The Case of Naomi Clynes (18 page)

“
Bon, monsieur
.” The speaker was a powerful-looking man in his working-kit. He had the puffy, bloodshot eyes of a hard drinker, but a kindly smile redeemed his face.

“Do you remember the English gentleman, Albert?”

“Yes, I remember him. It was when I was coming down with a lantern. He was staggering about. He asked me where the wounded had been taken to. He spoke French so well that at first I did not take him for a foreigner. I took him back with me to the goods-shed because he said that he wanted to find a boy—his nephew. It was dark in the shed-there was only one lantern—and the wounded were moaning and groaning. I don't know whether he found the boy or not, because I had to get down the line with my lantern, but I did not see him again that night…”

“And that is all you know?”

“Yes, that is all.”

“Thank you, Albert.”

It was now the station-master's turn. “This Monsieur Maze returned here next day to search for the body of his nephew. He came to this office and I had to go with him, the station being all in confusion, you understand. I had had the bodies of the unidentified children brought into the lamp-room, laid out on planks, and decently covered with sheets borrowed from the clinic and from the families of the staff. I assure you that it was necessary to cover them. They were a more dreadful spectacle than any that I saw in the trenches during the war—indeed, some of the women who were taken into the lamp-room to look for a missing child, shrieked and fainted when they saw it.”

“The bodies were mutilated?”

“Mutilated is not the word, messieurs. Some of them were in little fragments. I had got Dr. Maurras to come down to the station to help us fit some of the bodies together—an arm here, a leg there, a head crushed out of all recognition. There had been four identifications when the English gentleman came, but bodies were still being brought in as the workmen were clearing away the wreckage. It was terrible.”

“Some of the children were never identified?”

“What will you, messieurs? The fathers and the mothers had perished too. Who was left to identify them? Those that were identified were taken away by the undertaker, but a number remained…”

Richardson had taken out a notebook. “Ask him how many bodies were lying in the lamp-room when the Englishman went into it.”

“Thirteen, monsieur—children of all ages up to twelve.”

“What did the Englishman do?”

“He made me lift sheet after sheet until I came to the body of a young boy. It was terribly mangled. Then he made me lift other sheets. He stopped long over the twelfth boy and then he asked me to go back to the other. He began to search the bits of clothing that were caked to the body. Suddenly he spoke. 'This is my nephew,' he said. ‘I know him by this little scar on his knee which he got by falling out of a tree on to the gravel. I know him too by this undervest which I bought for him in Paris the day before yesterday.' Then he became very sad. ‘I must charge myself with his funeral,' he said; ‘please give me the address of an undertaker.' The undertaker, Monsieur Rollin, was actually in the station at the moment. I went out and called him to the door, and heard the gentleman give the instructions for a sumptuous funeral in the cemetery. He wrote out on a page torn from his diary the inscription which was to be carved on the stone.”

“Was the stone erected?”

“Yes, monsieur, it was. I have seen it myself. You will find it about the middle of the cemetery. The
gardien
will show it to you.”

“Did the Englishman come back for the funeral?”

“I have heard that he did, monsieur; not only did he come, but he gave a sum of money to the
gardien
to put flowers about the grave. This, for a little time, the
gardien
did, but I have heard it said that he does so no more, and people who know how much money he received, comment on this unfavourably.”

Hudson and Milsom had risen. “Tell the station-master that we're real glad to have seen him,” said the former, “and that it has been a shame to take up so much of his time.”

The station-master made the usual polite response and bowed them out of his office.

Not a word was said until the party reached the car. There they stopped to consult. As usual Jim Milsom was the first to speak. “Now what about going on to that clinic that the Bryants went to. You took down the address, Inspector.”

“If you don't mind, Mr. Milsom, I think that we should visit the cemetery first,” said Richardson quietly.

“Good Lord! Have you gone crazy about that little boy?”

