by Hans Holzer
“Do you know Salisbury Hall?” I decided to see what the reaction would be.
“You want to know I was his mistress…. I was there…sometimes….”
I demanded to have further proof of her identity, but the visitor from beyond demurred.
“Let me go…Why have you come here?”
Again, following Jimmy Jacobs’ suggestion, I accused her of being an actress impersonating Nell Gwyn. But the entity did not budge. She was Nell Gwyn, she said, and would not discuss anything about her family.
In retrospect I feel sure she was speaking the truth.
Shortly after, Ronald Hearn woke up. He seemed tired and worn out, but could not recollect anything that had come through him the past hour or so. At any rate he stated he didn’t, and while I can never objectively prove these absences of a medium’s true self, I have no reason to doubt their statements either. We left, and Hearn was driven back to his home in the suburbs.
On September 24, I came back to the Gargoyle Club with Trixie Allingham. It was the end of a very long day which we had spent at Longleat, the ancestral seat of the Marquess of Bath, and I didn’t expect too much of Trixie, as even mediums get tired.
But time was short and we had to make the best of our opportunities, so I took her quickly upstairs to the same spot where we had brought Ronald Hearn, a table in the rear of the clubroom.
Contemporary portrait of Nell Gwyn
Trixie looked at the somewhat seedy surroundings of the old place in astonishment. It was clear she had never been in or near anything like it. After all, she was originally a nurse who had turned professional psychic later in life when she discovered her great gift. This wasn’t her kind of place, but she was willing to have a go at whatever I wanted of her. It was late afternoon, before the club was open for business, and quite dark already. She did not realize where she was, except that it was some Soho nightclub, and she wanted to get out of it as soon as possible!
* * *
There was a curiously depressing atmosphere all around us, as we sat down in the empty club, breathing stale air mixed with the smoke of the previous night.
“There’s a man and a woman concerned,” she said immediately, “there’s a tragedy…the one she loves is killed.” She then continued, “She’s tall, rather lovely, dark eyes, pale face.”
I wanted to know how she died, but Trixie does not like direct questions as it throws her off her thought track. So I decided to just let her get into the atmosphere of the place by herself, as we watched her intently.
“I’m conscious of a stab…a knife goes through me…there’s some triviality here to do with a garter.” The King of England, of course, was the head of the Order of the Garter, which is considered a royal symbol. Trixie’s psychometry was working fine.
“There’s something to do with a triangle here,” she continued, “also something to do with money…initial R…some people looking at a body on the ground… stabbed…she is most unhappy now, tears pouring down her face. I think she said ‘marry’…. Why on earth am I seeing a bear?!”
While Trixie wondered about the bearskin she was seeing, one of my companions, the American writer Victor Wolfson, commented that the Royal Guards wear a bearskin. I don’t like to have any information disclosed during an investigation, but I thanked him and requested that he hold back comments until later.
Meanwhile I asked Trixie to press the female ghost for some proof of her identity, and further personal data.
“Some extraordinary link with the Palace…. Does that sound crazy?” Trixie said, hesitatingly, for her logical mind could not conceive of any connection between a Soho striptease club and Whitehall. I reassured her, and let her continue. “That’s what I’m getting…something in French…my French is so poor, what did you say, dear? Someone is to guard her…I’m going back in time for this picture…two men to guard her…darkish men, they’ve got European dress on, band of silk here….” She indicated the waistline. “Can’t quite see them…turbans…M…link with royalty…acting and royalty…and heartache…someone linked with her at the time was ill…Harry…clandestine meetings…real love…betrayal…two men fighting…castle is linked with all this…I hear the words, ‘Save for the world…passion…save and deliver me!”‘
We were all listening very quietly as the drama unfolded once again.
