The Domino Men

“You think a little line of chalk can stop chaps like us from mooching out whenever the fancy takes us?”

Hawker downed a dainty ham sandwich with its crusts cut off. “We’re only here because we want to be,” he said, and hiccoughed.

“Why are you eating all this stuff anyway?” I asked in exasperation.

“It’s our last night here, sir!” said Boon, swigging from a bottle of ginger beer. “Thought we’d jolly well celebrate.”

“You know what they say, sir, about the condemned man’s last meal.”

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“Golly,” said Boon, mock sympathetic. “Haven’t you worked it out yet?”

Hawker waggled his eyebrows at me. “Bit slow, are we, Mr. L? Bit of a turtle brain today, my old lamb chop?”

Boon turned to his accomplice. “Lamb chop! I say, that’s rather good.” He sniggered as Hawker ladled jelly into his mouth. “Can’t believe we didn’t think of it sooner.”

I raised my voice, just a little, just enough to get their attention. “It’s your last night here?”

“Course it is, sir!”

“Abso-bally-lutely!”

I glared at them. “Why’s that?”

“Because today’s our lucky day, Mr. L.”

“I haven’t come to listen to your lies,” I said. “Just give me the location of Estella.”

“Oh, but we can’t tell you that, sir.”

“No, no. You’re perfectly helpless with directions.”

“We’ll take you there ourselves, sir. Introduce you face to face.”

“What do you bastards want?” I asked.

Hawker looked scandalized. “Cheek!”

Boon tutted noisily. “Naughty old lamb chop. Wherever did you pick up language like that?”

“What do you want?” I asked again, trying to stay calm.

“Just a small thing.”

“Nothing too big,” said Boon. He had helped himself to more jelly and it was dribbling glutinously down his chin. “But we would like to ask a little favor…”

As soon as I was clear of Downing Street, I took out my mobile and phoned Mr. Dedlock. Exactly how this worked, since I had never seen the least evidence of any communication device in the pod (let alone a sub-aquatic one), I really couldn’t say.

“Henry?” the old man rasped. “Have you seen them?”

“They’ve agreed to take us to Estella. God knows what’s changed their mind.”

“This is excellent news.”

“But there’s a condition.”

“Tell me, boy.”

“They want you dead.” I swallowed hard. “And they want to choose the manner of your passing. Apparently they… Well, they’ve got something specific in mind.”

There was an achingly long pause and when Dedlock spoke again, I could detect a change in his voice, a note of sadness, even of relief.

“You’ll have my answer,” he said, “in one hour.”

As soon as he had gone, I dialed another number.

My heart lifted when she spoke. I hadn’t realized how swiftly I’d come to find her voice so comforting.

“Hello?” she said. “Who is this?”

“It’s Henry, Miss Morning. I need to see you again.” I tried to suppress the quivering vibrato in my voice. “It’s time I knew the truth.”

Trying to forget the sticky, fleshy popping sound which the boy had made when Leviathan had sat up inside him, Prince Arthur Windsor left Mr. Streater’s presence and headed not, as one might have supposed, back to his own quarters, to seek out Silverman or his wife, but rather toward the official front door, the gateway, of Clarence House. Half a dozen servants, thrown by this unscheduled, impromptu abandonment of the day’s agenda, were around him within minutes, enquiring as to his plans, making polite offers of assistance and discreetly attempting to slow his progress. As the heir to the throne edged increasingly close to the open air, they frantically signaled for the prince’s regular security detail to be torn from their recreations and summoned to his side.

Arthur was polite to them all, his lifelong unease with the family’s mastery of the servant class manifesting itself in a flurry of apologies and regrets, but he was nonetheless adamant that he wished to change his plans for the day in order to pay a visit to the palace. There was no longer any need (as there might have been ten or even five years earlier) to enquire as to whether or not his mother was currently in residence. The palace had become her hermitage, far from the public gaze despite its location at the heart of the city, though it had always struck the prince that the place seemed less of a spiritual retreat than a paranoiac’s bunker, as though she was expecting some imminent catastrophe and had elected to bury herself deep, hoping to wait out disaster.

A Jaguar was ready for him at once and, several imploring calls having been made to the Metropolitan Police, when the prince sank back into the downy seats the roads had been cleared for him to proceed from Clarence House toward Buckingham Palace. No traffic light was ever red for Prince Arthur Windsor and no zebra crossing, lollipop lady or rogue pedestrian ever provided the slightest impediment to his regal procession through the city.

When he arrived at the palace, a platoon of secretaries, equerries and ladies-in-waiting were gathered in anticipation of his arrival. Although he waved them aside, they buzzed and clustered around him, like beggar children accosting a man of evident wealth and magnificence strayed too far from his usual habitat. As he walked, the throng of domestic staff seemed to grow in number, dozens of them trailing behind him like the anxious tail of a meteor. They were running some kind of interference — the prince could tell that much — trying to slow him down, offering an abundance of plausible-sounding reasons for him to turn back.

Arthur ignored them all and walked on through the mazy corridors of the palace that glimmered with a casual wealth to which he was long inured. He knew where he was heading. He was absolutely certain where she would be — squirreled away in the north wing of the palace, hiding from the world in her private suite.

When he arrived with the mass of attendants still behind him, Arthur discovered the great wooden doors to be closed and fastened and two palace servants — burly, pugilistic types squeezed uncomfortably into dark suits — standing in front of them, arms folded, unfaltering stares in place, like bouncers at the most exclusive club in the world.

“Her Majesty is not at home to visitors,” one of them said in a dull, perfunctory voice which tacked heedlessly close to discourtesy.

“I think she will be home to me,” said the prince.

“No, sir,” said the other man. “Not even to you.”

“She sent me a letter,” Arthur said.

“A letter, perhaps, sir. But not an invitation.”

“Listen here. I have a perfect right to see my mother. God alone knows why she has decided upon this perverse seclusion of hers but something is going on in my house and I think she may be able to tell me why.”

Like a guardsman in a busby ignoring the antics of a tourist angling for a photo opportunity, the men seemed entirely unimpressed by what, according to the standards of the prince, amounted almost to a tirade.

“Her Majesty’s instructions were most specific, sir. We are to admit nobody.”

Blood was rushing to Arthur’s head, dyeing his cheeks red with frustration. In desperation, he leant toward the doors and shouted. “Mother? Are you in there?”

Everyone stared at him, a little embarrassed.

“Mother!”

The men at the door had started to move toward him as though intending, gently but firmly, to eject him