Paul Temple and the Margo case

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Paul Temple and the Margo Case is an eight-part radio play from the Paul Temple series by Francis Durbridge , which WDR produced in 1961 and aired for the first time from February 23 to April 13, 1962. The total playing time is 314 minutes.

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The individual episodes of the earlier multi-part series were still provided with separate subtitles. From the Lawrence case onwards, with the exception of the Geneva case , the WDR evidently refrained from doing this.

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The writer and private detective Paul Temple met the American publisher Mike Langdon on the return flight from a lecture tour through the USA . On behalf of his London boss George Kelburn, he should prevent his daughter Julia from marrying pop singer Tony Wyman.

Steve Temple, who wanted to pick up her husband after his arrival in London , has disappeared without a trace. It quickly becomes clear that it is a kidnapping . The police find their car in the airport parking lot. There's a coat on the back seat that doesn't belong to Steve. A company sign with the imprint Margo is sewn into the collar . Hours later, Steve is released at Euston Station in London . She tells Paul that she was kidnapped only as a warning and to prove it was possible. But the Temples are in no way involved at the moment. Commissioner Raine, who could not determine the origin of the coat, tells Temple that Scotland Yard is currently working on a case involving a large-scale organization in which various gangs and lone perpetrators carry out serious break-ins in order to subsequently transfer the loot to one Forward a fence , commonly known as Oak . Steve reports on a former friend named Linda, who has now become the second wife of the extremely wealthy George Kelburn. A few days ago Linda said on the phone that she absolutely had to talk to Paul, but denied this a few days later during a personal encounter.

Mike Langdon asks Paul to make inquiries about Tony Wyman, who says he has no close relationship with Julia Kelburn. In the middle of the night, Mrs. Kelburn calls Temple and claims that her stepdaughter Julia should be murdered. The next morning the police fished Julia's body out of the Thames . The girl, who was obviously strangled, was wearing a coat with the Margo nameplate on the collar . Kelburn turns to Temple for help. However, his wife Linda denies the nightly call.

Tony Wyman tells Temple about Julia Kelburn and how she was treated by a psychiatrist named Benkaray. Then the car in which Temple and Wyman are sitting is deliberately rammed by another vehicle, which the driver, a certain Ted Angus, vehemently denies. As apparently intended, Wyman was shocked.

While looking for a manufacturer or a fashion salon Margo , Steve happens to find out the home address of Drs in a fashion store on Bond Street. Benkaray in Kent , whose London practice is apparently closed for a long time. The Temples discover the badly abused Ted Angus near their home. Right before he dies, he advises Temple to ask Mrs. Fletcher about the coat. Mrs. Fletcher, who used to work for Dr. Benkaray has been running a gas station and repair shop in the area for some time with her son Bill. However, it is unclear to the people where they got the money for the operation. It is speculated that Dr. Benkaray could have been the financier. Mrs. Fletcher tells Temple that she knows nothing about Ted Angus and the coat. The innkeeper, Harcourt, remembers having had Julia Kelburn as a guest six months ago. Mike Langdon also seems to have turned up there.

Back home, the Temples learn from Inspector Raine and his boss Sir Graham Forbes that Julia Kelburn was a drug addict. Kelburn asks Temple to stop his research because he no longer sees any point in it. After a visit to Wyman's at Club 21 , Paul recognizes Linda Kelburn and Larry Cross, the secretary of Dr. Benkaray. Steve recognizes him as one of their kidnappers. It was only thanks to a telephone warning from Mrs. Fletcher that Steve was unharmed when a package bomb exploded in her dressing room.

Temple learns from Bill Fletcher that his mother had a heated argument with Mike Langdon. She refused to bring a coat to a person named Margo in Brighton , which she apparently used to do regularly on behalf of Dr. Benkaray had done. When Langdon warned her of the consequences of her actions, all she said was that it was enough to confront Benkaray with the name Edgar Northempton . The Temples go to Brighton also to look for a mysterious friend of Julia's named Fiona Scott, who both Kelburn and Wyman had mentioned. In a bank in the small town of Tenterhurst, Temple meets the local director Edgar Northempton, who advised Mrs. Fletcher some time ago.

