by Anita Anand
Udham should have killed every one of his victims that day. As a lawyer would later put it: ‘Every bullet found a billet.’47 However, only one man would die.
It would take a gun and ballistics expert to later discover that the bullets Udham had used were too small for his gun, .44 calibre instead of the .455 which would have fit the chambers snugly. The loose fit of these smaller ‘wrong’ bullets had forced propellant gases around the casings, significantly slowing the flight of the bullets as they left their chambers and reducing their impact. Lord Zetland, Louis Dane and Lord Lamington owed their lives to that fact.48
The gun was hot in his hand when Udham made a break for the door: ‘Make way! Make way!’49 he screamed, shoving people out of his way. Bertha Herring, still in her seat on the aisle, saw him barrelling towards her and, though most were paralysed with fear, something inside her snapped. Yelling at her sister to stay down, she leaped at Udham as he passed. Bertha was a substantial woman and she body-checked him with all her might, grabbing at his shoulders and toppling him to the floor. Her extraordinary reflex set off a chain reaction.
As he struggled to untangle himself from Bertha and get back on his feet, Claude Wyndham Harry Riches also hurled himself at Udham, bringing him down for a second time:
‘I took a step forward and jumped, landing on the man’s shoulders. As I landed my coat, which was on my arm, went over his head and unsighted him. He fell on his face to the floor and as he did so, his right hand struck against something and he dropped the revolver about six inches from his hand. I pinned the man’s hand to the ground with my right hand and leaning over him, with my left hand I flicked the revolver away.’50
Major Slee grabbed the gun, while two serving officers who had been sitting at the back of the hall vaulted over the mess of fallen chairs and crouching people to where Udham was now sprawled on the floor. They pinned him, one with a foot on his outstretched hand.51
Realising there was no chance for escape, Udham stopped struggling almost immediately and lay perfectly still. For a few moments, the only thing that seemed to be moving in the Tudor Room was the curling white smoke that had just been discharged from his gun.
Eerie silence descended on all in the blood-spattered Tudor Room, broken only when Marjorie Usher, the latecomer, snapped herself out of her horror-stricken trance and made her way forwards towards Sir Michael. His breathing was shallow and laboured. Marjorie knelt and, not knowing what else to do, gently raised Sir Michael’s head onto her lap and fanned him with her programme.
Dr Grace Mackinnon, who had been sitting on the front row, was jarred into action by Marjorie’s futile tenderness. She joined her, kneeling by her side, and set about trying to find the bullet wounds, attempting to staunch Sir Michael’s bleeding. He was beyond her help: ‘I could do nothing for him.’52
The women had broken the spell and the Tudor Room reanimated. Another member of the audience, Dr M. R. Lawrence, the brother of T. E Lawrence, or ‘Lawrence of Arabia’, ran forward. Sir Michael’s life was now slipping away fast. Lawrence looked to the others, groaning and writhing around him. He set about trying to calm them, running his hands over their bodies, trying to find entry and exit wounds.
Sobbing, shouting, anger and fear now replaced the stunned silence of the Tudor Room. One woman ran out into the street screaming for a policeman. Perhaps it was a late rush of adrenaline that drove retired medic Colonel Carl Henry Reinhold to throw himself on the pile of bodies pinioning Udham in the aisle: ‘[I] added my weight on top of them,’53 he told police proudly later.
It did not take long to realise that he was in fact squeezing the breath out of the servicemen as well as Udham, so he scrambled off the human pyramid and went instead to where Marjorie knelt. Sir Michael was now motionless on her lap and she was whispering words of comfort into his ear. Reinhold realised he was watching him take his last breaths: ‘I think he died within a few minutes.’54
Shot through the heart,55 the former lieutenant governor of Punjab bled out surrounded by people who were powerless to help him. It was a macabre echo of the fate of so many at Jallianwala Bagh.
Philip Bloomberg had not been shot, but he was in agony. A journalist with the Press Association (PA) wire service, he had drawn the short straw that night and been sent to cover the Caxton Hall meeting. No other newspaper could be bothered. He was therefore the sole journalist in the room when Udham Singh started shooting.
