by Nick Marsh
The train is here.
Note left in Lausanne Station addressed to Hr. Max von Wertheim.
Herr von Wertheim,
Your story moved me, and I will help if I can! My employer is dragging us all into something terrible! I think she’s going to get us all killed.
I don’t have much time. We’ll be staying at the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele in Milan. Please contact me there.
Grace M.
The note was never picked up, and was retained in the station archives until our agent discovered it.
Diary of Mrs Betty Sunderland, Monday November 2nd 1925
I can scarcely lift my pen to the page to write. I don’t know if I can find the words, but if I don’t attempt it, my only alternative is to try sleep again. Every time I close my eyes, I can see him. I won’t find any rest tonight. I may as well try and make some kind of sense of it, if there is sense to be found in anything anymore. Such a foolish mission I have forced them all on. Is it me? Is it my fault? I was so sure, in London, in Paris. Even in Lausanne – we had to help Julius. A friend does not leave a friend in need. But now...
I must try and explain what happened.
The locomotive with its magnificent blue and gold carriages arrived at the station in Lausanne perfectly on time at a quarter to seven in the morning, and we gratefully accepted the help of the Wagons-Lits staff to load our luggage – including that wretched trunk that I am learning to loathe. By seven o’clock we were in our compartments and most of us were asleep. I had barely even glanced at the scroll that had caused such strife in Lausanne, deciding that I would examine it better with a clear head and possibly some warming brandy inside me. The train was scheduled to arrive in Milan at just after noon, where the hunt for another piece of the Simulacrum would begin.
I awoke a few hours later and decided that it would be a good time to try and get a late breakfast, or at least an early lunch, before we arrived in Alphonse’s home city. Grace and Violet were still asleep. Alphonse declined the idea, saying that he knew an excellent little café that he wanted to take us to when we arrived, but a Yorkshire gal doesn’t grow up strong by missing meals, as my grumbling stomach was reminding me. Neville agreed to come, and though he said it was out of politeness I think he was just as ravenous as me. Alphonse retired to the salon car, to enjoy a drink whilst we arrived in Milan. He told us that he would join us in the dining car shortly.
When Neville and I entered the restaurant carriage it was nearly empty, as most of the passengers were still quite full of their breakfast, but a tall thin man in his late sixties with wide eyes and a large mouth was sitting at a four-seater dining table next to a small woman.
‘Ahh,’ he shouted as we entered. ‘Fellow passengers! And English, by the looks of ‘em!’
The small woman next to him cringed slightly as his voice boomed out. I’m still not sure how he managed to pick us out as English, but there was no disguising the fact now. He had the unmistakable brash self-confidence and bearing of a military man. Perhaps he recognised a fellow soldier in Neville. He gestured us over to the table, and stood stock upright as he extended his hand first to Neville and then to me.
‘Colonel Herring, pleased to meetcha,’ he said, and his smile grew broader as Neville introduced himself as a colonel also. It turned out there had been quite a number of parallels in their respective military careers, and within minutes we were sitting at the table whilst the pair reminisced about the Sudan and South Africa, complained about the ‘bloody wogs’ and even, at one point, broke into a spontaneous chorus of Gilbert and Sullivan. It was nice to see Neville enjoying himself for a change.
I attempted a conversation with Agnes, his timid wife sitting beside him, but she was a nervous and flighty creature and every time Colonel Herring spoke she jumped slightly. Evidently being married to the man did not do wonders for her nerves. I thought of Lilly, Neville’s deceased wife, and how bright and vibrant she had been, compared to the rather ineffectual woman sitting opposite me. It seems awful to say it now, but I rather took a dislike to the pair. Colonel Herring’s braying laugh especially grated upon my nerves. I tried instead to concentrate on the view outside the window, but even this did not escape Colonel Herring’s endless commentary.
‘Nothing worth looking at out there, old dear,’ he said as I watched the fields and farms of Italy slowly giving way to buildings and factories as we approached Milan. Old dear indeed!
