Death In Hyde Park

CHAPTER FIVE

In the decade between 1903 and 1913, Scotland Yard faced a difficult challenge with regard to the Russians who sought refuge in London ’s infamous End. There were two different revolutionary groups, the Anarchists and the Bolsheviks, and Scotland Yard frequently confused the two. To complicate matters still further, the Czar’s Secret Police, the Ochrana, hired spies to infiltrate both groups. These spies employed agent-provacateur tactics, inducing the revolutionaries to commit illegal or terrorist acts, then betraying them to the police. When the informants employed by the Yard were added to the mix, it was sometimes very difficult to know who belonged to one side or the other.

Albert J. Williams,

“A Brief History of British Anarchism”

The Metropolitan Police, founded by Sir Robert Peel in 1829, was headquartered in an area of Whitehall known as Scotland Yard, a term that (owing to the English habit of naming buildings and agencies after their location) became synonymous with the force itself. Scotland Yard grew rapidly, from 1,000 in 1829 to 10,000 in 1870, to 15,763 on the eve of the new century. But new technologies and new kinds of crime required a new kind of thinking and a different sort of training. For instance, when the streets and roads began to fill up with motorcars, the work of the Public Carriage Office changed from monitoring horse-drawn lorries and brewers’ drays to dealing with speeders (motorized vehicles traveling faster than twenty miles an hour) and issuing licenses to drivers; and a new “Fraud Squad” had to be formed to investigate the escalating numbers of embezzlements, swindles, and con games, some of which involved some rather important personages who had lost (or had made) significant amounts of money.

Other challenges required the Yard to branch out in other ways. In the early 1880s, a Special Irish Branch of the Criminal Investigation Department was staffed with Irish officers and organized to deal with the Fenians, the Irish Dynamiters who blew up The Times office and a government office in Whitehall and set dynamite bombs in Scotland Yard, Trafalgar Square, and Westminster Hall. By the 1890s, however, the Fenian threat was replaced by the Anarchist threat, and the Special Irish Branch became simply the Special Branch. The Continental terrorists making their way to England- Italian, French, Spanish, and Russian-seemed to believe that a few bombs were neither here nor there, and through the nineties, members of the Special Branch were kept busy hunting for bomb factories, pursuing accused bombers and their accomplices, and keeping a wary eye on those they suspected of plotting terrorist activity. There were Anarchists in Walsall and a botched explosion in Greenwich Park (which Joseph Conrad used as the inspiration for his novel The Secret Agent), followed by bomb bursts in Mayfair and in the Underground, together with a half-dozen other minor skirmishes.

All this uproar was followed by silence, an uneasy, fear-inducing silence that went on from the last three years of Victoria ’s reign and into the first two years of Edward’s. Abroad, assassins were spreading terror among heads of state, while in England, Special Branch became increasingly anxious that a storm was brewing in the East End. But frustratingly, the police were left with little to do, except to keep a close watch on known and suspected Anarchists in the hope that they might commit a crime under the noses of the police. The Branch were assisted in this effort by the growing number of counterrevolutionary agents provacateurs who had begun to appear in London, sent by the Russian Secret Police to entrap Russian emigres who posed a threat to the Czar’s life and regime.

Inspector Earnest Ashcraft of the Special Branch was perhaps more frustrated than any of his colleagues, for he had a very strong sense of duty, and every day that passed without his being called upon to perform that duty was a day that he felt he had somehow failed. Ashcraft was a man in his early thirties, broad-shouldered and thickset. He deeply regretted having missed the excitement of the Fenians and the Walsall terrorists and that bang-up Greenwich affair, all of which had occurred while he was still a youth.

In fact, almost everything of note, Inspector Ashcraft often thought sadly, seemed to have happened before he joined the force in ’98-except for the Boer War, of course. He had done his duty there, not waiting to be called up but enlisting as soon as the trumpets sounded and shipping out on the very first transport to South Africa. But he had been struck by dysentery before he could fire a shot at the enemy, and had come back wasted, in what he felt in his soul to be a kind of mortal disgrace. The fact that Scotland Yard welcomed him back without question and even promoted him to the rank of Inspector made no difference to him. In his mind, his promotion had no redemptive qualities; he could only hope to redeem himself by some sort of significant action.

