The Irregular: A Different Class of Spy

by H. B. Lyle

  ‘Leyton, sir.’

  ‘Yes, yes. His murder. This will make their whiskers stand on end.’

  ‘There is only one item on our agenda today, gentlemen, I am afraid, which Sir Edward will report on when he arrives.’ The Permanent Under Secretary sniffed. He fashioned a watch into his hand, like a magician’s trick, and stared at it. ‘Which should be any moment now.’

  ‘But I must insist,’ Ewart began. ‘We have a man, one of our agents—’

  The heavy oak doors of Cabinet Briefing Room A swung open and Sir Edward Henry appeared at the head of the table. He handed his hat to a minion.

  The Under Secretary rolled out a lazy, elegant arm. ‘A seat, Sir Edward?’

  Sir Edward Henry glowered over his beak of a nose. ‘As you all must know, there was a gunfight in Tottenham yesterday. At least one of my constables is dead. William Tyler. A child slain. Panic and mayhem. The press are already calling it an outrage. On the streets of London,’ he barked.

  ‘Is the situation under control?’ Ewart asked. ‘Will my troops be needed? We have the footguards at Chelsea.’

  ‘Of course they won’t be needed.’ Sir Edward looked daggers across the table. ‘My men have already solved the case. One of the killers is dead, from his own hand. The other’s in hospital. Under police guard.’ Sir Edward outlined the details of events. When he’d finished, a brooding silence settled over the room.

  Finally, the Under Secretary coughed. ‘Who are these people? What do they want?’

  ‘Russians, we think. Common criminals. After a payroll.’

  The Under Secretary hummed. ‘Odd, though, isn’t it, these Russian gangs? Nothing more to it than money? There seem to be rather a lot of these incidents.’ He said this last word with mild distaste, as if his favourite horse kept running lame.

  Sir Edward nodded grimly, his sideburns bristling. No one challenged him, the members of the committee having no more knowledge of Russian gangs than they did of the lives of their children, or the mating practices of Canadian wild geese. The Under Secretary sighed.

  Kell, who sat against the wall behind Ewart, fought to hold his tongue. ‘Captain Kell,’ the Under Secretary began. ‘You look as though you have something to venture on the matter? Please.’

  ‘I think, er, that is I’m led to believe, that many of these immigrants claim to be anarchists or, indeed, Bolsheviks.’

  ‘Bolsheviks, eh?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Further to this, I fear some of these groups may be funded by external forces, foreign powers.’

  ‘The Germans!’ Ewart boomed, triumphant.

  Sir Edward slammed the table. ‘Stuff and nonsense. Major General, you’re obsessed with Germany.’

  Kell winced. It was true, his boss Ewart was obsessed. On his very first day in the job, Kell had been told to concentrate on little else. The unit’s stated aim was counter-espionage, but Ewart had informed him that he was to find evidence of German espionage – that only this evidence, and nothing else, would do if the department were to survive and thrive.

  Ewart was a difficult man, but Kell thought he did have a point. Europe was an armed camp, with Britain on one side and Germany on the other. Less than two years before, the British had signed a treaty with Russia to go with their agreement with France a few years earlier, which had secured an enviable defensive block – the so-called Triple Entente. But the Germans themselves were allied with Austro-Hungary and Italy. Most in the government, certainly most of the grey faces around the committee table that day, assumed that the strength of these treaties ensured a permanent peaceful stalemate. Kell wasn’t so sure.

  ‘You know nothing of Germany, or of policing,’ Sir Edward rumbled on.

  ‘I know more than—’

  ‘Gentlemen, enough,’ the Under Secretary cried. He held up a clerk’s note. ‘We must adjourn. The Prime Minister wishes to meet with the full Cabinet at once.’

  Everyone rose and filtered to the doors, but Ewart couldn’t let it go. ‘Sir Edward, I demand an apology.’

  ‘Or else what? Will you call me out?’

  Kell stood behind his boss and hoped to disappear. The committee men muttered as they passed. He looked up to see a familiar face pushing towards them, through the departing throng. ‘What have I missed?’

  ‘Good day, Churchill,’ the Under Secretary drawled. ‘I had no idea you were a member of this committee.’

  ‘These are grave times, grave indeed,’ Winston Churchill said. ‘As President of the Board of Trade, I insist on being informed.’ He nodded at Kell. The same age, they knew each other from Sandhurst, though they rarely spoke.

