The Secret Generations
Later that same evening, he made an excuse to visit the King Street house, spending some time upstairs trying to talk with his hopelessly retarded brother, Rupert. While he talked, he searched the boy’s room.
Ramillies was out, so he crept into his room also, and performed a similar, and fairly thorough, search.
He said nothing to Smith-Cumming, but Caspar was now certainly worried by at least one glimmering and terrible suspicion. A spare white silk scarf was missing from Rupert’s old uniform chest. It had been there a few months previously. Caspar had seen it.
*
Malcolm was ‘cleaned out’, as C called it, by his people, MI5, and the Branch. All three departments prepared files which were eventually put together, and issued to all the sections – including Admiralty Intelligence – as the up-to-date dossier on revolutionary action in Ireland.
When it was all over, Malcolm declared that he never wished to see that wretched country again. All he wanted was the chance to do some proper farming, but there was the question of his age and fitness, which made him eligible for compulsory military service.
He still lived with his father in Eccleston Square, and Giles did his best to see if matters could be arranged in the young man’s favour.
He had even spoken to Sara about Malcolm taking over running the farm, but Sara’s reaction was merely to say that if Malcolm wished to help with the running he would be more than welcome.
In the meantime, Ramillies visited his grandfather, at Eccleston Square, at least three times a week. Malcolm was always kept well out of the way during the visits.
During the week before the Casement trial, in May, Ramillies came to the house one night much later than usual.
Giles sat opposite the young man, in the Hide, his eyes friendly, yet never leaving Ramillies’ face.
‘We will not be disturbed,’ he began, ‘Malcolm’s tucked away, and I’ve sent the servants to bed. Now…’ He started as usual, going through the latest events and gossip at the Foreign Office. Ramillies was now his main source of intelligence from within the corridors of diplomatic power.
It was three days since they had last met, but Ramillies, whose eyes and ears were sharp for detail, was able to play back almost a minute by minute résumé of all he had seen and heard in the past seventy-two hours.
‘And what of you, Ramillies?’ It was the standard question, and Ramillies answered with eyes clear of deceit, and a silver tongue which would only disclose so much and no more, even to his beloved grandfather.
‘Busy, as always. You’ve taught me so much, sir. I find most of the moves come easily enough…’
‘Once you’ve learned the game, you realize there are few variations,’ the older man smiled. ‘Like chess.’
Ramillies nodded, ‘I think I have everything under control. Quiet; possible enemies watched; delicate situations placed so they can never bother me again, and…’
‘And the Russian?’ Giles asked smoothly.
‘I still spend four or five hours a day. I think I’ll pass when the time comes, as you tell me it will.’
Giles nodded. ‘Now to the reason I asked you here so late.’ He opened one of his desk drawers. ‘Here we have certain details; specific documents,’ unfolding a dossier. ‘Can you manage to take two days from the office this week without causing ripples?’
‘Naturally.’
‘Good. I want you to go to Scotland, but there are rules in what I shall instruct you to do. Deviation could bring havoc.’
As Giles was beginning to tell Ramillies of the action he wished him to take, Sergeant Billy Crook VC was arriving at Waterloo Station to start an unexpected week’s leave.
He had been out of the line when the CO sent for him. ‘Spot of leave’s come up, Sarn’t Crook.’ The Colonel smiled. All very friendly.
‘Leave, sir?’
‘Mmm. Not really compassionate, but…’
‘Not my mother, sir.’ His heart skipped a beat. His mother was looking very well at Christmas.
‘No–no–no. But it is, er, someone – your former employer, Mrs Farthing?’
‘Mrs Richard Railton Farthing, sir.’ It was old Mr Giles, and the rest of the family, who had insisted Lady Sara kept the Railton in. Funny how he still always thought of her as Lady Sara.
‘Yes, that’s it. She has well-placed friends, Sarn’t Crook.’
‘Sir.’
