later when Mrs Krafft visited the offices of Muller & Company, Stopford was in a car parked outside, accompanied by two of the sales assistants from Selfridges. They positively identified her as the woman who had changed the banknotes. Stopford later reported:
I should describe Mrs. Krafft as being of rather above medium height and probably taller than she looks owing to the fact that she is decidedly thickly built and has something of a flat-footed walk giving the impression of being stiff at the hips. She is full faced with pale complexion and has a typical German Hausfrau appearance. She gives the impression of being moderately well dressed for an elderly lady, but is certainly not smart. She has rather an active look in her eyes, and I should say that her eyes, though not beautiful, are somewhat striking. She had dressed in a very dark fur coat and wore a bunch of violets. She had rather pointed black shoes. Her toes being a little turned out. She wore a black felt hat with a high crown with a big floppy brim which turned down. Her hair is dark, going grey, and dressed in a bun at the back. She was not wearing glasses, and carried a medium sized black ladies handbag.
A widow of German extraction, Mrs Krafft was discovered to have made bank withdrawals coinciding with the cash payments received anonymously in the mail by S NOW . Interception of her mail revealed that she was in correspondence with a niece in Copenhagen and planned to travel to Fiji, where she had inherited a coconut plantation from her late husband. Then there was an embarrassing fiasco when, at MI5’s request, the Secret Intelligence Service made some not very discreet enquiries about her niece in Denmark, which would become a great cause for concern. Guy Liddell noted in his diary that:
There has been a bad slip-up in the S NOW case. Some time ago Jock Whyte wrote to SIS asking for enquiries to be made about Editha Dargle in Copenhagen . The Danish police blundered in and asked her whether she knew a Mrs Krafft, hence a letter from Editha Dargel to Krafft telling her not to correspond in future.
This awkward incident could have had disastrous consequences for S NOW , and for a while his transmissions were closed down, but after a short periodof inactivity, contact was resumed. Meanwhile, the surveillance on Mathilde Krafft continued until she was later arrested and detained at Aylesbury prison.
* * *
In early December 1939 Owens moved into a new flat in Richmond and, after consultation with MI5, made arrangements for a further visit to Brussels . His instructions were to complain that he had only received £50 in the last two months, and as he was performing a dangerous job for the Germans he did not consider the pay adequate. Owens had been asked by the Abwehr to take his accounts with him on the trip so MI5 went through them, and the accountant reported ‘from what I can see he has done England for as much money as he can.’
S NOW was instructed that if anything went wrong on the mission he was to send a wire to Lily, signing himself as ‘Owen’. He was to ask for instructions concerning C HARLIE , and to query why things were moving so slowly.
When Owens arrived in Brussels, Dr Rantzau told him that he had been called to Berlin to explain why the weather reports had been so poor. Rantzau had made excuses for Owens by saying that his agent could not be expected to give accurate reports at night in the black-out, but it had been pointed out that the reports had not matched those transmitted from Ireland and Holland. As a result, Owens was instructed to gather his weather data between 12 noon and 2 p.m. Owens was also told that his signals had not been coming through well so his call sign was to be changed to OIK, with the German station using CTA. He was to start transmitting again at 7.15 p.m. on 26 December, and the weather code would also be altered to five letter groups where the first and last group were to start and end with the letter
I should describe Mrs. Krafft as being of rather above medium height and probably taller than she looks owing to the fact that she is decidedly thickly built and has something of a flat-footed walk giving the impression of being stiff at the hips. She is full faced with pale complexion and has a typical German Hausfrau appearance. She gives the impression of being moderately well dressed for an elderly lady, but is certainly not smart. She has rather an active look in her eyes, and I should say that her eyes, though not beautiful, are somewhat striking. She had dressed in a very dark fur coat and wore a bunch of violets. She had rather pointed black shoes. Her toes being a little turned out. She wore a black felt hat with a high crown with a big floppy brim which turned down. Her hair is dark, going grey, and dressed in a bun at the back. She was not wearing glasses, and carried a medium sized black ladies handbag.
A widow of German extraction, Mrs Krafft was discovered to have made bank withdrawals coinciding with the cash payments received anonymously in the mail by S NOW . Interception of her mail revealed that she was in correspondence with a niece in Copenhagen and planned to travel to Fiji, where she had inherited a coconut plantation from her late husband. Then there was an embarrassing fiasco when, at MI5’s request, the Secret Intelligence Service made some not very discreet enquiries about her niece in Denmark, which would become a great cause for concern. Guy Liddell noted in his diary that:
There has been a bad slip-up in the S NOW case. Some time ago Jock Whyte wrote to SIS asking for enquiries to be made about Editha Dargle in Copenhagen . The Danish police blundered in and asked her whether she knew a Mrs Krafft, hence a letter from Editha Dargel to Krafft telling her not to correspond in future.
This awkward incident could have had disastrous consequences for S NOW , and for a while his transmissions were closed down, but after a short periodof inactivity, contact was resumed. Meanwhile, the surveillance on Mathilde Krafft continued until she was later arrested and detained at Aylesbury prison.
* * *
In early December 1939 Owens moved into a new flat in Richmond and, after consultation with MI5, made arrangements for a further visit to Brussels . His instructions were to complain that he had only received £50 in the last two months, and as he was performing a dangerous job for the Germans he did not consider the pay adequate. Owens had been asked by the Abwehr to take his accounts with him on the trip so MI5 went through them, and the accountant reported ‘from what I can see he has done England for as much money as he can.’
S NOW was instructed that if anything went wrong on the mission he was to send a wire to Lily, signing himself as ‘Owen’. He was to ask for instructions concerning C HARLIE , and to query why things were moving so slowly.
When Owens arrived in Brussels, Dr Rantzau told him that he had been called to Berlin to explain why the weather reports had been so poor. Rantzau had made excuses for Owens by saying that his agent could not be expected to give accurate reports at night in the black-out, but it had been pointed out that the reports had not matched those transmitted from Ireland and Holland. As a result, Owens was instructed to gather his weather data between 12 noon and 2 p.m. Owens was also told that his signals had not been coming through well so his call sign was to be changed to OIK, with the German station using CTA. He was to start transmitting again at 7.15 p.m. on 26 December, and the weather code would also be altered to five letter groups where the first and last group were to start and end with the letter
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