The Case of Naomi Clynes by Basil Thomson Page B

dead, sir.”
    â€œGood God! Her death must have been very sudden. What was the cause of it?”
    â€œIt is ascribed to suicide. She was found in the morning lying in her kitchen with her head in the gas-oven with all the taps turned on. There is to be an inquest, of course, and the coroner has applied to the police for information about her relatives and friends. She seems to have had no friends in London, and that is why I am making inquiries in Liverpool.”
    â€œThe news is a great shock to me. She was my confidential clerk and worked for me for ten years until three months ago, and if I had searched the country through I should never have found a better one. I’m afraid, poor woman, that she can’t have made a success of her new venture.”
    â€œAccording to her publishers, things were going well. Do you happen to know anything of her life before she came to Liverpool?”
    â€œShe told me that she had been working for one of those American philanthropic societies that were formed in Paris at the time of the Peace Conference, and they gave her the highest character. At first she was living with an aunt in Liverpool, but three or four years later the aunt died and she told me that she was the last relation she had in the world. She was a curiously reticent creature; even her fellow-clerks seem to have known very little about her.”
    â€œMay I ask why she left her employment with you?”
    â€œOnly because I am retiring from business and have no longer any need of a secretary. I wanted to do my best for her, as one always does for a faithful employee who has been with one for years. Quite by chance I had heard from one of the other clerks that in her spare time Miss Clynes had been writing for one of the magazines and had had a story accepted, and that she had literary ambitions. I made a jocular allusion to this, and she told me quite seriously that it was true; that her dream was to establish herself in London and devote herself seriously to writing. This seemed to be an opportunity for helping her. I broke the news to her that I was going to close down the office, but that I would give her twelve months’ salary in lieu of notice and let her go at once if she liked, and that, of course, she could give my name as a reference in case she found another employer. She seemed very grateful and she wrote to me from London, asking me to become her reference for a little flat she was taking. I suppose, poor woman, that she must have found the market for fiction as overcrowded as everything else in these days, and that this depressed her…”
    â€œNo, sir, on the contrary, she had just had her first novel accepted on very favourable terms.”
    â€œIndeed? That surprises me very much. I shouldn’t have thought that she was a woman of imagination, though the English she used in my correspondence was very good. A first novel! On good terms, too! It’s surprising, and it makes her suicide all the more astonishing. She wasn’t the kind of woman to have an unfortunate love-affair.”
    â€œHave you seen her at all since she went to London, sir?”
    â€œNo, and I fear that I haven’t kept the one letter of thanks she wrote to me.”
    Richardson finished his glass of port and rose to take leave. “I am very much obliged to you, sir, for receiving me at such an untimely hour. It will enable me to get away to London by an earlier train than I thought possible.”
    â€œYou said that there was to be an inquest, Inspector. I suppose that that will throw some light on the mystery. The doctors are satisfied about the cause of death, no doubt?”
    â€œSo I understand, sir. The case is sure to be reported in the London papers. Good night, sir.”
    Having the invaluable faculty of being able to sleep in the train, Richardson arrived at headquarters feeling quite fresh and ready for work. It was rather early for finding the Assistant Commissioner