THE
WANTON PRINCESS
Dennis Wheatley
Edited by Miranda Vaughan Jones
For the
Sales Representatives of the Hutchinson Group
in appreciation of their having sold
20,000,000
copies of my books,
and particularly for their Chief,
GEOFFREY HOWARD,
a treasured friend of many years’ standing
Contents
Introduction
1 The Failure of a Mission
2 War or Peace?
3 The Prisoner in the Tower
4 The Rebirth of a Nation
5 Marengo
6 Idyll by the Sea
7 Away to Pastures New
8 The Mad Czar
9 The Conspiracy
10 The Alibi
11 Catastrophe
12 On Trial for His Life
13 The Terrible Betrayal
14 Bonaparte becomes Napoleon
15 White Magic
16 The Stolen Honeymoon
17 Of Love and War
18 Sold Down the River
19 Blackmail
20 Poised on the Precipice
21 The Double Agent
22 The Grim Affair of the Duc d’Enghien
23 Overwhelmed
24 Jenny’s Story
25 Disastrous Voyage
26 The Fate of England Hangs …
27 Napoleon Triumphant
28 But Britain Rules the Waves
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
1
The Failure of a Mission
It was the first day of the new century. Seven hours earlier the bells of Ripley Church had rung out ushering in the year 1800. Not far from the village, at Still waters, the splendid mansion that was the home of Georgina, Countess of St. Ermins, the many servants were already bustling about, but Roger Brook had only just woken.
Normally, when staying at Stillwaters he would have awakened in Georgina’s bed for, although circumstances had led to their being separated, at times for years at a stretch, they had been lovers since their teens and, although both of them had had many other loves, they still looked on one another as the dearest person in the world. But Georgina was ill. Only a few days ago her life had been despaired of; so Roger had slept in the room on the far side of her boudoir, to which in happier times he had retired for appearances’ sake when her maid, Jenny, called them in the mornings.
As he woke his first thought was of her, and relief at the knowledge that she had turned the corner. His next was a bitter one for, on the previous day, he had learned of the failure of his latest mission. On December 28th he had arrived in England as the Envoyé Extraordinaire of General Bonaparte who, on November 10th, as the result of the coup d’état of 18th Brumaire, had become First Consul of the French Republic. No more extraordinary envoy could have been selected for such a mission, as for a dozen years Roger had been Prime Minister ‘Billy’ Pitt’s most resourceful and daring secret agent.
At the age of fifteen he had run away to France rather than be forced by his father, Admiral Sir Christopher Brook, to accept the hard life of a midshipman and make the sea his career. Four years in France had made him bilingual and had given him a second identity. Then chance had put him in possession of a diplomatic secret of the first importance. Realising that knowledge of it might prevent France from going to war with England he had returned home post haste and seen the Prime Minister. Appreciating how well suited he was to such work, Mr. Pitt had sent him on a secret mission to the northern capitals. Other missions had followed. He had again lived in France during the greater part of the Revolution and the Terror. At the siege of Toulon he had first met Bonaparte, then an unknown Captain of Artillery, had been with him in Paris when he had
become a figure of importance through suppressing the riots that preceded the formation of the Directory, met him again after his victorious campaign in Italy, saved him from being kidnapped, been made an A.D.C. and, with the rank of Colonel, accompanied him to Egypt. So the dynamic little Corsican artilleryman who had now become the most powerful man in France looked on Roger as an old and trusted friend while, owing to his audacious exploits, he had become known in the Army as Le brave Breuc.
Only two men in France knew him in fact to be an Englishman: Joseph Fouché, the crafty ex-terrorist who was Bonaparte’s Minister of Police, and Charles Maurice de Talleyrand, the subtle and brilliant ex-Bishop who held the Portfolio for Foreign Affairs. The former had long been Roger’s most deadly enemy but, recently, common interests had led to their burying the hatchet; the latter had, from their first meeting, been his good friend. As in those days it was not at all unusual for a man born in one country to carve out a career for himself in another, as Roger had done in France, both of them now regarded him as a naturalised Frenchman and completely loyal to the country of his adoption.
