Overcome with desire, helpless with craving, the prince lurched into an alcove and, with a grim facility which would have horrified anyone who had ever loved him, injected himself with another hit of ampersand. He sighed in dark delight. It was only when he was finished that he noticed that an under-butler was standing opposite, his eyes still cast feudally toward the ground. Making a stab at dignity, flailing toward decorum and falling horribly short, the prince rolled down his sleeve and tottered past.
The underbutler’s face burned with shame. Just as the prince was almost out of sight, he said: “Sir?”
Slowly, the prince turned around, dumbstruck by the insolence.
“I’m sorry, sir,” said the man. “But I have to say something.”
“What?” hissed the prince.
“Fight it, sir! You have to fight it!”
The prince stared at the servant. No doubt he had passed the man a thousand times, but his face was entirely unfamiliar to him. The fellow had a strange, whiskery moustache and an air of almost feline sleekness.
“What…” he began. “What did you say?”
“I said you’ve got to fight it,” said the under-butler again. “For the sake of us all, you have to snap out of this.”
The man backed away and disappeared, his courage evidently all used up.
Arthur tried not to think too hard about this strange interlude and lurched on toward his quarters.
He heard the sounds before he even reached his door. Animal noises. Grunts and groans. Yells and screeches. He paused outside. Had he been mistaken? No, there they were, the sounds of passion, almost comical in their volume and excess. There were squealed suggestions of the most indecent nature. There were hoarse commands and whimpered pleasures. The prince heard his oldest friend yelp in delight and his lover moan in delirious abandonment.
As ampersand gurgled through his synapses, slimed down his nervous system and surged along his bloodstream, the prince felt the weight of the gun in his pocket and knew what he had to do.
He opened the door and walked inside. Who knows what he saw behind that door, what grotesquerie, what lurid pornography, what leering simulacra.
You might reasonably expect at this point, when the drug ampersand had almost completely destroyed his capacity for reason, for us to tell you about a couple of gunshots, to be told about the ferocious whip-crack of that revolver echoing around the corridors of Clarence House.
That wasn’t to be. Instead, two minutes later, the prince simply re-emerged, as inside the sounds of romance went on unabated.
Only one thing had changed in this picture. A single, unremarkable detail which none of us could have predicted but which immediately made everything different.
There was a small gray cat strolling by his side.
In the corridor, two old acquaintances stood waiting. Each held a pasty in his hand — half-eaten, their glistening insides dripping onto the floor, where they clung glutinously to the plush strands of carpet.
“Evening, cock!” crowed Detective Chief Inspector George Virtue.
“Wotcha!” bugled Detective Sergeant Vince Mercy.
“Why are you here?” Arthur asked.
One of the fat men wiped his meat chop of a hand across his nose. “Bottled it, didn’t you, scout?”
“Couldn’t go through with it, could you?”
“Wassock.”
“Toss-pot.”
“Nonce.”
“You gonna stand about and let people laugh at you?”
“You gonna let them take the piss?”
“Be a man, guv.”
“Get yourself blooded.”
Arthur stared, a little more understanding inching into his consciousness. “What did you say?”
“Blooded, guv.”
“That’s what he said. Get yourself blooded.”
The prince stared at them both, suddenly hopeful, suddenly aware of the possibility for redemption. “Gentlemen!” he said, sounding for the first time in days something like his old self.
“Yeah?” Mercy asked through a mouth of semi-digested mulch.
“I don’t believe you’re real.”
“Oh, that’s gutting, mate.”
Arthur went on. I can’t believe what I’m hearing from that room. Or what I saw in there either. It’s an illusion, isn’t it? It’s a trick being played on me be ampersand.”
“Don’t know what you’re on about, pal.”
The prince glared at them. “Why?” he asked. “Why do you want me to kill my wife?”
“What’s the matter with you?” Virtue shouted. “There’s a bloke in there porking your missus and you’re wasting time yammering with us.”
Deliberately, Arthur turned away from them (behind him, their cries went on — “Do it, you arsehole!” “Pull the bleeding trigger!”) and, his gun lowered, went back into the bedroom.
As the ampersand-filter descended from his eyes, he saw the truth of it — Laetitia on the bed, alone and fast asleep, curled up under the covers, the picture of innocence and chastity (though perhaps looking a little heavier than Arthur could remember having seen her before).
Back outside, the detectives Virtue and Mercy had disappeared. The prince fell to his knees in relief, wracked with sobs at how close he had come. At first he didn’t even notice what had walked in beside him and begun to nuzzle against his legs.
Arthur Windsor wiped his eyes, dabbed the snot from his nose and, miraculously, managed a kind of smile.
The gray cat looked up at him and purred.
“You again,” whispered the prince.
The cat purred, seemed to smile and stalked closer to the downed prince, please at what had been averted, knowing the dangers which still lay ahead but ready at last for the endgame.
The prince fell back upon the floor as the cat came closer. He was about to say something more, to offer the animal some thanks, some further words of gratitude, when exhaustion washed over him and everything faded away. The last thing he saw was a feline face, small and gray, filled with wisdom and concern, opening its mouth as though it was about to speak and, at long last, explain it all.
Chapter 23
At 9:01 A.M. that Tuesday morning, Mr. Derek Mackett, who had dedicated the great majority of his life to safeguarding the Civil Service Archive Unit, waved two of the most notorious killers in British history past reception without even asking for their ID. It was the only blot on a career which (with its 100 percent attendance record and five-time commendation for loyal service) stood otherwise unblemished.
Mackett was never able to forgive himself for the oversight. How could he have failed to stop two people who transparently had no business in a civil service building without getting them to sign in for guest passes? How could he have blithely hurried them through, even going so far as to speed them on their way with a gruffly avuncular smile and a friendly nod? Why did he think that there was nothing at all suspicious in two grown men dressed as schoolboys wandering into an office block? Why couldn’t he have smelt the bloodlust on them?
The counselors were good with him, awfully decent and kind. They told him that the Prefects were able to warp perception, that they were masters of deceit and that Mr. Mackett was far from the only person responsible for what happened. But Derek took his job very seriously indeed, and as far as he was concerned, the buck stopped with him.
I heard that he died last month, not so much of a broken heart as of fatally punctured professional pride.