There was a pause, while the Colonel shuffled papers. ‘Well, have a good time, Crook. Collect your warrant. Oh, and you’re not to hang about in Paris or London. Straight to… er,’ another look down at the papers, ‘Haversage, is it?’
‘Haversage, Berkshire, sir. Yes.’
‘Off you go then. Lucky devil. Have a good leave.’
What could Lady Sara want? No good thinking about it or worrying. As long as it was not his Ma, nothing mattered. A week at Redhill, in early spring. It would be bliss. No guns. No fear.
He took the underground train to Paddington. Haversage, change at Didcot. Next one in half an hour.
It would have been strange, in the crowd, when he finally walked onto the platform, if he had noticed passing the chief petty officer who walked with a stick, as though he had a peg-leg. A big man, broad, with one side of his face heavily bandaged. He wore his Number One uniform, with a navy raincoat, and a white silk scarf.
The chief petty officer was heading towards Platform Two. The Bristol train.
*
‘Of course they’ll find the bastard guilty, Brian. A traitor. Guilty as hell, and they’ll hang him for it. I was there, heard the lies – how he was landed to stop the rebellion.’
‘But…’ Wood considered that Charles Railton was a very different man from the one he had known at the outbreak of war.
‘I tell you, Sir Roger Casement will hang.’ Charles noticed his hands were shaking. His nerves were in shreds. It was not just the job, being close to Thomson for most of the time, reporting to Kell, becoming involved in the puerile inter-department feuds; there were the two other vice-like pressures.
Mildred would not leave his consciousness. How could someone as steady as Mildred disintegrate so rapidly? She was getting worse, the moods of elation dropping into deep troughs of despair, and short-fused temper.
During the more placid moments, he noticed that each month she asked for a small raise in her allowance. Mildred had always managed her finances like a careful book-keeper. Now she needed more and more.
Charles could not know that Dr Fisher had subtly removed her from the laudanum, and was ‘treating’ her with morphine. Yet Kell had kept his promise, introducing Charles to his medical man, an earnest, likeable and obviously dedicated young doctor called Martin Harris.
They had spent an hour together, with Charles answering questions as succinctly as possible. As Vernon suggested, the doctor was amenable to a small plot – a dinner party seemed best. Charles arranged it. But, when the day arrived, Mildred was suffering from ‘a terrible bilious attack’, and the dinner was postponed. Harris then had to be away, so it would now not take place until early August.
On top of all this, there were the illicit demands for information – munitions output, aeroplane types, recruiting, relationships between the War Office and Admiralty. Hardly a week went by without one of the notes, with a short list of questions.
Because he could trust ‘Brenner’, and knew some complex duplicity would prevent the truth reaching those who asked the questions, Charles did as he had been told. He gathered the intelligence, attended the meetings in the tucked away house, reported in full to ‘Brenner’, and tried not to think any more about it.
Somewhere though, on the periphery of his mind, hung a large question mark. He even tried to ask ‘Brenner’ for more details, but the man smiled, shaking his head. ‘Holy Writ,’ ‘Brenner’ said. ‘In the fullness of time all things shall be accomplished.’
And now, Basil Thomson had asked Charles to discuss the white silk scarf murders with Wood and Partridge.
r /> They waited to take a lead from him, and he cleared his throat saying that they should look at what they knew of this man who their enemies called ‘The Fisherman’.
Certainly he was a saboteur, and a murderer with at least four victims – ‘Five if you count Miss Drew…’
‘Haas, sir,’ Wood corrected, the policy being that the dead woman should be named in all documents as Hanna Haas, ‘and we can’t count her. The modus operandi is totally alien to the others.’
‘You mean because of the knot? Then we can’t count my kinswoman in Ireland, either, because all they got was charred remains…’
‘And the testimony of Mr Malcolm Railton.’ Wood corrected again. ‘It’s not simply the knot. There were other indications. Whoever killed Miss Haas did not use the same method. The others were quick professional jobs, a scarf looped around the neck from behind, with the ends crossed and pulled – with a knot added, like a signature.’
