Hardcastle's Spy

by Graham Ison

Genres: Mystery; Historical Mysteries; Traditional Mysteries

Synopsis

Introducing the pipe-smoking DI Ernest Hardcastle, bluff straight-talker, canny investigator and no respecter of privilege. 1916. In a London shocked by reports of the first days of the Somme, a woman is found murdered in Shoreditch. At first it's thought she was a common streetwalker, but then she's identified as someone MI5 have had under observation and who has an address book containing the names of some of the high and mighty names in the land. Hardcastle is brought in to take charge of the case, but his forthright and common sense approach does not sit comfortably with the help - and hindrance - of the MI5.

Release date: October 14, 2015

Publisher: Orion

Print pages: 218

Sample

Thinking that the body lying near the railings was that of a tramp, the policeman pushed at it with his foot. ‘Come on now, you can’t
doss down there,’ he said. ‘It’s Rowton House for you, my lad.’

But the body did not stir. The constable shone his bullseye lantern. ‘Oh my oath!’ he muttered, and stooped to examine the still figure. Then, sweating beneath the glazed, oilskin
cape that the sheeting rain forced him to wear, he hurried towards the nearby Old Street police station to report that he had found the dead body of a woman in Hoxton Square, Shoreditch.

It was two o’clock on a Sunday morning in July of 1916.

The following Tuesday was, in many respects, a sombre day: an unseasonable chill wind swept a London overcast by scudding clouds, and rain was never far away.

But the weather was as nothing compared with news of the losses at the Battle of the Somme. Eighteen days previously, thousands of British soldiers had left their trenches and almost strolled
towards the German lines. By nightfall, nearly 60,000 of them had fallen victim to German machine guns as effortlessly as corn falls to scythes. And that was only the beginning. Throughout the
country, every day since that terrible first of July, widows and bereaved mothers had stared, in stark disbelief, at tear-stained telegrams.

In Whitehall, motor buses and taxi cabs, exuding noxious fumes, toiled between Trafalgar Square and Parliament Square, their passengers seemingly uninterested in the passing scene. Pedestrians
thronged the pavements, but now there were as many men in uniform as in civilian dress. Most were officers whose duty lay either in the War Office or at the Admiralty, and whose grave faces bore
testimony to the serious situation in which the British Empire now found itself.

In Downing Street, the two policemen standing at the door of Number Ten hunched their shoulders under their capes and stared at the handful of sightseers who were gathered beneath shining, wet
umbrellas opposite them, hoping for a glimpse of the Prime Minister.

Just off Parliament Street, at Cannon Row police station – an awesome building which, like Scotland Yard opposite, was constructed of Dartmoor granite hewn by convicts – Divisional
Detective Inspector Ernest Hardcastle, senior CID officer of A Division of the Metropolitan Police, stood up, walked to the window of his office and yawned.

The previous evening he had taken Mrs Hardcastle to see George Robey in The Bing Boys Are Here at the Alhambra Theatre and they had been late getting back to Kennington, but the night
had been interrupted when Mrs Hardcastle had woken at two in the morning. Rousing her husband and swearing that she could hear engines and the sound of artillery, she had insisted that they look
out of the window. For the next five minutes they had watched, spellbound, the sight of a Zeppelin hovering over London, its sausage-like shape, nearly seven hundred feet long, held, as if on
ghostly stilts, by the probing shafts of the searchlights mounted on Apsley Gate at Hyde Park Corner.

Hardcastle had taken the opportunity of telling his wife that all the gilt had been stripped from Prince Albert’s statue opposite the Royal Albert Hall to prevent the moon from reflecting
on it and thus attracting Zeppelins.

At last the giant airship had escaped the unwelcome attention of the staccato anti-aircraft guns and made for the coast at sixty miles an hour. For the remainder of the night, Hardcastle had
dozed only fitfully, but his wife, her head covered in twisted rags to give her hair ‘a good curl’, had slept soundly.

