That Old Black Magic

by Cathi Unsworth

  “Of course,” said Spooner. “I was sure she would and that she’d use the magazine to get in touch with me again. Who said a theatrical agent can’t have other interests? She knew mine were the same as hers.”

  “And what did you think those interests really were? Please don’t tell me it was volksliede?” Anders’ barked a short, humourless laugh. “Or you didn’t think that she could actually be in love with you?”

  “No,” said Spooner. “I was pretty sure the person she really loved was Clara. That’s why she wanted me to know what happened to her friend just as soon as she was sure of it. Did you not realise it was Anna leaving all those messages? Who put Bella in the Wych Elm? What do you reckon?”

  Clapping a hand on his shoulder, Anders stopped Spooner in his tracks. The blade bit a little deeper, enough to draw blood, but the handcuffed man carried on talking.

  “See, Anna thinks it was Nicholas Ralphe – Ralph Nicholson as she knew him. I actually saw the man, just before he died, and he even believed it himself. You did a good job on him, you and your Master. That’s what I would call proper magic.”

  By now he could see it all, just as it had been in his dream. The pale columns of the temple illuminated against the dark canopy by flickering pinpoints of light. The smell of burning herbs brought to his nostrils by the gentle breeze. This time, though, it wasn’t just hairs rising on the back of his neck. It was pinpricks of blood.

  “It was the letters that made me certain,” Spooner continued, “the ones you wrote to Professor Melvin. Ralphe sent the first one, asking her about the ritual for the Hand of Glory, once he had made up his mind what he had to do. The ones that came after were written by you on the same typewriter, which you had easy access to, since you’d had Clara copy the keys to his flat, where you’d read her reply to the first one. A great idea – except for your spelling. When you wrote to the professor, you spelled her title with two ‘f’s and one ‘s’. Clara called De Vere the professor. Was that what made the word tricky for you? A wee bit jealous, perhaps?”

  Spooner could hear Anders breathing behind him becoming a little more strained. Powerless as he was to use anything as a weapon, he had to keep on using words to stop that blade from going in any deeper. Receiving no answer, he plunged on.

  “See, I think you were. You had to make Anna believe Clara was blackmailing you, but I’d wager it was you set the whole thing up. You knew Clara from the thirties, back when you were with the circus in Hamburg, and you’d already established an identity for yourself in Birmingham months before she arrived. Your friendship with Anna gave Clara a professional foil while she went about seducing secrets out of Ralphe. Once you knew what he intended to do with her, you let him go right ahead. We’re now on the spot where you buried the hand, so I’m guessing that once you’d seen him make his preparations, you waited here,” Spooner nodded towards the portico, “to take charge of the ceremony once they got back. I also think you knew the estate a lot better than he did and that sense of humour of yours leads me to believe it was you who chose Clara’s last resting place in the tree. Which leaves only one thing I’m not sure of. Did you work alone that night, or were you assisted by your Master? My understanding is that when Clara went back to Germany in the winter of 1940, it was to ensure De Vere’s safe passage. But that information could be suspect. Only a Magister Templi could have successfully performed the ritual, after all.”

  His words hung on the air for a few moments – too hot, too prickly and smelling overpoweringly of the herbs burned in that previous ritual: rue, henbane, myrtle and belladonna. The blade dropped away from Spooner’s neck.

  “Not bad for a theatrical agent,” said Anders. “Ninety-nine per cent of your deductions cannot be faulted. It must be your tragic obedience to your class system alone that leads you to reason that De Vere must be the head of our Order. The same deference that you show to your own superior officer, I expect.”

  He stepped out in front of Spooner. In the dancing blue light he looked akin to a vampire, the dark woods his natural habitat.

  “Well, when you said that tonight’s performance was for your Master…” Spooner began.