“It was nighttime,” Trixie continued in a halting voice as if the memory were painful. “There was a fog outside…C…Charles…now I’m seeing a prior coming into the room from that door and he is saying, ‘Time this was remedied! I’ve called you here.’…Now I’m seeing a cherub child leading her away and I hear the prior saying, ‘Go in peace, you have done what was necessary.”‘ Trixie put her head into her arms and sighed. “That’s all I can give you. I feel so sick.”
Since so much of her testimony had matched Ronald Hearn’s, and as it was obvious that she was at the end of her psychic day, I felt it would do no harm to try to stimulate some form of reaction with material obtained by Hearn in the hope that it would be further enlarged upon by the second medium. “Does the name Fortescue mean anything to you?” I asked casually. Her facial expression remained the same. It didn’t mean anything to her. But she then added, “If it’s got to do with an ancient house, then it’s right. All ancient lineage.”
On later checking I found that the Fortescue family was indeed one of England’s oldest, although the name is by no means common or even well-known today.
Trixie explained the girl was now gone, but the prior was still around and could be questioned by her psychically.
I asked about Salisbury. Just that one word, not indicating whether I was referring to a man or a place.
“A tall and rather grim-looking place,” Trixie commented, “isolated, cold, and gray…dreary….”
The description did indeed fit Salisbury Hall at the time Charles II bought it.
I asked the prior to tell us who the girl was.
“Some link here with royalty.” Trixie answered after a moment, presumably of consultation with the invisible priest, “She came and she went…some obscure…linked up with this royal…setup…she rose…then something happened…she was cast off…that caused this tragedy… beautiful person, dark, I don’t mean jet-black, but dark by comparison with a blonde, and curls…down to her shoulder…N…Nell…this is Nell Gwyn!”
We all rose and cheered. Everything Trixie had said made sense.
Having shot her bow, Trixie now almost collapsed, mumbling, “I’m sorry, that’s all I can do. I’m tired.”
The spirit had left her in more ways than one, but it was no longer important. Gently we led her downstairs, and one of us took her home to the suburbs where she lives a respectable, quiet life.
On examination of the tapes, it struck me at once how both mediums hit on many similar details of the story. Since neither medium had had any foreknowledge of the place we were going to visit, nor, on arrival, any inkling as to why we were there, nor any way of knowing of each other, one cannot help but assume that both psychics were tuning in on the same past.
There were a number of extraordinary details not otherwise stressed in conventional history.
Both mediums described a triangle, with two men fighting on the roof—where all the hauntings had been observed—and one man going down in death. King Charles, also mentioned by name, had sent one of them, because someone had told him his mistress Nell was deceiving him.
Hearn had described the two men as Captain John Molyneaux of the Cavalry or Royal Guards (who were horseguards), and a Lieutenant Fortescue, also of the Guards. Captain John was the lover, who lived below in the Saddlery, and whose job it had been to guard her for the King. Instead, he had fallen in love with her. Lieutenant Fortescue (sometimes the name is also spelled Fortesque) was dispatched by the King to avenge him and kill the unfaithful officer at the house of his mistress. No first name is given for Fortescue by medium Hearn, but medium Allingham refers to the initial R. Trixie had added that
money was involved, and I assumed that the murderer had been promised a bounty, which would seem natural in view of the fact that the killing was not the sort of thing a court of law would condone even if it were the King who had been cuckolded. Thus the need for an inducement to the young officer who did Charles’ dirty work!
Evidently, Nell and John had planned to elope and marry, but were betrayed by someone to the King, who took revenge in the time-honored fashion of having the rival killed and the ex-mistress disgraced. We do know from the records that Nell fell into disfavor with the King during her heyday and died in modest circumstances. The plot became very clear to me now. Nell had seen a chance at a respectable life with a man she loved after years as the King’s mistress. That chance was brutally squashed and the crime hushed up—so well, in fact, that none of the official or respected books on the period mention it specifically.
