Paul Temple and the Tyler Mystery. Francis Durbridge

Temple reminded him. ‘It’s your people who enforce the laws.’

      ‘They’d better not try and turn me out,’ the older man said in his bass-drum voice. ‘As a bona fide traveller I’m entitled to call for glasses of water till the cows come home.’

      It had taken Sir Graham exactly one hour from Temple’s phone call to pick up Vosper and bring him down to Guildford. The Inspector had joined the Guildford C.I.D. men at 17 Charlotte Street; Forbes and the Temples cast themselves upon the mercy of the Black Lion. While they waited for Vosper to bring back the latest information Temple briefed Sir Graham about the visit to Sonning, Jane Dallas’s telephone call and his macabre discovery at Charlotte Street.

      ‘She was killed, of course, to prevent her giving you this information, whatever it was.’

      Sir Graham picked up his coffee cup, examined its contents and then decided against drinking any more. Temple did not feel that any comment was required from him.

      ‘What I don’t understand,’ Forbes went on, ‘is why this strangler should leave his visiting card each time.’

      ‘The picture scarf of Paris? It didn’t really tell us any more than we knew already. The link between Jane Dallas and Betty Tyler was established. We cannot assume, though, that Jane Dallas was killed because she knew something which pointed to the identity of the other girl’s murderer. She may have been killed for the same reason as Betty Tyler.’

      ‘That reason being?’

      ‘Sir Graham, when we know that we’ll be within sight of our murderer.’