Paul Temple and the Kelby Affair. Francis DurbridgeЧитать онлайн книгу.
he needed help. He’s such a good man. We did everything we could to keep this a home for him, especially after she died. Do you think he’ll be all right?’
‘I trust so, Mrs Ashwood. I really hope so.’ She was a large, motherly woman and she was clearly devoted to her employer. Paul sensed the grief that such disruptions of normal domesticity can cause; suddenly Kelby was a human being and it mattered that he should be well.
‘Is Leo your husband?’
‘Yes, that’s right.’
‘I saw him working in the grounds.’
‘He’s a hard worker. It takes his mind off the trouble. Leo is more like a friend of Mr Kelby than just the handyman.’ She allowed a brief laugh to ripple through her ample body. ‘Mr Kelby always says that Leo taught him to be a countryman. They’re very close.’
It was relaxing in the kitchen. Gladys Ashwood lived in a nice world of nice people. She was sympathetic about Mr Ronnie. ‘Well, he was devoted to his mother. Her death was such a blow that he needed somebody to blame. He blamed Mr Kelby. But they’ve made it up now. Mr Kelby was so pleased that his son came home the other week. There’s even talk of Mr Ronnie staying…’ She liked Tracy Leonard: ‘Such a brilliant girl and ever so much the lady. She’s been here for nearly five years…’ None of these nice people would ever harm Mr Kelby. The only person she had bad words to say about was Ted Mortimer.
‘I feel responsible in a way,’ she was saying. ‘Ted Mortimer used to be very close with my husband and me. We used to see a lot of him. But he’s not a countryman. He was in the merchant navy.’
Paul was drinking a cup of tea she had poured him and he scarcely heard her story about the row Kelby had with the neighbouring farmer. ‘Mr Kelby was going over there on Monday afternoon,’ she said, and the words registered with a sudden shock.
‘What did you say, Mrs Ashwood?’
‘To see Ted Mortimer. He was going over to Galloway Farm—’
‘Did he ever arrive?’
‘I couldn’t say.’
‘What was their row about?’
‘I wouldn’t know, Mr Temple, but they do say in the village that there was a quarrel about money. We don’t see Ted Mortimer any more, you see, and I’m not one to gossip myself—’
‘Of course you aren’t, Mrs Ashwood. But you’re a wonderful raconteur. Excuse me if I dash away.’ He squeezed her shoulder affectionately. ‘By the way, this is my card. If you do remember any gossip, please let me know. I’m a devil of a gossip myself.’
She was laughing complacently as he left the kitchen and collided in the hall with Charlie Vosper. The inspector had come running from the library.
‘Where are you off to?’ Vosper asked suspiciously.
‘Me? Oh, I thought I’d make a tour of the neighbouring farms. It hasn’t been done, has it?’
‘No, it hasn’t. Would you mind driving with me, Temple? I’d like to be sure I know all that you know before we search Ted Mortimer’s place. I like to keep abreast.’
They walked across the drive towards the police car with studied casualness. But the inspector reached it first.
‘OF course there never was such a diary, my dear. How could there be when Dickie never had such a mistress? Dickie had his faults, I’d be the first to admit them: he was a bore and he danced abominably, but I never noticed people rushing off to enter up their diaries whenever Dickie trod on their corns. What did you say this person’s name was?’
Steve persevered with the assignment. ‘Miss Spender. Margaret Spender.’
‘Never heard of her!’
‘She was your husband’s secretary.’
The frail old lady said: ‘Oh!’ like an ancient bird sighting a small field mouse. ‘That Miss Spender. I always felt sorry for her. She was a big girl. We called her the last of the big Spenders.’ Her eyes sparkled with malicious life.
‘Miss Spender did keep a diary for those ten years,’ said Steve, ‘and of course that included the period after the war when your husband was murdered.’
‘Killed, dear. It could have been an accident. I expect it gave her something to do in the evenings.’
‘And now that she is dead her sister has decided to publish it.’
‘How very demeaning.’
Steve had felt slightly nervous when she arrived at Delamore House. But she had made an appointment with Lady Delamore’s secretary, which Paul had said was significant. She’s worried, he had said, or else she wants to know what is going on. A butler had shown Steve into the drawing room; and then Lady Delamore had bustled in calling for Simpson to bring tea.
‘We’ll have tea early today,’ she had said pedantically. It was only ten minutes to four. ‘Mrs Temple looks as if she needs sustenance.’
She was not putting Steve at her ease.
‘You young people are so thin these days. I’m thin, but then I’m eighty-five. When I was your age I had a generous bosom and a bottom you could really sit on.’
‘You must have led a busy life in those—’
‘It must be all this unisex that you people go in for these days. It makes everybody thin.’
The butler brought in tea at that point. It gave Steve an excuse to change the subject. She talked about the diary although Lady Delamore’s attention soon wandered.
‘How do you come to be involved in this?’ she suddenly demanded.
‘My husband is a crime writer, and it was his publisher who acquired the diary.’
‘Crime, eh?’ She laughed derisively. ‘It’s a little late for solving any of the mysteries which surrounded my husband’s death. Those of us who are still alive have forgotten what little we knew.’
‘Nobody is trying to solve anything, Lady Delamore,’ Steve said provocatively. ‘The solutions are all given in the diary.’
‘Which has disappeared, you said?’
‘A man has disappeared, Lady Delamore. The historian, Alfred Kelby. The diary is incidental, although if we found that we might also find Mr Kelby. My husband wondered whether you, or some of your friends, might be being blackmailed. Whoever has this diary might try to extort money by it.’
‘I never pay blackmailers,’ she pronounced aphoristically, ‘and none of my friends have any money. I’m sorry I couldn’t be more help.’
Steve helped herself to another tea cake. ‘Alfred Kelby was reading the diary to give his opinion on its historical authenticity,’ she said.
‘I don’t understand. Do you mean he could confirm that my husband was really murdered? And murdered by whomever Miss Spender accuses? Surely if Mr Kelby knew that he should have said in 1947, when poor Sir Philip Tranmere was arrested. I believe there was a Mr Kelby in the party up at the shooting lodge at the time, but I don’t remember that he was really in with the best people.’
Steve suggested that Mr Kelby could find the diary explanation convincing or not. ‘He would know the people involved, and he might be a better witness than you, Lady Delamore, on the subject of Miss Spender.’
‘What would a historian know of my poor late husband’s sexual relationships? This publisher should have asked me. I could have told him that Dickie’s morals were above reproach. He snored in his sleep and his feet smelled. Those