He witnessed extraordinary scenes, and any editor would have given his eyeteeth for Bloomberg’s account. His copy, had he been able to file it, would have had everything: high drama, high-profile victims, an exotic villain. Bloomberg watched as a lady doctor and a male colleague – somebody said he was Lawrence of Arabia’s brother – splinted Louis Dane’s shattered forearm with a lady’s umbrella. It should have been the scoop of his life.
Instead, Philip Bloomberg would live out every journalist’s worst nightmare. He was witnessing history but he could tell nobody about it. As soon as Bloomberg managed to gather his wits enough to phone the story in, the police had entered the Tudor Room and were locking down everything and everyone inside.56 To make matters more excruciating, Bloomberg could see the press table from where he was standing. There was a telephone right there, on top of it, within reach. It might as well have been on the moon.
Every minute, more police arrived, adamant that nobody should move, much less talk to anyone outside till they had been processed. A couple of officers had been stationed in Caxton Hall and had arrived within seconds. Pockets had to be searched, identities and home addresses had to be taken and detailed witness statements had to be recorded and signed. As Philip Bloomberg was herded into an adjoining room, he could see Sir Michael’s body lying there, his head resting against the leg of his press table.
Within half an hour, a thick police cordon was being thrown around Caxton Hall. Bloomberg’s Fleet Street competitors, who arrived at the scene within the hour, counted around 150 police officers, almost one for every member of the audience still trapped inside.
Popping camera bulbs strobed the descending gloom. Journalists buzzed like hornets over ripe fruit, filling the nearby red telephone boxes and shouting their copy down the line, while their photographers remained rooted to the spot. There was one picture that everyone wanted. They would wait all night if they had too.
Only the news editor of the Daily Express thought to send a reporter to Sir Michael’s home, where he not only doorstepped the housekeeper, but forced his way inside. The reporter noted that Sir Michael’s walls were covered with ‘pistols and swords and Indian idols’.57 Pushing past the poor woman’s confusion, he asked her why the cups and plates were laid out on the table. She had been expecting him back, she said. He was meant to be home any minute. The water was still hot in the kettle. Mackay was by the door, wagging his tail, waiting for a master who would never return.
The stunned housekeeper, faced with the reality of events, now found herself babbling to the reporter, little realising that every word she said would be printed in the next day’s newspaper. Sir Michael and his wife were planning to spend the summer in their country home in Devon, she said. They always did that. They planned to be there in June, she said. He was coming home for tea. He was coming back. She had the tea things all ready.
CHAPTER 21
MOHAMMED SINGH AZAD
Detective Inspector Deighton was the first senior police officer on the scene. Arriving on his heels came police surgeon Dr Arnold Harbour. The two shook hands and walked over to the body, confirming what everybody knew. Sir Michael was dead and his body lay on the floor exactly where he had fallen. Rolling his body on its side gently, Harbour showed Deighton the scorch marks on the back of Sir Michael’s jacket. The gun had been extremely close when it had been fired.
Turning to the dark-skinned suspect who had been watching them work with an air of detachment, Deighton noticed that he was now smiling. Udham had been forced to sit in a chair on the front row, and was handcuffe
d to an officer:1 ‘Do you understand English?’ Deighton asked.
‘Yes,’ replied Udham.2
‘You will be detained pending further enquiries.’ Deighton said the words slowly and clearly to avoid any doubt.3
Udham looked Deighton straight in the eye, his smile unnerving and unwavering: ‘It’s no use, it is all over.’4 Nodding his head towards Sir Michael’s body, he said slowly and clearly: ‘It is there.’5
Stretchers began to arrive. Somebody placed a handkerchief over Sir Michael’s face. Paramedics rushed Louis Dane to Westminster Hospital and Lord Zetland to St George’s Hospital. Lord Lamington, who lived only ten minutes away in Wilton Place, insisted on being taken home. He wished to be treated by his neighbour, a retired Swiss surgeon. Nobody could talk him out of it. The surgeon would later report that the 75-year-old had sustained ‘a multiple fracture of two long bones of the right hand, and had metal chipping embedded in his wound.’6
Louis Dane was also being treated for a shattered forearm. The bullet which had gone straight through his bones had been caught in his clothing. It tumbled out onto the hospital floor as the doctors examined him.
