Wreckers Must Breathe
Page 11
At this stage it is necessary to digress in order to recount the experiences of Maureen Weston, the novelist, which had such an important bearing on later events. She very kindly offered to allow me to lift en bloc the story as she told it in her book Groundbait for Death. I should like to take this opportunity of thanking her for her kindness. I have, however, refrained from taking advantage of her offer because I feel that the bare facts as she gives them in her communications to Charles Patterson, news editor of the Daily Recorder, together with various other communications which complete the picture, are more suitable to a straightforward narrative of this type. I should state that I am also indebted to the authorities at Scotland Yard for their kind assistance in supplying me with copies of a number of official communications.
Part Two
The Disappearance of Maureen Weston
Wire from the news editor of the Daily Recorder to Maureen Weston, Sea Breezes, St Mawes, dispatched from Fleet Street at 12.15 p.m. on September 4:
Note story in Telegraph seven two stop Can you cover disappearance Walter Craig query Still a member Recorder staff stop Full details obtainable Cadgwith—Patterson.
The following story appeared under a D head in the Telegraph of September 4, page seven, column two:
U-BOAT ATTEMPTS LANDING
BELIEVED SUNK BY TORPEDO BOAT
From Our Own Correspondent
Somewhere on the Coast of England—Sept. 3: A daring attempt was made this evening to effect a landing from a German U-boat. It is believed that the intention was to land a spy in this country. Thanks to the British Secret Service, however, the U-boat’s intention was known before hand and the naval authorities at Falmouth notified.
As a result, a British torpedo boat was waiting for the U-boat. As soon as the U-boat surfaced it put off a boat. The torpedo boat attempted to ram this and at the same time opened fire on the U-boat.
The submarine replied and a smart engagement followed. The boat was not rammed and its crew escaped on to the submarine again. The torpedo boat then fired a torpedo at the U-boat, but failed to register a hit. The U-boat then submerged. The torpedo boat immediately dashed to the spot and dropped depth charges. The first of these brought a quantity of oil to the surface and this encourages the belief that the U-boat was destroyed.
Two men, who were watching for the U-boat from the shore are reported to be missing. One was a local fisherman named Logan and the other, Walter Craig, the well-known dramatic critic.
Wire from Maureen Weston to Charles Patterson of the Daily Recorder dispatched from St Mawes at 2.55 p.m. on September 4:
Busy on new book stop Walter untype involved scrape—Maureen.
Wire from Charles Patterson of the Daily Recorder to Maureen Weston dispatched from Fleet Street at 4.50 p.m. on September 4:
Damn book stop Yard asking questions stop Convinced story stop Cannot spare any one investigate from this end stop Relying on you stop Writing hotel Cadgwith stop Suggest five pound daily retainer expenses plus space—Patterson.
Wire from Maureen Weston to Charles Patterson of the Daily Recorder dispatched from St Mawes at 6.20 p.m. on September 4:
Okay stop God help if wild-goose chase—Maureen.
Letter from Charles Patterson of the Daily Recorder to Maureen Weston at the hotel Cadgwith, dated September 4:
DEAR MAUREEN,
Officers from Scotland Yard questioned me about Walter Craig yesterday morning. There is apparently not the slightest doubt that he and this man Logan have disappeared.
In some respects the story in the Telegraph is not quite accurate. For one thing the U-boat was not landing any one, but taking off a man who had been landed the previous night. I gathered from the detectives that Craig met this man shortly after he had been landed and that later he became suspicious. The coastguard is mixed up in it somewhere. It was he who warned the naval authorities at Falmouth. I believe Craig and this fellow Logan lay in wait for the German above the cliffs. The police seem to think that both were captured and taken on board the submarine. There is some doubt as to whether it was destroyed.
The question is—why did the submarine land this German? Who did he contact on shore, and why? It must have been something urgent for them to have taken that risk.
