The Case of Naomi Clynes (19 page)

“I cannot answer that question, monsieur, but I can tell you one thing that may be useful to you. Most of the passengers who were not too badly injured engaged cars from the garage nearly opposite the station. The garagist may be able to tell you where the Englishman went.”

Richardson rose. “Thank you, monsieur. It is, after all, a very small point, but I should like to clear it up. The garage is opposite the station?”

“Yes, monsieur; not exactly opposite, but a hundred yards distant in the direction of the town. Milleaud is the name.”

“Now we'll go to that garage, Adolphe, and you will ask the garagist where he was ordered to drive Mr. Maze, if it was Mr. Maze.”

“I understand, monsieur. First I must get a description of the gentleman in order to be sure that it was the same man, and then I must ask where he went.”

Milleaud, the garagist, was in his little cubby-hole of an office, casting up his accounts. Richardson loitered outside to give his interpreter a free hand. Adolphe explained his business, saying that some highly-placed English had come out from London to trace an Englishman who had been in the accident on Christmas Eve; that the station-master had told them that he might have come to the garage shortly after the accident to engage a car.

“My cars were all engaged that night, driving the injured to one place or another,” explained Milleaud. “Each paid for his car at the time. It is difficult to remember any one in particular.”

“But this was a foreigner—an Englishman.''

Milleaud lifted his shoulders. “All my clients that evening spoke French. Stop! There was one who spoke with some accent—English it might have been. He was the last to come here that night.”

“Can you describe him?”

Milleaud searched his memory. “He was a big man—I remember that—and getting on in years, I should say. The hair that showed under his hat looked grey in the lamplight. That is all I can remember about him. He was so persistent about having a car to drive him that in the end I gave way, and drove him myself.”

“Where did you drive him to?”

“To Nogent-sur-Marne. You see, the clinic here was full. He asked me what was the nearest town which had a clinic, and of course I said Nogent. He asked me whether the doctor-in-charge of it was a good man, and I told him quite truly that Dr. Guillaume had a reputation extending far beyond Nogent. I ran out the car, and he picked up the little boy and lifted him in…”

“What little boy? I thought that he came to you alone.”

“Didn't I tell you that he had a little boy with him? He had carried him over from the station in his arms. Little, did I say? He was not so very little—a boy of eight or nine, I should think. His head was bandaged and was lying on the gentleman's shoulder. I got out of the car and held the boy while he got in. Then I lifted the boy into his arms on the back seat, and we drove off. When we reached the clinic at Nogent we were told that other wounded had arrived—that there was only one vacant bed, so the boy was taken in and the gentleman got me to drive him to the Hotel de France for the night. I left him there.”

“Excuse me for a moment,” said Adolphe. “I have a friend who speaks no French waiting outside. I should like to tell him what you say.” To Richardson, who was waiting outside the little office, he repeated the conversation.

“He said that the man had a wounded boy with him? Then it cannot have been Mr. Maze.”

“Yet the description he gave of him—a tall Englishman of middle age who spoke French fluently—seemed to fit Mr. Maze.” Adolphe turned to the garage proprietor who had joined them. “You say that that gentleman spoke with an English accent?”

“It seemed to me that the accent was English, monsieur.”

“Ask him how far it is to Nogent.”

“I can tell you that, sir. It is eighteen kilometres.”

Richardson consulted his watch. “Then we've time to go there before the others get back. Ask him what he would charge for driving us out, there and back?”

The garagist had met his match in the art of bargaining. Adolphe beat him down to a franc and a half a kilometre for the double journey, and hinted at a liberal
pourboire
.

Richardson made a mental survey of his private resources and decided that it was worth while. “Very well, Adolphe. Tell him to get out the car and we'll start straight away.”

It was a fairly open road to Nogent-sur-Marne, and the car covered the distance in twenty minutes. They drove straight to the nursing-home: the two passengers went in, leaving the car to wait outside. They were received by the matron. Adolphe explained that they had come to inquire about a little English boy who had been injured in the railway accident at Lagny.

“Ah, yes, messieurs, I remember him well.”

“Is he still here?”

“No, messieurs; his father called for him the next afternoon and took him away in a car.”

“But was he well enough to travel?”

“Dr. Guillaume seemed to think it unwise, but what will you? We have no power to detain our patients except, perhaps, in very grave cases.”

“May we have a word with Dr. Guillaume?”

“Certainly, messieurs. I will call him.”

In less than two minutes the door opened to admit a young-looking doctor with a gravity beyond his years.

“You have called about that little English boy who was injured in the Lagny accident, yes?”

“Yes, monsieur,” answered Adolphe.

“Well, his father took him away the next day, against my advice.”

“Was he too ill to travel?”

“Physically, he was not too ill to travel a moderate distance, but he was suffering from shock, and he seemed to have lost all memory of what had happened up to the time of the accident. One of our nurses speaks English and that is what she reported to me. I should be interested to hear how he is now. The impression I formed was that he would never recover his memory. I told the father this when he insisted on taking him away.”

“Were the head injuries serious?”

Dr. Guillaume pursed his lips. “I cannot say that. He had received a blow—that was evident from the bruise—but there was no question of a serious concussion of the brain. He was, as I told his father, fit to travel a moderate distance without ill effects.”

“Did the father say where he was taking him?”

“No, he was curiously reticent when I asked him. He replied evasively that it would be less than fifty kilometres. May I ask whether this gentleman is a relative of Monsieur Godfrey.”