Bonaparte and everyone, other than these two, who knew him in France, believed him to be a native of Strasbourg whose mother, an English woman, had died when he was quite young and that he had been sent to England to be brought up by her sister; then, when in his late teens, attracted by the epoch-making Revolution decided to return to the country of his birth. In consequence, on the rare, awkward occasions when he ran into anyone from one country who knew him in the other he was able to pass himself off as bearing a striking resemblance to either his French or English cousin of the same age, for whom they had mistaken him.
He even had a third identity which he used on occasion when in neutral countries and was liable to meet both Englishmen and Frenchmen who knew him either as Roger Brook or the ci-devant Chevalier de Breuc. For this he grew a short, curly brown beard, used his mother’s maiden name, calling himself Robert McElfic, and posed as her nephew who had recently succeeded her brother as Earl of Kildonan. The McElfics had raised their clan in ’45 to fight for Bonnie Prince Charlie, and after his defeat, like many other pro-Stuart nobles, followed their ‘King’ into exile in Rome; so very few people in either France or England had ever met this cousin of Roger’s and he had never been challenged when using this name.
By the skilful use of these aliases over a long period he had secured himself from detection in the real part he played and now, apart from some entirely unforeseen catastrophe, had little to worry about on that score, but he was intensely worried at what he considered to be the criminal stupidity of the British Government and the report he would have to make on his return to France.
For seven long years, ever since 1793 when the French had guillotined their King, Britain and France had been at war. To begin with, the Monarchist armies of the First Coalition had invaded France; but with fervid patriotism the ill-trained rabble of the Republic had driven them back, overrun Belgium and Holland and secured France’s old frontier on the left bank of the Rhine. They had then invaded Savoy and Piedmont. Young General Bonaparte’s amazing campaign in ’96 had made them masters of the whole of Italy, and Switzerland too had been dominated by them. But these victories had cost them many thousands of lives and, despite the vast treasure in indemnities and loot they had taken from the countries they had conquered, France was bankrupt. Exhausted both by the civil wars of the Revolution and these foreign wars to protect their newly won liberties the people longed for Peace, and Bonaparte had decided that the time had come to give it to them.
Internally, as a result of the Revolution, France was in a chaotic state. Civil war still simmered in La Vendée. Administration, other than in the Army, had entirely broken down. Taxes could no longer be collected, the paper money issued by the Government was almost worthless and the old laws protecting property were ignored. Roads and bridges had fallen into disrepair and the Post service had deteriorated to a point where it took three days to get from Dieppe to Paris instead of one. Industrialists were at the mercy of their workmen; a great part of the agricultural land confiscated from the nobility and the Church now lay fallow, with the result that food had reached famine prices; and bands of marauders, in some cases hundreds strong, roamed the countryside unchecked, robbing and murdering scores of people every week.
Eager, now that he had obtained the power, to concentrate on putting an end to this state of anarchy and restore law and order, Bonaparte had written both to King George III and to the Emperor of Austria proposing terms of peace. And, at Talleyrand’s suggestion, Roger had been selected to carry the First Consul’s letter to London.
Britain, too, was almost exhausted by her seven years of war and her people desperately anxious that an end should be put to hostilities. So Roger had been overjoyed at being given the mission and set out with the conviction that he would be received in London as an angel announcing a new era of happiness and prosperity. But, to his amazement and disgust, the British Government had treated Bonaparte’s overture with contempt.
As Roger woke he thought for a moment that his interview the day before with the Prime Minister could have been only an evil dream, but when he looked round the familiar room, he realised that it had indeed taken place. Getting out of bed he slipped on his chamber robe, pulled aside the curtains of one of the tall windows, glanced at the snow-covered landscape and the now frozen lake that gave the house its name, then crossed the boudoir and tiptoed into Georgina’s big bedroom.
It was still in semi-darkness but he saw that Jenny, who since Georgina’s teens had been her faithful maid and confidante, was sitting beside the great four-poster bed with its tapestry canopy, under which he had known so many nights of delight. There was no movement in the bed, and he whispered:
‘How fares she, Jenny?’
