Mask of the Verdoy

by Lecomber, Phil

  ‘FW, Pearson—a little help here!’ cried Harley, getting on his hands and knees to retrieve some of the antidote tablets as the aristocrat began to writhe in her chair, emitting a low, menacing howl.

  ‘My God, her eyes—look at her eyes!’ said Ramsay MacDonald, pushing his chair back away from the table. ‘What on earth is happening to her?’

  ‘Exactly what I said was gonna happen to you,’ said Harley, back on his feet again. ‘Prime Minister—focus now! I need you to pour me a glass of sherry and then use the telephone over there to summon an ambulance. Can you do that?’

  ‘Of course … of course.’ Replied the PM, regaining his composure. He swiftly poured the drink and handed it to Harley, then moved across to the telephone on Lord Wingord’s desk.

  ‘Get a good hold FW, try to stop her thrashing about so,’ said Harley, slipping his brass knuckles out of his jacket pocket.

  ‘Good grief, Harley—no!’

  ‘What? … Oh, don’t be daft! It’s not for that!’

  Harley used the knuckleduster to quickly crush a number of the tablets into a fine powder which he swept into the glass of sherry, mixing it up with his finger. ‘Right, hold her steady, FW. Albert—you pinch her nose … harder … that’s it—keep holding it …’

  As Euphemia opened her mouth to gasp for breath Harley poured in the antidote potion. She coughed and spluttered for a while, but most of the mixture seemed to stay down.

  ‘Alright, let her go—and I’d stand back a bit, if I were you.’

  Pearson and Swales stepped aside as Euphemia began to pant like an exhausted dog, beads of sweat breaking out on her brow and her hair falling loose from its clips. She fixed Harley with her bloodshot eyes and let out a frightening chuckle.

  ‘You’re too late, you idiot! Once the wolf takes hold there’s … no … denying … its … voracious … appetite …’ She slumped forward in her chair.

  ‘The ambulance is on its way,’ said Ramsay MacDonald, approaching cautiously. ‘Well, she seems to have stopped having the convulsions—that’s a good sign, surely?’

  ‘I don’t know, Prime Minister,’ said Harley, shaking his head. ‘Saint Clair—what’s the deal with this antidote? Were we in time, d’you think?’

  ‘What? Oh, I haven’t a clue, old man. After all, how would I know? Most extraordinary behaviour—never seen the like before … Was out in India once—saw a fellow in the grip of typhus—’

  ‘Oh, for Christ’s sake—cheese it! Fellowes—keep an eye on him. Make sure he doesn’t get up to anything dodgy.’

  ‘It would be my pleasure,’ said Fellowes, taking a seat opposite Saint Clair with his pistol in his hand.

  Euphemia now sprang to her feet, causing Pearson to leap back and draw his gun. She struck a dramatic pose—turning her face to the ceiling and placing her arms across her chest, with her long fingers splayed out in a commanding fashion. Then she slowly lowered her head and locked eyes with Harley.

  ‘You’re too late, you fool! There’ll be no turning back now.’

  Although full of venom, her voice was now steady, controlled.

  ‘What are we talking about here, Effie?’ asked Harley, gesturing to Pearson and Swales to move away. ‘The Wolf’s Bite … or the Correction?’

  ‘We will sweep them away as with a flood; they are like a dream, like grass that is renewed in the morning …’

  Now Euphemia slumped back down in her seat, her head low between her knees, her hair tumbling dishevelled to the floor.

  Harley moved a little closer and bent down so that she could hear him.

  ‘You made him up, didn’t you? Your mystery whistler. A little red herring to put me off the scent after Kosevich blew himself up with that unstable dynamite. Clever really. I mean—it took the heat off you, didn’t it? For a while, anyway …’

  He now drew a chair from the table and sat opposite Euphemia, who remained still, with her head down.

  ‘You know, the bit that I don’t get is the eugenics experiments at that clinic. Sterilising all those women—and God knows what else you were getting up to. I mean, the way you deal with those kids, I’ve seen it—it can’t all be acting, can it? You seemed to really care. And you a nurse in the VAD … Isn’t there a nurse’s pledge? Florence Nightingale, weren’t it? Something about devoting yourself to the welfare of those in your care?’

  Euphemia sat up and laughed.