When Lord Zetland was wheeled into St George’s Hospital, he was clutching his heart, convinced he had taken two bullets to the chest. Doctors described him being in a state of ‘great agitation’, however when they loosened his shirt they could find no puncture wounds. There was no blood, only a ‘moderate amount of swelling in the subcutaneous tissues’7 about his chest. The bullets had found their mark but failed to pierce his skin. Zetland, who had felt the impact of the shots, could not believe what the doctors were telling him, and to reassure him, a radiographer was called to take images of his torso.
What had been meant to calm the secretary of state did the exact opposite, because when the radiographer held the film up to the light, it clearly showed a bullet lodged in his chest. It made no sense. Perplexed, the radiographer tried to take an image from a different angle; that was when the bullet fell out of Lord Zetland’s clothes.8 It too had been stopped by fabric. While the secretary of state marvelled over his lucky escape, the second bullet that had hit him was being discovered in the Tudor Room.
Still covered in Sir Michael’s blood, watching police take photographs and measurements of the body, Marjorie Usher had noticed a handkerchief on the chair upon which Lord Zetland had fallen. It was tightly folded, small enough to sit in his breast pocket. The embroidered letter ‘Z’ in the corner clearly identified it as Lord Zetland’s property. ‘I picked it up intending to return it to him. I held the handkerchief for at least half an hour before I discovered a bullet inside the fold and several holes in the handkerchief.’9 She handed both to the police.
Lord Zetland would always believe he was the intended target of the killer and that he had been the first to be shot. It was a reasonable assumption as secretary of state he was the most important man in the room. The evidence, however, told a different story. Udham’s primary target had always been O’Dwyer. The secretary of state had merely been a bonus.
There had been ample opportunity for Udham to walk up to the dais and shoot Zetland at close quarters, but he had saved that intimate proximity for Sir Michael, his first victim. Sir Frank Brown corroborated: ‘[I] had the impression that Sir Michael O’Dwyer received the first shot.’10 Sir Percy Sykes was of the same opinion and had a military clarity about events:
I heard and saw a flash, and I saw my old friend Sir Michael shot dead . . . I saw him fall, he fell and turned round facing the corner chair in which he had been sitting, I then charged at the flashes, there was smoke and I could not see the accused who was evidently crouched behind Sir Michael’s chair . . . one or two bullets passed very near my head; I have had that before so I knew what it was. Two bullets aimed at Lord Zetland passed very near me, then I had to pull up for a second. Everything took place in about 20 seconds.11
Udham’s aim had not let him down. His weapon had.
As police continued their search of the murder scene, Udham was taken to one of the smaller offices on the first floor and placed in the custody of Detective Sergeant Sidney Jones. A solid officer, Jones was attached to the nearby Rochester Row station. He was told to search Udham and inform his superiors of anything of interest.
The first thing he turned out of his suspect’s pockets was the identity card in the name of Mohamed Singh Azad. He then found the spare bullets, box of ammunition and diary. Jones had been ordered to sit with Udham until it was time to transfer him to police headquarters at Canon Row. He settled into his chair, facing the seated prisoner, who still wore an expression of mild amusement.
While they sat staring at each other, news rippled round the building that Lady O’Dwyer was on her way. She had been informed of her husband’s murder, but police had not expected her to demand to see him immediately. Sensible of the effect the blood-spattered scene might have on her, they had tried to dissuade her, but Una was adamant. She wanted to see her Michael.
When Lady O’Dwyer’s car pulled up outside Caxton Hall, Field Marshal Sir Claud Jacob materialised out of the thickening dusk to open her door. Lady O’Dwyer allowed herself to be steered towards the Tudor Room and the ageing soldier propped her up when her legs gave out.12 It was not clear who had called Jacob or how he had got there so quickly, but the O’Dwyers had always had powerful and well-connected friends.
