“I know,” said the Serjeant. “And you’re late.” He leaned forward slightly, his great form towering over me. “I don’t care who you are or what you’ve done; you mess with me and I’ll make you permanently late. You’ll be the late Edwin Drood.”

“See, there you had to go and spoil it,” I said. “Never hammer a threat into the ground, Cedric.”

His expression didn’t change, but he stepped back to allow me to pass. I strode in with my nose in the air, back into the Hall that was my home, like it or not. Back into the cold embrace and dangerous entanglements of my beloved family.

I made my way unhurriedly through the long corridors and passageways, the great open chambers and galleries, surrounded on all sides by the acquired loot of ages. To the victor goes the spoils, and we have spoiled ourselves. The Hall is stuffed full of accumulated treasures, including masterpieces of art and famous statues by immortal names. Gifts from grateful governments, and others. Or perhaps tribute to the secret masters of the world. Presented just as prominently were suits of armour and weapons from centuries past, and not a few from the future, all with their own legends and histories, all of them bright and gleaming and ready for use at a moment’s notice. There were fabulous carpets and rich hanging drapes, and long shafts of sunlight poured like slow time through tall stained-glass windows.

They were waiting for me in what used to be called the Sanctity: a great cavernous chamber that once contained the Heart that gave the family its armour and its power. A single massive diamond as big as a bus, with a million gleaming facets, the Heart turned out to be an other-dimensional fugitive from justice that fed on pain and horror and death, until I destroyed it. These days the Sanctity is empty, and the family’s armour and power derives from another extradimensional creature with rather more friendly motives. She insists on being called Ethel, though God knows I’ve tried to talk her out of it. Ethel manifests in the Sanctity as a soothing shade of red, suffusing the whole chamber with its happy presence and the scent of roses.

The council were waiting impatiently at an ancient oak table set in the middle of the chamber. It would have looked small and even insignificant in such a setting if not for the importance of the people sitting around it. I strolled across the chamber, head held high, maintaining an ostentatious serenity under the accusing weight of their stares. My footsteps echoed loudly in the quiet. I sat down, and smiled easily around me.

“So, who’s got the cards?”

They didn’t smile. Not all the council were there; just the Matriarch and the Armourer. Martha Drood sat straight-backed in her chair, tall and elegant and more regal than any queen. She had been a famous beauty once, and you could still see the force of it in her strong bone structure. She wore country tweeds, twin set, and pearls, and her long gray hair was piled up on top of her head in the style of times past. My grandmother, though she’d never let that get in the way of doing whatever needed to be done. She’d tried to have me killed, but we’d got over that . . . mostly. She had to be in her early seventies now, but there wasn’t an ounce of weakness in her. She studied me with calm, calculating gray eyes, waiting for me to acknowledge her, so I deliberately nodded cheerfully to the Armourer.

A bald, middle-aged man with thick tufty white eyebrows and a permanent scowl, Uncle Jack looked sulky and put-upon, as he always did when called away from his beloved Armoury. Devilishly talented when it came to creating dangerous and devious devices, but he just couldn’t be bothered with people skills anymore. He used to be a field agent, and a great one in his day, but he rarely left the Armoury now.

I prefer things to people, he once told me. You can fix things when they go wrong.

The long lab coat wrapped around his spindly frame had presumably been white once, but it was now disfigured with rips and tears, chemical stains and burns, and the occasional splash of someone else’s blood. And what might have been mustard. Under the lab coat, the Armourer was wearing a grubby T-shirt with the legend Weapons of Mass Destruction R Us. He had large, bony, engineer’s hands and kind eyes.

“Hi there, hi there, hi there!” said Ethel, her words seeming to burst out of everywhere at once. “Welcome home, Eddie! Great to have you back; everyone else here is so stuffy! They just don’t know how to have fun, the great bunch of stiffs. The Hall is always so much more lively when you’re around. How was London? How was the Tower? Did you bring me back a present?”

“I never know what to get you,” I said. “You’re so hard to buy for, but then I find that’s true for most immaterial other-dimensional entities.” I ignored Ethel’s giggles and looked at the Matriarch. “Where’s the rest of the council? Are we waiting for them?”

“No,” said Martha, her voice calm and even and utterly devoid of any kind of warmth. “For the time being, we are the council. Your cousin Harry is out in the field with his partner Roger Morningstar, infiltrating one of the more dubious Paris nightclubs in pursuit of the notorious Fantom. I can’t believe that madman’s on the loose again so soon after we put him away. If the French authorities can’t build a prison strong enough to hold their most notorious and appalling criminal, I shall have the Armourer build them something special. And make them pay through the nose for it.”

“I thought we blew the Fantom up last year,” said the Armourer, frowning.

“We did,” said the Matriarch. “It didn’t take. Harry and Roger will be back when they can.”

“And William?” I said.

“The Librarian is hard at work, in the old library,” said the Armourer. “Hardly ever leaves the place. Got a cot set up in there, and a chemical toilet, and has all his meals sent in.”

“Normally I wouldn’t allow such behaviour,” said the Matriarch. “But we need him.”

“It’s not healthy,” the Armourer said firmly. “I mean, I love my Armoury, but at the end of the day I lock the door behind me and go home.”

“William is doing good and necessary work,” the Matriarch said. “And that is all that matters.”

“To us,” said the Armourer. “But what about him?”

“Hush, Jack.”

“Yes, Mother.”

I nodded glumly. “I did hope he’d improve, after I got him out of that asylum for the criminally insane and brought him home, but . . . the Heart really did a number on his head. Give him time; he’ll bounce back. He’s a tough old stick.”

“Of course,” said Martha. “He’s a Drood.”

“And we’re never more dangerous than when we’re crazy!” said the Armourer, waggling his bushy eyebrows.

“Jack . . .”

“Sorry, Mother.”

“So,” I said thoughtfully. “Just the three of us. How cosy.”

“Four!” said the crimson glow reproachfully.

“Sorry, Ethel,” I said. “Four. Now . . . just what is so important that I have to be dragged all the way back here, with absolutely no advance warning? And why did I have to drive down? Why couldn’t I just transport myself directly here through the Merlin Glass, like I normally do?”

“We can’t risk word of this getting out,” the Matriarch said steadily. “I’ve never entirely trusted the Merlin Glass. I mean, look who made it. You did bring it with you?”

“Of course,” I said. “It’s safely locked in the boot of my car.”

“Good,” said the Armourer. “That means no one can listen in through it.”

“I see the family’s paranoia is well and thriving,” I said. “Look, either someone gives me a really good reason for my being here, or I am driving my nice little car straight back to the more civilised comforts of London. I am not in charge of the family anymore, and only a member of the council when I absolutely have to be; I am a field agent again, and I like it that way. I have just saved the Crown Jewels from being stolen and protected the whole of England from a terrible disaster, and I am owed some serious downtime.”