“No,” laughed Richardson, “but as I'm always telling you it's one of our maxims never to leave any loose ends in a story. Everything must be cleared up as one goes.”

“He's quite right, Jim,” interposed Hudson.

Get to the bottom of every little thing if you want to be successful; and besides, I'd like to see the grave of that poor little youngster myself.”

They entered the car, and as they drove, Milsom asked, “Wasn't Maze the name of Miss Clynes' employer in Liverpool? I thought so.”

“Yes, I saw Mr. Maze when I was in Liverpool the other day,” said Richardson.

“What gets me,” grumbled Hudson, “is that in Europe when a guy has made his pile, and his nephew has got killed in a railroad smash, he should want to have him buried out here in a foreign country instead of taking him home to bury.”

“Mr. Maze didn't strike me as a man of sentiment,” explained Richardson. “As a lawyer he may have thought that one country it as good as another for getting buried in.”

“Did he tell you about having lost his nephew?”

“I heard from other people in Liverpool that he was frightfully upset so I didn't refer to it.”

The cemetery at Lagny lay on rising ground a quarter of a mile outside the town. It was the local luncheon hour, and they found the guardian less communicative than he might have been at another hour of the day. But Adolphe would stand no nonsense. For foreigners of this distinction, backed by their embassies, all restrictions must give way. Rather sulkily the man unlocked the gate, pointed to a tall limestone cross and left the visitors to find their own way to it.

The cross was well cut; a few withered flowers stood in a pot on the grave—a point that was not unnoticed by Adolphe. The others were bending over the inscription which Richardson was copying into his notebook. It was in English.

The
gardien
emerged from his lodge, wiping his mouth. Adolphe stopped to engage him in conversation, while his party went on to the car. They observed that the man was spreading his palms out in the gesture of self-justification. Adolphe came from the gate at a run.

“What was it, Adolphe?” asked his master.

“Excuse me, sir. I was asking the man what he meant by neglecting that grave when he had been paid for looking after it. I ventured to tell him that he would hear more of it.”

T
HE CLINIC
in the rue de la République was kept by the most eccentric-looking doctor that any of them had seen. They were shown into the
parlour
; the door flew open and a bearded figure burst in and stopped short. They rose politely. He looked for all the world like an anthropoid ape, badly in need of washing and grooming. His face was hirsute; his clothing—riding-breeches, gaiters and all—was fit only to be thrown into the municipal destructor. His little eyes were bright and full of intelligence.

“Well, gentlemen; your business, if you please? I, myself, am a very busy man.”

“Tell him,” said Milsom, addressing Adolphe, “that we have come to inquire about two English people who were injured in the railway accident on Christmas Eve.”

Adolphe put the question in French.

“Ah! Then these gentlemen speak no French? They are English?—Countrymen of Monsieur Bryant. Doubtless they are come to tell me that he has done it at last.”

“Done what?” asked Milsom, when the reply was translated.

“
Eh, bien!
Swallowed the dose that he had always carried in his pocket—the cyanide of potassium. No? Then what poison did he use? It interests me to know.”

“Tell him,” said Milsom impatiently, “that we saw him alive and well in London last week.”

“Then why have these gentlemen come—to hear my impressions of Monsieur Bryant and his wife? Good! I will tell them. They were quite uninjured by the accident, but they had been badly shaken. The lady in particular was a difficult case. She complained of everything—the nurses, the food, her mattress—everything. If she suffered from anything it was hypochondriasis and ill-temper. We were glad to be rid of her. As for the poor husband, I pitied him. When the nurse found that little bottle of cyanide in his pocket, I pitied him the more. I thought at first that he was the victim of stupefying drugs, but it was not that. He told me that he carried the cyanide with him for months as a method of escape from his wife, but he had always lacked the courage to use it—even the courage to put his head into a gas-oven. I told him that death was but a little thing—that people met death face to face every day, and that the world was not one sou the worse when they left it. He said that he had faced death in the trenches when he was younger, and that now when he wished for it, he did not dare to die. I told him that he was wise; that one never knew what was waiting for one round the corner—good fortune, perhaps. He sighed and said that if anything would be waiting round the corner for him, it would be his wife.”

