Looking to the Past for Inspiration

By H L Marsay

This August sees the release of The Mystery of the Missing Frenchman, the third book in my Lady in Blue series. The series was inspired by the brave suffragettes who began volunteer patrols to support the police when the First World War broke out. However, I stumbled across these amazing women quite by chance. 

A few years ago, I was thinking of writing a mystery series with a female retired police superintendent as the main character. I was unsure what decade I should set it in. I needed to find out when the first woman was appointed to this rank in the UK (there was no point setting it in the 1980s if there were no female superintendents until the 1990s!). So, I started researching and that’s when I encountered Dorothy Peto and the Women Police Volunteers. I was so impressed by their story, that I decided to write about them instead.

When war with Germany was declared in 1914, the regular police were understaffed as so many young men had left their jobs and joined the army to fight for king and country. This coupled with the increase in refugees from war torn Europe arriving in London, meant there was a real need for the Women Police Volunteers. Unfortunately, to begin with, the male politicians and senior officers at Scotland Yard were extremely sceptical about women being involved in police work of any kind. However, the early volunteer patrols were such a success that soon police forces all over the country were recruiting women and offering to pay them too. The Women Police Volunteers soon became the Women’s Police Service.

The main character in the Lady in Blue Mysteries is Dorothy Peto, a young woman whose father was a famous landscape artist and whose grandfather was a wealthy baronet. The real Dorothy was one of the first young ladies to join the Women Police Volunteers. Although, she spent much of the war based in Bath and Bristol, she went on to become the first female superintendent at the Metropolitan Police. The other founding members of the WPV who feature in the series are the eccentric philanthropist Margaret Damer Dawson, her partner Mary Sophia Allen and Nina Boyle, the charismatic campaigner and journalist.

At the beginning of The Mystery of the Missing Frenchman, we learn that Dorothy has been seconded to Scotland Yard to work with Inspector Derwent and his team of detectives. They are involved in investigating a string of burglaries in London where wealthy victims have had their valuable jewels stolen. However, their work is interrupted by the arrival of the handsome and charming Colonel Lamarchant, who works for the Deuxieme Bureau, the French secret service. The colonel hopes the team at Scotland Yard will help him discover what has happened to his cousin, the Marquis de Nagay, who has gone missing after arriving in England with some priceless sapphires. 

Along with the inspector and the colonel, Dorothy visits Stray Park, a large country house in Yorkshire that has become an army hospital and was the last place the marquis was known to have visited. During the war, many large country houses were turned into hospitals for injured soldiers returning from the front, including Wrest Park (my inspiration for Stray Park) that was partly funded by the famous playwright, J M Barrie. At Stray Park, Dorothy meets Lady Birbeck. The elderly lady is in mourning for her grandson who was a friend of the missing Frenchman. She assures Dorothy the marquis was safe and well when he left her house for a business appointment.

While Dorothy is away in Yorkshire, a body is discovered close to Kings Cross station in London. Although the dead man is wearing the clothes and ring belonging to the missing Frenchman, he turns out to be an Englishman who worked for a heating company. Dorothy begins to wonder if there could be a link between the jewellery thefts and the missing young man. She tries to confide in her brother, who works for Military Intelligence, but she soon finds herself tangled in a complicated web of communist agitators, pacifists and Irish republicans. It becomes impossible to know who she can trust.

As always when writing one on the Lady in Blue Mysteries, I needed to spend hours researching this period of our history. In particular, for The Mystery of the Missing Frenchman, I focused on subjects as diverse as early central heating systems, the Communist Party, Irish Republicans, army hospitals and military intelligence in France and Britain. I found this last subject particularly fascinating. 

It was widely supposed by the rest of Europe that Britain had an extensive spy network in place and that it had been operating since the days of Sir Francis Walsingham, spymaster to Queen Elizabeth the First. However, this wasn’t the case. At the outbreak of war in 1914, the Secret Service Bureau which came to be known as MI5, had only sixteen employees. Like the police, with so many men fighting abroad, MI5 had to look to women to solve their problem of staff shortages. MI5 recruited their female staff from leading girls’ schools and universities such as, Cheltenham Ladies College, Royal Holloway and St Hugh’s and Somerville Colleges at Oxford University. These women played a more important role in the Security Service than in any other wartime government department. According to recruitment records from the time, they were required to possess, ‘intelligence, diligence and, above all, reticence’. I am sure Dorothy and the other members of the Women Police Volunteers shared the first two qualities but perhaps not the last.

THE MYSTERY OF THE MISSING FRENCHMAN

Inspired by the remarkable life of Dorothy Peto, the Metropolitan Police’s first female superintendent.

Even in war, your enemies can linger too close to home…

While war and revolution continue to ravage Europe, Dorothy Peto embraces her new role at Scotland Yard as she and several detectives investigate a series of jewel thefts. Then Dorothy is tasked with assisting the inscrutable Inspector Derwent and the charming Colonel Cartier to find a missing French aristocrat. Their enquiries take them to a country house in Yorkshire, that’s been converted to a hospital for wounded soldiers and was the last place the Frenchman visited. However, the more questions they ask, the more questions they have.

When the body of a man suspected of being the marquis is discovered, the investigative team returns to London, but the dead man is a stranger. Dorothy speculates that the death, the jewel thefts and the missing Frenchman may be connected. She finds herself tangled in a web of conscientious objectors, Irish republicans and communist agitators, and not everyone is who they appear to be.

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