The Eye in the Door (6 page)

Prior walked down the corridor to his own room, tiny in comparison with Lode’s, hardly more than a cupboard. Evidently, in pre-war days this room had been reserved for those obliged to sin on a budget. He felt dirty, physically dirty, after the long train journey,
and when he looked into the small glass above the washbasin he saw that his face was covered in smuts. He washed as much of himself as he could reach without undressing, and then began searching through the filing cabinet. He’d made a list of a number of files that contained reports from Lionel Spragge, and it took him only a few moments to gather them together and dump them on his desk. He had an hour to read through them before Spragge arrived. Spragge had been reluctant to come to the Ministry at all, suggesting they should meet outside, at some pub or other, but Prior had wanted this first meeting to be on his own ground.

He’d read the reports several times already, so it was merely a matter of refreshing his memory. When he came to Beattie’s file, to Spragge’s reports on the Roper affair and then to his deposition, he read more slowly. After a while he looked up, puzzled by the sense of something unfamiliar in the room. He stared round him, but could see nothing different, and then he realized that the change was in himself. He had not been angry until now.

on his oath saith as follows:

2 February 1917. I am employed at the Ministry of Munitions. I entered the employ of the Ministry on 1 July 1916. I have been engaged making certain inquiries concerning various organizations amongst others the Independent Labour Party and the No Conscription fellowship. I reported to Major Lode. He was the officer from whom I chiefly got my directions.

Between October and December 1916 I was sent to Liverpool to make inquiries concerning one Patrick MacDowell. He had been the leading organizer of the Sheffield strike in
the Munitions factories. I told MacDowell I wanted to go to the Manchester area. MacDowell gave me a letter to give to Mrs Beatrice Roper. On the night of I think the 23 rd December I went to Mrs Roper’s shop, at 11 Tite Street, Salford, and gave her the letter. After reading the letter Mrs Roper agreed that I could stay with her and we shook hands very heartily indeed. She sat at one end of the table, and I sat next to her. There was another man staying in the house at the time who was introduced to me as Tommy Blenkinsop, a deserter. He did not come downstairs until later. Mrs Roper asked me about myself. I told her I had been refused exemption and that I had been on the run since September as a moral objector. I told her about being locked up in a detention centre and I think I told her something of the treatment I had received there. At that she said, ‘That is just like my William,’ and she got up and fetched a photograph from the dresser. It was a small photograph of her son, William Roper. As she was showing me the photograph she told me that before the war she had been active in the suffragettes and that she had burnt down a church. I think her exact words were, ‘You know about St Michael’s? We were nearly copped, but we bloody well did it.’ She laughed and said, ‘You should have seen the flames go up.’ She then said, ‘And that was not all we did.’ She told me she had been party to a plan to kill Mr Lloyd George, by inserting a curare-tipped nail through the sole of his boot in such a way that it would pierce the skin when he put his weight on the foot, causing instant lassitude followed by seizures. They had been planning to do this on the Isle of Wight where Mr Lloyd George was staying at that time. There was a waiter in his hotel sympathetic to the suffragette cause. I do not recollect the name of the hotel, or of the waiter. I asked her why the attempt had not succeeded. She replied, ‘The bloody, shitting, buggering old sod pissed off to France, didn’t he?’ Mrs Roper’s language was fairly good most of the time but when she spoke of Mr Lloyd
George she used bad language. I then made diligent inquiries as to the nature of Mrs Roper’s attitude to Mr Lloyd George. She several times expressed the opinion that he ought to be killed. I then asked her whether there was anybody else who ought to be killed and she replied, ‘Yes, the other George, that poncing old git in the Palace, he’d not be missed.’

I then asked her whether this was all talk or whether some plan was afoot. She replied, ‘Can I trust you?’ I think I said something to the effect that she was in a pretty pickle if she could not. She then said that she knew where to get curare and that Walton Heath Golf-course would be a good place to get Mr Lloyd George with an air-gun. She said she knew three good lads in London who would do the job. She then asked me if I wanted to be in on it and I considered it my duty to reply in the affirmative in order to procure further information. 1 passed that night at Mrs Roper’s house, and the following morning I reported back to Major Lode’s department in code.

