In the 1930s the authorities recorded about 80,000 offenses each year in the 700 square miles of London’s Metropolitan Police District. Setting aside the Special Branch, the chief constable had at his disposal 1,000 detectives, 150 working out of Scotland Yard. They had access to 60,000 photographs of rogues and over half a million sets of fingerprints.1 With the news of the attack on Cartier’s representative, this elaborate machinery swung into action.
When the police arrived at the Hyde Park Hotel they first spoke to the victim, Etienne Bellenger. Bruised and bloodied, he was understandably confused. He gave a description of his attackers but was not sure which of them had pushed him to the floor. And although he spoke of bringing eight rings to the hotel, he had actually brought nine. He believed all were taken, but the police had found one on the floor during their search.2 They then interviewed the hotel staff. They searched rooms 305 and 309. Chief Inspector Frederick Cherrill, superintendent of the Fingerprint Bureau of New Scotland Yard, was soon on the scene.3 By 6:30 he had taken prints off a whiskey bottle, two tumblers, and a siphon.4 He returned the bottle, one-quarter full, to the hotel manager. That night the officers who rushed to the hotel combed the West End in search of the assailants. Scotland Yard publicized the reward on offer, passed on descriptions of the villains to local police stations, and sought the help of those who traded in diamonds. All these undertakings appeared to have been rendered unnecessary when, the next morning, the Oxford police phoned London to announce that three suspects had been apprehended.
Chief Inspector Leonard Burt, who was later best known for his work on counterespionage and security after the war, was in charge of the investigation.5 Among his colleagues he had a reputation for being a gifted interrogator, and that was the skill required at this stage of the case. Having detained the likely suspects, the police no longer had to be concerned with detection and capture. Their goal now was to extract from the suspects a full account of the events of December 20.
The Judges’ Rules stipulated that a police officer should first caution before questioning or taking a statement. He repeated the caution when making a formal charge: “Do you wish to say anything in answer to the charge? You are not obliged to say anything unless you wish to do so, but whatever you say will be taken down in writing and may be used in evidence.” The rules held that the police were not to cross-examine or question anyone making a voluntary statement. When they charged two or more persons with the same crime, they had the accused read, correct, and sign their statements and exchange copies. The rules stated that the police were not to suggest that the accused had to reply to their confederates’ statements.6
Burt’s best hope was that one or more of the accused would provide a full confession. At the very least he knew, as a seasoned interrogator, that when two or more individuals were charged with the same crime they almost always abandoned their loyalty to each other and sought to save their skins. It was almost inevitable that each would attempt to minimize his own culpability while shifting the blame onto others. Burt’s tactic was to separate the suspects, have them produce their self-serving accounts, and then give them each other’s statements to goad them into making further disclosures.
In Oxford the three suspects were first asked to give an account of their movements on the afternoon of December 20. The blond-haired Lonsdale reported that he had had a full day: he had brunch at a Lyons’ Corner House at 1:00, then went to the Monseigneur Cinema in Piccadilly, met a Mr. Wilby (manager of the Florida nightclub in Bruton Mews), between 3:30 and 4:00 was at the Quebec Hotel on business, then called at his father’s place at 155 Gloucester Terrace, proceeded to the Coburg Court Hotel where he made two calls to Paris, took afternoon coffee on the Edgeware Road, and returned home at about 5:45.7
Jenkins, the best looking of the three, gave a shorter but equally bland account of his uneventful afternoon in London’s West End. He had had a 1:00 p.m. lunch at a Lyons’ tea shop on Coventry Street, killed some time wandering about Mayfair, and had coffee at the Kardomah in Piccadilly; from 3:15 to 5:00 he was with his accountant, Lester Parry, then returned to his hotel before going out that evening to Jack’s Bar in Mayfair, where he got “pretty tight.” He had had dinner on Curzon Street, met Wilmer, and together they went to the 19th Club in Cork Street around midnight, where Lonsdale joined them.8
Wilmer was not cooperative and would only state: “I drove down from London to Oxford in my friend’s car. My friend being Mr. Blacker-Douglas of 31 Hans Place, London. We started at about 3:30 am this morning and arrived at Oxford at 6:30 am and Bourton-on-the Hill at 8:30 am to stay with my aunt, Lady Porter for Christmas, and I dropped Lonsdale and Jenkins at Oxford.”9 He refused to sign an official statement.
