She knew my voice, too. She giggled unpleasantly in her usual way. “So you’ve turned up again!” she said. “Where are you? I thought we’d left you safely stuck away in Wales.”
“No,” I said. “I’m in London now, and I need to speak to my father at once. Could you get him to the speaker, please?”
She giggled even harder. “No,” she said. “I can’t.”
“Do you mind telling me why not?” I said.
“Because he’s not here,” she said. “He hasn’t been here for ages now. We expelled all the dissident wizards two weeks ago.”
I had that pitching downward feeling inside again, but I said, politely, “Then perhaps you can tell me where he is now.”
“Wouldn’t you like to know!” Alicia said. “He’s where nobody’s ever going to find him again. And your mother’s there, too. And you know, Roddy, you really have no business ringing this number, because you’re not a member of Court any longer. I shouldn’t really be speaking to you.” There was true triumph in her voice. I could tell she had been looking forward to telling me this from the moment she heard my voice on the speaker. “Both your parents have been impeached for treason to the Crown, you see,” she explained.
“Thank you so much for telling me,” I said. “Who’s seeing to the weather, then?”
“Well, nobody at the moment,” she said, “but I expect a new appointment will be made as soon as the King has abdicated.”
“Oh,” I said. “Is the King going to abdicate?”
“I didn’t tell you that!” she said hastily. She sounded quite frightened.
“Of course not,” I said. “Alicia, you’ve been so good telling me all this. Now tell me what happens to Grundo, please.”
“Oh, is he with you?” Alicia asked coldly. “I suppose you’d better send him back to Court. Not to Norfolk, though. We’re moving first thing in the morning, and we won’t get to— Oh, what a nuisance that child always is! Send him to Salisbury Plain the day after tomorrow. He can always wait if we’re not there yet. Good-bye, Roddy. So nice talking to you.” She rang off.
I stood and stared at the whirring earpiece. I felt dead. All I seemed to be able to think was that it was no wonder the weather had been so hot all this time. Dad couldn’t have had a chance to change it. Then I thought—viciously—that Alicia had always been a liar if she thought she could hurt my feelings and get away with it. This simply could not be true. I slammed the receiver back, slapped the codepad shut, and punched in “Annie Hyde” instead, furiously. Mam would surely tell me that none of it was true. Mam’s code was AH369 currently. But all I got when I dialed it up was a mechanical voice saying, The owner of this code is no longer in Court. The owner of this code is no longer …
I put the receiver back and stared at my grandfather’s dark, shabby wallpaper. Both my parents seemed to be gone. Grandad was gone, too, the King was about to abdicate, and no one seemed to realize that there really was a conspiracy. Who could I tell? Who could possibly help? I couldn’t tell Grandfather Gwyn because he had been ordered to take my grandfather Hyde away, with the help of London himself. Who else could I tell?
I thought of Mrs. Candace. She was pretty powerful. She might not have believed me this afternoon, but she’d have to believe me now.
I snapped the pad again. If she was Lady of Governance, Grandad would surely have her number. Yes. He did. It was there, and I dialed it. And it rang and rang and rang. I allowed for someone with a crippled hip. I let the call go from whirring to bleeping. I allowed time for her to lever herself out of her chair and time to limp slowly across a big room. I allowed time on top of that. But still no one answered the speaker.
I put the receiver slowly down and stared at the wallpaper again. After a bit, as an experiment, I dialed the code for Salisbury again. Just the code. I didn’t get whirring this time, just silence. I got silence for so long that I was going to give up, when a strange, heavy, unechoing voice answered.
“Salisbury here.”
“Oh,” I said. “Thank goodness! Look, I’ve been trying to call Mrs. Candace, but she doesn’t answer—this is Arianrhod Hyde, by the way. Is Mrs. Candace all right, or asleep or something?”
“I regret to say,” replied Salisbury’s heavy voice, “that Mrs. Candace is no longer with me. She was removed from her house earlier this evening.”
“Who?” I said. “Who took her?”
There was a short silence. Then Salisbury said, “The son of Nud, I believe. I was ordered not to interfere. I am sorry.”
“That’s all right,” I said. “If even London had to obey orders, there was nothing you could do. Do you know where she was taken?”
There was another short silence. Then he said, “No.”
“Thanks anyway,” I said. I cut the connection and stared at the wall some more. Then, as a last resort, I snapped the codepad open to “Hepzibah Dimber” and, rather reluctantly, dialed that number.
That whirred and bleeped and bleeped, too. It rang for so long that I began to think I would be glad even to speak to an Izzy. But it’s Friday night, I thought as I rang off. Maybe they’ve all gone out. But it was so late by then that I didn’t believe it. After a while I went back into the living room. As I came in, Nick looked up and said, as if he was quite surprised, “Maxwell Hyde’s still alive! That’s certain.”
“But he’s not anywhere we can find,” Toby added.
Grundo said, and I could see it was part of an argument they had been having, “It has to be outside this world. Your results don’t make sense any other way.”
Dora gazed at me and said brightly, “Anything the matter, dear?”