‘Should have been up here before, eh Agnes! Spectacular views, spectacular I say!’ His wife murmured in agreement. ‘Enormous mountains, Alpine villages, glaciers too! Should have got up earlier in the morning, eh?’ He winked at me in a very forward manner.
‘I did,’ I lied. ‘I was watching from my window, thank you Colonel.’
‘Hmph. Ah. Yes,’ he said, his momentum lost. Sadly he rapidly regained it. ‘And that tunnel, right through the mountain! Must have been ten miles long![24]’
‘Twelve miles, actually. Fascinating story, how they built it,’ Neville began. If there’s one thing I have learned in my travels with Neville, it is that discussions of engineering projects should be avoided at all costs. To my dismay, Colonel Herring’s face assumed an expression of deep interest.
‘Go on, old boy,’ he said. I was about to make up some excuse so I could retreat to my compartment, but Agnes Herring, finally displaying a degree of assertiveness, beat me to it.
‘I’m feeling rather tired, Andrew dear,’ she said, standing up. ‘I think I may have a quiet lie down before we reach Milan.’
‘What? Oh yes, yes, of course,’ the colonel said, as Mrs Herring rapidly made her exit from the dining car. I was considering leaving the two old warhorses to their exploits regardless when a blue-jacketed waiter appeared with a teapot, which he placed before me. I thanked him and he turned to leave. As I poured my tea, I heard someone enter the car. The waiter’s voice carried over to me.
‘Will Monsieur be dining alone today?’ he asked the new arrival.
‘No,’ came the reply, in a familiar, heavily-accented voice. ‘I think that I will eat with my friends.’
Neville and I both turned together, recognising the voice. The duke! He strode over to our table and sat in the chair recently vacated by Agnes Herring, a broad and unpleasant smile on his face. He was carrying a small leather valise, which he placed at his feet as he sat down. He ignored the indignant Colonel Herring beside him.
‘And now,’ he said, smoothly, ‘I hope you will forgive my bluntness, but I must come to the point.’ He waved the waiter away as the man approached to take his order, and leaned in closely to me.
‘The scroll!’ he whispered. ‘You will give it to me now.’
Neville began to say something but at this point Colonel Herring, whose face had grown redder and redder during the duke’s brief monologue, could contain himself no longer.
‘You DARE!’ he boomed, in a voice that ricocheted around the carriage, as he turned to the duke. ‘You dare come and insult my new friends in such a way! Slimy bloody Frenchman, marching in here as if you own the bloody place! I’ve seen better-mannered dogs than you, you filthy--’
The duke, seeming now to notice Colonel Herring for the first time, stared intently at him as he ranted. I saw that as he watched the colonel, he had begun making small, intricate movements with his hands.
‘Damn French swine, we should have finished the job at Waterloo--’
Remarkably, Colonel Herring’s face had darkened even further, so that now his complexion was almost purple. Sweat poured down from his brow and dripped into his eyes.
‘Now look here, old chap, calm down,’ Neville said. Colonel Herring had stopped shouting now, and reached down to his collar to unbutton it. He was still sweating, and it was obvious that something was very wrong. At first, I thought the poor chap was having a heart attack.
‘Dashed... dashed hot in here, what,’ the colonel said, weakly, and then burst into flames. Shouts of horror came from the other end of the carriage
as the flaming form of Colonel Herring tried to stand, screaming, but quickly slumped back into his chair. Neville poured the jug of water over his smoking body but it made no difference to the flames. Colonel Herring’s screams rapidly faded into silence. The duke turned his attention back to us.
‘A demonstration,’ he said, quietly. ‘The scroll, now. My brothers will not be denied!’
Something about the words struck a chord with me, like something I had heard before, but I could not bring it to mind. Neville was on his feet by now, bringing his heavy stick up and across the table to strike at the man. The duke merely glanced at the stick, and suddenly it was aflame, just like the unfortunate Colonel Herring. Neville exclaimed in surprise and dropped it.
I had been too shocked to move during these few terrible seconds, but now I stood, intending to run to the salon car to fetch Alphonse, whom I felt sure would know what to do. The duke got to his feet as well, and stared at us both with open malice.
