“An
agent provocateur,
eh?” Savidge said, raising his heavy eyebrows. “There seem to be a great many of those chaps wandering about the East End these days, all trying to dislodge refugees of one nationality or another, or otherwise cause trouble. I imagine that the Yard would like to be rid of the whole lot. Those foreign agents take up far too much of Special Branch’s attention.”
“Special Branch is in a difficult position just now,” Charles said. “The City has been swarming with heads of state and visiting dignitaries—almost like a plague of locusts—since before the first scheduled date of the Coronation. Ensuring their safety no doubt required a monumental effort, and the explosion in Hyde Park must have rattled the Yard all the way up to the commissioner. But that does not permit them to—”
“To manufacture evidence, mistreat members of the Press, and arrest émigrés who have sought refuge in London, et cetera et cetera.” With a bored expression, Savidge flicked the ash from his cigar. “I don’t like to disappoint you, Sheridan, but there must be a more compelling reason why I should become involved with this affair. I am of course interested in the possibility of laying hands on a policeman who manufactures evidence, but such a thing is deucedly hard to prove, even when one knows it is true. And Anarchists are hardly my dish of tea.”
“There is a compelling reason,” Charles said. He pursed his lips. “The case may involve the use of fingerprints.”
Savidge’s eyebrows went up again. “You’re saying—”
“I’m saying that if the police are telling the truth about those ginger-beer bottles, the defendants’ fingerprints should be all over them. If, however, the only prints belong to the police, or to some unidentified party—”
“I see,” Savidge said thoughtfully. “I must say, that changes things, doesn’t it, old chap?”
Charles knew exactly what lay behind Savidge’s sudden interest. It had to do with the fingerprints of a man named Harry Jackson, whose trial for burglary was scheduled at Old Bailey a fortnight hence. If the Crown’s prosecution was successful, the case would certainly become a forensic landmark, a vindication of a new system of criminal identification, and a proud feather in the cap of Scotland Yard’s new head of the Criminal Investigation Department and Assistant Police Commissioner of London, Edward Henry.
Henry had begun his work with fingerprints in the 1890s, when he was in charge of the Bengali police in British India. An intelligent and cultivated man, he had a mathematical bent and strong organizational abilities. Having become acquainted with the fingerprint studies of Sir Francis Galton, Henry developed a system that included not only taking the fingerprints, but classifying, indexing, filing, and retrieving them, and in 1906, implemented it in Bengal, where it replaced the current anthropometrical identification system called
bertillonage,
after the Frenchman who had developed it twenty years before. Henry thereupon proposed the new method to the Governor General of India. It was quickly adopted, proving to be a faster and more reliable method of identification than the slower, more complicated
bertillonage
.
It was a long way from India to England, and revolutionary ideas do not flow swiftly or smoothly through bureaucratic channels. But Charles had brought Henry’s program to the attention of the Home Office, and in 1900, he was appointed to a committee under Lord Belper, to look into what was being done in British India. The committee recommended the abandonment of anthropometry—the measurement of the skull, the length of arms, hands, and feet—and the creation of a new system of criminal identification based on Henry’s fingerprint system. In March 1901, Edward Henry himself was appointed to the post of Assistant Police Commissioner of London and head of the Criminal Investigation Department.
Henry had not found it easy to convince the Yard that fingerprints represented a more reliable means of identification than anthropometry, in which a great deal of time and effort had been invested and which some still held to be superior. Henry persevered, however, and soon the first Scotland Yard fingerprint department was in full operation. Within the year, nearly two thousand convicted persons were fingerprinted. Charles himself had directed the fingerprinting of prisoners at Dartmoor, and similar programs were conducted in prisons and jails across England.
Mark Twain had introduced the first fingerprint evidence into a fictional American courtroom in 1893, but the first real vindication of Henry’s new method did not occur in England until the month before Edward’s Coronation. On Derby Day at Epsom Downs, a team from the Yard fingerprinted fifty-four men who were arrested for various offenses, from public drunkenness to picking pockets. When the prints were checked against the new criminal records, over half of the men were found to have a history of arrests and convictions, thereby enabling the magistrate of the Petty Sessional Court to impose sentences twice as long as would otherwise have been awarded.
