Hardcastle's Traitors

by Graham Ison

  ‘This here Benoit seems to know a lot for a farmer,’ commented Hardcastle drily.

  ‘But hasn’t our government also promised a homeland to the Jews, under a British mandate?’ queried Frobisher.

  ‘So I believe, Colonel, but apparently the Zionists don’t trust us. However, Benoit agreed to continue passing information to the enemy. But that information would in future be furnished by our people and would, of course, be misleading.’

  ‘Do we know who was at the receiving end of these Morse code messages that Benoit was sending?’

  ‘No, Colonel, although it’s been suggested that it might be someone in London. I understand that MI5 is trying to identify the recipient.’

  ‘Good luck,’ said Hardcastle, who dismissed MI5 as a bunch of amateurs trying to be detectives.

  ‘But what has any of this to do with Haydn Villiers, Captain Wetherby?’ asked Frobisher, impatient to get to the nub of the matter.

  ‘Ah yes, Captain Villiers. Our enquiries have revealed that Villiers is of Jewish extraction, and makes no secret of his passion about this business of a homeland.’

  ‘But how did you know that Villiers was involved?’ asked Frobisher. A tension had arisen in the office as the police officers, civil and military, waited to see what was coming next.

  ‘After his arrest, Colonel, Benoit, under threat of the guillotine, admitted that this information had come from Villiers. Quite simply, Villiers called at the farm, usually about once a week, to obtain eggs, chickens and milk, and that’s when he handed over the information. That tallied because much of the intelligence concerned the theatre of war in which Villiers was serving. However, we were not prepared to take a French farmer’s word that a British officer was a traitor. In an attempt to obtain confirmation the provost marshal arranged for me to be posted to Villiers’s brigade as Second Lieutenant George Tindall. Unfortunately, Villiers went off on leave before I could find out anything substantive.’

  ‘But if he was a suspect, why was he allowed to return home on leave?’ asked Marriott.

  ‘Very simply,’ said Wetherby, ‘because his commanding officer knew nothing of Villiers’s involvement or, for that matter, mine, and it was thought safer not to tell him. The fewer people who know about these operations, the better. Consequently, there was nothing that could be done to prevent Colonel Powell granting him furlough over the Christmas period.’

  ‘If he knew what else Villiers was going to get up to when he got home, he might’ve had second thoughts about giving him leave at all,’ commented Hardcastle quietly.

  ‘What was he up to, Inspector?’ asked Wetherby, a puzzled expression on his face.

  ‘Every night since he got back here, he’s been sleeping with Colonel Powell’s wife, Captain Wetherby.’

  ‘Good God!’ exclaimed Wetherby. ‘Is that true?’

  ‘I thought you said that that was just a rumour, Inspector.’ Frobisher was as surprised as Wetherby had been.

  ‘I only said it was a rumour because I thought it would be seen as an offence by the army, but a not very serious one.’

  ‘On the contrary, Inspector. That sort of behaviour is taken very seriously,’ said Frobisher.

  ‘But it doesn’t really matter, does it, because I suppose you’ll hang him now?’ said Hardcastle. ‘For spying, I mean, not for having a bit of jig-a-jig with Annabel Powell.’

  ‘Agreed,’ said Wetherby. ‘If he’s guilty of spying he’ll undoubtedly be executed.’

  ‘What d’you want to do about arresting Villiers, Captain Wetherby?’ asked Frobisher.

  ‘He’s probably on his way to Southampton already, Colonel. The best idea is to alert the assistant provost marshal there and have Villiers detained when he attempts to board the troopship. I’ll travel down and personally take him into custody.’

  ‘If you come across to my office in Horse Guards Arch, we can arrange it from there.’ Frobisher stood up. ‘By the bye, why did it take you so long to track down Villiers, given that you must’ve arrived here on Boxing Day or the day after?’

  ‘I didn’t know where he was, Colonel. I called at the Battersea address, but his mother told me that she had no idea where he’d gone. But knowing that he was due back from furlough tomorrow, I guessed that he’d be there this evening to pack.’

