Dawn was fast approaching. Though he’d not yet been to bed, it was still far too early for brandy. But the bird’s beak was looking especially pointy and anyway, he had a headache, and nothing was better for headaches than a healthy splosh of fermented peaches. It might not kill the pain, but it swiftly made sure you no longer cared that the top of your head was threatening to explode.
He poured them each a drink and they sipped in sour, contemplative silence.
“You know what this means, don’t you?” he said at last, grumpily considering the bottom of his glass. “It means I have to tell Sir Alec I haven’t saved the day for him.”
“You haven’t saved it yet,” said Reg, with a genteel, alcoholic belch. “There’s still time.”
“Not much. And every hour that passes pushes Bibbie and Melissande and Gerald an hour closer to disaster.”
Reg rattled her tail. “That’s a very glass-half-empty way of looking at the world.”
“Actually, my glass is entirely empty,” he said. “Did you want some more brandy?”
“No,” said the bird. “And neither do you. What you want is a bath and some breakfast. The Sir Alecs of this world are best confronted with a clean face and a full belly.”
She was right. Again. Drat her. So he dragged himself upstairs, bathed, shaved, found some fresh clothes, then staggered back downstairs to fortify himself with coffee and porridge. After that, with the sun risen a decent distance above the horizon, he hauled out his crystal ball and gave Sir Alec the bad news.
Sir Alec was unimpressed and said so, at length.
“Well, honestly, sunshine, what did you expect?” said Reg, strutting to and fro across the kitchen table with an irritatingly derisive look in her eye. “You’ve known him a lot longer than I have and I’m not surprised.”
Monk dumped three teaspoons of sugar into his fresh cup of coffee and stirred so hard he nearly slopped half of it over the side.
“I didn’t say I was surprised.”
“Yes, you did,” Reg retorted. “Not five seconds ago. You said, and I quote, That miserable bastard! I don’t believe it!”
Aggrieved all over again, he thumped his fist to the bench beside the sink. “Yes! Precisely! I’m disbelieving, not surprised! Honestly, to hear him talk you’d think I didn’t give a toss about Gerald and Bibbie and Melissande!”
“Well…” Reg stopped strutting and scratched the side of her head. “To be honest, ducky, I think you’re wrong there. Don’t misunderstand me, I wouldn’t trust that sarky bugger as far as I could spit a hedgehog, but in case you weren’t paying attention, your Sir Alec’s not looking too flash. Seems to me you caught him in a bad moment, is all. Prob’ly he’s got a lot of prickly problems on his plate.”
Remembering the pallid cast to Sir Alec’s drawn face, and the shadows of strain beneath the tired, chilly grey eyes, Monk tossed his teaspoon into the sink. “So I’m s’posed to feel sorry for him now?” Picking up his coffee, he retreated to the nearest chair. “D’you think he’s keeping secrets?”
Reg hooted so hard she nearly fell over. “I don’t know, ducky. Do pigeons poop on statues?”
“I mean secrets about Splotze,” he said, glowering. “I mean do you think something’s gone wrong with Gerald’s mission and he’s not telling me because-because-” But a swiftly rising fear wouldn’t let him finish. “Dammit, Reg. I never should’ve let Bibbie set foot out of this house.”
“I don’t see how you could’ve stopped her, short of trussing the girl like a turkey and shoving her head first into a closet,” said Reg. “Now just you stop carrying on, sunshine. If something has gone arse over teakettle in Splotze, you’d know it. What you need to think about is how to fix that clever clogs door-opening hex of yours so that the bloody door stays open, right? Because tail feathers like mine don’t grow on trees!”
Monk looked at her tail. Thanks to a near-miss on the Blonkken embassy’s second floor, it was now minus three of its extravagantly long brown-and-black feathers.
“Yeah. Right. Sorry about that.”
“As well you should be,” Reg said tartly. “Because I’ll tell you this for nothing, my boy. I won’t be setting so much as a toe inside another embassy if there’s a chance of me flying out of it half-naked!”
