Send for Paul Temple – 1946 | 83 mins | Crime | B&W

Plot Synopsis

The film debut of Francis Durbridge’s popular radio detective Paul Temple is an unexceptional crime yarn that suffers from the low-budget production values of b-movie purveyors Butchers. Three further films featuring Paul Temple followed with Paul Bentley in the lead role.

Following a series of unsolved diamond heists in the West Midlands, Scotland Yard’s Inspector Harvey calls on novelist/amateur detective Paul Temple (Anthony Hulme) to help investigate. When Temple and Harvey visit the Little General pub to collect the policeman’s belongings, a shot rings out and Harvey is discovered dead in his room in suspicious circumstances.

The only clue Temple has to go on is that the Little General inn was originally named The Green Finger, and this was the dying words of a security guard during a diamond robbery. Temple is joined in investigating the case by Harvey’s sister, lady reporter Steve Trent (Joy Shelton), who believes her brother was murdered by the same gang of jewel thieves he encountered in South Africa years earlier. It transpires that the Little General in Evesham is being used as the diamond thieves headquarters and that jewel are leaving the country via carrier-pigeon to the continent.

The police raid the Little General but discover the innkeeper is dead at that the crooks have fled to a new hideout – another local inn called the First Penguin. Paul and Steve then stakeout the inn awaiting the arrival of the leader of the gang, who turns out to be masquerading as a police inspector.