‘Doing well, sir, the dear Lord be praised,’ Jenny whispered back. ‘She slept the first part of the night, but roused when I came in to take the Colonel’s place. So we gave her a draught of the wine that had the red-hot poker put in it as you ordered and she soon went off again.’
Roger smiled. ‘Thank God for that. With plenty of sleep and the iron to renew her blood she will soon be herself again. I’ll dress and go down to breakfast with Colonel Thursby, then come up here to relieve you.’
Half an hour later, shaved and immaculate in a blue cutaway coat, white stock, nankeen waistcoat and breeches, he made his way down the broad central staircase of the house. He was just over six foot tall, with powerful shoulders and slim hips. Although he was still in his early thirties the dangerous life he had led for so long made him look somewhat older and, as a result of having caught the plague while in Syria the previous year, the brown hair that swept back in a high wave from his fine forehead now had a touch of grey in it. His mouth was a little hard, his straight nose aggressive, his strong chin determined; but his deep blue eyes, a glance from which had made many a pretty woman’s heart beat faster, were gay and friendly. The little fingers of his beautifully moulded hands were long in comparison with the others, which would have told a palmist that he had the gift of eloquence and a special flair for languages; his calves, when displayed in silk stockings, gave his tall figure the last touch of elegance.
He found Colonel Thursby, Georgina’s father, already in the breakfast room. The Colonel had attained his rank in the Engineers; then, already a man of means, used his good brain and practical knowledge to profit from the Industrial Revolution. His interests in the construction of canals, weaving machinery and the development of concrete had since brought him a considerable fortune. Georgina was his only child. Her mother had died when giving birth to her and her father had brought her up. To him she owed a far wider education than most women of that period obtained. Although he had two houses of his own, since she had become a widow he spent a good part of each year with her. They adored one another; and from his boyhood Roger had looked upon the kind, clever, quiet-mannered little Colonel as a second father.
Aft
er telling the Colonel that Georgina had passed a good night and was still asleep, Roger went over to the sideboard where, as was customary in big houses in those spacious Georgian days, there was more food than a dozen men could have demolished: a variety of egg dishes, bacon, kidneys, sausages, a mutton pie and the better part of a York ham. As Roger carried his first selection to the table the Colonel said:
‘You appeared so worn out on your late return last night that I forbore to ask you what had passed in Downing Street. Everything went well, I trust.’
‘Far from it, sir,’ Roger declared with disgust. ‘Had not my Lord Grenville been there with Mr. Pitt and displayed the same obduracy of mind, I would have thought our Prime Minister afflicted with a lesion of the brain. I can still scarce believe it but they have as good as instructed me to fling General Bonaparte’s offer back in his face.’
‘What say you?’ The Colonel put down his fork and looked up with swift concern. ‘What possible reason could they have for wishing to continue draining away the lifeblood and treasure of the nation when given this chance to enter on negotiations? I can only suppose that General Bonaparte’s terms were so hard as to preclude any possibility of accepting them.’
‘On the contrary, sir. His one wish now is to be done with war so that he may turn his talents to rescuing France from the appalling state of disorder into which she has fallen. In consequence his terms were generous. The greater part of Italy was lost to France during his absence in Egypt. He asks only that France should retain her ancient frontiers, including the Belgian lands up to the left bank of the Rhine, and Piedmont. It was upon this last that Mr. Pitt and the Foreign Secretary hinged their refusal even to consider making peace.’
‘In that they were no doubt influenced by our being bound by treaty to restore King Charles Emanuel to his domains.’
‘We bound ourselves to our Austrian allies to make no separate peace which would not secure to them the return of the Belgian Netherlands. Had we ignored that pact we could have had peace with France in ’96. And what was our reward for honouring our bond? A year later the Austrians went behind our backs and made the Peace of Campo Formio by which they gave up their title to Belgium in exchange for the Venetian lands, leaving us to fight on alone. King Charles Emanuel still has his great island of Sardinia. Is it so much that he should be asked to accept the loss of Piedmont permanently in order that this bloody war should cease and peace be restored to all Europe?’
The Wanton Princess Page 1