In London, on December 22 at the Gerald Street Police Station, the suspects were more forthcoming. The advice their solicitors offered no doubt played a role. Lonsdale now stated that on December 20 between 12:15 and 12:45 he was at Stewart’s Restaurant on Bond Street, where Jenkins, Wilmer, and a man he did not know told him of their scheme to use an expensive hotel room as a front in which by some ruse they would trick a jeweler out of his gems. He warned them that the plan was unwise and dangerous. He would not participate. Nevertheless, that afternoon at about 2:30 out of curiosity he rang up their hotel room. “We have got a bottle up here,” Wilmer told him. “You might as well come up and have a drink.” He popped in for a few minutes and was relieved to see there was little likelihood of anything resulting from his friends’ undertaking.
Lonsdale made repeated references to his supposed involvement in the arms trade. After the drink at the hotel he said he went off to confer with Wilby—“who has been financing me for the sale of Mausers” (rifles)—and on to see his father, who was going to Paris that night “to protect my interests in the deal which I have referred to before.” He made some calls to Paris and dined with his father at Bertorelli’s near Westbourne Grove. Lonsdale was at a friend’s (John Davies of Ivor Court, Gloucester Place) at 11:00 p.m. when Wilmer called. Lonsdale and Davies joined him at the 19th Club. Jenkins and Richard Blacker-Douglas were also there, as was the man who had been at Stewart’s, who was now introduced as Michael Harley. Lonsdale stated that Jenkins appeared very nervous and asked for money. Lonsdale refused, telling Jenkins he would only spend it on drink. They all moved on to an after-hours drinking establishment (referred to as a “bottle party”) next door to the Florida nightclub. Lonsdale claimed he was now quite drunk and “for no particular reason” opted to go off with the others to Oxford. They arrived about seven, and since it was too early to impose on Wilmer’s aunt he and Jenkins took a room at the Clarendon. At a coffee stall by the train station he saw a newspaper report of the robbery. To his amazement Wilmer and Jenkins now told him they were involved in the affair but had had no idea that it would result in a violent assault. They added that when Harley “who had stayed in the suite unbeknown to them had attacked the man most savagely,” they lost their nerve and fled. Harley took all the jewels. What should they do? “Harley had apparently threatened them with physical violence if they did not keep their mouths shut.” This explained why they had drunk so much the previous night. But because he too was tired and hungover, Lonsdale claimed he did not fully realize the significance of what he heard, and went to bed.10
In Oxford, Wilmer had been taciturn; in London he declared that he was now ready to make a “clean breast of it.”11 His story was that he, Lonsdale, and Jenkins had cobbled together an amateurish plan of peacefully palming a diamond from a distracted jeweler. It was not clear exactly how they would do it. “Our idea was really unformulated and our plan of action was left to chance in that if an opportunity of getting possession of the jewellery did not occur, Jenkins was simply going to say he needed time to consider the matter.” The fourth person involved was to help facilitate their escape “and also he had arranged to carry, some adhesive plaster, a fixed strip which he might be able to slip over the man’s mouth if he were manoeuvred near the door of the bedroom.”12 But the fourth person’s attack on Bellenger was completely unexpected. Neither Jenkins nor Wilmer played any part in the assault. Horrified by the bloodshed, they immediately fled. Indeed, Wilmer claimed that he was so “absolutely terrified” that he had trouble walking normally down the hotel steps.
Later that same day Wilmer made further admissions: First, he named Harley as the fourth man, the man who not only attacked Bellenger but took possession of the loot that same night. “At this time Harley was endeavoring to dispose of the jewellery.” Second, Wilmer admitted he was responsible for dumping Harley’s weapon at a tube station. “In the taxi Harley gave me the instrument he used wrapped up in the spotted scarf he had covered his face with and told me to hide it in a public lavatory, which I did.”13 He reiterated the argument that he was not fully responsible. “My mind is still very misty regarding my movements after the assault, perhaps due in some part to the whiskey I had drunk and did drink subsequently as well as fright.”14
In his December 22 statement Jenkins similarly stressed that the crime was not thought out. In his telling it was no more than a drunken lark that got out of hand. One evening at his flat the three friends had all complained of being short of money. They dreamed up a plan to book a hotel room under a well-known name and have a jeweler bring round an expensive engagement ring, hoping that by some scam they would relieve him of it. There was never any suggestion of employing violence; they envisaged a simple confidence trick. Wilmer had included Harley at the last minute, as he supposedly was in contact with a fence. It was otherwise understood that Harley’s only duty was to transport the rings. Meeting at Stewart’s Restaurant at 12:15 on December 20, they worked out the final details of the operation. Jenkins described how he bought a carnation and took a taxi to the Hyde Park Hotel, where he booked a suite. Wilmer joined him shortly after 2:00 p.m. Harley showed up sometime later. Lonsdale popped in but stayed for only a few minutes. Cartier’s representative at first said he was not sure if they could send someone over, but soon telephoned to say that they would.