  Anders smiled. “De Vere was useful,” he said, “more useful to us than he was to the man who sent you here. It was his wish to become an adept, so his initiation was to assist us in destroying your war factory from the inside. I’m sorry if it was he you were hoping to meet this evening, but you see, Mr Spooner, I serve only one master – and as your colleague Ralphe found to his cost, his powers are much greater than any earthly lord’s. Come, see for yourself how I persuaded your predecessor he had killed the great love of his life. I’m sure you will appreciate the trick of it…”

  With a sharp click, Spooner heard the blade snap back into position behind his neck and he could do nothing to avoid it but walk towards the temple, trying to keep his mind ready for any eventuality he might find himself presented with.

  Twelve tall black candles had been placed around the pentagram marked out on the floor, the image of Baphomet at its centre. They burned with a phosphorescent glow, emitting sulphurous notes to the smoking bowls between them. At the centre stood an empty throne, a chair made of blackened oak, the thirteenth candle placed at its base.

  It wasn’t the unholy setting that made Spooner’s stomach turn a somersault. It was what hung above the throne, suspended from the ceiling upside down, gagged and bound from her ankles to her throat, sea-green eyes staring at him in mute horror: Anna.

  “Like a lamb to the slaughter,” she had said.

  “You recognise the sacrifice, naturally,” Anders could not conceal the delight in his voice. “As it pleased her so much to betray her sacred oaths to you, she will follow her dearest all the way down to hell. And you shall be the one to send her there.”

  Beneath where her body twisted in a vain attempt to loosen her shackles, across the seat of the throne was placed a scimitar, its blade a deadly crescent moon.

  “Impressive, nein?” Anders swooped down to reach it. “This holy blade was once used by the Templars. Shedding blood with such a powerful weapon shall make the sacrifice all the more potent. Together, you and Anna shall open the door into the abyss…”

  By now, Spooner had almost succeeded in pulling off the trick he had been practising so long. He had picked up two hairpins from his jacket pocket when he had returned his handkerchief, unnoticed by his host. He had them gripped between the third and fourth fingers of both hands when the handcuffs went on and had managed to slide them down in his palm by making fists as he exited the car. All the time they had been walking through the woods he had fashioned them into tools to work at the lock with, the sound of their feet and conversation disguising the noise made by each successive pin of the barrel coming loose and keeping his mind focussed on the task and not the myriad illusions he was being shown. As they entered the temple, the fifth and final pin had sprung. All he had to do now was wait for Anders to place the sacrificial knife in his hand.

  “But first,” Anders smiled as he turned the vicious implement around in his hand, “let me introduce you to my Master. It is in his name that all of this work is done. Hail to thee, Prince of Darkness! Hail to thee, my Lord Satan!”

  As he spoke the candles shimmered, their flames guttering, while around the throne another light seemed to form out of thin air, a pale purple ball that glowed and spread lengthways and widthways, turning in front of Spooner’s disbelieving eyes into the form of a massive goat. Back to Spooner came the words of the Chief: “Ralphe said he saw the Goat of Mendes manifest in a temple in the grounds of a house on the Worcestershire borders”, and he knew he was seeing exactly what the doomed man had witnessed before him and been terrified out of his wits thereafter.

  Despite the dizzying lights, smells and all the other elements Anders had working away to destroy his reason, it was this fact that assured Spooner that what he was seeing was nothing but a trick, the smoke and mirrors of the adepts of Norrie’s world, not a re
al satanic manifestation of Triple-U will. Even if he could see every coarse black hair on the creature’s body, smell the foetid aroma of its breath.

  Trying not to flinch, Spooner kept his gaze on Anna, who twisted and curled above.

  “Now you shall obey my Master,” said Anders, “and dispatch this little traitor.” He ran the curved blade around her neck with the precision with which he had wielded the sword-stick, creating there a thin necklace of rubies, made from her own blood.

  Everything now hinged on the timing. Catching his breath, Spooner watched Anders pass the knife through the smoke of the incense and then genuflect before the Goat, presenting the instrument of slaughter to his Master. The Beast raised its head and opened its mouth, from which emitted a cacophony of shrieks and bellows as loud as the wail of an air raid siren that seemed to be blasting up through the earth from its kingdom below.

  No wonder Ralphe had cracked when faced with the same ordeal. Poor Ralphe, who had been so unprepared; and to whom no one had ever lent a copy of Magic for Beginners.

