Again Stackhouse shook his head. ‘And so Sinclair betrayed us.’
‘Looks that way, doesn’t it?’ I watched him in the gloom. Another piece of Thames Ironworks Company equipment, in the haunted yard at night. ‘But he didn’t, of course, did he?’
Silence.
‘Everything about Sinclair’s behaviour says the opposite. This wasn’t a man solving his problems; this wasn’t a man with his slate wiped clean. This was a man suddenly realizing what he was caught in, and panicking, and wanting help. There was no way he’d have summoned me if he’d given in and betrayed the secrets and was regretting it; what could I have done to help? But if he hadn’t given in, and instead had realized that there was something big going on and wanted advice from someone he knew wandered in and out of the shadows, I was just the chap.’
I waited. My hands were loose at my sides. I didn’t want Stackhouse thinking I was a threat.
‘The Germans wanted to get their hands on the technical drawings for the fire-control table. And then, by staggering coincidence, a set is called forward from the special safety of the offices to the shipyard. If nothing else, that showed treachery at the heart of the company.’
‘Sinclair requested the drawings.’
The words were flat.
‘But he didn’t, did he? There was something fishy about the procedure. Sinclair was worried about the fire-control table, and I guess he asked to check the drawings in the office, and was told they’d been called to the yard. That would have worried him properly, and he’d have checked the ledger to see who had requested them. And he’d have found his own name there. With the drawings still at the yard, the receipt for their return should have been in the ledger. And there should have been nothing for anyone to be particularly surprised at. But Sinclair was very surprised. He took the stub himself – we found it in his pocket. That was panic, not plan. He was frightened – about what was happening, about himself – and who can blame him? He knew now that after he had rejected the approach from Greenberg, someone else in the company had accepted.’
He was silent and still.
‘Eh, Stackhouse?’ Nothing. He wasn’t used to this sort of thing. ‘Did you suspect something, and follow him here that night? Or did he summon you for a confrontation, with me as witness? And I was too late to save him.’ I’d been thinking about the second scenario a lot in recent days. I knew I would go on thinking about it.
I said: ‘Got a knife this time?’ I couldn’t see his hands in the gloom. ‘Perhaps it was your own. Common enough that it wouldn’t be traced. Or perhaps one you found here, when the conversation started going wrong. Perhaps you didn’t want to risk being stopped with it. Perhaps you calculated. Perhaps you panicked. That how it was, Stackhouse?’
‘You’re guessing, Delamere. You can’t prove anything.’ Steady Stackhouse.
‘Sinclair learned enough to believe it was you. If he could, others can.’
‘Plenty of people work for the company.’
‘Very few in your head office. You started to worry. You got the Germans to stage a phoney break-in at the office. You needed them to cover the disappearance of Sinclair’s diary, and your own, which you smuggled out the next day and presumably burned. You were worried that his diary showed details of his meetings with Greenberg; and you knew that your own did the same – perhaps more.’
‘This is the wildest speculation. It was a break-in. The police know it. Try and convince them it wasn’t real and they’ll think you’re crazy.’
‘They’ll think I’m even crazier when they find out that I broke in myself.’ I saw something alter in his posture. That had been a surprise. ‘Yes, Stackhouse. I was there that night. I broke in before the Germans, and properly. I know that the business on the roof was sham. I know there’s no way that that diary was stolen that night, because I was there the whole time from when it was last in Sinclair’s desk until the police arrived. And I know what was in it.’
He waited.
‘Perhaps there was more than I saw. But I saw enough to get me thinking. Greenberg’s initials. The number of the receipt for the drawing you’d contrived to borrow in his name. And a set of initials, with a double question mark of speculation: “H.M.S.??” – Hugh Marston Stackhouse, I fancy.’
He had nothing now.
‘Second. You told us that someone had stolen the plans of Glasgow docks from your room at Shulstoke. Perhaps they did sneak in and mess things around, to give weight to your story. But there’s no way they’d have needed or wanted to take such a long shot to get plans of the docks; and I don’t know why you would have had them anyway, given that your company isn’t building in Glasgow. But your story distracted police attention to Glasgow, far away from Crewe and the train where the real attack was going to happen. Odd that.’