I am sorry to have dragged you out of your book. I tried to get you on the phone in order to explain the situation, but every business in London has moved out to the West Country and it is quite impossible to get a call through. At the moment I dare not spare any one from this end, for though we are running a smaller paper and half the staff is hanging about doing nothing, at any moment a rush of war news may come through. At the same time local men are no good for a job of this sort.
What I am hoping for is a first-class spy story. Good hunting, and very many thanks for helping me out.
Yours sincerely,
CHARLES PATTERSON.
Transcript of a code wire from Detective-inspector Fuller to Superintendent McGlade at Scotland Yard and dispatched from Cadgwith at 4.15 p.m. on September 5. The wire was decoded and sent by special messenger to M.I.5:
Enquiries about disappearances being made by Maureen Weston stop Description height about five-two black hair parted left waved brown eyes slim nails painted young attractive stop Arrived hotel about seven last night in green Hillman ten number FGY 537 stop Has contacted Morgan and now walking over cliffs inspect Carillon stop Keeping contact pending instructions—Fuller.
Transcript of a code wire from Superintendent McGlade to Detective-inspector Fuller at the police station at Lizard Town and sent on by hand to Mr Fuller’s lodgings at Mrs Forster Williams’, arriving shortly after 7 p.m. on September 5:
Maureen Weston was a reporter on Daily Recorder until year ago when retired to St Mawes to write stop Now acting for Recorder again stop Editor concerned as to whereabouts of Walter Craig stop Have no power to prevent her conducting own enquiries stop Suggest you help and facilitate disinterest—McGlade.
Typescript of a phone call received by Charles Patterson of the Daily Recorder from Maureen Weston just before 5 p.m. on September 6 and taken down in shorthand by his secretary:
I have been shown the spot where the submarine’s boat landed, I have talked to the coastguard and have walked over to Carillon, the cottage inquired for by the man landed from the submarine. But I am no further forward.
However, this much I have got. It gives the background. Walter Craig went out after mackered with a man known locally as Big Logan and came back soaking wet. Big Logan, by the way, is a bit of a character—apparently he is very large and bearded, about forty, tough and fond of the girls. Well, apparently Walter had got pulled into the sea by what he thought was a shark which went for a mackerel he had just hooked. Logan thinks this over and decides it isn’t a shark but a submarine. Then, when Walter comes down on the Sunday and begins talking of a fellow he met on the cliffs going home the previous night who had just come in by boat, Logan gets properly suspicious, for his boat was apparently the last one in at Cadgwith. The man Walter met asked the way to a cottage called Carillon on the cliffs above Church Cove.
Logan asks the landlord at the local who the owner of Carillon is. That is as far as they go with the landlord. After that they trot off to the coastguard. I could not get much out of Morgan even though he is Welsh. He is in bed suffering from shock and feeling rather sorry for himself. Apparently the U-boat came very near to sinking the torpedo boat. He says that he is not allowed to say anything about it—not even to get his picture in the papers.
A Mr Fuller introduced himself to me this morning. He seemed to know all about me and why I was in Cadgwith. I began to get suspicious. And when he told me he was from Scotland Yard I was quite certain I had found the master spy. However, it turns out that he is from the Yard and he helps quite a bit. Here’s the low down.
It was arranged that Walter and Logan should wait on the cliffs whilst the coastguard and two other fishermen lay in wait just around the headland in Logan
’s boat. It appears, however, that the coastguard, on thinking the matter over, decided to notify Falmouth, and the naval authorities dispatched a torpedo boat to intercept the submarine. The action was much as the Telegraph account describes it. The U-boat is believed damaged, but it is by no means certain that it was destroyed. Fuller told me that the police had found marks on the slopes above the place where the landing was made which indicate a struggle. Their theory is that both Walter and Logan were taken prisoner. Incidentally, the boat made the submarine. It was a collapsible rubber boat and was picked up farther down the coast the next day. On it was painted the letters U 34.
