As we expected, we found a license plate among the scattered items supplied along with the Talbot.
However, instead of the two license plates that are found on most vehicles, we had only one, and it was incomplete. Four digits were missing the result, with dot marks for the missing digits, was:
••30 AB ••
Looking at the actual plate rather than the pictures, it seemed obvious that the missing digits had not been lost but had been deliberately removed. This was strange, but could also be a clue.
From the marks that were still visible where the digits had been removed, we surmised that the first digit after “AB”, which was curved downwards, could very well have been a “3” or a “9.”
So how far had we got? Well, this was a French license plate (though we toyed with the possibility of a foreign plate as well) and the number of the department probably started with a “3.” In addition, the format of the registration clearly showed that the car had been registered in France after 1950 and almost certainly before 1952.
Finally, as it was certain the plate had deliberately been made incomplete, we had to determine why four digits had been removed and why two digits and two letters only had been kept – “30 AB”? When asked to help a few months later, our researcher Martine suggested “AB” might have been left because it can stand for “Air Base” – Harold Christensen was an aviator stationed at WAFB. It has not been possible to test this hypothesis, but it remains attractive.
It was a scant harvest, but the Talbot Club in Paris came to our rescue.
