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  Vendetta in Spain

  ( Duke de Richleau - 2 )

  Dennis Wheatley

  Vendetta in Spain

  Readers of The Golden Spaniard and other books in which the glamorous Lucretia-Jose appears with the Duke de Richleau may recall that her parentage was surrounded by mystery. Over the years many people have written, asking for an account of the great romance that led to her birth.

  The story takes us back to Spain, in 1906, when the Duke had not yet succeeded his father, and was still the Count de Quesnoy. In these days it is not easy for us to realize that, less than fifty years ago, there was hardly a Monarch or President who could leave his bed in the morning with any certainty that he would live through the day. Anarchism permeated every country in Europe. Not a night passed without groups of fanatics meeting in cellars to plan attempts with knives, pistols or bombs against the representatives of law and order; not a month passed without some royalty or high official falling a victim to their plots.

  In Spain, an historic bomb outrage that led to scores of innocent people being killed or injured, gave de Quesnoy ample cause to vow vengeance on the assassins. His attempt to penetrate anarchist circles in Barcelona nearly cost him his life. In San Sebastian, Granada and Cadiz he hunted and was hunted by them in a ruthless vendetta. Only after two years did it end in a final desperate gamble with death.

  It is against this background of true history, subtle intrigue, sudden violence, terrorism, blackmail and suspense that there develops the bitter-sweet romance between the gallant young de Quesnoy and the beautiful Condesa Gulia, the wife of a friend he loves and honours. Their frustrated passion leads to a denouement that rivals in surprise and breath-taking effect the outcome of his vendetta against the anarchists.

  DENNIS WHEATLEY

  VENDETTA IN SPAIN

  THE BOOK CLUB

  121 CHARING CROSS ROAD LONDON, WC2

  © Dennis Wheatley 1961 First published 1961

  For SHELAGH

  Still 'the dazzling young Duchess of Westminster'* who knew and loved Spain at the period of this story.

  ♦Robert Sencourt in "King Alfonso" (Faber and Faber, 1942)

  Death at High Noon

  The principal streets of Madrid presented a riot of colour. From a cloudless sky the sun poured down on the flags of all nations, long strings of pennants and thousands of yards of red and yellow bunting draping the innumerable stands that had been erected on every available space beyond the pavement line. In addition, following the eastern custom brought over by the Moors, carpets, woven rugs and colourful tapestries hung from every window and balcony. On both sides, behind lines of soldiers in bright uniforms, the pavements were a solid mass of people in gala attire. Others filled the stands, every window and even the roof-tops. At intervals along the route there rose tall flagpoles surmounted by gold crowns and bearing shields with the arms of Spain and those of Princess Ena of Battenberg, for King Alfonso XIII had that day, the 31st of May, 1906, married the granddaughter of Queen Victoria.

  The side streets, although nearly deserted, were little less gay; for the marriage of the young King, aged twenty, to the beautiful, golden-haired English Princess, aged nineteen, was a most popular one, and even the poorest Madrilehos had shown their joy by hanging flags and strips of carpet from their windows.

  Down one such street behind the Calle Mayor several small groups of smartly-dressed ladies and gentlemen were hurrying. They had just left the church of San Jeronimo in which the wedding mass had been celebrated with great pomp and splendour, and were making their way to a special stand reserved for certain court officials and distinguished guests to witness the procession on its way back to the Palace.

  In one of these groups the most striking figure was Armand, Count de Quesnoy, the thirty-one year old son of the ninth Due de Richleau. He was only a little above medium height but carried himself with the easy grace of a man who had spent most of his life hunting, dancing, fencing and soldiering. His hair was dark and slightly wavy, his forehead broad, his face oval with a rather thin but well moulded mouth, and a pointed chin that showed great determination. His nose was aquiline, his eyes grey, flecked with tiny spots of yellow; at times they could flash with piercing brilliance, and above them a pair of 'devil's eyebrows' tapered up towards his temples. At the moment his slim figure was hidden by the robes of a Knight of the Golden Fleece, and it was his membership of this illustrious Order that had secured for him a place in the church to witness the wedding ceremony.

