Stone's Fall

'Not often. But then he didn't often come with me on my trips either. Each of us to our own particular universe. He was happy in his, I in mine. There were some things we could not share. And he needed to be without distractions. He would say that the factories would talk to him, and he had to listen. Sometimes, they would say one thing, the accounts another. Then he would become curious, and stay until he was satisfied. This time he came back perplexed. All had been well, he said. The yard was happy, the operations were smoothly run. They had recently finished a gigantic project to dig out new dock which involved dredging a large part of the river itself so ships could be launched more easily. The cost of Dreadnoughts is so astounding that I was always amazed by his ability to contemplate it. It didn't bother John at all. For him, large sums of money were just small sums, with more noughts on the end. Something was either a wise investment or not. Whether it was for one thousand pounds or one million did not alter the principle.

'All was well. He was satisfied. Apart from one small thing. One of the accounting clerks had been dismissed for peculation. A small amount of money, nothing more than twenty pounds, completely insignificant. But he had been a young man, full of promise, who had been earmarked by one of the managers as someone who could be trained up and given a great deal of responsibility in years to come. The manager felt to blame, that his assessment of the young man's character had been at fault. He had decided not to bring charges, but mentioned it to my husband.

'Most people in John's position, I am sure, would not have bothered about it. All companies mislay a certain amount of money; it is considered inevitable. John thought differently. He had spent years developing his organisation and wanted to achieve perfection. It did not matter to him whether it was twenty pounds or twenty thousand or even two shillings; it should not have been possible, and if twenty pounds could disappear, maybe twenty thousand could too.

'So he looked further and came to the conclusion that this was not the only time such a thing had happened, although he could not discover many details. But he did find out where they were going to, an address in East London which only a small amount of investigation revealed was occupied by this man known as Jan the Builder.

'What infuriated John was that he could not discover how these payments were being authorised. The man responsible clammed up and refused to say anything at all. So he decided to tackle the problem from the other end. And that was where I came in.'

'Yes,' I said. We had now got to the point – the only point, if truth be known, which interested me. Embezzlement and failures in accountancy procedures were all very well, but I was still fixated on the eyes of Jenny the Red, staring icily in a meeting hall. 'Why did you come in?'

'Perfectly simple. I offered, and he accepted my offer. Not willingly or readily, but I am quite persuasive. You find it all perplexing, no doubt. That is because you know nothing of me apart from what you see. You think of me as a pampered lady, used to gliding through a ball or a dinner party, but quite unfitted for real life. Too delicate and refined, shocked even at the vulgarity of a middle-class hotel. Is that correct?'

I tried to protest and say nothing of the sort but, in essence, it was an accurate summary.

'As I say, you know nothing of me. I have a long name of impeccable lineage but that covers a multitude of things. Hungarian aristocrats are not necessarily wealthy or pampered. I was neither. John could not send one of his people to get close to this group; they would have been spotted easily. These payments were coming from inside his companies, and so he felt unwilling to trust anyone connected with them. He needed someone who could be convincing, and whom he could trust. He did not for a moment think of using me.

'I decided to do it. I go to Baden for the waters every autumn – indulgent of me, I know, but I find it pleasant to talk German again – and when I was there I began to read about anarchism and Marxism and revolutionary politics – very interesting, by the way. Then I borrowed the identity of a German revolutionary whom the German police had executed in secret. An accidental fall down the stairs. It was convenient for them – and lucrative – to let it be known that she had been released and had gone into exile. Xanthos organised it for me; I suppose money changed hands in his usual fashion. I studied the clothes and the mannerisms, the way of talking. I went on to Hamburg, then travelled back on a tramp steamer to London. I arrived as Jenny the Red, brutal, uncompromising, more ardent than most men. I got to know these people and they slowly began to trust me in a way they would never have done a man, or someone English. No one John could have found would have been anywhere near as convincing.'