Secret service agents claimed he had pulled a gun on them, but Collins dismissed this. ‘There is not the slightest doubt that there was no intention whatever to arrest Mr Lynch,’ he wrote. ‘Neither is there the slightest doubt that he was not in possession of a revolver.’ Neligan informed Collins that Captain Baggallay, a one-legged courts martial officer had telephoned Dublin Castle about Lynch’s presence in the hotel, and the men responsible for the actual shooting were two undercover officers using the names Paddy McMahon and Peel, each a nom de guerre. There was a suggestion that John Lynch was mistaken for Liam Lynch, an IRA commandant, but that was hardly likely seeing that there was an extreme difference in their ages. John Lynch was simply a Sinn Féiner and this had become a capital offence as far as the British secret service was concerned. Collins had no doubts and neither had the British, and this was not just the regular officers and men who were involved but the generals at the top, the prime minister, Lloyd George, and the leader of the Conservative Party, Andrew Bonar Law.