Silence.
‘And there’s something else. The police found a Thames Ironworks Company cufflink in my rooms.’
‘The police said that was Sinclair’s.’
‘I’m pretty sure he was wearing others that evening. Anyway, how on earth would one of his have ended up with his murderer?’
‘This implicates you rather than me.’
‘What, I somehow got it in the struggle and decided to keep it? Souvenir? I ain’t that doolally.’
‘The Germans took one of his to implicate you.’
‘But at the moment of his murder they had no idea about me. Took it just in case, and risk getting found with it? Not very likely. No, after you killed Sinclair, you scared badly, and you rushed to Greenberg to tell all. By this time my head was in the noose, and Greenberg saw a chance to reinforce my guilt by planting some evidence. Those cufflinks and tie-pins are a limited edition. Expensive. Can’t have been many made. I know that if the police check, they’ll be able to account for the set of every Thames Ironworks Director and Manager. Including David Sinclair’s. Except one set: yours. When Inspector Bunce asks you tomorrow, Stackhouse, will you be able to produce your Thames Ironworks Company special cufflinks?’
‘Why on earth should one of my cufflinks matter a damn?’
‘Because you left the other clutched in Sinclair’s hand, when he tried to stop you murdering him. It’s the one thing that ties you absolutely to the crime.’ I pulled it out of my pocket. ‘Seems fitting to bring it back here, don’t it? Here!’
I threw it high and slow towards him, and instinctively his hands came out into the night, and one held a knife and one reached to catch the cufflink. I took one fast step forwards and put a straight punch into the centre of his face.
I don’t know what I expected. Not in that instant. Not in the whole conversation. I was tired and I didn’t care and I wanted out of the whole business.
Stackhouse staggered backwards, arms flailing with knife and cufflink, and he stumbled against the lip on the edge of the deck and fell backwards into the night.
A Dreadnought battleship dwarfs a man, especially if he has the misfortune to fall from it. Hugh Stackhouse fell in silence, gazing up at me, and took a damn long time about it, and it was so far that I didn’t even hear him hit the dockyard stones.
Slowly, wearily, I retraced my way back through the hulk of the battleship, and down to solid ground again. I sat down by the body, and waited for the police to arrive.
THE END
Author’s Note
Sir Henry Delamere’s memoirs are naturally a limited and partial picture of the events of Autumn 1910. Although he seems never to have really fitted in anywhere (and certainly not in Eaton Square with the wonderful Lady Victoria, alas), his words reflect the attitudes of his time and place. While he had the junior officer’s sympathy for the other ranks, and the outsider’s empathy with the oppressed, he was not a natural class warrior.
The practical context of his account – his Boer War service; the Anglo-German naval race, the calendar of the Dreadnought-building programme and its technological details, within the wider tension which would be sparked into war; the topography of the Lond
on and North-Western Railway – seems consistent with the historical record.
H.M.S. Thunderer was launched from the Thames Ironworks and Shipbuilding Company yard at Poplar in February 1911, a few months after Harry Delamere last spent an evening in her company; commissioned in 1912, and active throughout the First World War, she was finally scrapped in 1927. H.M.S. Colossus had been launched earlier in 1910, and was completed and commissioned during 1911. Launched in 1908, by 1910 H.M.S. St Vincent was part of the 1st Division of the Royal Navy’s Home Fleet.
The Royal Navy pursued two development programmes for fire-control, with Captain Dreyer’s becoming dominant for the Dreadnought series of battleships. (There’s much fascinating material via www.dreadnoughtproject.org.) Delamere’s account of the dramas of espionage and sabotage behind the development programmes could explain the delay in bringing the fire-control table into active service, and why the public record tends to give rather later dates for their installation on seagoing battleships. Though advanced and effective, in the one major naval engagement of the First World War, off Jutland in 1916, the Royal Navy’s superior fire-control technology was more than balanced by relative weaknesses in communications and armour-piercing shells. The German High Seas Fleet sank more ships, and escaped to port; but it left the Royal Navy in command of the seas for the rest of the war. So perhaps, in some small way, Harry Delamere had done his bit.
