The Lost Empress

by Steve Robinson

  As she circled the inner harbour by Granville Dock and came to Admiralty Pier, the longest of Dover’s piers at over four thousand feet, she slowed, thinking about how Drescher had referred to Raskin as her ‘agent’ and about how Raskin had told her she was now a ‘fixed post.’ She imagined that Drescher was another, and she wondered how many ‘fixed posts’ there were in England, and how many agents. She was now of the impression that a whole network of spies was abroad in England, all feeding information back to Germany and the kaiser through the chain of command that had been established. She wondered then who Raskin reported to. She didn’t imagine he reported direct to Germany himself. He was known to her and no doubt many others like her. She thought that anyone reporting direct to Germany would be as far removed from the front line as possible so as to reduce the risk of discovery.

  Arriving at the pier walkway, Alice dismounted from her bicycle and leaned it against the iron railings before climbing the steep steps that now forced her to continue on foot. To her right, over a thick wall, was the English Channel, and to her left was the harbour. Immediately below her, she could see the train tracks that had been laid to serve the ships that docked alongside the pier. There was a cross-channel passenger steamer on the other side of the water, alongside the Prince of Wales Pier, but Alice supposed that was of little interest to Raskin and his company of spies. What she was there to record were the splashes of battleship grey—as her father had once told her the colour was officially called—that she could see further along the pier and out in the Channel.

  She stopped walking about halfway along the pier and discreetly took out the chart Drescher had given her, using it to identify two types of cruiser and an armed yacht. After noting them down, she went out to the lighthouse at the end of the pier, where the wind became so strong she had to remove her hat altogether or risk losing it to the sea. Looking out into the Channel, she saw an easily identifiable destroyer, which she noted down along with the details of the other ships she had so far collected.

  On her way back, the sight of at least three ships out in the Channel stopped her in her tracks. They were coming towards the harbour in a convoy from the west. They were too far distant, and she knew she would need to see them from the side to accurately determine their type, but she thought if she waited, she would soon be able to. She leaned over the wall and rested her chin on her arms, closing her eyes as the wind pinned her hair back. She would have been happy to wait like that for those ships to arrive, had a voice not startled her, reminding her of Drescher’s advice to keep moving.

  ‘Do you need any help, miss?’

  Alice spun around and felt her cheeks flush with guilt.

  ‘What are you doing out here by yourself?’

  The man was smiling at her, and Alice felt no alarm, but she had to think fast.

  ‘I’m planning to paint the harbour,’ she said. ‘I was just looking for the best composition.’

  The man smiled broadly. ‘Well, you won’t find it looking out to sea.’

  ‘No, I’m sure I won’t,’ Alice said, meeting his smile. ‘I was just resting.’

  She bid the man a good day and set off again, thinking that she would make her way to the Prince of Wales Pier and watch the convoy of ships come in from there. On her way back it seemed that every man she passed eyed her with suspicion, and she supposed it was a little unusual for a woman to be out on this particular pier unaccompanied. It wasn’t anything like Promenade Pier, where it was common to take casual strolls to the pavilion and back. She saw her bicycle again and descended the steps towards it. Then, halfway down, she froze when she thought she saw the man in the tweed suit and bowler hat from the hotel lobby earlier. He was standing beside a horse and carriage by the pier gatehouse. Alice looked away briefly, trying not to let on that she’d seen him. When she reached her bicycle and glanced over again, he was no longer there.

  Alice laughed nervously at herself as she pedalled away, convinced that her imagination was getting the better of her. Just the same, she took a particular interest in looking out for tweed-suited gentlemen as she cycled back the way she had come by the Western Docks, taking only a few minutes to get there.

