The Case of Naomi Clynes

by Basil Thomson

  “And they were both in London at the time of the murder,” said Milsom thoughtfully.

  “I can see what you’re thinking, Mr. Milsom. You’re thinking that if that woman had ever got to know that her husband had once been engaged to Naomi, she would have sought her out and done something to her…”

  “I was. At any rate it seems worth going into.”

  The waiter came to their table with the dishes they had ordered. When he had retired his clients both remained silent while they ate. The thoughts of both were busy.

  “I suppose,” said Milsom at last, “that there will be no difficulty in locating this attractive pair when I get back to England.”

  “It’s a small country. The police ought to be able to do it.”

  “Oh, they can do that all right. The question is how they can bring the crime home to them, or rather to one of them. The fact is I’m not sure yet what evidence they have and how it will fit in with the theory that the murder was done by a woman, but what you’ve told me may turn out to be of the greatest importance.”

  Mrs. Sidmore looked at her wrist-watch. “I fear I ought to be going, Mr. Milsom,” she said; “I’ve a lot of work to do this afternoon. Thank you very much for your hospitality. Say, listen! I’ll give you one of my business cards with the telephone number on it, and if you want anything done in Paris that I can do, you’ll only have to ring me.”

  They exchanged cards and parted with great goodwill on both sides.

  Chapter Eight

  A MESSAGE was brought down from the telephone room by one of the operators. “For you, Mr. Richardson.” The inspector read the flimsy form.

  “FROM Mrs. Corder, 12 King’s Road, Chelsea, TO Inspector Richardson, CO.

  “A letter from France arrived this morning addressed to Miss Naomi Clynes. What shall I do with it?”

  He tossed the slip over to Sergeant Williams who was writing at the opposite side of the table. “Here’s a job for you, Williams. Slip along to King’s Road and bring the letter back with you. A letter from France addressed to a woman who has been dead for a week may prove to be interesting.”

  At the moment Richardson was finishing the last page of his report. He attached his signature and carried it in to the Chief Constable.

  “This is my report up to last night, Mr. Beckett. There may be something to add to it within the next hour or so.”

  The Chief Constable took the rather bulky document and adjusted his glasses. “Did you get anything useful out of that taxi-driver?”

  “Nothing that I could act upon, sir. He could give me only the vaguest description of the man who left those letters in his cab. The man stopped him at a street corner in Edgware Road and went off on foot. The driver said that he seemed very fussy and nervous.”

  “Do you think that the fare had found the paper or the letter he wanted while he was in the cab, and had then intentionally left the other papers on the seat, thinking that they would be thrown away.”

  “No, sir, I don’t. I think that, as the driver said, he was shaky and nervous, and he didn’t notice that his parcel had burst open and that a number of the letters had fallen out.”

  “Did you get that friend of yours to go over to Paris?”

  “Yes, sir; he went over yesterday morning. I don’t suppose that I shall hear anything from him until to-morrow.”

  “So you’ve nothing new to report?”

  “Yes, sir; I’ve had a telephone message to say that a letter addressed to the dead woman was left at the milk-shop by the postman this morning and that it had a French postmark. I’ve sent Sergeant Williams to the shop to get it and bring it back with him.”

  Beckett shrugged his shoulders. “We don’t seem to be getting on very fast, do we?”

  “No, sir, but so far we have added to our stock of evidence every day, so I don’t despair.”

  Richardson had scarcely regained his room when Williams returned.

  “Well—where’s the letter?” asked Richardson.

  “I’m sorry, Inspector. I happened to meet Superintendent Oliver in the passage when I had the letter in my hand. He stopped me and asked what it was. I told him that it was a letter you had sent me for-that you wanted it urgently, but he wouldn’t listen to me—took it away with him into the registry and said that you should have it all in good time. Of course then I couldn’t help myself.”

  Richardson knew the circumlocution of the registry where every paper and report was dropped into a slow-grinding mill which registered and docketed and minuted papers until hours might elapse before they came into circulation; but, being an intelligent man, he realized that registries are necessary evils if proper records of cases are to be kept.

  “Mr. Oliver was perfectly right, Sergeant, and I am perfectly wrong, but if you had brought me the letter I should have broken the rules and stood the racket. Now I shall have the racket without having the letter. However, you must not start following my example or you may find yourself in trouble. The man in charge of a big case has to take the risk of running counter to rules. He must know when to break them, that’s all.”

  As he expected he was soon to find himself engaged in hostilities with the great men who presided over the machine. It was Superintendent Oliver himself who deigned to visit the inspectors’ room to read the Riot Act. He had an envelope in his hand.

  “I am surprised that you should have instructed Sergeant Williams to bring a letter to you before it had passed through the registry. I thought that an officer of your seniority would have known that all correspondence must pass through the regular channel.”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Oliver: the letter was not addressed to the Commissioner. It was brought by hand for me and it should have been brought straight to me.”

  “Pardon me, Inspector; you seem to have a good deal to learn about the routine of the office. I have been over twenty years here and you have been less than twenty months. The registry is the proper place for docketing all papers that come in.”