  Beside him, a hand on his arm, was his wife, Angela: a typical English beauty with big pansy-brown eyes and a milk-and-roses complexion. Her forehead was broad, her eyebrows well arched, and her fine jaw-line, square almost to the point of truculence, showed her to have a personality as determined as her husband's. On her high-piled hair she wore an enormous hat decorated with tulle and yellow roses. In spite of the heat she was wearing a dress made of satin. It was also yellow, had leg-of-mutton sleeves, almost touched the ground and was excruciatingly nipped in at the waist above an armour of whalebone corset.

  She had been his first great love and he hers; but she had already been married when they met and many vicissitudes had prevented the consummation of their love until at last tragedy had broken the barrier that kept them apart, and fourteen months earlier she had become his Countess.

  With them in the group that had slipped away from the church as soon as the Te Deum had been sung were Colonel Guy Wyndham and several other officers of the 16th Lancers who had formed Princess Ena's military escort on her journey to Spain. At the end of the side street, on showing their passes, the police made a way for them through the crowd into the Calle Mayor about two-thirds of the way down, where this narrow street in the heart of old Madrid widens out in a small square called the Plaza de la Villa.

  There the group separated, the de Quesnoys and several others crossing the square to the stand which had been erected in front of the church of Santa Maria, while Colonel Wyndham and his officers went to a nearby house occupied by a Mr. Young, one of the secretaries at the British Embassy, who had invited them and the British Ambassador, Sir Maurice de Bunsen, to see the procession from its windows.

  The stand was already three parts full with Spanish hidalgos and their ladies, and foreign notabilities, whose rank had not been high enough to secure them places in the church, and now the front rows, too, were rapidly filling up with the more exalted representatives of the aristocracy of many nations. De Quesnoy's Order of the Golden Fleece made him a Grandee of Spain; so on that account he ranked among them, but that he and his wife should have been allotted seats in the very front row he knew must be due to the influence of the King's cousin, the young Due de Vendome, who was devoted to him.

  Francois de Vendome had been the instrument chosen by fate to alter the whole course of de Quesnoy's life. The Due de Richleau was by birth a Frenchman, but he had married a Russian Princess, and since he loathed the French Republican regime he had lived for many years as a voluntary exile on a large property of hers a little to the north of the Carpathians; so de Quesnoy had been born and brought up in Russia.

  At the age of eighteen, in order that he might establish his right to French citizenship, he had, against the strong opposition of his father, decided to do his military service in France, and had chosen the Army as his career.

  That career had opened with promise, but political differences with his superiors had resulted in his being packed off to insufferably dreary garrison duty in Madagascar. There, for the following two-and-a-half years, he had succeeded in overcoming discomfort and boredom by devoting his abundant spare time to an intensive study of the occult. Then, changes at the War Office had resulted in his being posted to Algeria
. At that time France was opening up the interior of North Africa, so while there he was almost constantly on active service against the tribesmen and, as he soon showed himself to be a born cavalry leader, his promotion was rapid. Another three years and he was a Brevet Lt.-Colonel decorated with the Legion d'Honneur.

  When at last recalled to France early in 1903 he had hoped to be given employment with a regiment, as the greatest ambition of his life was, in time, to command a Cavalry Division, but fate had decreed otherwise. The Republican government was riddled with corruption, and so fanatically atheist that it was purging the Army of many of its ablest officers solely because they adhered to their religion. A group of patriots had decided that the only remedy was to restore the Monarchy. Among them was an Assistant Chief of Staff named General Laveriac, and he had drawn de Quesnoy into the conspiracy.1

  The Monarchists' choice for King was the Due de Vendome, in whose veins ran the blood of Henry IV, the founder of the Bourbon dynasty. His father had married the Spanish Infanta Maria Alfon-sine, so he had been brought up in Spain but, like de Quesnoy, he insisted on going to France to do his military service. Soon after de Quesnoy's return, de Vendome was due to become an officer-cadet at St. Cyr, and Laveriac had asked the Count to take a post as

  1 See The Prisoner in the Mask.

  Chief Instructor there so that he might watch over the young Prince and gradually initiate him into the plan to stage a coup d'etat for the purpose of proclaiming him as Francois III of France.