But then, who would know? In the dark of night, a troop of horsemen arrives at the house in the suburbs; quickly and quietly, Fortescue gains entrance, perhaps with the help of the servant who had tipped off the Palace. He races up the narrow stairs to Nell’s apartments, find John Molyneaux there and a duel to the finish ensues, up the stairs to the roof. The captain dies at his woman’s feet, sending her into a shock that lasts three centuries. The murderer quickly identifies his foe, perhaps takes an object with him to prove that he had killed him, and departs to collect his bounty money.
Behind him a woman hysterical with grief awaits her fate. That fate is not long in coming. Stripped of all her wealth, the result of royal patronage, she is forced to leave the house near the Deanery and retire to more modest quarters. Her health and royal support gone, she slips into obscurity and we know little about her later years.
* * *
But I needed objective proof that Nell Gwyn really lived at that house and, more importantly, that these two men existed. If they were officers, there would have to be some sort of records.
Inquiry at the British Museum revealed that Nell lived in a house at the junction of Meard Street and the Deanery. This is the exact spot of the Gargoyle Club. As far as Fortescue and Molyneaux are concerned, I discovered that both names belonged to distinguished Royalist families. From Edward Peacock’s The Army Lists of the Roundheads and Cavaliers I learned also that these families were both associated with the Royal Cavalry, then called Dragoons. During the Royalist expedition against Ireland in 1642, under the King’s father, Charles I, the third “troop of horse,” or cavalry regiment, was commanded by Sir Faithful Fortescue. With him served a younger member of the family by the name of Thomas Fortescue, a cornet at the time, but later most likely advanced to a lieutenancy. I didn’t find any “R” Fortescue in the regimental records. But I reread the remark Trixie Allingham had made about his person, and discovered that she mentioned R is being present to identify the body of a slain person! Very likely, the murderer, Fortescue, had wanted to make sure there was no doubt about Molyneaux’s identity so he could collect his bounty. Also, Molyneaux came from a family as prominent as his own, and he would not have wanted to leave the body of the slain officer unattended. No, the thing to have done would have been to call in a member of Molyneaux’s own family, both to provide identification—and burial!
Was there an R Molyneaux?
I searched the records again, and in C. T. Atkinson’s History of the Royal Dragoons I discovered that a Richard Molyneaux, being head of the family at that time, had raised two regiments for Charles II. I also found that the name John was frequently used in the Molyneaux family, even though I haven’t located a John Molyneaux serving in the Royal Guards at the exact period under discussion. Was his name stricken from the records after the murder? The King could order such drastic removal from official records, of course.
* * *
I should emphasize at this point that linking the family names of Molyneaux and Fortescue with Charles II and his time is highly specialized knowledge of history, and not the sort of thing that is taught in schools or found in well-known books about the period.
Thus we knew who the ghostly woman at the Gargoyle Club was and why she could not find rest. We knew the cause of the tragedy, and had discovered an obscure chapter in the life of not-so-Good King Charles.
In the process of this investigation, a royal trollop had turned into a woman who found love too late and death too soon.
Judging from similar investigations and the techniques employed in them, I can safely say, however, that Nell and her John are at last united in a world where the Royal Guards have no power and even King Charles can walk around without a wig, if he so desires.
* 21
Ghosts Around Vienna
WHAT GHOSTS ARE, you know by now, and those of my readers who are unfamiliar with the term gemütlichkeit ought to be told that it is a German word meaning “pleasant, go-easy way of life.” When we flew into Hamburg, we did not expect gemütlichkeit, which is mostly found in southern countries like Switzerland and Austria anyway. But we found a genuine interest in psychic matters among radio and television people, although the vast masses of Germans are quite unaware of the seriousness with which sixth-sense experiences are studied in the Anglo-Saxon world. A small, keenly intelligent minority is, of course, trying to establish research on a respectable basis. Hans Bender and his parapsychological laboratory at Freiburg are unique, though. In Hamburg, we met with Erich Maria Koerner, author and translator of books on extrasensory perception, and Milo Renelt, a medium, called “the seer of Hamburg.” But, simply because people are reluctant to talk, we could not find any leads to haunted houses, of which there must be many.