  “You are quite right, Mr. Oliver, but this was a letter which Mr. Morden wants to see, and so do I. It may be a very urgent paper in a murder case-that case of Naomi Clynes. I suggest that you open it here and let me read it. Then, of course, it can go through the registry.”

  The Superintendent was only partly mollified. “You can follow me to the registry if you like, Mr. Richardson, and read the letter in my presence,” he said.

  The procession was formed, Richardson bringing up in the rear with a hint of laughter in his eyes. The Superintendent sat down ponderously at his desk, took up a paper-knife and slit the letter open. He called to his second-in-command—an officer of Richardson’s own rank. “What is the number of the Clynes’ file, Mr. Day?”

  “1203 over 77, sir.”

  Oliver noted the number on the envelope, opened out the letter and inscribed the same number at the top.

  “Now you can read it, Mr. Richardson.”

  At first sight it was a disappointing letter, written by a well-known English newsagent in the rue de Rivoli and dated the previous day.

  “DEAR MADAM,

  “We have received your esteemed order to which we should have replied earlier had we not taken time to verify the dates of the newspapers in question. We have now traced them and hope to forward them within the next day or two.”

  “I fail to see that there was any urgency about this letter,” observed Oliver.

  “No, sir? I am very glad to have it, nevertheless. It is likely to prove an important clue.”

  As soon as he had left the room Superintendent Oliver delivered judgment. “That young man is getting above himself, Mr. Day. It’s what I’ve always said; a promising detective officer who is promoted out of his turn is a detective officer spoiled.”

  Unconscious of this criticism Richardson put on his hat and took the Underground to Sloane Square. He found Mrs. Corder in her shop and thanked her for her telephone message.

  “That’s nothing, sir. I hope that the letter was u
seful to you.”

  “It was. I’m expecting a packet of newspapers addressed to Miss Clynes from the same correspondent in Paris. I want you to give me a ring when they come, and I’ll run down and take them away.”

  “Very good, sir. That shall be done.”

  “Have you had any visitors since I was here?”

  “No, sir; none but the Jew gentlemen who came for their weekly meeting upstairs.”

  “You’ll let me know at once if you have any unusual visitors? Good-bye.”

  When he returned to the Central Office he found a visitor waiting for him: it was his friend Jim Milsom, just back from Paris.

  “I’ve brought something for you, Inspector—something that will make you sit up and take notice. You’ll find most of it set out in this report. I sweated blood over it in my hotel bedroom in Paris. I don’t say that you’ll find every word of it written in parliamentary English. Some of it may be more fitted for the smoking-room in the House of Commons, but you might cast your eye over it. May I smoke?”

  “Certainly, Mr. Milsom. No doubt you find that smoking clears the brain.”

  Richardson began to read the report. It was certainly racy in style, but the matter contained in it was arresting, for it was the first time that an individual had been found who might have had a motive in visiting the murdered woman on the night of her death. At any rate it opened up a new vista of inquiry. This ill-assorted couple, reported now to be in England, would have to be located. It seemed to him to be sufficiently important to justify sending out an All Station message in the Metropolitan area to find out at what hotel they were staying if they were in London.

  He arrived at the end at last. Milsom had let his pen run away with him, and the report was inordinately long and diffuse.

  “Have you read through that tripe already?” asked its author.

  “I have, sir, and I am very much obliged to you for all the trouble you have taken.”

  “Not at all. I am just as keen as you are to get to the bottom of this business. The first thing you’ll do, I guess, is to find these Bryant people and put them through the hoop. You know what I think? While they were here they must have run into that poor lady in the street, or in a bus, or a train. She must have thrown a fit when she saw the ghost of her long-lost one in the grip of an amateur police-woman. There must have been startled explanations and confessions, a mutual exchange of addresses and all that kind of thing and then ...”

  “You think it possible that the husband called upon Miss Clynes that night.”

  Milsom laid an impressive finger on Richardson’s arm. “You’ll excuse my saying so, but you detectives have no vision, because you read no mystery thrillers as I do. You don’t allow for human nature. Here is this wretched henpecked wreck of a man who dare not call his soul his own, and this vixen of a woman mad with jealousy at knowing that Naomi Clynes was his former love. Jealousy like that imparts super-human strength to the feeblest of women—you can see that in some of our publications. Well, they had poor Naomi’s address. What does it matter whether both were there or only one—the woman? Remember, she was a Frenchwoman, brought up in the knowledge that if she were tried in her own country the jury would shed tears over her and find her ‘not guilty’ because what she did was a crime of passion.”

  “I see that you have quite accepted the theory that this murder was committed by this Frenchwoman, Mrs. Bryant.”

  “Well, how can you come to any other conclusion? If you count up the suicides in London you’ll find that the first idea of lovesick maidens who want to meet their Maker is the gas-oven. The man’s is a bullet through the head. Women think that they look better when they’re laid out for the undertaker if they’ve been gassed. All the other forms of death are so messy. Jumping off a bridge is such a cold kind of death, and so ineffective when one can swim. Mrs. Sidmore told me that when she’s really roused, this Bryant woman can behave like a fiend; that one night when there was dancing at the Pourville Hotel, and her husband asked another woman to dance with him, she fairly broke loose and created such a scene that the band was sent off to bed by the manager, and the other dancers went off to play bridge in the lounge.”