  De Quesnoy had accepted this most delicate task and in due course de Vendome—an unambitious but deeply religious young man—had, from a sense of duty, consented to being placed on the Throne. But the conspiracy had been betrayed and de Vendome arrested. By sacrificing his own liberty de Quesnoy had saved the Prince from acute suffering and probably death. It was for this signal service to a member of the Spanish Royal Family that King Alfonso had made de Quesnoy a Knight of the Golden Fleece. But his career in the French Army was irretrievably ruined. He had been deprived of his commission and could no longer even set foot in France without risking imprisonment for his part in the conspiracy. It was this knowledge, that there was little hope of his ever being able to return to the land of his ancestors, and because he knew how greatly it would please Angela, that had led him at the time of their marriage to become a naturalized British citizen.

  The ledge of the stand in the front row of which they sat was only just above the level of the heads of the crowd; but it was no more than three deep there because the stand projected over the pavement in front of the church and there was room for only a thin ribbon of people between the stand and the backs of the soldiers lining that part of the route. In consequence the procession itself would pass within fifteen feet of them. Midday had just chimed so it was now due to start and the street had'been cleared, but it would be the best part of an hour before, near its end, the Crown Coach entered the Calle Mayor; for the timing had been arranged to allow for the Royal couple to receive the homage of the great nobles, officials and royalties of Spain before setting out from the church. Suddenly the eager, murmuring crowd began to cheer, a solitary mounted orderly came into view, and a few yards behind him the Captain-General of Madrid.

  In his magnificent uniform he made a resplendent figure, but as he passed the stand, followed by a jingling troop of cavalry that headed the procession, it was upon his horse that de Quesnoy's eyes were fixed. It was a pure white Arab, mettlesome, high-stepping and perfectly proportioned. As a fine judge of horseflesh he thought he had never seen a better mount, and he gave an inaudible sigh.

  His sigh was not one of envy for the splendid animal, but of regret that he would now never lead another cavalry charge, much less command a Cavalry Division. Had the conspiracy succeeded de Vendome would, he knew, have rewarded him with one, and after leaving France he had had thoughts of joining the Army of one of the South American Republics in which, for an officer of his experience, there would have been fine prospects; but Angela's having become free to marry him had put an end to such ideas.

  As the wife of a French politician she had lived for so long in Paris that the past eighteen months, during which she had been back in England among her own family and old friends, had meant positive bliss for her. He could not possibly ask her to give that up and go with him to an utterly strange life in Latin America; yet there was no other avenue by which he could satisfy his longing to resume his career as a soldier.

  Fortunately, however, his father was rich and made him a very handsome allowance. That enabled him and Angela to live in considerable comfort, to enjoy the amenities of London society and to visit friends, or stay at fashionable hotels abroad. For the past fourteen months they had divided their time between such jaunts to the Continent and longish stays with her relatives, mostly at English country houses, in what really had amounted to a prolonged honeymoon. But now he was in negotiation for the lease of a pleasant house just off Berkeley Square, and had resigned himself to settling down to the sort of round that men of his class lived—the London Season, Scotland or a visit to a German spa in August, shooting in the autumn, a month or more somewhere in the Mediterranean after Christmas, hunting in the shires during early spring, then another trip abroad until Ascot, Lord's, Henley and Goodwood came round again.

  At first only the thought that he would be sharing it with Angela had made bearable to him the contemplation of such an aimless existence, but early in the year another factor had arisen which now made him regard it much more cheerfully. Angela was expecting a baby in October.