The doctor flashed upon them what was intended to be a smile, it was an exhibit of ragged yellow teeth. “Ah, messieurs, what will you, he was a neurotic; a victim of shell-shock nearly twenty years ago; there are many like him.”

“Ask him what became of them.”

“Oh, I bundled them both out of the clinic on the third day. Their beds were wanted for more serious cases than theirs. You tell me that they went to England? That surprises me when I remember that the wife was a Frenchwoman; and he told me that it was she who possessed the fortune. Now, messieurs, if you have no other questions to put to me, I will ask you to set me free: my patients are waiting for me.”

They thanked the doctor and were glad to escape from his overpowering presence.

In the car, on their way to lunch, Milsom remarked, “I should like to have had that guy taken to a Turkish bath, had him shaved and his hair cut, burnt his clothes and sent him out as a civilized man.”

“Huh!” growled his uncle, “and he'd have lost all his practice; his appearance is half his stock-in-trade.”

Lagny is not a town that lends itself to gastronomy. The Moulin Bleu in the Allée Antoinette was Adolphe's choice. They ate their lunch on the verandah which commanded a good view. The food was excellent. Between the courses Jim Milsom felt free to express his views.

“Well, we haven't wasted our time here, have we? Now that we know from that chimpanzee doctor the kind of guy this Bryant is, we can go straight ahead. Carried poison about with him in his pocket; talked about sticking his head in a gas-oven. Why, there you are.”

“And the motive?” asked Richardson, with a twinkle.

“Oh, we know about the motive. She had been his fiancée; he went to her flat to get her to run away with him; she turned him down and then, of course, for a man in that state of nerves it was only a step to the poison and the gas-oven. He was afraid of them for himself, but they were all right for other people. What do you think, Uncle Jim?”

Mr. Hudson was never profuse, either in brain-work or words, when he was eating. He waved a fat hand towards his nephew and took another mouthful.

“My uncle won't commit himself, Inspector, but you see what I mean?”

“I do, Mr. Milsom.”

“But I see you're not convinced.”

“I should like to get a little further into the case before forming an opinion. I remember what his mother told me—that it was his wife who took drugs and carried poison about with her, but he seems to have told the doctor that the habit was his; perhaps the mother was trying to shield him.”

“Well, now that we are full-fed, we won't waste our time in this hole. What about pushing off to Clermont-Ferrand?”

“Pardon me, I should like to make a few more inquiries this afternoon.”

“What! You don't want to see that chimpanzee again?”

“No, I want to see one or two of those railway-men, I want to find out from them where Mr. Maze slept on the night of the accident, and then go on to Clermont-Ferrand.”

Mr. Hudson woke to activity. “Say, if you're not going straight back to Paris I'll have to get back this afternoon and cash a traveller's cheque at the American Express Company. I'll take the car and be back before five.”

“Then you'll need Adolphe to drive you. What will Mr. Richardson do without an interpreter?” asked Milsom. “I'll tell you what, Uncle Jim. I'll drive you.”

His uncle shuddered. “I'm getting an old man, Jim. My nerves are not what they were. With you at the wheel…”

“That was before I became a publisher. I don't drive like that now. Why, the other day a truck-driver in England who'd been hooting to pass me, asked me what firm of undertakers employed me. No, I'll run you up to Paris and keep you looking at your watch all the way.”

So it was arranged. Richardson and Adolphe watched uncle and nephew start, and then they walked down to the station for a second interview with the station-master, who received them with the same deference as in the morning. Richardson took the seat that was offered him and opened his business.

“We have seen the grave of Mr. Maze's little boy, monsieur, but there is one question that we forgot to ask you. Where did Mr. Maze pass the night after the accident?”