Dismemberment (short story)

Dismemberment
Main character(s):	Missy
Main enemy:	Harrison Mandeville
Main setting:	Scoundrels Club, 1700s
Key crew
Publisher:	BBC Books
Writer:	James Goss
Release details
Part of:	The Missy Chronicles
Release date:	22 February 2018
The Missy Chronicles
Next →	Lords and Masters

Dismemberment was the first short story published in The Missy Chronicles.

Summary

The leading lights of Missy's private members' club bar her on the grounds that she's female. They're going to regret it.

Plot

Harrison Mandeville is alerted by one of the Scoundrels Club's butlers that a woman has entered the club and sat in the seat of one of their longest-serving members. Horrified, Mandeville goes to confront the woman, Missy, who shrugs off his concerns and attempts to prove her identity as the Master. She is promptly thrown out of the club by Mandeville and three porters and swears revenge on the club and the man.

At the opening of Lord Ascot's new gallery, the Ascot Gallery, Missy waits, watching the crowds. As the skies open up, the guests are horrified when blood starts raining down on them as they wait helplessly outside the closed gallery. Once inside, Lord Ascot refuses to let that put a damper on things and opens his gallery to visitors. Expecting an exhibit on Modern Urban Poverty, the guests are instead treated to pieces from the Reissmann Collection, a collection of artwork stolen from Jewish families by the Nazis in the 1930s, alongside pictures of Lord Ascot in full Nazi regalia. As he flees the gallery, Lord Ascot runs into Missy, who taunts him before leaving. Soon after she leaves, the Ascot Bridge collapses, sending Lord Ascot to his death.

Later, Bobo Braithwaite wakes up tied to some train tracks and mistakenly believes he's part of some publicity stunt for his new high-speed train line. Soon Missy confronts Bobo and forces the Reverend St John Colquhoun to marry her and Bobo. She reveals to Bobo that she had drawn up documentation that ensured, upon his death, that his wife would inherit all his money. She then leaves Bobo to be killed by the very high-speed train that he had built.

In southern America in the 1700s, a freed slave named Saffron is visited by Missy, who offers her a job. She is soon employed as a cook at the Scoundrels Club, where her food becomes a hit with the club's members. Soon the club begins preparing for its most cherished annual event: the Marlowe Banquet.

As the banquet gets underway, Mandeville relishes in the event. When the group goes to gather their copy of Dr Faustus II, the group finds that it is gone from its locked lead box, and soon discovers that someone has thrown it into the fire. Suspecting Missy's involvement, they begin shouting for her, only to discover that the various members of the club have been paralysed. Soon, Missy enters the club, along with Saffron, and confirms their part in the drugging.

Missy then lifts a horse's head onto the table for all to see, which Mandeville recognises as his prized stallion, Downton. She then reveals that she killed and cooked his horses into the main meal. As the members slowly begin succumbing to the poison, Missy offers the group an antidote: the most prized manuscript the club owns, the last remaining copy of William Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Won. The group devours the book and then slides into unconsciousness.

Much of the Scoundrels Club's members wake up on the Mandeville sugar plantation, in the 18th century, where they are enslaved and forced to work on the plantation. In the present day, Harrison Mandeville is running away from Missy but is shot by a dart that completely paralyses him. Missy then drags him over to her chair in the club and begins using him as a rug. She then turns to Dr Skarosa, and, while taunting him, pushes him into the fire.

Characters

• Missy
• Harrison Mandeville
• Dr. Skarosa
• Lord Ascot
• Bobo Braithwaite
• Reverend St John Colquhoun
• Saffron
• Foreman

Worldbuilding

• The Master has a tradition of recuperating at the Scoundrels Club after every regeneration, and has been a member of the Club since the Great Fire of London.
• Gustave Lytton hid bullion in the Club.
• Dr Faustus II was a lost play by Christopher Marlowe.
• Downton was Mandeville's prized stallion.

Notes

to be added

Continuity

• In one of his past incarnations, the Master sold a giant whale to Lord Sutcliffe. (TV: Thin Ice)
• The Master's copy of the Magna Carta hung in the Scoundrels Club. (TV: The King's Demons)
• Missy recalls being a snake. (TV: Doctor Who)
• Missy states she was late to the Marlowe Banquet because she was busy running over "a maths teacher". (TV: Dark Water)
• The Scoundrels Club has the only surviving copy of William Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Won. (TV: The Shakespeare Code)