Black August by Dennis Wheatley Page A

some sort of Government job.’ Ann shivered slightly, feeling for the first time the chill of the night air.
    â€˜Government job, eh?—that’s pretty rich.’ He shook his head whimsically. ‘You poor little fool, hadn’t you the sense to realise that Wensleadale is the family name of the Dukes of Burminster? That young man is the candidate for mid-Suffolk, Ann—and he is known officially as my Lord the Marquis of Fane!’

4
Love, Cocktails, and the
Shadow of Fear
    â€˜Darling! How divine of you to come!’ Lady Veronica Wensleadale was stretched at full length on the comfortable sofa in her private sitting-room. It was on the third floor of the Burminster house in Grosvenor Square, a friendly, well-lit and exquisitely furnished room.
    â€˜My dear! I’ve been simply dying to see you.’ Fiona Hetherington stretched out both her hands. She was Veronica’s closest friend and from their greetings one might have imagined that they met after a separation of months. Actually they had seen each other less than ten days before, exchanged letters, and held two long conversations on the telephone in the meantime.
    â€˜Sit down, my sweet, and tell me
everything.
’ Veronica pulled the other girl down beside her. She was darker than her brother Kenyon, but a suggestion of red lit the almost black hair on her small and shapely head. As she lay back her slim body was half-buried in the cushions and her pale oval face only just appeared above her knees. A thin spiral of smoke rose from a cigarette in her slender jade holder.
    â€˜I suppose you’ve heard all these ghastly rumours which are floating round,’ Fiona said.
    â€˜Yes, too nauseating, my dear—why don’t they have their absurd revolution and get it over!—but tell me about the Tweekenhams’ dance?’
    â€˜It was an awful flop, half the people failed to turn up!’
    â€˜But, darling, they were completely loppy to give a party in August, anyhow.’
    â€˜I don’t know,’ Fiona remonstrated, ’as Parliament is still sitting everybody has stayed on in London this year, but even Peter tried to back out at the last moment—said it was such damned bad taste with the King ill and everything—but we had to go in the end, I couldn’t let Angela down.’
    â€˜Poor Angela! she is a complete nit-wit, but such a sweet. Itwas hellish to have to refuse her, but I couldn’t get away from Holkenham until yesterday.’
    Fiona pulled off her hat and shook back her fair hair. ‘Was it amusing?’
    â€˜Grim, my dear—grim.’ Veronica cast her eyes up to the ceiling. ‘The house was Strawberry Hill Gothic, not enough bathrooms, and a vast brown-tiled hall—real Neo-Lavatorial!’
    â€˜How depressing. What were the Bronsons like?’
    â€˜Quite too terrible. Of course it’s a bit of luck for Kenyon that he was at Magdalen with the son. Old Sir George is practically fighting the election for him, but the old woman was appalling. It is one of those ghastly places where they keep up the prehistoric custom of the men sitting over their port, and as Juliana Augusta went up to bed early the first night the Bronson cornered me in the drawing-room. She third-degreed me about Juliana Augusta’s little whims and she must have said “the dear Duchess” forty times in the hour. I think she thought that to say “Your mother” would have been
lèse majest
é.’
    Fiona smiled. ‘And what about the young man?’
    â€˜Oh, he was quite a nice little cad—played a decent game of golf and made sheep’s eyes at me of course, but the poor lamb was dragged off to do this filthy electioneering most of the time—Hell’s Bells!—that’s done it.’ Veronica grabbed frantically at the end of her cigarette which had fallen from the holder into her lap. When she had succeeded in rescuing the glowing