  The railway tracks on the Prince of Wales Pier were on the same level as the walkway, although Alice hadn’t seen any trains coming or going from this pier, supposing it was no longer in use. She passed the clock tower that marked the entrance to the pier and cycled towards the passenger steamer she had seen earlier from Admiralty Pier, with its twin funnels. It bore the letters ‘SECR,’ which she knew stood for the South Eastern and Chatham Railway. Further on, she had to slow for the passengers waiting to board the ship, and then she pushed on to the lighthouse at the end of the pier, knowing that from there she would have the best view of the convoy of warships as they came into the harbour.

  Every minute Alice had to wait, the tenser she became. After the first few minutes had passed, she began to ride around the lighthouse, and after that she rode to the steamer and back so as to keep on the move. She was glad all those passengers were there because they gave everyone else something to focus on other than her. When at last the first flash of battleship grey appeared in the mouth of the harbour, Alice stopped pedalling and took out her chart and notepad. A few minutes later she could see all three ships, and she quickly recorded a Dreadnought class battleship and two destroyers similar to the one she had seen anchored in the Channel, the view to which was now obscured by the harbour’s Southern Breakwater.

  Keep moving, Alice told herself.

  She put everything back into her bag and got on her bicycle, having decided she had recorded enough information for now. As she came onto the pier, she saw by the clock tower that it was still early afternoon, so she thought she would go in search of some light refreshment. She could come back afterwards and loiter by the harbour and the docks until sunset, which for Alice could not come soon enough. As she began to pedal, however, she saw the man in the tweed suit again, and she stopped abruptly, causing her brakes to judder. She stared at the man long enough this time to see that he had a crooked nose that appeared slightly squashed on his face, as if he might have been a boxer, or had at least seen his share of street brawls.

  He was on foot as before, but this time a moment of startling recognition flashed between them as they locked eyes, and in that moment Alice knew beyond any doubt that he was following her. More alarming was the determination on his face and in his manner as he came directly towards her. It was clear that his intention was to challenge her, and what then? He would discover her treason, and all would be lost. She was trapped at the end of the pier, and there was only one way back.

  Alice looked around, quickly weighing her options. They appeared to be few: the sea or the steamer. Then she decided there was one other option open to her. It was bold, but she couldn’t see how jumping into the sea would save her any more than she thought she could escape him by boarding the steamer. She turned the bicycle around and began to pedal back to the lighthouse. A quick glance over her shoulder told her that the man in the tweed suit had started to run after her. She kicked harder. She needed speed.

  The lighthouse was wide enough so as not to slow her down as she came to it. She kept going, all the way around it, pedalling faster until she was heading back along the pier. The man was less than twenty feet from her now, and Alice gave it everything she had. Faster and faster she went, heading right at him. As she arrived, she saw the troubled look in his eyes just before she ducked her head down. She saw a flash of tweed out of the corner of her eye, and she felt the man grab at her coat, but she was going too fast. His grip gave out, and she was away, pedalling for her life, it seemed. When she chanced a look back, she saw the man pick up his hat and dust it off as he stared after her.

  Chapter Seventeen

  It was late evening by the time Alice returned to Hamberley, having taken a hansom cab from the railway station. Thankfully, she saw n
o more of the man in the tweed suit that day. After leaving the pier, she had cycled away from the harbour, through the town and out the other side, not daring to chance her return train journey so soon after the ordeal on the Prince of Wales Pier. She had feared her pursuer would suspect she had arrived in Dover by train and would go to the main station to look for her, so she had waited almost four hours, counting on the idea that any man’s patience would have run out by then.

  As the train sped Alice back through the dark Kent countryside, she had plenty of time to reflect on who the man could have been. She thought it unlikely that he had followed her all the way to Dover, so she supposed he must have been watching Drescher at the Burlington Hotel and that he had become suspicious of her when she made contact with him. If the man was on to Drescher, then Alice could only conclude that he must have been a spy catcher of sorts, perhaps working for the Special Branch of the police or for the Secret Service Bureau her father had mentioned after breakfast that morning. Whoever he was, Alice knew she had made a narrow escape.