An even more important test was waiting in the wings, however, and both Charles and Savidge knew it. A house in Denmark Hill had been burgled and seven billiard balls stolen. The investigating officer noticed a dirty fingerprint on a newly-painted windowsill. The print was photographed, compared to those in the Yard’s files, and found to match the left thumbprint of a convicted burglar named Harry Jackson. Jackson had been apprehended, charged with the burglary, and was awaiting trial on September 2 at the Old Bailey. If the jury found him guilty, the case would make news all over the country—all over the world, perhaps.
“The first thing to do, of course,” Savidge said thoughtfully, “is to obtain the fingerprints of the men you wish me to defend. Then—”
“The men were fingerprinted when they were jailed, and their prints are in the custody of the administrator of Holloway Prison,” Charles said. “I confirmed that this morning.”
“Ah,” Savidge said. “Then we must obtain a competent expert who can examine the bottles held by the police and determine whether there is any fingerprint evidence to be found.”
“I think,” Charles said, “that I can serve in that capacity.”
“Of course,” Savidge said approvingly. “I had forgotten your expertise in that business.” He paused. “I don’t suppose that the police have studied the bottles for fingerprint evidence.”
“If they have,” Charles said, “no mention was made of it to Morley, Adam Gould’s solicitor. I rather doubt it, actually. Fingerprinting is not an investigative technique that Special Branch would have readily adopted.”
“Well, then,” Savidge said, “if you find the men’s fingerprints on those bombs, the best course would be a guilty plea. If not—”
“If not,” Charles said, “I suggest that we move for a continuance until after the Jackson trial is concluded. The chance for prevailing upon fingerprint evidence might be greater.”
Savidge looked at Charles. “You’ve been following the case, I take it. Is it likely that Jackson will be convicted?”
“On the evidence,” Charles said, “the Crown has a strong case. I should think he’ll be found guilty.” He paused. “I am afraid, however, that a jury will be less inclined to release three Anarchists on fingerprint testimony.”
“Agreed. But juries don’t like to see the police tamper with evidence. If that has happened here, and if it can be proved—” Savidge smiled maliciously around his cigar. “You present an interesting case, Sheridan. I don’t see how I can refuse.” He paused, narrowing his eyes. “But there is the little matter of the fee. Amalgamated is taking care of Gould, but what of the others?”
“I’m good for it.” Charles rose. “You will be hearing from Morley. If we are agreed, then I must be off. I have one or two other matters to look into today, but I’ll see what can be done about getting a look at that evidence.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The initial excitement and appeal of this novel
[A Girl Among the Anarchists]
reside in its entertaining account of an innocent, middle-class Victorian girl provocatively committing herself to an apparently fanatical, even dangerous group of subversives. The heroine’s unchaperoned idealism enables an emancipatory narrative that provides a marvelously sustained vision of the New Woman. Indeed, the novel’s central, implicit assumption that a woman can, in fact, be politically effective challenges powerful nineteenth-century injunctions confining the middle-class woman to the privacy of the home.
Jennifer Shaddock,
Introduction to the Bison Book Edition, 1992, of
Isabel Meredith,
A Girl Among the Anarchists,
1902
“Good afternoon, Richards,” Kate said, as the startled Sibley House butler opened the heavy door that led into the entrance foyer. She turned to the cabbie who had brought up her bags and put several coins into his hand. “Thank you,” she said, and went inside with the same shiver of melancholy and shadowy foreboding that she usually felt when she entered the grim old house, even on the brightest of days.
“Good afternoon, m’lady,” Richards said stiffly, taking her coat. He paused and added, in a tone of subtle rebuke, “I’m afraid his lordship failed to mention that you would be coming up to town.”
Kate took the bull by the horns. “I know it will be an enormous bother to Mrs. Hall to prepare dinner for the both of us,” she said. “Present my apologies, please.” Of course, dinner for two was no more bother than dinner for one, but the cook liked to pretend that it was, and Kate always played along with the game.