Spragge was a big, fleshy, floridly handsome man, with thick brows and startling blue-green eyes that slanted down at the outer corners. His neck and jowls had thickened, and rose from his broad shoulders in a single column. Hair sprouted from his ears, his nostrils, the cuffs of his shirt. He was as unmistakably and crudely potent as a goat. Beattie would have gone for him, Prior thought, as he stood up to shake hands. He wondered how he knew that, and why he should mind as much as he did.

‘I asked you to come in,’ Prior said, after Spragge had settled into his chair, ‘because we’re thinking of employing you again.’ He watched the flare of hope. Spragge was less well turned out than he appeared to be at first sight. His suit was shiny with wear, his shirt cuffs frayed. ‘You’ll have gathered from the papers there’s a lot of
unrest in the munitions industry at the moment. Particularly in the north, where you spent a good deal of time, didn’t you? In’16.’

‘Yes, I —’

‘With MacDowell. Who’d just come out of a detention centre, I believe?’

‘Yes, he’s a deserter. Conchie. You should see the size of him, for God’s sake. Built like a brick shithouse. See some of the scraggy little buggers that get sent to France.’ Spragge was looking distinctly nervous. ‘I don’t think I could approach him again. I mean, he knows me.’

‘He knows you from the Roper case, doesn’t he?’

‘Before that.’

‘You might be able to give advice, though. Obviously we’d need to keep you away from the areas you were working in before.’

Spragge looked relieved.

‘You met MacDowell in the summer of ‘16? In Sheffield?’

‘Yes, I was making inquiries into the shop stewards’ movement.’

Prior made a show of consulting his notes. ‘You stayed with Edward Carpenter?’

‘I did.’ Spragge leant forward, his florid face shining with sweat, and said in a sinister whisper, ‘Carpenter is of the homogenic persuasion.’

‘So I believe.’ That phrase again. It had stuck in Beattie’s memory, and no wonder. It was transparently obvious that Spragge’s natural turn of phrase would have been something like ‘fucking brown ‘atter’. ‘Of the homogenic persuasion’ was Major Lode. Who had once told Prior in, of all places, the Cafe Royal, ‘This country is being brought to its knees.
Not
by Germany’ — here he’d thumped the table so hard that plates and cutlery had leapt
into the air – ‘NOT BY GERMANY, but by an unholy alliance of socialists, sodomites and shop stewards.’ Prior had felt scarcely able to comment, never having been a shop steward. ‘Do you think that’s relevant?’

‘It was relevant to
me
. There was no lock on the door.’

‘He is eighty, isn’t he?’ said Prior.

Spragge shifted inside his jacket. ‘A vigorous eighty.’

‘You went to a meeting, next day? Addressed by Carpenter.’

‘I went with Carpenter.’

‘And in the course of his speech he quoted a number of… well, what would you call them? Songs? Poems? In praise of homogenic love.’

‘He did. In public.’

‘Well, it was a public meeting, wasn’t it? And then after the meeting you went into a smaller room, and there you were introduced to a number of people, including the author of these songs?’

‘Yes.’

‘Walt Whitman.’

‘Yes.’

‘Walt Whitman is an American poet.’ Prior waited for Spragge’s mouth to open. ‘A
dead
American poet.’

‘He didn’t look well.’

‘1819 to 1892.’

Spragge jerked his head. ‘Yeh, well, it’s the money, innit?’

‘Is it?’

‘I’ll say it is. Two pound ten a week I was promised. Mind you, he says the information’s got to be good and you’ve got to keep it coming.’ Spragge sat back and snorted. ‘Didn’t matter how good it was, I never had two pound ten in my hand, not regular, just like that. Bonuses, yes. But what use are dribs and drabs like that to me? I’m a family man.’

‘You got bonuses, did you?’

‘Now and then.’

‘That would be if you turned up something special?’

Spragge hesitated. ‘Yes.’

‘How big a bonus did you get for Beattie Roper?’

Spragge hesitated again, then clearly decided he had nothing to lose. ‘Not big enough.’

‘But you got one?’

‘Yes.’

‘All in one go?’

‘Half on arrest, half on conviction.’

‘You got a
bonus
if she was
convicted?’

‘Look, I know what you’re after. You’re saying I lied under oath. Well, I didn’t. Do you think I’m gunna risk – what is it, five years – for a measly fifty quid? ‘Course I’m bloody not. I’d have to be mad, wouldn’t I?’