Jenkins asserted that Harley’s attack on Bellenger was completely unforeseen. “The next thing I knew Harley was coming from the bedroom.… I saw one of his arms raised with an object in his hand. He looked desperate and I flew out of the place and got on a bus to Knightsbridge.”15 That evening Wilmer phoned him to say something terrible had happened and they should meet at Jack’s Bar. Jenkins arrived to find Harley and Wilmer in a taxi outside. They proceeded to the 19th Club, where Lonsdale joined them about 11:00 p.m. They finished the night at the bottle party. Harley had the rings. “I was definitely under the influence of drink but I remember Harley showing me a handful of diamond rings in a café in Curzon Street.” Wilmer’s advice was to lie low. He was going off to visit his aunt in the country. Lonsdale and Jenkins decided to accompany him as far as Oxford.16
By the night of December 22 the police had received a fairly full summation of the Hyde Park Hotel robbery. Lonsdale admitted to consorting with the three others but insisted that he had cautioned them not to attempt anything rash. He did not know a robbery had been committed and knew nothing about Harley’s assault until Wilmer and Jenkins informed him in Oxford. The stories that Wilmer and Jenkins told were slightly different. They conceded that they had had the silly notion of acquiring a diamond by some sleight of hand. But whereas Lonsdale said the idea was theirs alone, they included him as one of the architects of the plan. They all concurred, however, that they never envisaged that violence would occur and consequently were terrified when Harley pummeled Bellenger. They had been stupid and drunk. Harley had been vicious. He had wielded the cosh and taken the rings. If anyone were guilty of robbery with violence it was Harley. Where was he?
Robert Honey Fabian, one of the best-known Scotland Yard detectives, claimed the credit for solving what he called in his memoirs “the case of the Mayfair Playboys.”17 He asserted that the morning after the robbery an informant phoned to say that the night before he saw several “geezers” with rings in a café “palled-up with a fence.”18 He didn’t know them, but “they looked like proper college toffs to me.” From Fabian’s photo collection of people on the margins of high society, cut out of the glossy weeklies, the grass, or informant, identified Harley. At 1:55 on December 21, Fabian and Inspector Hayward accosted Harley at the post office in Queen Street, and he agreed to accompany the officers to the Vine Street Police Station.19
In his first statement on December 21 the mustachioed Robert Harley (also known as Michael Harley) stated that he had not done much on December 20. He visited his ill brother and left his coat with him. He lunched at Stewart’s but saw no one he knew. Between 6:00 and 7:00 p.m. he was at the Spotted Dog, where he bumped into David Wilmer. They had several scotches and then went to some other pubs; he was too drunk to recall which ones. He heard that someone said he looked like one of the robbery suspects, but he had not been at the Hyde Park Hotel in a long time.20 His account was dutifully recorded, but even as he spoke detectives were finding evidence that undermined his story.
