Dennis Wheatley
THE STRANGE STORY OF LINDA LEE
DEDICATION
for
Jim and Helen Phillipson
At whose home, The Manor House, Everton,
the plot of this story was thought out early in
the mornings of a Saturday and a Sunday
NOTE
*
No character in this book is based on that of
any living person, and their names were chosen
by the author as those of people he had never
met or even heard of.
Contents
Introduction
Chapter 1 Escape
Chapter 2 The Third Alternative
Chapter 3 The Transformation of Linda
Chapter 4 Sex Rears its Ugly Head
Chapter 5 Disaster
Chapter 6 Night of Horror
Chapter 7 A Thief in the Morning
Chapter 8 On the Run
Chapter 9 Unhappy Exile
Chapter 10 A Lucky Break
Chapter 11 A Joyous Interlude
Chapter 12 Nemesis
Chapter 13 Ordeal
Chapter 14 The Price of a Lift
Chapter 15 Sir Colin Galahad
Chapter 16 In It Up to the Neck
Chapter 17 A Night in a Brothel
Chapter 18 Drugged and Kidnapped
Chapter 19 Top-secret Documents
Chapter 20 Full Circle
Chapter 21 Flight or Prison?
A Note on the Author
Introduction
Dennis Wheatley was my grandfather. He only had one child, my father Anthony, from his first marriage to Nancy Robinson. Nancy was the youngest in a large family of ten Robinson children and she had a wonderful zest for life and a gaiety about her that I much admired as a boy brought up in the dull Seventies. Thinking about it now, I suspect that I was drawn to a young Ginny Hewett, a similarly bubbly character, and now my wife of 27 years, because she resembled Nancy in many ways.
As grandparents, Dennis and Nancy were very different. Nancy’s visits would fill the house with laughter and mischievous gossip, while Dennis and his second wife Joan would descend like minor royalty, all children expected to behave. Each held court in their own way but Dennis was the famous one with the famous friends and the famous stories.
There is something of the fantasist in every storyteller, and most novelists writing thrillers see themselves in their heroes. However, only a handful can claim to have been involved in actual daring-do. Dennis saw action both at the Front, in the First World War, and behind a desk in the Second. His involvement informed his writing and his stories, even those based on historical events, held a notable veracity that only the life-experienced novelist can obtain. I think it was this element that added the important plausibility to his writing. This appealed to his legions of readers who were in that middle ground of fiction, not looking for pure fantasy nor dry fact, but something exciting, extraordinary, possible and even probable.
There were three key characters that Dennis created over the years: The Duc de Richleau, Gregory Sallust and Roger Brook. The first de Richleau stories were set in the years between the wars, when Dennis had started writing. Many of the Sallust stories were written in the early days of the Second World War, shortly before Dennis joined the Joint Planning Staff in Whitehall, and Brook was cast in the time of the French Revolution, a period that particularly fascinated him.
He is probably always going to be associated with Black Magic first and foremost, and it’s true that he plugged it hard because sales were always good for those books. However, it’s important to remember that he only wrote eleven Black Magic novels out of more than sixty bestsellers, and readers were just as keen on his other stories. In fact, invariably when I meet people who ask if there is any connection, they tell me that they read ‘all his books’.
Dennis had a full and eventful life, even by the standards of the era he grew up in. He was expelled from Dulwich College and sent to a floating navel run school, HMS Worcester. The conditions on this extraordinary ship were Dickensian. He survived it, and briefly enjoyed London at the pinnacle of the Empire before war was declared and the fun ended. That sort of fun would never be seen again.
He went into business after the First World War, succeeded and failed, and stumbled into writing. It proved to be his calling. Immediate success opened up the opportunity to read and travel, fueling yet more stories and thrilling his growing band of followers.
He had an extraordinary World War II, being one of the first people to be recruited into the select team which dreamed up the deception plans to cover some of the major events of the war such as Operation Torch, Operation Mincemeat and the D-Day landings. Here he became familiar with not only the people at the very top of the war effort, but also a young Commander Ian Fleming, who was later to write the James Bond novels. There are indeed those who have suggested that Gregory Sallust was one of James Bond’s precursors.
The aftermath of the war saw Dennis grow in stature and fame. He settled in his beautiful Georgian house in Lymington surrounded by beautiful things. He knew how to live well, perhaps without regard for his health. He hated exercise, smoked, drank and wrote. Today he would have been bullied by wife and children and friends into giving up these habits and changing his lifestyle, but I’m not sure he would have given in. Maybe like me, he would simply find a quiet place.
Dominic Wheatley, 2013
Chapter 1
Escape
It was early on the evening of the first Sunday in May 1970 that Linda stood on the platform of the little railway station at Market Rasen, in Lincolnshire.
She was a big girl: five feet eleven in height, broad-shouldered and strong-limbed. Her brown hair had golden lights in it and was short and springy; so that it stood up naturally in dozens of wavy curls, forming a bright aureole round her head. Although she was wearing her best coat and skirt, they were obviously of poor quality, and the shabby canvas suitcase beside her was bursting at the seams.