  ‘The trouble with you, George, is you have no vision, no perspective.’ She leant forward and rippled her fingers in front of her eyes. ‘There’s that little brain of yours, chugging away at full pelt, processing all those puerile facts like a miniature combustion engine in that thick skull of yours … focussing all the time on the little man, the individual … whereas those with any real intelligence can see that the problem is on a far bigger scale.’ She pushed herself back and clenched the arms of the chair, gripped momentarily in a spasm of intense pain. After a while she relaxed her grasp and continued. ‘My pledge—not as some lackey nurse, but as a member of the elite Verdoy—is to devote myself to the welfare of the nation … not of the scabrous offspring of the rookeries, the issue of drunken couplings and casual whoring. After all, aren’t they the very microbes infecting the bloodstream? But now, thankfully, we have a cure!’

  ‘Your father would have been so proud.’

  ‘My father? … my father? Oh yes, Sir Richard Daubeney—the great scientist … The man was a fool! More concerned with the welfare of the great unwashed than with centuries of breeding and civilization. Another weak, bleeding-heart liberal applying the sticking plaster to the maimed limb, denying the stench of the gangrene in his nostrils—when what is really needed is to hack the damned thing off!’

  She got to her feet, more animated now, spitting the words out with flecks of saliva, making violent chopping actions with her hand.

  ‘Yes, hack it off, I say! Spare the rod and spoil the child.’

  ‘So is that how you see us all then, Effie—like children?’

  ‘Yes!’ she said, staring at him, incredulous at his ignorance. ‘Of course you are! Oh, but you, George—you’re a little freak of nature, a dancing bear. With your little library of books and all those facts that you gobble up like a child in a sweetshop … Most of the proletariat are lucky if they can read the label on the gin bottle … and yet did that stop the liberal idiots giving them the vote? Oh no! Universal suffrage? My God! These people are not genetically equipped to understand complex political concepts.’

  ‘Where’s that damned ambulance?’ said Ramsay MacDonald, walking to the window and pulling aside the curtain.

  ‘And then there’s the middle classes,’ said Euphemia, pointing at the Prime Minister and laughing. ‘If the proletariat are the infants then the middle classes are surely the spoilt adolescents of this great nation family.’

  The ergot toxin seemed to be taking a stronger hold again, and as she spoke Euphemia began to scratch violently at the palm of her hand, the effects of the poison dancing across her face in tics and spasms.

  ‘Just look at him … look at him! Our glorious Prime Minister … the bastard offspring of a housemaid and a farm labourer!’

  Saint Clair gave a little snort of laughter at this which didn’t go unnoticed by Ramsay MacDonald, who now drained his glass of sherry and sat back down at the table, looking a little shocked.

  Euphemia thrashed her arms for a moment and then clawed at her head, tearing out a clump of hair which she thrust towards Saint Clair.

  ‘How could we let this happen?’ she screamed. ‘All those perfect specimens, those beautiful boys—the product of generations of noble breeding, born to rule, born to lead …’ There were flecks of pink foam showing at the sides of her mouth now. ‘Slaughtered … sacrificed … my darling Rupert … Just think of it, Pel—compare our dear Prime Minister there to Rupert … Rupert! And there were thousands like him … gone … they’re gone, do you understand? Gone forever … And what’s left to us? Why, the runts and the mongre
ls, the stunted and feeble-minded wretches who should have been winnowed out long ago …’ She began to babble now, her words coming in a torrent of shrieks and shouting. ‘And so we must do the winnowing. The few … the extraordinary … the Verdoy! We’ll correct the mistake, won’t we, Pel? Won’t we? Start again … breed out the runts, the thieves and liars, the whores and drunks, the reds and the imbeciles … Yes! Start again! A rebirth, a renaissance … “we will sweep them away as with a flood; they are like a dream, like grass that is renewed in the morning …” and with them will go those childish notions of suffrage and democracy. Good Lord! What more do these people need to convince them that it doesn’t work? Can’t they see what’s happening to civilisation? You mark my words, unless something is done, this century will kill civilization off. I see it lying there, jaundiced—can you see it, Pel? Jaundiced and morbid on the death-bed of the twentieth century; writhing in its last throes, still clutching desperately to a crumpled manifesto; scrawled in the blood of an empire: democracy, liberty, suffrage! But my God! We’re strong enough—aren’t we? We few? We’ll correct it, won’t we? We have the nerve, and the right! We’ll break off that golden bough and start afresh. A new feudal system—that’s it! Then the adults will take charge again. We’ll teach the world again how to rule, how to forge a civilisation … With Pendragon gone we’ll build our new Camelot … Yes, a new Camelot, here … here, on this sceptered isle, this fortress built by nature for herself against infection and the hand of war … “we will sweep them away as with a flood; they are like a dream, like grass that is renewed in the morning; with a flood … a flood; they are like … like grass that is … like grass …”’