At 4:00 p.m. on December 21 police went to 50a Curzon Street, a block of service flats, apartments that offered hotel services. Harley had rented flat 14 since December 7. In his rooms investigators found an empty Chesterfield cigarette packet that matched the one discarded at the Hyde Park Hotel. Detective Inspector Percy McDouall more importantly discovered in a writing bureau drawer two “life preservers.”21 In Fabian’s self-aggrandizing account he and Hayward were the ones who, in searching Harley’s rooms, found the cigarette package and a bill for life preservers.22 He also claimed he knew Harley was associated with Lonsdale and Jenkins.23
Peter James Kearney, a valet at Curzon Street, later provided helpful information on Harley’s associates. Wilmer had visited Harley on several occasions, the last time being the evening of Sunday, December 19. On Monday, December 20, Harley went out at 10:00 in the morning, returning Tuesday morning. And Harley wore, the valet recalled, a distinctive “teddy bear coat.”24
In his autobiography Fabian says he knew Harley but does not mention how. Harley was in fact a police informer. When he was formally detained on the morning of December 22 he asked if he could see Fabian privately. He then asked him if he could talk about their relationship. Fabian said he could. At the same time Fabian independently informed his superiors that he had known “Mike Harley” as an informer since October 20, 1937.25
The informant (spy, grass, or nose) according to Cecil Bishop, a Scotland Yard veteran, was crucial in real policing, though rarely mentioned in thrillers. One set a thief to catch a thief. Each officer jealously guarded his own informants. The public, most policemen, and the underworld despised such spies, but many felons could find no other source of work and relied on the money paid out of the “Information Fund.” Bishop warned that normally they should not be called to testify in person, for in court they were easily discredited. Judges understood that the names of informants would usually not be provided. When giving evidence the police officer would simply say, “From information received, I understood that …”26
In his second statement Harley placed his actions in this context. If his behavior were suspicious, he argued, it was because he was a police informer. He had called Fabian at Gerrard 2604 on Sunday, December 12, and left a message. He called again on Saturday, December 18, and told him he could alert him to an important event that would occur the following Monday or Tuesday. His account of his movements on December 20 was cryptic. He said that much of the day he attended his sick brother at 22 Wright’s Lane, Kensington. Leaving his distinctive teddy bear coat at his brother’s, he departed for the Hyde Park Hotel, arriving at about 4:15. He was there for only fifteen minutes. He did not say how, but that evening he came to have the rings in his possession. As it was too late to hand them over to the authorities, he hid them. His plan was to contact the insurers the next day, but as he was coming out of the post office at about 2:00 p.m. on December 22 he ran into Fabian and Hayward, who took him along to Vine Street, where he made his first statement. Harley underlined that he had helped Fabian in a similar situation once before. In the case of the Hyde Park Hotel robbery he insisted that his sole object was to get the insurance money. In other words he simply wanted the reward offered for the return of the diamonds. He now realized that he had acted foolishly and concluded by saying either “We’d better go and get the stuff” or “And now I’ll take you to the rocks.”27 In any event, at 2:00 p.m. Burt and Hayward accompanied him to a small, first-floor room at 22 Wright’s Lane. There Hayward found hidden behind the waste pipe of a washbasin two sealed envelopes. Inside were eight diamond rings.28
The tabloids were to attribute the capture of the four Mayfair men and the recovery of the rings to a “brilliant police investigation.” In reality the utter incompetence of the robbers was their undoing. They had neither disguises nor alibis prepared, and no flight plan in place. The News Chronicle reported that a pilot offered to fly them to Belgium, but they did not have the £150 he demanded.29 Most important of all, they failed to do what any seasoned jewel thief knew was essential: have a fence standing by who—paying a small percentage of the true value of the gems—would dispose of the loot within a few hours.30
To confirm Harley’s role in the robbery Burt had him participate in an identity parade. Burt had the first attempt scrubbed when Harley objected that he was the only tall man in the lineup. After the police found the rings they organized a second parade, at 5:00 p.m. Sloan and Clarke, the lift operators from the Hyde Park Hotel, thought they had seen Harley before, but they were not sure when. Their testimony, complained Burt, was “useless.” More troubling was that none of the other witnesses recognized him.31
At this stage Burt showed Harley the statements of Jenkins and Wilmer implicating him in the assault on Bellenger. He responded by making a further statement, which attempted to shift the blame back to them. He now admitted that on December 20 he left his flat at 10:45 to meet Wilmer and then went to Stewart’s Restaurant to join Jenkins and Lonsdale. It was Jenkins and Wilmer who proposed that he knock out the Cartier representative. “A definite proposition was put to me by both Wilmer and Jenkins that I should hide in a suite and knock him out when they had maneuvered him into a suitable position. As I had anticipated that they had intended only a confidence trick I was naturally taken aback, but I tentatively acquiesced.”32 He pretended to agree, but only so as to know where and when the robbery would take place. In making it clear that he was not going to be the fall guy, Harley sowed further seeds of dissent. “I wish to add that I was not particularly surprised at their suggestion of violence, as, in the previous case in which I assisted Inspector Fabian, Wilmer suggested in front of my brother and another witness that I do practically the same thing to Jenkins to obtain his £655.”33 Harley insisted that he only had gone to the hotel at about 4:30. Entering via the Buttery Entrance, down a passage by the barbershop to the lobby, he ran into Wilmer, who was hurrying to the front exit. They went together by taxi to Green Park Station and on to Piccadilly, where Wilmer used the toilet.34 Harley made this statement at 9:30 p.m. on December 22. At 10:00 a.m. the next morning at the Westminster police court Burt showed it to Harley’s confederates.
