On his majesty's secret service

Published on Sunday 21 November 2004 02:36

M: MI5’s First Spymaster

Andrew Cook

Tempus, 20

SOME time in 1891, police barricaded a quiet street in Handsworth and raided the home of a Mr Cavargna, a soft-spoken insurance agent, aged 55. They found him lying on his sofa, feeling under the weather due to a bout of influenza. Despite his illness, Cavargna was a model of hospitality, offering his Scotland Yard guests cigars and whisky. After they finished their drinks, the policemen took Cavargna into custody, threw him into Winsome Green prison and kept him there, without charge, for several weeks.

The policeman who headed the case was William Melville, a shadowy character who would later help found MI5. His suspicions were raised because Cavargna, in addition to peddling insurance, was also an explosives expert. The suspect had recently landed a contract worth 10,000 for a method of controlling rabbits. Cavargna had invented a little bomb, complete with timer, which was designed to be tied around a captured rabbit’s neck. The rabbit, after being released, would innocently scamper back to its warren, whereupon it would wipe out its entire extended family.

Melville was certain that Cavargna was up to something more sinister than blasting bunnies. His case seems to have been based on nothing more substantial than the fact that the suspect’s name ended in a vowel, which in those times was reason enough to jail a man (unless of course the vowel in question was a silent ‘e’). Melville’s justification for arresting Cavargna arose from the fact that anarchists and Irish Republicans were hiding bombs in places all over London, including a particularly nasty one in the public loo underneath Scotland Yard.

The end, in other words, justified the means. It mattered not that Cavargna was entirely innocent since, according to Melville, one could never be too careful in the protection of Queen and Country. Throughout his career in the police force and MI5, he was a model of duplicity and callousness. On one occasion he interrogated the wife of a suspect while her baby lay dying in a cot next to her. A socialist editor was dragged to jail just hours after his wife had died, while his young children were left at home alone with the body of their dead mother. Melville also perfected the art of using sexual intimidation to break a suspect and lectured on the technique at the MI5 school for spies.

Andrew Cook has devoted the last few years to finding the mysterious Mr Melville. Rather like the subject of his book, he’s left no stone unturned in his effort to get his man. He hunted down Melville’s descendants in Ireland and New Zealand. He spent weeks in the War Office and police archives. He was even able to gain access, under the 1992 Waldegrave Initiative, to MI5 documents which will supposedly never be released to the public. What has resulted is an impressively researched book.

GREAT RESEARCHERS do not, however, always make great authors. Cook’s findings are presented in boringly linear sequence, fact following fact with mind-numbing monotony. It’s a pity that such great material should have fallen into the hands of an author so lacking in subtlety and so incapable of insightful analysis. The book has about as much sensitivity as a crime report written by PC Plod.

Granted, part of the problem arises from the fact that Melville was a man determined not to be discovered. He often wore disguises, went by a number of aliases, and customarily destroyed the records of his investigations. That was the nature of his profession. In his quest for anonymity Melville was aided by a secretive state which essentially denied his existence until 1997. Parts of his life appear as if they’ve fallen victim to an anarchist’s bomb - they’ve simply ceased to exist.

As a result, much of this book is not about Melville at all, but rather about the times in which he lived and the institutions in which he worked. He’s only a bit player in the first 100 pages. They are filled with convoluted descriptions of the arcane machinations of the police force and the London underworld. The reader is treated to drama by association: for instance, an entire chapter is spent discussing the Ripper case, but Melville’s actual involvement in that case is unclear, since no one is absolutely certain of Jack the Ripper’s real identity. All we really know is that some people were brutally murdered in London and that Melville was a policeman at the time.

All the piles of evidence fail to illuminate the soul of Melville. Cook is reluctant to speculate on what might have motivated the man or what dark secrets might lie behind the cynicism, ruthlessness and occasional cruelty. Granted, had Cook travelled down the path of interpretation, judgments would have had to be based mainly on speculation.

But that is what readers expect good biographers to do. They are supposed to make intuitive judgments based on evidence they have collected, reinforced by a sensitivity to their subject. Cook does occasionally speculate, but the speculation is often of the most banal kind.

He posits, for instance, that Melville might have joined the police force because a new precinct headquarters was being built across from the London residence where he lived at the time. On other occasions, he dangles possibilities in front of the reader, but then fails to develop them to their logical conclusion. For instance, he writes that the man who might have been Jack the Ripper "died under the name Frank Townsend and he left almost 140,000. One can only speculate about the extent to which his wealth played a part in his escape." What the heck is that supposed to mean? Who’s accusing who of what?

Melville lived in turbulent times. Anyone who thinks that the terrorist bomb is a new calamity should perhaps read this book. Back then, the venality of the criminals was often matched by the corruption of the police. But all this wonderfully vile material is delivered in a style seemingly calculated to squeeze the drama right out of it. Cook is a master of stilted prose - a fault compounded by the fact that he’s ignorant of basic elements of grammar. (Whoever copy-edited the manuscript should perhaps be looking for a new career.)

Much is made of the fact that Melville might have been the inspiration for the ‘M’ of Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels, even though there’s no hard evidence to suggest that Fleming actually knew of Melville’s existence. I suppose that sort of thing is supposed to sell books, but in truth it’s indicative of the rather lame nature of this one. Melville shouldn’t need Fleming’s help to prove that he’s interesting.

I have a feeling that Melville was a fascinating man. I’ll bet that beneath the bully there lurked a complicated - perhaps even tortured - soul. But that’s just a feeling based on speculation, not on the evidence presented in this rather lifeless book.