While others in the Special Branch may have been lulled by the seeming quiet on the Anarchist front, Inspector Ashcraft was convinced that these dangerous people were only biding their time. The times themselves were dangerous, for the end of the war threw thousands of men into the labor market, and large throngs of the unemployed marched through the streets of London, disrupting traffic and frightening law-abiding citizens. And even the employed were dangerous, for membership in the trade unions was rising and the unions held the cudgel of the strike in their hands. In this restive, rebellious climate, Ashcraft felt, any little spark might flame up into an uncontrollable conflagration. All hell would break loose, and unholy chaos would reign over law and order. But Ashcraft knew this could not be allowed to happen. When the peace and stability of society were threatened, Special Branch would be there to protect it. And Earnest Ashcraft, at last, would have the chance to do his duty.

To that end, over the past few months, Ashcraft had paid special attention to the half-dozen Anarchist groups in the East End. He was most interested in the Clarion, an Anarchist newspaper that had begun publication a decade ago under the editorship of a woman named Sybil Conway, whose daughter was now the editor. Ashcraft had studied the Clarion diligently, and in his opinion it was among the most inflammatory of all those published in the country; it stood to reason, therefore, that if a plot was brewing, the Clarion would be somehow involved.

Inspector Ashcraft’s interest in the newspaper had been further fueled by a man calling himself Dmitri Tropov, although Ashcraft had reason to believe that this was not his real name. At Tropov’s invitation, Ashcraft had met him in a dirty, crowded cafe near the docks. Tropov was a thin man, rather tall and dressed as an ordinary seaman, although his fingers were long and delicate, the fingers of a musician, perhaps, but hardly the hands of a sailor. There was something about his eyes, too-something watchful and wary, as if he were always on the lookout.

After some initial conversation, Tropov identified himself as a member of the Ochrana, the Russian Secret Police. He was especially interested, he said, in a man called Ivan Kopinski, who worked as a printer at the Anarchist newspaper, the Clarion. If Special Branch ever had occasion to detain or arrest Kopinski, Tropov would be glad to be notified, for Kopinski’s name was on his list of dangerous individuals. In fact, if the opportunity arose, Tropov would be delighted to take Kopinski off Ashcraft’s hands and arrange his clandestine deportation to Russia.

“One less Anarchist to trouble the Yard,” he had said with a chummy laugh, in perfect, unaccented English. “Right, Inspector?”

Ashcraft was not surprised by Tropov’s fluency or easy manner. That was the way of it with these Ochrana chaps-they spoke any number of languages, could assume any number of disguises, carry off any number of masquerades. The next time he saw Tropov, he might be an aristocrat, or a race-course tout, or (with those hands) even a woman. Of course, he couldn’t be trusted; those fellows would sell their mothers if they could make a profit thereby. But that was of little importance to Ashcraft, since Tropov was not in his employ. The man made him uneasy, however. It was those eyes, he thought, those endlessly watching eyes.

In the event, Ashcraft had agreed that one less Anarchist would indeed be a good thing, and had gone back to the Yard to inform Chief Inspector Mattingly about his conversation with the Russian agent. The press had been full of stories about the thaw in Anglo-Russian relations and the eventuality of an Anglo-Russian alliance, and Ashcraft was not surprised when the chief inspector suggested that he keep in close touch with Tropov, to learn what the man was up to.

“I shouldn’t wonder if the Foreign Office would be interested in hearing about this particular contact,” Mattingly said with a deliberative air. He was a round-faced, white-haired man with the look of a genial Father Christmas but a reputation that was a great deal more sinister. “And especially about Tropov’s interest in the Clarion’s printer-that fellow Kopinski.” He paused, his eyes narrowing under bushy white brows. “One never knows about these things, Inspector. It could be that Kopinski is a nothing. On the other hand, he might be a something.” He stroked his white beard. “If you take my meaning.”

Ashcraft clasped his hands behind his back and said that he certainly took the chief inspector’s meaning.

