0:00

This is the BBC. This

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podcast is supported by advertising

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outside the UK.

0:07

BBC Sounds.

0:10

Music, radio, podcasts. I'd

0:15

expect that it would all be coming in cobwebs

0:17

like Miss Havisham's place. It came

0:19

by Mrs Wilson in every Thursday when I was

0:21

around. How is Mrs Wilson? Still

0:24

crazy. This was my first time back

0:27

at my flat since I'd been away.

0:29

As you can tell, I was surprised to see the place

0:32

in such good order. You watered the plants? Er,

0:35

yeah. I mean, they did not make it. I

0:37

had some catching up to do. Before

0:40

we followed the lead Caroline Morse had given us, Kennedy

0:43

wanted to bring me up to speed on an aspect

0:45

of her own investigations that had suddenly

0:47

become relevant again. Alright, so this

0:50

guy Edwin Lillibridge. Caroline

0:53

mentioned him and it got a visible reaction

0:55

from you. I've never heard of him.

0:57

No, so this happened when you were away. I

0:59

have a recording here, actually. I

1:03

hate this audio software. Oh,

1:06

that's it. I recognise that voice. Okay,

1:08

so starting at the beginning. We're

1:11

going back to September 2022. I

1:14

got an anonymous email telling me to look into a journalist

1:16

called Edwin Lillibridge. Anonymous? Yeah,

1:19

I couldn't trace it.

1:20

Slide drew a blank too. And it

1:22

didn't seem like anything. Lillibridge

1:24

worked for the London Evening News in the 1930s. He

1:27

wrote pieces about Nazi sympathisers, but as

1:29

we learned from Caroline, the more hard-hitting stories

1:31

got spiked. They never saw the light of day. Lillibridge

1:35

disappeared in 1941.

1:36

Disappeared sounds ominous. It

1:38

does, but this was during the Blitz.

1:41

The street Lillibridge lived on wasn't hit, but he could

1:43

have been somewhere that did get bombed. I'm guessing people

1:46

disappeared all the time back then. So

1:49

Lillibridge seemed like a dead end. And

1:51

then I was going through some of your files. I was thinking about that

1:53

Crowley project you wanted to

1:54

do. Yeah, I still like that. Anyway,

1:57

so in the Crowley file, there was a photograph

1:59

taken in Paris in 1942. The Man Ray.

2:01

You don't know it's a Man Ray, but yeah, that one. Have

2:04

you looked at it recently? Not recently, no.

2:06

I've been otherwise occupied for three years.

2:09

So the picture shows Crowley with

2:11

a bunch of people, including Picasso, outside the Grand Guineol

2:13

Theatre. Yeah, I know. And one of the people he's with is

2:16

Edwin Lillibridge.

2:16

Oh, interesting. So I

2:18

went to Paris.

2:19

To the Leveque Institute. To see your old friend,

2:21

Eremis Leveque. And you recorded

2:23

it? I did. It's right

2:26

here. Can you hear it?

2:28

Mr. Leveque, it's

2:30

Kennedy Fisher. Oh, yes,

2:33

you can see it. The

2:36

Leveque Institute is a private archive of esoteric

2:38

material.

2:39

It was started by Eremis Leveque sometime

2:42

in the 1990s.

2:42

You go through a gate

2:44

off the main street

2:45

of the Ile Saint-Louis, and then across

2:47

one of those cute Parisian courtyards, where

2:49

there are trees and cobblestones. And

2:52

then you go through another door and down several

2:54

flights of steps into a long arched

2:56

room that sits beneath the island. I

2:59

think it was some kind of storeroom, originally, holding

3:02

goods that were going to be moved by boat up and

3:04

down the river. Hello, bonjour. Welcome.

3:07

I'd heard Leveque's voice before when

3:09

Matt met him in the last series, but I had no

3:12

idea what he looked like. In person,

3:14

he's an odd character, like

3:17

a circus ringmaster crossed with a kind of studious

3:19

professor. Once we

3:21

got the introductions out of the way, I showed

3:23

him the photograph I'd found of Edwin

3:24

Lillibridge. This is an original

3:26

print from the time, yes? I think so. I found

3:29

it in Matthew's files. It was part of his research

3:31

into Aleister Crowley. Crowley, of course,

3:33

yes. Well, this is a

3:36

valuable artifact to me, I

3:38

mean. But

3:40

also the photograph itself, yes. It

3:43

is very interesting.

