The Jubilee Plot

by David Field

  Melville whistled softly. ‘That’s a remarkable breakthrough, Sergeant. By the sound of it, you’ve infiltrated the very centre of what may be the nest of those seeking to wreak their evil on Day One.’

  ‘But is that their real target?’ Percy enquired. All eyes turned to him again as he shared his thoughts further. ‘The Queen will be far more vulnerable when she sits in her carriage at the foot of St. Paul’s steps, surely? Any lunatic with a half-decent gun could pick her off there. It may be that we’re being decoyed into concentrating on Buck House when the real danger is at St. Paul’s.’

  ‘Or the other way around,’ Melville argued. ‘It’s too obvious, surely? We’re being tempted into pouring manpower into the East End, when for all we know the real plot involves the West End, and Day One.’

  ‘It would help if we knew who we were dealing with,’ Percy grumbled. ‘From what you told me during our first meeting, the threat could come from anywhere in Europe, or indeed from some lunatic bunch here in the British Isles. The Irish would seem to be favourite from what we’ve unearthed so far, but as you were at pains to advise me, they could just be the hired muscle for some other lot.’

  Melville leaned down from the table and extracted several sheets of paper from his valise. He placed them face up on the table between them, then turned them to face Percy, before inviting him to look more closely. ‘Have you by any chance come up against any of these little charmers during your investigations?’

  Percy looked hard at the photographs in front of him, then his eyebrows shot up as he pointed to a particularly unflattering one of a ferrety-face individual with hair that looked like aggressive thistle spikes. ‘This bloke — he’s one of the two who warned me off further conversation with Sarah Cameron — the wife of Hector Cameron, the Holborn sergeant who allowed all those police uniforms to get themselves stolen.’

  There was a snort from Sidney Reilly, who seemed far from delighted. ‘That is Leonid Jetnikov. You are lucky that you live.’

  There was a brief silence before Melville offered to enlighten them. ‘As you will have gathered for yourselves, my colleague Mr Reilly has never been closer to Ireland than Liverpool. I will not reveal his real name, but you are entitled to know that he is Russian by birth, and that he was recruited by me in return for his being eased out of Odessa when his Jewish ancestry became somewhat inconvenient for him. Although he is no lover of the Romanov family, neither does he wish there to be some sort of working-class pogrom in the land of his birth, since it would not be for the benefit of those of Hebrew extraction.’

  ‘So who exactly is this ferret who offered to engage me in fisticuffs?’ Percy enquired, and Reilly spat noisily onto the grass to the side of his chair before replying.

  ‘Leonid Jetnikov is killer — a man who will take life with bare hands in return for money,’ he explained. ‘We believe he comes to London to assist the followers of Ulyanov who wish to kill the Tsar and replace him with their own government of the people. He cares not for people, but he works for money.’

  ‘Just as we suspected,’ Percy grinned. ‘Russians are behind all this, using the Irish as their infantry.’

  ‘Let’s not jump to conclusions,’ Melville counselled him. ‘Someone may be using the Russians in their turn.’

  ‘Which brings us back to where we started,’ Ridley observed gloomily. ‘We don’t even know who the chosen target may be.’

  ‘The Queen, surely?’ Jack suggested.

  Melville treated him to a condescending smile. ‘Another conclusion that may prove to be false. The eyes of all Europe will be on the Jubilee, and even if they only succeed in assassinating one of the cavalries, or even his horse, it will constitute a major event, and a powerful reminder of what “they” are capable of — whoever “they” are. We’ve already identified two potential interest groups — the Fenians and the Russians — but we knew about them before we even began our investigations.’

  ‘So we’ve learned nothing after all our efforts of the past few weeks?’ Percy said with a sour expression.

  Melville replied with a reassuring smile, ‘Far from it, Percy. You and Jack here have done the job we set you on, by confirming that the recent incidents in the Met were born of corruption and not mere incompetence. And Jack has presented us with a ticket of introduction inside the network of malcontents who may be calling the shots. What we have to decide now is how to respond to what we’ve learned.’