The police were unhappy with the staff of the Hyde Park Hotel for their difficulties in identifying the suspects. This was brought home when the Daily Mail splashed photographs of the four accused on its pages on December 24.35 As a result, on December 27, Reginald Kelly, a receptionist at the hotel, identified Jenkins as the man who had engaged the suite under the name P. L. Hambro.36 William Peter Jefferies, Kelly’s colleague, in reviewing the photos recognized Wilmer as the man who was on the third floor when Bellenger got out of the lift.37 Thanks to the pictures, Enrico Laurenti identified Jenkins as the first man and thought Harley “resembled” the second.38 Sloan in a further statement admitted he picked out the wrong man in the identity parade. From the press photos he was now certain it was Jenkins, not Harley.39 Clarke went to the identification parade at the Gerald Road Police Station on December 22 and picked out Harley whom he remembered having seen at the hotel on December 20. But Harley was not the man he had described in his original statement.40 Henrietta Gordon recognized Jenkins and Harley in the Daily Mail photos but could not identify anyone in the December 22 lineup.41 Saying that she could recognize the suspect by his teeth, Gordon asked Harley to take his hand away and smile, but she still failed to recognize him.42
The police tracked down other witnesses. Jenkins had been staying at the New Clarges Hotel since about December 10. The hall porter stated that Wilmer and Harley had visited Jenkins on December 20, between 10:00 and 1:15. Jenkins was out all afternoon, returning in the evening between 5:20 and 6:00.43 Greta Vaughn, housekeeper at the Mayfair Hotel, Down Street, Piccadilly, said Lonsdale was a guest there from December 14 to 20, registered under the name of Mainwaring. At around 2:00 p.m. on December 20 she saw him drinking in the lounge with Wilmer and Harley. She had seen this group together on previous occasions. When asked to settle his bill for £3 19s. 6d., Lonsdale said he would pay at 6:00 p.m. To the question, “Can you rely upon that?” he replied, “Absolutely.” Overhearing Wilmer wondering aloud if she wanted money, she snapped: “Yes, I do.” They left at 2:15. Harley was wearing a teddy bear coat, Lonsdale a navy blue coat, and Wilmer a camel hair coat.44
Despite the spotty quality of the eyewitness evidence, within a few days the police believed that they had gathered enough material to warrant the Department of Public Prosecutions going to trial. They had the incriminating statements of the four accused. All were socially well connected but probably had been involved in previous cases of fraud and larceny. Lonsdale was a deserter. If he had not participated in the robbery he nevertheless was part of the conspiracy that led to it.45 There was now bad blood among the accused, and Burt believed that at the very least Jenkins would testify against Harley. Harley had a reputation for violence, but no convictions. He had, in Burt’s words, put “forward a fantastic and carefully thought out story of assisting Police and restoring the property to the insurance assessors.”46 The police in addition had physical evidence. They had the hotel registration written in Jenkins’s hand. They had found Wilmer and Jenkins’s fingerprints on the drinking glasses used in room 305.47 In Harley’s flat, detectives had uncovered two life preservers, with cord attachments identical to the cord found at the Hyde Park Hotel. Burt was pleased to report, “A representative of Messers Gamages, Holborn, will say that at about 2 pm the day of the robbery he sold two life preservers to a man answering the description of Harley.”48
At Westminster Police Court on December 23, before Magistrate Ronald Powell, the four men were charged with robbery with violence. Powell granted an application to allow Wilmer to see his wife and Harley to see his brother.49 Because of Bellenger’s condition the judge refused to grant bail to the accused. He extended their remand, and they continued to be held in custody at Brixton Prison.50 In January, Vincent Evans, director of Public Prosecutions, added the charge of conspiring to commit robbery.51 As there was no evidence of Lonsdale being at the hotel at the time of the attack on Bellenger, his barrister argued that he should be discharged. The magistrate disagreed, pointing out that there was a conspiracy and he was charged with being an accessory before the fact—that is, he had aided and abetted others to commit a crime.52
