as they are, of course.'
'May I ask who was on the other end of the line?'
'You may.'
Congreve frowned at this typical childishness. 'All right, once more with feeling. Who was on-'
'His Royal Highness, the Prince of Wales.'
'HRH himself?'
'Yes.'
'What did he want?'
'He called to invite me, and anyone else I cared to bring along, out to his country home at Highgrove for a long weekend. Your oversized brain obviously helped you make the cut.'
'So. Not the usual fishing, shooting, and hunting weekend, one assumes?'
'Hardly.'
Congreve leaned back in his chair, thinking. It didn't take long to arrive at his conclusion.
'There's been some credible threat to the Royal Family,' Ambrose said. 'Correct?'
'Hmm. Quite impressive. You should have been a detective.'
'Anyone else going to be there?'
'We shall see, but I would imagine so.'
'When do we leave for Highgrove?'
'Now would be as good a time as any.'
'Alex?'
'Yes?'
'Listen carefully, Alex, because I mean every word I'm about to say. I am deeply glad to have you back. Even if it took something like some, some awful threat against the Royal Family to do it.'
'Thank you. Had it been anyone else but Charles, I'm not sure I could have managed to pull myself back from the-'
'But it was Charles, wasn't it? And he called you because he's known you all your life. And he trusts you and you alone. No one else in this country is capable of the kinds of things you do. No one. He knows that.'
'Please. Don't be ridiculous.'
'Alex?'
'What?'
'It's been a long time. To be perfectly honest, I've missed you terribly, dear boy. I think I may-'
'Oh, Ambrose, for heaven's sake, dry up. Don't go all leaky like a schoolgirl. We're back in action in case you hadn't noticed. Tears are frowned upon both on horseback and under fire.'
Congreve smiled.
Alex was back. As Dr. Watson had once said of a rejuvenated Sherlock Holmes, 'The man was once again on the foredeck, cutlass in hand, eyes on the far horizon, searching for bad weather or enemy sails.'
Hawke had returned indeed, in full measure.
FIVE
YOU DON'T REALLY MEAN TO SAY, Alex, that we are not taking the Yellow Peril to Highgrove?' Congreve said, gazing wistfully over his shoulder as they passed right by his lovely Morgan ticking and gleaming in the morning sunlight.
'Sorry, not taking the Yellow Peril to Highgrove,' Hawke replied. He was striding quite briskly across the mossy brick, and whistling, Ambrose noticed.
Whistling?
'Why on earth not, Alex?' Ambrose asked, puffing a bit, trying to keep up with Hawke's rapid pace. 'You think the Royals might find the old Peril a bit unseemly? A bit of flash? Outre? Is that it?'
'Outre? Please, try not to use French in my presence,' Hawke said, pausing a moment to look over his shoulder. 'You should get down on your knees every night and thank God you don't have the world's thinnest vocabulary, a distinction accorded solely to the bloody French.'
'A fact, may I remind you, that you learned from me.'
Congreve, prior to joining the Metropolitan Police, had been a formidable language scholar at Cambridge and never tired of reminding Hawke of it. Ambrose had the remarkable ability to place a man within twenty miles of his home, wherever in the world it might be, as soon as he heard him speaking. Dialects were recorded permanently in his brain and, by some synaptic perfection of brain machinery, were always on tap for his use.
Slight details of a man's behavior or his dress would have meaning for Congreve that most men would miss: he had an intuitive power of quick deduction that made it extraordinarily difficult for any but the rarest of men to deceive him for long. These powers accounted for his success as a criminalist and the obsessive fondness Ambrose felt for Conan Doyle's transcendent creation, Sherlock Holmes. He and Holmes, Ambrose felt, privately of course, were cut from the same cloth.
Across Hawkesmoor's wide car park stood a large granite stone building with a long row of gleaming dark green garage doors, formerly stables. A steep slate roof sloped down from the high pitch, and there was a dormer window for every room where a stable boy once slept.
As a child of eight, Hawke had decided he liked one of these rooms and the company of the rowdy, fun-loving stable boys far more than his own high-ceilinged corner room in the Hawkesmoor's West Wing. Eventually, he had wheedled and cajoled Pelham into secretly moving him lock, stock, and barrel into one of the tiny stable rooms.
He'd brought with him to the new room exactly half of his books, half his toy soldiers, and half his wooden ship models. The other half of his worldly goods remained in his old room in order to keep up appearances.
Nannies, nurses, and other assorted jailers had been ordered by Pelham to keep mum on the matter of his moving out. Pelham ruled Hawkesmoor with an iron fist in those days and his word was law. Alex took to wearing clothes provided by his new mates, and every day you'd find him mucking out stalls, grooming horses, and repairing tack right along with the lads. Many an afternoon you'd find him, a woolen cap pulled low on his forehead, learning to take fences at a full gallop.
The stable master privately told one of his charges that young Hawke was 'as fine a natural rider as ever he'd seen.'
So it was that little Alex and Pelham had kept this change of quarters a semi-secret from Alex's grandfather for years. The boy had happily made the stables his residence until he was shipped off to the Fettes School in Edinburgh to begin his education.
'What car are we taking, then?' Congreve asked, a sullen expression on his face.
Behind all those stable doors was a fabulous automotive and motorcycle collection, from the actual British racing green Jaguar 'C' type that had, to the Queen's delight, beaten the American Briggs Cunningham to win Le Mans for England in 1953. Among the collection, too, were a lovely midnight blue 1957 Jaguar XK-140 Drop-head Coupe and a Corso red Ferrari 250 GT SWB.
'The Locomotive, of course,' Hawke said, entering the one opened stable door.
'Morning, sir,' said an old fellow in white coveralls. 'Just topping the old girl off for you.'
'Lovely shine, George. Thanks.'
The older man, who had amazingly bushy white eyebrows and muttonchops, was just finishing a wipe-down of Hawke's daily driver whenever he was at Hawkesmoor. Affectionately referred to as the 'Locomotive,' it was a 1953 battleship-grey Bentley 'R'-type Continental.
Modified extensively over the years, he'd upgraded the engine to the Mark IV 4.9 liter and had her fitted with bucket seats reupholstered in dark green Connolly hides. By adding an Arnott 'blower,' the newly supercharged monstrosity was capable of well over 130 miles per hour.
It had been more than a year since he'd driven her and he'd been looking forward to climbing behind the wheel
