“Remember Victoria was dead for a few years. Now shush,” she says, and hits play again.

  We are launched into the third Phibes movie without further ado. There is an opening montage. On returning from the River of Life in Egypt, Phibes and Vulnavia established a lair in a bomb shelter below the Kit Kat Klub in Berlin. Phibes (who has lost his fortune) has murdered and replaced Max, the impresario and owner, who he impersonates from behind a curtain. The Clockwork Band plays jazz in the art deco surroundings of the club while Vulnavia performs as the Master of Ceremonies, dapper in white tie and tails. Victoria is alive, or at the very least undead, thanks to the blessing of the Black Pharaoh: but she is frail, her immune system devastated by Phibes’s embalming treatment, so she sleeps away the years in a crystal coffin beneath the club.

  Outside the jazz club, the atmosphere of impending doom is palpable on the streets of Berlin. Every day the swastika flies from more buildings: brownshirts stomp in jackbooted processions through the streets, fighting running battles with the communists and beating up Jews, foreigners, homosexuals, and anyone denounced as an enemy by their Führer.

  Phibes is here to exact a terrible revenge on his rival, the gambler and criminal mastermind Mabuse, who has stolen Vulnavia’s bone-white violin—a gift from Victoria’s liege lord and one of the band’s instruments. Vulnavia also seeks to replace the violin with a new one commissioned from the infamous Erich Zahn. To this end Phibes manipulates the young American writer Clifford Bradshaw using Victoria as bait. She presents herself as a young English chanteuse, Sally Bowles. Cliff has an underworld contact, Ernst the smuggler, and once Victoria is installed in his boarding house a complex sting is set in motion.

  Cliff is in debt to the infamous Mabuse, master of crime: Mabuse has a little job for him that requires nothing more than travel to a distant city to collect a violin case from a crazed luthier. So undemanding! Cliff thinks, even though his boyfriend begs him to think twice and flee back to Boston rather than fall into the clutches of the man without a face. He means Phibes, but Clifford thinks he’s talking about Mabuse—and before he can be corrected on the matter, Vulnavia arranges for the bar to serve his boyfriend a cocktail spiked with manchineel juice, whereupon he dies horribly. (The special effects budget has leveled up considerably since the earlier films in the series.)

  Cliff takes the train to Munich, collects the violin case from Zahn, and returns. Along the way he is oblivious to a comically excessive series of deaths as Phibes’s minions and Mabuse’s men battle it out aboard the train.

  (The ticket inspector, an ardent Nazi, is hog-tied and dangled in the path of a passing high-speed Schienenzeppelin’s whirling propeller blades; Hermann Göring’s aide-de-camp is paralyzed by a blowdart, then skeletonized in his bunk by hungry ferrets; Mabuse’s assassin is bisected by a surprise guillotine as he makes his way between carriages to murder the sleeping American; and so on.) While this is happening, the Master of Ceremonies takes to the stage back in the Kit Kat Klub to sing an ominous cover of Abba’s “Money, Money, Money,” accompanied by Anton on the Wurlitzer. Unwanted guests have entered the jazz club, and the Nazi infiltrators jeer. The atmosphere becomes tense: other audience members leave and are replaced by silent figures in evening dress and jewelled masks.

  Clifford’s train pulls into Berlin Hauptbahnhof. Victoria (disguised as the ingenue Sally) is there to meet him on the platform: she kisses him and takes his breath away—her lipstick is loaded with curare and he suffocates to death. She takes the violin, and returns to the club.

  As the audience applauds, “Sally” walks on stage and presents the open violin case to the Master of Ceremonies. Vulnavia retrieves a bone-white instrument and strikes up a chilling duet with Phibes, as Victoria sings “The Future Belongs to Me.” This is the signal for Phibes’s papier-mâché automata—who have replaced the regular audience—to turn on the Nazis and garrote them. (From their curious lack of resistance it is not clear whether they are even alive at this point, for Vulnavia’s violin is clearly of the same ilk as Lecter.)

  As the closing credits roll there is a montage of Phibes and Vulnavia boarding a sealed carriage to Vienna as storm clouds loom. The Clockwork Band loads a pair of glass coffins (one of which holds the sleeping Victoria) aboard the guard’s wagon: the steam locomotive chuffs slowly away from Berlin on the very eve of Hitler’s rise to power.