As a result of his disturbed night, Hardcastle had risen at six o’clock and was in his office by eight.

Irritated that, since 1914, Big Ben’s chimes had been stilled for the duration of the war, Hardcastle sighed, took out his chromium-plated hunter, clicked open the cover and looked at the
time: it was five minutes to ten. Absentmindedly he wound the watch before dropping it back into his waistcoat pocket. He had little to do now that the murder of a prostitute, whose body had been
found in St James’s Park, had been solved. The soldier who had strangled her was awaiting execution in Pentonville Prison.

There was a light knock at the door and Detective Sergeant Charles Marriott entered the room. ‘Excuse me, sir.’

‘What is it, Marriott?’ Hardcastle turned from the window. Far below, an underground train rumbled out of Westminster station, the noise amplified by the gap between the
buildings.

‘There’s a detective sergeant from Commissioner’s Office to see you, sir.’

‘Where in Commissioner’s Office?’

‘He wouldn’t say, sir.’

‘Send him in.’ Hardcastle picked up his pipe from the ashtray and began to search his pockets for matches.

‘Good morning, sir. Detective Sergeant Drew from Special Branch.’

‘Oh, and what would Special Branch be wanting with me?’ Hardcastle expelled a cloud of smoke into the air. Special Branch was the political wing of the police and was concerned,
nowadays, with German espionage in addition to the Fenian threat which they had been formed to combat.

‘Superintendent Quinn sends his compliments, sir. Would you be so good as to see him as soon as possible.’

Inwardly surprised at this request, Hardcastle gave no indication to the sergeant that this summons was in any way out of the ordinary. ‘Is he there now?’

‘Yes, he is, sir.’

‘Good,’ said Hardcastle, ‘then you can show me to his office.’

Despite the fact that Special Branch had its offices in New Scotland Yard, just across the courtyard from the police station, Hardcastle donned his bowler hat and lifted his umbrella from the
hatstand.

Superintendent Patrick Quinn, head of Special Branch since 1903, was seated behind a huge oak desk set across the corner of the room, in which all the windows were tightly closed. He was a tall,
austere-looking man with a grey goatee beard, an aquiline nose and black, bushy eyebrows. He looked up, studying the inspector, who now stood in front of his desk. ‘Sit down, Mr Hardcastle. I
shan’t keep you a moment.’ And for the next five minutes, Quinn continued to write a letter in his fastidious copperplate hand. ‘Mrs Maclaughlin’s pension,’ he said,
as he put down his pen. ‘I’ve written to tell her that arrangements have been made.’

‘Mrs Maclaughlin, sir?’ Hardcastle was puzzled that an officer as senior as Quinn, beset as he was with affairs of state – particularly onerous in time of war – should be
troubling himself with such a comparatively trivial matter. He wondered, briefly, if he had been sent for to discuss a widow’s pension.

‘Her husband, Detective Sergeant Maclaughlin, was Lord Kitchener’s protection officer. He went down with him when HMS Hampshire was sunk off Orkney.’ The Secretary of
State for War had been drowned the previous month when the ship carrying him had struck a mine less than two hours out of Scapa Flow.

Quinn placed the letter carefully on the corner of his desk, from whence it would be collected by the duty constable the moment the superintendent summoned him. ‘Now then, Mr Hardcastle,
you are to be attached to Special Branch from today. In a manner of speaking.’

Hardcastle, a detective who had spent all his career investigating crime, was aghast. ‘But I know nothing of political matters and spying, sir,’ he protested.

‘And we know little of murder here in Special Branch,’ said Quinn, his level gaze still surveying Hardcastle with a stony glare. ‘I understand that your enquiries into the
murder of Annie James are complete.’

Hardcastle was amazed that Quinn, with so many responsibilities, should know of the prostitute’s murder. ‘That they are, sir. The man’s due to be hanged shortly.’