Richards sniffed. “Perhaps his lordship did not inform you. Canon Rawnsley is joining him for dinner here tonight.”
Kate ignored the sniff and the delicate jibe. “How delightful,” she said. She glanced in the mirror, patted her hair, and added, “I’ll have tea, please. In the library.”
“Of course, madam,” Richards said, with another sniff, and went off to give Mrs. Hall the unwelcome news that her ladyship had come, unannounced, and that there would be three to dinner.
Kate did not enjoy London, and she did not like the house in Grosvenor Square. It was a mausoleum, chilly and uninviting, with large, overdecorated rooms, echoing passageways, and scarcely a scrap of garden. Worse, its staff had been selected and trained by Charles’s deceased mother, the Dowager Baroness Somersworth, and it was impossible to change their habits or attitudes. And to compound Kate’s discomfort, it was here that she and Charles had been staying when she lost the baby, which had only added to her aversion to the place. She came as infrequently as she could.
But today’s trip to London had been unavoidable. When Kate learned that Charlotte had left Bishop’s Keep, she had first thought of sending telegrams to Charles and Nellie, to let them know that the young woman had probably returned to London. But she had discarded that plan and decided to come up to town herself, on the train.
Now, going into the library (one of the few agreeable rooms in the house), Kate poked up the fire in the grate, then sat down at the writing desk and jotted a quick note to Nellie. She put it into an envelope, addressed and sealed it, and when Richards came in with the tea tray—a silver pot, a pair of cups, and a plate of tea cakes—she gave it to him.
“Please ask Tommy to take this around to the Royal Strand and deliver it personally to Miss Lovelace,” she said. “If she is not there, he is to wait until she arrives. I have asked her to return an answer.”
“Yes, madam,” Richards replied. The sniff was titanic. Richards did not approve of theatrical people.
Kate glanced at the clock on the ornate mantlepiece. It was nearly five-thirty. “Did his lordship say what time he planned to return this evening?”
“No, madam,” Richards said, “only that he expected Canon Rawnsley at eight.” He bowed slightly and left the room with her note, holding it at arm’s length.
Kate had just poured herself a cup of tea and settled down in front of the fire with
The Times
and one of Mrs. Hall’s excellent apricot tea cakes, when Charles came into the room.
“Kate!” he exclaimed, coming over to drop a kiss on her hair. “I had no idea you were coming up to town today. Why—”
“Because Miss Conway—Charlotte—has run away,” Kate said. She put down the newspaper. “Sometime during the night, according to Mrs. Bryan. She didn’t appear at breakfast this morning.”
“Blast,” Charles said softly. “She’s come back to town, I suppose.”
“To help her comrades, perhaps,” Kate said. “I was going to send Nellie a telegram and thought better of it.” She poured Charles’s tea and handed him the cup. “It’s important that we find Miss Conway, Charles. If the police get to her first . . .” She didn’t finish her sentence.
“You’ve let Nellie know that the girl has disappeared?”
Kate nodded. “I’ve sent Tommy round with a note, and asked for a reply. I’m hoping that she knows Mrs. Conway’s address. I should like to go there and see her.” She regarded Charles thoughtfully. “Were you able to see Adam Gould and the others?”
“And Morley, as well.” Charles sat in the wing chair on the other side of the fireplace, putting his cup on the mahogany table beside the chair. “He agreed to handing the case to Savidge.” He gave her a wry smile. “And Savidge is delighted to take it, with the hope of becoming the first to win an acquittal through fingerprint evidence.” He picked up his cup, settling back. “I also called round to the Yard to have a look at those so-called bombs that Special Branch claims to have found in the men’s rooms.”
“Oh?” Kate asked with interest. From the tone of Charles’s voice, she judged that he had not been impressed by what he saw. “And what did you discover?”
“That the ‘bombs’ are stoneware bottles which contain traces of a substance purported to be nitric acid. He paused. “Savidge and I will go back tomorrow, for a closer examination. Meanwhile, I have sent a note to Edward Henry at the Yard, asking him to see to it personally that the evidence is protected from handling. At the moment, it’s sitting on the shelf.”