  Euphemia collapsed on the floor and began to thrash around violently, blood streaming from her nose, her mouth now clogged with the pink foaming saliva.

  ‘Quick, Albert!’ said Harley, kneeling down. ‘Get some cushions! FW, give me a hand here—I’ve got her ankles, try to grab her arms … That’s enough cushions, Albert; throw them on the floor all around her … that’s right. Have you got your manacles? Alright, help FW … that’s it … Right, cuff her—it’ll stop her hurting herself. That’s it … good … I think we can let go now.’

  Ramsay MacDonald stood up as the clanging of a bell became audible from the street. ‘Thank God for that! At last!’ he said, pulling the curtain aside. ‘Gentlemen—the ambulance has arrived.’

  ‘Good!’ said Swales, putting his jacket back on. ‘Pearson, go outside, would you? Bring them straight through. Oh, and get word to the others to call the search off—I don’t think there can be any doubt that George has discovered exactly what we were looking for … I want the reception hall kept clear of guests for when they take Lady Euphemia out to the ambulance. And I want two officers to go with her and to stay with her at the hospital until they receive further orders … and make sure that they’re armed.’

  ‘Yes sir!’

  ***

  Having been sedated, the patient was bound to a stretcher with leather strops and taken out to the waiting ambulance.

  ‘My God, what a mess!’ said Ramsay MacDonald, watching the stretcher being loaded into the back of the vehicle from the study window.

  ‘Indeed,’ said the General, pouring himself a glass of sherry.

  ‘I’m free to go, I take it, Swales?’ said Saint Clair, getting up from his seat and nonchalantly picking some fluff from his jacket sleeve.

  ‘No, sir, you are not!’ roared Swales, angrily sucking the remnants of the sherry from his copious moustache. ‘You, sir, are under arrest!’

  ‘Oh yes—on what charge, exactly, old boy?’

  Swales turned to Fellowes. ‘Is High Treason still available to us, Constantine?’

  ‘I would suggest not, Sir Frederic, not in this particular case. Nor Treason Felony … perhaps a simple Accessory to Murder?’

  ‘That will do for starters, I suppose. Put him in one of the Q cars and get him away to the Yard.’

  ‘You’re wasting your time, you know—I shall be out within the hour. The Lord Chancellor is a personal friend of mine.’

  ‘That’s as may be, Sir Pelham,’ said Ramsay MacDonald, looking sternly at the baronet, his thumbs hooked into the armholes of his waistcoat. ‘But as a member of the Cabinet the Lord Chancellor answers to me!’ He turned to Swales. ‘In my opinion, General, there can be no doubt that Sir Pelham is implicated in this sorry affair to some degree. You’ll have my full backing in using all the resources necessary to discover just how far that involvement goes. Take him away Mr. Fellowes!’

  ‘Yes, Prime Minister … If you would, Sir Pelham?’ said Fellowes, ushering Saint Clair towards the door.

  ‘Keep your filthy hands to yourself, Jew-boy!’ spat Saint Clair, vehemently, finally letting the mask slip to reveal his anger and frustration.

  He strode out of the door with his head held high—and Fellowes’ service revolver pushed firmly into the small of his back.

  ‘What was all that, FW?’ asked Harley, flicking a Gold Flake out of the packet. ‘Fellowes isn’t Jewish, is he?’

  ‘Actually, now you come to mention it, I believe he is—on his mother’s side, I think.’

  ‘So that’s what he meant about having a personal interest in this one. But how would Saint Clair have known that?’