  Mo hits pause at the end of the film just as I explode, “This is bullshit!” I empty my beer glass. “Good use of Nazis, though. You can see where Spielberg got it from.”

  Mo’s reaction is more philosophical. “I quite liked it! I could totally ship Charlotte Rampling and Diana Rigg in a threesome with Vincent Price, you know? But it’s a shame Doctor Mabuse was just a silhouette the whole time, they could have done so much more with his character—”

  “What if it wasn’t Phibes who bumped off the director of that third movie, the one they didn’t make?” I ask. “I mean, what if Mabuse—”

  Mo shudders. “Don’t invite trouble like that, one tormented mad scientist and serial killer is enough, don’t you think?”

  I consider for a few seconds. “Yeah,” I concede. Do not multiply fiendish serial killers needlessly, right? “But this stuff in Berlin, does it track what you read in their files?”

  “Not entirely,” she says slowly, “but it’s not totally at odds with it either.”

  “I suppose Phibes wouldn’t be keen to allow anyone to make a movie in which he looks too bad, would he? I mean, in this one he’s trying to do the best for his family, right? And fighting Nazis. That’s never wrong.”

  She elbows me. “Says the man who now works for The Man.”

  I roll my eyes. “Is this another ‘are we the baddies’ moment?”

  “Grab another bottle and I’ll start the next movie, they’re only ninety minutes each.”

  “What’s coming up?”

  I already know the answer before she tells me: “The Brides of Doctor Phibes.” And, yup, the Phibes throuple got an 18 certificate in 1981. Obviously the good doctor was back in his coffin by then and the studio could take liberties without fear of sudden death.

  * * *

  It takes a while for Vulnavia to get Victoria up and ready for travel. (Luckily the twinset and heels Vulnavia has picked out for her are acceptable to Victoria’s 1921 sensibilities, although Vulnavia takes some time to persuade her that going hatless is normal these days.) It takes slightly longer to get Victoria used to the tight-fitting FFP3 face mask she will need for the next few days, but she doesn’t really balk until she sees the Qashqai: “What’s that?” she demands.

  “It’s a car.” Vulnavia uses the key fob to unlock the doors and flash the indicators.

  “But where does the chauffeur sit?”

  Explanations ensue. Victoria’s doubts seem to be allayed right up until the point where Vulnavia guns the engine as she takes the slip road to merge onto the M25. As the Countess slithers into a gap between an articulated tanker and a BMW the size of a Second World War tank, all of them moving at about sixty miles per hour, Victoria’s knuckles whiten where she grips the panic bar. “Can’t you drive a little more sedately?” she asks.

  “There’s a minimum speed limit on the motorways,” Vulnavia says defensively as they pass a smart motorway gantry bearing a row of defleshed drunk-driver skulls. “But we’re perfectly safe, cars hardly ever crash and explode these days. Toot toot!”

  “Less Mr. Toad, more Badger, dear,” Victoria requests.

  They exit onto the M4, then slow right down as they hit the traffic between Shepherd’s Bush and Knightsbridge. The skyscrapers on the banks of the Thames loom overhead, and Victoria falls silent. “I see there have been quite the changes,” she finally says, then flinches as a jumbo jet bound for Heathrow Airport rumbles overhead.

  Vulnavia is in an unaccountably cheerful mood, and can’t resist tweaking her nose: “Don’t worry, those hardly ever crash and burn either!”

  “What? We’re going to—” Victoria sees her expression. “Why, you … you deceiver!”

  Vulnavia sniggers, then checks her satnav and begins to keep an eye open for parking spots. “Nearly there.”

  Vulnavia ends up paying through the nose for a parking spot a couple side-streets away from the London Clinic. The clinic is a bland brick-faced cuboid with a fake Georgian front that dates to the 1930s: Victoria doesn’t blink at it. But once inside, the twenty-first-century hospital interior clearly sets her back, from the automatic sliding doors to the omnipresent TV screens.

  “You’re already checked in,” Vulnavia says quietly. “I’m a registered nurse and I have ID so I can take you straight to your room.” To prove her point she badges her way into one of the staff elevators and holds the door open for Victoria.

  “Where’s the lift attendant?”

