The Shadow of Tyburn Tree Read online

  The Shadow of Tyburn Tree

  Dennis Wheatley

  Edited by Miranda Vaughan Jones

  For

  The Life and Soul of the Party:

  The Incomparable Poo.

  With Love From her fond Step-papa-in-law:

  Beau Wheatley

  Contents

  Introduction

  Chapter 1 The Best of Friends

  Chapter 2 A Losing Battle

  Chapter 3 A Desperate Gamble

  Chapter 4 A Night in a Life-Time

  Chapter 5 A Bid for Life

  Chapter 6 The Parting of the Ways

  Chapter 7 Young Mr. Pitt

  Chapter 8 The Bal-Masqué

  Chapter 9 The Uncrowned Queen

  Chapter 10 The Two Tests of Natalia Andreovna

  Chapter 11 The Inexperienced Spy

  Chapter 12 Unmasked Again

  Chapter 13 Hell’s Kitchen

  Chapter 14 The Order of Death

  Chapter 15 The Plot

  Chapter 16 The Ambush

  Chapter 17 Penalty for Murder

  Chapter 18 Her Majesty’s Pleasure

  Chapter 19 Like a Sheep to the Slaughter

  Chapter 20 For the Honour of England

  Chapter 21 In Baulk

  Chapter 22 The Fate of the Nation

  Chapter 23 The Shadow of Tyburn Tree

  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 inWhitehall, 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 elevenBlack 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 Best of Friends

  Georgina Etheredge’s limpid black eyes looked even larger than usual as, distended in a semi-hypnotic trance, they gazed unwinkingly into a crystal goblet full of water. It stood in the centre of a small buhl table, at the far side of which sat Roger Brook. His firm, well-shaped hands were thrust out from elegant lace ruffles to clasp her beringed fingers on either side of the goblet while, in a low, rich voice, she foretold something of what the future held in store.

  She was twenty-one and of a ripe, luscious beauty. Her hair was black, and the dark ringlets that fell in casual artistry about the strong column of her throat shimmered with those warm lights that testify to abounding health; her skin was flawless, her full cheeks were tinted with a naturally high colour; her brow was broad and her chin determined. She was wearing a dress of dark red velvet, the wide sleeves and hem of which were trimmed with bands of sable, and although it was not yet midday the jewels she was wearing would have been counted by most other women sufficient for a presentation at Court.

  He was some fifteen months younger, but fully grown and just over six feet tall. His white silk stockings set off well-modelled calves; his hips were narrow, his shoulders broad and his back muscular. There was nothing effeminate about his good looks except the eyes, which were a deep, vivid blue with dark, curling lashes, and they had been the envy of many a woman. His brown hair was brushed in a high roll back from his forehead and tied with a cherry-coloured ribbon at the nape of his neck. His coat, too, was cherry-coloured, with a high double collar edged with gold galloon, and open at the neck displaying the filmy lace of his cravat. His teeth were good; his expression frank and friendly.

  They were in Georgina’s boudoir at her country home; and, having breakfasted together at eleven o’clock, were passing away the time until the arrival of the guests that she was expecting for the week-end.

  So far, the things she had seen in the water-filled goblet had been a little vague and far from satisfactory. For him a heavy loss at cards; concerning her a letter by a foreign hand in which she suspected treachery; for both of them journeys across water, but in two different ships that passed one another in the night.

  For a moment she was silent, then she said, ‘Why, Roger, I see a wedding ring. How prodigious strange. ’Tis the last thing I would have expected. Alack, alack! It fades before I can tell for which o
f us ’tis intended. But wait; another picture forms. Mayhap we’ll learn…. Nay; this has no connection with the last. ’Tis a court of justice. I see a judge upon a bench. He wears a red robe trimmed with ermine and a great, full-bottomed wig. ’Tis a serious matter that he tries. We are both there in the court and we are both afraid—afraid for one another. But which of us is on trial I cannot tell. The court is fading—fading. Now something else is forming, where before was the stern face of the judge. It begins to solidify. It—it….’

  Suddenly Roger felt her fingers stiffen. Next second she had torn them from his grasp and her terrified cry rang though the richly-furnished room.

  ‘No, no! Oh, God; it can’t be true! I’ll not believe it!’