‘Time grows short!’ he snarled. ‘This is your last chance. The scroll! We must have it!’
As he spoke, I heard the door to the carriage open and close behind us once more.
‘I think,’ a voice said, in a strong Italian accent, ‘No one ‘as it.’
We all turned to see Alphonse standing very calmly in front of the door. In his left hand he held the scroll, still rolled up and sealed with wax.
In his right, he held his silver-coated lighter.
‘No!’ the duke screamed with rage, running around the table, his leather valise in his left hand. Alphonse smiled, and ignited the scroll. It burned brightly and very quickly. Alphonse held on to it for as long as he could, then dropped it to the ground as the flames reached his hand.
The duke snarled in animal rage as he watched it burn, then turned his dreadful eyes on the professor. I quickly picked up the pot of hot tea from the table and threw it over the duke, but it was too late.
‘Now, perhaps,’ Alphonse was saying, but already his face was turning red.
‘Alphonse!’ I cried, but even as he turned to me the smoke began rising from his tweed suit. Within a second his whole body was a pillar of flame, and he too was screaming, as Colonel Herring had before him. Neville pushed past the duke and pulled Alphonse to the floor, trying to roll him around on the carpet to extinguish the flames. The duke looked at me with an expression of deep hatred and for a moment I feared that I would suffer the same fate. Instead, he glanced out of the window. The train was slowing as it approached the station in Milan. He clicked open the valise, and retrieved a length of braided horsehair rope, woven into a loop.
He nodded briefly at me. ‘Mrs Sunderland. We will meet again,’ he said, and dropped the rope over his head. As it fell, the duke, the rope and the valise disappeared.
I had no time to wonder at this strange development. As the duke vanished, so did the flames that he had seemingly caused. Neville lay on the floor, his own moustache singed and his face scarlet, but mostly unharmed. Alphonse was less fortunate.
I rushed to the professor’s side as Neville tried to help him to his feet. His hair was gone, and his face and hands were black and cracked. His tweed suit had melted onto his skin, and his eyes were wide with pain. As I approached, he tried to open his mouth to speak, but his lips split in several places and oozed a clear, thick fluid. His breath came in dreadful wheezing gasps and he winced in pain as we held him. I tried to lift his arm up to put it around my shoulder but a large patch of his suit came off instead, bringing with it a piece of the professor’s skin, and leaving behind a red and oozing sore that stretched from his elbow to his shoulder. Alphonse cried out in pain, and his lips split further. Neville caught my eye, his face grave, and shook his head.
‘Oh, Monsieur, Madame, what has happened?’
We noticed that we were now surrounded by several Wagons-Lits staff. The maître d’hôtel stood forward. Two of the waiters were lifting Colonel Herring’s charred body from its seat.
‘Please, Madam,’ the maître d’hôtel said, ‘We need to help this man.’
I turned back to Alphonse. His breathing was slow, and deep. He lifted his arm to lay upon mine, and looked into my eyes. The fire had ruined his lungs and stolen away any last words that he may have had for me. Then his arm fell back to his side, and his eyes closed.
Alphonse was dead.
Personal Journal of Professor Alphonse Moretti (trans. from Italian) 2nd November[25]
We would appear to have mysterious enemies.
Whilst the others were distracted by the duke’s tour of Lausanne, I took the opportunity to investigate the history of the man in the local library. The Cantonal museum and library cannot be compared to the British Museum, or the Bibliothèque Nationale, but I was able to uncover some interesting facts regardless.
I found several mentions of a ‘Duc Jean Floressas d’Essientes’ in a place I did not expect – fashion and society papers from Paris in the 1870s. He apparently led a peculiar and decadent lifestyle there, and the various brief reports are not complimentary to him, commenting upon his disdain and eventual hatred of normal human society.[26] He disappears from Paris and, save for a brief reappearance in 1880, is not mentioned again in French historical records until the Great War. At this time, a man calling himself the Duc d’Essientes was involved in several munitions deals with various European powers, and even had dealings with Sir Basil Zaharoff[27] before the war was done. Although unlikely to be the same man as Jean Floressas (who would have been in his nineties at the time) he was apparently a close relative – although the exact relation is never made clear in the texts I have discovered.