  ‘Well, he wasn’t, Captain Wetherby. I’d already checked,’ said Marriott. ‘But as Mr Hardcastle and I had spoken to Villiers earlier this evening, and suggested that you had deserted and were intent on murdering him, it’s possible that he took flight.’

  ‘Whatever made you think I was going to murder him?’ asked Wetherby, clearly amazed by this latest revelation.

  ‘We didn’t,’ said Marriott. ‘Villiers did.’

  ‘It might’ve been better if we’d been told of your suspicions, Captain Wetherby,’ said Hardcastle. ‘We could’ve nicked him for you. However, if you do manage to knock him off at Southampton, where will he be taken?’

  Wetherby glanced at Frobisher before replying. ‘He’ll be brought back to London, Inspector.’

  Frobisher nodded his agreement before turning to Hardcastle. ‘He’ll probably be confined in the Tower of London. Do you have an interest in this officer, Inspector?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, I do, Colonel. Although it’s been confirmed that on the night Reuben Gosling was murdered, he was in Mrs Powell’s bed, he might know more than he’s telling about his father’s car and its involvement in that murder.’

  ‘If he was a party to that murder, it’ll make no difference to the sentence,’ said Frobisher.

  ‘Only whether they’ll hang him instead of shooting him, I suppose,’ said Hardcastle drily.

  ‘Oh, he’ll be shot, Inspector,’ said Frobisher. ‘As an army officer, he’s entitled to a firing squad.’

  ‘I’ve no doubt he’ll be delighted at being accorded that privilege,’ said Hardcastle.

  It was almost two o’clock on Friday morning before Hardcastle and Marriott got to bed. Nevertheless, they were back at the police station by eighty thirty the same morning.

  But before then, the arrest of Captain Haydn Villiers had been effected, somewhat unceremoniously, on a cold quayside at Southampton docks.

  EIGHT

  At six o’clock on that same Friday morning, a line of army officers was waiting to pass through the military police checkpoint at Southampton prior to boarding the troopship that would take them to Boulogne.

  Captain Haydn Villiers of the Royal Field Artillery handed his identity document, leave pass and movement order to a military police corporal.

  The corporal briefly scanned the documents and returned them. Turning his head, he signalled to Lieutenant Colonel Lionel Chapman of the Manchester Regiment, the assistant provost marshal of Southampton Garrison.

  As Villiers walked towards the gangway, the colonel tapped him on the shoulder. ‘Captain Villiers?’

  ‘Sir?’ Villiers turned to face Chapman and saluted.

  ‘Be so good as to come with me, please, Captain Villiers.’

  ‘Is there a problem, Colonel?’

  ‘You could say that, yes,’ replied Chapman with a smile.

  Villiers followed the APM, but failed to notice the two military police NCOs who fell in behind him. He wondered why he was being prevented from boarding, positive that he was not late in returning from leave.

  But then other thoughts crowded into his mind. Had something happened to one of his parents? Perhaps his father had had an accident in that high-powered car of his, or his mother had been killed in an air raid. And surely to God, no one had found out about his brief affair with Annabel Powell. These and a dozen other questions flashed through his mind during the short walk to an office over which was a sign that said MILITARY POLICE.

  ‘Come in and take a seat,’ said Chapman affably. He ushered Villiers into the office, and glanced at the two NCOs. ‘Carry on.’

  Villiers entered the sparsely furnished, workmanlike office, and was astounded to see George Tinda
ll seated in a chair near a glowing pot-bellied stove. Suddenly Villiers thought he understood why he was there, and felt a great sense of relief that he was not in trouble himself, or that bad news about a member of his family was about to be broken to him.

  It all now became clear. The police officers who had interviewed him in London had passed on what he had told them about Tindall being in serious debt and they had informed the military.

  Tindall was obviously under arrest and, as the officer’s battery commander, Villiers would be required to make a statement about the officer’s indebtedness. But at the same time he knew that he would have to think quickly if he were to maintain the entire fiction of Tindall being in debt and a gambler who had lost heavily. He did not like Tindall and wanted rid of him from his battery. In his view, Tindall was an overconfident Scotsman, and far from being a gentleman.