  ‘We clearly need to confirm whether whatever they’re planning is for Day One or Day Two,’ Percy reminded them, ‘and my money’s on Day Two, at St. Paul’s.’

  ‘Yet this club that Jack’s penetrated seems to consist of those who’ll be well positioned on Day One,’ Melville reminded him. He turned to Jack. ‘Whatever else we agree on, we’ll need Jack here to persevere with his membership of that club. Are you agreeable to that, Sergeant?’

  Jack nodded. ‘I’ve come this far, and I’m not disposed to call it quits at this stage. But I remind you that I have a wife and four children.’

  ‘All of whom will be well provided for, should the need arise,’ Melville assured him with a smile.

  ‘Now just wait a minute!’ Percy interrupted. ‘Apart from a wife and four children, he has an uncle, and you’re looking at him! He may be a useful temporary pawn for you people, but he’s the nearest thing to a son that I’ll ever have. There’s no way on God’s earth that I can sit by silently while you order him onto the enemy’s guns in some suicidal attempt to flush out the ringleaders of a plot who employ known killers as expendable infantry.’

  ‘Very touching,’ Melville replied coldly, ‘but we haven’t heard from him yet.’

  Jack went cold all over as he became of four sets of eyes fixed on his face. His first thought was of Esther and the children, then he asked himself what their lives would be like if some foreign power conquered England and began treating his nearest and dearest like slaves. Finally he looked Melville firmly in the eye and asked, ‘What are you proposing that I do next?’

  ‘Run away while you still can,’ Percy muttered, before Reilly grabbed his arm and hissed that if he did not remain silent, he wouldn’t survive the picnic. Melville allowed that point to sink in, then smiled at Jack.

  ‘I think that the young man here realises, more than his uncle does, that they’re both too far into all this to be able to withdraw without consequences. What we’re asking, Jack, is that you join the revolution. Become what is known in my profession as a “double”, working ostensibly for both sides, but in reality for only one.’

  ‘Get further involved with those in the club, and pretend to go along with their plans while reporting them to you, you mean?’ Jack asked as his throat began to dry.

  Melville nodded. ‘Precisely. Apart from your club membership, you also have family links to two people we need to keep a careful eye on.’

  ‘Abe and Mary?’ Jack said, to another nod from Melville.

  ‘As requested, we did some background digging on the pair of them, and an oddly matched pair they turned out to be. Abraham Jacobs — Captain Abraham Jacobs of the Grenadier Guards — far from being a deserter, is officially still in Cairo, where the Army Minister assures me he’s engaged in important strategic planning. When Sir Matthew here challenged him at Cabinet level regarding what he knew to be a lie, Salisbury called him off and told him that what went on within the Army Office was no business of the Home Secretary. It isn’t the first time that Special Branch have been frustrated in their enquiries by officious types dealing with overseas matters, and the sooner we have a combined Secret Service presiding over all matters of national security, the better for the nation.’

  ‘And Mary Carmody?’

  ‘Much easier. She’s a straightforward high-class tart. Never was married to an English Guards officer, and please God never will be. Employed by interests alien to the nation in order to seduce your brother-in-law into deserting his post and joining whatever cause is paying her no doubt exorbitant fee.’
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  ‘So Abraham Jacobs is one of those planning to desecrate the Jubilee with some sort of assassination?’ Jack’s heart leapt into his mouth at the likely effect on Esther of being told that.

  Melville shook his head. ‘Probably not, since if he were we’d have been advised by the army, and he’d have been shot as a deserter. As it is, the army won’t even accept that he’s a deserter.’

  ‘Perhaps he’s been allowed to desert, in order to join the conspirators, by someone high up in the army who’s in with them too?’ Percy suggested, but Melville shook his head.

  ‘I can’t believe that because I don’t want to believe that. If it’s true, then England as we know it is well and truly doomed.’

  It fell gloomily silent until Percy opted to earn his sandwiches, and he looked across at Melville. ‘Assuming that Jack’s mad enough to go along with your suggestion, is there anything else you require me for, apart from organising his funeral?’