Despite making tidy profits during the war, this man left France soon afterwards under something of a cloud, though once again the sources are frustratingly vague about the nature of the scandal. He took himself and his profits to Lausanne, where he has remained since and apparently become something of a pillar of the community – a community which his Parisian relative despised.
There remains an air of mystery and confusion around the man. In my experience, when prominent men in society have such a background, it generally means that something is being concealed. I wonder what the duke has to hide? Is there some connection to his decadent ancestor that he would rather keep secret?
This speculation is unhelpful but I will most certainly be investigating the man further when we arrive in Milan. It may, as they say, ‘take one to know one’, but he strikes me as dangerous. His actions in the Wellingtons’ shop confirm his ruthlessness, but also confuse me. If he wanted the scroll so badly, why not simply outbid us? He certainly has the funds. I suspect that the murders of the Wellington brothers were partially designed to remove his rivals – us – from the picture. Perhaps he planned to implicate us in their deaths, forcing us to either flee Lausanne or be arrested. In any case, he has succeeded in removing us from his city. But then why the mutilation of William’s corpse? Curious.
Regardless of my questions, the Duc d’Essientes is clearly not a man whom it is wise to cross. What he will do when he discovers that his scroll is a fake I am not sure, but I have taken some precautions. I stayed behind at the Wellingtons’ house whilst the others arranged to board the train once more. Searching Edgar’s desk further, I found the parchment and sealing wax that he had used to create the first scroll, and I proceeded to make another. I have had need, in the course of my adventures, to create such things before, and I may say that I think I did a better job of the thing than Edgar did. It may not be enough to fool the duke twice if he gets a close look at it, but hopefully it will not come to that.
As for the scroll itself – despite Edgar’s proclamations that he couldn’t understand the thing, it appears that he had paid for an English translation of it, which he has attached to the original. I have had little time to study it so far, but what I have read of it appears to be merely the ramblings of a madman. Why would the duke be prepared to kill for such a prize?
So, now the face of our enemy is rev
ealed.
Or is it? I have had a feeling since Paris... something is not right. Perhaps it is my imagination, or perhaps it is the object we have stored in the trunk in the fourgon, but... perhaps it is something else. That wonderful night with Caterina, as we left Paris, I had the strangest feeling all night that I was being watched. And, this morning, as I left my carriage to make my way here, I bumped into a young English fellow with glasses. He stood and stared down the carriage, apparently in a daze.
‘You called me,’ he murmured, ‘and I came.’
I asked him who he was, but he simply repeated the phrase, over and over. I shook him, and he seemed to come to his senses, appearing rather embarrassed, and not remembering the last few minutes.
Small incidents, I accept, but still... I am beginning to wonder if we have other foes to concern ourselves with. I have wired ahead to an old colleague of mine, a man certainly able to help with such adversaries. I will
The final entry of Professor Moretti’s journal ends here.
‘THE SCROLL OF THE HEAD’
The author of the scroll recovered by the Sunderland party is Sedefkar of Osmanli, who lived in the city of Constantinople just before the Fourth Crusade at the start of the thirteenth century.
In summary, the scroll concerns the Sedefkar Simulacrum, an item which Sedefkar prophesies that he is soon to lose. He mentions that this scroll, the ‘scroll of the head’, is the first of five which he will write. This scroll concerns the history and thoughts of Sedefkar. He mentions that the other four scrolls will be – the ‘scroll of the belly’, concerned with the worship of a being known as the ‘Skinless One’, the ‘scroll of the legs’, which describe a series of magical spells which affect the body of the caster (and which Sedefkar suggests to be the basis of his power and wealth), the ‘scroll of the right arm’, describing a ritual that can awaken the statue, and the ‘scroll of the left arm’, which will apparently describe a ritual to ‘balance the power of the statue’.