Guest Post: "C" of the British Secret Service

 [John Bellen, known in the feline blogosphere for "I Have Three Cats," has recently published on Amazon "Inductions Dangerous," a collection of short stories centered around the adventures of a fictional British Intelligence agent during the 1920s.  I so enjoyed the book that I asked him to provide a relevant real-life story for this blog.  He kindly responded with this following account about a man who played an important role in the development of Britain's modern Secret Service.  Take it away, John!]

I have sometimes read that the British Secret Service traces its descent back to Elizabethan times. Alas, such an association is untrue. Certainly, Sir Francis Walsingham, Queen Elizabeth I’s highly capable secretary of state, organised an excellent secret service, but that is what it was: A secret service, not THE Secret Service. A personal system, Walsingham ran it, largely paid for it and placed it at the service of his monarch and country. It died with him.

John Thurloe, secretary to the Council of State during the Cromwell’s regime, also directed an efficient secret service – aided no doubt by his duties as postmaster-general – in order to support the Commonwealth government. His organisation, like Walsingham’s, was personal, and did not survive the Restoration.

It was not until the Victorian era, when Britain began to take the responsibilities of empire seriously, that the seeds of a real secret service were planted. In 1873, the War Office appointed its first Director of Military Intelligence. Though this officer’s department was to collect information of value to the government and army, there was not much thought of secret work. Indeed, to this day, much, if not most, worthwhile intelligence is gathered openly, through newspapers and other media, handbooks and reports issued by foreign governments and, of course, through military, naval and air attachés. These officers, working out of embassies, attend by invitation foreign army and navy manoeuvres, dinners, conferences; in other words, there is nothing covert about their business. The British have usually tried to maintain that openness, to guarantee their attachés’ continued availability.

Impetus for the creation of a genuine espionage service came with the ‘spy scare’ of the later Edwardian era. Novelists, adventurers, journalists and eventually politicians in Britain started demanding that something be done about the hordes of German spies allegedly in the country. One stated that the 50,000 German waiters in Britain were spies, while another asserted that 350,000 German soldiers (half the strength of that country’s peace-time army) were secretly resident in England. This led to a spate of ‘invasion literature’. As often happens, each piece of hysteria became evidence for the next.

But the government felt it had to do something, not least because, behind the hysteria, there was a serious and growing concern regarding German intentions. The problem was given to the Committee of Imperial Defence to solve. In October, 1909, it created the Secret Service Bureau. Thus, the modern British Secret Service was born.

Divided into two sections, military and naval, the former was given to a thirty-six year old half-pay army captain named Vernon Kell to run. For the latter, the choice fell on a fifty year old Royal Navy commander on the retired list, Mansfield Smith Cumming, or C, as he came to be called.

Why was C selected? He had joined the Royal Navy as a twelve year old cadet and, until 1885, led the normal life of a good but undistinguished officer: several ships at sea and participation in a naval brigade (sailors used to supplement artillery or infantry on land). Then, at only twenty-six, he retired “(unfit) on Active Half Pay”. This is the first mystery of C’s life. There is no indication why he was ‘unfit’; family tradition suggests sea-sickness, but his subsequent enjoyment of small boats, on lake, river and ocean, counters this.

A smaller mystery asks what C did for the next thirteen years, though we know he spent some, if not all, of that time as first, private secretary to the Earl of Meath, then, as agent for that aristocrat’s estates in Ireland, where C’s kindness and humour won him friends among a people with no reason to like a landlord’s man.

Then, he was returned to the navy. His ‘unfitness’ may have been cured, or it may be that his new posting – Superintendent of Boom Defences (maritime barriers) at Southampton – did not need complete health. But stories of his agility – climbing rigging and masts, and diving into the sea in winter to clear a fouled propeller – indicate a man even healthier than his age should allow. In any case, C, though reduced in rank so that he could be re-employed, seemed to enjoy his time immensely. His joviality was a characteristic.

Also characteristic was his boyish sense of adventure, often with a disregard for danger. C loved mechanics, and, along with boats, had a fondness for motor-cars, becoming an early member of the Royal Automobile Club. The early days of motoring were filled with hazards but he happily raced cars in speed and endurance tests and reconnoitered routes for the RAC over roads that had never heard internal combustion. Not content with conquering the land and sea (he had helped found the Royal Motor Yacht Club in 1905), he was a founding member of the Royal Aero Club in 1906, though he didn’t obtain his ‘aviator’s certificate’ for seven years – when he was 54.