A wintry smile crossed Quinn’s face. ‘Perhaps he’ll be topped the same day as Roger Casement, then,’ he said. Casement had been arrested in County Kerry the previous
April as he stepped ashore from a dinghy, intent on recruiting disaffected Irishmen to the German cause, and Quinn had been in charge of the case at the Old Bailey.

‘Perhaps he will, sir,’ said Hardcastle, still wondering why he had been sent for.

Quinn stood up and crossed the room to the large steel safe that stood next to the fireplace and withdrew a file. ‘Early on Sunday morning’ – he sat down again and placed his
hand flat on the unopened file – ‘the body of a woman was found in Hoxton Square, near Bowling Green Walk. She’d been murdered. There was nothing about her person to indicate who
she was and at first it was thought that she was a prostitute. But yesterday morning the DDI at City Road had the newspapers publish details of a laundry mark found on her clothes. Within hours,
the manageress of a collecting shop in Strutton Ground had identified the mark as one of hers. Furthermore, she was able to furnish the name and address of the dead woman. She’s called Rose
Drummond.’

‘Excuse me, sir, but why are you telling me all this?’ asked Hardcastle.

‘Because you are going to investigate it, Inspector.’ Quinn frowned. He did not like being interrupted and his usually soft Mayo accent became a little sharper.

‘But, sir—’

‘Just listen, man,’ said Quinn irritably. ‘Rose Drummond was a woman about whom we have harboured suspicions for some time. MI5 were supposed to have had her under observation,
but she seems to have given them the slip.’ Again he permitted the briefest of smiles to cross his face. ‘In short, Mr Hardcastle, she was suspected of having been a German
spy.’

‘Ah, I see,’ said Hardcastle. ‘Might I ask, sir, why the DDI on G Division is not investigating the matter, as he started it off?’

‘Certainly,’ said Quinn. ‘As you seemed skilled at solving murders of women found in parks, the assistant commissioner, Mr Thomson, on my advice of course, has directed that
you will investigate this one; secondly, I shall need to be informed of your progress daily; and thirdly, you will need to speak to officers of MI5 from time to time. And you will only do that in
this office and under my supervision. As your own office is just across the road, it will be convenient for me to have a DDI who I can get hold of in a hurry.’

‘I see, sir.’

Quinn stroked his beard. ‘I’m not sure that you do, Mr Hardcastle,’ he said. ‘Although the woman was dressed like a prostitute when she was found, we know that she was
not one. At least, not in the sense of being a streetwalker. In fact, she was well educated and usually well dressed. She lived in rooms in Artillery Mansions, down the road in Victoria Street, and
it is known that she has entertained prominent persons, politicians among them.’ He looked piercingly at the detective inspector. ‘And I mean entertained in the widest possible
sense.’ He now opened the file and turned a page. ‘It is possible that she was a German national but our enquiries had not reached that stage when she was murdered. We would be
interested to have it confirmed.’ MI5 had, in fact, already established that the woman was a German, but Quinn was being his usual circumspect self.

‘Of course, sir,’ said Hardcastle, and wondered how he was expected to discover something that had, so far, apparently eluded the combined resources of Special Branch and MI5.

‘If that is the case, then there are sure to be others involved and it is in our interests to find out who they are. So, Mr Hardcastle, the situation is this: you will take over the
investigation of the murder but bear in mind what I have said. I don’t want you spoiling it all. Apart from the request for information about the laundry mark, there has been nothing in the
newspapers and Colonel Kell has threatened Fleet Street with the Defence of the Realm Act if they publish a single word about it. Particularly about her identity.’

Hardcastle found it all very difficult to take in. First Quinn had mentioned Basil Thomson and then this Colonel Kell who, he rightly presumed, was the head of MI5.

But Quinn had not finished. ‘I need hardly say,’ he went on, ‘that both the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary will be greatly interested in the outcome of your
enquiries.’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Hardcastle. There was little else he could say.