3:44

Could you describe

3:45

the picture for me? Describe?

3:49

For the recording. Oh,

3:51

of course, yes. We

3:54

see here, this is a barrier in 1925, and this building

3:57

here... is

4:00

the Theatres du Grand-Gignol, you

4:02

know this, yes? I've heard of it. Yes, and it is

4:04

very popular back then. Theatres, whose

4:07

program consisted of comedy

4:10

plays, you know, funny, and also the

4:13

grotesque... Horror,

4:16

different horror films. Oh, yes, yes,

4:18

very violent indeed. Gruesome,

4:21

gruesome. It was a very popular entertainment,

4:23

and as you see here, in this photograph,

4:26

a certain type of celebrity might visit...

4:29

Mr. Crowley is in the picture, as

4:31

you say, and this woman here beside

4:34

him is Alice Prynne, and

4:37

you see here

4:40

Mr. Heewood has written on the back

4:42

of the picture, Man Ray,

4:45

with a question mark, because this woman,

4:47

Alice Prynne, who is also known as Kiki

4:49

of Montparnasse, was with Man Ray

4:51

at this time, his girlfriend, and so Mr.

4:54

Heewood has a speculation that perhaps

4:56

the man holding the camera is Man

4:59

Ray himself.

4:59

And what about the other people?

5:02

Alice de Crowley, Alice

5:04

Prynne, and this is Nancy

5:06

Cunard, you know, the Cunard family, the

5:08

shipping, and Andre Gide, the

5:11

famous author, and of course this man

5:13

is Aghid, is Pablo

5:16

Picasso. That's quite a gathering.

5:18

Oh, yes, well, Paris in

5:20

the 20s, if we could go back in time. And

5:22

the man behind Picasso is Edwin Lillibrich.

5:25

Indeed, the subject of your investigation,

5:27

no? And

5:31

this other man here, this is a rare

5:33

image, you understand, an unusual

5:36

vision of this man.

5:38

In the photograph, Edwin Lillibrich

5:40

is standing behind Picasso, and he's whispering

5:42

to another man, and that other man

5:44

is laughing at whatever Lillibrich has said.

5:46

This laughing man,

5:48

this is

5:51

Le Comte Saint-Germain.

5:53

Saint-Germain.

5:54

The alleged immortal, a

5:56

man I had personally come to know as Casey,

5:59

the friendly concierge. from the Gilman House Hotel

6:01

in Innsmouth. The man the rest of the world

6:03

knew as Obed Marsh, the man

6:05

responsible for Matthew Heywood's disappearance.

6:09

It was strange seeing him there in Paris nearly

6:11

a century ago, looking exactly

6:14

as he did when I last saw him in 2020. So

6:16

what do you know

6:17

about Edwin Lilybridge? Oh,

6:19

well, this is a strange

6:21

story. It is unusual that

6:24

someone leaves a group like

6:26

this. So he was part of the script? Caso

6:29

in Manrae, I bet I do not know, but with

6:31

Saint-Germain and Rowling, yes, very

6:34

much. Back then,

6:37

this was a time of great possibility.

6:40

Yes, a brutal war

6:42

was recently over. The Jazz

6:45

Age, yes, reconstruction

6:47

possibility. And remember that

6:49

this man, Saint-Germain, had recently completed

6:52

a ritual in Melusine.

6:55

Similar, I think, to the ritual, he attempted to tour

6:57

the unfortunate Monsieur Heewood.

7:00

Now, Monsieur Lilybridge

7:02

was a young man. As you see, he had

7:04

been a soldier, yes, in the British Army. He

7:06

served in the same unit as Edward Lansdale.

7:09

And this must be how he came

7:11

to make acquaintance with Saint-Germain.

7:14

But I wonder if this photograph

7:16

is not also telling us

7:18

something else.

7:21

Like what?

