Buckingham Follies, Act II

By Spencer Davidson

How Fagan managed his sunrise visit to the Queen

London's strangest drama of the summer season continued in the Bow Street Magistrates' Court last week. Michael Fagan, 33, the unemployed laborer who had stunned Britain by wandering into Queen Elizabeth's bedroom three weeks ago, was brought into court for a bizarre 17-min. bail hearing. (Bail was denied.) At the same time, a Scotland Yard investigation of the affair revealed just how somnolent the Queen's protection had been during Fagan's peregrination through Buckingham Palace.

Trespass is not illegal under English law; criminal intent must be proved. Since Fagan did not threaten to harm the Queen, he was charged with stealing half a bottle of wine worth $5.40 during an earlier visit to the palace on June 7.

During the brief hearing last week, Faganpropped shoeless feet on a wrought-iron rail at the front of the prisoner's dock, laughed and waved to his wife Christine and mother Ivy. When his solicitor, Maurice Nadeem, questioned whether Fagan could still pose a threat to the Queen after this week's security improvements, the prisoner bristled. "I told you not to fetch her name up," Fagan said, glaring. "I would rather plead guilty than have her name dragged into this."

"I don't want him asking for bail," Fagan persisted. "I'd rather go back to the cells." Detective Chief Superintendent Trevor Lloyd-Hughes agreed, warning that Fagan might skip trial, commit other crimes or hurt himself. "His present state of mind is such that his movements and actions are totally unpredictable," the policeman said. "He has serious personal problems and has suicidal tendencies. He has twice tried to slash his wrists, and the marks are still to be seen."

Pagan's suicidal bent, according to Scotland Yard, was what led him to appear at the Queen's bedside with a piece of broken ashtray in hand, dripping blood on the bedclothes from a cut thumb. Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner John Dellow, who carried out the investigation, reported that Pagan's movements had been more extensive than earlier accounts had indicated. Fagan got inside, Dellow said, by climbing a railing near the gates to the Ambassadors' entrance at 6:45 a.m. He was spotted by a policeman, but in the first breakdown of communications, the police control room let the warning slip.

Through an unlocked ground floor window, Faganclimbed into the Stamp Room, where the extensive royal stamp collection is displayed. That set off an alarm, but it was ignored. Fagan went back out the same window, shinnied up a drainpipe, removed his sandals and socks, and climbed to another window, which had just been unlocked by a maid. For the next 15 min. or so, reported Dellow, "he moved through the corridors of the palace unchallenged. One member of the palace domestic staff remembers seeing him, but his behavior was not sufficiently suspicious to cause her to raise the alarm." He also slipped through warning devices that had been improperly adjusted and finally, Fagan told police, he found the private apartments by "following the pictures" along the gallery that connects to the Queen's quarters.

Suicide suddenly occurred to him when he spotted the ashtray. He smashed it and, at 7:15 a.m., entered the royal bedroom carrying a shard. The policeman stationed outside the door had gone off duty at 6 a.m. The footman who relieved him, by custom, was walking the Queen's corgis. Her maid was working near by but with doors closed so as not to disturb the sleeping monarch.

Thus, when Queen Elizabeth awoke, saw Fagan and pressed the button to an alarm bell outside her door, no one heard it. A telephone call to the palace operator for help was forwarded to the police, but none was forthcoming; six minutes later, she called again. She and the maid, who had come into the bedroom, led Fagan into a pantry in search of cigarettes. Returning with the corgis, the footman kept him there smoking until police, as a result of the second call, finally appeared.

Dellow's findings and Home Secretary William Whitelaw's report on it to the Commons last week were harshly critical of palace security. Since the murder in 1979 of Earl Mountbatten, the Queen's cousin, by Irish terrorists, $3.5 million has been spent on electronic beams, microwave barrier fences, closed-circuit TV, remote-controlled locks, reinforced doors and other security measures at Buckingham Palace. Yet Fagan was able to move about at will. The worst failings, however, were human ones. "If police officers had been alert and competent," said Dellow's report sharply, "Fagan would have been apprehended well before he got close to the private apartments." Whitelaw called the failure "appalling."

One reason for the failure, perhaps, was that police duties were split. The local district covered the palace, while a royal squad guarded the Queen. The two details were combined into one last week under Deputy Assistant Commissioner Colin Smith, 41, who scarcely two months ago came to London from a provincial force. Last week, too, the commander of the local district resigned, his highest-ranking subordinate at the palace was transferred, and four other officers face possible disciplinary action. In a way, Fagan could take credit for one thing: his visit presumably tightened security before someone with more sinister motives might attempt to make the same trip. --By Spencer Davidson.

Reported by Jef McAllister/London

With reporting by Jef McAllister

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