Read Online M by Andrew Cook - Free Book Online
Authors: Andrew Cook
Tags: M15’S First Spymaster
Ads: Link
but they also knew that if the system were completely abolished pay would have to be improved. Monro understood that the CID must be held in respect or it would be ineffective. He supported a move away from the rewards-for-results system in every way he could. Rewards were more sparingly given, but serious crime decreased.
On the other hand, Jenkinsonâs influence was all-pervasive.
Every detective in the Special Irish Branch was a Metropolitan policeman through and through. Even if they were Irish â and most were â this was the case. If you were not stationed in London, most specifically in or around Scotland Yard, you didnât really know what was going on. You could never catch up. You were out of sight, and too far away for any hope of promotion. Go to the provinces, even to other parts of London, and you might never be seen again.
And yet when, in March of 1884, Jenkinson applied to have nine of Littlechildâs original twelve men leave London and work with customs officers at the ports, Melville chose a posting as far as he could get from Scotland Yard. However ambitious he was, there is always a nagging question for a man with two children under the age of four who follows a dangerous occupation. Is he placing his wife under intolerable strain? Twice, now, police constables had found and defused bombs. He and Kate had survived the death of their child together. Was this daily confrontation with violence fair to her or the children?
Even if he gave no thought to ambition and did not feel endangered, he and Kate needed to make a new start after the bereavement of last summer. So Sergeant Melville and Kate, little Kate and the baby William packed their trunk, left the inspectors recruiting new men, and travelled to France to the first time: to the port city of Le Havre.
THREE
P LOT AND C OUNTERPLOT
Le Havre extended along a windswept curve of coastline under a vast northern sky. Its docks, tucked into the north side of the wide estuary of the Seine, were the seat of its prosperity. In the eighteenth century, local dynasties had been founded on fortunes made from the triangular trade in sugar and slaves between Africa, France and the French Antilles, and Melville would have found out quickly enough that their names still carried weight in the town a hundred years later. Families like the Foaches and the Begouens once built ships, bankrolled the trade, even insured it and refined the sugar. Thanks to them Le Havre was endowed with a grand Hotel de Ville, a number of private mansions in the city centre, an imposing Palais de Justice and the deep Vauban Docks, based on those in the Port of London, that Melville would come to know well.
Nearly 300 metres of massive stone breakwater protected the port and people ashore would point out ships poised beyond the bar, awaiting pilots to bring them in. Since the first passenger steamships ploughed their way across the Atlantic in the 1830s, Le Havre had become more prosperous than ever, and now with mass emigration from the east, all Europe seemed to want to embark here for a new life in America. The steamship lines competed to offer something different. Some were technologically advanced, some more luxurious, some, like the Chargeurs Réunis, specialised in freight. Melville would have seen scores of ships of the Compagnie Générale Transatlantique and Messageries Maritimes.
It was a good place to bring up a family. Le Havre was a sort of cross between Brighton and Bristol: a station balnéaire and commercial port combined. Along the Boulevard Albert Premier facing the long beach, tall balconied hotels were springing up to satisfy the new fashion for seaside holidays. Kate could wheel the perambulator towards the Cap de la Hève which towered out of the sea, or inland towards the old Priory on a hill overlooking the bay. All this, after the smoke and grime of London: they would have had no regrets. Melville was working with French customs
On the other hand, Jenkinsonâs influence was all-pervasive.
Every detective in the Special Irish Branch was a Metropolitan policeman through and through. Even if they were Irish â and most were â this was the case. If you were not stationed in London, most specifically in or around Scotland Yard, you didnât really know what was going on. You could never catch up. You were out of sight, and too far away for any hope of promotion. Go to the provinces, even to other parts of London, and you might never be seen again.
And yet when, in March of 1884, Jenkinson applied to have nine of Littlechildâs original twelve men leave London and work with customs officers at the ports, Melville chose a posting as far as he could get from Scotland Yard. However ambitious he was, there is always a nagging question for a man with two children under the age of four who follows a dangerous occupation. Is he placing his wife under intolerable strain? Twice, now, police constables had found and defused bombs. He and Kate had survived the death of their child together. Was this daily confrontation with violence fair to her or the children?
Even if he gave no thought to ambition and did not feel endangered, he and Kate needed to make a new start after the bereavement of last summer. So Sergeant Melville and Kate, little Kate and the baby William packed their trunk, left the inspectors recruiting new men, and travelled to France to the first time: to the port city of Le Havre.
THREE
P LOT AND C OUNTERPLOT
Le Havre extended along a windswept curve of coastline under a vast northern sky. Its docks, tucked into the north side of the wide estuary of the Seine, were the seat of its prosperity. In the eighteenth century, local dynasties had been founded on fortunes made from the triangular trade in sugar and slaves between Africa, France and the French Antilles, and Melville would have found out quickly enough that their names still carried weight in the town a hundred years later. Families like the Foaches and the Begouens once built ships, bankrolled the trade, even insured it and refined the sugar. Thanks to them Le Havre was endowed with a grand Hotel de Ville, a number of private mansions in the city centre, an imposing Palais de Justice and the deep Vauban Docks, based on those in the Port of London, that Melville would come to know well.
Nearly 300 metres of massive stone breakwater protected the port and people ashore would point out ships poised beyond the bar, awaiting pilots to bring them in. Since the first passenger steamships ploughed their way across the Atlantic in the 1830s, Le Havre had become more prosperous than ever, and now with mass emigration from the east, all Europe seemed to want to embark here for a new life in America. The steamship lines competed to offer something different. Some were technologically advanced, some more luxurious, some, like the Chargeurs Réunis, specialised in freight. Melville would have seen scores of ships of the Compagnie Générale Transatlantique and Messageries Maritimes.
It was a good place to bring up a family. Le Havre was a sort of cross between Brighton and Bristol: a station balnéaire and commercial port combined. Along the Boulevard Albert Premier facing the long beach, tall balconied hotels were springing up to satisfy the new fashion for seaside holidays. Kate could wheel the perambulator towards the Cap de la Hève which towered out of the sea, or inland towards the old Priory on a hill overlooking the bay. All this, after the smoke and grime of London: they would have had no regrets. Melville was working with French customs
Similar Books