7:22

Well, look, you see the place,

7:24

the Thiâtre du Grand-Gignol, a product,

7:27

as you say, of its time, yes, because they staged

7:29

the stories of Horroch and torture

7:31

and death, but also very

7:34

much so, of insanity. Andre

7:37

de Lourdes, who was in charge of the theatre at this time, worked

7:39

on several plays with Alfred B. May, the famous

7:42

psychologist. The pieces they

7:44

created were all about

7:47

insanity, yes. And so I wonder

7:49

if this is relevant to the time we are looking at, the

7:51

1920s and to the 20th century entirely. Yes,

7:58

yes, because the century... begins with the Great

8:01

War, yes, and at the beginning of that is the Melusine

8:04

ritual. Saint-Germain, Lansdale,

8:06

von Seboitendorf, perhaps Edwin Lilybridge

8:09

too? They are attempting to

8:12

open a door into another

8:14

dimension. Now we think of this ritual

8:16

now as a failure, yes? A

8:18

catastrophe with the village of Melusine vanishing

8:21

like your pleasant queen. But what

8:24

if the door was opened?

8:25

Just a clock for a few moments

8:29

and something came through

8:32

that door.

8:33

Some thing? Like an actual

8:35

thing? Yes,

8:35

maybe, or maybe not. Perhaps

8:38

not in a form that you and I might recognize.

8:40

But what if a

8:43

thought, an idea, a home?

8:48

A piece of data, as we might say, a seed.

8:50

And this seed, it is small and it's

8:53

weak and it needs to feed

8:55

to go strong. And where is

8:57

the soil? You understand, I

8:59

am using an analogy

9:00

here. An analogy, yes. So the soil is

9:02

the war. Just so, yes.

9:06

A war the like of which human beings have never

9:09

seen. Not two armies meeting on

9:11

a single battlefield, but industrial

9:14

murder, yes? Men using machines

9:16

to kill more and more and more people.

9:18

The battlefields drenched in blood.

9:21

Millions of people get the horror,

9:23

the terror, the insanity.

9:25

And so if this, whatever it was,

9:28

came through that door and it's said

9:29

on... Yes, yes. This

9:32

is what I believe now. This thought, this

9:34

seed, it does not belong here, but

9:36

it feeds and it grows and it becomes more

9:38

and more powerful. And now

9:41

it is like a disease, an

9:43

infection, yes, in the minds

9:46

of men and women. And insanity,

9:48

which men like Alfred Binet are trying

9:50

to understand and explore through

9:52

his work at the Grand Guineol. And people

9:55

are drawn to this and they don't

9:57

know why, because it is something

9:59

they do. because this beast

10:03

is inside

10:03

of them. Okay. And so

10:06

through the 1920s, you

10:08

have more and more occult

10:10

activity in Europe that feeds directly

10:13

into the birth of the fascism and into the Nazis

10:15

themselves. And then

10:17

the Second World War. More feeding,

10:19

yes, more sustenance, and then

10:22

the atomic bombs, and then the Cold War.

10:24

So you're blaming the whole of the 20th century on the Melissine

10:26

ritual.

10:27

Not a century, no, I

10:29

don't think, but

10:31

something, an idea, a spirit,

10:34

lurking in the shadows.

10:36

Human beings do bad things, yes, of

10:39

course, always, but here

10:41

there is something more. And if you peer

10:44

into the darkness, you can glimpse

10:47

it perhaps, yes? And

10:50

these groups,

10:51

the ones you have talked about in your

10:53

recordings,

10:55

they worship these things.

10:57

They give them different names. But perhaps

11:00

this is all one thing.

11:03

Yes. The

11:05

beast, the beast. The beast.

11:08

And I believe that these men in this photograph,

11:10

they were there when this beast

11:13

came into our world. And

11:15

perhaps they did not know what they were doing or

11:17

what they had done, and perhaps some of them, like

11:20

Monsieur L'Hibreich, had cause

11:22

when they realized this.

11:25

To experience regret, yes?

11:30

I've literally never heard so much bollocks in my life. Once

11:32

Kennedy had played me the interview with Leveque, I

11:35

sent it to Eleanor Peck for her take. She called me back

11:38

almost immediately. That

11:40

is the purest concentration of bollocks

11:42

that has ever entered my ears, and I had a flatmate

11:44

at uni who played Bea here now on a loop. Okay,

11:46

but nonetheless, Edwin Lilybridge is a character in

11:48

all this. And he links to Robert Blake. You haven't

11:51

found the Blake notebook yet, have you? No, no, but we're

11:53

pretty sure it's important if Wilberforce Ashton

11:55

Heath is looking for it. It's just worth pursuing, Maggie. What

11:57

do you mean? I mean, you've just got back from God knows where.

