by Robin Paige
That near miss would have affected anyone, Charles thought. On 4 April 1900, Edward and Alexandra were passengers on a train to Copenhagen. When it stopped in Brussels, a fifteen-year-old boy dashed forward, thrust a revolver through the window of the Royal coach, and fired two shots before being wrestled to the platform by guards. One of the bullets had whizzed between the two Royal heads, but by a miracle, neither Bertie or Alexandra were hit. To make things worse, this was not an isolated event. Only eleven months before, William McKinley, President of the United States, had been shot at point-blank range by a self-proclaimed Anarchist named Leon Czolgosz, who was put to death less than sixty days later. As he was being strapped into the electric chair, Czolgosz had said, “I killed the President because he was the enemy of the good people. I did it for the good people, the working men of all countries!”
Ponsonby cleared his throat and said, half-apologetically, “In regard to the Hyde Park event, Sheridan, I wonder if we might have a word alone.”
Bradford glanced at Charles, his eyebrows raised, and then made for the door, glass in hand. “I’ll just tell the ladies that you’ll join them in a few moments,” he said, and went out.
Charles felt his heart sink. “What is it?” he asked.
Ponsonby regarded him thoughtfully. In a quiet voice, he said, “His Majesty regrets having to ask your assistance again, but he would like you to look into the matter. The Hyde Park affair, that is.”
Charles frowned. “But the bomber is dead. Isn’t that an end to it?”
“The incident might have been the work of one insane mind,” Ponsonby agreed. “But without some investigation, we cannot be sure. The bomber’s fellow Anarchists attempted to make a show of his funeral. What if one of them hopes to succeed where Messenko failed?” He paused and added, rather more delicately, “His Majesty is also interested in the… shall we say, underlying causes of the matter.”
This assertion took Charles by surprise. He had long known that, while military matters held the Royal interest and foreign affairs were of great importance, social issues scarcely merited a passing thought. The King was quite aware, of course, that there were poor people in London and elsewhere, but he found discussion of the topic rather boring. How the poor lived and died, what they ate or wore, what illnesses afflicted them, what they hoped and feared-these matters were of as little interest to Edward as they had been to his mother Victoria, during the years of her long reign.
Charles’s skepticism must have shown in his face for Ponsonby added, in an apologetic tone, “I did not make myself clear, I’m afraid. I mean that there may be a foreign angle in all this.”
“A foreign angle?”
Ponsonby gave a little shrug. “Our English Anarchists have been a relatively peaceable lot, as I’m sure you know. Marches, demonstrations, speeches, newspapers.” He dropped his glance to the Clarion and raised it again, with just the barest hint of a smile. “French Anarchists, of course, are rather more excitable, as are the Spanish and Russians. They prefer deeds-bombs, arson, assassination-to words. Owing to our leniency in the matter of immigration, a great many of these foreign Anarchists have taken refuge here, and some of their governments would like very much to get them back. We must walk a very fine line between protecting the rights and liberties of the people we have allowed to settle here, and alienating certain foreign powers.” He cleared his throat. “At the same time, we must make certain that these radicals are not infecting our own people with their militant ideas.”
Charles got up and began to pace. All of this was true. The East End was full of Russians, Poles, Italians, and Jewish immigrants, each group with its own political and social agenda, and all covertly watched by agents of foreign governments. The Foreign Office and the Home Office had the devil of a time dealing with the complex situation, and he had no desire to become entangled in it. What was more, he had conducted one or two personal investigations for the King and he preferred not to conduct any others, if he could help it. But he couldn’t tell Ponsonby this, of course. He had to think of something else.
He put down his glass and turned back to Ponsonby. “But surely now that Edward is King, he has the unlimited resources of the government to pursue such inquiries. What could I possibly offer?”
Ponsonby sighed. “Ah, yes, therein lies the problem. Now that he is King, His Majesty knows that a great many persons will tell him only what they think he wishes to hear.” He pursed his lips and regarded Charles thoughtfully. “He is sure that this is not the case with you. And of course, there are many in his government with reasons to conceal important matters from him, particularly when it comes to foreign affairs. I speak confidentially, of course, but you may be aware that there is a great deal of strain at the moment. His Majesty is not anxious to involve Lord Landsdowne in this matter, for instance, or Mr. Balfour. And as far as the Home Office goes-” He paused. “I’m sure you take my meaning.”