  For some reason, perhaps because so great a part of his bachelorhood had been spent in outposts of the French empire, or because he had not met any women other than Angela whom he had wished to marry, he had never thought of himself as a father. But now he was thrilled by the idea. He hoped that she would give him a boy to carry on the ancient title of de Richleau, but the prospect of a girl who might take after her was almost as exciting. Her pregnancy bad run a normal course and so far caused her little inconvenience; but from the moment she had told him of it he had shown the greatest concern for her, and he was a little worried at the moment that the walk from the church and the heat might have tired her unduly. To his tender, whispered inquiry she replied with a smile that she felt perfectly well, then she began to fan herself while he opened the big gilt-edged programme they had been given on reaching the stand, and read out to her the names of the regiments and personalities that were now passing within fifteen feet of them.

  For over half an hour detachments of cavalry, infantry and artillery went by. Every regiment from the Home Army was represented; black and brown troops had been brought from the Spanish colonies and Berbers in the service of Spain, who loped along on their ungainly camels, from Morocco. Then came the open State landaus and the gilded coaches. In the first carriages were the English Lords and Ladies sent to attend the new Queen. Next came the Great Officers of the Spanish Royal Household, Cardinals in their scarlet and other dignitaries of the Church, then the coaches of the principal Grandees of Spain, the Dukes of Alba, Baildn, Fernan-Nufiez, Medina-Sidonia and many more. They were followed by coaches containing members of the Royal Family and many visiting royalties; in the last rode the Prince and Princess of Wales, sent to represent King Edward VII, who was happy to regard himself as the principal sponsor of this royal romance.

  Among the dozen or more coaches containing Don Alfonso's relatives there was one that the de Quesnoys gave a special cheer, for in it were the Due de Vendome and his family. A few years after his father's death, his mother, the Infanta Maria Alfonsine, had married again, taking as her second husband the Conde Ruiz de Cordoba y Coralles, a member of the great banking family whose head was his elder brother, Jos6. In the coach on its front seat de Vendome was sitting between the two Condes, his stepfather and Stepuncle. Opposite, facing the horses, sat their two wives. Like all the other Spanish ladies in the procession they were wearing the national head-dress, huge combs of tortoiseshell f
rom which were draped mantillas of the finest lace. The Infanta was in her early forties, plump, somewhat heavy-jowled and high-nosed; her sister-in-law, the Condesa Gulia, was much slimmer and it was at her that nine-tenths of the male spectators were now looking.

  Although the wife of the older brother, the Condesa was much the younger of the two women, being still only in her early twenties. She was not so dark as the average Spaniard, having Titian hair and a matt-white magnolia complexion; but her eyes were black and held the slumbrous fire which is one of the greatest attractions of the typical Spanish beauty. As the coach passed the stand, those eyes sought de Quesnoy, then remained riveted upon him, but he was quite unconscious of her special interest in himself and his smiles and waves were directed at the family as a whole.

  Cannon continued to thunder in the distance, and joy-bells to peal from a score of churches. The crowd had been cheering for close on an hour, yet its Olds showed no signs of hoarseness. In fact, as the coach carrying Prince George and Princess Mary of Wales passed the Court stand, a louder than ever burst of cheering thundered along from further up the street, indicating that the Crown coach must have entered the Puerta del Sol—the Piccadilly Circus of Madrid—in which thousands of people were congregated.

  A moment later a huge mahogany coach emerged from under the arch of greenery and flowers that spanned the street where it entered the little square. In it were the King's mother, Queen Maria Christina, who had acted as Regent during his long minority, Queen Ena's mother, Princess Beatrice, the Infante Don Carlos and his four-year-old son, Don Alfonso Maria.

  Next, in accordance with ancient custom, there came a gold-panelled coach which was empty, and known as 'The Carriage of Respect'. The coaches of the nobility had been drawn by four horses, those of the royalties by six, and now there came into view the eight beautiful Andalusian cream-coloured steeds drawing the Crown coach. It was moving very slowly and as the lead horses came level with the de Quesnoys, owing to some check to the procession in front, it was forced to come to a stop.