Read Online M by Andrew Cook - Free Book Online Page B

that there were more.) Monro found this intolerable. Worse, Jenkinson would not share information; he insisted 6 that he was under no obligation to do so and could not work if he did. So Moser, in Paris in the summer of 1884, had found himself watching men who were working for Jenkinson. Nothing could be more futile. And the Special Irish Branch Port Police, leaving home at the crack of dawn on icy mornings for the docks, and prepared to do all they could to warn the authorities of the movements of suspects, needed something better to go on than a ship’s manifest. How was Melville to investigate, or even identify, suspects on the New York boats if he had only a sketchy idea of who they were or why they were suspected? Jenkinson had proved dismissive of the SIB from the start and by the spring of 1885 matters were coming to a head.
    In London there had been bombs at the Tower and the House of Commons. There was also social unrest which had nothing to do with Ireland, and following riots in Trafalgar Square, Commissioner Henderson resigned.
    On 8 April James Monro and Edward Jenkinson, like a couple of recalcitrant schoolboys, sat down before the new Commissioner Sir Charles Warren. Warren was a military man. He settled the argument at once. When they departed he was entirely persuaded that Jenkinson’s promise to communicate with him directly, cutting out Monro, would somehow ensure that Jenkinson volunteered information and that Monro would no longer concern himself with the work on which his detectives were engaged. Neither was remotely likely. Jenkinson on principle did not volunteer information. Monro remained rightly protective of his status and that of the Special Branch, and had been used to running his own show and letting Sir Edward Henderson as Commissioner do the PR and take the credit while he did the work. Now, in Warren, he was up against a man who was used to obedience from subordinates. As Assistant Commissioner in charge of CID, Monro was expected to take orders.
    Six weeks later Home Secretary Harcourt called Jenkinson and Monro into his office in an attempt to mediate. He too failed. Monro was reasonable; all he wanted was to see the RIC off his patch and get some information to work with. Jenkinson was ‘like a dog with a bone’, Harcourt told him irritably, insisting ‘It is monstrous that the London detectives should not know of these things.’ 7
    Jenkinson had every reason to be wary. He had recently been approached, via the Consulate in Mexico and the Foreign Office, by a potentially invaluable spy, General F.F. Millen, who had been a leading Irish-American activist for twenty years (and had worked for the British in the 1860s on the recommendation of Lord Salisbury, who was keeping silent on the matter). He worked for the New York Herald, besides being a military man.
    Millen would be risking his life and, in any case, expected a certain standard of living for his family. He would be a serious charge on the Secret Service budget.
    Jenkinson dared not reveal Millen’s identity. He thought Scotland Yard men were incompetent; thanks to them, his own name had already appeared in the newspapers. He insisted that he alone should be the judge of when to convey information to Monro, that Monro on the other hand should be under an obligation immediately to convey information to him, and that he should retain the RIC men. On the other hand Jenkinson had been made a fool of, recently, by ‘the Burkham affair’ in which bogus information was offered and largely paid for. 8
    By 17 June – at another, stormy tripartite confrontation – Harcourt had had enough.
    Sir W. Harcourt regretted to see that Mr Jenkinson manifested such a temper and frame of mind... and when Mr Jenkinson displayed such a state of mind in dealing with him, it gave rise to the impression in Sir W. Harcourt’s mind that Mr Jenkinson might display the same feeling towards others, and that perhaps he