As her grief filled the Tudor Room, metres down the corridor, Udham Singh asked for a cigarette.13 Jones noted down the request in his book but did nothing. Usual police procedure dictated that an officer should write contemporaneous notes at a crime scene, and pages in Jones’s notebook, a standard issue, rough-grain Metropolitan Police pad with the distinctive crown insignia on the buff-coloured front, certainly suggested that he knew the rules.14 The rest of it was filled with incidents Jones had attended that week: minor break-ins, street altercations, vagrancy and robbery, scrawl filled with crossings out and notes in the margins.15
Jones’s Caxton Hall notes started in that same style, however changed dramatically two pages in, suggesting that he stopped taking notes at the scene and filled in the rest later. In place of messy jottings he had written neat, legible words in fully formed sentences. When later questioned about this break with protocol, Jones would only say: ‘Something may have happened so that I was not able to write them [his notes] down there and then. I cannot explain why that should be.’16
Poor practice aside, Sergeant Jones would swear under oath that his notebook contained an accurate representation of what passed between him and Udham in that room that night. According to him, though Udham appeared docile, solicitous even, he was unable to stay silent. From the moment he opened his mouth, he incriminated himself over and over again.
It all started when Jones was itemising the contents of Udham’s pockets. He was examining his curved blade when Udham broke his smiling silence: ‘I had the knife with me because I was set about in Camden Town a few nights ago.’17
Jones was unsure whether his prisoner understood the police caution read to him earlier meaning anything he said could be used in evidence. He warned him to keep quiet, but Udham seemed in a buoyant and chatty mood: ‘I did it because I had a grudge against him. He deserved it.’18 ‘I do not belong to any society or anything else.’19
When Jones’s boss Detective Inspector Deighton came into the room and dramatically placed four empty cartridge cases on the table before them, Udham’s smirking calm slipped for the first time that evening. He seemed angry instead: ‘No! No! All the lot. Six,’20 he said, holding up six fingers.21
Deighton picked up the bullets from the table and returned to the Tudor Room, to search for the two remaining bullets. He had no way of knowing that one was still lodged in Sir Michael’s body and the other had been confounding a hospital radiographer and a panicking secretary of state.
Alone with Jones again, Udham was now agitated: ‘I don’t care. I don’t mind dying. What is the use of waiting till you get old, that
’s no good. You want to die when you’re young. That is good. That’s what I am doing.’22
In a climbing state of passion, Udham exclaimed: ‘I am dying for my country.’23
Looking at Jones’s notes today, it feels as if the long periods of silence were too much for Udham to bear. He and the policeman were in that office together for around four hours, during which time Udham asked for a copy of that evening’s paper, wanting to see if he had made it into the late edition. Jones ignored the request, passing him a cigarette instead, perhaps to calm them both down. Smoke twisted around a temporary silence. Then, without warning or provocation, Udham started to talk again: ‘Is Zetland dead? He ought to be. I put two in him right there.’24 Udham pointed to his left side. Then fell silent again.
From time to time Udham seemed to forget Jones was even there, giving answers to questions that had not even been asked: ‘I bought the revolver from a soldier in a public house at Bournemouth. I bought him some drink, you know . . . My parents died when I was four or five.’25
It was as if Udham was trotting out some kind of rehearsed dialogue: ‘I had property which I sold,’ he said apropos of nothing. ‘I had over two hundred pounds when I came to England.’26
At some point Udham mused aloud: ‘Only one dead, eh! I thought I could get some more. I must have been too slow. There was a lot of womans [sic] about, you know.’27
At 8.50 p.m., police were finally ready to move Udham. All the witnesses had given their statements and been sent home, even those with the most to say. Bertha Herring had proved a particular hit with the freezing reporters on the pavement outside and had revelled in their attention. Like an intense and excitable version of Margaret Rutherford, she relived her experience for whoever asked her to. As much as the press enjoyed her spirited account, and would use it in their papers next day, there was really one thing they were waiting for.