  With a violent gesture she swept the goblet from the table; the water fountained across the flowered Aubusson carpet and the crystal goblet shattered against the leg of a lacquer cabinet. Her eyes staring, her full red lips drawn back displaying her strong white teeth in a Medusa-like grimace, Georgina gave a moan, lurched forward, and buried her face in her hands.

  Roger had started to his feet at her first cry. Swiftly he slipped round the table and placed his hands firmly on her bowed shoulders.

  ‘Georgina! Darling!’ he cried anxiously. ‘What ails thee? In Heaven’s name, what dids’t thou see?’

  As she made no reply he shook her gently; then, parting her dark ringlets he kissed her on the nape of the neck, and murmured, ‘Come, my precious. Tell me, I beg! What devil’s vision was it that has upset thee so?’

  ‘ ’Twas—’twas a gallows, Roger; a gallows-tree,’ she stammered, bursting into a flood of tears.

  Roger’s firm mouth tightened and his blue eyes narrowed in swift resistance to so terrible an omen; but his face paled slightly. Georgina had inherited the gift of second-sight from her Gipsy mother, and he had known too many of her prophecies come true to take her soothsaying lightly. Yet he managed to keep his voice steady as he said, ‘Oh come, m’dear. On this occasion your imagination has played you a scurvy trick. You’ve told me many times that you often see things but for an instant. Like as not it was a signpost that you glimpsed, yet not clearly enough to read the lettering on it.’

  ‘Nay!’ she exclaimed, choking back her sobs. ‘ ’Twas a gibbet, I tell thee! I saw it so plainly that I could draw the very graining of the wood; and—and from it there dangled a noose of rope all ready for a hanging.’

  A fresh outburst of weeping seized her, so Roger slipped one arm under her knees and the other round her waist, then picked her up from her chair. She was a little above medium height and possessed the bounteous curves considered the high-spot of beauty in the female figure of the eighteenth century, so she was no light weight. But his muscles were hardened with riding and fencing. Without apparent effort he carried her to the leopard-headed, gilt day-bed in the centre of the room, and laid her gently upon its button-spotted yellow satin cushioning.

  It was here, in her exotic boudoir reclining gracefully on her day-bed, a vision of warm, self-possessed loveliness, that the rich and fashionable Lady Etheredge was wont to receive her most favoured visitors and enchant them with her daring wit. But now, she was neither self-possessed nor in a state to bandy trivilities with anyone. Having implicit belief in her uncanny gift, she was still suffering from severe shock, and had become again a very frightened little girl.

  Roger fetched her the smelling-salts that she affected, but rarely used in earnest, from a nearby table; then ran into her big bedroom next door, soused his handkerchief from a cut-glass decanter of Eau de Cologne and, running back, spread it as a bandage over her forehead. For a few moments he patted her hands and murmured endearments; then, realising that he could bring her no further comfort till the storm was over, he left her to dab at those heart-wrecking eyes that always seemed to have a faint blue smudge under them, with a wisp of cambric, and walked over to one of the tall windows.

  It was a Saturday, and the last day of March in the year 1788. George III, now in the twenty-seventh year of his reign, was King of England, and the younger Pitt, now twenty-eight years of age, had already been his Prime Minister for four and a quarter years. The Opposition, representing the vested interests of the powerful Whig nobles, and led by Charles James Fox, was still formidable; but the formerly almost autocratic King and the brilliant, idealistic, yet hard-headed son of the Great Commoner, with a little give and take on both sides, between them now controlled the destinies of Britain.

  The American colonies had been lost to the Mother country just before the younger Pitt came to power. Between the years ’78 and ’83 Britain had stood alone against a hostile world; striving to retain her fairest possessions in the distant Americas while menaced at home, locked in bitter conflict upon every sea with the united power of France, Spain and the Dutch, and further hampered by the armed neutrality of Russia, Prussia, Denmark, Sweden and Austria also arrayed against her.

  From this desperate struggle Britain had emerged still proud and defiant, having given her continental enemies harder knocks than she sustained; but so exhausted by the effort that the great majority of her people believed that she was ruined for good and, still isolated as she was, must now sink to the station of a second-class power.

