The Case of Naomi Clynes

by Basil Thomson

  “Say, he may have been travelling with two boys when he left Paris.”

  “He said nothing to the station-master about there being two.”

  “No, that’s so. Waal, so you followed him out to Nogent.”

  “How did you go?” asked Milsom.

  “We hired a car, sir, and kept it until we had finished our inquiry.”

  “You’ll be able to recover the money from Scotland Yard when you get home?”

  Richardson looked embarrassed. “I’m afraid not, sir, but that’s of no consequence.’’

  “No such thing, Inspector. This is our show, and we won’t have you putting your hand in your pocket till it’s over. Tell Adolphe what you spent and he’ll refund it out of his expense account.”

  “Thank you very much, sir; it’s very kind of you.”

  “What I’m dying to know,” said Milsom, “is what they told you at that clinic in Nogent.”

  “It wasn’t only at the clinic that I got information. I got it from the hotel and a garage in the town. The man who called himself Godfrey returned to the clinic next morning with a car and told the doctor that he proposed to take the boy away. The doctor objected that it might be dangerous to the child’s health, but as the boy was conscious, he could not, of course, detain him. The boy had, it seems, entirely lost his memory, and the doctor seemed to think it doubtful whether he would ever recover it. At the hotel I learned that he took the child to Orleans.”

  “How far is Orleans?”

  “About one hundred kilometres, sir. We ought to be able to do it comfortably in an hour and a half.”

  “Have you the address of the clinic there?”

  “Yes, sir; it is in the rue des Orfévres. I have seen the man who drove them to Orleans. Mr. Godfrey, as he called himself, carried the boy into the clinic and paid off the car.”

  “Certainly it’s funny. This man identifies and buries his nephew here, and then motors off with another boy supposed to be his son, and under another name. Had he two boys with him—a son and a nephew—and was he trying to foist the nephew in the place of his son who was killed?”

  “No, sir, Mr. Maze is a bachelor and has no son.”

  “I’ll tell you what, Uncle Jim; the inspector has ferreted out material for a top-hole thriller.”

  “The first thing we’ve got to clear up is this,” said Richardson. “Is the man we are following Mr. Maze, or another Englishman altogether? Are there two men or one? And if only one, why so many clinics?”

  “Yes, you’ve struck the weak point in the thriller,” said Milsom. “If the guy was out to cover up his tracks one could understand him changing his name, but why so many clinics?”

  “Well, we won’t solve the puzzle by sitting here talking,” declared Hudson, signalling to the waiter.

  “We’d best be getting along.”

  They found Adolphe immersed in his Michelin Guide. “You know the way to Orleans?” asked his employer.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Step on the gas then, Adolphe, and let us get on with it.”

  Adolphe “stepped on the gas,” and the car went like the wind. Mr. Hudson belonged to the class of motor-owners who have a childlike confidence in the skill of any driver who wears a uniform, but a pathetic mistrust of every driver in mufti, drive he never so carefully.

  They found themselves at Orleans before six, and were driven straight to the clinic.

  “We can’t invade this clinic in body,” said Milsom; “we’d scare the little sisters out of their wits. What about Mr. Richardson, with Adolphe to interpret for him, breaking the ground first, while we stop in the car?”

  “Okay, but push on with it.”

  “Right, Uncle; in thrillers like this is there mustn’t be a hitch for a moment in unrolling the evidence.”

  Richardson rang the bell, and Adolphe asked the sister in uniform who opened the door whether they could see the doctor.

  “On the subject of…?”

  “On the subject of a young English boy who was admitted as a patient immediately after the railway accident at Lagny.”

  The sister’s face broke into a smile. “I remember that little boy well,” she said, and tripped down the passage.

  A moment later the doctor made his appearance and to Richardson’s relief addressed them in excellent English.

  “You are asking about an English boy who was here four or five months ago? Godfrey was his name.”

  “Yes,” said Richardson. “My friends and I are anxious to know what became of him.”