  “There can be no harm in my telling you that we have evidence that a man’s voice was heard in the room that night.”

  “Well, then, that woman took her worm of a husband with her to do the fetching and carrying. A fool who allows himself to be henpecked by a jealous wife loses all his will-power and does anything that he’s told to do.”

  “Very well, Mr. Milsom. The first thing we have to do is to find the Bryants and find out from one or the other whether they met Miss Clynes while they’ve been in London. That shall be done to-night. But before you go I might tell you of one curious thing. One of our witnesses says that she overheard a conversation on Miss Clynes’ telephone. She heard her say, ‘You wouldn’t stop at murder? I was arranging a suicide.’“

  “Say that again. ‘You wouldn’t stop at murder? I was arranging a suicide.’ Was that what she said?”

  “So the witness says.”

  To Richardson’s astonishment Jim Milsom began to rock in his chair with suppressed merriment. At last he burst into a roar of laughter. When he succeeded in getting his laughter under control he asked, “Are you trying to find out the name of the miscreant at the other end of the line—the man who was putting her up to commit the fatal deed? I can tell you who it was. It was me. We were discussing the plot of her next thriller. Oh, Lord! To think that sleuths were on my track!”

  Richardson joined in the laughter and said, “See what a dangerous profession you have taken up, Mr. Milsom. Some day, if your wire is tapped, you may find yourself in one of the cells in Cannon Row.

  Now I must leave you and set about finding the Bryants. Good-bye and thank you.”

  “Stop a minute. When can I come and see you again?

  “We shall meet after the adjourned inquest on Wednesday. I hope you will attend it.”

  “You can count on me for that. Good-bye.”

  Richardson picked up the report of his mercurial Canadian friend and knocked at Morden’s door.

  “I’m sorry to interrupt you, sir, but my friend is back from Paris and I think that you ought to read his report before I pass it in to the registry. I haven’t had it typed because it has only just been handed to me.”

  Morden put out a weary hand for the report and glanced at it.

  “What an awful hand he writes!” he murmured, but gradually, as he read, Richardson saw him stiffen with interest. “We ought to get hold of these two people before they leave London,” he said.

  “Yes, sir, I thought that it was a case for an All Station message this evening if you approve.”

  “Certainly. Draft one, and I’ll initial it.”

  “I’ve done that, sir, to save time. Here it is.”

  Morden read:

  “To All Stations.

  “Inquire confidentially at all hotels whether Wilfred Bryant, formerly a lieutenant in army, aged about forty, and his wife, a Frenchwoman, of about the same age, domiciled in Paris, are staying in the hotel. Important not to alarm them by police inquiry. Arrange confidentially with manager to notify you before they leave.”

  “Very good,” said Morden, initialing it. “What are you going to do if they are found?”

  “With your approval, sir, I propose to have an interview with the husband alone.”

  “Right. Let me know what he says. We have to think about what witnesses are to be called at the adjourned inquest. We must give the coroner a list of them, and Bryant may be an important witness. Who else is there?”

  “Besides the medical witnesses there are Mrs. Corder from the milk-shop; Ellen McDougall, the girl clerk to that Jewish committee upstairs; Annie James, the charwoman; Superintendent Willis, about the fingerprint on the typewriter; Sergeant Hammett from B Division and myself. I don’t know what you think about calling that member of the Jewish committee, Peter Stammer?”


  “The man who went to the office after hours to meet a girl? What can he say?”

  “Only that when he was passing Miss Clynes’ door he heard a man’s voice.”

  “We had better let the coroner decide that question. You must warn him to attend.”

  “Very good, sir. I don’t suggest calling any of the witnesses from Liverpool.”

  “No, they can throw no light on the case. But what about your friend, the publisher? Oughtn’t he to be called to prove that the woman had every reason for clinging to life? At any rate we’ll put him in the coroner’s list and let him decide. You have no one else? Very well, then get on with that A.S. message.”

  Chapter Nine

  ON THE following morning Richardson received the promised message from Mrs. Corder. He called Williams, and together they made their way to the milk-shop in King’s Road.

  “Oh, I’m glad you’ve come, gentlemen. The parcel that’s come for the poor lady is cluttering up the shop, and I thought you’d be glad to take it away with you and examine it at your office. There it is.”

  She pointed to a very substantial bundle of newspapers tied up with thick string. It was too heavy to carry to the station in Sloane Square, and too big to take into a motor-bus. This was one of those cases in which a detective officer might be excused for incurring the cost of a taxi. They had the urgent duty to examine the bundle before the adjourning inquest. They took a taxi back to the Yard, and Richardson made a note in his diary of his reason for departing from the official rule.

  Williams knew not a word of French, but with the aid of a dictionary, Richardson could master the meaning of a paragraph in a French newspaper.

  “Now, Williams, you can set yourself to arranging this file of newspapers in order of date. You can do that without knowing any French.”