Charles nodded. They knew ‘The Fisherman’ was responsible for the explosion on HMS Bulwark, and that he had orders to carry out similar acts. Couldn’t they do a reconstruction? Establish motive.
They began to go through each murder in detail, then the dates and periods of time when they knew exactly where ‘The Fisherman’ had been.
Fiske, the first victim – the naval officer – was the easiest. He had been in Bulwark and had gone on leave the day of the explosion.
‘Let us suppose,’ Wood had a sheet of paper in front of him, ‘“The Fisherman” could not get aboard Bulwark. Fiske was used to take a parcel aboard. If it had happened like that, he probably needed to eliminate Fiske.’
Charles nodded, ‘Yes, I accept that Fiske was the carrier; and the only way to explain the chemist, Douthwaite, and the unfortunate Mrs MacGregor, is that unwittingly they both made some kind of discovery. And Mrs MacGregor was his lover,’ Charles added.
Which left Bridget and the attempt on Malcolm; and who was responsible for the killing of Hanna Haas?
Wood produced the signal ordering ‘The Fisherman’ to Dublin. Suddenly, Charles realized that he was in this room, not to help with ‘The Fisherman’ murders, but to share any ideas he might have concerning Hanna Haas’ death. Thomson had taken him into the web. Now Wood and Partridge were to question him – for the hundredth time, it seemed. He sighed, loudly.
‘Look, Charles,’ Brian Wood almost invariably still called him sir, but as a chief inspector he occasionally lapsed. Now, the lapse was timed, carefully, like a comforting hand laid on an arm. You are among friends, it said. ‘Both David Partridge and myself have been through the files. We have access. We know what’s passed. You’re cleared. Nobody suspects you of double-dealing. Folly and indiscretion, yes. But not murder or treachery.’
‘So?’
‘So, just a few ideas. It hit you hard at the time. Did you have any suspicions that she was in danger?’ Yes, of course he suspected. She was scared stiff: terrified.
‘Of what?’
Terrified of her own people and his. He told of her horror of coming under MI5’s protection. ‘She said it was too soon.’ And she gave him the succulent morsel about ‘The Fisherman’.
‘In your opinion, sir,’ Partridge this time, replete with respect, ‘which of our two sides would have benefited most to have her out of the way?’
‘Hers of course – if they knew she was under my protection.’ How did they know? he thought, then said the words aloud.
‘Quite,’ Wood smiled. ‘She was good. Would have spotted someone playing Wenceslas’ Page, treading in her footsteps?’
‘Yes, she would.’ Then Charles stopped. ‘By rights she should have spotted your people as well.’
‘With respect, so should you.’
A little light flared in Charles’ mind. He should have spotted the watchers. Aloud he wondered if she had spotted them. Wood asked him why he said that.
‘Because I’m really not sure, now, which side did benefit most by her death.’
‘Who could have done it, Charles? Kell’s boys? He carries a few spares with enough violence in them to do away with someone.’
He shook his head. ‘C’s plug uglies?’
‘Or the Admiralty. I wouldn’t put anything past the DNI, or DID, or whatever he calls himself. Unless, she was being run as a double by a Firm other than yours, Charles. C’s outfit, or the Admiralty’s Intelligence department. Please think about it.’
He had thought, and wondered how the killer had got into the Hans Crescent building without being spotted. How had they missed the killer on those strange listening devices?
*
Ramillies was absent from the Foreign Office for two days.
He took a morning train to Glasgow, stayed overnight at the Central Hotel and then paid a visit to the Bank of Scotland’s main Glasgow branch.
The visit took less than half an hour.
He returned on the afternoon train, went home and was back at his desk the following morning.
On that last visit to his grandfather, Ramillies had turned as he reached the door. ‘No, sir,’ looking into the hard eyes. ‘No, it’s not really like playing chess. More like draughts –what the Americans call chequers.’
His grandfather had smiled, and the ice turned to a white warm fire of pleasure.