  “Ah! And I, too, would like to know. We became much attached to that boy; he was a dear little fellow.”

  “Was he seriously injured?”

  “I cannot say that. He had received a blow on the head which left a big bruise, and he was suffering from shock, but his physical condition was unaffected by it. He slept and ate well; he could laugh and joke with me and with the sisters, but he had lost his memory. He did not even appear to know his own father, and he had no recollection of the accident or of anything that preceded it. During the war this was not uncommon among men suffering from shell-shock.”

  “Did they recover their memory?” asked Richardson.

  “In most cases, yes, but not in all, and that is why I am sorry that I could not follow up this particular case. The boy was so lively and intelligent, so quick in noticing things, that I should have expected that he would entirely recover. But…”

  “Did his father take him away?”

  “He did, and after only six days in the clinic. It should have been longer.”

  “Where did they go?”

  The doctor spread his two hands out from the elbow. “The father did not say where he was taking him. He was curiously reticent about his destination. He called for the boy in a car, and I presumed that he was taking him back to England.”

  “He has never written to you since?”

  “No. Of course, as he had paid the account, he was not constrained to write, though most people do send a line of gratitude, particularly the English.”

  “Thank you very much, doctor,” said Richardson, rising. “I ought to explain why I have troubled you. It is because my friends who are waiting below knew that the boy had been here, and thought that you might be able to give them his present address.”

  “I wish I knew it,” replied the doctor, shaking hands. “If you hear where he is, you will give much pleasure to our nurses if you will write to me.”

  “One more question, doctor. Did the father stay here?”

  “No, he stayed at the Hôtel Métropole.”

  Richardson returned to the car and reported his conversation.

  “Okay,” said Mr. Hudson. “We’ll go and stay at the Métropole; we might hear something there.”

  The Métropole proved to be an hotel of some importance—one of those hotels in which the manager makes a point of attending on distinguished visitors in the dining-room and engaging them in conversation. That these visitors were distinguished was shown by Mr. Hudson’s choice from the wine list.

  The manager advanced deferentially and asked whether the dinner was to their liking.

  “Okay,” said Mr. Hudson.

  “Monsieur is Americain? I thought that you were English.”

  “Do you get many English here?”

  “We used to, but now with the exchange, not so many. I regret it. My daughter was educated in England, and it is good for her not to forget what she learned.”

  Jim Milsom sat up and took notice. “Is she the young lady at the desk?” he asked.

  “Yes, monsieur.”

  When he had withdrawn to other duties, Milsom said, “Now you’d better let this English-speaking daughter be my job. In looks she’s quite passable. I shall get on with her like a house on fire. Shell tell me all about the mysterious Godfrey, and a good deal more, I fancy.”

  “Well,” remarked Richardson, “it will fit in with my plans, for if Mr. Hudson doesn’t mind, I thought of writing my report thi
s evening in case I might forget something.”

  Mr. Hudson seemed to smile upon the project. His eye was a little glazed, and his whole attitude suggested that he would spend the evening profitably by dozing in the smoking-room with a long cigar dangling from his lips; he had fed well and sipped copiously.

  Accordingly the party broke up to go its several ways. Richardson had retired to his bedroom to write, and had arrived at his fifth page when there was a sharp rap at the door, and Jim Milsom burst in, triumphant.

  “I’ve had a spot of luck, Inspector. The young lady at the desk was dying to air her English. She learned it in a Catholic school in Jersey. It’s the funniest kind of English that ever you heard, but quite pleasant to listen to. She said that she remembered your man Godfrey quite well, but I permitted myself to doubt her. Anyway, look what I’ve got for you— this letter. She said that it came just after Godfrey left, and as he hadn’t left any address it’s been lying waiting for him in the office ever since. Now, if you’d interviewed her, you’d have had qualms about accepting the letter, because you wouldn’t have cared to say that you were one of Godfrey’s intimate friends.”

  “On the contrary, Mr. Milsom, I should have gone further than you did, for I propose to open this letter and read it.”