Except for herself and the solitary porter, the little station was deserted. As she stood, half-concealed, in the entrance of the waiting-room, she tapped one large foot impatiently and kept glancing nervously from side to side first in the direction from which the train would come then through the railings toward a road leading up to the station.
Her full-lipped mouth was tightly closed above her strong, aggressive chin, but she was praying silently, ‘Don’t let him come! Don’t let him get here before the train! I’m over eighteen now, so I’m legally of age. He no longer has the right to stop me. But don’t let him come! Oh, don’t let him catch me!’
It was her father whom she feared might appear at any moment, for she was running away from home and had been caught in the act by her mother. She had chosen Sunday evening as the best time for getting clear away with a good start because, after his afternoon nap, her father always went down to the village pub, and her mother usually spent a couple of hours with friends who made up the Chapel sewing circle, while Linda watered the plants in the glasshouses that formed a part of her father’s market garden, and prepared the Sunday supper.
That evening her mother had not felt well, so had left the sewing circle early. To her amazement, she had found Linda up in her room, wearing, instead of overalls, her best outfit, and on her bed was an open suitcase crammed with the contents of her scanty wardrobe.
No explanation, other than the truth, had been possible. In a spate of angry words, Linda had declared she would not stand the life she was leading a day longer, and meant to find a job in London. Her mother was well aware that she had ample cause for complaint, but endeavoured to persuade
her to change her mind, promising that she would speak to ‘Pa’ about making things easier for her.
But Linda proved adamant. She knew Pa too well to believe that he would ever change. Bill Lee was a great, red-faced brute of a man, ignorant of everything except the soil from which he made his living. He was honest, God-fearing and worked exceptionally long hours without complaining of his lot. But he expected his wife and daughter to work as hard as he did himself, and woe betide them if they showed any slackness or wanted time off to go ‘gallivanting’, as he called it. Most Saturday evenings he returned home a little drunk and, if put out, knocked his cowed wife about. From time to time Linda, too, received a hefty cuff. It was not to be wondered at that she had grown to hate the very sight of him. Mrs. Lee’s tearful appeals to Linda, that they could not possibly run the place without her having been brushed angrily aside, she took a different tone and began to threaten. Turning toward the door, she cried:
‘Very well then, you ungrateful girl. I’ll go and fetch your Pa from the local. He’ll soon learn you for this he will; yes, with his belt across your bottom.’
At that, Linda had become desperate. She was much bigger and stronger than her mother. Grabbing her by the arm, she had pulled her back and cried, ‘No, you don’t, Ma! I’m going to London and nothing ain’t going to stop me!’
The struggle was brief. Mrs. Lee tripped on a mat and fell heavily on the far side of the bed. Linda seized the opportunity to snap to the locks of her suitcase and run out into the passage with it. Dropping it there, she turned, pulled the key from the lock of the door, pushed it in on the outside and, before her mother could stop her, had turned it. Three minutes later, she had lashed the suitcase on to the back of her bicycle and was pedalling with all the strength in her long legs from the outskirts of Willingham village, where they lived, to the railway station five miles away at Market Rasen.
Her mother’s unexpected arrival on the scene had led to her starting at least ten minutes before she had intended, so she had arrived at the station nearly a quarter of an hour before the train was due. She had meant to have the bicycle labelled and put in the guard’s van, then sell it in London. But panic had decided her to hide as soon as possible, so she had left the bike behind a shed in the station yard, bought her ticket, hastily gone to ground in the ladies’ lavatory and emerged from it only when she saw from her wrist watch that the train should arrive at any moment.
During that agonising wait she had weighed up the chances of her father’s catching her. Although she had left her mother locked in, there would be little difficulty in escaping from the bedroom. The small, ugly, late-Victorian house was jerry-built, and the door of her room was flimsy. If her mother threw her weight against it, the lock would give. It would take her only five minutes to cycle to the ‘Dragon and Crumpet’. In another ten minutes Pa should be back at the house and in the station-wagon. If things had gone like that, it would be a toss-up whether he or the train arrived first at the station.
As she stood in the doorway of the waiting-room she was straining her ears for the sound of a motor engine. In the hush of this quiet Sunday evening, she could have heard it while still half a mile away.
She caught a distant rumble. It increased. Then, to her intense relief, the train appeared in the distance. It was a ‘slow’ and even while moving seemed to crawl. As Linda stepped out of the waiting-room, she looked anxiously along the platform and through the railings beyond it. Her heart missed a beat. The noise from the engine had drowned that of the motor; but there was her father’s station-wagon no more than a few hundred yards away, coming all-out up the road.
The leisurely train meandered to a halt. Linda made a dash for the nearest carriage, praying as she ran across the platform that her father’s view of her was blocked by some intervening buildings. But it was certain that he would describe her to the porter and learn that she was on the train. Her only hope now lay in his failing to find which carriage she had got into before the train moved off.
