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Molly. “Taking it easy in your cubicle, were you, with the latest issue of
Big and Busty
and the door locked?”
    The Sarjeant ignored her, his cold gaze fixed on mine. “About time you got back, boy. Whole place has been going down the crapper since you left. Family discipline is falling apart, without the old certainties to keep them in line. They need you here, setting an example. Not gallivanting about back in the world, on personal business.”
    “You know, just once it would be nice to hear
Welcome home
when I come through the door,” I said wistfully. “So stop bugging me, Sarjeant, or I’ll have Molly turn you into a small steaming pile of something. You’re not telling me that angry mob just happened…They couldn’t have got near the front door without your cooperation.”
    “Wanted you to see how bad things had got,” the Sarjeant said calmly. “I’d have stepped in, if things started getting ugly.”
    “I only put up with you so you can keep the pests off my back,” I said flatly. “It’s bad enough I just got attacked outside my old flat by a whole bunch of MI5 goons, without being ambushed by my own family the moment I walk through the door. You let this happen again, and I will slam you against the nearest wall until your eyes change colour! Do I make myself clear?”
    Give the man his due; even though no one had dared to speak to him like that in decades, and even though he knew I meant every word of it, he didn’t flinch one bit.
    “I needed to see who would act, instead of just talk,” he said. “Now they’ve identified themselves as troublemakers, I can go after them, and there will be spankings. Don’t try to teach me my job, boy. You might run the family now, but I run the Hall. Now what was that about you being attacked by MI5? No one attacks us and gets away with it.”
    “Trust me,” I said. “They didn’t. But they knew exactly where and when to find me, which means someone in the family must have ratted me out to the prime minister. So make yourself useful and find out who.”
    His cold eyes brightened at the thought of authorised violence. “Any restrictions on my methods?”
    “I want answers, not bodies,” I said. “Otherwise, anything goes. Make them cry, make them talk. The family can’t afford to be divided right now.”
    “Hardcore, Eddie,” said Molly. “What’s next; loyalty oaths and public executions?”
    The Sarjeant-at-Arms inclined his head slightly to me. “Welcome home, sir. Welcome back to the family.”
    “Get my Inner Circle together,” I said. “And have them wait for me in the Sanctity. We have urgent new business to discuss. I’ll be along as soon as I can. I have to talk to the Matriarch first. How is she?”
    “Still in mourning,” said the Sarjeant.
    “Alistair isn’t dead,” I said.
    “Might as well be.”
    The Sarjeant bowed stiffly to me, ignored Molly, turned on his heel, and strode off into the labyrinthine depths of the Hall. He was never going to warm to me, and I wouldn’t have known what to do if he had.
    “You’re really getting into this leadership thing, aren’t you?” said Molly. “Barking orders and handing out beatings. I guess breeding will out. You’re every inch a Drood, Eddie.”
    I shrugged apologetically. “I swear I used to be so much calmer and easygoing, before I came back to the Hall. There’s just something about having to deal with my family that makes me want to spit and curse and throw things. Preferably explosives. But I have to be seen to be in charge, Molly; I have to be hard on the family and make it toe the new line, or they’ll turn on each other, and the family will devour itself. I’ve taken away everything they depended on; now it’s up to me to give them something else to live for. A new cause to follow.” I sighed tiredly. “I hate all this, Molly. Not least because I have a horrible suspicion I’m not up to the job. But I have to do it… because there’s no one