  “Now you’re talking. Let me see you do it.”

  “Oh, I haven’t any of the gadgets that the postal censors used during the war. I have to do it as jealous wives do when they steal letters addressed to their husbands, in the hope of finding a woman’s signature and an assignation.” He went to the washstand, ran an inch of water into the basin, and laid the back of the letter to float on the surface without wetting the address. “There! In ten minutes it will be open without leaving a trace.”

  “May I wait? I won’t interrupt your writing if you’ll let me smoke.”

  “Sit down by all means. I shall have finished in a very few minutes.’’

  For once in his life Jim Milsom maintained a silence that could be felt. He watched Richardson’s pen traversing the page with what seemed to him incredible swiftness: the man never seemed to have to think what to say next. It was that faculty, he thought, that must have brought his friend such quick promotion—that and his habit of clearing up the smallest detail. A man like Richardson, he thought, would have succeeded in any walk of life, and here he was, content with the exiguous salary of detective inspector, because he loved his work for its own sake instead of pursuing it for what it would bring him in wealth and influence.

  At last Richardson laid down his pen and went quickly to the washstand. He took out the letter, let the drops fall back into the basin, dabbed it with a towel, and tested the flap of the envelope with a little pocket paper-knife. Milsom rose and stood over him. Both the letter and the envelope were of cheap paper, and the handwriting was untutored. The letter was in French, but a French so simple that even Richardson could translate it. It read as follows:

  21 RUE MARECHAL FOCH,

  MELUN.

  14 Janvier, 1934.

  “SIR,

  “Having read your advertisement in Paris-Soir, I hasten to inform you that my wife and I will be glad to accept the charge of the little English boy provided that the terms offered are sufficient. Awaiting your reply, I beg you to accept the assurance of my consideration the most distinguished.

  “HENRI BIGNOT.”

  The address on the envelope was M. Godfrey, Hotel Metropole, Orleans.

  “Now we are getting on,” cried Milsom. “All we have to do is round up this joker, Bignot, take him by the larynx, and make him produce the boy.”

  “No, Mr. Milsom. You forget that this letter has never been seen by this Mr. Godfrey, because he left this hotel two days before the letter came and left no address. But we do know from this that he advertised in the Paris-Soir between December 25th and January 14th for someone to take charge of a little boy. We need not trouble to go to the writer of this letter; all we have to do is to search the files of Paris-Soir between those dates. I dare say they take the paper in at this hotel.”

  “Right! Then that will be a job for Adolphe. Last Christmas Day and January 14th? I’ll go and dig him out.”

  Five minutes later he returned triumphant with an armful of newspapers. “Adolphe had the devil’s own luck. He’s dug out the bally lot—all except one. Shall I go through them?”

  “We’ll do it together. Give me half of those papers. Now I suppose that the page to look at is the Petites Annonces. We’ll try them first, looking for the name ‘Godfrey.’ I wonder why our friend chose a Paris paper.”

  “Adolphe tells me that it has an enormous circulation all over the country—mostly among the business people in little shops, and working people.”

  They worked on, unfolding each newspaper and scanning the advertisement column. Jim Milsom was the first to break the silence. “Here, what’s this? Godfrey’s name as large as life. Date—January 6th. Let me make a shot at the translation. It’s under the column headed:

  Offres de Places

  Wanted, French family to take charge of English boy, aged 9. Liberal terms. Personal interview necessary. Address, M. Godfrey, Hôtel Métropole, Orleans.

  How does that strike you?”

  “May I look at it? Yes, sir, that’s what we are in search of.”

  “Yes, Inspector, but how the devil are we going to find the other people who answered this advertisement. Are we to put in an advertisement of our own?—something like this: ‘Will the gentleman who lately adopted a little English boy for a Mr. Godfrey, send his name and address to Mr. Richardson, Hotel Metropole, Orleans.’”

  Richardson was lost in thought.

  “You’re not listening to me, Inspector.”

