“No, she wasn’t.”
“Yes, she was.”
“No, she wasn’t.”
“Of course she was. You know Miss Hunroe far prefers me to you. She never would have offered you the real Paris in France!”
“You old witch!” Miss Teriyaki cried, her feelings visibly hurt. Then her face changed. She thrust her hand at Miss Suzette. “I don’t expect Miss Hunroe gave you a ring like this. She didn’t, did she? Hah. Favorite indeed. Miss Hunroe loves me. There you go!”
“Oh, shut up and hurry up, you slug,” huffed Miss Suzette. “If we don’t get Mr. Black now, she’ll hate us both, and then neither of us will get Paris or Venice or anything.”
Clip, clip, clip went their shoes and the walking stick on the marble passage floor. Then they were out of the arcade onto the busy street beyond it, just in time to see AH2 disappear through the open gates of the entrance of Green Park. A rain was spitting down, and the skies above were growing grayer.
“I’m sure I heard him say Buckingham Palace,” Miss Teriyaki exclaimed breathlessly. “Perhaps we should hail a cab.”
“Don’t be so lazy, Teriyaki!” Miss Suzette wheezed, wiping some dribble from the corner of her mouth with a lace hanky. She put up her frilly-rimmed umbrella and set off through the park.
Outside high railings in front of Buckingham Palace, a handful of tourists stood watching the changing of the guards. A bearskin-hatted sergeant shouted commands, and three serious red-uniformed soldiers, also in tall black furry hats, took it in turns to march up and down the palace forecourt.
Miss Teriyaki and Miss Suzette crossed the road to stand by the railings fifty yards from where AH2 had joined the tourist throng. Miss Teriyaki reached into her handbag for her cell phone.
“I’m going to alert Miss Hunroe,” she said, beginning to text a message. “I have a feeling she ought to be here.”
Miss Suzette nodded. “And I’m going to set up a little Molly Moon trap all of my own.” Beside her a red-haired Chinese woman in a denim trouser suit raised a camera to her eye and snapped.
“That will be a classic picture,” interjected Miss Suzette with warm charm.
“Oh, yes, it will be,” said the Chinese tourist.
“Are you alone, dear?” asked Miss Suzette, smiling.
“Alone? Oh, yes, I am,” said the young woman, completely trusting the sweet-looking, chiffon-collared lady.
“You speak very good English.”
“Oh, yes,” the Chinese woman replied. “I have spent ten years at school learning it.”
“Lovely!” Miss Suzette replied. There was a pause as the young woman took another photograph. Then, like a horrid, fat, poisonous spider, Miss Suzette swung her web.
“I say, could you check my eye? I seem to have a speck of dust there—can you see anything?”
The innocent Chinese woman turned. She gazed into Miss Suzette’s piggy eye. And before she knew it, she was hypnotized.
Thirteen
“I’ll be the butler,” Micky twittered. “You can be the queen.”
“The queen? Are you joking?” The feathers on Molly’s head stood up on end.
“Come on,” Micky coaxed, “she’s only another human being.”
“But I don’t know if I can behave like the queen!” Molly tweeted.
“Of course you can. Just be ever so royal and polite. Listen, you’d be helping her.”
“But I can’t see her face, so I can’t imagine her as a child,” Molly objected. “So how can I morph into her?”
“Your work’s been done for you,” Micky pointed out. “That portrait there with the girl holding the puppy is of the queen when she was about six.”
Molly and Micky began staring at the edge of the green-and-white carpet beside the floorboards near the window. It had a pattern of leaves and flowers that twisted around one another. Soon Molly had captured an image of a strange cottage with a tall spindly roof. She immediately turned her attention to the portrait of the young princess. Micky had been right. The picture was so good it made Molly’s task very easy, and within seconds she had harnessed the cottagey image, linked it with the princess’s face, and, as though these pictures were magical charms to pull her, Molly was at once shooting out of the blackbird’s body straight for the queen’s.
Like a rolling tsunami wave, Molly crashed into the old lady’s mind, overpowering her personality like a breaker overpowering an unsuspecting swimmer. Part of Molly felt apologetic and rude to be pushing into Her Royal Highness’s mind, but she knew she mustn’t show weakness, for if she did, the queen’s character might get the upper hand, and that would be disastrous.
So Molly took charge, and as she did, she apologized to her. I’m so sorry, she thought to her. Erm. Your Majesty. It’s for your own good.
Molly was overwhelmed by the queen’s memories and her knowledge. Molly saw giant ships that the queen had launched, swinging bottles of champagne at their hulls. She saw private yachts and huge stables filled with the queen’s racehorses. She saw wonderful palaces with parks around them where the queen lived and went on holiday, and she saw memories of all sorts of parades and celebrations that had been given in the queen’s honor. This was mixed with an unexpected ordinariness of character that made the queen feel just as normal as the other humans Molly had morphed into. Molly saw how she loved her family, her grandchildren, her dogs, her horses, and her friends. She saw how she was wishing the butler had brought her a chocolate muffin.
“Cor!” Molly found herself saying. Her accent as the queen was extremely posh.
“Is there anything wrong, ma’am?” Black asked; something in the queen’s tone put him on edge. Molly wondered whether the queen had been hypnotized by Black. She didn’t think she had been, but she couldn’t be sure.
“Everything is perrrfect,” Molly the queen replied, trying desperately to get a grip on herself. “Cor is the nickname of one of my corgis—the big scruffy one. His full name is Cor Blimey. It’s Cockney, don’t you know. He was just being naughty. You didn’t see it, but I did. Ha, ha. Oh, dear!” Outside, the sergeant was shouting his commands in the changing of the guard. The marching of the soldiers was perfectly synchronized as their feet hit the ground with precise rhythm. “Isn’t the marching comforting?” Molly said. On the ground by her feet, three corgis turned to look up at her quizzically. The big scruffy one began growling. “Be quiet, Cor!” Molly tutted.
“You were saying?” Black began.
“What was I saying?” Molly asked unsurely, picking up her teacup and sipping at it. Clumsily she spilled some on her lap. “Oh. Ah, um, butler! Have you got a napkin?”
Black watched suspiciously as the royal butler came toward the queen brandishing a linen cloth. Black eyed the queen and her snarling corgis. Instinctively, he picked up his leather bag with the hypnotism book inside it.
“There you go, My Highness,” said Micky the butler, mopping away at the queen with the napkin. Molly pushed him away, knowing that a butler would definitely not start rubbing the queen’s knees. Two of the corgis began to bark.
“You were offering,” Black went on, “to make arrangements for me to get to the Tower of London, to put the book safely there.” Now Black did not feel comfortable at all. Lily’s warnings rang loud in his ears.
Molly the queen eyed his bag. She supposed the book was inside it, and she marveled at Black’s cunning. It was very clever of him to be using the book as an excuse to get into the Tower of London, she thought. Why, once he was in there, the riches at his fingertips were immense. The crown jewels were kept there, including the biggest diamond in the world. And she could see in the queen’s memories that she had already been persuaded that the book was very, very precious and dangerous. She already had some knowledge of hypnotism, time traveling, time stopping, and morphing, for Black had been explaining them to her.