Upon arriving in Vienna, Austria, we went to see Countess Zoe Wassilko-Serecki, the president of the Austrian society for psychical research. She brought us up to date on the situation in Austria, where the press was openly hostile and derisive of any serious efforts to report parapsychological studies. An American of Austrian descent myself, I found the use of the local tongue most helpful when I called on the television and radio people the next day. I quickly found out that radio would have nothing to do with me, since a local magician had convinced the responsible producers that all psychic experiences were hokum and could be reproduced by him at will. Somewhat more of an open mind awaited me at the newly created television headquarters of Austrian TV, which is about ten years behind ours, but full of good will and operating under great handicaps of low budgets and pressures. Finally, a reporter named Kaiser agreed to accompany Catherine and me on a ghost hunt and to do a straight reporting job, without bias or distortion. I must say he kept his word.
We drove to the Imperial Castle, which is a sprawling array of buildings in the very heart of Vienna. There we went on foot into the portion known as Amalienburg, the oldest part of the castle. All I had to go on was a slim report that a ghost had been observed in that area.
Right off the bat, Kaiser turned to the police officer at the gate and asked him if he knew of any ghosts.
“Ghosts?” the officer asked, somewhat perplexed, and scratched his head. “None that I know of.” He suggested we pay the Burghauptmann, or governor, a visit.
The governor was a fortyish gentleman with the unusual name of Neunteufel, which means Nine Devils. Far from being hellish, however, he invited us into his office and listened respectfully, as Kaiser explained me to him. Considering that we were in arch-Catholic Vienna, in the inner offices of a high government official, I admired his courage. But then Kaiser had admitted to me, privately, that he had experienced an incident of telepathy he could not dismiss. His open-mindedness was not a drafty head but sincere.
“Well,” the governor finally said, “I am so sorry, but I’ve only been in this post for five years. I know nothing whatever about ghosts. But there is an old employee here who might be able to help you.”
My heart had begun to falter and I saw myself being ridiculed on television. “Please, boys,” I said inaudibly, addressing my friends upstairs, “help us a little.”
Mr.
Neunteufel dialed and asked to speak to a Mr. Sunday. There was a pause. “Oh, I see,” he then said. “You mean Mr. Sunday isn’t in on Friday?” Black Friday, I thought! But then the governor’s face brightened. Mr. Sunday would be over in a moment.
The man turned out to be a quiet, soft-spoken clerk in his later years. He had worked here practically all his adult life. “Yes,” he nodded. “There is indeed a ghost here; but not in the Amalienburg. Come, I’ll show you where.”
You could have heard a pin drop, or, for that matter, a ghost walk, when he had spoken. Kaiser gave me a look of mixed admiration and puzzlement. He and his cameraman were already on their feet.
With the governor at our side, we followed Sunday up and down a number of stairs, along corridors, through musty halls, and again up a staircase into a back portion of the castle.
“I’ve never been here myself,” the governor apologized to me, as we walked. “In fact, I didn’t even know this part existed,” he added.
What the hell! I thought. It’s a big house.
Now we stood in front of a Marterl, a peculiarly Austrian type of Blessed Virgin altar built into the wall and protected by a metal screen. To the left were the stairs we had come up on, and to our right was another, smaller stairway, closed off by a wooden door.
“Where are we?” Kaiser asked.
“This is the private apartment of Baroness Vecera,” Sunday said.
Baroness Vecera was the sweetheart of Crown Prince Rudolph. They were central characters of the famed Meyerling tragedy, resulting in a major national scandal that rocked the Austria of the 1880s.
“The Crown Prince arranged for this flat,” Sunday explained, “so he could see his lady friend quietly and privately. These stairs are not marked on the plans of the building.”
“No wonder!” The governor sighed with relief.
Part of the castle had evidently been rented out to private citizens in recent years, since the Republic had toppled the monarchy, and the officials of the castle had paid scant attention to that wing since then.