The Case of Naomi Clynes (22 page)

He went out to the car and found its owner beaming with anticipation.

“You've found the boy, then?”

“Yes, Mr. Hudson; he's at school at the moment, but his foster-mother has gone off to fetch him. I find myself in some difficulty because I'm not conversant with French law. These people were told that the boy's father was in prison, and they have legally adopted this little boy as their son; and I can't represent myself to them as an English relative who wants to take the boy away from them, I might be committing an offence against French law.”

“Don't ask me about French law and French lawyers. I'm a property owner in the country, and I hate the very sight of them.”

Jim Milsom broke in. “Look here, Inspector, don't waste time by splitting straws. Leave it to me. I'll kidnap the boy and have done with it. What I don't know about kidnapping isn't worth knowing.”

“No doubt, Mr. Milsom, but then we should have sensational paragraphs in the French newspapers, and perhaps questions in the House of Commons, and I might find myself in serious trouble.”

“Well, then, a little lying wouldn't come amiss. You, of course, as a public official must tell nothing but the truth, but I'm free as a fiction editor to tell them anything that'll go. I'll say that the boy's father isn't in prison; that on the contrary he's in heaven, and that the guy who brought him here had no rights over him—that he stole him, in fact; that you are his nearest relative, his paternal uncle, and you want him back.”

“And you might add,” said Mr. Hudson, “that if a small sum of money would be of any use to them…If I was in your place, Inspector, I should just tell them who I was—an inspector from Scotland Yard. I should say, ‘See here, now, Scotland Yard has sent me to bring that boy back to England, and no guy in blue breeches is going to stop me doing it.' And if they grumbled a bit I should say, ‘If it's a bit of money you want, I'll pay you a bit of compensation if you don't open your mouths too wide.'“

Adolphe approached them at a quick walk and addressed Richardson. “It's all right, Inspector. The missus is fond of the boy, but the doctor has given her a bit of good news. She's expecting—is that what you say in English? When they wanted to adopt a child it was because they thought she couldn't have one of her own.”

“Well, then, everything's okay,” said Mr. Hudson. “I'm eager to see that little fellow and hear what he has to tell us.”

Adolphe was looking up the road. “They're coming, sir.”

The three jumped out of the ear and stood waiting. They saw Louise pointing at them. The little boy broke from her and came running towards them. In spite of his deplorable French clothing, he was manifestly an English boy.

“Maman tells me you are English. Are you really English?” His candid blue eyes looked from one to the other.

“I should jolly well think we are,” said Jim Milsom, who had a way with little boys. “What's your name, old man?”

“Well, here they call me Jean Godfrey, but Godfrey's my first name. My real name is Godfrey Maze.”

L
OUISE, WITH
the hospitable instinct of the French peasant, insisted that they all go into her kitchen and taste her coffee. There were to be no refusals. Chairs were fetched from other rooms until there were sufficient for all. The hostess busied herself about her kitchen range: Jim Milsom put his arm round little Godfrey Maze and asked him how he would like to go with them to England.

The boy's eyes blazed with excitement. “Wouldn't I just! But what will Maman say?”

“Oh, we're going to make it all right with Maman. Don't you worry.''

Meanwhile, Richardson suggested to Adolphe that while the coffee was being made they should take the adopted father into his workshop and have a talk with him. The three left the room together.

“Tell him,” said Richardson, “that the gentleman who brought the boy here had no right to sign that deed of adoption; that he lied when he told him that that boy's father was in prison—that, in fact, the father is dead and the boy is heir to a considerable fortune in England. All this can easily be proved in a French court, but that would cost time and money, and there would be publicity in the newspapers which we are anxious to avoid. Ask him whether he would object to the boy leaving with us, and consider the deed of adoption as null and void?”

Adolphe translated all this to the astonished mechanic.

“Messieurs,” he replied, “my wife has grown attached to that boy, but we have both realized that he is not happy with us; that he is not of our class. We ought, of course, to let him go back to his own folks, but it is a question of the money we have had. Happily it has not yet been spent, but I have been in treaty for new premises, and they may hold me to pay the law expenses.”

“Tell him that there is no question of asking him to refund any of the money. All that is required is that he should tear up that deed of adoption and allow us to take the child away.”

There was intense relief in the man's features when he heard the statement about the money, but Richardson detected an expression of fear when he understood that he was being asked to tear up a document with an official seal on it. “But suppose, messieurs, that the Maire requires me to produce this document. He may say, ‘What proof had you that the gentleman who called upon you had more right to the boy than the gentleman who signed that deed?'”

There was no answer to that question. Not one of them had a better claim to the boy than his guardian, John Maze.

“Tell him, then, that he can keep the document to produce if he is required to do so, but that the child must come back with us to England, as he is required to give evidence against the man who signed that document in a false name, and to enable him to claim the property that was left to him by his father.”

“You mean that little Jean has inherited property, messieurs?” He spoke in a tone of new respect for his adopted son.

“Yes, a very considerable property, we believe, and the boy's evidence will be required to enable him to claim it.”

“I am content, messieurs, to let him go. I will tell my wife to pack his valise. And now I hear her calling us. The coffee and the
goûter
must be ready.”

In spite of the approaching parting, it was a gay little meal. Jim Milsom's sallies kept little Godfrey in gurgles of laughter: Louise herself found it infectious as she pressed biscuits and coffee on her guests. When all except the little boy showed that they could eat and drink no more, the cycle-mechanic signalled to his wife and they left the room together. Mr. Hudson seized the opportunity for a whispered colloquy with Richardson.

“Say, Inspector, I would like to stand in on this. If a wad of notes would soften the blow for these poor folks, why, they ought to have it, see? You might slip it to them without telling them where it came from.”

