A suite of rooms had been booked for Mr Bell, a splendid bedroom with a study area and a bathroom with a hydrostatic health spa, which was as fearsome an arrangement of pipingshowerhead-water-jet paraphernalia and brass stopcocks as had ever daunted Mr Cameron Bell. The instruction manual ran to thirty-six pages and the detective suffered chills and scaldings by turn, but eventually emerged from the bathroom a cleaner and a wiser man.

  Having attended to all the minutiae of male hygiene, he dressed in his pale linen suit and put his travelling clothes outside the door, with a note to the effect that they should receive immediate attention.

  By local time it was now early evening and Mr Bell’s stomach grumbled for dinner. He stood in the bedroom and examined his reflection in a tall ornately framed looking-glass.

  He was determined that he would succeed in his endeavours. He was, after all, Mr Cameron Bell, widely recognised to be the greatest detective of his day. A man who through mere observation of a gentleman’s attire could deduce with unerring accuracy a host of intimate details and reveal the truth, thereby determining guilt or innocence.

  He peered at this reflection. What could he deduce from that? It was slightly out of focus, for from a misplaced vanity he rarely wore his pince-nez. But he could read much about himself from his reflection.

  Here stood a man of average height, a portly fellow with a large bald head. A fellow who looked as Mr Pickwick did. A fellow, furthermore, whose turn-ups spoke of his self-doubt, and his lapels of his failings on this, that and the next thing, too.

  Mr Bell was distracted from his reverie by a knock at his door.

  He answered this to find a messenger boy in a pillbox hat and brightly buttoned waistcoat holding a silver tray that bore a long white envelope upon which Mr Bell’s name was scrawled.

  Mr Bell accepted the envelope and tipped the messenger.

  Alone in his room, he examined the envelope.

  It had travelled through many hands and the Gothic script had been penned by a woman. An evil woman. Miss Lavinia Dharkstorrm.

  Cameron Bell tore open the envelope, drew out a sheet of scented paper and read aloud what was written upon it.

  There was something more inside the envelope and this Mr Bell tipped into his hand.

  A tuft of brown hair. A tuft that had not been cut but rather torn from the skin of its owner.

  There was blood upon this hair.

  The blood of Darwin the monkey.

  20

  rincess Pamela’s floating palace was painted peachy pink and had tiers and tiers of tessellated turrets. Amongst its architectural anomalies were also to be found a conglomeration of crimped cupolas, a multiplicity of marble minarets and a superabundance of staggering steeples. All sufficient, in fact, to beg for abominable alliteration as a hungry hound might beg for a bone-meal biscuit.

  Or indeed a simpering slave for the mercy of a monstrous master.

  Mr Cameron Bell, whose tastes in architecture were of the classical persuasion, considered the palace to be of such overwhelming ostentation and ghastly grandiloquence that he was lost for all alliteration.

  As he approached aboard the royal steam tug, the great detective stood at the prow, as if some stoic figurehead, viewing the outrageous construction as it slowly filled the skyline.

  This portly figurehead with his pale linen suit, straw boater aslant upon his baldy head, a Gladstone bag in one hand and a sword-stick in the other, was not the Mr Bell of the previous day. Which is to say that a substantial change had come over him since he had viewed the horror delivered to his hotel room in a long white envelope. This Mr Bell was the Mr Bell of old. A man supremely confident of his powers. A man determined in his attitude. A man who would not be shaken from his purpose.

  A man who was a force to be reckoned with.

  The steam tug’s engine chug-chug-chugged as the bulbous boat, its registration plate naming it as the Maggie of Cubit’s Yacht Basin, London, moved over the placid waters. The Grand Canal was five miles wide at this point and had more of the look of a lake or an inland sea about it.

  Mr Bell called back to the man at the helm. ‘How many folk inhabit his extraordinary creation?’ he called.

  ‘Thousands,’ the helmsman replied. ‘The princess maintains a vast retinue of servants. There’s flunkeys and footmen, castellans and courtesans, equerries, courtiers and chatelaines, too. Then there’s the shield—bearers, train—bearers, cup— bearers, wine-bearers, bare-bearers—’

  ‘Bare—bearers?’ asked Mr Bell.