“Monsieur Godfrey!” said Adolphe. “Did he give his name as Godfrey?”

“Yes.”

Adolphe turned to Richardson. “This cannot be the gentleman you are inquiring about. This one gave his name as Godfrey, not Maze.”

Richardson held up his hand to check him. “The doctor asks whether I am a relative of Mr. Godfrey. Tell him that I am not, but that I am acquainted with him; that I have come to France to find him if I can.”

Adolphe translated the reply. The doctor seemed surprised. “I knew that Monsieur Godfrey had been severely shaken by the accident. He told me that he had lost consciousness for some moments, but we had no vacant bed here to offer him and he went to the hotel for the night. When he called to take his son away he was perfectly normal.”

“Did he take him away in a car?”

“So they told me. I did not see it myself; they may be able to tell you something at the Hotel de France.”

To the Hôtel de France they went. The woman at the desk had a vivid recollection of the accident, but only a hazy one about visitors to the hotel so many months before. “An English gentleman, you say?” She shook her head. “We have had no English visitors for months past. It is on account of the rate of exchange, they say.”

“This Englishman spoke fluent French; he may have registered in the name of ‘Godfrey.'”

“That will mean perhaps two hours of searching in the books.”

“But I will relieve madame of the searching,” said Adolphe gallantly. “I could do it here under your own eyes if you would give me the book for last Christmas.”

The lady produced the book from a shelf behind her; Adolphe and Richardson pored over it. “Here it is!” cried Richardson. “John Godfrey. Room 37.”

Adolphe announced their discovery to the lady at the desk. “Would it be possible, madame, to ascertain how the gentleman left the hotel—whether by train or by car?”

The lady threw out her hands in dismay. “Ascertain how a client of four months ago left the hotel? Impossible, messieurs!”

Richardson had noticed a bright-eyed boy in uniform, listening to the conversation with intense interest. He looked as if he was bursting to join in. He touched Adolphe on the arm. “I believe that boy could tell us something. Let us get him away from the desk.”

Adolphe thanked the woman profusely and led the way towards the door. The chasseur scurried past him to open it and followed the two men out to the doorstep. Adolphe began to question him.

“I can see that you remember all about that railway accident at Lagny, my boy. Perhaps you remember that Englishman we were talking about.”

“I do, monsieur. I carried his bag up to his room. The next morning when I brought him his breakfast he asked me about the train to Lagny. I told him. You see, I know them all by heart. He went off to the station after breakfast, and when he came back at four o'clock to pay his bill and get his valise, he was in one of Monsieur Braudon's cars from the garage near the station. One of the garage hands whom I know well—Jean Ravel—was driving.”

“Is he still at the garage?”

“Yes, monsieur; he'll be able to tell you where he went that afternoon.”

Richardson further depleted his dwindling funds by slipping a five-franc piece into the boy's palm, the guerdon of an excellent memory. They jumped into their car and drove down to the garage. Fortunately Jean Ravel was busy oiling a customer's car. He remembered the incident perfectly.

“The gentleman picked up his valise, paid his bill and told me to drive to Dr. Guillaume's clinic. There he kept me waiting for perhaps a quarter of an hour. Then one of the nurses helped him to carry out a boy with a bandaged head, and the gentleman ordered me to drive to Orleans. When we neared the town he told me to stop at a chemist's to ask the address of a clinic. I drove him to that clinic. It was in the rue des Orfévres. There he paid me off and I left him.”

Richardson had been making rapid notes. He looked at his watch and saw that it was half-past four. “We must get back,” he said.

They were deposited at the Moulin Bleu where Adolphe insisted upon offering his companion an
apèritif
. They were half through it when Adolphe cocked his ear. He knew the purr of his car as a mother knows the whimper of her infant. “Hark! They have returned,” he said, swallowing the remainder of his
apèritif
at a gulp.

Both uncle and nephew seemed to be pleased with the world. The uncle had cashed his cheque and seemed ready for the conquest of France, but less ready perhaps to admit that his nephew was the most prudent driver of his experience. There was a friendly exchange of badinage between them on this point.

“Now,” said Mr. Hudson, “when we've had a drink we'll be ready to start for any place, Inspector.”

“We must go to Orleans, if you don't mind, Mr. Hudson.”

“To Orleans? What's the great idea?”

“Well, sir, since you've been away we have been over to Nogent-sur-Marne and I think that we've made a discovery.”

M
R.
H
UDSON'S
beverage was tea; Richardson pointed mutely to his unemptied glass; Jim Milsom ordered something more potent and exhilarating. “Now, Inspector, let us hear all about your discovery,” he said, when the waiter had left them to themselves.

“Well, sir, we found that an Englishman, whose description tallied closely with that of John Maze, ordered a car from the garage near the station on the night of the accident and drove to Nogent-sur-Marne with a small boy who appeared to have been in the accident because his head was bandaged. He took this boy to the clinic at Nogent and told the people there that he was his son, but the strangest part of the story is that he gave his name on this occasion as John Godfrey.”

“It must have been another Englishman,” said Hudson.

“I think not, sir. The station-master was positive that there were only two Englishmen on that train, John Maze and Wilfred Bryant.”

“Perhaps he got a blow on the head, too, and didn't know what he was saying. There have been cases in America of men forgetting their own names.”

“I thought of that, Mr. Hudson, but the doctor described him as being perfectly normal, and when the man identified that body and gave instructions to the undertaker he called himself Maze.”

“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.”