“Well, then.” Mattingly picked up a sheaf of papers to signal the end of the interview. “I leave it to you, Inspector, to determine how to deal with the situation.” He would see to it, he added, that Tropov’s name was handed up to the assistant commissioner. If Ashcraft felt that he needed additional personnel to conduct surveillance or other activities, he might choose two or three Special Branch officers to assist him. If noses-informants-were needed, why, that would be no problem, either.

So Inspector Ashcraft, feeling that this was a significant assignment, through which he might at last be called upon to do his duty, had begun to watch the offices of the Clarion. He paid special attention to the comings and goings of Ivan Kopinski, of course, but he also kept his eye on Pierre Mouffetard, a Frenchman with a strong propensity to violent expression. There was a third employee, a boy named Messenko, but he did not seem of much importance. The editor, however, the attractive, free-spirited Charlotte Conway, was clearly dangerous, since hers was the hand and the brain behind the pen.

Indeed, as the days went on, Ashcraft’s attentions to Miss Conway gradually intensified. He was not the sort of man who would search his soul for the reasons for his growing interest in this female Anarchist, although if he had, he would have had to acknowledge a serious conflict, for Ashcraft was happily married and believed that he loved his wife and two children. Nevertheless, he frequently watched the lighted window of Miss Conway’s bedroom as she prepared to go to bed at night, standing on the street until long after the lamp had been extinguished, and he assigned to himself the task of following her from her mother’s house to the newspaper offices in Hampstead Road.

But however entranced Ashcraft may have become by the intriguing Miss Conway, he did not allow her to distract him from other important aspects of the investigation. He spent the day in the neighborhood of the Clarion’s office, and assigned to two associates the jobs of trailing Kopinski and Mouffetard from their rooms to the newspaper. And he purchased several noses.

From its beginnings, Special Branch had employed informants to help with investigations. In fact, while the Yard itself might modestly explain that a certain crime was solved by a good police work or a lucky chance of some kind-information offered by a disgruntled employee, a jealous lover, or a good-doing informant-the truth was that most often the information was purchased, and often at a very good price. This practice had been hotly debated for decades, for it certainly smacked of entrapment, and worse. Noses were known to sell unreliable information, and (when hard up for a guinea) to implicate innocent people. But Special Branch-and Scotland Yard in general-could not have done without noses, and continued, surreptitiously, to employ them. And Ashcraft himself would have dealt with the devil, if that’s what it took to do his duty.

But that was not necessary in this instance. The inspector procured the services of Mrs. Georgiana Battle, the owner of the green-grocer’s shop in the front of the building, as a nose-or in this case, perhaps she might perhaps rather have been called an ear. There was an opening in the wall at the back of the shop where, when the presses were not operating, voices could be distinctly heard, and Mrs. Battle was more than happy to keep Inspector Ashcraft apprised of what she heard when she applied her ear to the opening.

In addition to Mrs. Battle, Ashcraft had taken the precaution of obtaining the services of a young Russian emigre named Nicholas Petrovich, whom he paid to infiltrate the Anarchist cell in Hampstead Road. This group met each Sunday night in the grimy basement room of a bookseller’s shop a few doors down from the Clarion. Petrovich represented himself to the group as having just arrived from Munich, eager to carry out any duties to which he might be assigned. Anarchists, by and large, were a naive lot, and they readily accepted Petrovich’s offer, and he quickly became an indispensable member of the group.

In addition to these strategies, the inspector took the precaution of developing certain evidentiary contingencies that might make conviction more reliable, should he be called upon to make arrests in this case. He had once seen an Anarchist snatched from the clutches of the law, so to say, when a zealous barrister pointed out in the course of his client’s defense that there was no physical evidence of his guilt and that the informant upon whose word the police had acted had disappeared. The jury aquitted. Inspector Ashcraft did not intend that to happen in this case.

Given all these careful measures, then, it was certainly unfortunate that the inspector had neglected to monitor the movements of Yuri Messenko. But the young man had seemed a vague, gentle sort, not in the same class with the dangerous Kopinski, the inscrutable Mouffetard, or the clever, comely Miss Conway, and it did not seem useful to expend funds or footwork to watch a half-wit. It was only the greatest good luck, therefore, that had taken Inspector Ashcraft through Hyde Park on Coronation Day, at the precise moment that young Yuri blew himself into little pieces with the bomb