  Hamberley was all but in darkness when she entered. The air was cool and quiet save for the perpetual ticking of the clocks, and she was glad she had thought to take a key to the side door with her, because her parents had clearly retired for the night, and she didn’t want to disturb them. She lit a candle from the kitchen and removed her shoes so as to make as little sound as possible. Then she made her way along the corridor that led to the main staircase, wondering how well Chester had recovered and thinking to look in on both of her children on her way to bed.

  She was about to climb the stairs when she heard a sound that drew her eye to her father’s study. Was it a voice? She thought it was, but she couldn’t be sure. She held up her candle and saw that the study door was closed, but there was a faint amber glow filling the gap beneath it. She thought her father must still be up, working late. But whom was he with? She went to the door, proposing to find out and to let him know she was home again, but as she drew closer, she heard the voice again and faltered. It was not her father. She was certain of it. She couldn’t make out whose voice it was, but he was talking in whispers, and Alice believed her father incapable of talking so quietly—and why would he in his own home?

  Alice pressed her ear to the door, momentarily thinking that spying was becoming second nature to her. She could determine the words that were being spoken, always from that same hushed voice, and she quickly realised that whoever was in the room was talking on the telephone: her father’s telephone in her father’s study. She thought it must be her uncle. Oscar Scanlon had reportedly taken so many liberties since he and her Aunt Cordelia had taken up residence at Hamberley that Alice supposed he now considered her father’s study as much his own as the contents of her father’s wine cellar.

  But why is he whispering?

  Alice was intrigued, and as much as she knew it was wrong to remain there, given the late hour and the clandestine nature of the conversation, she felt there was something underhand taking place and considered it her duty to stay.

  ‘I see,’ the man said. ‘Yes, it’s all arranged.’

  Alice couldn’t fathom what the hushed conversation was about.

  ‘A minor complication,’ the voice continued, ‘but it’s all in hand.’

  Alice wondered what was arranged and what was in hand. Was it another one of Uncle Oscar’s dubious business deals? What she heard next almost made her drop her candle.

  ‘Come the day, we shall both be very wealthy men. Now I must go.’ There was a pause. ‘Yes, until then.’

  Alice heard the telephone rattle back into its cradle, and she ran silently from the door, blowing out her candle as she went. She quickly found the shadows in one of the alcoves and hid, trying to control her breathing as the study door opened. She wanted to look to see who it was, but she resisted out of fear of discovery. She heard footsteps on the wooden flooring. Then they stopped suddenly, and Alice stopped breathing altogether. She heard another sound then, as though someone was sniffing the air. She realised she could smell it too. Her candle was still smoking. She squeezed the hot wick between her thumb and forefinger, hoping it hadn’t already given her away. A moment later the footsteps continued, and she breathed again. When the footsteps were distant, she came out into the dark hall and followed after them.

  The squeak of a dry door hinge drew her to the passageway on her right. She saw light spill out from an open door, and then it closed again. It was the door to the games room. She went to it and listened again and immediately picked up another conversation. There were two people this time, and their words were not whispered, but spoken clearly and confidently, without regard for being overheard. It seemed they were playing cards and were soon laughing about something. Alice recognised the voices as those of Oscar Scanlon and Frank Saxby.

  She wondered what Saxby was doing there so late and concluded there were any number of reasons. ‘Uncle’ Frank needed no invite to Hamberley. She supposed that while he was there, her real uncle had enticed him into an after-dinner game of cards to try to win some money from him. It didn’t matter to Alice how or why either of them were there. What did matter was which of them had just been in her father’s study.

  Come the day . . .

  Those words replayed through her mind, and she wondered whether she was just becoming paranoid, like so many other people in England, about German spies and the threat of invasion. Yet she herself was proof of their existence, if any were needed. Could there really be another spy at Hamberley besides herself? Alice could not deny her own ears, but which of them was it? She turned away from the door and went up to her room, deep in thought. She was unsure of the answer, but she was going to find out.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Present day.