11:59

You've lost nearly three years of your life. Candy's

12:02

left-handed now. Really? Besides the point. What about

12:04

that? And

12:04

that is the point. Why are you driving straight back into this?

12:07

What are you trying to achieve? If these people aren't

12:09

brought to account, they'll just carry on with whatever

12:11

it is they're doing. And we've learned enough over the

12:13

last few years to know that if they succeed, it's

12:15

not going to be good for anyone. We don't

12:16

even know what they're trying to do. We don't, but

12:19

maybe neither today.

12:20

They want powers and influence and blah blah blah.

12:22

But we know now

12:23

from all that we've seen that they're being fooled.

12:26

They're

12:26

being tricked into opening the door to something much

12:28

worse. Okay, it's a clarity. We don't actually

12:30

know that at all. It's just one wacky theory. Time

12:33

to remind you that I went missing for three years. I'm just

12:35

saying, let's go and there's the app,

12:36

fine. Then find Blake's notebook.

12:38

Whatever's in there is clearly germane to something.

12:41

But if I were you, I'd be looking for a nice, cosy,

12:43

regular person murder to investigate.

12:47

So that's Edwin Lillibridge.

12:48

And Robert Blake worked with him.

12:51

As far as we can tell, Blake was the junior partner until 1941

12:54

when Lillibridge disappeared. And

12:56

then Blake seems to have picked up the torch. So they're

12:58

both looking into fascist sympathizers.

13:00

I think we can drop sympathizers. Ernest

13:03

Gladwin and his confederates were out and proud fascists.

13:05

And a cultist. Yeah. And now in the

13:08

present day, we have Caroline Morse's brother,

13:10

Wilberforce Ashton Heath. He's Ernest

13:12

Gladwin's grandson. He's married into the Tillingar's

13:15

family, a leading lighting government. He

13:17

was an architect of Brexit, anti-vax,

13:19

anti-lockdown, anti-immigration, generally slightly

13:22

to the right of Genghis Khan. And it seems

13:24

like he's the guy who shut down the Department of Works. And

13:26

he's looking for Robert Blake's notebook. Presumably

13:28

because there's stuff in that notebook he doesn't want to come to

13:31

light. Because it would be damaging. Which

13:33

is why we need to find it and do the damage

13:35

ourselves.

13:37

Neither Kennedy nor I were of a mind to let

13:39

all this go just yet. I've

13:41

always done my best not to let personal

13:43

politics influence the stories we tell here.

13:46

But it was very hard to separate my distaste

13:48

for Wilberforce Ashton Heath and what

13:50

he stands for politically

13:52

from the investigation we were mounting. If

13:55

Ashton Heath was commandeering the hunt for Robert

13:57

Blake's notebook, then he was responsible

13:59

for the damage. death of Theo Martin. Couple

14:02

that with the likelihood that he had also engineered

14:04

the closing of the Department of Works, and

14:07

it was difficult not to leap to the conclusion

14:09

that this was a very bad guy indeed.

14:12

But we needed more than supposition.

14:15

We needed some proof.

14:17

Kennedy went to chase down another possible lead

14:19

on Blake's notebook while

14:21

I jumped on a train to Essex. Yes,

14:24

I knew Robert Blake.

14:26

Not well. At least I don't think we met more than a

14:28

few times. It was a telephone

14:29

relationship, really. Diane Netley is

14:32

an energetic 60-year-old.

14:34

She and her husband Michael live in a small cottage

14:36

in a village called Sibyl Headingham in Essex.

14:39

Michael is very ill with MS,

14:42

and Diane is his carer.

14:44

It was Diane's concern for her husband's condition

14:46

that led her to make contact with Wilberforce Ashton

14:49

Heath.

14:50

Before we got into that, though, I asked

14:52

her about her friendship with Robert Blake.