  ‘It’s German imperialist troublemaking,’ Ewart cried, glaring at Sir Edward.

  ‘Prove it,’ the chief policeman retorted, red-faced.

  Ewart looked at Kell expectantly. He shrugged.

  ‘You see?’ Sir Edward turned to Churchill and the Under Secretary. ‘Not a shred of evidence. And until you find any, I warn you to keep your noses out of police business. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a job to do.’ He swept his coat-tails aside and strode off.

  ‘This is a disgrace, Captain Kell, a disgrace,’ Ewart blustered. ‘We must rectify this parlous situation immediately. I told you, get me evidence.’ The older man then also pulled at his coat-tails in theatrical style and followed Sir Edward down the corridor.

  Churchill raised an eyebrow. ‘Could do better, eh, Kell?’

  Oh, sod off, Winston, Kell thought but did not say. Instead, he nodded mutely and waited while Churchill followed the others to Number Ten. The Under Secretary whispered to Kell as he left: ‘The club. Seven fifteen. I’ll be in the Bengal Lounge.’

  ‘Do you know, until Clive took Calcutta, Bengal had a larger economy than the whole of Western Europe?’

  ‘Oh leave off, Soapy,’ Kell said. ‘I’m too tired for another one of your history lessons. And thanks for landing me in it today, most generous of you.’

  The Under Secretary, Soapy to his friends, curled himself into the red velvet chair opposite and smiled. ‘You’ve ordered yourself a drink, I see. Cigarette? They’re Turkish, I’ve just had them made up.’ He sparked up with a polished silver table lighter. They bathed themselves in smoke.

  ‘Bad business in Tottenham,’ he went on after a moment. ‘The PM’s most put out. Press will have a field day, of course. Not to mention Sir Edward.’

  ‘He’s going to the funeral?’

  ‘Wouldn’t miss it for the world, preening old fool – still, he’s not a bad policeman for all that.’

  ‘He’s not too keen on me.’ Kell sipped a straight Scotch.

  Soapy paused then picked a shard of loose tobacco from his lazy bottom lip. ‘You suspect agents provocateurs?’

  ‘I suspect everyone.’

  ‘Ha! It’s deuced inconvenient that they appear to be Russian, though. Did you know the Tsar might be coming to London this summer? He and the King want to toast the success of the Triple Entente, if it still holds by then.’ He dragged on his cigarette and released the smoke through flaring nostrils. ‘But you really think Germany is sponsoring this sort of thing? Whipping up mayhem and murder?’

  ‘Honestly, Soapy, I don’t know. It could all have been trumped up by Special Branch. Melville and his gang are always putting temptation in the way of fellows. Or it could be foreign-power sponsored. Aside from Tottenham, what I know is that a man of mine was murdered, probably while working for me. I know that our factories leak information, our naval yards are as open as Covent Garden and our diplomats fritter away sensitive details like cheap champagne. We are not secure, and our greatest rivals must surely realise this, if not now then soon.’

  ‘Are you sure your man was killed by Germany?’

  ‘No, but I suspect.’

  ‘That word again.’

  Kell sighed. ‘You’re right. I have nothing concrete, but …’ He left it hanging there, his mind still taken up with how little he could do – almost nothing – to find Leyton’s killer. Wit
hout an agent who could successfully infiltrate the lower classes, he was at a loss. ‘And I don’t have the resources to investigate properly.’

  ‘If it were up to Ewart, we’d declare war on the Kaiser today and be done with it,’ Soapy chuckled. ‘A word of warning though, old man, keep out of Sir Edward’s business. All these Russians, these gangs – he’s right you know, it’s police work. Not War Office bag at all.’

  ‘Has something been said?’

  ‘Let’s say the PM has never been too keen on what you chaps are trying to do. Spying just ain’t cricket, is it? Rocks the boat all round. So if you do find some German spies – big if, I’ll wager – that’s all well and good, but don’t bother with anything else. Leave the criminals to the police.’

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘Jolly good. You look all in. Let’s have another drink and talk about something else. How is the lovely Mrs Kell?’

  ‘As well as usual.’

  ‘My Alice said she saw her the other day, in Hyde Park. Some sort of demonstration? I told her it couldn’t have been Constance. Mistaken identity.’ He fiddled with his cigarette case. ‘I was right of course?’

  ‘Of course,’ Kell lied.