  Anders swept the blade under Spooner’s arms, forcing him to hold them out in front of him, palms upwards, to receive the weapon.

  “Take it!” Anders demanded.

  Spooner felt his hand grip the handle at the same second as his handcuffs fell to the ground and, in that moment, he stepped to the side of his opponent, raising his arms in preparation to strike, forcing all his will against the sound and the fury of the performance around him into his only pure objective – to rid the world of Anders and everything he stood for.

  But the moment never came.

  As the knife passed between the two men, Anders’ face registered first shock, then outrage and finally, disbelief. Spooner followed the other man’s rolling eyeballs upwards to the perfect round hole that had appeared, as if by magic, in the centre of his forehead.

  “That,” said Detective Sergeant William Houlston, holding his pistol in front of him, “was for the BSA factory.”

  Anders gave a final gasp and fell backwards.

  “And this,” Houlston swivelled around, aiming now at the portico of the temple, the place Spooner suspected that a projector was hidden, “is for everyone on shift that night. Including my sister.” He let off a volley of shots, drawing his finger back on the trigger until his cylinder had been spent. Wood splintered and sparks flew under the barrage and Spooner dropped to the ground to avoid the shrapnel, throwing the knife aside and putting his hands over his ears instead, until the wailing of the damned came to an abrupt and spluttering halt.

  “I’ve waited a long time to do that,” he heard Houlston say, and then: “Are you all right?”

  As the DSI kneeled beside him, Spooner realised he was shaking like a leaf. He had survived, and with his reason seemingly intact, but the physical endurance it had taken had turned his body to quivering jelly. Gingerly he raised himself into a sitting position.

  “I’m not sure,” he admitted, raking a hand through his hair. Houlston’s round blue eyes stared back at him. He had lost both his flat cap and the pencil moustache he had worn the last time Spooner saw him, part of the disguise he had used to stand in for the De Veres’ gamekeeper.

  “That took guts, kid,” he said.

  When Spooner had asked for the Birmingham spycatcher, he hadn’t been entirely surprised to find himself meeting Houlston again. It seemed the feeling was mutual.

  “You took your time,” was the first thing he said.

  But when Spooner shared the information he had gleaned at the Hippodrome, the detective’s surly demeanour transformed. He swiftly ascertained that Simon De Vere had sent orders to the estate that his gamekeeper should expect Mr Anders to call at the end of the month, and to put the car, house and grounds at his disposal. The gamekeeper knew Anders by sight, but doubted the other man would have similar recall – he and Houlston looked enough alike to resemble each other from a distance, which was as close a look as Anders had ever taken at any servant of the De Veres. Houlston had been observing Anders and his chauffeur bringing in props and practising trial runs with a stopwatch while wandering the grounds with a spaniel and a pair of binoculars for the past week.

  Bertie Adams had advised them on how the tricks would likely work and Spooner’s library had provided further details on what to expect from this kind of ritual. They had been as forewarned as possible. Though there was one thing Spooner hadn’t realised.

  “I didn’t know about your sister,” he said.

  Houlston grimaced. “We all have our reasons. I thought it might make you feel better to know what made the pleasure entirely mine.”

  “Is there anyone else here?” asked Spooner. “Was any of what I saw actually real?”

  Houlston shook his head. “Nope. It was all a projection. Though I dread to think where that recording of the screams came from.” He shook his head. “There’s no one here but us chickens and no one knows that except the staff at the house… and my boss.”

  Houlston gave Spooner another one of his long, slow winks, as if to suggest he knew who that last person he referred to might be.

  “He’ll expect me to clean up,” he continued, “but first, let’s get you up and that other one down and we can find out who was right about her – you or me.”

  For the second time in their acquaintance, Houlston helped Spooner to his feet. Spooner’s legs wobbled and he had to lean against the other man until he regained his balance. But it was relief now, not fear that coursed through his veins. He had survived and he had saved Anna. It was almost enough to make him laugh…

  Until he turned towards the centre of the temple and saw the loose rope hanging there.