14:54

Oh, well, I first came into contact with

14:56

Robert in the early 80s. I was a

14:58

secretary in the evening standard. Robert

15:00

was largely out of the picture by then. He'd

15:03

had his heyday, but he would call up to

15:05

pitch stories and features

15:07

and what have you to my boss. And that's how you got

15:10

to know him. Well, yes, because, you

15:12

see, it was my job to make sure

15:14

he never got through. I was the gatekeeper.

15:18

And Robert got wise to that quite quickly, as

15:20

he might expect. So it became sort

15:22

of a verbal tennis match between us. After

15:25

a while, I became curious as to who he

15:27

was, or at least who he had been.

15:30

And I dug out some of his old pieces. He was very

15:32

good, you know. You read his work.

15:34

No, not really. We're still fact

15:37

finding at the moment.

15:38

Of course, Robert became interested

15:40

in me when he found out I lived in Sibyl Headingham.

15:42

Right. Because of Savitry Devi. Savitry...

15:46

Oh, no, I'm sorry. I don't know. The fascist.

15:48

She was friends with Francois Dior and all

15:50

the National Front people.

15:51

This was not a name that rang a bell at the time.

15:54

But it turns out that almost no one better embodies

15:57

the bridge between occultism and fascism

15:59

than

15:59

of Vitri Devi.

16:01

We're going to get into her in a later episode, but

16:04

if you want to get ahead on your homework, I recommend

16:06

a deep dive via your search engine of choice.

16:08

Devi died in a house just along

16:10

the lane here in 1982. I would

16:13

have only been 19 or 20 at the

16:15

time. We didn't see her very much. I

16:18

think she was already quite ill when she moved

16:20

in. Anyway, Robert was

16:22

fascinated by her, as you can imagine, because

16:25

she associated with all of these people

16:28

who had been trying to expose in his stories.

16:30

So people like Ernest Gladwin?

16:33

He was a nasty piece of work by all

16:35

accounts. And that chap who became

16:37

cabinet secretary? Sir Godfrey Tillinghast.

16:40

Oh, the dirt Robert had on those

16:42

two. And no one would publish it. The

16:45

establishment had the media in their pockets back

16:47

then, although I doubt much has changed. Like

16:50

the will before Vashta Neith, spawning

16:52

about today like butter wouldn't melt. I

16:55

understand you've made contact

16:57

with Mr Ashton Heath.

17:00

Is that why you're here?

17:01

No, I don't know him. No,

17:04

I'm here because...

17:06

Well, I was told that you were trying to pressure Wilberforce

17:09

Ashton Heath into somehow curing

17:12

your husband.

17:14

You don't believe that's

17:16

possible? Well, I really wouldn't know about that.

17:18

And who told you that I was pressuring him? I'd

17:20

rather not say. But I can tell

17:22

you this didn't come from his camp. I'm not direct

17:25

interested in Ashton Heath. I'm looking

17:27

into Robert Blake and specifically a

17:29

notebook that he kept. Well, I

17:31

can't help you with that, I'm afraid. I

17:33

remember the notebook, of course, Robert would

17:35

never leave his site, but

17:38

he also never let anyone look at it. He

17:40

said the contents of that book could

17:42

bring the British establishment

17:43

to its knees. But he never used

17:45

it, even though he clearly wasn't getting any

17:48

traction trying to write about these people in

17:50

the press.

17:50

Oh, he was going to,

17:52

believe me.

17:53

He was just looking for the missing piece. That's what he

17:55

always called it. The missing piece.

17:58

And he found it. He did?

18:00

Yeah.

18:01

Thursday the 15th of October 1987.

18:04

He

18:05

called me here at home in the

18:07

evening quite shaken. He said, Diane,

18:10

I've found it. I've found

18:12

the missing piece. And

18:15

then the line went dead.

18:16

What happened? The storm.

18:19

October 1987, the great storm.

18:22

It cut all the phone lines. And

18:24

the next morning they found Robert Blake dead in

18:27

the lane outside his house.

18:29

So you don't know what this missing piece was?

18:31

No. And you have no idea

18:33

where the notebook is? I do not.

18:36

So then what leverage do you

18:38

have over Wilberforce Ashton Heath? I

18:40

have the tape, Mr. Hayward.

18:43

I have the tape that will bring

18:45

down this government.