  “I beg your pardon. I’m afraid that I was thinking of something else.” He took his note-case from his pocket and extracted from it a used postage-stamp with the postmark attached. “I wonder whether Mr. Hudson would mind driving us to Clermont-Ferrand next?”

  “To Clermont-Ferrand? You’re going to drop this case and go hunting the Bryants. Where is the damned place?”

  “Right in the middle of France in what they call the Massif Central.”

  “Then it is the Bryants. I’m all for following up the case we came over for, but this new thing has taken hold of me.”

  “Don’t worry, Mr. Milsom, I want to go to Clermont-Ferrand because I have what they call a hunch, a kind of intuition that we shall find the little boy there.”

  “Is that the famous postage-stamp?”

  “Yes, the one I found treasured in Miss Clynes’ room. I knew she had not been in France for many years and this postmark is dated only this year.”

  “The letter might have come to her from Bryant.”

  “No, because if the letter had been addressed to her she would have kept the envelope and not only the stamp and the postmark. She did not collect postage-stamps.”

  “I begin to see your idea. You think that Miss Clynes may have got wind of the little boy being alive. By Jove! Inspector, that opens up all sorts of possibilities. I believe you’ve hit it. And when you get to Clermont-Ferrand—I suppose it’s a biggish place—how do you propose to proceed?”

  “In the last resort we could advertise in the local paper, but I think the better way would be for me to go to the local Sûreté introduce myself as a colleague from Scotland Yard and get them to interest themselves. There must be quite a number of people who know that an English boy has been adopted by someone in the town. It may all come to nothing and turn out to be a waste of time, but as we are in France I think we should leave no stone unturned.”

  “Oh, you needn’t worry about my uncle. Whatever you suggest to him goes. In your hands he’s like an infant in a kindergarten. You can take it from me that we’ll start to-morrow morning at eight o’clock.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  ADOLPHE BROUGHT the car round, spick and span, at five minutes to eight and ran upstairs for his passengers’ baggage. He found his employe
r in low spirits, which was always his wont in the early morning when coffee had to be swallowed at half-past seven.

  “This is a ghastly hour to be starting, Adolphe. How far are we to go?”

  “About two hundred and forty kilometres, sir—not a very long run.”

  “And we average sixty an hour with this car. Why, it’s only a four hours’ run. Why should we have to get away so early?”

  “It was Mr. Milsom’s order, sir. I fancy that he and the inspector hope to find out something important at Clermont during the afternoon.”

  “Oh, if that’s the case I’ve nothing to say. Let’s get on with it. Here’s my grip-sack.”

  During the four hours’ drive it became evident to Mr. Hudson’s companions that he was making heroic efforts to restrain his curiosity. At last he made a timid move towards drawing Richardson out. “I don’t know why we’re going to this place, Clermont-Ferrand, but it’s not for the beauty of the scenery, I guess, Inspector. You two boys got at something last night?”

  Milsom squeezed Richardson’s knee, but Richardson was too grateful to his benefactor to take the hint and join his nephew in what he called “guying” him. “Yes, Mr. Hudson, we found a letter and an advertisement in a French newspaper which showed that this Mr. Godfrey—the man we are following—was advertising for people to come forward and provide a home for a young English boy, no doubt the boy he had taken to three separate clinics. But I must warn you that this journey to Clermont-Ferrand may turn out to be a sheer waste of time and money.”

  “I don’t mind that so long as we get at something in the end, and I’ve seen enough of your methods of working, Inspector, to feel sure now that we shall.”

  “I ought to warn you, sir, that we are going to Clermont-Ferrand on nothing stronger than a postage-stamp and a postmark which I found among the trinkets of that poor dead woman in London. Here they are.”

  Mr. Hudson adjusted his glasses and pored over the postage-stamp. “Waal, if this leads to anything I shall tell the world that you are its greatest sleuth! To get a murderer on a postage-stamp—why, it’s just wonderful.” He rubbed his fat hands together with the anticipation of a schoolboy.