  “Anna!” he called, and stumbled forward through the smoke and the fumes. It was so hard to see anything properly. Perhaps she had managed to free herself and was crouching in the shadows waiting for him, too afraid of Houlston’s presence to show herself. “Anna, you can come out now. It’s all right. No one’s going to hurt you…”

  His voice echoed back off the walls. His lungs had become so full of the smoke that the effort of shouting made him start to cough painfully. He turned around, desperately seeking a sign of movement between the smouldering bowls and the flickering lights. All he could see was shadows and the still form of Anders, staring blankly up at the ceiling.

  “I should have known…” Houlston said from behind him, all the ire returning to his voice. “He never tied her up, did he? It was all part of the trick.”

  “The trick?” Spooner’s hand flailed towards the rope, still swinging with the momentum of its former captive’s departure.

  “She was in on it all along,” Houlston moved beside him. “She lured you here so he could kill you, then she spent the week practising all this with him, dressed as his chauffeur. Bet you never knew she was an escapologist and all, did you?”

  Spooner shook his head. “No,” he said. “She believed in him once. But he let her down, disappeared on her. And she wasn’t sure why until he came back, after they’d found the body in the woods. That was when she finally had to accept the truth of what he really was. That night at the Hippodrome, she asked me to fetch the spycatcher and bring you here. She knew he was trying to set me up, but she wanted this game to end with Anders dead, not me. She played along with him until the last second, but she was gambling all along that you’d get him first. That was the risk she was prepared to take, that I might actually kill her. She was still trussed up when he put the knife in my hands, wasn’t she?”

  Houlston grunted. “Then what’s she done a runner for now?” he asked.

  Spooner raised his arm to cuff away the tear that was sliding down his cheek. He hoped that, in the darkness, his companion wouldn’t have noticed it. “Her work’s done now,” knowing as he said it that he’d never catch up with her again, not in this lifetime. All she’d ever be was a silvery trail hung upon the night air, the stardust memory of a song. “There’s nothing else left for her.”

  Anna was gone.
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  EPILOGUE

  Friday, 3 January 1946

  Around a hundred people assembled by the gates of Wandsworth prison for the execution of the traitor, Simon De Vere. Anticipating trouble from his supporters, the police had drafted in reinforcements. But when the notice announcing the hanging was posted, just after nine o’clock that morning, only one man removed his hat and stood to attention.

  The prisoner faced the rope with as cool a demeanour as he had shown the court at his trial at the Old Bailey the previous September. Perhaps he was hoping that, as had once been the case with his friend Lady Wynter, the jury would not find themselves able to pass a guilty sentence on someone of such breeding, a notion that had been dashed both then and at his subsequent appeal. Still, De Vere had gone for his appointment with the executioner Albert Pierrepoint, himself fresh from dispatching many of his lordship’s former comrades at Nuremberg, dressed in his best Savile Row.

  He hadn’t looked so assured the last time Spooner had seen him, shortly after his capture on the Danish border the previous May. De Vere had been found lurking in an abandoned farmhouse, one of many such places in which he had sought refuge since the German surrender. Two British soldiers, part of a battalion hunting for SS and war criminals amid the defeated troops coming down from Denmark and Norway, recognised and challenged him. De Vere admitted who he was and let the soldiers in, then made a lunge for something hidden under the seat of a chair. Thinking it was a gun, one of the soldiers shot him in the buttocks.

  The De Vere that Spooner met with, in the 74th British General Hospital in Lüneburg, close to the Hamburg that Clara and Kohl had once called home, rested on his iron cot with a sunken face, his dentures having been confiscated in case they contained a cyanide pill, wearing blue and white striped pyjamas. He looked much older than the man Spooner recalled from the smoky London rooms of 1939.

  Their interview filled in some gaps of the story, details that would not be heard in court and which De Vere parted with unwillingly, on the sole condition that the woman he had been found with, a German redhead with an uncanny resemblance to Agent Belladonna, would be spared imprisonment herself. As he would go on to repeat at his trial, he claimed to be a patriot who had been working for the interests of his country all along.