The police were confident that within a matter of days they had tracked down all the Hyde Park Hotel robbers. Others were not so sure. Several informants asserted that Lonsdale’s friend Victor Hervey was also involved.53 Hervey’s name came up in a report Detective Constable W. Chamberlain and Detective Sergeant Heathfield of Kent County submitted to the commissioner. An informer told them that Hervey was the gang’s ringleader. In December he was supposedly in France or Germany collecting loot from other jobs and was three days late returning. As a result the others panicked and bungled the robbery at the Hyde Park Hotel. Stewart Cappel, eighteen to nineteen years of age, was a friend of the four accused and, along with his sister Betty Cappel, about twenty, visited Lonsdale in Brixton on January 14 or 15. Stewart, having suspicious amounts of money on occasion, the informant said, was somehow involved in the robbery. The informant was afraid that if the gang found out that Cappel passed on information they would punish him.54 The snitch concluded by suggesting that if the rings had not yet been located, he could help. A few days later another unnamed informant, being questioned about his link with Lonsdale and Harley, mentioned the relationship between Lonsdale, Hervey, and Stewart Cappel. The authorities knew that Lonsdale and Hervey were involved in delivering arms to the Spanish right-wing rebels. The informant said that Stewart Cappel was also engaged in the scheme and all three could be connected to the Hyde Park Hotel robbery.55
Burt set out to squash these rumors. Writing to the superintendent, he said that it was true that Miss Cappel of 26 Basil Street, Knightsbridge, visited Brixton Prison on January 14, but she saw Wilmer and Jenkins, not Lonsdale. Turning to the report of the superintendent of the Kent County Constabulary, who had suggested that Victor Hervey was an accomplice of the four accused, Burt stated categorically: “I know the Hon. Victor Hervey, son of Lord Hervey, very well, and I am aware that he is associated with the four men in custody, but I am satisfied that he is in no way implicated in the matter of robbery which is now before the Court.”56 Despite such assertions, there were some who continued to believe that Hervey’s relationship with the Mayfair playboys had yet to be clarified.
The solicitor Reginald Thomas Philip Bennett, of Speed and Company, also played a shadowy role in the proceedings. Wilmer claimed that he spent most of December 20, the day of the Hyde Park Hotel robbery, dealing with Bennett. Harley sought similar cover. On December 30, Horst Robert Leopold Bonsack informed the police that the day of the robbery a man believed to be Harley offered Bennett £100 to support his alibi. According to Bonsack the unscrupulous Bennett had once been struck off the Law Register. He added that Jenkins had been robbed of £600—probably by his colleagues—but had not called the police. Bennett somehow resolved the dispute.57
Equally mysterious was the fact that the cash-strapped Harley suddenly came into a sizeable amount of money. In early February the governor of Brixton Prison notified Scotland Yard that Harley’s brother had visited the prisoner. A prison officer sat in on the meeting and reported that Harley told his brother (now living at 171a High Street, Kensington) to see Mr. Ellis Lincoln, of 118 Upper Street, Islington—a solicitor who had not until now acted for Harley. He wanted Lincoln to help him open a bank account with £1,000. He asked his brother to contact A. Kramer (Wilmer and Lonsdale’s solicitor), who would give him a sealed packet that he was to take to the bank. He was not to tell Harley’s current solicitor, Emanuel Garber, anything about this transaction, but he was to reassure Lincoln that it was “perfectly honest money.” On the way back to his cell Harley appeared anxious to tell the officer that these transactions were necessary since his old bank asked him to close his account with them.58 But where did the money come from? What did he do to earn it? Was he being paid to take the fall for the Hyde Park Hotel robbery or, at the very least, not to compromise a wealthy friend?
The police did not pursue such issues. They congratulated themselves on a job well done and split the £80 of reward money provided by Lloyds. Chief Inspector Burt received £21, Detective Inspector Fabian £17, and so on down to Detective Lewis at £5.59 Burt noted the trial “created unusual interest and publicity.”60 He recognized the assistance provided by the police in Oxford (who were given £20); Moreton-in-Marsh, Gloucestershire; Newbury, Berkshire; and Andover, Hampshire.61 In London most of the investigation was the work of B Division, with help from Fabian from C Division and Inspector Cherrill of the Fingerprint Bureau. Burt particularly hailed the contribution of Fabian, who was responsible for Harley’s second statement and the handing over of the rings. A March report praised the work of both Burt and Fabian. Without their skillful handling of the prisoners, it stated, difficulties would have arisen. What the police meant by this cryptic remark was not clarified. Did it relate to their use of informants? Or aggressive interrogation techniques? The author of the report restricted himself to mysteriously concluding, “The details of it do not and cannot appear on this file.”62
Scotland Yard’s work did not end with the filing of the robbery charges. Between the time of the arrests of the suspects in December 1937 and their trial in February 1938 police and newspaper reporters in Britain and North America continued to collect information on the backgrounds of the four young detainees. The result was a detailed and disturbing portrait of the dark side of London’s polite society.