Hardcastle's Frustration (29 page)

Outside the court, Hardcastle hailed a taxi and asked to be taken to Scotland Yard.

‘And I mean Scotland Yard this time, Marriott,' he said. ‘I'm going to see Superintendent Quinn.'

‘Well, Mr Hardcastle, what is it now?' Quinn looked up with an expression of irritation at being confronted, yet again, by A Division's DDI.

‘I thought I should inform you that I arrested a Battersea barber named Henry Watkins on Saturday last, sir.'

‘And of what possible interest to Special Branch do you imagine that to be?' Quinn laid down his pen and leaned back in his chair, an enquiring and slightly sarcastic look on his face.

‘I arrested him for the murder of Ronald Parker, sir.'

‘You did
what
?' Quinn was clearly outraged at this announcement. ‘But von Kleiber has confessed to that murder, and the Attorney offered no evidence at the police court.'

‘Watkins confessed to it, sir, and I seized the firearm that was in his possession. Detective Inspector Franklin is adamant that it was the weapon used to murder Parker, and will testify to that end.'

‘What made you decide to arrest this man, Mr Hardcastle?'

Hardcastle explained about his visit to Mavis Parker and his seizure of the raincoat that von Kleiber had left at her house. But when he mentioned the slip of paper he had found that gave Watkins's address, the superintendent interrupted him.

‘This is all most irregular, Mr Hardcastle. That raincoat should have been handed over to me at once.'

‘I was rather surprised that your officers hadn't found it, sir,' said Hardcastle, risking a reproof, but at once delighted that he had scored a rare point against Special Branch.

But Quinn immediately realized that his own officers had been at fault and, Hardcastle thought, they would be in line for a severe dressing down. Nevertheless, Quinn was obviously undecided what he should do about the problem which the DDI had placed before him and sat in silence for some moments. ‘It would seem that von Kleiber, knowing that he would be executed for espionage, confessed to the murder in order to protect this man Watkins,' he said eventually. ‘Doubtless so that Watkins could be used on another occasion by another agent, should he be required.'

‘That was my thinking, sir,' said Hardcastle, to whom the thought had not occurred until Quinn had suggested it.

‘What stage have you reached in dealing with this man Watkins?'

‘He appeared at Bow Street police court this morning charged with murder, sir, and was remanded in custody until the sixteenth of this month.'

‘I trust no mention was made of von Kleiber at this hearing.'

‘No, sir. It was simply an appearance to secure an eight day remand.'

Quinn glanced at the calendar on his desk. ‘Well, that gives us a week to decide what to do. I shall consult Mr Thomson about the matter.' Basil Thomson was the assistant commissioner for crime, but in recent years had been taking a far greater interest in Special Branch operations than in ordinary crime. ‘I'll let you know his decision, Mr Hardcastle. In the meantime, you're to take no further action.'

‘Very good, sir,' said Hardcastle, who could not think of any action he might have taken.

Hardcastle did not have long to wait for the assistant commissioner's decision. The next morning, Detective Inspector Drew appeared in the DDI's office.

‘Mr Quinn's compliments, sir, and although he realizes how busy you are, he'd be grateful if you could spare him a moment at your convenience, preferably today.'

‘Very well, Mr Drew, I'll see him directly.' Hardcastle was surprised at the conciliatory form of Quinn's summons, but did not comment on it. Putting on his hat and seizing his umbrella, he made his way across the courtyard separating Cannon Row police station from New Scotland Yard, and to Quinn's office.

‘Ah, Mr Hardcastle, please take a seat.' Quinn seemed to be in quite a jovial mood. It was certainly the first time that the DDI had been invited to sit down. ‘I've spoken to Mr Thomson and he, in turn, has discussed the matter with the Attorney-General. You are to go ahead with the prosecution of Watkins, but the trial will be held in camera. The Attorney has decided that von Kleiber's confession will be allowed to stand, and for that reason, scant regard will be paid to this extraordinary story that Watkins told you. He'll doubtless be convicted as if it were an ordinary sort of murder.'

‘But do you think that his story will be accepted by the jury, sir?' asked Hardcastle.

‘No question of it, Mr Hardcastle. In fact, I'm quite sure that the Attorney will have no trouble in dismissing Watkins's story as a fiction he dreamed up to justify the murder of Parker.'

‘But what sort of motive will I be able to present to the jury, sir?'

‘The Attorney will take care of that, Mr Hardcastle.' Quinn waved a hand of dismissal, as though it were of no importance. ‘It's obvious now though, that Ronald Parker had been given cause to suspect that von Kleiber was a spy, probably as a result of his wife's friendship with the man, coupled with her employment. In the circumstances, I imagine that von Kleiber was fearful that he would be exposed. With hindsight, it might've been better if we'd taken Ronald Parker into our confidence and told him that MI5 and this Branch had already got the matter well in hand.'

I
t was six o'clock in the morning of Tuesday the twenty-third of April 1918, St George's Day. It so happened that it was the day when the Royal Navy was to mount its daring attack on Zeebrugge with the intention of sinking three old cruisers to block the harbour. But there was no symbolism in the selection of that date, for few people knew of it until afterwards; it was merely a coincidence.

The eight men of the Scots Guards who were to comprise the firing squad marched out of Waterloo Barracks in the Tower of London. Their sergeant halted them near the execution block where Anne Boleyn had met her end nearly four hundred years previously.