  ‘Did I say bare-bearers?’ said the helmsman. ‘Naturally I meant bear—bearers — the chaps who carry little bears around. Then there’s the laundry maids and parlour maids and chambermaids and—’

  ‘I think I get the picture,’ said Cameron Bell.

  ‘Jamadars and bheesties,’ said the helmsman. ‘Not to mention the major-domos, lordly lamplighters and twisted firestarters.’

  ‘Twisted firestarters?’ enquired the detective. ‘I told you not to mention them.’[13]

  Mr Bell leaned back towards the helmsman and smote him smartly upon the head with the business end of his sword—stick.

  ‘Enough of your impertinence, my fine fellow,’ he said.

  ‘Well, pardon me, guv’nor,’ said the helmsman in a tone that vaguely echoed contrition, ‘but sometimes I cannot contain myself, what with the joyousness of life on this here canal.’

  Mr Bell raised an eyebrow but spared the helmsman a further smiting. He glanced the fellow up and down and drew deductions from here and there and also the next place, too.

  ‘You have served the princess for a very long time,’ said he to the man at the helm, ‘yet you have never been allowed to enter the floating palace.’

  ‘Man and boy I have served the royal lady,’ said the helmsman, adjusting a stopcock which put Mr Bell in mind of those within his bathroom at the hotel. He had received a particularly violent scalding this morning but felt confident that he was getting to grips with the theory of it all.

  ‘Perhaps your eldest son will find a place in the Royal Household,’ said Mr Bell. ‘He appears to be a bright enough lad.’

  ‘Ah,’ said the helmsman. ‘I see.’

  ‘You do?’ asked Cameron Bell.

  ‘You are a thaumaturge, one of them as can read the minds of men. Come for some congress at the palace, I suppose it would be.’

  Mr Bell’s face expressed no emotion. ‘And what do you know of such congresses?’ he asked.

  ‘No more than I should, sir. No more than I should. But it is common knowledge that the princess enjoys the company of magicians. The princess fears the anarchists, just as everyone else does, and she has been known to employ magicians to protect her. I boat them out to the palace all the time. Backwards and forwards I go, backwards and forwards, year after year after year, but never allowed inside that big pink palace.’

  ‘You follow a noble calling,’ said Mr Bell. ‘When I speak with the princess, I shall recommend that she raise your salary. And also that she employ your son, when he is of a suitable age.

  ‘Why, thank you, sir. Why, thank you very much.’ The helmsman tipped his cap to Cameron Bell.

  ‘So tell me,’ said the detective, ‘has the princess received many visitors and guests of late? Anyone of singular interest you have ferried across?’

  ‘None but the usual lords and ladies as comes for the season. But for that one woman, and I did not take to her.’

  ‘Please go on,’ said Cameron Bell.

  ‘Skinny creature with mauve-coloured eyes. You could smell the magic upon her. I takes her over and she’s all smiles, but on the way back she’s cursing fit to fracture a rib and threatens to turn my face inside out if I don’t put more speed to her passage.’

  Mr Bell smiled somewhat. Lavinia Dharkstorrm, he presumed with correctness. Travelling happily to the palace with the intention of stealing the reliquary. Then returning in fury when she discovered that someone else already had.

  ‘T
he palace was originally the property of Martian nobility, I assume,’ said Mr Bell.

  ‘You assume correctly, sir. Once the Martians were all dead, the London toffs took over the floating palaces. The princess had hers painted pink. Everything’s pink with the princess, so I’ve heard.’

  Mr Bell chose not to comment upon that remark. ‘When will the palace be setting sail, as it were?’ he asked.

  ‘In two days’ time,’ said the helmsman. ‘And I’ll travel with it, moored to the jetty, but not permitted to set a toe upon her.’

  The floating palace now loomed all-consumingly above and the helmsman drew the little craft close to the jetty upon which he could never set a toe.

  ‘Do you wish for me to await your return, Master Mage?’ asked the helmsman, saluting as he did so.

  Mr Bell climbed with care from the royal tug to the royal jetty and turned to face the helmsman. ‘What if other folk come to the shore, awaiting you to ferry them across?’ he asked.

  ‘Then they’ll just have to wait, sir, won’t they?’