The owner of Carillon was arrested that night. His name is George Cutner. He had been at Carillon just over two years. I gather that he paid frequent visits to London and other places. Nobody down here seems to know much about him. To them he was a foreigner and regarded much as the summer visitors. Any one is a foreigner down here who was not born in the district. He was very fond of fishing, though he seldom went out in a boat. He was often with a rod at a picked spot called the Bass Rock at the extremity of one of the headlands. There was nothing in the least unusual about his appearance. He was about fifty-five, short and rather bald—in fact, much like the retired bank manager he was meant to be. There is a police guard on the cottage and I cannot find out where the man has been removed to. Moreover, friend Fuller seemed to expect me to be satisfied with what he had told me and clear out, so perhaps I had better. I shall take up the search with the agents from whom Cutner purchased Carillon.
I don’t know whether you will be able to get a story out of this. However, I will hope to get something really hot in due course. Incidentally, this is the last time I try and get you on the phone. I waited two and a half hours for this call. I’ll wire in future.
Cutting from the front page of the September 7 issue of the Daily Recorder:
RECORDER MAN EXPOSES
GERMAN SPY
AND BECOMES FIRST BRITISH
WAR CAPTIVE
NOW PRISONER ON BOARD DAMAGED U-BOAT
Walter Craig, the Recorder’s theatre critic, is the man responsible for the exposure of the first German spy to be captured since the outbreak of war. His action has cost him his freedom and possibly his life. He is now a captive on board a German U-boat, which is known to have been damaged and may well have been destroyed.
The spy was posing as a retired bank manager at a little coastal village. For reasons of national importance names and localities cannot be given. His capture was the result of a remarkable piece of deductive work on the part of Walter Craig.
Here is the story as told by one of his colleagues who went down to the place where he had disappeared in an endeavour to discover whether he was alive or dead.
Every detail of Maureen Weston’s story that could be got past the Censor was included in this splash. The story was taken up by the evening papers and caused something of a sensation in the Street.
A cutting from the Daily Recorder of Friday, September 8. It appeared in the form of a box on the front page and was based on nothing more hopeful than a wire dispatched from Penzance at 4.45 p.m. the previous day and reading:
Agents not very helpful but looking around— Maureen.
The box read as follows:
RECORDER SPY HUNT
Following Walter Craig’s brilliant exposure of the first German spy to be captured since the beginning of the war, the Daily Recorder has sent one of its star reporters to take up the hunt where Walter Craig was forced to lay it down.
The Daily Recorder is convinced that Walter Craig’s brilliant work opens the way to the exposure of a whole network of German espionage in England. This must not be regarded by readers as being in the nature of a spy scare. It is nothing of the sort. But it would be foolish to imagine that Germany, which has been preparing for this war for over five years, will not have perfected an intelligence system of the greatest efficiency in this country. This will have been facilitated by the influx of refugees into this country since Nazism first began to spread terror in Europe.
This does not mean that you should regard all your neighbours, especially those with foreign names, with suspicion. But you would be wise to remember not to discuss in public the little pieces of information, military and civil, that you glean in the course of your business or through conversation with friends. Remember—Walls have ears. In the meantime the Daily Recorder is investigating this menace.
Wire from Maureen Weston to Charles Patterson of the Daily Recorder dispatched from Falmouth at 4.25 p.m. on September 8:
Cutner imprisoned here stop local force succumbed but Cutner unhelpful stop Declares visitor was commander U-boat and he gave him envelope contents unknown stop Insists he was purely an intermediary stop Discussion with estate agents at Penzance unhelpful—Maureen.
Letter from Maureen Weston at the hotel, Cadgwith, dated September 10 and received by Charles Patterson of the Daily Recorder on the morning of Monday, September 11:
DEAR CHARLIE,
It’s not for the recipient of a £5 daily retainer to doubt a news editor’s wisdom in continuing it, but I must admit that you don’t seem to be getting your money’s worth. Needless to say, I’m doing my best, but it doesn’t seem to be leading any place. Either I’m no good as an investigator or else Cutner was just what he said he was—an inter-mediary. The only objection to this theory is that his identity was rather elaborately faked—at least that’s my opinion.
