The Doctor is in...

The investigation being undertaken by MI6s recently reformed team of enhanced individuals has taken a surprising turn, whether it is coincidence or not is yet to be established, but the apparent involvement of their old team mate Mr Hades has shocked the team. MI6s team consists of Alfie Baldrick, the one man rifle section; Mimi Dubois, maîtresse of skills; Madeline Forsyth, the living shadow; and Sven Hyse, the Norwegian shapeshifter.

London, England, April 1948

We leave Mrs Denhim's home and head straight back to the laundry with the intention of getting a sample of Emily Armstrong's blood from the murder scene so that we can compare it to the blood on the handkerchief, and to test both samples for evidence of enhanced biochemistry. On the way we stop at a telephone box and Madeline jumps out and puts a call through to Special Agent Philby's office in Dorset Square. She speaks to Philby's secretary and asks him to arrange for us to gain the use of a laboratory to carry out the blood tests.

Once we have collected the blood sample from the hospital we head to Dorset Square where we are informed by the smartly dressed man, who acts as Special Agent Philby's secretary, that an appointment has been arranged for us at the University College London Hospital with a Doctor McDonald. Charlie drops myself and Corporal Billy Baldrick outside and within a few minutes I am shaking hands with Doctor McDonald, I hold onto his hand for longer than is socially acceptable while asking him about his work. As I do so, I use my enhanced ability to borrow his knowledge of biochemistry and with my new found skill begin to discuss the process with him. Once he has shown us to the laboratory set aside for our disposal I make it politely clear that he is no longer required and get Billy to stand on guard by the door while I get to work. After a couple of hours I have been able to prove that the two blood samples, the victims blood from the laundry and the blood from the handkerchief, are a match and that neither of them show any sign of enhanced biochemistry.

Billy contacts Charlie via his mental link and gets him to pick us up in the car and drive us back to the others at the safehouse in Canning Place Mews. It is quickly decided that we need to head back to the laundry and search again for any information that we can discover on the laundry ticket, H-612. We leave a Baldrick, Isy, at the safehouse just in case anyone tries to contact us on the houses telephone and get Charlie to drive us to St John's Wood. When we arrive we find that the laundry is being guarded by a pair of policemen, Madeline flashes her credentials and asks why it is now being guarded and the bobby informs her that they are awaiting a scene of crime officer, but as there are very few in the force it may be some time before he arrives.

The bobby lets us in and closes the door behind us. As soon as the door is closed Alfie duplicates and begins the slow process of searching through all of the items of clothing to see if they can find anything that matches the laundry ticket discovered in the discarded handbag. While they are engaged in their search, Madeline leafed through the ledger and discovered an entry that tallied with the ticket number, but unfortunately it was only the number and a price quoted. She was, however, able to deduce that given the price quoted it was likely that the item matched to the ticket would have been a suit for dry cleaning. After a very thorough search the Baldricks confirm that there is nothing within the laundry that matches to the ticket number.

Out of habit I push out with my senses and make sure that there are no other enhanced in the area, I am pleased to discover that the only one outside of the laundry is Corporal Charlie Baldrick. I turn to Alfie and ask him to contact Jonny at Hanslope Park so that we can relay an update on the days findings. In Major Sawdon's office at Hanslope Park, Corporal Jonny Baldrick looks up from what he is doing and says to Sawdon;

Message from London sir!

Once Jonny has relayed the days findings, including the surprising information about a possible sighting of Mr Hades, he informs us that he has had some people recreating the files stolen from Hanslope Park and that as part of that process they have discovered a photo of Mr Hades' alter ego, Doctor Jackal. Having finished at the laundry we jump back into the car and head towards Dorset Square, stopping at the first telephone box for Madeline to contact them and request a meeting with Special Agent Philby, she is informed that he is in the office and will see us as soon as we arrive.

While we are on route, Major Sawdon finds the photograph of Doctor Jackal and hands it to Corporal Jonny Baldrick, as soon as Jonny sees the picture he instantly recognises it as the man pretending to be General Barguest, all be it that he had been wearing a very good disguise. Jonny relayed that information through Alfie and Madeline and I shared a look of concern. Up until this point we had been working against an enhanced gang of London criminals, but now the game was afoot and we realised that we were facing a genius in the form of Doctor Jackal and his savage alter ego Mr Hades.

Doctor Henry Jackal had been a founding member of MI6s original enhanced team, he had been our friend and had shared the train carriage on that fateful journey six years ago. Doctor Jackal had disagreed with our methods during an infiltration mission into Norway to rescue the Norweigen Crown Jewels from the clutches of the Nazis, when we had arrived back in England he had voiced his concerns strongly to our commanding officer and had been convinced to stay on and work with the scientists who were trying to crack the enhancement process.

