Web of Discord

by Norman Russell

  ‘I’ve got a very decent ’69 brandy here, Herr Fischer,’ said Napier, rising from his desk. ‘I hope it’s not too early for you to imbibe?’

  ‘Not at all, Sir Charles. How very kind! And may I, without impertinence, convey my commiserations to you on the recent outrage perpetrated against you? It was a cause of deep pain to many of us at Prussia House.’

  And he means it, thought Napier, as he busied himself at a wine table in a dim corner of the room. They all mean it! What was happening to the old diplomatic certainties? Prussians were designed by nature to be forever flying at Britons’ throats – but not now. Did the Germans know things about Russia that they were not yet willing to share?

  As he poured their drinks from a crystal decanter, he glanced briefly out of the window at St James’s Park, where banks of daffodils were glowing among the lawns. Spring was well on the way. Would 1893 be a year free from international tensions? He smiled sardonically, and turned to his guest.

  ‘There you are, Herr Fischer: Gesundheit!’

  ‘Gesundheit, Herr Ritter! Ah! A fine brandy, this!’

  ‘So you intend to treat that cable as a hoax?’ asked Napier. ‘I wonder why it was despatched in English? That’s very odd. Still, if it contains any kind of truth – I mean a genuine threat to an unarmed German merchant steamer – then I place myself, and my government, at your disposal.’

  ‘It can only be a hoax, Sir Charles. But I’ll mention it to His Excellency. Perhaps the Hofmann Line can be alerted to the possibility of unpleasantness. These are strange and stirring times, Sir Charles. We must wait and see what happens – if anything.’

  Some minutes later, Herr Fischer left the room, and Napier rang a small hand-bell on his desk. Almost immediately, the double doors of the chamber were thrown open, and the duty secretary announced Colonel von Hagen, military attaché to the German Embassy.

  Colonel von Hagen was wearing morning coat and pinstriped trousers, but he looked as though he would have been more comfortable in the field-grey uniform of the Prussian Hussars, to which he belonged. He was clutching a highly polished briefcase, and Napier wondered idly whether it was his valet’s daily task to buff up the briefcase at the same time as the colonel’s boots. Von Hagen clicked his heels and bowed. Napier motioned vaguely to the chair that Herr Fischer had only just vacated.

  ‘Sir Charles,’ said von Hagen in heavily accented English, ‘I will come to the point immediately. It could never be said that I strove to see the English point of view. I see only the needs and demands of Germany, its Kaiser, and its folk.’

  ‘Oh, quite,’ said Sir Charles Napier, settling himself in the comfortable chair behind his desk. This was more like it! He was at home with these arrogant Junkers, and knew how to play their game.

  ‘Nevertheless, recent developments in Europe have been so peculiar, that I have determined to talk to you in your capacity as head of the Foreign Office intelligence service. You have, no doubt, heard of the Russian weapons project in the forests of Lithuania?’

  ‘I have, Colonel. I am also aware that any such developments in that area of the Baltic coast could be construed as a potential threat to the integrity of Prussian Germany. I can advise you that that is also the view of Her Majesty’s Government.’

  ‘Good. I am pleased to hear you say so. The Russian secret project has been under way for the last eighteen months. Many people are under the impression that they are developing a new kind of land-vehicle for aggressive use against Germany. Some have wondered whether it could not be a new kind of boat – possibly an under-sea boat. But no. It is more sinister than that. Our German Intelligence is brilliant in its methods, and they have found out the truth.’

  Von Hagen began to struggle with the leather straps of his briefcase. Napier watched him. Here was yet another modern German with a bristling waxed moustache, and a glinting monocle. Did they never have short sight in both eyes?

  ‘Ah! Here. This is what our intrepid agents have discovered. The Russians, Sir Charles, are constructing not a land vehicle, not an under-sea boat, but a great ship of the air, a monstrous dirigible.’ He struck the papers that he had taken from his briefcase with the back of his hand. ‘They have seen it, tethered in a great shed deep in the woods of Lithuania. They estimate it to be two hundred and sixty feet in length, and eight tons in weight. Our experts in Berlin have computed that this aerial ship will reach a speed of ten knots.’

  ‘But Colonel von Hagen, what can be the possible use of such a grotesque contraption? What is it for?’