  Jefferson Tayte awoke from a restless sleep, squinting at the bright sunrise that was pushing through the gaps in the blind at his hotel room window. He rolled out of bed in the Hershey’s boxer shorts Jean had sent him for Christmas and made straight for the coffee machine, noting along the way that it was just after eight—Wednesday already. Following the research at Davina’s apartment the night before, Tayte hadn’t stayed long. His body clock was still running on DC time, and his second glass of Jack Daniels just made him want to sleep. So, as soon as their line of research had been concluded, he’d made his excuses and called it a day, much to Davina’s disappointment. Tayte imagined she would have stayed up researching with him all night if he’d had it in him.

  As he switched the coffee machine on, his thoughts were already back on the articles he’d read in The Times Digital Archive about Admiral Waverley’s heart attack and the question of what he was doing at Tilbury Docks in the middle of the night, and of the discovery of his wife’s decomposed body, found in the Thames two weeks later. He considered that much speculation, but no solid conclusions, had been drawn to explain with any certainty how their deaths had come about, but he thought it was useful information to have.

  The connection to Charles Metcalfe that had led him to the articles had proven tenuous at best—Lord Metcalfe having been called upon to assist in the official enquiry, both as a Lord of the Admiralty and a close friend of the late Admiral Waverley, for whose character Charles Metcalfe had gone on record to defend, stating that Admiral Waverley was as devoted a patriot as King George V himself. In reading the accusations against Waverley, of stealing Admiralty secrets prior to his death, and of the concern over his missing service revolver, Tayte could not help but wonder, given the suspicious circumstances surrounding the death of Waverley’s wife so close to his own, whether the Admiral had been put under pressure to obtain those naval documents for someone. He wondered, then, whether there was a connection to Alice. Were the same people forcing her to spy for them?

  Tayte decided he wasn’t ready to shower and dress just yet, so he slipped his guest bathrobe on, poured his coffee and sat down at his laptop, thinking to move his research
on. From his briefcase, he pulled out Davina’s photograph of the Metcalfe family-and-friends gathering, which she’d let him hold on to. Standing beside Admiral Waverley was Lord Ashcroft, and the Ashcroft family had interested Tayte, not least because of the young boy standing in front of his father in the image, whom Davina had told him was known as Archie.

  Tayte thought a visit to the current descendants of Lord Ashcroft could prove fruitful, so he called up the 1911 UK census to find out where they were living at the time the census was taken. He checked his notebook and saw that he didn’t have a first name for Lord Ashcroft, whom he thought was likely the head of the household, so he entered the search criteria for the only full name he did have: first name, ‘Archibald’; last name, ‘Ashcroft.’ In the place-of-residence field he entered ‘Kent,’ which was where Davina had said she believed the family were from.

  Hitting the search button presented Tayte with a single entry that showed a birth year of 1889; the subject’s age in 1911, which was twenty-two; and an entry in the district column showing ‘Medway,’ all of which gave Tayte confidence that he was looking at the right record. He preferred to do his own transcribing where possible, so he clicked to view the original page, knowing such a page often contained more information than could be found on the general transcripts. When he saw that the head of the household was listed as ‘Lord Thomas Ashcroft,’ and that his profession was listed as ‘Royal Navy, Board of Admiralty,’ he had no doubt that he was looking at the right family.

  Archibald’s relationship to the head of the household was recorded as ‘son,’ which was as Tayte expected. It told him that Thomas Ashcroft’s wife was called Lydia and that they had another son, Ernest, and a daughter who was no longer alive in 1911. Several members of staff were also listed on the report, along with a large number of rooms, which said a good deal about the status of the family—again, to be expected for such a high-ranking naval official. For his records, Tayte took a screen shot of the page, which contained so much more information that was useful to someone in his profession, such as the civil parish of each member of the household, as well as the person’s place of birth. Then he wrote down the address in South Gillingham as it was recorded in 1911, hoping that the descendants of Lord Thomas Ashcroft still lived there.