When the Temples arrive at the Palace Hotel in Brighton, they meet Langdon and Kelburn, who wants the detective to shadow his wife, as she could possibly have an affair with another man. Paul and Steve call Fiona Scott to meet for the evening in a remote country house on the coast. After an ominous phone call from Mrs. Fletcher, the Temples encounter fortune teller Margo in a nearby amusement park. She warns Steve about a car accident that could have something to do with a dolphin. There is a stone sculpture modeled after a dolphin above the entrance to the Breakwater House, where Miss Scott meets. A few meters further on, Paul, driving cautiously, discovered a steel cable that was stretched across the middle of the path and was obviously intended as a trap. In the completely empty Breakwater House, the Temples find the badly abused Tony Wyman. The three of them can only leave the house with difficulty, as it has since been set on fire. When they want to leave the property again, they find the heavy entrance gate locked and the fence energized. Kelburn and Langdon appear in front of the gate and claim to have been ordered there in writing by Temple.

During the search of the Breakwater house, the police find fingerprints of the burglar and jewel robber Midge Harris, who is meanwhile in custody. The reporter Ken Sinclair suspects that the infamous Oak is behind Harris. With a trick Paul Temple succeeds in getting Harris to speak. So Temple learns of a certain Oskar, who acts as a middleman between the jewel robbers and the Oak.

Mrs. Fletcher tells Steve that as a messenger she would not have worked knowingly for the Oak. When she found out, she had deposited incriminating documents in a safe at Edgar Northempton's Bank so that she could safely get out. Now she has had the gas station and workshop transferred to her son in order to leave England for Australia herself. But the Kelburns, who have reconciled themselves again, want to leave the country, just like Dr. Benkaray and her secretary Larry Cross. Temple senses that time is running out as the organization appears to be in the process of disintegration. With the help of Scotland Yard, he had the news of an alleged jewel theft spread on Bond Street and shortly afterwards offered Oskar the goods for sale. As proof, he leaves a bracelet, which is supposed to be part of the loot, but actually belongs to his wife, with the middleman so that he can pass it on to the Oak for inspection. Since Temple now knows the identity of the Oak, he hires the former facade climber Wally Stone to steal the bracelet from his villa.

Shortly before her flight to Melbourne , Mrs. Fletcher learns from Steve that her son has been hit by a car and seriously injured. She then tells Steve that the gang has also been involved in drug trafficking for some time and that the coats she was supposed to bring to fortune teller Margo were used to distribute the drug. On behalf of Temple, Mrs. Fletcher explains to Dr. Benkaray that she would now be ready to hand over the incriminating documents to Oak, but only to him personally. The handover should take place in the late evening at the petrol station. But it is not Oak who falls into the trap, but Mike Langdon, who has been sent by him. It was he who strangled Julia Kelburn, who was also a member of the gang, because she threatened to go to the police. Julia also revealed the Oak's identity to Tony Wyman, who then tried to blackmail him. When Kelburn and his wife want to leave the country on a passenger ship, Temple and the police show up with them. Before Kelburn the Oak could be arrested, he committed suicide with pills. Benkaray and her secretary are also arrested. Bill Fletcher, who was run over by Larry Cross, is now on the mend.

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Remarks

The radio play was first produced by the BBC in 1961 under the title Paul Temple and the Margo Mystery . The Temple couple were voiced by Peter Coke and Marjorie Westbury .

After Paul Temple and the Gregory affair in 1949, this is probably the tenth multi-part series that WDR and its predecessor NWDR Cologne produced in its Paul Temple series. The ARD radio play archive, however, has another multi-part series entitled A case for Paul Temple from 1950, which is said to be the Valentin case . The WDR in Cologne could not confirm this information on request.

For Eduard Hermann it was the last directorial work in a Paul Temple production. He was there from the start. In the first radio play of the Gregory affair , which the NWDR studios in Hamburg and Cologne still produced together, he was responsible for every second episode, while Fritz Schröder-Jahn took on this role in the "Hamburgerteile". Hermann died in 1964, so the last two multi-part series were directed by Otto Düben .

The Cologne folk actress and singer Lotti Krekel, who was known from various television broadcasts from the Millowitsch Theater , can also be heard in a small supporting role . The following year she appeared in a slightly larger role in the street sweeper Tim Frazer , also by Francis Durbridge on television.

Joachim Sonderhoff , who would later make a name for himself as a broadcaster, director and producer at the radio station WDR, worked as assistant to director Eduard Hermann in this multi-part series.

Matthias Deltgen, who spoke the role of reporter Ken Sinclair, is the son of René Deltgen and his first wife Elisabeth Scherer , who spoke the role of Steve Temple in 1951 for Paul Temple and the Curzon case .

Publications

References

  • Radio play (plot)
  • The Internet database of the ARD radio play archive, accessed on March 2, 2011 (all information about the production).