  Villiers, beneficiary of a privileged upbringing and a public school education, could not tolerate an officer who was not a gentleman. The truth of the matter was that Tindall had unwittingly riled Villiers from the moment they had met; instinctively he had seen Tindall as a threat. There was something that was not quite right about the man. But Villiers was confident that anything he said about Tindall would be accepted without question by the assistant provost marshal, and later, a court martial.

  There was something else, too. Villiers’s commanding officer, Colonel Powell, would not have granted leave to two officers in the same battery at the same time. So, it was true what Hardcastle had said: Tindall was a deserter. That was even better; that would mean a firing squad. General Sir Douglas Haig, recently appointed commander in chief of the British Expeditionary Force, would have no qualms about confirming the death sentence on an officer who had abandoned his post in the face of the enemy.

  But then Villiers’s world fell apart.

  ‘This gentleman,’ said the APM, indicating the officer Villiers believed to be Second Lieutenant George Tindall, ‘is Captain Hugh Wetherby of the Royal Garrison Artillery, attached to the Military Foot Police, and he has a warrant for your arrest on a charge of imparting information to the enemy. That warrant is signed by the Provost Marshal.’

  The blood drained from Villiers’s face, and had he not been seated would undoubtedly have fallen to the floor in a dead faint.

  ‘This is preposterous,’ he gasped eventually, gripping the arms of his chair. ‘What makes you think I have done such a thing? There must be some mistake.’

  Ignoring Villiers’s protestations, Wetherby said, ‘You will be taken to London, Captain Villiers, where you will be further questioned.’

  Villiers turned to the APM. ‘But this man is George Tindall, an officer in my battery, Colonel. He’s a liar and a cheat, and a deserter as well.’ It was a desperate statement, but Villiers knew that none of that was true, apart from Tindall being a deserter. And Villiers also knew that the allegations being made against himself were not without foundation.

  Lieutenant Colonel Chapman just smiled.

  By the time that Hardcastle and Marriott arrived at Cannon Row police station at eight thirty, Captain Haydn Villiers was already lodged in an officer’s quarter in the Tower of London, guarded by a captain in the Grenadier Guards.

  It was midday when Sergeant Glover, the APM’s clerk, appeared in Hardcastle’s office, just as the DDI was discussing the Gosling case, yet again, with Marriott.

  ‘Colonel Frobisher has asked me to tell you that Captain Villiers is under arrest, Inspector. He thought it best to let you know in person, rather than by telephone.’

  ‘Quite right, Sergeant Glover,’ said the DDI. ‘Whereabouts is he being held?’

  ‘In the Tower of London, Inspector. Where else?’ Glover permitted himself a brief smile. ‘But the real reason I’ve called in is that Colonel Frobisher wished to know if you wanted to interview Captain Villiers about the murder you’re investigating.’

  ‘Thank the colonel for me, Sergeant Glover, but there wouldn’t be any point in my talking to Villiers. I’m satisfied with the alibi that he gave for the time of the murder. And despite what I told Colonel Frobisher last night, I have since decided that Villiers had nothing to do with the murder.’

  ‘I’ll let him know straight away, Inspector.’

  ‘I wonder if there’s a connection even so, sir,’ said Marriott, once Glover had departed.

  ‘Connection? What sort of connection?’

  ‘One of the things we learned from Captain Wetherby, sir, is that Villiers is of Jewish extraction; you probably noticed that his mother was wearing the Star of David as a necklet.’

  ‘Of course I did, Marriott. I don’t miss things like that.’

  ‘Reuben Gosling was a Jew and a fence,’ continued Marriott, ‘and I wondered if there was a connection between the two, bearing in mind that the Frenchman Benoit was also a Jew.’

  ‘What on earth are you talking about, Marriott?’ asked Hardcastle, his face expressing amazement.

  ‘It was just a thought, sir.’ Marriott knew that if the DDI had floated such an idea, he would have expected it to be taken seriously. ‘And Wetherby said that Haydn Villiers is just as passionate about a Jewish homeland as Benoit. I wondered if Reuben Gosling was the man who was receiving the Morse code messages that Wetherby mentioned.’

  But any further discussion on the matter was interrupted by the arrival of a smartly dressed young man in the DDI’s doorway.

  ‘Mr Hardcastle, sir?’

  ‘Yes. Who are you?’