  ‘It’s these motorised taxis Alice insists on taking. They go so bally fast you can’t see a thing. You’ve seen the Mail? They’ve offered a cool thou to anyone who can fly the Channel in one of those heavier-than-air machines. Never happen, of course, but still, hideous idea. Now, shall we risk the dining room?’

  4

  No detail, however small or trivial, should ever be ignored.

  Wiggins examined the back of Bill’s coffin. The funeral cortege ploughed through crowds three-deep. He walked two rows behind Emily and the rest of the Tyler family. The Union Jack swaddling the back of the horse-drawn hearse darkened with rain. In the days since Bill’s murder – the Tottenham Outrage the press called it – Wiggins had tried to find out more about the killers, who was behind them, about the possibility of a third man in the cottage: anything to make sense of his friend’s death. The newspapers talked of a London that was full of disgruntled Russians (Lepidus and Hefeld were two) frequenting political clubs and drinking dens and calling for the death of the Tsar – but it was all a far cry from a Tottenham beat bobby.

  Emily’s sobs rose above the clip-clop of the horses as they approached the church. ‘Oh Lord, take me too,’ she wailed. Wiggins pulled at his hip flask. The police and the newspapers had closed the case between them. Two lone killers, a robbery gone wrong, and the missing payroll? The work of an opportunistic trophy hunter apparently. And the death sentences had already been passed. Lepidus had bled to death at Oak Cottage, and Hefeld was about to die in hospital – both from self-inflicted wounds.

  Wiggins fingered the eight-pointed red enamel star in his pocket. He thought of the bloodied footprint in Oak Cottage. And where was the money?

  Crowds filled the doorway of the church and lined both sides. Wiggins settled into a pew midway down the aisle, and looked up at Bill’s coffin centre stage. There must have been another man. He pulled again at his flask, the cheap gin stinging his nose. A woman to his right frowned. The vicar’s words left him cold. Now was not a time for platitudes and acceptance, for pondering a great scheme. It was a time for anger.

  As the mourning party broke free of the church, Wiggins put his hand on Emily’s shoulder. ‘I’ll find out who’s behind it, I promise.’

  She looked blankly at him.

  The liquor rose to his head. ‘We’ll find these bastards.’

  A policeman, one of Bill’s ex-colleagues, ushered him away. ‘Shut it, mate. You’re not wanted here.’

  Wiggins looked around. Mourners glared, shook their heads, the start of a scene. ‘Sod it,’ he cried and stalked off. What he needed was a drink, and not the kind where you sat around with dark-suited men, coppers all, and cursed blind fate. A drink and answers.

  Kell shifted uncomfortably in his seat. Next to him, Sir Edward regarded the congregation with ill-concealed disgust. In front of them, William Tyler’s coffin lay draped in a damp Union flag. The priest spewed forth the same comfortless crumbs he’d heard umpteen times before. Kell caught sight of Wiggins, sitting a few rows behind the widow, lank hair tucked behind the ears, unshaved, hand clamped around a liquor flask. He looked drunk. Holmes’s telegram came back to him: WIGGINS THE BEST. He didn’t look like it now.

  Kell wondered how his wife might behave at his funeral.

  Relations between them were currently strained. Over breakfast, he’d brought up Soapy’s remark concerning her presence at the Hyde Park demonstration.

  ‘Well of course Alice saw me. Because I was there.’

  ‘I know that, dear. I was merely trying to explain how it looks.’

  ‘She looked like a startled turbot,’ Mrs Kell said. ‘She quite goggled.’

  Kell exhaled loudly and paused. A kettle whistled in the kitchen below. ‘It’s a question of appearances.’ He tried again. ‘A suffragette.’

  ‘I am a suffragist, how many times have I told you? I believe in universal suffrage, the vote for all men and women, not in smashing windows.’ She crunched into a corner of buttered toast.

  ‘The distinction, I think, is moot – at least where appearances are concerned. A man in my position—’

  ‘A man in your position,’ she cried. ‘Jumping at shadows, chasing whispers, conjuring up the Kaiser. A man in your position surely has nothing to do with the vote.’

  Kell sat silent. His wife put down her teacup and placed her hand on his, mindful perhaps of going too far. He gazed at her for a moment. She was a slight woman with asymmetric features, a feline nose and an air of unhurried beauty. Only after they had married did Kell realise quite what a granite will she had, every bit as exceptional as her forensic eye and scalpel-sharp tongue. They held a hiatus of affection then she reached for the teapot. ‘I am sorry to put it so bluntly, but it’s true. The War Office has nothing to do with voting rights for women, now does it? I don’t know what Soapy was thinking when he brought it up. He and his silly, soppy Alice. Soapy and Soppy, what a pair.’