  “Gone the way of the buggy whip manufacturer.” Vulnavia leads her to the ward reception desk and introduces Victoria to the duty nurse. “Let’s get you settled in.” She glances at her phone. “Anton will be along in half an hour.”

  Victoria waits until the door to her private room clicks shut before she whirls on Vulnavia. “Where has he been? Is he angry with me for, for some reason? Does he not trust me? Is it about us?” She wrings her hands. “I expected him to be there when I awakened! Is something wrong?”

  “Nothing is wrong with you, except for the damage to your immune system,” Vulnavia reassures her as she squirts disinfectant gel on her hands. “And that is repairable. But Anton has a very important patient to attend to, one who can’t be neglected.”

  “How important?” Victoria looks skeptical. “One would think his own wife returned from the dead might be a priority.”

  “Normally you would be entirely correct, but His Dark Majesty assigned Anton the rank of chief royal physician to the Queen, and the security at Buckingham Palace is very strict these days.”

  Victoria’s mouth forms a perfect O. “I see.” A pause. “Or rather, I don’t see.”

  Vulnavia sits beside her on the bed and takes her hand. “It’s very simple, my dear. You need to remain here in isolation while the immunologists replace your bone marrow, which was damaged by the embalming process. You can’t go about in public yet, the slightest cold could hospitalize you. But the Queen is getting sicker by the day. We have an appointment at 10 Downing Street next week for His Majesty to take your oath of allegiance—in His capacity as Prime Minister—and anoint you as His high priestess. Then He will explain your role in the coming Regency.

  “After which,” Vulnavia leans close to her ear and whispers, “we won’t need Anton anymore.”

  * * *

  Catastrophes always seem to happen slowly at first, then faster than anyone in their path anticipates.

  Over the next couple of weeks, Mo and I visit the Palace regularly.

  I finish my survey and search for hidden occult power sources: it’s a two-hundred-year-old palace so of course I find stuff, but nothing as weird as the thaum farm in the attic or Phibes’s glass coffins. Certainly there are no demons in skin-suits masquerading as members of the royal family (not even Prince Andrew, and I checked twice). Maybe this is the wrong royal site to go magic hunting—the Tower of London and Windsor Castle are the obvious standouts, but anywhere a bunch of monarchs have been buried is a good bet, even that car park in Leicester where they dug up Richard III—but I can’t help wondering if I’m simply searching under the metaphorical street light.

  The GPU-powered thaum farm in the Palace attic remains a sore point.

  It turns out that its installation was approved by the head of site security at the express request of Professor Phibes. Phibes insists it’s a necessary tool to power the wards on the glass coffin, unless I want to stand in the aisle of Westminster Abbey and sacrifice a goat live on TV. (The press office is understandably unenthusiastic about this option.) Phibes maintains that his glass coffins require a low-level necromantic jump-start, and it would take at least a goat, with the strong implication that in times gone by, a Mute Poet cultist was a perfectly good caprine substitute. (The press office is even more negative about that contingency.)

  I still have Questions.

  That server farm contains upward of a million quid’s worth of high performance GPUs and assorted supporting machinery. Someone had to pay for it, and someone had to put it together, and I’m pretty certain that the well-funded Dilbert in question was not a certain musician and surgeon who trained before the First World War. (Phibes being on his uppers since he lost his shirt during the Great Depression is just another datum in the evidence trail.) The Professor must have an accomplice with deep pockets and occult devops chops. If he was inflicted on the Palace by Number Ten that suggests a name to me, but if you shoot for The Man’s chief of staff you’d better shoot first because Iris will not give you a second opportunity. And I still can’t be sure why it’s there, because if Phibes told me that water was wet I’d go to the bathroom to check.

  As for the weird offices in the basement, they’re supposedly there for some sort of 3D augmented reality documentary the aforementioned PR people are working on. But I have no idea why they just don’t do it all in CGI. It’s all very hush-hush and absolutely nothing to do with the current clusterfuck, and it stinks like a week-dead skunk.

  Finally, there’s the SIS fiasco. I still cringe whenever I recall that fatal meeting. Mo says she doesn’t blame me, but I can’t help thinking if she’d gone alone or taken someone else—Willard, maybe? Even his pet rat?—there might have been a different outcome.