About the Author
Robert Wilton was Private Secretary to the UK Secretary of State for Defence, advisor to the Prime Minister of Kosovo in the years before the country’s independence, and acting head of an international human rights mission in Albania. He’s co-founder of The Ideas Partnership charity, supporting the education and empowerment of marginalized children in the Balkans. Author of the prize-winning Comptrollerate-General series of historical novels, he also writes on history, culture and the failures of international intervention in south-eastern Europe, and translates Albanian poetry. A practising life and writing coach, and occasional voice artist, he divides his time between the Balkans and Cornwall. He is neither an adventurer nor a gentleman.
Visit www.robertwilton.com for free stuff, information, and a conversation about the curiosities of history.
* * *
Traitor’s Field
1648: Britain is at war with itself. The Royalists are defeated but Parliament is in turmoil, its power weakened by internal discord.
Royalism’s last hope is Sir Mortimer Shay, a ruthless veteran of decades of intrigue who must rebuild a credible threat to Cromwell’s rule, whatever the cost.
John Thurloe is a young official in Cromwell’s service. Confronted by the extent of Royalist secret intelligence and conspiracy, he will have to fight the true power reaching into every corner of society: the Comptrollerate-General for Scrutiny and Survey.
Just how exactly does the power behind the throne manage the transition to a republic?
‘a new benchmark for the literary historical thriller’ – Manda Scott, President of the Historical Writers’ Association
* * *
Treason’s Spring
1792: the blood begins to drip from the guillotine. The French Revolution is entering its most violent phase, and Europe confronts chaos. The spies of England, France and Prussia are fighting their own war, for a trove of secrets that will reveal the treacheries of a whole continent.
At the height of the madness a stranger arrives in Paris, seeking a man who has disappeared. Unknown and untrusted, he finds himself the centre of all conspiracy.
When the world is changing forever, what must one man become to survive?
'A rare clever treat of a novel.' – The Times
* * *
Treason’s Tide
1805: Britain is on her knees: militarily weak, politically divided, unsettled by her rioting poor. The armies of France wait across the Channel for their chance, the moment of inattention or the change in the weather that will complete Napoleon's domination over Europe and destroy the British Empire for ever.
Only one man stands in the way – Tom Roscarrock, unwitting agent to an obscure government bureau of murky origin and shadowy purpose.
In England, the man who recruited Roscarrock has disappeared, his agents are turning up dead, and reports of a secret French fleet are panicking the authorities. In France, a plan is underway to shatter the last of England’s stability.
Behind the clash of fleets and armies, there is a secret world of intrigue, deception, treachery and violence. His life in danger and his motives increasingly suspect, Roscarrock must pursue the complex conspiracy across England and then into the heart of Napoleon's France, there to confront the greatest mystery of all.
‘Beautifully written, wonderfully clever, this is a triumph.’ – Daily Telegraph
* * *
The Spider of Sarajevo
1914: Europe is on the brink. As Britain’s enemies grow stronger, the Comptroller-General must confront the man with whom he has struggled for a generation – a man he knows only as the Spider. In a desperate gamble, he sends four agents out across the continent, on a mission they do not understand…
The future of British intelligence – of the British Empire – is in their hands. Not all of them will return. Unique and resourceful, hunted and deceived, they have embarked on a journey that will climax in the town of Sarajevo on the 28th of June 1914.
‘A learned, beautifully-written, elegant spy thriller.’ – The Times
* * *
Sherlock Holmes and the Adventure of the Distracted Thane
'So we rode again into Scotland, Sherlock Holmes and I; only this time we came at the head of an army.'
A beautiful woman comes out of a storm to tell her macabre tale. And thus the legendary detective is confronted with his strangest case: the murder of King Duncan of Scotland, and the ascent to the throne of the haunted Macbeth.
Dr Watson's narrative reveals the untold story behind Shakespeare's play: a kingdom in chaos, a man possessed, and bloody murder. At last, literature's greatest detective gives his explanation for its most infamous crime.
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Death and the Dreadnought Page 27