  ‘Of course,’ Melville replied. ‘We want you to go “double” as well, Percy. Let Assistant Commissioner Doyle think that you’d like nothing better than a leading position in the brave new Metropolitan Police Force that will govern the capital and grind the peasants into the mud once the trumpet sounds for the revolution. In the meantime, carry on with your manpower plan, in the hope that, even if we don’t foil any plot, we’ll at least be fully manned when the uprising begins.’

  Two hours later Percy and Jack alighted from the coach at their front gate and stood for a moment gazing up at the house.

  ‘You should never have agreed, Jack,’ Percy muttered. ‘And I meant what I said about you being my substitute son.’

  Chapter Seventeen

  Christmas and the New Year were a welcome distraction, and Jack and Percy took as much of their leave entitlements as they could get away with, partly to relieve the pressure on their brains from all the skulduggery in which they seemed to have got themselves immersed, and partly because they instinctively knew that the coming year — 1897 — would not offer them much opportunity for extended leave.

  Constance seemed to have gracefully accepted that the old family home in Church Lane had hosted its last Christmas dinner, and that future Yuletide over-indulgences would be at the Bunting Lane home of Jack and Esther. However, not to be outdone, she insisted that her daughter Lucy and her family stay with her when they made the trip from their well-appointed house in Holborn with their own children, and that her own cook and housemaid be added to the domestic staff available for the massive feast that required four separate tables to be set in the sitting room.

  Everyone imaginable was there for the best part of a week, with Uncle Percy and Aunt Beattie installed in Jack and Esther’s bedroom, while Abe and Mary were afforded what had been Lily’s room until she was ordered to share a room with Bertie, which inevitably had the effect of converting it into an almost permanent war zone. Jack and Esther were reduced to sleeping on the floor in Tommy’s nursery, with Miriam, who was a few weeks away from her second birthday, tucked in between them.

  It was happy, overfed, boisterous and chaotic, but never before had so many Enrights been gathered in the one place to see out the old year and welcome in the new. Constance was in her element, ordering the domestic staff around as if the house were hers, dominating the table that also contained Jack and Esther, reminiscing about all the previous Christmases and making dire predictions about the ones to come if Jack didn’t ‘buck up his ideas and get a respectable position in the city somewhere.’ There seemed to be no sign of any lingering illness, and certainly no evidence that she was sticking to the diet prescribed by Dr. Browning.

  Abe and Mary had already become honorary Enrights and gave every indication that they were happy to be included in the expanded family fold. From time to time Jack caught Abe looking at him with a slightly intense expression but he put it down to brotherly curiosity regarding the man his sister had married. As for Mary, she slowly became the life and soul of the lighter moments, happily singing a few of her favourite ballads from her home country, and seemingly unfazed by the absence of any piano accompaniment. But Esther reported back to Jack, more than once as they lay under the blankets on the bedroom floorboards padded with spare sheets to deaden the effect of the gaps, that she found Mary ‘difficult to figure. There’s always a distance in her manner, somehow, that I can’t quite describe, and although we get along fine I can’t imagine that we’ll ever become warm friends.’

  By unspoken agreement Jack and Percy kept their distance from each other, partly to avoid being accused by Constance of ‘talking shop’, and partly because the year to come would see them almost joined at the hip as they resumed the task of preparing the Metropolis for what might well prove to be a massive outrage on the chosen two days in June — the twenty-first and twenty-second — on which the Queen would unknowingly be exposing herself to anyone who cared to go down in history as an assassin.

  Eventually the guests departed according to their individual timetables and commitments, and Sunday the third of January dawned bright and cold, with no guests remaining in residence, and nothing left to remind them of what had been except a huge collection of leftover food that Nell was instructed to convert into pasties, pies and anything else that might tempt their jaded appetites.

  ‘I was hoping that when the New Year came you’d be back here with us all the time,’ Esther complained as they gazed mournfully out of the kitchen window at the thin layer of overnight snow that had converted their rear lawn into a virgin landscape that Lily and Bertie were competing to convert into trails of boot prints.