Charles did. Arthur Balfour, the new Prime Minister, was not an admirer of the King, while Lansdowne, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, was, according to all reports, ready to resign over the King’s refusal to grant the Order of the Garter to the Shah of Persia. Clearly, some of Edward’s ministers held the same low opinion that Queen Victoria had held of her oldest son’s ability to be trusted with matters of state.
“The King does not expect you to handle this matter entirely on your own,” Ponsonby continued. “Rather, he has asked me to arrange for your introduction wherever you think it might be useful, particularly in the Intelligence departments.” He lowered his voice. “I am sorry to have to ask you to do this, Sheridan. But I am also aware that you have a… certain sympathy with the cause of the people and a knowledge of some of the parties who may be involved.” His glance fell once again to the Clarion. “You’re simply the best man for the job. In fact,” he added ruefully, “I’m afraid that you may be the only man for the job.”
Charles stopped pacing. “And what does he wish me to accomplish?” he asked testily.
“Merely to look into the incident and the circumstances and conditions surrounding it and report back to him what you find. No more, no less than that.” Ponsonby smiled. “It is not all that difficult, really. He is not asking you to crack the case, as our friend Sherlock Holmes might put it.”
Charles sighed. “Well, then, I suppose I shall do my best. Lady Sheridan and I had arranged to go down to Bishop’s Keep at the weekend, however. I’m seeing Marconi on Saturday, and I hadn’t planned to come back to London before the beginning of next week.”
“Splendid.” Ponsonby put down his empty glass. “The beginning of the week will do very well; I don’t think there is a great hurry.” He stood, his tone lightening. “Do give my regards to your wife, Sheridan, and tell her that I very much enjoyed Beryl Bardwell’s novel about Dartmoor, which I read while I was in hospital. I must say, I felt it to be more realistic than Doyle’s Hound of the Baskervilles, which was rather more Gothic than I would have liked. Lady Sheridan exactly caught the spirit of the moors and the people there.”
Charles smiled. “She’ll enjoy hearing that. Funnily enough, Doyle was at the Princetown hotel, writing, while I was carrying out a project at the prison and Kate was doing the research for her book.” ^2
“Is that right? Odd how these things happen.” Ponsonby took Charles’s hand and shook it. “Well, good night, then, Sheridan. Let me know how I can aid your inquiry.”
“I shall,” Charles said. “Good night.” He watched Ponsonby leave the room and then, with a long sigh, went to join Kate and their guests.
CHAPTER FIVE
In the decade between 1903 and 1913, Scotland Yard faced a difficult challenge with regard to the Russians who sought refuge in London’s infamous End. There were two different revolutionary groups, the Anarchists and the Bolsheviks, and Scotland Yard frequently confused the two. To complicate matters still further, the Czar’s Secret Police, the Ochrana, hired spies to infiltrate both groups. These spies employed agent-
provacateur tactics, inducing the revolutionaries to commit illegal or terrorist acts, then betraying them to the police. When the informants employed by the Yard were added to the mix, it was sometimes very difficult to know who belonged to one side or the other.
Albert J. Williams, “A Brief History of British Anarchism”
The Metropolitan Police, founded by Sir Robert Peel in 1829, was headquartered in an area of Whitehall known as Scotland Yard, a term that (owing to the English habit of naming buildings and agencies after their location) became synonymous with the force itself. Scotland Yard grew rapidly, from 1,000 in 1829 to 10,000 in 1870, to 15,763 on the eve of the new century. But new technologies and new kinds of crime required a new kind of thinking and a different sort of training. For instance, when the streets and roads began to fill up with motorcars, the work of the Public Carriage Office changed from monitoring horse-drawn lorries and brewers’ drays to dealing with speeders (motorized vehicles traveling faster than twenty miles an hour) and issuing licenses to drivers; and a new “Fraud Squad” had to be formed to investigate the escalating numbers of embezzlements, swindles, and con games, some of which involved some rather important personages who had lost (or had made) significant amounts of money.