*
‘The Fisherman’ found a nice little guest house in Bristol which catered for sailors between ships, and, each night, he followed their last instructions – set up his wireless, tuned it, gave his call sign for ten minutes, waited for fifteen, gave his sign for another ten, and waited for a further five.
There was no contact. No orders, and he knew what this meant. Find a good target and destroy it before the end of the year. Soon, he would move further north.
*
Sergeant Billy Crook VC stood, tired, near the firestep, dragging on his cigarette, wondering if it had all been some incredible dream. Now, back in the makeshift life, the cheek by jowl existence with death, he could hardly believe it.
Lady Sara telling him that Vera was in the club, asking him if he loved her, or if it was merely lust. Billy had been so startled that he had immediately declared his love for Vera. ‘Always loved her.’
‘If that’s true, Billy, you’d better go and speak to her now. Ask her to marry you, and leave all the arrangements to me.’
And before he knew it, there were special arrangements, a licence wangled from the Bishop by Lady Sara; and two days after he got back to Redhill, there he was standing in Church with Will Averton, the blind organist, pumping out the Wedding March, and Vera coming down the aisle on Commander Andrew Railton’s arm, and Ted Natter trumpeting into his handkerchief, and Ken Raines with George Sharp, who had both been to school with him, laughing and giggling their heads off, and old Gregory, the schoolmaster, looking amazed that someone like him – Billy Crook – should be old enough to marry at all. And there was Porter – the old soldier, former servant and friend to The General, now looking decrepit, sad, lonely, pensioned off by the family and given a cottage – but there, proud, at the wedding, wearing his medals and trying to stand straight, as if to say, ‘I represent The General.’
Rachel Berry was what they called Matron of Honour, while townsfolk and people from Redhill laughed and cheered when they came out of Church.
Lady Sara did them proud, laying on a big spread in the Manor, and arranging a real hotel in Oxford for two nights, and then the last two in London, so that Vera could see him off on the train.
As for Vera, she promised to be ‘A real helpmeet, Billy. A true wife to you, that’s my vow.’ Then she almost devoured him in bed at that Oxford hotel, and when he did her she came like the old Haversage Tramway Company’s train whistle, so that he thought everyone in the whole blessed house would hear.
And it went on like that, every night for the whole time, right up to an hour before he had to catch the train.
He smiled grimly as the machine-guns began to rattle; having seen the front along their part
of the line Billy did not fancy their chances. Attacking over the top along the Somme was, in his humble opinion, as stupid as walking straight into a threshing machine at harvest time.
*
They brought Roger Casement to trial on 26 June and even dragged Paddy Quinn out of retirement to be present.
Casement was charged with six specific overt acts of treason, including soliciting and inciting British subjects who were ‘…prisoners of war at Limburg Lahan Camp to renounce their allegiance and fight against the King.’
The trial lasted three days, and the jury was left in no doubt of its duty by the Lord Chief Justice. They were out for one hour only. The verdict, Guilty.
Before sentence of death was passed, Casement read a long, rambling, vain statement which seemed almost to aim at warping history. Immediately after sentence he lodged an appeal.
There followed a strange incident in which none of the Railtons took an active part. Yet all of them heard the rumours, and wondered on the truth.
The Prime Minister wavered over the death sentence passed on Casement. Public opinion changed to sympathy, and there was much lobbying. One of the many protests was signed by powerful men, including authors like John Galsworthy, Arnold Bennett and GK Chesterton. The Americans put Asquith under pressure, and Cabinet Ministers warned that Casement should be allowed to live.
The Branch had been out to nail Casement for years. Now, ‘Blinker’ Hall and Basil Thomson had done it. Also, whatever the truth about Casement’s statement – that he wanted to stop an Irish rebellion – Hall and Thomson had successfully kept the Press at bay and almost surely contributed to that unhappy Easter Rising which allowed the military to inflict ruthless justice.
It is said that Hall and Thomson now inflicted a justice of their own. Alarmed that the death sentence would not be carried out, they dug into the secret hoard originally taken from Sir Roger’s flat – the diaries.