“You never did tell me how to address her,” Ernest whispered to Prism, who was in the bed next to him as they proceeded down the row.

“You don’t say anything unless she asks you a direct question,” Prism whispered. “And then it’s ‘Your Majesty.’ Shh. Here she comes.”

He should have asked him if she knew this was a hoax or not. It was impossible to tell. She spoke to the “patients” as if they actually had been injured in battle, asking them what unit they were with and where they were from. If she did know, she was doing an excellent job of acting. We could use her in Special Means, he thought.

The entire thing was over by half past two. The Queen declined to stay to tea and left at a quarter past, and the photographers took a few more pictures and departed. He could still make it to Croydon if they left now.

He put the case to Moncrieff. “All right,” Moncrieff said. “We’ll leave as soon as we’ve loaded the beds back onto the lorry.”

“And got me out of this plaster,” Cess said.

The former was no problem—they had the lorry loaded and off by three. But Cess’s plaster cast was another matter. Both tin snips and a hacksaw failed to work.

“Can’t we do this back at the post?” Ernest asked, but they couldn’t get Cess through the door of the car with the cast on. A servant had to fetch a hammer and chisel.

It was nearly seven before they got home. “We’d better not have to blow up any more tanks tonight,” Cess said, limping inside.

They didn’t, but Ernest had to write up the hospital event for the London papers and then phone it in, and it was past ten before he was able to start in on his own news articles. It was much too late for Croydon, but he’d made Moncrieff feel guilty enough about it on the way home that he’d promised to let him drive them over to Bexhill to meet the Village Gazette’s deadline, which meant he’d have an entire afternoon to do what he needed to do unobserved.

He rolled a new sheet of paper in the typewriter and typed the letter he’d thought up about the bull, and then an ad for a dentist in Hawkhurst. “New patients welcome. Specializes in American dental techniques.”

Cess leaned in the door. “Still at it?”

“Yes, and if you’re here to ask me to go blow up an aircraft carrier, the answer’s no,” he said, continuing to type in the hope that Cess would take the hint and go away, but he didn’t.

“I think I’m permanently crippled,” Cess said, coming in and perching on the desk. “It was worth it, though, to get to meet the Queen. D’you know what she said to me? She thanked me for my bravery in battle. Wasn’t that nice?”

“It would have been if you’d actually been in battle,” Ernest said, continuing to type.