“That depends on what you call bad news. You’ll have a shock, I can promise you that. I’ll come right away.”
Richardson’s usually calm demeanour was shaken. He had a terrifying premonition that the boy, Godfrey Maze, had been lost, or had been run over by a taxi. He had to wait a full ten minutes under this awful fear before the door opened to admit Jim Milsom, for once serious and anxious-looking.
Richardson sprang up from his chair to shake hands with him. “Has anything happened to that little boy? Please tell me quickly.”
Milsom stopped short in blank astonishment, and then burst out laughing. “Is that what you thought it was? I’m so sorry that I pulled your leg. No, the boy is all right. The shock I’m going to give you is of quite another kind. Last night I brought that poor woman’s last manuscript home to read. I had just come to the last page and had turned it over when I saw writing on the back. I’ve brought it down with me for you to read and see what you can make out of it.” He pulled a quarto sheet from his pocket. It was not typed, but written in pencil, with a few corrections, as if it was the draft of a letter. Richardson read it with growing excitement.
“DEAR MR. MAZE,
“For some weeks I have had something on my mind. Just before I left your service a letter came for you from France. The address was written in a childish hand, which I felt sure that I recognized as that of your dear little nephew. I took it in to you, feeling sure that you would tell me that the little boy whom you were mourning as dead, had somehow escaped from that dreadful railway accident on Christmas Eve, and that you had without knowing it buried another little boy in his stead. I remembered reading that some of the children were terribly mangled and that some of them were quite unrecognizable. But you said nothing about the letter, and afterwards I found in the wastepaper basket, the envelope torn up. I saved the stamp and the postmark from them, and I have them still. The thing is preying on my mind. It is so awful to think of that dear little boy being among strangers, not knowing a word of the language or how to get to his friends. There may, of course, be some quite natural explanation. If there is, I do hope you will send it to me and forgive me for having troubled you on a matter which, you may say, did not concern me. My excuse is that on the rare occasions when you brought him down to the office, he used to play with my typewriter, and we became great friends.
“Sincerely yours,
“NAOMI CLYNES.”
“Do you recognize the handwriting, Mr. Milsom?”
“I could swear to it anywhere. Miss Clynes often wrote to me about her books, and I have kept her letters.”
“Of course this pencil draft is not evidence that the letter was ever written, or that Maze ever received it, but dated as it is on May 10th, the presumption is that the letter reached him. Its importance lies in the fact that it is the first time we have proof of a motive for the murder.”
“That is what I thought. Of course the poor woman never knew that the draft of her letter had not been destroyed. This was the last page of her manuscript. She caught it up and shoved it into her machine without noticing that there was writing on the back. I’ve often done that myself, and probably you’ve done the same thing.”
“You’ll let me keep this sheet, sir?”
“Of course. That’s why I brought it down. Now tell me how you are getting on with the case. Will you be able to hang this swine, Maze?”
“We are getting on all right, but it needs a bold man to say what the lawyers will decide, and still more to predict what a jury may do. Now, if you’ll excuse me, Mr. Milsom, I must rush off. There is a lot to do to-day.”
Charles Morden was not expected back from lunch until half-past two. Richardson munched a sandwich at his table while he wrote his report on the result of his inquiries of the morning, and on the draft of Miss Clynes’ letter to Maze. The examination of the sack of documents brought away from the house in Liverpool had been entrusted to Sergeant Williams, who had had long practice in sifting the grain from the chaff in going through masses of documents. Richardson looked into the detective sergeant’s room and found him at work at the big oak table. “Any luck?” he asked.
“I’m getting on, sir. So far I’ve found a number of letters showing that Maze has been for years embezzling trust funds, and that the beneficiaries have been getting restive. Things were just coming to a head when his nephew was killed in that accident in France, and he succeeded to his property. Since then he seems to have been using the money to pay back into the trust funds what he stole from them.”
“So there’s not much left?”
“I can’t say that yet—not until I’ve been carefully through his passbooks from the bank, but by the day after tomorrow I hope to be able to produce a fairly accurate balance sheet.”
“Have you come across any private letters—a letter signed Naomi Clynes, for instance?”
“No private letters at all, so far.”
The messenger looked in. “Mr. Morden has just come in. He’s alone for the moment.”
Richardson hurried off to his Chief’s room.
“Back already, Mr. Richardson?”
“Yes, sir, and I think that I’ve found enough to break down that alibi.” He related what he had discovered at the garage. Morden nodded his head with satisfaction.
“And a friend of mine has brought me this.” He laid Naomi Clynes’ pencilled draft on the table.
“The draft of a letter, eh? But you haven’t found the actual letter among the prisoner’s papers?”
“No, sir, not yet. Sergeant Williams is searching for it. The gentleman who gave me this is prepared to swear to the handwriting.”
Morden sighed. “All that this amounts to is that if we could put it in as evidence, it would suggest a motive for the crime, but I doubt very much whether we can use it, so it comes to this—that your case for the murder charge is as complete as you can make it. I’ll initial your report and you had better take it over personally to the Director of Public Prosecutions.”
“Very good, sir.”
Richardson knew the routine at the office of the Director, which was staffed by a number of sound criminal lawyers, most of whom had practised in the Criminal Courts. He delivered his file of papers to the messenger who carried them to the room of the Assistant Director. Ten minutes later he was sent for. This official, a man of middle age with a cold eye, asked him whether he was the officer who had conducted the inquiries personally, and learning that he was, he said, “I must congratulate you, Inspector. I wish that all the police reports that are brought here were as clear as this. I’ve only had time to skim through the evidence, and I wish that it was a bit stronger as regards the murder charge. The other is, of course, capable of proof up to the hilt. I see here that you have recovered the little boy who this rascal swore had been killed. We may have to produce him in court. Now, the Assizes at the Central Criminal Court begin the week after next, and if we are going to charge this man with murder, it would be better not to keep him hanging about until the next Assizes, but to wipe the slate clean. It will mean a rush.”
“It will, sir, but with all submission I think that the evidence ought to be sufficient—the fingerprint, the cigarette, and the knowledge which the accused had that the murdered woman knew that the little nephew was still alive.”
“Yes, but that pencilled draft could not be put in, I’m afraid, without proof that the accused received it. Still, I think that we can risk it. The charge can always be dropped at a later stage if we encounter a snag. You say here that the man is in custody on remand until next Tuesday. Yes, I think that you may charge him.”
“Very good, sir.”
Richardson covered the ground back to Scotland Yard at his best speed. He sought an interview with Morden as soon as he had written out a short report of his interview with the Assistant Director, and asked him for written approval. This form of the traditional Scottish caution prevailed throughout the Department. High officials might have short memories about the verbal
instructions that they give from time to time, but the written word is there to remind them.
“I have one piece of good news for you,” said Morden. “Sir Gerald Whitcombe has made an analysis of the liquid in that bottle with the label of a French chemist in Orleans. You will remember that the bottle was labelled ‘Poison’ on a red label. It contained tincture of aconitina. That ought to strengthen our case.”
Richardson’s next resort was to Brixton prison to which all trial and remand prisoners in London are sent. For this expedition he had to take with him Sergeant Williams, who could be produced as a witness to anything which the prisoner might say in reply to the charge.
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 37A 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
About The Author
SIR BASIL HOME THOMSON (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.
Also by Basil Thomson
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
Basil Thomson
The Case of the Dead Diplomat
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
The Case of the Dead Diplomat
Chapter One
ERIC CARRUTHERS, 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.
The Case of Naomi Clynes Page 21