“It's very good of you, Mr. Hudson, but you've done too much for us already. I don't think that the man wants any more money. His fear was that we should ask him to refund some of what he's already got, and also that he might get into trouble with the French authorities if he allowed me to destroy that deed. As for the wife, I think that she is genuinely fond of the little boy and will miss him until she has a child. What would really please her would be a photograph of the little boy taken with her—a photograph that she could show to her friends in after years.”

“I thought that these French peasants were always after money.”

“Of course you know more about them than I do, Mr. Hudson, but if I can judge at all what is passing through a man's mind, I should say that a sort of sturdy pride was uppermost in that man's mind, and that to offer him more money would wound it. I believe that he would refuse to take it.”

“That's okay then, Inspector. We'll take the woman along in the car, and the man, too, if he'd like to come, drive to the best photographer in the town, and get a framed portrait done of the three of them. I wouldn't have missed this show for all the world.”

The foster-father and mother came down from the bedroom carrying a cheap little suitcase. There were tears in the woman's eyes. Adolphe was called in to interpret. Mr. Hudson spoke.

“Tell them that we are all going down to the photographer to have a picture done of them with the little boy, and that some day, when he's a grown man, he will come out in a car of his own to visit them.”

The woman clasped her hands in delight. She ran to the child and kissed him. “Thou hearest, Jean? We are all going to be photographed, and I shall have thy portrait always to look at when thou art far away!”

The man flew to his workshop to wash his hands and face, comb his hair and put on a coat. Somehow the party was packed into the car, and Adolphe was bidden to find the best photographer in the town. Guided by the cycle-man, he pulled up at a mean-looking little photographer's shop in the next street, but this did not suit Mr. Hudson.

“Drive back to the Grand Hotel,” he commanded.

“They'll tell us where to find the best man in the town.”

A few minutes later, when they had been directed to the smartest photographer in the town, and the little couple saw where they had pulled up, they were covered with confusion. Richardson could read in Louise's face dismay at the thought that she was not wearing her best Sunday frock. The party filled the little shop decorated with specimens of the master's art—principally wedding groups of the local bourgeoisie.

Adolphe interpreted to the astonished photographer the desires of his employer. “It is to be a large picture—a sort of exhibition picture—in the handsomest gilt frame you have----”

The artist pointed mutely to his
chef-d'oeuvres
displayed on the walls.

“No, it's got to be bigger than any of these. Now get on with it.”

The couple and little Godfrey Maze were conducted to the studio upstairs and were left to the whim of the artist. In five minutes they came clattering down. Godfrey ran to Jim Milsom. “He took us four times, Uncle Jim! And he made us change where we looked at each time. He lifted up my face by my chin,” he added with awe.

The photographer came in to complete the business arrangements with his eccentric customers. The price was agreed to without demur—another eccentricity—the money was paid over; addresses were exchanged; an unframed copy of each photograph was to be sent to Jim Milsom in London, and the framed copy of the best was to be sent to the cycle-shop.

“There is one thing that we ought to do, Mr. Hudson, while we have the cycle-man with us. We ought to go to the lawyer who drew up that agreement of adoption which is registered in the Mairie, and ask him whether any legal formalities will be required for cancelling it. A complication may arise from the fact that only one of the parties to the agreement is present, but a French lawyer can generally discover some loophole, and his fee cannot be very large.”

“You needn't worry about the fee. That's my share of the joy-ride. Adolphe, ask that gentleman beside you to show you the way to the lawyer who drew up that agreement.”

From the little man's excited gestures they gathered that it was quite near.

Maître Delage lived on the first floor of a house at least three centuries old. He was a hirsute personage, and between his beard and his spectacles there was little to be seen of his face. Adolphe introduced the party as a distinguished company of English noble-men, who had come on a mission to France to take back with them a young nobleman who had been legally confided to the care of Louise and her husband by mistake. Adolphe felt in his heart that it would cost his employer double the ordinary fee, but that he would submit to the extortion with a glad heart.

The bearded
maître
scanned the agreement and nodded his beard over it three times. “Where is the gentleman who signed this agreement? It cannot be abrogated by one party without the other.”

“Tell him,” murmured Richardson, “that the gentleman in question is a criminal; and that he signed the agreement under a false name.”

“Then he has committed a crime in this country, and your course is clear. If you can prove that the name he signed was false, you can have him arrested. The agreement, at any rate, is void.”

He emphasized his verdict by thumping the table with a fat hand.

They trooped out to the car: the parting was to take place on the pavement. Richardson found himself wondering whether with all this excitement the boy would submit properly to the caresses of his foster-parents, since boys are apt to be callous under such circumstances. He need not have been anxious. Louise was sobbing quietly to herself as she folded him in her arms: the boy hugged and kissed her with real and unaffected warmth: there were tears in his eyes as she gently disengaged herself. The man insisted on kissing him, too, in the French fashion, and he responded no less warmly.

It was now nearly five o'clock, and there was still one formality to be complied with before they left the town. Richardson asked to be driven back to the Gendarmerie station to report to the Brigadier, and to thank him for what he had done for them.

“You are taking the boy back with you to England, monsieur?”

“Yes. monsieur. His evidence is likely to be very important in the case I mentioned to you. I shall not fail to report to my
préfet
the great service you have rendered to the cause of justice.”

The man purred with satisfaction as they shook hands.

The question now arose where they were to pass the night. “Paris is only just over three hundred and eighty kilometres from here,” observed Adolphe.

“We could get in by half-past ten,” said Milsom, who was dying to get on.

“We could—if we didn't stop to dine,” retorted his uncle, who was old enough to remember his creature-comforts. “Where could we stop on the way to dine and sleep?”