This was the man plucked from the south coast of England and plopped into Whitehall to run the Secret Service. Why C? It’s true that a member of the Committee of Imperial Defence was one of his old captains, now an admiral. It’s true that he knew Winston Churchill, by that time a cabinet member. C had also toured Europe examining the possibilities afforded by small-boat engines (then more advanced on the Continent than in Britain); it may be that his report and observations had been remembered. Aside from these clues, the mystery of his selection remains.

Once established, however, the Secret Service Bureau grew but slowly. Kell (‘K’) and C shared one clerk, but were alone in their respective departments; the British Secret Service, feared and envied by the great powers of the world, was, in reality, one middle-aged naval officer.

Though his responsibilities were initially stated as providing information to the Admiralty, his boss was the War Office: C was administratively under the War Office’s Directorate of Military Operations’ fifth branch (MO5). This created problems, as MO5 favoured K, and handed over to him a number of agents already being run; this, despite the clarified division of labour that put foreign espionage into C’s hands. He was initially even refused permission to view War Office records. He spent most of his first months waiting in his office in Victoria Street to be contacted – even though only his bosses knew he was there. At one point, he seriously considered resigning from this vaguely Kafka-esque situation, thinking he would leave government service ‘discredited’.

With encouragement from some in the Admiralty, C persevered, and, slowly, managed to wrest some control for his tiny department from others. He started meeting agents alone – previously, he had to have a colleague present – learned German to better understand some contacts, and gradually built a respectable position for himself. That others valued him is seen in his being made a Companion of the Order of the Bath, on the eve of the Great War.

This is no place to describe the large and complicated history of the Secret Service in that gigantic conflict. It’s sufficient to note that at the war’s start, headquarters comprised four officers, four clerks, and five others. By 1917, there were more than forty officers, while staff abroad had increased ‘out of all bounds’. The number of agents must have been staggering. C was knighted in 1919. (For those – such as myself - who keep track of such things, the service became officially known as MO5j in 1914; MI1c in early 1916; MI6 in 1920 – when that designation was left empty by the war-time censorship department that had used it was disbanded. But by then, its members just called it the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS).)

C rightly deserves the overused term ‘legendary’, for there are actual legends about him. They often concern his love of speed, inherited, with tragic results, by his son Alaister. The younger Cumming was an officer in a Highland regiment when the Great War broke out, and his father went to France to visit him. Alastair was behind the wheel of a Rolls Royce, with his father as passenger. The young man lost control of the car when a tire blew and there was a horrible wreck. Alastair received mortal injuries, while C was trapped under the car. Hearing his son mutter in discomfort, C used a penknife to cut off the remains of his leg, freeing himself to go to his boy. Whether or not the last part is true, it was believed even by so cynical a man as Compton Mackenzie, then chief of C’s Aegean Sea operations, and later a best-selling author. The actions attributed to C were viewed as perfectly credible by all who knew him.

There were many stories told of him, such as how he had his missing leg replaced by one of cork; he would unnerve guests by absent-mindedly sticking a letter-opener into it. He used a child’s scooter to propel himself around the corridors of Secret Service headquarters. He was a ‘gay dog’ who ‘put up his eyeglass [monocle] at the ladies’. Indeed, he was probably the source of the Secret Service tradition of having the prettiest secretaries in Whitehall. He collected motor-cars, having at one time, six, along with a motorcycle with sidecar, and a Great War tank, on which he would take children for rides. C was a favourite with youngsters, whether related by blood or marriage, or just proximity. He never lost his sense of fun, and would sometimes tell a field operator that after the war, the two of them would go spying together in disguise, as it was ‘capital sport’.

Certainly, he could be ruthless; one didn’t manage a world-wide espionage organisation otherwise. He was also efficient and intelligent: it was he who first divided an espionage service into different collection and analysis departments, so that those who gathered the information passed it on to cooler, disinterested parties for study. It may be too that he coined the term ‘station’ for secret service units permanently based abroad. In the navy, a station referred to a squadron of ships permanently assigned to a particular location (eg. the China Station, the South America Station.)

But the weight of running his one-man show, which eventually employed thousands, took its toll, and Sir Mansfield Smith Cumming died in 1923, still ‘in harness’, passing away while sitting in his office, at 64; younger than many, older than most, at the end of a very busy life. C probably would have been happy with that.

Horror in West Texas: The Frome Murders

"Pomona Progress Bulletin," April 6, 1938, via Newspapers.com

The Frome family of Berkeley, California exemplified mid-20th century American prosperity.  Weston Frome, a top executive at Atlas Powder Company, made all the money needed to give his wife Hazel and his two daughters, Nancy and Mada, a life of pampered contentment.  The three attractive, chic Frome women traveled extensively, shopped, and took a prominent part in Bay Area society.  The Fromes could have stepped out of a magazine ad.  As an icing on the cake of the family’s seemingly endless good fortune, Weston Frome won a lottery where the prize was a lavishly equipped, brand-new silver Packard.  He gave the car to Nancy as a college graduation present.

