Ace of Spies Read Online Free

birth would have been somewhere between March 1868 and April 1869. An exhaustive search of birth records for an Anna Gibson during that period reveal only one person of that name, who was born in Blofield in Norfolk. As this Anna Gibson was not born in London, let alone Clerkenwell, we must either assume an error or omission in the records or that, for whatever reason, Anna misled the family about her name, age or place of birth. The nearest national census to Anna’s year of birth was 1871. By methodically searching the Clerkenwell census returns for two-year-old girls by the name of Anna, we find only one such candidate – Anna Luke, daughter of William and Elizabeth Luke. Anna Luke’s birth certificate shows that she was born on 5 January 1869, and more revealingly that her mother’s maiden name was Gibson. 19
    Can we therefore assume that the Anna Gibson employed by the Thomas household and Anna Luke are one and the same? If so, what motive or reason could Anna have had for adopting her mother’s maiden name? The answer may lie in the circumstances surrounding Anna’s departure from her previous position in Japan, where she had held a post working for a wealthy family. Shortly before Anna’s return to England, a crime passionnel hit the headlines in the Japanese press. In Yokohama, on 22 October 1896, Walter Carew died of arsenic poisoning, and his wife was arrested amid a storm of publicity. As it later emerged in court, Mrs Carew had been having an affair with a young bank clerk. Although found guilty and sentenced to death, Mrs Carew’s sentence was commuted and she was sent back to England to serve out her sentence atAylesbury Prison. At her trial she maintained her innocence and continued to do so on her release from prison in 1910. Until the day she died at the age of ninety in June 1958, she was to maintain that one ‘Anne Luke’ had been involved in her husband’s death.
    To tell the full story of the Carew case, with its many twists and turns, would require a book in its own right. In the context of Hugh Thomas, however, the central question is whether or not there is any tangible evidence to connect ‘Anna Gibson’ with the Carew case. If Anna Gibson spent two years in Japan, and returned to England in late 1896 or early 1897, she must have initially left in late 1894 or early 1895. An exhaustive search of British passport records indicated that no passports were issued to anyone under the name Gibson during late 1894 and early 1895. However, a second search undertaken for the name Luke revealed that on 13 December 1894 a passport was indeed issued to ‘A. Luke’. 20 While there is no conclusive proof that Anna Gibson was Anna Luke, or that she was involved in Carew’s death, the circumstantial evidence does point very strongly to this conclusion.
    Had Rosenblum somehow discovered Anna’s secret and involved her, willingly or unwillingly, in the plot? Towards the end of her life, Margaret spoke of a ‘great wrong’ she had committed earlier in her life, which preyed on her conscience. Was this perhaps a reference to her involvement in the death of her first husband? 21
    Rosenblum, however, was a man without a conscience. The planning and execution of the Thomas murder had all the hallmarks of the skilful cunning, deceit and daring that characterised his later career. If ever there was such a thing as a perfect murder, this is surely a prime candidate. On 22 August 1898 he married Margaret Thomas at Holborn Registery Office. The marriage brought not only the wealth he desired but provided the pretext for the fulfilment of his second major ambition, to discard Sigmund Rosenblum and assume the identity that was to bring him such notoriety: that of Sidney Reilly. This new and plausible identity was, as we shall see later, the key to achieving his desire to return to the land of his birth.

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    S igmund Rosenblum’s identity and origins have confounded writers,