The last time that I had seen him, he was quietly slipping out of the Norweigen Embassy after we had been awarded medals for retrieving the Crown Jewels, and had said to me;

If you can’t save anyone else, at least save yourself Mimi!

That was in November 1942, and two days later there had been an explosion at the Hanslope Park research facility that ended in the death of one of the scientists and the disappearance of Doctor Jackal. I remember at the time that we were convinced that it couldn't have been Henry involved due to his abhorance of violence. But I guess that we were wrong about him.

Special Agent Philby leans back in his chair and puts his pen down very precisely next to his neatly written notes. We had just spent the previous thirty minutes informing him of the latest developments in our investigation and as always he had made copious notes and had cross examined all of us to make sure that nothing was missed. He looked around the room at the four of us and said;

I just have one final question. How is it that you know this Doctor Henry Jackal?

While Corporal Alfie Baldrick finds something very interesting on his shoes to stare at, the rest of us look at each other before Madeline responds;

Unfortunately, we can not share that information as it is on a need to know basis. I'm sure that you understand.

It was the first time that I had seen a crack in the professional armour of Philby's demeanour. His face flushed, and you could see him visably controlling his temper. And the longer that we all passively held his gaze the more florid he became. Until eventually he blurted;

You are dismissed! Get out of my office!

I don't mind admitting that I felt like that was a bit of a victory. Special Agent Philby had done nothing to earn our dislike, but both Madeline and myself just had a feeling about him. For me, it was that he reminded me of the pen pushing politics of the SDECE and everything that I had disliked about the desk based role that I had hidden away in since the war.

And so the trail goes cold once more. The Emily Armstrong case is logged as an unsolved crime and the investigation into the Battle of London Airport continues, but the Flying Squad team have very little to go on. I get a large map of London and place it on the wall of the Canning Place Mews house, I stick pins into it of the relevant locations and any information that we have to try and work out if there is a specific area of the English capital that we should be focusing on, but there is no strong pattern other than the loose fact that Hyde Park seems to be roughly in the centre of events. But that could just be a coincidence, or so I thought at the time.

As the weeks pass, we work with the Flying Squad on a number of occasions to provide back up for them on a couple of mundane operations. We also ask Major Sawdon to source us a tranquillizer rifle, having worked with Doctor Jackal before we know that it is important to knock him unconscious as quickly as possible. And I also really wanted to not harm him. Madeline spends a lot of her down time shadowing Special Agent Philby, she discovers where he lives and breaks into his office once more but discovers that the folder on the Flying Squad is no longer in his desk drawer. She rifles through what she does find and discovers that he is using some kind of cipher to encode names and telephone numbers. Madeline takes photographs of all of the cipher pages for later study. She then takes the time to search the rest of Philby's office and discovers a hidden safe, knowing that she doesn't have the correct equipment to open it she makes a note of it's make and model and then slips quietly out once again.

London, England, June 1948
It wasn't until June 23rd that anything happened to put us back on the trail. Madeline was reading the newspaper when an unusual article caught her attention. The article referred to another sighting of the Hound of Hyde Park, and when Madeline said this out loud to the rest of us around the breakfast table Alfie looked up and through a mouthful of egg said;

I've heard about that! It was when I was stationed at Hyde Park Barracks in Autumn 1946. People in the park late at night would often hear the baleful howl of a large hound, but no one had ever seen it.

Madeline points out that this time the Hound had attacked a tourist, and that this seemed to be an escalation. With nothing particular on, and with a penchant for investigating the strange and obscure, we decide to follow up on the story. Madeline took Corporal Billy Baldrick with her and set off to interview the reporter, while the rest of us headed for Hyde Park's local police station to find the bobby that attended the scene. The reporter is a local man who is more than happy to talk to Madeline, but he does not have much more detail than he had put in his piece for the paper. The tourist was attacked in the south east of the park by a large dog, but he was unable to provide a description of the hound. There had been several other instances of people hearing a large hound howling in the park over the last year but this was the first attack. Madeline thanked the reporter and set out to rendezvous with the rest of the team.

We had discovered the name of the policeman that had come to the aid of the tourist, and as luck would have it he was on duty and within the station. We asked him a few questions, but he was unable to provide much more detail. The man had bite marks and scratches, and his clothing had been ripped in line with an attack by a wild animal, but he had been unable to provide a description of the beast that attacked him. This was becoming interesting, and so we asked the policeman to provide us with the case file and scene photographs as well as any information that the police had on other sightings. The hunt was on.