Read King and Joker for Free Online

hesitated.
    â€œOch,” he said, “Awed. I was after askin’ Her Royal Highness a few questions aboot yon eencident wi’ the toad at breakfast. I am instructit to investigate, ye ken.”
    Nice for McGivan to have something to do, thought Louise. Officially he was one of the security police at the Palace, but there wasn’t much in that line anybody felt like trusting him with. In one early episode he’d been sent on some outing as Albert’s bodyguard, had got lost and then had made such frantic efforts to rejoin his Royal charge that the local police had arrested him. Albert had had to bail him out.
    â€œFire ahead,” said Louise. “I don’t think I noticed anything special until Father lifted the lid.”
    â€œThe whole Family was no verra obsairvant the morn,” said McGivan­. “Noo, Your Highness, when ye cam into the breakfast-room, who was there, besides yourself?”
    â€œOh, I was first down. I usually am. Mr Pilfer had only just rung the gong. I suppose that makes me chief suspect, because I’m pretty sure nobody went fiddling around with the ham-dish after I came in.”
    â€œOch, you and Prince Albert are already eleeminated. Baith o’ ye were in Scotland when Her Majesty had the misunderstanding with the advertising agency, and also when the eencident occurred in His Majesty’s toilet.”
    â€œIn Father’s loo! Honestly? What incident, for God’s sake?”
    (Albert said it was really Durdy’s fault that Father’s time on the loo each morning had become part of the Palace ritual almost as sacrosanct as, say, the Changing of the Guard. No wonder everybody had been so stuffy about the nature of the earlier jokes.)
    McGivan coughed and looked away. Durdy sniffed.
    â€œOh, all right!” said Louise. “What else can I tell you?”
    Painstakingly McGivan took her through all the details of the toad-finding and Pilfer’s faint, seeming most interested in things that couldn’t possibly be any help. Her impatience must have showed.
    â€œYe ken I must ask questions of the serrvants,” he said. “And I canna do that unless I can tell them I have questioned the Family equally severely.”
    â€œYes, but surely you want to start with who knew about the toad? I think Prince Albert said it only arrived yesterday.”
    â€œCorrect,” said McGivan. “I checkit the box mysel’. It could have been a bomb, ye ken?”
    â€œBut who else knew? That’s the point.”
    â€œAweel, Sergeant Theale crackit a wee bit joke aboot it. Was Constable Sanderson there? I dinna mind. And there’d be the messenger who took it to the Prince. Aweel. Aye, yon’s a guid suggestion, Your Highness. Verra guid for a lassie. I’ll investigate on those lines. Aye.”
    With another monstrous snuffle he crept away. Kinunu giggled as he left, but Durdy sighed.
    Are you tired, darling?” asked Louise. “Shall I go?”
    â€œNot tired, only old,” whispered Durdy.
    â€œHow old? Don’t tell me. As old as your tongue and a little older than your teeth. Right?”
    Durdy smiled peacefully and closed her eyes. Louise bent to kiss her forehead, nodded to Kinunu and tiptoed away. Walking back down the corridor she took the oxer and the water-jump each with an absent-minded bound. Visiting Durdy always made things seem all right—Nonny and Father, for instance: in half an hour that had stopped being a strange new portent and become something that Louise had known and accepted all her life, without knowing that she did so. In fact as she went down the stairs she was thinking neither about that, nor about the clearly impossible suggestion that Durdy should be moved to a nursing-home, but about the joker. An incident in Father’s loo! Wow! It was funny but it was also a bit uncanny. In some ways Father was a very secretive person, so not many people in the Palace would