This proved to be the worst decision of his life.

1938 did not start out well for Nancy.  Her fiance, a San Francisco optometrist, broke their engagement.  Upset and anxious to “get away from it all,” in March, twenty-three year old Nancy announced that she would like to take a train cross-country to visit her sister, who was married to an active-duty Marine stationed in South Carolina.  However, Hazel worried about her young daughter making such a long trip on her own.  She had an alternate idea: how about if the two of them use Nancy’s plush new car to drive there?  For a mother and daughter who loved traveling, it would be a fun adventure.  Nancy readily agreed, and the pair were soon on their way.

The road trip was uneventful until they reached West Texas, where the Packard developed engine trouble.  The local auto repair shop had to send for replacement parts for the luxury car, leading to an unavoidable delay before it could be fixed.  Rather than just sit in their El Paso hotel room, the women took a tour of the town and its sister city, Juarez, Mexico.  Five days later, on Wednesday, March 30, their car was finally ready for them.  When the Fromes came to pick up the Packard, they asked for directions to Dallas, and, at about 10:30 a.m., resumed their trip.  

The following afternoon, two army surveyors found the Packard parked on the side of a lonely road eleven miles west of the town of Balmorhea.  They reported the find to their sergeant, who in his turn notified the Reeves County sheriff’s office.

The two deputies who arrived at the scene were baffled.  The car was unlocked, and the keys in the ignition.  No luggage or anything that would identify the car’s owner was found.  Aside from a few minor scratches, the car was in perfect condition.  Why would anyone abandon an expensive auto out in the middle of nowhere?

The California license plate enabled the sheriff, Louis Robertson, to at least determine who owned the car.  When Weston Frome was contacted, he became hysterical, immediately assuming that his wife and daughter were both dead.

A search was immediately launched using all of West Texas’ available resources.  Robertson drove the Packard back along the route the Fromes had taken, asking at every stop if anyone remembered the car and the women driving it.  No one had.  Law enforcement, volunteers and members of the Civilian Conservation Corps searched the area on foot and horseback.  The Coast Guard was called in.  Despite these efforts, no clues to the women’s disappearance were found until five days later, when an El Paso truck driver named Jim Milam went to police with a strange story. Early Wednesday afternoon, as he was driving from El Paso to Wickett, a silver Packard had passed Milam about 13 miles west of Sierra Blanca. Closely following the Packard was a dark coupe, with two license plates and white writing on the right door. Both cars were traveling east. Two hours later, six miles east of Van Horn, he saw the same coupe driving toward him, slowly, along the edge of the highway. A woman was driving. Twenty miles later, the Packard passed him again, headed east and driven by a man. Following the Packard was the coupe with the female driver. Milam took investigators to the spot. As they searched the area, it was Milam who found the bodies of Hazel and Nancy Frome.

Their deaths had been unusually brutal.  Although both were nearly naked, neither woman had been sexually assaulted.  However, they were gruesomely abused in other ways.  They had been badly beaten, one of Hazel’s forearms looked like the flesh had been bitten off, and Nancy’s right hand had been burned to the bone, probably from a cigar or cigarette.  Death finally came when they were shot execution-style in the head.  It was as if someone had tortured the women in order to obtain something that the Fromes wouldn’t or couldn’t provide.  A massive manhunt was instantly launched to find these very, very dangerous murderers.

"El Paso Times," June 28, 1981

Investigators were flooded with tips.  Other motorists remembered that on the day the Fromes disappeared, the Packard seemed to be followed by another car containing several people, but that promising clue wound up going nowhere.  At first, law enforcement assumed the obviously wealthy women were the victims of a random highway robbery.  However, the fact that a diamond watch and Hazel’s gold wedding ring were left inside the car forced them to abandon that theory.  Perhaps, some lawmen thought, the women were mistaken for drug smugglers, and tortured to force them to turn over their stash of dope?  The El Paso sheriff was of the opinion that the savagery of the murders indicated a personal motive; that someone they knew from California was for some reason inspired to take a bloody revenge on the women.  Or maybe, he suggested, the Fromes were murdered by people they encountered in Juarez?

