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CHAPTER II
Paul Temple

The press of the country had seized on the idea of a mysterious gang holding the Midlands in its grasp, and were making the most of it. Both Spanish and Chinese War news had begun to grow wearisome. Moreover, news editors found it both difficult and tedious to try to follow the latest moves. Only an occasional heavy bombardment, the capture of a big city, or the sinking of a British ship could now be sure of reaching the front pages.

The mere killing of hundreds of men a day had long ceased to be news. There had not even been a really good murder story for months, and editors were falling back on such hardy annuals as Gretna Green and the ‘cat’ for their very large and strident headlines.

Then suddenly, out of the blue, the ‘Midland Mysteries’ arrived. The circulations of the evening papers immediately reached heights no national or international crisis could produce. Special investigators made their special investigations and produced lengthy summaries of what they had not been able to find out. Articles appeared by well-known psychologists, judges, the Chairman of the Howard League for Penal Reform, and Mr. George Bernard Shaw.

Every newspaper produced different theories and suggested different methods of apprehending the criminals. One ran a competition for readers’ solutions. It was won by Mr. Ronald Garth, a Battersea bricklayer, who was convinced, in no very certain grammar or spelling, that the crimes were a put-up job and part of a new attempt to foster interest in A.R.P. He received a cheque for 10s. 6d.

On one point, however, all the newspapers were agreed. The urgent necessity of sending for Mr. Paul Temple. ‘Send for Paul Temple’ became almost a national slogan.

His name appeared on almost every poster in the city. His photograph was blazoned from the fronts of buses.

Scotland Yard remained quiet and merely writhed in exquisite agony. They did not enjoy the ‘Send for Paul Temple’ campaign. Nor did they enjoy reading the letters which reached them by the hundred every day instructing them, in the public’s interest, to—Send for Paul Temple!

All this publicity, however, was not without its value, for booksellers very quickly reported high sales for Paul Temple’s detective stories, and one of the more lurid of Sunday newspapers, hoping to scoop the rest, commissioned an article by Mr. Temple on the growing rat menace in Britain and paid him the record sum of £1,000 for it. Unhappily for them, on the day it appeared, another equally lurid Sunday newspaper published an article by Mr. Temple on the growing spy menace in Britain, which he had written five years before and for which he received £4 14s. 6d. after his agent, overjoyed at selling the ancient manuscript, had deducted his usual 25 per cent commission.

It had taken Paul Temple six years to rise from the dark obscurity of an unknown author to the limelight of a popular novelist. On coming down from Oxford he applied for a newspaper job and eventually became a reporter on one of the great London dailies. After twelve months of writing everything from gossip paragraphs to sports reports he became interested in criminology, and eventually started to specialise in ‘crime’ stories.

While still in Fleet Street, he tried his hand at the drama, and in 1929 his play, Dance, Little Lady, was produced at the Ambassadors Theatre. It ran for seven performances. In a fit of irritation, caused through the unexpected failure of his play, Paul Temple started his first thriller.

Death In The Theatre! appeared early the following year. It achieved a phenomenal success, and Paul Temple promptly left Fleet Street.

Oddly enough, Temple very quickly acquired a reputation as a criminologist. From time to time he had been asked by popular papers to investigate some sensational crime on their behalf. Thus, although it is not generally known, it was Paul Temple who was really responsible for the arrest of such notorious criminals as Toni Silepi, Guy Grinzman, and Tessa Jute.

On the subject of the present crimes, however, Paul Temple refused to be drawn. To the reporters who called to see him, he was invariably out of town. No telephone number or address could possibly be given. He was thought to be travelling in the Ukraine.

Several energetic reporters, however, went so far as to set up camp stools outside the big block of service flats in Golder’s Green where he stayed when in London. The only vacant flat in the building had already been engaged on a year’s lease at a rental of £460 (inclusive) by the Queen Newspaper Syndicate of America!

Meanwhile other reporters and photographers patrolled the grounds of Bramley Lodge, Paul Temple’s country house not far from Evesham.

Bramley Lodge was an extensive old Elizabethan house which Paul Temple had secured at a very low figure owing to its poor condition. He had managed to have it partially rebuilt without completely ruining the beautiful façade, the old oak beams and other ancient features of the building. In addition, central heating had been installed, tennis courts laid, and a rather delightful rockery planned. Altogether, Paul Temple had contrived to make Bramley Lodge a very comfortable place.

All these alterations had done nothing to spoil it, and Paul Temple was often asked by artist friends (and strangers) as well as photographers, for permission to make some permanent record of the lovely old mansion. Only to Surrealists did he refuse.

The house was set in the middle of a large park with a drive fringed by luxurious old beech trees to the main Warwick Road below. About the exact size of his grounds, Temple felt rather dubious. He had bought a half-inch Ordnance Survey map only a few weeks before and by dint of laborious calculation and lengthy use of compasses and dividers, discovered that he possessed eighty-five acres of very pleasant land. But his confidence in his own mathematical knowledge was not exactly great. (‘When I was at Rugby, my marks for mathematics used to be 8 per cent with the most monotonous regularity,’ he used to tell his friends.) He had not yet remembered to pass the problem on to more mathematically minded friends and as in addition, all the papers concerning the estate were ‘locked away somewhere’, he had only very vague ideas about his own property.

On the Monday, two days after the conference at Scotland Yard, Dr. Milton and his niece, Diana Thornley, neighbours of the novelist, had succeeded in penetrating the cordon of newspapermen and were now sitting in the comfortable drawing-room of Bramley Lodge.