I stayed the Friday night at Falmouth and on the Saturday morning received an answer to a wire I had sent to the local paper at Gloucester the previous night. Gloucester was where Cutner was supposed to have been a bank manager and I had asked for full details as to appearance, interests, visits abroad if any and present whereabouts. The description given in the reply tallied with Cutner in every detail. Interests were given as golf and bridge—golf handicap was four! He was a widower and, following his retirement in June, 1936, he had embarked on an extensive tour of Europe. Present whereabouts was given as Carillon, Church Cove, near Lizard Town, Cornwall.
I then presented myself once more at the local police station. But the law had become unpleasantly official overnight. Exit your glamorous investigator, baffled, to meet friend Fuller on the doorstep. He did not seem in the least surprised to see me and frankly admitted that he was responsible for the attitude of the local force. So I weighed in with a few questions: What were the countries visited by Cutner in his European tour? Was Germany one of them? Did he play golf? If so what was the handicap and had they found out whether he really could play? And so on.
When I had finished, Fuller said, ‘So you’ve got that far, have you, Miss Weston.’ I said, ‘What do you mean—that far?’ He said, ‘Never mind.’ We then discussed the weather and left it at that. He was not inclined to be helpful.
Deductions, my dear Watson—lucky I write detective stories, isn’t it?—are as follows. Cutner vanished in Germany. His passport, clothes, and in fact, his whole personality were taken over lock, stock, and barrel by the gentleman now in prison. This gentleman returned, and, with Cutner’s background to fall back on if questioned, purchased Carillon from the executors of the deceased Mrs Bloy. This all sounds rather like an excerpt from one of my books, but I am quite convinced that if only I could get this man Cutner on to a golf course I could prove it. The average German isn’t very interested in golf and I doubt whether the man would know one end of a club from another.
However, the net result of this was to send me post-haste back to Cadgwith in an attempt to pick up the threads from that end. But nothing doing. The man had few visitors and no one seems to know anything about them. The police have withdrawn from the cottage and last night I went over it. Not a smell. The police will almost certainly have removed anything they thought might be interesting. But I doubt whether Cutner was the man to leave anything about. When I saw him in the cell at Falmouth he struck me as a secret-ive little man. He looked like a bank manager. His whole appe
arance shrieked figures, routine and a methodical mind. I doubt whether he ever had an affair in his life. Incredible the sort of people who will go in for intelligence work! There’s not an ounce of romance or adventure about him. If he is a master spy, he’s a damned dull one. But there you are, that’s just the sort of man you want for a spy.
The point I am leading up to is this. I am no further forward on this business than when I started. I don’t mean I’ve discovered nothing. But I have not discovered anything that would lead me to a big spy network or even to suggest that such a network existed. From your point of view I’m a washout, and after this letter I’m quite expecting you to wire me to get back to my book. The only trouble is I’ve got interested in this business. The way I look at it is this. Presuming my deduction to be right, why did the German Intelligence go to such pains to plant at Cadgwith a man who was to be no more than an intermediary? It doesn’t make sense. Any one would have done for the job of intermediary.
Now I have a proposition to put forwared. I continue this investigation and the Recorder pays me expenses. I’ll chuck it as soon as I realize I’m getting no further. And if I chuck it you’ll only be out of pocket to the extent of my expenses. If, on the other hand, I get on to something that is really worth while you can pay me my daily retainer for the period and for whatever you are able to print. Let me know what you think.
Yours,
MAUREEN WESTON.
Wire from Charles Patterson of the Daily Recorder to Maureen Weston at the hotel, Cadgwith, dispatched from Fleet Street at 11.10 a.m. on September 11:
Okay go ahead stop Good luck—Patterson.
Letter from Maureen Weston at the Red Lion Hotel. Redruth, dated September 12 and received by Charles Patterson of the Daily Recorder on the morning of Wednesday, September 13:
DEAR CHARLIE,
Believe we may be getting somewhere, but God knows where. Am leaving here early tomorrow for St Just near Land’s End. It’s a long shot and can’t for the life of me think why I am feeling suddenly optimistic.