Other challenges required the Yard to branch out in other ways. In the early 1880s, a Special Irish Branch of the Criminal Investigation Department was staffed with Irish officers and organized to deal with the Fenians, the Irish Dynamiters who blew up The Times office and a government office in Whitehall and set dynamite bombs in Scotland Yard, Trafalgar Square, and Westminster Hall. By the 1890s, however, the Fenian threat was replaced by the Anarchist threat, and the Special Irish Branch became simply the Special Branch. The Continental terrorists making their way to England-Italian, French, Spanish, and Russian-seemed to believe that a few bombs were neither here nor there, and through the nineties, members of the Special Branch were kept busy hunting for bomb factories, pursuing accused bombers and their accomplices, and keeping a wary eye on those they suspected of plotting terrorist activity. There were Anarchists in Walsall and a botched explosion in Greenwich Park (which Joseph Conrad used as the inspiration for his novel The Secret Agent), followed by bomb bursts in Mayfair and in the Underground, together with a half-dozen other minor skirmishes.
All this uproar was followed by silence, an uneasy, fear-inducing silence that went on from the last three years of Victoria’s reign and into the first two years of Edward’s. Abroad, assassins were spreading terror among heads of state, while in England, Special Branch became increasingly anxious that a storm was brewing in the East End. But frustratingly, the police were left with little to do, except to keep a close watch on known and suspected Anarchists in the hope that they might commit a crime under the noses of the police. The Branch were assisted in this effort by the growing number of counterrevolutionary agents provacateurs who had begun to appear in London, sent by the Russian Secret Police to entrap Russian emigres who posed a threat to the Czar’s life and regime.
Inspector Earnest Ashcraft of the Special Branch was perhaps more frustrated than any of his colleagues, for he had a very strong sense of duty, and every day that passed without his being called upon to perform that duty was a day that he felt he had somehow failed. Ashcraft was a man in his early thirties, broad-shouldered and thickset. He deeply regretted having missed the excitement of the Fenians and the Walsall terrorists and that bang-up Greenwich affair, all of which had occurred while he was still a youth.
In fact, almost everything of note, Inspector Ashcraft often thought sadly, seemed to have happened before he joined the force in ’98-except for the Boer War, of course. He had done his duty there, not waiting to be called up but enlisting as soon as the trumpets sounded and shipping out on the very first transport to South Africa. But he had been struck by dysentery before he could fire a shot at the enemy, and had come back wasted, in what he felt in his soul to be a kind of mortal disgrace. The fact that Scotland Yard welcomed him back without question and even promoted him to the rank of Inspector made no difference to him. In his mind, his promotion had no redemptive qualities; he could only hope to redeem himself by some sort of significant action.
While others in the Special Branch may have been lulled by the seeming quiet on the Anarchist front, Inspector Ashcraft was convinced that these dangerous people were only biding their time. The times themselves were dangerous, for the end of the war threw thousands of men into the labor market, and large throngs of the unemployed marched through the streets of London, disrupting traffic and frightening law-abiding citizens. And even the employed were dangerous, for membership in the trade unions was rising and the unions held the cudgel of the strike in their hands. In this restive, rebellious climate, Ashcraft felt, any little spark might flame up into an uncontrollable conflagration. All hell would break loose, and unholy chaos would reign over law and order. But Ashcraft knew this could not be allowed to happen. When the peace and stability of society were threatened, Special Branch would be there to protect it. And Earnest Ashcraft, at last, would have the chance to do his duty.
To that end, over the past few months, Ashcraft had paid special attention to the half-dozen Anarchist groups in the East End. He was most interested in the Clarion, an Anarchist newspaper that had begun publication a decade ago under the editorship of a woman named Sybil Conway, whose daughter was now the editor. Ashcraft had studied the Clarion diligently, and in his opinion it was among the most inflammatory of all those published in the country; it stood to reason, therefore, that if a plot was brewing, the Clarion would be somehow involved.