  ‘Sir Pelham is a very resourceful individual, Mr. Harley,’ said Ramsay MacDonald, distributing the last of the sherry into three glasses and passing them round. ‘I’m afraid we have all made a rather serious enemy this evening … However, if it wasn’t for your quick thinking and decisive action I fear I would no longer have the wherewithal to recall my own name, let alone worry about making enemies of baronets. So—here’s to your good health, Mr. Harley! I am forever in your debt,’

  ‘Hear! Hear!’ said Swales. ‘Well said, Prime Minister … Although, you know George, you had me going there for a while. I was convinced that we’d got it wrong. Tell me something—how did you know what those little cachous really were?’

  ‘Hmm?’ murmured Harley, obviously distracted by something.

  ‘The antidote tablets, George—how did you identify them?’

  ‘Oh, it was the little enamelled box they were in—on the lid was the image of a saint holding the baby Jesus and a lily—St Anthony. I recognized it from the stained glass window in the Chantry Hall chapel. It was too much of a coincidence—St Anthony’s fire, and all that … and she’s too bright to have risked getting those cakes mixed up without some kind of a safety net. Although it didn’t help her much in the end, did it?’

  ‘Well, it may sound harsh but I’m afraid I have little sympathy for Lady Euphemia. After all, if you will play with fire … And who knows? You may have been quick enough with that antidote, George—she may recover from any long-lasting effect. Anyway, the most important thing is that you did it, old chap! You beat the Verdoy—you stopped the Correction! It’s just a matter now of acting on the intelligence we’ve gathered, rounding up the suspects … Of course, because of the seniority of some of those involved we will need to tread carefully, make sure we have a cast iron case, but I’m sure that … George? What the devil is it, man?’

  ‘That wasn’t it!’

  ‘What are you talking about? What wasn’t what?’

  ‘The attempt to poison the PM,’ said Harley, busying himself with his hat and coat, ‘that wasn’t the event to start the Correction … well, not the only thing, anyway.’

  ‘Slow down, George! What are you talking about?’

  ‘Listen—the Verdoy did want the Prime Minister incapacitated, but not so they could just usher Saint Clair into power. After all, that would mean that they’d still have to go through the traditional route of getting the BBF voted in. No, they wanted to create a vacuum at the top to coincide with some devastating event; something so catastrophic that it would tear the country apart, leave the people reeling and dazed, and looking for a strong hand to lead them through their hour of need. That’s when Sir Pelham and his BBF bully
boys stand up for the job.’

  ‘And exactly what is this devastating event to be, Mr. Harley?’ asked the Prime Minister, some of the colour having drained from his face.

  ‘It was there, in Lady Euphemia’s ramblings—she might as well have spelt it out for us, word for word. She gave the whole bloody thing away. Saint Clair must have been fuming inside.’

  ‘Well, George, I for one don’t remember any such revelation,’ said the General. ‘Are you absolutely positive?’

  ‘One hundred per cent. Don’t you remember? “We’ll break off that golden bough and start afresh”, she said. “With Pendragon gone we’ll build our new Camelot …”’

  ‘But I just assumed she was talking about getting rid of the Prime Minister.’

  ‘No, no, no … Uther Pendragon was King Arthur’s father, right? And the Golden Bough, well, it’s a story from the Aeneid, but it’s also a book, a study of magic and religion. Pembroke would definitely have been aware of it, ’coz his old man mentions it in the book he wrote about medieval ergotism. In the Golden Bough Frazer explores legends and rituals of rebirth, many of which have one thing in common.’

  ‘And that is?’

  ‘Regicide.’

  ‘Good grief!’ said Ramsay MacDonald.

  ‘Where’s the King tonight, FW?’

  ‘His Highness is at the London Palladium,’ said the General, now grabbing his own hat and coat, ‘commanding the Royal Variety Performance.’

  ‘Then, gentlemen,’ said Harley, with his hand on the door knob, ‘unless we can stop them, the King will be assassinated in the theatre tonight by a bomb, attributed in some way to the Wild Cat International Anarchists’ Brigade, leaving the Prince of Wales to ascend to the throne—a man who’s made little effort to hide his respect and admiration for Sir Pelham Saint Clair and his British Brotherhood of Fascists.’

  ‘God’s teeth!’ exclaimed the General, rushing to follow Harley out into a Belgrave Square which had become cloaked in a gathering shroud of fog.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE