The Case of Naomi Clynes (27 page)

To the gatekeeper of that establishment he explained that he had been sent to read to the prisoner, John Maze, an additional charge that would be made against him at the next hearing. The gatekeeper spoke a few words on the telephone and let his visitor into the Central Hall where the chief warder awaited him.

“You want to see John Maze, Inspector?”

“Yes, I have to charge him with wilful murder.”

“Have you? Does he expect it?”

“I fancy not.”

“Well, if you'll take a seat in the adjudication room,” said the chief warder, unlocking the door, “I'll have him brought down to you.”

Two minutes later the door was thrown open and John Maze, followed by an assistant warder and the chief warder entered the room. He looked careworn and thinner and older than he did when Richardson had last seen him, and there was a curious air of fatalistic indifference about his bearing. He was wearing his own clothes.

“John Maze, I have been sent to read to you an additional charge which you will have to answer at the next hearing of your case. You are charged with the wilful murder of Naomi Clynes at 37
A
Seymour Street, Chelsea, on the evening of May 15th last. I have to caution you that you are not obliged to say anything, but that anything you do say will be taken down in writing and may be used against you at your trial.”

The prisoner's behaviour was unusual. A fit of coughing seized him; he put his handkerchief to his mouth. There was a moment's pause, and then he caught at the back of an empty chair, staggered backwards and fell with the chair on top of him. As he was falling a strident laugh escaped his lips. He tried to speak but could not.

The chief warder put a whistle to his lips and shouted for the medical officer, but when that official came and the man was carried to the infirmary it was too late: he had passed to a higher tribunal than the Central Criminal Court.

Richardson waited in the prison to hear the doctor's pronouncement. The chief warder brought it to him.

“He must have had a tablet of cyanide of potassium in his handkerchief,” he said. “Bad searching in the reception.”

The death of John Maze left little Godfrey quite alone in the world. As events proved, very little of his fortune remained, and it was no doubt this factor that weighed with the court when it decided to grant to James Hudson, though an American citizen, the guardianship of the boy, an arrangement which made them both happy.

THE END

S
IR
B
ASIL
H
OME
T
HOMSON
(1861-1939) was educated at Eton and New College Oxford. After spending a year farming in Iowa, he married in 1889 and worked for the Foreign Service. This included a stint working alongside the Prime Minister of Tonga (according to some accounts, he
was
the Prime Minister of Tonga) in the 1890s followed by a return to the Civil Service and a period as Governor of Dartmoor Prison. He was Assistant Commissioner to the Metropolitan Police from 1913 to 1919, after which he moved into Intelligence. He was knighted in 1919 and received other honours from Europe and Japan, but his public career came to an end when he was arrested for committing an act of indecency in Hyde Park in 1925 – an incident much debated and disputed.

His eight crime novels featuring series character Inspector Richardson were written in the 1930's and received great praise from Dorothy L. Sayers among others. He also wrote biographical and criminological works.

Richardson's First Case

Richardson Scores Again

The Case of the Dead Diplomat

The Dartmoor Enigma

Who Killed Stella Pomeroy?

The Milliner's Hat Mystery

A Murder is Arranged

He flung open a drawer and took from it a heavy dagger in a sheath with blood-stains upon it. On the blade were engraved the words,
“Blut und Ehre!”

Frank Everett was a rising young press attaché at the British Embassy in Paris – until he was found dead in his Rue St. Georges apartment, a knife wound to the throat. Was it a political assassination, a
crime passionnel
, or possibly even suicide?

The foreign office call in the redoutable Detective Inspector Richardson, who travels to Paris and must work with the French police in solving the case. He soon discovers that a mysterious coded number is one of the primary clues – if only he can decipher its meaning and unmask Everett's assassin.

The Case of the Dead Diplomat
was originally published in 1935. This new edition, the first in over seventy years, features an introduction by crime novelist Martin Edwards, author of acclaimed genre history
The Golden Age of Murder
.

“Good entertainment as well as a perfectly sound detective story.”
Daily Telegraph

“The story is remarkably well written…highly entertaining reading.”
Birmingham Gazette

E
RIC
C
ARRUTHERS
, the first secretary at the Paris Embassy, was entertaining his fellow Scotsman, Guy Dundas, the newly joined attaché, at luncheon at a café discovered by himself, in which the cooking and the wine were both beyond criticism.

“You'll find, I'm afraid, that officially this place is not exciting. Nothing ever happens here.”

“All the better. I shall have a better chance of learning my job,” answered the younger man, who was fresh from Oxford and felt that his foot was on a rung of the ladder up which he dreamed of climbing rapidly. “At any rate you seem to be a happy family here.”

“Oh, we don't quarrel and that is always something.” Carruthers looked at his watch. “We ought to be getting along to the Chancery. Though nothing ever happens we must keep to official hours and it's half-past two.”

They took a taxi back to the Embassy; the messenger was waiting on the steps of the Chancery.

“His Excellency has been waiting for you, sir,” he said to Carruthers. “He is in his room now with Mr. Stirling, if you would kindly go up.”

“Asking for
me
?”

“Yes, sir. His Excellency seemed very anxious to see you—told me to keep at the door and be sure to let you know as soon as you came in.”

“Very good, Chubb; I'll go at once.”

Dundas made his way to the little room in the Chancery where he spent his working hours in what his stable-companion, Ned Gregory, the third secretary, irreverently termed “licking stamps,” but which actually consisted in such responsible duties as decoding cipher telegrams and making up the diplomatic bags for the courier. Gregory was not at his table; his voice could be heard holding forth in the next room; the Chancery seemed to be in a flutter. Dundas wondered whether the monotony of which Carruthers had complained was about to be broken.

Eric Carruthers found his chief collapsed in a deep arm-chair in the stately room where he received official visitors and signed dispatches. The Minister Plenipotentiary, Richard Stirling, was with him. Both wore an air of deep depression.

“I hope you are feeling better this morning, sir,” was Carruthers' greeting. He knew that his chief had been brooding over his health and that the Embassy doctor, Dr. Hoskyn, was attending him daily. “They told me downstairs that you wanted to see me.”

“I did. I suppose that you have heard the news about Everett. You seem to be taking it very easily.”

“About Everett, sir? Has he been letting himself go with the native journalists?”

“He's dead.”

There was a pause. Carruthers was trying to take in this startling intelligence; the ambassador leaned forward in his chair.

“Everett dead! Why, I saw him in the Chancery yesterday afternoon. He looked perfectly fit then and seemed in the best of spirits. What did he die of?”

“Suicide or murder, the police say. All I know is that a police
commissaire
from the ninth
arrondissement
called here three-quarters of an hour ago and gave a rambling account of the discovery of Everett's body in his own flat with a knife wound in the throat. They did not know who he was until they found his Embassy card in his pocket-book, and they then came down here to make inquiries.”

“Who saw the
commissaire
, sir?”

“Maynard saw him and came upstairs to tell me, and now, I suppose, it will be in all the Paris papers and be telegraphed over to London. We don't want the business to get into the papers at all if we can help it, but if it must go in, for goodness' sake let it be our version and not a French reporter's.”

“I agree with you, sir. We don't want the French Press to report it,” said Carruthers with a frown. “But I doubt whether we can stop it now without invoking the help of the people at the Quai d'Orsay, and that would only make things worse when it came out. The next thing would be headlines in the
Paris-Matin
—‘
SUDDEN DEATH OF A BRITISH DIPLOMATIST. SUICIDE OR A POLITICAL ASSASSINATION?
'”

“Good God! Is that what they do here?” The ambassador started up from his chair with a groan and hobbled to his writing-table. He was one of those diplomats
de carrière
who had risen step by step to his present exalted dignity—the last post before his retirement—by doing everything he was told to do faultlessly; by making faultless little speeches on occasions when such speeches are called for; by keeping the Press at arm's length under all circumstances. He was now a man of past sixty and looked his age. He was a hypochondriac, always fussing about his health and generally without reason.

“You see, sir, the French public has been brought up for seven or eight months to believe that every sudden death of a functionary is a political murder. It makes good copy for the sensational newspapers.”

“Look here, my dear fellow; somehow this must be stopped. Telephone to Dr. Hoskyn and go with him to the police, and if necessary be present when the post-mortem examination is made. Young Everett may have committed suicide; that would be bad enough; but whatever we do we must keep the gutter Press at arm's length. You might ring me up and let me know how you get on.”

Eric Carruthers went down to his own room in the Chancery to use the telephone. He rang up Dr. Hoskyn, whose voice began to flutter when he learned that the call came from the Embassy.

“I hope that you have no bad news about Sir Wilfred,” he said.

“No, doctor, but I want you to take a taxi at once and come here and ask for me, Eric Carruthers. I'll tell you why when I see you.”

While waiting for his visitor Carruthers sent for the second secretary, Percival Maynard.

“Maynard, the ambassador tells me that you were the first person to receive news of Everett's death. Who brought the news?”

Maynard was a young man with a languid manner, who talked French more fluently than his own language. He was a welcome guest at French luncheon-tables and was a mine of information upon the intrigues in the lobbies of the Chamber and the Senate, and the latest political scandals.

“A police
commissaire
, who said that he came from the ninth
arrondissement
, came in about an hour ago. He had Everett's Embassy card in his hand and he said that the body had been found in Everett's flat, with some sanguinary details. I gathered that he was the man who was first called in by the concierge.”

“What did you think of Frank Everett? You saw more of him than I did.”

“Everett? Well, he seemed like any other newspaper man that one meets in Fleet Street and avoids if one can—quite a decent young man within his natural limits and, I imagine, fairly good at his job.”

Carruthers was drumming on the table with his fingers. His complaint was that one could never get a straight answer out of Maynard.

“Do you know who his friends were?”

“Do you mean here in the Embassy or outside?”

“Both. First, in the Embassy.”

“Well, I should think that Ned Gregory saw most of him. I used to hear his voice and his laugh—what a laugh he had, poor devil!—coming from Gregory's room. Gregory's a bit of a wag, as you know.”

“So I've heard,” observed Carruthers dryly. “Did Everett ever tell you about his people in England?”

“Never. I never asked him. Our intercourse was always on official matters. He was quite well informed about Paris Press matters.”

The messenger opened the door to announce Dr. Hoskyn.

Carruthers rose. “Thank you, Maynard. I'm going out with Dr. Hoskyn for an hour or two. Will you mind the baby?”

Dr. Hoskyn was a fussy little man with white hair, purpling cheeks and a soothing, bedside manner. When there was a considerable British colony in Paris, he had had a good private practice and it was natural that he should be called in by the people at the Embassy when a doctor was required.

“Sit down, doctor,” said Carruthers, pointing to the chair beside his table. “You've heard, no doubt, of the death of poor Everett, our Press attaché.”

The doctor's cheeks deepened in hue. “Dead! That healthy-looking young fellow? What did he die of? An accident?”

“The police give us the choice between suicide and murder. There was a knife wound in the throat. I don't know whether you have had any experience in police medical work, but the ambassador has great confidence in you, and he wants you to make a post-mortem examination of the body and furnish him with an opinion if you can.”

“I have never had to do anything of that kind since my old hospital training days,” said the doctor doubtfully.

The taxi was announced.

“Come along, doctor,” said Carruthers. “I don't know how these things are done in Paris—whether they hold inquests as we do, or whether the police get busy and turn the case over to a
Juge d'Instruction
.”