  For better or worse I am personally associated with the Leeds fiasco in the public eye, or at least enough of the public eye to occasionally count for something. And there’s the reason we need the MUGGLE WONDERLAND training in a nutshell: too damn many civil servants don’t believe in magic, so they react to us as if we’re wild-eyed loons.

  You might think the Civil Service would respond correctly to the right forms and incantations and invocations of the authority of the Cabinet Office, but you’d be wrong. Response (a) is “humor him” and response (b) is “delay, deny, and kick the can down the road.” Once she decided we were cranks, Dr. Abdul stopped responding to us—and so did everyone else. And while it’s possible to make an administrative end run around human road blocks, it’s messy and gets ugly fast. Especially when instead of the municipal parking department in Wolverhampton you’re dealing with James Bond (lethal neurotoxin purchase orders optional).

  Meanwhile we screen everyone with access to the Palace but it’s a tight ship, with a high proportion of ex-military and members of families who’ve served the royals for more generations than I have fingers.

  There’s one tentative breakthrough. Someone at MI6 finally actioned the red note Mo got Iris to send demanding to know who ordered the bottle of DMM. They don’t know or they couldn’t tell me, but they did confirm it was checked out for an unspecified secret project. That was four days before Candy the dorgi was taken ill. In that period the Queen made three public appearances, had a regular weekly meeting with the PM, attended church once (in the Palace chapel), and had an afternoon off for her regular hair styling and manicure session. She walked with the dogs twice (check), Huntsman was on duty both times (check), and Willard confirmed Huntsman was working on every one of those days.

  We narrow down the question of how the Queen was poisoned to two options: Was it through skin contact, or in her food? There’s no sign of mercury contamination in the building, so food seems likely. And apparently there was an incident in which Candy got loose and interrupted the Queen during a meeting with the PM where she was served tea and biscuits by Huntsman.

  I’m waiting for the police to determine who spiked the snacks when Iris carpets us in Scooby 14 one morning for an unscheduled meeting. Her smile is tight-lipped and unhappy. “I need you to lay off the SIS inquiry,” she says.

  “Why?” Mo asks bluntly. “We know they’re screening for someone—”

  “Yes, they are.”

  “But—”

  “You need to stop asking questions about dimethyl mercury. You’re attracting attention—the wrong kind. This is now above your pay grade, and mine. The privy council is unhappy about the direction your inquiry is taking, so here’s a direct order: drop it and walk away. You’ve got enough on your hands with FAIREST and GLASS COFFIN coming up anyway.”

  What?

  * * *

  After a week of being prodded and poked with needles (and one mildly inconvenient operation which she drowsed through and retained no lasting impression of) Victoria decides that twenty-first-century medicine is very strange. There are machines everywhere, a superfluity of machines that beep and chirp and display cartoonish diagrams. And there is a strange box on a gimbaled mount behind a door bearing skull-and-radiation symbols that made her fine hairs stand on end while she lay beneath its cone-shaped business end. “It’s the Scabbard of Excalibur,” Vulnavia explained, “healing magic powered by the souls of executed felons paying their debt to society. Isn’t modern medicine wonderful?” (Victoria agreed wholeheartedly.)

  The nurses wore pajama-like uniforms instead of proper dresses, some of the doctors were ladies, and her bed had electric motors. But the central experience was essentially unchanged from a century ago: it was a sanatorium for the unwell and the infirm, she’d been admitted for treatment—a passive body to be adjusted rather than an active participant—and she must needs relinquish her dignity for the duration.

  Victoria adapted to rest and recovery, poked inconclusively at the thing called the internet, and drowned herself in television, where there were decades of changes to catch up on.

  After two weeks, during one of Anton’s visits, he looked up from her charts to explain, “Your latest white cell counts are very promising, my dear. And His Majesty is expecting you. Do you feel well enough for a brief outing tomorrow?”

  The next morning Victoria is dressed and waiting when Anton and Vulnavia arrive to collect her. It’s this century’s version of formalwear, which is casual: Anton isn’t even wearing a hat. But she takes his arm anyway, and they ride the lift down to a big police car that drives them to a set of high steel gates in a windowless brick wall. It’s one of the side entrances to Buckingham Palace, and as Anton and Vulnavia escort her through security (where she is presented with a photographic identity badge) she begins to smell a rat.