  ‘Splendid,’ said Mr Bell. ‘Then settle yourself down for a nap and I will awaken you gently upon my return.’

  The helmsman offered another salute and Mr Bell went on his way.

  He trudged up a gravel drive that led to an unprepossessing door. Knowing well the societal niceties of court, Mr Bell was aware that only those of royal blood could expect to use the grand main entrance. As his shoes crunched on the gravel, he wondered at the wonder of it all. This palace was constructed of marble and stone and had to weigh literally millions of tons and yet it floated as would an ocean liner. There was much to understand upon this rose-red world and there would be little room for error if he was to succeed in his enterprise.

  Mr Bell faced up to the unprepossessing door and rapped upon it with the pommel of his sword-stick. The door swung instantly open and the detective gazed at the being who stood within. Gazed down at this being. This rather wonderful being.

  For she was a woman of oriental appearance, her hair teased into the style of the geisha, her sylph-like body embraced by a gorgeous kimono. A perfectly proportioned woman, this, but one standing less than three feet in height.

  ‘Mr Bell,’ said this delicate creature, in an accent that was unknown to the great detective. ‘Princess Pamela is expecting you. Do please follow me.’

  Mr Bell entered the palace and as he followed this enchanting little person up a spiral staircase, which she climbed with practised ease, he recalled an article he had read in The Times newspaper several years before. An article which concerned certain alarming discoveries that had been made upon this planet once it had been freed from its warlike inhabitants. Human beings were found upon Mars. Human beings who had been altered in various ways and pressed into the service of their loathsome masters. The evidence suggested that for a considerable period of time prior to their abortive invasion of Earth, the Martians had been surreptitiously visiting our world with the purpose of kidnapping human children. Evil things had been done to these innocents, ungodly experiments carried out upon them. Mr Bell had shuddered considerably when he read this account. It was truly the stuff of nightmare.

  The tiny woman moving briskly before him was, however, anything but the stuff of nightmare. She was as one of the elfin folk, wafted from the realms of Fairyland.

  At length they gained a high hallway, the little lady button-bright but Cameron Bell a-puffing like a steam tug. As he regathered his breath, the elfish being indicated a door, bowed politely and departed from his sight.

  ‘So be it,’ said Mr Bell, removing his straw boater, dragging from his pocket an oversized red gingham handkerchief and drawing it over his brow. He straightened his tie and, with shoulders back, knocked gently upon the door.

  Which was immediately drawn open by yet another tiny figure, this one even tinier than the first. He looked to be a gentleman of considerable age, with a bright bald head and a noble beard that reached from his chin to the floor. He wore a loose red long-sleeved garment secured at the waist by a silken cord, and he looked every bit the way a storybook wizard should look.

  Only smaller.

  Mr Bell gained knowledge from his fingernails and footwear. The little fellow glared at him with ill-concealed contempt.

  ‘Bell, is it?’ he said, in a voice all shrill and reedy. ‘Follow me and hurry, too — the princess won’t be kept waiting.’

  The bald and bearded fairy-man set off at the scamper and Mr Bell marched behind, swinging his sword-stick and taking in his surroundings.

  These were certainly pleasant enough, although colour-wise they did lean rather heavily towards the pink. There was a medieval feel to it all, with hanging tabards and crested shields smothering walls of unplastered stone. Unplastered perhaps, but painted pink. Mr Bell marched onwards.

  Ahead, from on high, hung curtains of pink. ‘Go through between them,’ said the bearded manikin.

  Cameron Bell pressed through the curtains and entered a wonderful room. A wonderfully pink room it was, all filled with wonderful things that were wonderfully pink.

  The furnishings were eccentrically eclectic, drawn from many ages and all expressing an overwhelming opulence. Renaissance thrones rubbed gilded shoulders with high-backed settees that must once have graced the drawing room of the Sun King. There were paintings, too, by Constable and Turner, by Gainsborough and Landseer and also Richard Dadd. Their frames were pink but the oils remained untouched. Pinkly patterned kilims pelted the polished floor and a chandelier so overwrought with crystals as to be some ice-capped mountain flung light from a thousand modern bulbs in ten thousand directions.

