Known as ‘Buffy’ in the Top 400.

AKA ‘The Baroness of Bones’

List of Amorati (Deceased)

1. The Baron Otto Ludwig von Bathory

Buffy’s first husband. She was 17 and an innocent peasant girl, he was 73 and the hereditary ruler of the little Duchy Buffy called home.

On their wedding night the Baron, faced with the tantalising vision of his fresh faced bride in her ivory bridal corset, rushed forward so eager to consummate, he trod on the hem of his own nightshirt and fell headlong into the antique commode at the foot of the bed. His cries for assistance muffled by the porcelain and shrieks of hysterical laughter from Buffy, the Baron expired when, pulling on what he thought was the bell rope, but was in fact the flush.

Tragically, at least for Buffy, the Baron left her not, as she had hoped, the fortunes of state, but rather crippling death duties and mortgages of a bankrupt state. She therefore decided very practically that life in the mountain schloss was not for her.

2. Ramon Garcia Manuel Domingo Gonzales Y Domingo

Owner of vast sherry estates in the throbbing passionate heart of Old Spain.

Throbbing and passionate (some would say greasy, smarmy and more arms than an octopus – but he does make nice sherry).

Drowned by Buffy in a vat of manzanilla and fulfilled his tenet of ensuring his wine was fortified with ‘plenty of body’ in the most literal sense.

The octogenarian family lawyer distracted by a flash of garter and come hither look from Buffy, and judiciously applied sherry stains, honoured the badly forged will and Buffy now had reasonable income from her new estates to live a life of leisure. But the summers were too hot, the country too parochial and the flamenco too ‘waily’, so Buffy packed her trunks to visit the capital of the civilised world – London.

3. Archibald ‘the Organ’ Hammond Hammond of Pimperne St Gussage.

Met Buffy on her Grand Tour when she was a guest of the Master of the Pytchley. A chinless, charmless heir to the Hammond Hammond fortune with a figurehead like the prow of a ship and a laugh like someone performing unspeakable acts with a donkey. What Archie lacked in charm he certainly made up for in persistence and ability to grate on The Baroness’ nerves. Introduced to Buffy by his mother the Dowager Hammond Hammond in the despairing attempt to marry him out of the family home, even if it is to a ‘foreign’ title.

Archibald distinguished himself by being the only one of the Baroness’ cast offs she has felt it necessary to dispose of BEFORE gaining his fortune. A superb but vain horseman, Buffy inveigled Archibald into a steeplechase challenge with herself as the prize. Lust and vanity driving him on, the hapless Viscount attempted the final fence to victory, but which was, in fact the mouth of a discarded tin mine. His hunter, Ronald, having more brains than his master, refused and pitched Archie headfast to oblivion, allowing Buffy to side saddle up to the gate, collect Ronald’s reins and sell the beast at Tattersalls. The money raised at least allowed Buffy to leave the country in style.

4. Duke Stefan Wenceslas Barbarossa of Slovdovia

Ruler of Slovdovia and the richest man in the Balkans on account his ruthless exploitation of the population in the mines, factories and sweatshops (particularly children). Buffy finds him a man after her own heart in many regards. Too much so, indeed, as it rapidly becomes clear to Buffy that the Duke is more interested in her fiscal assets, than she is in his.

Duke Stefan tries to compel the Baroness to legally sign over her Spanish and Bathory estates to him: first by means of persuasion and gifts, then by menaces, then by imprisonment and forced labour amongst the children she despises so much and is forced to wash for the little brats. Long having learnt to protect her financial independence however, Buffy has deposited her deeds and titles securely (that’s what she thinks) in a vault in Zurich.

Resourceful and cunning, Buffy instigates a revolt amongst the down trodden (consummate actress), and leads a torchlight revolt against the palace. It fails, but rids her of one nuisance – the peasantry – and places her once more within the attention of her husband. She pretends to capitulate to his will and ‘in his honour’ plans a special birthday feast, insisting he tries out the ‘new special moustache wax’ she has brought all the way from England – deVere’s Finest with a little touch of gelignite.

Flown with triumph and suitably waxed , the Duke boorishly mocks his wife at her end of the table, and to add further insult to injury, lights one of his vile Cuban cigars (Buffy hates smoking).

Boom!

Buffy admires the new red decoration of the dining room and the gently smoking corpse of her husband, and tossing and catching the tin, briskly makes her way to her carriage and strapping coachman, and together, with her late husbands banker bonds safely stuffed in her corset, they leave the country for Switzerland.

5. Herr Franz Fritz Weiss of Zurich

Buffy’s personal banker. He holds Buffy’s deeds and titles. Middle aged, clever, generally shifty, and a bigger crook than his great uncle – sadly taken off by bomb delivered to the bank by one Miss Winter and her companion, a certain Herr Dragomilov.

Since that terrible day, he has been something of a misogynist but he knows the scent of a gravy train when it passes and has enjoyed embezz – ah – investing, the Baroness’ money. Unfortunately, by the time he learns she has crossed the Swiss border, the coffers are practically empty. There are a number of options open to him.

a) Run and hope she doesn’t catch him. He is beginning to hear certain unpleasant rumours about her character.
b) Bluff and hope the stocks rise again.
c) Marry her in the hope that her possessions and chattels legally become his and they can ‘sort things out’ if only she’s patient.
d) Murder her….

However, when Buffy arrives all unsuspecting with a new influx of wealth – a cool fifty million (everybody whistle) – Herr Weiss begins to wonder if he can turn this to his benefit.

Shady individual – he is a Swiss Banker – after the bonds are safely in his vault, he invites Buffy to dine as an honoured client. Unfortunately for Buffy, Weiss has slipped her a mickey, and when she collapses snoring in the blancmange, he has her abducted by toughs and bundled over the German border.

Congratulating himself hugely, Weiss drinks too much brandy, staggers out into the street and falls down an open manhole into that special circle of Hell reserved for lawyers, bankers accountants and other like company.

No one now knows Buffy’s whereabouts, and she is penniless and friendless in a strange land…

6. Colonel Heinrich von Schrapnell

Buffy wakes up bound insecurely in the back of a soft roofed Volkswagen. Inexpertly shanghaied in Zurich her abductors failed to search her for hidden weapons, hence the pearl handled stiletto flick knife in her garter – for emergencies, naturally – is still in situ. It is the work of moments for Buffy to slit a hole in the side of the wagon, but cannot jump from the van at the speed it is travelling. Eventually, however Buffy sees through the holes they are entering the disreputable quarter of Berlin (what quarter isn’t?) and taking her chance, leaps for freedom. Unfortunately for her, her dress catches on a protruding bolt, and with much ripping of fabric she finds herself in the middle of a cobbled street, in the dark, in her scanties. Ducking into the nearest doorway she finds herself backstage at the Kit Kat Kabaret.
Badly in need of clothes, cash, and a base of operations, Buffy boldly overwhelms the manager with her charms and personality and promises of fleshly gratification (which she has no intentions of keeping) she becomes his top act: Der Fraulein Exotika Sturmtrupper, with whip, peaked cap and depraved sneer. In this guise she is able to study the clientele each night and fixes on the portly Colonel Heinrich von Schrapnell of the locally stationed regiment. Paying particular attention to this particularly muttonheaded example of Junkerdom, she contrives to work her way from the stage, to his side at the garrison altar. She now has position as the Colonel’s lady and somewhere safe to plot her return to wealth. Tragically, after one month of wedded separation, the Colonel is killed by a poisoned knockvurst sausage that somehow found its way into his travelling hamper.

The Baroness really had ‘no idea’ how it got there….