Within minutes,
Hauptmann
Gerhard von Kleiber, accompanied by an army chaplain with an open Bible in his hands, was escorted from the guardroom in the barracks and secured skilfully and quickly to the execution post by the sergeant.

The Scots Guards officer, a youthful lieutenant, stepped across to von Kleiber and proffered a blindfold. The spy declined it with a brusque shake of the head and faced his executioners with his eyes open.

The chaplain finished intoning a few words and moved out of the line of fire.

As the volley of shots rang out and von Kleiber's lifeless body slumped in its bonds, the Tower of London's ravens rose panic-stricken from their resting places, cawing loudly in the dawn air.

The medical officer stepped forward and, satisfying himself that von Kleiber was dead, nodded briefly to the officer commanding the firing squad. The officer nodded in return, grateful that he would not be required to administer the
coup de grâce
with his revolver. Taking a pace forward, he saluted the corpse.

‘Your leave to speak, sir, if you please, sir?' asked his sergeant, snapping to attention. ‘What did you salute yon man for, sir? He was naught but a dirty spy.'

‘That's where you're wrong, Sergeant,' said the lieutenant. ‘A spy he may have been, but
Hauptmann
von Kleiber was also a soldier and a brave man. It was a compliment from one soldier to another.'

‘Sir,' said the sergeant. ‘Your leave to march off, sir, if you please, sir?'

Under cover of darkness that same evening, the start of a clandestine ceremony took place. At ten o'clock a plain van entered the Tower of London. Moments later a simple, wooden coffin bearing the mortal remains of
Hauptmann
Gerhard von Kleiber was loaded into the van by four men.

The van drove the seven miles to the East London cemetery in Plaistow. Once inside, it continued until it reached a far corner where it stopped. The gates of the cemetery were closed and two policemen stood guard.

The four men placed the coffin on stretchers over a grave that had been dug earlier in the day.

In the light of several hurricane lamps an army chaplain, the same chaplain who had sought to offer von Kleiber solace in his last minutes on earth, conducted the funeral service. Finally, the four men lowered the coffin into the grave and shovelled earth into it until there was just a slight mound to mark von Kleiber's last resting place.

Returning to the van, one of the men brought out a cross bearing a number and nothing else, and hammered it into the ground at the head of the grave. The number on the cross corresponded to the number on the coffin, and was the only clue to the identity of its occupant. It was an identity known only to MI5.

Hardcastle was surprised to see Superintendent Quinn and Assistant Commissioner Thomson seated in the well of Number One Court at the Old Bailey on the day that Watkins's trial opened. As Quinn had predicted, the trial was held in camera, and the only members of the public in court were the twelve men of property comprising the jury.

‘Lock the doors,' cried the clerk of the court, and a policeman moved to comply with the order.

The Attorney-General, Sir Frederick Smith, better known to members of the bar and beyond as ‘F.E.', led for the Crown, and Sir Richard Leary KC was faced with the near impossible task of defending the prisoner.

Henry Watkins pleaded Not Guilty and the only four prosecution witnesses – Hardcastle, Marriott, Doctor Bernard Spilsbury and Detective Inspector Franklin – gave their damning testimony.

Spilsbury gave evidence of the cause of death, and Franklin explained how he had deduced that the revolver seized by Hardcastle was the weapon used to commit the murder.

Hardcastle told the court of the statements made by Watkins when he was arrested, and Marriott followed him into the witness box to corroborate what his chief had said.

After each witness had given his evidence in chief, Sir Richard Leary rose to ask a few questions, but he was unable to shake the evidence. Hardcastle got the impression that Leary knew that there was little he could do to aid the prisoner.

Watkins was the only witness for the defence and repeated the story he had told Hardcastle. He seemed quite sincere in his belief that he had committed the murder on behalf of the British government. And despite what Quinn had suggested, the Attorney-General's relentless cross-examination was unable to persuade Watkins otherwise.

In the circumstances, there could be but one verdict.

The judge donned the black cap and pronounced sentence of death. The judge's chaplain intoned the single word, ‘Amen', and the trial was over.

There was, however, a surprising corollary to the trial. Even though neither the police, nor the jury at Watkins's trial, had believed the Battersea barber's story, clearly the Home Secretary, Sir George Cave, had some misgivings about it. When the docket requiring him to confirm Watkins's execution arrived on his desk, he deliberated on the matter for over a week before writing his decision.

‘
I am in some doubt about Watkins's motive,'
he
wrote
. ‘It seems to me that he was genuinely labouring under the impression that he committed the murder on behalf of His Majesty's Government, and given that this country is at war, one assumes he imagined it to be an act of patriotism. Having been threatened with execution if he spoke to anyone about the task he had been set, he was, I believe, loath to approach even the police. In view of this apparent conflict, the sentence of death is commuted to one of life imprisonment
.'

A year later, Henry Watkins died of natural causes in Dartmoor prison.

A month after Gerhard von Kleiber's execution, Superintendent Hudson, the head of the Whitehall Division, entered Hardcastle's office.

‘Good morning, sir,' said the DDI, rising to his feet and putting his pipe in the ashtray.

‘There's an interesting item on the Court Circular page of the
Daily Telegraph
this morning, Ernie,' said Hudson. He opened the paper and read aloud. ‘His Majesty the King has been graciously pleased to appoint Mrs Mavis Parker a Member of the Order of the British Empire for services to the State.'