Under a Watchful Eye(63)

‘I found all of that in records from Bow Street Magistrate’s Court. He had been in the war, though, in North Africa. He was a private, in Signals, but other than getting shelled once in Libya, he didn’t see much action. He came close to a court martial, though, for desertion while on leave. But he was dumped in a psychiatric hospital in England for a year, then kicked out in 1944. He managed to get himself discharged from the army on a medical. According to his military record, he’d had a breakdown.’

‘And he came out as an aristocrat?’

‘No, that was later. What I could find about him in the late forties and early fifties was sketchy. He did some course at a technical college but never finished the year, though that never stopped him putting BSc after his name. Worked bars in holiday camps for a bit, too. Was a waiter at one point in Margate. An entertainer at a camp in Yorkshire. Most of his stories in the first collection were set in these places, so they are partly autobiographical. That’s what made me look at those places first, where employment records existed. I found some other stuff in the courts where he’d been charged for various things, mostly non-payment of bills, and once for impersonating a woman.’

‘You’re kidding me.’

‘He was rumbled while in drag, in a restaurant at a rural hotel. I’d say he had problems with his gender identity. I cop a lot of that from his stories too. Lifelong transvestite. And he seems to have drifted back to London after that bust, where he went bankrupt following a spell working in a care home for the elderly. That job didn’t last long, but he did get married to a patient’s relative, a widow, a fairly unsuccessful stage actress. With her, he drifted through various flats in London, pretending to be ‘money’, but never paid the rent or electric anywhere they stayed. I found three eviction notices for non-payment of rent in Kensington, with their names listed. He was going by the name of Robert Beaumont at that time and trying his hand at acting. He couldn’t pay the fines for his unpaid bills either, and that’s why he went bankrupt.

‘His wife was a lot older than him and when she died, the baron was born. Picked up some stage-craft from his wife, I’m guessing. Maybe a decent wardrobe too for his female persona, whom he called Diane.’

‘Diane!’

‘Yes . . .’

‘Sorry, please go on.’

‘Sure. Well, after the baron scam had run aground and he’d served his six months, he’d become interested in psychotherapy and hypnotism. Changed his name to Magnus Ackermann, enrolled on a course in some kind of cognitive therapy, and another in hypnotherapy, and either failed the courses or didn’t finish them, because his name wasn’t on the list of graduates at the colleges he’d enrolled at. Though that didn’t stop him calling himself a doctor either, or putting MBSH after his new name. He added DPsy later too, for the SPR, to make the group look more prestigious. But he had no degrees. His whole CV was fiction.’

‘So the SPR came out of the hypnotherapy?’

‘In part. But his treatments and theories needed fine-tuning before he pulled off something as ambitious as the SPR. So he was still serving his apprenticeship in manipulation when he set up the hypnotherapy practice in Mayfair. That was in a swanky apartment to attract a wealthy clientele. And he aimed these treatments at vulnerable women. The bereaved, ill, depressed, divorced, anxiety sufferers, you name it. Rich, elderly women remained his core market until he died. Charged a tenner a session too and got away with it for a couple of years. Used to advertise in the Observer, New Statesman, even The Times, who eventually exposed him as a fraud.

‘The second time he was sent down, he wasn’t done for faking his qualifications but for obtaining credit under false pretences. Over twenty people pressed charges. Other domestic stuff was added to the charges too, non-payment of rent, bills, the usual Hazzard routine. And he’d concealed that he was bankrupt when going into business too.

‘He went down for three months the second time and finished the stories in his first book in prison. So M. L. Hazzard was actually born in Her Majesty’s Prison Belmarsh. He was published modestly over the next couple of years, and he used to harass people like Colin Wilson and Arthur Koestler for help. They even mentioned him in some interviews.’

Seb’s thoughts spun, but the revelations brought some relief. ‘I’ve only read two stories. I remember them being creepy, but the writing wasn’t quite there.’

‘No, he was no Algernon Blackwood, but there’s an authentic strangeness in them that I lapped up.’

‘But from prison to the SPR in Devon? That’s a big leap.’

‘It was. But he must have been encouraged enough to take the therapy angle to the next level, which was the SPR. From what I can work out, he picked up some tips from the woman who became Sister Katherine of The Temple of the Last Days. This was from his time in Mayfair. They once knew each other, years before she went to France. Hazzard adored women too, the glamorous, older, aunty types. That’s crucial to his whole make-up. You can tell from his stories. But what I think he really wanted was to become a woman. I don’t think I’ve ever come across a person so desperate to escape who they were. I don’t think Hazzard was ever comfortable inside his own skin. You could even say that he dedicated his life to escaping it, and literally. I think that might be why he embraced psychedelics as genuine gateways, doors to perception and all that.