They had just enjoyed an excellent dinner prepared under the very personal supervision of Temple himself, for he quite rightly prided himself on his culinary knowledge. In fact, he used to boast that his knowledge of West End restaurants was second to none. Certainly he knew almost every chef in London well enough to spend many a half-hour in wistful contemplation of the mysterious processes to which they subjected the raw materials of the meal he was later to enjoy.

The knowledge he thus gained would go to benefit his guests. This evening Dr. Milton and Diana Thornley had certainly appreciated the meal that had been set before them.

Now they were sipping their coffee before a great fire of coal and holly, the men in deep brown leather armchairs, Miss Thornley on a stool by the inglenook. A heavy Turkish carpet softened the room, and the comfortable old furniture seemed to impart an intimate, sociable atmosphere.

The vivacious, dark-haired and dark-eyed girl of twenty- seven who looked as if she had Spanish blood in her, contrasted strangely with the two men. Yet she bore them many similarities in temperament. Impetuous, yet firm-lipped, she was a girl of hard character who looked as if she enjoyed life to the full. That she was not married was a continual source of wonder, and even anxiety, to the country people in the district.

Her uncle showed little family likeness to Diana Thornley. But then, as Dr. Milton explained, she took after her mother, not her father, who was Milton’s brother. He had a wiry figure, which looked as if it had seen hardship and could easily face more. He rarely seemed completely at his ease.

He told Temple he had had an extensive practice in Sydney and that he had done some exploration into the great deserts of Western Australia. Now he had come back to the home country to retire. He seemed very little over fifty and was probably younger, very young to retire, reflected Temple. But he seemed to have enough money to spend, and always enough to do to obviate boredom.

Temple himself was a modern embodiment of Sir Philip Sydney. Courtly in manners, a dominant character without ever giving the impression of dominating. He was equally at home in the double-breasted dinner-jacket he was now wearing, the perfect host entertaining his guests, or in coarse, loose tweeds striding along the country lanes.

Nobody was surprised to learn that he preferred rugby football to cricket, although he had played both. Now at the age of forty, he was past the violence of the game but still rarely missed an international match. He had done well in the pack for his college team at Oxford but, strangely enough, he had never got past the selection committee for the varsity side. The fact that he had never secured his blue was a constant source of regret.

He had a habit of leisurely movement and retained traces of what, in his younger days, had been a very pronounced Oxford drawl. On the other hand, you felt that here was a man whose bulk would be no great hindrance to action, and that in a fight it was as well to have him on your side.

Conversation had turned gradually to crime as it often did in that drawing-room. They were discussing the notorious Tenworthy case and Temple’s personal contacts as distinguished from his abstract interest in crime.

‘A man called Tenworthy murdered his wife by gently pushing her over Leaton Cliffs in Cornwall,’ the novelist reminded Dr. Milton. ‘That was two years ago, the beginning of my active interest in criminology.’

‘You must have taken an interest in the case from the very beginning,’ said Diana Thornley. ‘Surely you just didn’t make a lot of Charlie Chan observations?’

Her uncle looked at her with a kindly and tolerant, yet none the less broad, amusement. ‘Don’t be silly!’ he admonished her. ‘Mr. Temple is far too modest. I remember reading about the Tenworthy affair. He made several startling discoveries which the police had entirely overlooked. As a matter of fact, they arrested a young man called Roberts, who had nothing to do with the case, if I remember rightly.’

The details of the case were coming back to the two men now. It had caused a tremendous stir at the time. The newspapers had started a ‘Release Roberts!’ campaign. Indignation meetings had been held over the country and questions had been asked in the House of Commons. Young Roberts was finally set free and awarded £1,000 as compensation.

‘Yes, Len Roberts,’ said Paul Temple in a soft voice. ‘By Timothy, that boy had a near shave!’

‘Well, no wonder all the newspapers are saying, “Send for Paul Temple!”’ smiled Diana Thornley, with an excitement that sent a glow of colour into her cheeks.

Her host laughed. ‘The newspapers, like your uncle, are inclined to exaggerate my ability, Miss Thornley!’ he said. ‘I am afraid they see in me what is technically described as “good copy”!’

‘I’ve been reading a great deal about these robberies,’ said Dr. Milton. ‘They really are remarkable, you know. Four robberies in six months, and all within the same area. I’m not one for grumbling, but I do really think it’s about time the police started to show some results.

‘Now look at that business in Birmingham only this week. The police haven’t even got a single clue!’

‘Yes,’ said Diana softly. ‘The night watchman was murdered too.’

‘Murdered?’ asked her uncle, with surprise in his voice. ‘I didn’t know that!’

‘Apparently he was chloroformed and didn’t recover from it,’ explained his host. ‘I have a sort of feeling that was an accident.’

‘Yes,’ said Milton after a moment’s thought, his face set in a deep frown, ‘perhaps you’re right. We shall soon start thinking we’ve settled down in the wrong country, Diana!’ he added, laughing.

They discussed the ‘Midland Mysteries’ just as in a hundred thousand other homes in the country they were being discussed. Whilst jewellers and diamond merchants tested their safes and burglar alarms, taking the latest precautions of every kind, before nervously rubbing their hands and hoping the insurance companies wouldn’t be too argumentative when the disaster inevitably arrived.

‘Mr. Temple—’ started Diana suddenly.

‘Yes?’

‘What do you really think about these robberies? Do you think it’s the work of an organized sort of gang, or do you think…’

‘Oh, come, Diana!’ interrupted her uncle, with what was probably intended to be an indulgent smile, ‘don’t start troubling Mr. Temple with a lot of newspaper nonsense!’

Both men began to laugh. To Temple, at least, it was amusing to see this lovely girl displaying so sudden and rather startling an interest in the Midland Mysteries. And Diana was so very serious as well as persistent.