  ‘Ah! I forget; you are not a military man. This monstrous ship will be equipped with special hand-shells, or bombs, which can be dropped at will from the air on to the innocent people on the ground, What is to stop them? What field-piece can fire up into the air? This aerial vessel is but the prototype of more to come. The Russians will have the potential to destroy our cities, kill our innocent civilians by the thousand – and that is why I bring you this set of plans today. The time for traditional animosity between England and Germany is over. We must share intelligence, Sir Charles, if we are to survive this new and terrible aggression.’

  The German military attaché gathered up his papers, and handed them to Napier. For the second time that morning Sir Charles saw the workings of a quite genuine anger which was not directed against him or his country. The Germans were very clearly shocked and unsettled by recent events. Even if the Russian cables were hoaxes, it was very clear that the German authorities had no idea of their provenance.

  ‘These documents, Herr Oberst,’ Napier said, ‘will remain a close secret between our two organizations. I will undertake to share with you any reports that we receive from our own agents in the Baltic area. Our two countries have a joint interest in preventing any further Russian creeping down the Baltic shores.’

  Colonel von Hagen stood up, and bowed stiffly. He seemed to be striving to say something – something which normally he would not have dreamed of saying. Finally, he brought himself to utter a formal, stilted little speech.

  ‘You will, I hope, accept my commiserations on the insult offered you recently by the drunken oaf Andropov. Such a thing is quite unacceptable in polite society. These Russians are pigs!’

  6

  The Hatpin Man

  Arnold Box hurried across the cobbles and up the worn steps of 2 King James’s Rents. A clock somewhere in Whitehall struck nine. As he stepped into the entrance hall, he saw the blackboard and easel standing by the stairs, and groaned. Charlie, the night helper, had written the word ‘Assignments’ in large curly chalk letters on the board, and had embellished his work with a wavy line beneath the word.

  Most days, detectives would come in to work and resume the thread of cases where they’d left off, or wait to be summoned upstairs when requests came in for specialist help. ‘Assignments’ meant that Superintendent Mackharness had been inundated with emergency requests since he’d arrived that Monday morning. All pending work would be suspended while Box and the others investigated the cases that their superintendent assigned to them. Box hurried up the stone stairs.

  Mr Mackharness had evidently been working himself up into a passion. His desk was covered with slim buff files and a number of hastily opened letters. His trim white side-whiskers stood out in contrast to his irascible red face. He rummaged through the files, picked one up, and fixed Box with a baleful glance.

  ‘Ah! There you are. I thought you weren’t coming in this morning. I’ve been here since half-past six. They were queuing up here for attention. There’s been an assault on a Russian diplomat, which will cause the usual political fuss and flurry. There’s a suspicious death at Highgate, a body found bound on the tracks just outside Paddington Station, a drowning in the Regent’s Canal, this business out at Falcon Street – but you don’t want to hear all this. Why should you be bothered?’

  ‘Sir—’

  ‘We’re stretched to breaking-point,’ Mackharness continued, ignoring Box’s attempt to speak. ‘I’ve had
to send out Wilson and Campbell, and I’ve begged two more inspectors from Kinghorn Street. The sergeants are all out, too, including your Sergeant Knollys, so you’ll not have him to hold your hand when you go now – immediately, you understand? – to Falcon Street.’

  Superintendent Mackharness thrust a cardboard file into Box’s hand, and began a renewed search through the various objects on his desk. One of his hallmarks was extreme tidiness. It was obvious that the senior officer of King James’s Rents was having a very bad Monday morning.

  ‘Sir,’ Box ventured in as mild a tone as he could muster, ‘what am I to do in Falcon Street?’

  ‘Do? I thought I’d told you. These constant interruptions of yours break my train of thought. Go down to Falcon Street, and talk to a Sergeant Griffiths of City. He’ll show you the body of a man found dead in shop premises at number 14. Gabriel Oldfield, chemist and druggist. Found dead in “bizarre circumstances” according to this Sergeant Griffiths. Go and look into it. If it’s cut and dried from our point of view, give it back to City. Otherwise retain it— What are you peering at, Box? Aren’t you interested in what I’m saying?’

  While the various diatribes were in progress, Box had been attempting to make out some of the many objects reposing on Mackharness’s mantelpiece. He counted the bobbles on the moth-eaten green velvet over-mantel, he examined the dried ferns in pots, and the framed photograph of a stern woman whom he knew to be Mrs Mackharness. Further along, there was a medal of sorts in a little glazed frame. One of these days he would find out what that medal was.

  ‘I’m not peering, sir. I expect it’s a trick of the light.’

  ‘Very well. Now, when you get back from Falcon Street, I want you to make preparations to go down to Cornwall, to a place called Truro, and call upon an Inspector Tregennis. I’ve heard of him, and I think he’s a very capable officer. A young man was pushed to his death off a cliff down there, at a place called Porthcurno.

  ‘Porthcurno?’

  ‘Yes, yes. It’s in Cornwall. It looked like an accident, but Tregennis is not satisfied. It’s all in this report. Here, take it away with you, and read it. Now, there’s a stopping-train from Paddington at four-fifteen this afternoon, or you can go tomorrow by the ten-twenty. Sergeant Knollys will be back by one o’clock this afternoon, so he can go with you. That’s all, I think. Dismiss.’

  Inspector Box looked down on the body of Gabriel Oldfield, chemist and druggist, and saw why the sergeant had used the world ‘bizarre’ to describe his fate. He lay on his back, his open eyes seemingly fixed on the ceiling of the simply furnished bedroom above his shop in Falcon Street, a bustling thoroughfare near St Martin’s-le-Grand. The sheet, neatly turned down, came up to his neck. His mouth was slightly open, but the face betrayed no kind of surprise. The morning sunlight that streamed through the bedroom window glittered and glanced from the large diamanté head of a woman’s hatpin thrust through the counterpane.

  Box turned away from the bed, and addressed Sergeant Griffiths, a young, clean-shaven man, who stood rather awkwardly near the door, cradling in his arm the distinctive crested helmet worn by the City of London Police.

  ‘Your inspector did right to call the Yard in over this business, Sergeant,’ he said. ‘We know something about your Mr Oldfield, including the possibility that he had someone staying here with him – someone who isn’t here now.’

  ‘He did have a gentleman staying with him, sir. I’ve glimpsed him once or twice. As a matter of fact, I passed the time of day with him just a couple of nights ago. A naval man, I’d say, in his forties, five foot ten or so. Very well spoken. If you come up to the attic floor, sir, I’ll show you the little room where that naval gentleman may have slept.’

  The room occupied a space under the roof at the back of the premises. It was very simply furnished with a truckle bed, neatly made up with pillows and blankets. A narrow, grimy window, which looked down on the row of back yards behind the shops, stood wide open, its curtains flapping in the roof-top breeze.

  ‘Your man evidently camped, rather than lived, here, Sergeant. He slept in his clothes, as like as not, waiting for something to happen. Enright, his name was. Malcolm Enright.’

  Box gazed out from the wide-open window across the uneven roofs. The great dome of St Paul’s Cathedral looked intimidating in its apparent nearness.

  ‘There’s a row of newly broken tiles over there on the right, Sergeant, which suggests that Malcolm Enright left the premises through this window. Presumably, he was able to clamber down a drainpipe and into one of the alleys behind these houses.’

  ‘Do you think this man Enright was the murderer, sir?’

  ‘No, Sergeant. Malcolm Enright isn’t our mysterious hatpin man. As a matter of fact, I’ve a pretty shrewd idea who he really is, but that’s not exactly a police business. Whoever went through that window did so in order to escape, even though it was dark. I say “dark” because I think the murder took place in the small hours. Enright was desperate to escape, and took the risk of falling.’

  The two officers went downstairs and into the shop, where the wooden shutters still remained in place. Through the gloom they could see the three tall ornamental bottles of coloured water, the trade sign of a chemist, standing in the shop window. There was a strong balsamic odour in the air.

  ‘There’s nothing taken or disturbed, sir,’ said Sergeant Griffiths. ‘There are twenty-four sovereigns in the till, two cheques totalling four pounds ten, and five pounds thirteen and six in silver and copper.’

  Box glanced at some of the items for sale on the neatly stacked shelves. ‘What’s this, I wonder? Hagel’s Pancreatine Emulsion. “Definitely prolongs life in cases of consumption”. Does it really? Aromatic vinegar – that’s a smelly stuff for ladies to dab on their temples. Arrhenius’s Universal Relaxant. The mind boggles.’

  Inspector Box turned away from the shelves, and sat down on a tall stool near the counter. He glanced at the heavily bolted front door of the premises.

  ‘Sergeant Griffiths,’ he said, ‘tell me again about the discovery of this murder. You say that you were approached by a boy, out there in the street?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Just after eight-thirty, it was. I was walking back from the magistrate’s office in St Paul’s Churchyard, when I was accosted by a young lad crying blue murder. It was this Mr Oldfield’s shop boy He told me he’d been sitting on the doorstep for half an hour, wondering why his master hadn’t opened for business.’

  ‘And then he decided to take a look?’

  ‘He did, sir.’ Griffiths turned over a page on his notebook. ‘This is what he said to me. “I went into the shop, and found Mr Oldfield dead, upstairs. He’d been murdered! It’s not respectful to do a thing like that. I don’t want to go in there again”.’

  ‘Where is this boy, now? And what did he mean by murder not being respectful?’

  ‘I sent him over the road to Mr Palmer’s, the photographer. He’s a nice old cove, and he promised to look after the boy until he’s wanted. The boy’s name is Tom Slater. A very respectable boy, well dressed and well cared for. He told me that he was fourteen. I don’t know what he meant by murder not being respectful, but boys do say peculiar things these days. It’s on account of not listening properly at school.’

  ‘Sergeant, our murderous friend the Hatpin Man came here on purpose to murder both Mr Oldfield and Malcolm Enright. Enright managed to escape, and no doubt he’ll be in touch with the relevant authorities before the week’s out.’

  ‘The relevant authorities, sir?’

  ‘Yes. It’s a Secret Service affair, you see. I know something about it. That doesn’t mean that we don’t go after the Hatpin Man, because, of course, we do. But the whole matter needs to be left with Scotland Yard. I’ll leave you here, now, to hold the fort, while I go across the road to see this boy Tom Slater. I’m anxious to meet a young fellow who doesn’t think that murder’s respectful.’

  Mr Palmer bowed Inspector Box into his spacious photographic sho
wroom, which occupied the front upstairs rooms of his shop. There was a smell of polished mahogany in the air, mingled with the aroma of freshly made toast.

  ‘I saw you crossing the road, Inspector,’ Mr Palmer was saying, ‘and I knew you’d be coming up here. It’s a great honour to meet you, I must say. The whole town’s talking about your cornering of the blackguard who murdered Sir John Courteline. They say the Russians were behind that. And now they’ve sunk a German ship. Frightful! But what can I do to help you?’

  Mr Palmer, an elderly man with curly white hair, was wearing, as far as Box could judge, some kind of artist’s smock. A red cravat drooped from the floppy collar of his Byronic shirt.

  ‘I’ve come to speak to Mr Gabriel Oldfield’s shop boy, Tom Slater. I believe you’re kindly looking after him for the duration.’

  ‘I am. He’s through there, beyond the beaded curtain, having a bite to eat. It’s not nice for a boy to discover a murder. Poor Oldfield! Whatever harm did he do to anybody? Poor young Slater – he’ll be thrown out of work, now.’

  Box had crossed to the front windows of the shop, and was looking down across the crowded thoroughfare to the opposite pavement. Both the front door and the opening of a side entry beside the chemist’s shop were clearly visible from where he stood.

  ‘Mr Palmer,’ he said, ‘I wonder whether you saw anything unusual from these windows of yours, late afternoon yesterday, or early evening, say? I see you’ve a telescope set up here, so I take it that you like to survey the passing scene in Falcon Street from time to time?’

  ‘I do, Inspector, and I frequently take test shots for the new lenses that I acquire for clients. I keep some fine specimens always to hand – Bausch and Lomb, Wrays, and so forth. I took some yesterday, as a matter of fact. Let me see, now, where did I put them after I developed them? Ah! Here they are. These are two bromide prints, which I think will interest you. I did them late last night. This first one shows a gentleman who’s been staying with Mr Oldfield for the last week or so. You’ll understand that I didn’t actually set out to photograph him. I was testing a particular camera, and it so happened that the man was just entering the shop as I uncapped the lens. It’s a very good image – instantaneous, you see.’