Inspector Ashcraft’s interest in the newspaper had been further fueled by a man calling himself Dmitri Tropov, although Ashcraft had reason to believe that this was not his real name. At Tropov’s invitation, Ashcraft had met him in a dirty, crowded cafe near the docks. Tropov was a thin man, rather tall and dressed as an ordinary seaman, although his fingers were long and delicate, the fingers of a musician, perhaps, but hardly the hands of a sailor. There was something about his eyes, too-something watchful and wary, as if he were always on the lookout.
After some initial conversation, Tropov identified himself as a member of the Ochrana, the Russian Secret Police. He was especially interested, he said, in a man called Ivan Kopinski, who worked as a printer at the Anarchist newspaper, the Clarion. If Special Branch ever had occasion to detain or arrest Kopinski, Tropov would be glad to be notified, for Kopinski’s name was on his list of dangerous individuals. In fact, if the opportunity arose, Tropov would be delighted to take Kopinski off Ashcraft’s hands and arrange his clandestine deportation to Russia.
“One less Anarchist to trouble the Yard,” he had said with a chummy laugh, in perfect, unaccented English. “Right, Inspector?”
Ashcraft was not surprised by Tropov’s fluency or easy manner. That was the way of it with these Ochrana chaps-they spoke any number of languages, could assume any number of disguises, carry off any number of masquerades. The next time he saw Tropov, he might be an aristocrat, or a race-course tout, or (with those hands) even a woman. Of course, he couldn’t be trusted; those fellows would sell their mothers if they could make a profit thereby. But that was of little importance to Ashcraft, since Tropov was not in his employ. The man made him uneasy, however. It was those eyes, he thought, those endlessly watching eyes.
In the event, Ashcraft had agreed that one less Anarchist would indeed be a good thing, and had gone back to the Yard to inform Chief Inspector Mattingly about his conversation with the Russian agent. The press had been full of stories about the thaw in Anglo-Russian relations and the eventuality of an Anglo-Russian alliance, and Ashcraft was not surprised when the chief inspector suggested that he keep in close touch with Tropov, to learn what the man was up to.
“I shouldn’t wonder if the Foreign Office would be interested in hearing about this particular contact,” Mattingly said with a deliberative air. He was a round-faced, white-haired man with the look of a gen
ial Father Christmas but a reputation that was a great deal more sinister. “And especially about Tropov’s interest in the Clarion ’s printer-that fellow Kopinski.” He paused, his eyes narrowing under bushy white brows. “One never knows about these things, Inspector. It could be that Kopinski is a nothing. On the other hand, he might be a something.” He stroked his white beard. “If you take my meaning.”
Ashcraft clasped his hands behind his back and said that he certainly took the chief inspector’s meaning.
“Well, then.” Mattingly picked up a sheaf of papers to signal the end of the interview. “I leave it to you, Inspector, to determine how to deal with the situation.” He would see to it, he added, that Tropov’s name was handed up to the assistant commissioner. If Ashcraft felt that he needed additional personnel to conduct surveillance or other activities, he might choose two or three Special Branch officers to assist him. If noses-informants-were needed, why, that would be no problem, either.
So Inspector Ashcraft, feeling that this was a significant assignment, through which he might at last be called upon to do his duty, had begun to watch the offices of the Clarion. He paid special attention to the comings and goings of Ivan Kopinski, of course, but he also kept his eye on Pierre Mouffetard, a Frenchman with a strong propensity to violent expression. There was a third employee, a boy named Messenko, but he did not seem of much importance. The editor, however, the attractive, free-spirited Charlotte Conway, was clearly dangerous, since hers was the hand and the brain behind the pen.
Indeed, as the days went on, Ashcraft’s attentions to Miss Conway gradually intensified. He was not the sort of man who would search his soul for the reasons for his growing interest in this female Anarchist, although if he had, he would have had to acknowledge a serious conflict, for Ashcraft was happily married and believed that he loved his wife and two children. Nevertheless, he frequently watched the lighted window of Miss Conway’s bedroom as she prepared to go to bed at night, standing on the street until long after the lamp had been extinguished, and he assigned to himself the task of following her from her mother’s house to the newspaper offices in Hampstead Road.