‘I shall attach my Detective Sergeant Drew to your investigation, Mr Hardcastle,’ said Quinn. ‘He’s the fellow who brought you here, and he is to be made privy to
everything that occurs. You understand?’

‘Yes, sir, of course.’

‘He’s a very good detective, incidentally.’ Quinn closed the file. ‘Very well, Mr Hardcastle, you’d better get started,’ he said.

‘Er, may I have the file, sir?’ Hardcastle stood up.

‘No, Mr Hardcastle, you may not.’ Quinn put the document back in the safe and locked it. The interview was over.

As a matter of courtesy, Hardcastle called first at City Road police station in Shepherdess Walk, next to the Eagle public house in Shoreditch where draymen were unloading
great barrels of beer. Hardcastle gave wide berth to their ponderous horse, seemingly intent upon mounting the pavement.

‘Aha!’ said Detective Sergeant Drew. ‘Up and down the City Road, in and out of the Eagle, eh, sir?’

Hardcastle ignored the Special Branch sergeant’s lame attempt at humour and sought out the office of the divisional detective inspector of G Division, who was only too glad to be relieved
of what promised to be a protracted and difficult murder enquiry.

‘Well, Ernie,’ said the City Road DDI, ‘it’s a right bugger’s muddle and no mistake. I don’t know why the assistant commissioner wants you to handle it, but
I’m not sorry to be letting you have it, and that’s the truth.’

‘Thanks a lot,’ said Hardcastle cynically; he was far from happy about investigating a crime that had occurred well off his ground. For the next ten minutes, he and Drew examined
such documents as had, so far, been prepared, and gleaned from the City Road DDI what steps he had already taken in the investigation.

From City Road, Hardcastle went to Old Street police station opposite Shoreditch Town Hall, and it was here that his enquiries began in earnest.

Police Constable Tom Willerby, the officer who had found Rose Drummond’s body, had been roused from his bed in the police quarters near Bunhill Fields and told to report to the station
urgently.

‘I’m DDI Hardcastle, Willerby.’

‘Yes, sir.’ The young PC had dressed hurriedly after an equally rushed shave; a small piece of tissue paper still adhered to his chin where he had cut himself.

‘Well, don’t stand there, lad. Tell me what you know about this woman.’ Hardcastle felt for his pipe, but realized that it was still in his ashtray at Cannon Row police
station.

‘Yes, sir.’ Willerby plucked his pocket book from somewhere inside his tunic and opened it. He coughed and then began. ‘Sir, on Sunday, 16th of July 1916 at approximately two
a.m., I was patrolling Seven Beat, night duty, in an anti-clockwise direction—’ he broke off and glanced at Hardcastle ‘—it being an odd day of the month, sir, when I
started duty like. On the Saturday, that is.’

‘Don’t bother with all that fiddle-faddle, Willerby. Just tell me.’ Hardcastle was familiar with the police practice of changing the direction of patrolling beats on a daily
basis. ‘I suppose you were going into the gardens in Hoxton Square for a crafty smoke, were you?’

‘Oh, no, sir.’ Willerby looked offended.

‘Come off it, lad,’ said Hardcastle. ‘I started out at Old Street. I know what young coppers get up to. Done it myself in the past.’

‘Yes, sir. Well, sir, I was walking across the square towards the hut in the middle of the gardens when I sees this bundle against the railings, like. Well, first off, I thought it was a
tramp, so I gives him a bit of a poke with me foot, like, and told him as how he’d be best off going to Rowton House. T’ain’t much of a stride down Whitechapel, sir, and I might
even have given him tuppence meself, seeing as how it was such a night.’

Hardcastle gazed sceptically at the constable. ‘I’m sure you’re a very charitable sort of fellow, Willerby, but can we get on with it?’