As promising as all these theories initially sounded, no real evidence could be found for any of them.  For all their efforts, law enforcement came up with no solid leads, let alone likely suspects, for the very sinister deaths of Hazel and Nancy Frome.  It remains one of Texas’ creepiest murder mysteries.

Over the years, there have, of course, been efforts by armchair detectives to solve the case.  One of the more interesting scenarios was laid out by former journalist Clint Richmond in his 2014 book “Fetch the Devil.”  It is built around the fact that in 1930s San Francisco, the German consulate was a hotbed of Nazi spies led by Baron Manfred von Killinger.  At the time of the murders, there were also many German agents operating around the Mexican border.

Richmond believed that Weston Frome, as a German-born executive of a major explosives company, was targeted by the Nazis in order to learn his business’ secrets.  However, Frome rebuffed all efforts to either bribe or blackmail him.  The German agents then went after the more vulnerable quarry: Weston’s wife and daughter.

Richmond noted that while the Fromes were stranded in their El Paso hotel, Nancy came down with a bad cold.  As the regular hotel doctor was away, a hotel bellboy referred them to a local doctor, Wolfgang Ebell.  Unfortunately for the Fromes, Dr. Ebell was part of an extensive Nazi spy chain which operated through San Francisco, Latin America, and Berlin.  Hazel was a chatty, outgoing woman, so Richmond thought it likely that when she learned the doctor was German, she mentioned to him her husband’s similar ancestry, as well as his important position at Atlas Powder Company.

Ebell, according to this scenario, called his boss von Killinger to report his encounter with the women.  The spymaster instantly recognized the Frome name, and saw his opportunity to finally get some leverage over Weston.  Von Killinger instructed Ebell to do everything in his power to exploit this unexpected gift while the women were still in the area.

Ebell first sent two Russians, Romano Trotsky and G.N. Gepge, to try to romance the Frome women.  However, the mother and daughter merely laughed off their efforts.  While the Fromes were at the hotel, a letter was dropped off for Hazel at the front desk.  Although it is not known what the letter said, it clearly greatly upset both women.  Richmond theorized that the Nazi agents wrote to Hazel threatening to expose Weston’s peccadilloes, either real or fictional.  It caused the two panicked women to flee as soon as they could.

When Ebell learned the Fromes were preparing to leave, he quickly enlisted Trotsky, Gepge, and an unidentified woman in a plan to waylay the mother and daughter.  On the remote Highway 80, the spies were able to force the Packard off the road.  After that, it was a simple matter to detain the Fromes at gunpoint.  The men forced their way into the Packard, ordering Nancy to drive.  Ebell’s female agent followed them in Ebell’s car.  The Fromes were taken to some isolated place where Ebell’s thugs could question them under torture.  Meanwhile, Ebell searched the Packard for the incriminating letter that Hazel had received.  Unable to find it, he abandoned the car, taking the Frome luggage to be searched at his leisure.

Despite the terrible abuse the women suffered, they proved to be as stubbornly uncooperative as Weston had been.  When Ebell reported to von Killinger his failure to get information out of the Fromes, the spymaster said that there was no other option but to murder them.  Accordingly, the women--probably already nearly dead after hours of torture--were brought to the remote area where their bodies were later discovered, and shot.

The debacle of the attempt to recruit the Frome women--and the even more unwelcome publicity the murders received--caused the spies to quickly tie up loose ends.  The bellboy who had summoned Ebell to treat Nancy’s cold was kidnapped, taken into Mexico, and killed.  Baron von Killinger was recalled to Germany, far away from the reach of any investigators who might stumble across the link between his spy ring and two now-infamous murders.  By the time Dr. Ebell was arrested in December 1941, the Frome case was so cold, it never occurred to anyone to note his possible connection to the mystery.  The Nazi spies may have failed in their espionage activities against the Fromes, but they were very successful when it came to killing them.

Richmond’s scenario may sound like something out of a cheesy spy thriller, but it is not impossible, and would explain many of the odder elements of these unusually odd murders.  It is still possible that some day, some information will emerge to prove whether or not his theory is correct.

[Note: El Paso sheriff Chris Fox, who spent years trying to solve this case, did manage to uncover a couple of interesting details which might--or might not--have been significant.  When he interviewed family members, he learned that Weston and Hazel Frome had marital problems for some years--in fact, they were separated at the time Hazel made her fatal road trip.

Also, in one of those unbelievable coincidences which often dot true-crime cases, it transpired that on the day the Fromes disappeared, there was another silver Packard with California plates containing two women on Highway 80.  Fox was able to contact these women, and satisfied himself that they had no connection to the case.  However, this did lead some people to wonder if perhaps the Fromes had been mistaken for someone else.]