  ‘Detective Constable Sean Rafferty of Special Branch, sir.’

  ‘Oh dear, Marriott!’ exclaimed Hardcastle. ‘Something tells me that the arrival of Detective Constable Rafferty does not bode well.’

  ‘Mr Quinn sends his compliments, sir,’ said Rafferty, ‘and would be grateful if you would see him as soon as possible. He’s in his office now.’

  ‘Very well, Rafferty.’ Hardcastle knew that when a superintendent wanted to see him ‘as soon as possible’, it meant immediately.

  Superintendent Patrick Quinn, head of Special Branch for the past twelve years, was a tall, austere-looking man with a grey goatee beard, an aquiline nose and black, bushy eyebrows beneath which piercing blue eyes stared searchingly at the world.

  ‘Divisional Detective Inspector Hardcastle of A Division, sir. I understand you wanted to see me.’

  ‘That’s correct.’ For a moment or two, Quinn studied the inspector who now stood in front of his desk. ‘I have a job for you.’

  ‘But I’m heavily engaged investigating a murder at the moment, sir.’ Hardcastle could well do without an additional task.

  ‘I presume you’re talking of the murder of Reuben Gosling, the pawnbroker and receiver of stolen goods, Inspector.’ Quinn spoke with a soft Mayo accent; like many members of what had originally been the Special Irish Branch, he hailed from the Emerald Isle.

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Hardcastle was amazed that Quinn, so concerned with security matters, was aware of what was happening on A Division.

  ‘You’d better hand the day-to-day running of that investigation over to Neville. He is one of your deputies, isn’t he?’

  Detective Inspector Alexander Neville was in charge of the CID for the Rochester Row subdivision, but Hardcastle had no intention of handing him the investigation.

  ‘Yes, sir, but the problem is—’ he began.

  ‘This is far more important, Mr Hardcastle,’ said Quinn, interrupting sharply. ‘I understand that you were recently involved in enquiries into the activities of Captain Haydn Villiers of the Royal Field Artillery who is being detained in the Tower of London.’

  ‘That’s correct, sir.’

  ‘I know it’s correct, Mr Hardcastle. I make it my business to know about such things. You’ll be aware therefore, that Allied intelligence sources have discovered that a Frenchman named Pierre Benoit was using Morse code to transmit the information he got from Villiers. And it was, they believed, being sent to someone in this country.’

  ‘Yes,
sir, that was mentioned.’ Hardcastle was amazed at the depth of Quinn’s knowledge about something that was occurring in France.

  ‘Therefore, you probably know that MI5 were asked to assist in identifying the recipient of that information,’ continued Quinn.

  ‘Yes, sir, so I understand.’ Hardcastle was beginning to wonder why he was being told all this.

  ‘A man called Peter Stein was found shot to death early this morning in his lodgings at Bow Road on H Division.’

  ‘I’m afraid that name doesn’t mean anything to me, sir.’ Hardcastle was busy wracking his brains in case it had been mentioned by Wetherby or had come up in connection with the Gosling murder. He was finding some difficulty in following Quinn’s mercurial account.

  ‘It wouldn’t,’ said Quinn bluntly, ‘but it will. MI5 has identified Stein as the man to whom they believed Benoit was sending his messages. And now he’s dead. As you’ve been involved, up to a point, with this matter, I am directing you to discover who murdered him. And I suggest you start by speaking to the DDI on H Division who will doubtless be pleased to hand over the enquiry to you.’

  Detective Sergeant Herbert Wood was waiting outside Hardcastle’s office when the DDI returned.

  ‘What d’you want, Wood?’ Hardcastle beckoned Wood to follow him into his office.

  ‘It’s about the enquiries we were making to find out if anyone else was fencing stolen property to Reuben Gosling, sir.’

  ‘I now know he’s a fence, Wood.’ Hardcastle waved a dismissive hand. ‘You can forget all about that. Far more important things have since occurred that I have to deal with now.’

  ‘Very good, sir.’ Wood, fuming inwardly, returned to the detectives’ office. He and his fellow officers had spent hours talking to informants, and in some cases buying them beer, only to be told by the DDI that the information they had gleaned was no longer of any consequence.