  Somewhere in the distance arose a baroque table upon which was spread a banquet of heroic proportions. Glazed hogs’ heads, roasted turkeys and local game that defied easy description lay heaped in their steaming masses. And somewhere to the rear of it all a lady lounged a-feasting on a jellied tentacle.

  ‘Bell,’ called out this lounging lady. ‘Bell, do hasten here!’

  Cameron Bell, with head humbly bowed, hurried as best he could. As he reached the table he peered between a haunch of something or other and a loin of something else.

  ‘Mr Bell at your service, Your Royal Highness,’ said Mr Cameron Bell.

  The lounging lady leaned forward. She was a vision in pink from crown to gown, from lacy cuff to bulging blowsy bodice. Her fingers flashed with rare rose diamonds and a pearl the size of a copper penny, though pink as a pony’s pizzle, shimmered at her throat. The only note of sobriety in all this perfusion of pink was the little black domino mask that hid the upper part of her face.

  This, however, did little to offer disguise, for the feasting female was in every way but dress the very double of Her Royal Majesty Queen Victoria, Empress of both India and Mars.

  ‘Hast thou eaten, chuck?’ asked the princess in that accent known to most Londoners as ‘Northern’, but to a few, Mr Bell included, as the accent of Jupiter, where Princess Pamela had clearly spent most of her formative years. ‘If thou art hungry, then roll up thy sleeves and get thyself stuck in.’

  21

  oos?’ asked Cameron Bell, in response to a question posed to him by Princess Pamela. ‘Do I like them? Well, yes, I suppose I do.’

  ‘So dost I,’ said the regal lady, laying about a haunch of grilled galliguffin[14] with the carving knife. ‘I think they’re champion. I’m having one installed on the forward promenade deck.’

  ‘A fascinating novelty,’ said Mr Cameron Bell.

  ‘Close to kitchen,’ said the princess.

  ‘Ah,’ said Cameron Bell.

  ‘Art thou enjoying thyself?’ Princess Pamela topped up Mr Bell’s glass from the bottle of vintage Château Doveston that lazed in a bucket of pinkly tinted ice.

  ‘Very much so.’ Mr Bell had his sleeves well rolled, no stranger he to an old-fashioned trenchering-down.

  ‘Champion. Champion. Champion,’ said the pinky princess. ‘I’ve read all about thee, Mr Bell. And de
ar Lavinia says that nowt will stand in thy way when it comes to retrieving my reliquary.’

  ‘Nowt,’ said Mr Bell, sipping champagne between great gulpings of grub. ‘You can rely on me completely.’

  ‘Aye, that I can, or it will be the worse for thee.’

  ‘Excuse me?’ said Mr Bell, a leg of something hovering now before his open mouth.

  ‘Mars,’ replied the princess, loading her plate with grilled galliguffin and sweet potatoes, too. ‘Mars, lad, Mars!’

  ‘I fail to understand, fair lady,’ said the gallant Mr Bell.

  ‘Not like Earth, lad. Thou canst do what thou wilt ‘pon Mars. Well, not thee, but me. I can chop off thy head and eat thy meat and toss thy bones into Grand Canal and none will care nowt. How’s that to be goin’ on with?’

  ‘I am confident that you will have no cause to employ such extreme measures,’ said the dining detective.

  ‘Extreme?’ The princess fell about in mirth. ‘That’s not extreme. I’ll tell you what’s extreme.’

  ‘Perhaps not while I’m eating,’ said Cameron Bell.

  ‘Dost thou choose to argue with a princess?’

  ‘Perish the thought,’ said Mr Bell. ‘It is simply that I am eager to begin my quest and solve for you the case of the purloined reliquary.’

  ‘Dear Lavinia tells me that the Sherlock Holmes stories are actually based upon thy exploits.’

  Mr Bell nodded as he once more ate.

  ‘And that Dickens based the looks of Mr Pickwick upon thine?’

  Mr Bell nodded dismally this time. ‘It did sound like a good idea at the time,’ said he.

  ‘I like my men plump,’ said Princess Pamela, a—patting at her belly. ‘Holmes is slim as a whippet. Thou wouldst not get a sandwich out of he.’

  Mr Bell took up a napkin and gave his chops a good wiping over with it. ‘Well, I must be up and about my business,’ he said. ‘Could someone show me to the scene of the crime, as it were?’