‘Yes, sir. Sorry, sir. Well, like I said, I thought it was a tramp, but it turned out to be this doxy, sir. She had this bit of thin rope tight around her neck and her tongue was poking
out and she’d been bleeding from the nose.’

‘Did you touch the body before the divisional surgeon got there?’ Hardcastle asked. ‘Apart from kicking it, that is,’ he added drily.

‘No, sir, not beyond feeling her wrist for a pulse, like. But there weren’t nothing. Then I legs it up to the nick and reports to the station officer, sir.’

‘How wet was this body, Willerby? You say it was raining at the time.’

‘Coming down in stair rods it was then, sir. She was wet but not soaked through.’

‘How long had it been raining?’ asked Hardcastle.

Willerby considered the question for a moment. ‘Well, I made a point with the sergeant at half past one, sir, at Pitfield Street junction of Haberdasher Street. He’d just signed me
book when it started to come down. That’s when I—’

‘That’s when you decided to make for the hut in the centre of Hoxton Square and have a spit and a draw, was it?’

Willerby grinned. ‘Yes, sir.’

Hardcastle turned to Detective Sergeant Drew.

‘What did the divisional surgeon say about it in his report, Drew?’

‘Said that the ground under her was wet, sir. Looks as though she’d been dumped there after it started raining.’ Drew spoke hesitantly; he had yet to measure the gauge of the
DDI.

‘Who said she’d been dumped there, Drew? More likely to have been topped there, I’d’ve thought. Still, we’ll see what the post-mortem reveals.’ Hardcastle
turned back to Willerby. ‘And you never heard or saw anything as you were approaching Hoxton Square?’

‘Nothing untoward, sir, no,’ said Willerby.

‘Was that the first time you’d been to Hoxton Square that night duty?’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Willerby. ‘I got called to a fight down the Crooked Billet about a quarter after eleven. Nicked a drunk. Never got round me beat proper, like, till after grub.
I was early grub, you see, sir,’ he added.

‘What time was that?’

‘Quarter to one, sir.’

‘And I suppose that was after you’d had a pint off the licensee of the Crooked Billet for your pains, eh, Willerby?’

‘Oh, no, sir.’

‘No?’ Hardcastle shook his head in wonderment. ‘Well, things have changed at Old Street nick since I was here. Mind you, that was getting on for twenty-one years
ago.’ He stood up and gathered his papers together. ‘Get your helmet, lad, and take the sergeant and me up there. Show us exactly where you found the body.’

It was still raining as the caped figure of Police Constable Willerby led the way to Hoxton Square. Hardcastle, immaculate in navy-blue serge suit, a bowler hat and drab,
box-cloth spats over his shoes, had raised his umbrella against the penetrating rain. Drew wore a bowler hat too, but pursued the modern practice of abandoning the wearing of spats.

They passed a column of soldiers marching back to Finsbury Barracks in City Road. The rain ran off their caps and down the gas capes they wore over their packs and reversed rifles, so that they
looked like khaki-clad hunchbacks. A wag in the ranks who asked Hardcastle what he had been arrested for had his name taken by a sergeant with a fierce, waxed moustache.

A brewer’s dray ground its way eastwards and turned into Hoxton Street. High on their box, the driver and his mate – clad in waistcoats, leather aprons and brown derbies – had
covered their shoulders with sacks to protect them from the rain. Overhead, a droning Farman biplane started its long glide downwards towards the Royal Flying Corps airfield at Sutton Farm in
Hornchurch.

‘It was just here, sir,’ said Willerby, pointing to the place near the railings where he had sighted Rose Drummond’s body. ‘Her head was towards the north’ –
he gestured in the direction of Bowling Green Walk – ‘and her feet was towards Old Street itself. She was sort of lying on her right side, facing the railings. That’s what made me
think she was a tramp having a kip, sir.’

Still shielding himself with his umbrella, Hardcastle squatted down on his haunches and studied the ground closely. Although the DDI at City Road had assured him tha. . .