Paul Temple and the Tyler Mystery. Francis Durbridge
Miss Dallas in?’
‘No.’
‘This is the house, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, but she’s not in.’
‘Did she leave any message for me? My name’s Temple.’
‘No. She said nothing to me.’
Mrs Hobson had begun to close the door. She regarded Temple and Steve with suspicion, as if they spelt trouble.
‘That’s odd,’ he persisted. ‘I had an appointment to meet her here at nine o’clock. Has she not been in this evening at all?’
The woman shrugged as if to imply that the movements of her lodgers were no concern of hers.
‘She may have come in and gone out again while I was out feeding my budgies. As often as not she only comes back for long enough to change her shoes or dress before hurrying off to the pictures or the Palais.’
‘Are you sure she’s not in her room now?’
‘You seem very inclined to doubt my word—’ Mrs Hobson was working herself up into a huff over Temple’s insistence.
He said politely: ‘I’ve come all the way from London to see her, so naturally I don’t want to miss her.’
‘From London, are you? Well, I can always tell whether Jane is in or not by her wireless. It switches on from the door as you go in and she’s never in that room without it’s on. I don’t complain because I think she feels the loneliness.’
‘Well, thank you very much, Mrs – er?’
‘Hobson’s my name.’
‘Mrs Hobson. Perhaps we can call back a little later?’
‘Yes. I’ll tell her as soon as she comes in.’
Temple was just turning away to go down the steps when a thought struck him.
‘By the way, Mrs Hobson, where does Miss Dallas work?’
Being called by her name seemed to make all the difference to the landlady. A little primness crept into her pronunciation but she answered more readily.
‘She’s employed at one of those hairdressing saloons. It’s a new place – I can’t remember the name just at the moment.’
‘Is it Mariano’s?’
‘That’s it. I knew it was some French name.’
Steve and Temple walked slowly back towards the main street, watching for any girl coming the opposite way who might be Jane Dallas.
‘Is this coincidence again?’ Steve asked, though she already knew the answer.
‘It can’t be. This girl mentioned the Tyler mystery on the telephone. Perhaps she too was transferred from the London branch and knew Betty Tyler when they were there together.’
‘But Betty Tyler was murdered after she left London.’
‘We don’t know that this “Harry” business didn’t begin when she was still there. I have a feeling that Jane Dallas is going to help us quite a lot.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Ten past nine. I wonder how long we should give it?’
‘Another twenty minutes,’ Steve suggested. ‘Let’s go into this hotel and have a drink. I’m rather cold after that drive.’
Temple was very much on edge and hardly gave Steve time to enjoy her brandy. They were back at the door of number 17 before the clocks started striking the half-hour.
‘She’s not back yet,’ Mrs Hobson assured them. ‘I left my kitchen door open so that I’d hear the front door and no one’s come in.’
‘Mrs Hobson, I wonder if you’d just try her room – in case her radio has gone wrong or something.’
‘Well—’ Mrs Hobson surveyed Steve doubtfully and then opened the door wider. ‘Since you’ve come all the way from London.’
They stood in the narrow hall while Mrs Hobson toiled up the worn green staircarpet to the first floor. The Monarch of the Glen stared aloofly over their heads and a faint odour of primeval cabbage leaked out from the kitchen. In a minute or two Mrs Hobson came back down the stairs, walking sideways and holding on to the banisters.
‘There’s no answer,’ she said. ‘But it’s a funny thing, her door’s locked. She never locks it when she goes out—’
Temple was already moving towards the staircase.
‘Will you show me where her room is, please?’
‘Why!’ Mrs Hobson put out a podgy hand to restrain him. ‘I’ll ask you to remember whose house you’re in.’
‘This is urgent,’ Temple snapped. ‘That girl may be in danger. Now, which is her room?’
Before the expression in his eyes, Mrs Hobson capitulated.
‘It’s the door facing you at the end of the passage.’
Jane Dallas’s door was indeed locked. Temple banged on it and called loudly. Inside there was complete silence. Behind him he could hear Steve talking soothingly to the landlady, who was horrified at the sight of a Man on her first floor landing. He stood back a few feet, raised his right leg and kicked his heel against the door just below the lock. With a splintering sound the door shuddered open. The room in front of him was in darkness. He could see his own shadow, stretched to a grotesque length in the rectangle of light cast by the lamp on the landing.
With his left hand he felt for the light switch and snapped it on. He heard Steve coming along the passage behind him. Over his shoulder he said:
‘Don’t come any further, Steve. Try and get Mrs Hobson downstairs.’
Steve had worked with Temple too often to ignore that tone of voice. Without question she turned away. Temple went into the room and with the toe of his foot pushed the door until it was almost shut. Then he stood his ground and devoted a couple of minutes to what the police call ‘giving your eyes a chance’.
The room was a small bed-sitter. It was badly proportioned and too high for its size. The wallpaper and furnishings supplied by Mrs Hobson were ugly and shabby but here and there a few defiant gestures showed where Jane Dallas had tried to create a gayer, more feminine atmosphere. A flower-patterned curtain hung across one corner, obscuring the wash-stand, there was a vase of daffodils on the mantelshelf and a framed colour photo of Capri above it. The divan bed was covered with a striped blanket of many colours which might have come from North Africa, Persia or Birmingham.
The room was scrupulously tidy. Temple guessed that Jane Dallas had not had time to change her dress that evening.
She lay sprawled across the divan bed as if she had been flung there by violent hands. Her face was turned upwards towards the light and it was not possible to tell now whether she had been plain or pretty. Without moving from where he stood Temple was able to recognise the handiwork of a strangler. Though it was practically uncreased he never doubted that the girl had been killed with the silk picture scarf which lay near her on the divan. It had fallen in such a way that he could pick out on its shiny surface the Place de la Concorde, a portion of the Palais de Chaillot and Notre Dame de Paris.
Behind him a voice, growing rapidly in volume, announced: ‘And now, in answer to many requests, Al Jacobs will sing that popular number “Lonely is the Night”.’ An unseen multitude applauded and the brass section of an orchestra went into the key of E minor.
Temple calculated that Jane Dallas’s radio took just about two minutes to warm up. He hooked his toe round the door again to pull it open, and went downstairs to telephone the police.
‘I wish to God we could get a drink,’ Sir Graham grumbled, scowling round the dark empty lounge of the Black Lion. Some time earlier the waiter had politely pointed out that unless they were residents they could not