He raised his hands in surrender. “I told you, I promise, it won’t happen again. Now, if you don’t mind, I need to brush my teeth then gird my loins to face another day of thaumaturgical adventures in R amp;D. Can you stay out of trouble until I get home?”
Her offended squawking followed him out of the kitchen, up the stairs and into the bathroom, where he scowled at his reflection while scrubbing his teeth. A tremor of worry shuddered through him as he rinsed his toothbrush.
I hope the wretched bird’s right. I hope nothing’s gone wrong in Splotze.
“I don’t know, Gerald,” said Melissande, fiddling with the end of her ribbon-tied, plaited hair. “You paying official sympathy calls? Really that’s something I should take care of myself.”
Gerald turned away from the window in her guest suite’s bedchamber. “Under normal circumstances, perhaps. But none of this business is normal. Besides, there’s not a lot of point in you visiting the recently afflicted wedding guests, is there? Not when you’ve no hope of telling if any of them have been up to thaumaturgical shenanigans. And please, it’s Algernon, remember?”
“Fine. Then it’s just not done, Algernon,” Melissande persisted. “Any princess worth her tiara doesn’t send a secretary to convey a king’s concern. It might easily be taken as an insult, and what good will that do us?”
“How can anyone be insulted if I explain you’re still abed, recovering?” he said. “This way you’re making a good impression, unwell and still thinking of others, and I’m doing my job. We can’t lose.”
As Melissande shifted in her chair, unconvinced, Bibbie bounced a bit on the edge of the bed. “He’s right, Mel. With everyone recovering from that ghastly State Dinner, and resting up ready for the fireworks this evening, this is an ideal opportunity to run potential suspects to ground. Only…” She frowned. “Even though we’ve sorted through some of them, there are still rather a lot left. Why don’t I-”
Gerald turned on her. “Absolutely not! You are not helping me with anything remotely thaumaturgical. How many times do I have to tell you what Sir Alec said? Do you want to see me clapped in irons when we get back home?”
“Faddle,” said Bibbie, wrinkling her nose. “Clapped in irons. When it comes to exaggeration you’re as bad as Melissande.”
He loved Monk’s sister to distraction, but that didn’t mean there weren’t times he could easily shake her until her bones rattled.
“Call it what you like, Miss Slack, but my decision is final. You’re staying here. I swear, if you so much as poke your nose out of these apartments before I’ve finished investigating I’ll clap you in irons and ship you back to Ottosland on the slowest hot air balloon I can find! It’ll take you so long to get there that by the time you set foot on Ottish soil they’ll be celebrating the turn of the next century!”
Melissande looked at him over her new spectacles. “D’you know, Bibbie, I rather think he means it.”
“Yes, well, I rather think I mean it too!” he said, harassed. “Please, Bibbie, I am begging you. Don’t make my job any harder than it is already.”
She stared at him, her hexed eyes overbright. “Gracious. And there was me thinking I’d been of use at the Servants’ Ball. How silly. What a gel I am.”
Oh, damn. Crossing to the bed, Gerald dropped to one knee and took her hands in his. “I’m sorry. But no matter how brilliant you are, you’re not a trained agent and this is no time to be learning on the fly. It’s too dangerous. Sir Alec won’t risk you, and neither will I.”
“Besides,” said Melissande, breaking the taut silence. “While I might, at a pinch, send my secretary on this kind of errand, I’d never send my lady’s maid. That really would cause a stir.”
Bibbie slid her hands free. “Fine. Far be it from me to contradict Your Royal Highness. While our very special Mister Rowbotham’s off doing his important, manly duty, perhaps there’s a dirty fireplace somewhere I could clean.”
“Leave her,” said Melissande, as Bibbie retreated to the suite’s bathroom. “She’ll come round, eventually.”
Pushing to his feet, Gerald sighed. “I hope so.”
“It’s hard for her,” Melissande added. “She’s easily as talented as Monk, y’know. If life weren’t so unfair, if the world wasn’t so ridiculously prejudiced and shortsighted, she’d be making her own splashes in Research and Development. She might even be a proper government agent.”