Seizing the handle of the carriage door she wrenched it open and pushed her suitcase in along the floor. As she did so she threw a glance over her shoulder. Her heart missed a beat. Her father had just come through the barrier, but he was looking in the opposite direction. Jumping into the carriage, she slammed the door behind her, heaved her suitcase up on to the rack, then flung herself down in the far corner. Huddling back into it, she prayed frantically for the train to start.
The only other occupant of the carriage was a rather plump man of medium height. He had neither beard nor whiskers, but smoothly-brushed greying hair, and was obviously of a much older generation.
Suddenly Linda caught the sound of pounding feet. Next moment her father appeared outside the carriage window. It flashed on her that he must have glimpsed her at the moment she had boarded the train. He was carrying his big blackthorn stick, that he always took with him when he went to the pub on Sundays. Purple in the face from rage, and his thirty-yard dash along the platform to catch her, he waved the stick and bellowed:
‘Come art of there, you bitch! Tryin’ ter do the dirty on me an’ yer Ma! I’ll learn yer! Come art, or I’ll break me stick across yer bottom.’
Petrified, Linda crouched back in her corner. She knew that even if she obeyed him, when he got her back to the house, he would half-kill her. A whistle blew. Her father grabbed the handle of the carriage door to pull it open. Linda threw a despairing glance at the middle-aged man opposite her, wondering, if she appealed to him, whether he would intervene when her father started to drag her from the carriage. But he was not looking at her. When she jumped in he had been reading a book. Now he had laid it down and was staring out of the window at her father.
As Bill Lee was grasping his stick in his right hand, he had made the mistake of trying to open the door with his left. The handle was a little stiff and it failed to turn. With a curse, he transferred his stick from one hand to the other. At that moment the train began to move. With his right hand he again seized the handle. It turned but pulled him along with it. He began to run. The speed of the train increased, preventing him from pulling the door open. In the distance the angry shouts of the porter could be heard. Suddenly Bill Lee stumbled. The door handle was wrenched from his grasp. Another moment and he had disappeared from Linda’s view. A great sigh of relief escaped her and, after a few minutes, the beating of her heart slowed down.
When she had sufficiently recovered to take stock of her companion, she put him down as about fifty. He had been studying her with interest out of kindly hazel eyes; but as soon as their glances met, he quickly looked away and resumed reading his book. The hand that held it was slim, long-fingered, pale pink and carefully manicured. Instinctively, Linda hid her own hands in her jacket pockets. They were not ugly, but rough from hard work, and, strive as she would, she could never quite succeed in getting all the dirt from under her nails. She had also taken in the fact that the man’s clothes were unostentatious but of fine material and well cut.
Her nerves now at rest, and having no book to read, she amused herself by speculating about him. He had plump, slightly-reddish cheeks, which suggested a love of good living. His mouth was thin, but had laughter lines at the corners. His nose was on the small side and high-bridged. His most striking feature was his broad, smooth forehead, and it was that which made Linda think that he was probably a professor or an artist.
While she had been getting her breath back and settling down, he had had ample time to form an impression of her. Obviously a country girl, he decided. No make-up, other than a touch of lipstick, and healthy, rosy cheeks from leading an open-air life. A fine, Junoesque creature, who, given ample money for clothes and beauty treatments, could have made men’s heads turn in any de luxe restaurant. The halo of curling bronze hair was a fine example of what has been termed ‘woman’s crowning glory’; the big golden-brown eyes, with very clear whites and long lashes under beautifully arched eyebrows, were truly splendid; and the firm mouth, with its very
full underlip, indicated a forceful, determined personality. But the cheap clothes, scruffed shoes and awful bulging suitcase, all revealed that the girl came from a poor home; so she was probably lacking in all but a rudimentary education and had in her beautiful head only an apology for a brain. He had, for a few moments, been acutely interested in the attempt by the coarse-looking, red-faced man to get her to leave the train; but it was no affair of his. With that casual summary the gentleman sitting opposite Linda dismissed her from his mind and concentrated on his book.
For half an hour the train meandered on, stopping briefly at two stations. Then the door of the compartment was opened by the ticket collector, with the usual request.
Linda’s companion produced his ticket and it was duly clipped. She opened her bag and handed the man hers. After a glance, he said, ‘Sorry, Miss. This is a second, and you’re travelling first.’ Then he produced his pad and added, ‘I’ll have to charge you excess. One pound six shillings please.’
In her panic, Linda had not noticed the class of the carriage into which she had jumped. Now she had let herself in for spending money she could ill afford. On the previous morning she had drawn all her savings out of her Post Office account. They amounted to little more than thirty pounds; but she had decided that it would be ample to keep her in a modest boarding house in London until she found a job.
Diving again into her bag, she ignored her purse, knowing that after buying her ticket it contained only a few shillings. Quickly she hunted for the wallet she had bought to hold her savings. Next moment she was frantically turning the things in the bag over and over. But the wallet was not there.
Then the reason why it was missing came back to her. The wallet had been lying on her dressing table. She had been about to put it in her bag when her mother came into the room. In the scene that followed, she had forgotten all about it and, when dashing for the door, left it there.
The Strange Story of Linda Lee Page 1