  ‘But we dined there on New Year’s Eve. You said you enjoyed it?’

  ‘Oh, it was fine. Wilkins, more hot water,’ she bellowed down the hallway. ‘Now, before I’m terribly rude about your position again, how is the German-hunting going? Rooting out the duplicitous Teuton?’

  ‘Leyton is still dead, if that’s what you mean.’

  ‘Oh don’t be such a sourpuss. That wasn’t your fault.’

  Wilkins the cook entered and plonked down a jug of steaming water. Kell waited until she had departed. ‘That’s as maybe but he was working for me, and I have no idea who killed him. Ewart is convinced the Germans are behind it and threatening us at every turn. I tend to agree but there’s no real evidence. The few agents I have left in the field provide me with little.’

  ‘What do the police say, about Leyton?’

  ‘Less than nothing. There’s an inspector who is willing, but stupid. All he can tell me is the body probably entered the river somewhere between Richmond and Battersea. And Ewart doesn’t really care who killed poor Leyton – all he wants is to prove a link to Germany. I think he gets most of his intelligence from the Daily Mail.’

  ‘Never believe what you read in the Daily Mail. One of the first things they told us at the meetings. Famous liars, particularly about suffragists. Are you sure there’s a threat? From Germany, I mean? It all seems like so much hot air and bluster. We should ask Gerta.’

  ‘No, I don’t think—’

  But Mrs Kell was already screaming up the stairs to the nursery. ‘Gerta, Gerta!’

  The nanny came into the dining room and stood facing Mrs Kell. Gerta was in her early twenties, and her cheeks shone pink and fresh. His wife spoke. ‘Gerta, now tell me. Do you think your fellow countrymen and -women are planning to invade England?’

  ‘No, Mrs Kell.’

  ‘Would you want them to?’<
br />
  ‘No, Mrs Kell. I love England.’

  ‘You see.’ Mrs Kell turned to her husband with a smile. ‘Nothing to worry about. Thank you, Gerta. Tell the children I’ll be up to see them at three. You may go.’

  ‘One more thing,’ Kell said, startling the young girl. ‘Er, Gerta. Do you think women should have the right to vote?’

  ‘Vote?’

  ‘Yes, in elections. Politics. Should women be allowed to vote?’

  Gerta looked from one to the other of them, alarmed. ‘I know nothing about this. In Germany, I do not vote.’ She hesitated. ‘I do not know about …?’

  ‘Don’t bully her, Vernon,’ Mrs Kell said. ‘Off you go upstairs, Gerta. You know that means nothing.’

  He shrugged and snapped open The Times.

  ‘Do you honestly believe that you are intellectually superior to me?’ she went on.

  ‘It’s not as simple as all that, dear.’

  ‘Well if not me then Marie Curie? Is she not your equal, or at least that bellowing buffoon Ewart’s? Are you and he planning on winning the Nobel Prize any time soon? And don’t say “it’s different” because it’s all brain work. I’ve never met a woman in my time not worthy of the vote, even Alice. The Chancellor of the Exchequer agrees with me, does he not?’

  ‘Lloyd George is a Liberal.’

  ‘Well, maybe we should be too.’

  ‘And Welsh,’ Kell added under his breath.

  ‘Give me one good reason why women shouldn’t be allowed to vote? Prove your case, or else.’

  ‘Or else?’

  Mrs Kell stood up, irked. ‘You’ll see.’ She said no more. Kell closed his eyes and listened as she clattered the china, scraped her chair and exited the room.

  Sombre music filled the church. ‘Captain Kell,’ Sir Edward hissed. ‘Pull yourself together. We must follow the widow out.’

  Kell snapped open his eyes. A choir of small boys sang into the rafters. Kell fell into step behind Sir Edward and followed the congregation from the church. Wiggins had disappeared.

  * * *

  Stumbling down an ill-lit alley south of Whitechapel, Wiggins groped at his flies, finally alighting on a dark alcove. He pissed long and hard, trying to forget – the coffin, Emily’s tears, the ranks of public mourners. He slapped his face with his free hand and breathed in the steam and acrid stench.