‘Or in debt.’

Spragge blinked. ‘Just because I lied about Walt Whitman doesn’t mean I was lying all the time. That was the first report I wrote, I was desperate to get enough in.’

‘You never talked about dogs to Mrs Roper?’

Spragge made an impatient gesture. ‘What dogs? There weren’t any fucking dogs. They’re not
used
in detention centres. You might not know that, but she does. She’s talked to men who’ve been in every detention centre in England. She
knows
there aren’t any dogs.’ He stared at Prior. ‘Have you been talking to her?’

‘I’ve interviewed her, yes.’

Spragge snorted. ‘Well, all I can say is the old bitch’s got you properly conned.’

‘I haven’t said I
believed
her.’

‘She was
convicted
. It doesn’t matter what you believe.’

‘It matters a great deal, from the point of view of your job prospects.’ Prior gave this time to sink in. ‘The
letter that came with the poison. From Mrs Roper’s son-in-law.’ He drew the file towards him. ‘“If you get close enough to the poor brutes, I pity them. Dead in twenty seconds’.”

‘All that proves is that the
son-in-law
thought it was for the dogs. Well, she’d have to tell him something, wouldn’t she?’

‘You still say she plotted to kill Lloyd George?’

‘Yes.’

‘And that the suggestion came from her, and not from you?’

‘Yes
. She didn’t need any bloody encouragement!’

‘Even to the details? Even to suggesting Walton Heath Golf-course as a good place to do it?’

‘That’s right.’

‘How would she know that? She’s spent her entire life in the back streets of Salford, how would
she
know where Lloyd George plays golf?’

Spragge shrugged. ‘Read it in the paper? I don’t suppose it’s a state secret.’ He leant forward. ‘You know, you want to be careful. If you’re saying I acted as an
agent provocateur
– and that
is
what you’re saying, isn’t it? – then you’re also saying that Major Lode
employed
an agent provocateur. Either knowingly, in which case he’s a rogue, or unknowingly, in which case he’s a fool. Either way, it’s not gunna do
his
career much good, is it? You watch yourself. You might find out it’s your head on the chopping-block.’

Prior spread his hands. ‘Who’s talking about chopping-blocks? I’m interviewing a new agent – new to
me
. And I’ve made it clear – at least I
hope
I’ve made it clear – that any little flight of fancy – Walt Whitman rising from the dead – and I’ll be on to it. If there
aren’t
any flights of fancy, well then… no need to worry.’ With the air of a man getting to the real purpose of the
meeting at last, Prior drew another file towards him. ‘Now tell me what you know about MacDowell.’

After he’d finished milking Spragge of information, all of which he knew already, and had sent him home to await the summons, Prior sat motionless for a while, his chin propped on his hands.

‘The poison was for the dogs.’

‘There weren’t any fucking dogs. You might not know that, but she does.’

Was
it possible Beattie had tried to reach out from her corner shop in Tite Street and kill the Prime Minister? The Beattie he’d known before the war would not have done that, but then that Beattie had been rooted in a communal life. Oh, she’d been considered odd – any woman in Tite Street who worked for the suffragettes was odd. But she hadn’t been isolated. That came with the war.

Shortly after the outbreak of war, Miss Burton’s little dog had gone missing. Miss Burton was a spinster who haunted the parish church, arranged flowers, sorted jumble, cherished a hopeless love for the vicar – how hopeless probably only Prior knew. He’d been at home at the time, waiting for orders to join his regiment, and he’d helped her search for the dog. They found it tied by a wire to the railway fence, in a buzzing cloud of black flies, disembowelled. It was a dachshund. One of the enemy.

In that climate Beattie had found the courage to be a pacifist. People stopped going to the shop. If it hadn’t been for the allotment, the family would have starved. So many bricks came through the window they gave up having it mended and lived behind boards. Shit – canine and human – regularly plopped through the letter-box on to the carpet. In that isolation, in that semi-darkness, Beattie had sheltered deserters and later, after the passing
of the Conscription Act, conscientious objectors who’d been refused exemption. Until one day, carrying a letter from Mac, Spragge had knocked on her door and uncovered a plot to assassinate the Prime Minister. Or so he said.