Anschluss Cransley - Grantchester Prophesy

Third short ghost-story in the parodic Anschluss Cransley series of political-history horror thrillers. In 1948; a successful, but physically ailing, middle-aged writer is working on a Dystopian novel in a suburban cottage-office north of London. His attractive secretary enters with a picture postcard, sent across the county line from the Cambridgeshire Fens, which is addressed anonymously to him. The front photograph is of a Tudor mansion with an incongruous crenellated tower. A schematic of an Occult pentacle has been sketched on the reverse side, with encoded annotations; which the secretary, who worked for the Ministry of Information during the war, is able to decipher. The author is intrigued to read a list resembling key words and phrases from his vaticinating book, and a suggestion that 2010 will be a more significant year for political futurology than 1984. He suspects that the photograph is of Grantchester Hall. His secretary telephones a girlfriend from Naval Intelligence, whom she thinks spent time on assignment there during the war, to confirm this. The wren officer invites her to rendezvous at a branch-line railway station near to Grantchester Hall, with the curious postcard.

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