  ‘Hopefully I’ll be able to scale it back a bit in a few weeks,’ Jack lied, ‘and then I’ll be back to Chelmsford. If it’s any consolation, Aunt Beattie’s cooking’s going to taste even bleaker after all that rich food we’ve been enjoying. Thank you again for a wonderful Christmas, darling.’

  ‘Thank your mother, and Nell,’ Esther replied as she hugged him closer to her. ‘Thank God your mother didn’t appear to over-exert herself, and Nell was well worded to keep the heavy lifting and so on for herself. As for food, there are enough chicken pasties and turkey pies in the larder for you to take a few hampers down with you.’

  ‘I’ll be travelling by passenger train, not freight,’ Jack joked, then it fell silent.

  ‘You really can’t tell me what you’re working on with Uncle Percy?’ Esther wheedled, and Jack shook his head.

  ‘I really can’t, but as I said I hope that it’ll tail off a bit towards the spring, then I’ll be home fulltime, I promise.’

  His promise sounded even more hollow that evening, as he joined Percy in the all too familiar seat in front of the sitting room fire, having delivered a heavy satchel full of assorted pastries to a delighted Aunt Beattie.

  ‘At least we’ll have a half decent supper,’ Percy muttered as he puffed away on his pipe. ‘That said, I’ve had enough turkey to last me a lifetime, and supper will only bring back memories of happier days when danger didn’t lurk inside a gas oven.’

  ‘Let’s hope it won’t be a “Last Supper”,’ Jack joked apprehensively. ‘I’m not sure who we should fear the most — the ones who’re after the Queen’s life, or those allegedly on our own side who’d love to see us out of the way.’

  ‘Hopefully the letter the Home Secretary gave us this time will do the trick,’ Percy suggested. ‘I’m certainly looking forward to sticking it under Ingram’s nose, not to mention Bray, but what we don’t know is whether or not Doyle will take the hint.’

  ‘You think he’s the one to watch inside the Yard?’ Jack asked.

  Percy nodded. ‘He’s just at the right level, and he’s Irish by birth. Most of the stuff that we’ve uncovered inside the Met couldn’t have been so easily ignored or overlooked if Doyle had his eye on the ball. Either he’s totally incompetent, or up to his uniformed armpits in the plot.’

  ‘So we begin back at the Yard?’

  ‘Initially yes. Then I’ll have to act as the
resident bad smell in Whitechapel for long enough to force Ingram into devising a workable manpower plan for St Paul’s on the fateful day. That should be a real treat.’

  ‘And me?’

  ‘I don’t suppose it would be too suspicious if you were to adopt a similar role in Bow Street? You need to keep in close contact with everyone in that club, and that might be best done while you’re based in the West End. Then, at the same time, you can assess the security arrangements insofar as the Met will be involved, although if it goes to form we can also expect entire battalions of Household Cavalry, Foot Guards and assorted Artillery on both days.’

  The following morning they presented themselves back in Whitehall, and Percy stood with a smirk on his face while Chief Superintendent Bray read the scathing letter from the Home Secretary that upbraided him for even considering the possibility that ‘two officers personally allocated special duties by me on the authority of Cabinet are to be summarily ejected from your current accommodation. They are to be allowed the best remaining facilities inside the existing Scotland Yard building, and any failure to comply with this instruction will be reported directly to the Prime Minister, whose reaction is likely to be very unfavourable to your future career prospects. Please sign and detach the bottom-most portion of this letter, and have it delivered to me at my office in the House.’

  ‘Level Three, Room 327,’ Bray all but spat when he’d finished reading it. ‘He doesn’t say what those “special duties” are, but presumably you’re about to tell me?’

  ‘Far from it,’ Percy smirked. ‘It must be obvious, even to you, that what we’re engaged on is not a matter suitable for general publication. All you need to know is that it concerns the readiness of the Met for all aspects of the Queen’s security during the Jubilee in June. Not just the outlying stations, but the Yard itself.’

  ‘You suspect me?’ Bray bristled.

  Percy shook his head. ‘Not necessarily. But I might revise that opinion if I don’t get some reliable information on the current whereabouts of Constable Bernard Padley.’