  Yet, in four short years the colossal industry and ability of young Billy Pitt, both in the sphere of commerce and foreign relations, had lifted his country once again to first place among the nations. His financial genius had restored her prosperity and his broad vision had gained her friends. In ’86 he had struck at the roots of England’s most cancerous, wasting sore—her centuries-old feud with the French—by a commercial treaty which was now rapidly bringing about a better understanding between the two countries. And in recent months he had successfully negotiated defensive treaties with both the Dutch and the King of Prussia; thus forming the Triple Alliance as an insurance against future aggression. Since the Peace of Versailles in ’83 his wise policies had done more than those of any other statesman to stabilise a shaken world, and it seemed that Europe might now look forward to a long period of tranquillity.

  Roger Brook was justly proud that, young as he was, he had in some small measure, secretly contributed to the new Alliance;* and, during the past five months, he had put all thought of work from him, to enjoy to the full the almost forgotten feeling of well-being and security that Mr. Pitt had re-won for the people of England.

  Several of these care-free weeks Roger had spent with his parents, Rear-Admiral and Lady Marie Brook, at his home on the outskirts of Lymington, in Hampshire; others he had passed in London; frequently going to the gallery of the House to hear the learned, well-reasoned but tedious orations of Edmund Burke, the melodius, forceful eloquence of Fox, and the swift, incisive logic of the young Prime Minister; but he had devoted the greater part of his time to the tomboy companion of his early adolescence, who had since become the beautiful Lady Ether edge.

  Meeting again after a separation of four years they had seen one another with new eyes. During most of November they had danced, laughed and supped together in the first throes of a hectic love affair; and since then he had been a frequent guest here at ‘Stillwaters,’ the magnificent setting she had secured for her flamboyant personality down in the heart of the Surrey woods, near Ripley.

  The stately mansion had been designed by William Kent, some half a century earlier, and was a perfect specimen of Palladian architecture. Forty-foot columns supported its domed, semi-circular, central portico; from each side of which broad flights of stone steps curved down to a quarter-mile-long balustraded terrace with pairs of ornamental vases set along it at intervals; and between these, other flights of steps gave onto a wide lawn, sloping gently to the natural lake from which the house took its name. Kent, the father of English gardens, had also laid out the flower-borders and shady walks at each end of the terrace; and nature’s setting had been worthy of his genius, since the house and lake lay in the bottom of a shallow valley; a secret, sylvan paradise enclosed on every si
de by woods of pine and silver birch.

  Now that spring had come blue and yellow crocus gaily starred the grass beneath the ornamental trees, and the daffodils were beginning to blossom on the fringe of the woods, which feathered away above them in a sea of delicate emerald green. The scene was utterly still, and not even marred by the presence of a gardener; for it was her Ladyship’s standing order that none of the thirty men employed to keep the grounds should ever be visible from her windows after she rose at ten o’clock.

  Indeed, the prospect on which Roger looked down was one of such peace, dignity and beauty as only England has to show; but there was no peace in his heart. He loved Georgina dearly. They were both only children, and his fondness for her was even deeper from having filled to her the role of brother, than that of a lover. But she had been aggravatingly temperamental of late, and now this dread foreboding, that one or both of them would fall under the shadow of the gallows, had shaken him much more than he cared to admit.

  After some moments he turned and, seeing that her weeping had ceased, went over and kissed her on her still damp cheek; then he said with as much conviction as he could muster:

  ‘My love, I beg you to use your utmost endeavours to put this horrid vision from your mind. You know as well as I that all such glimpses of the unknown are only possibilities—not certainties. They are but random scenes from several paths which circumstances make it possible that one may tread; yet, having free-will, we are not bound to any, and may, by a brave decision taken opportunely, evade such evil pitfalls as fate seems to have strewn in our way. You have oft predicted things that have come true for both of us, but there are times when you have been at fault; and others when you have seen the ill but not its context, so that in the event it proved harmless after all, or a blessing in disguise. With God’s Mercy, this will prove such a case.’

  Georgina was far too strong a personality to give way to panic for long, and having by an effort regained her composure, she replied firmly, Thou art right in that, dear heart, and we must take such comfort from it as we may. Yet, I confess, the vision scared me mightily; for I once before saw a gibbet in the glass when telling poor Captain Coignham’s fortune, and he was swinging from one on Setley Heath within the year.’