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King was seriously ill, and the Coronation had been postponed indefinitely.
    Craddock read the news unemotionally. The King was well over sixty and at that age any exalted man who took his pleasures as strenuously as Teddy might well be taken ill, might even die and be buried in Westminster Abbey. The cab swung into Trafalgar Square, merging into the solid stream of traffic debouching from the Mall, Whitehall and Northumberland Avenue, and here, over the Admiralty Arch, hung two huge portraits, framed in gilt ovals, of Edward and Alexandra, gazing out over chestfuls of decorations and diamonds at the traffic below. Craddock glanced up at them, remembering the barrack-room jokes he had heard about the King’s philanderings. He was, they said, the most persistent royal woman-chaser since Charles II, but she was a woman whose regality made jokes about them seem in bad taste. He had waited, Paul reflected, forty years to mount the throne and now, at the very last minute, he was lying in bed awaiting a chancy operation. All the stands and scaffolding, the tinsel and bunting, were ready but now there would be no procession, no cheering crowds and no military bands but in their stead an orgy of impersonal grief for a bearded, corpulent man, fighting for his life and a chance to justify himself as man and monarch. Paul studied the faces of the people on the pavements but found there little indication of a national catastrophe, only the stress of scurrying through a whipped-up sea of horse traffic, pounding along to the accompaniment of a low-pitched roar. The sun continued to blaze overhead and the stink of fresh manure, blending with clouds of thick white dust, made Craddock’s nostrils twitch. They shook free of the mêlée about half-way down Pall Mall and turned into St James’ Street, where Zorndorff awaited him at his Club.
    ‘I suppose you’ve heard the news,’ Paul said, as he paid off the cabby, and the man grinned. ‘Couldn’t ’elp it, could I, Sir? Been screaming their ’eds orf since first light! D’you reckon he’ll make it, Sir?’
    ‘Why not?’ Craddock heard himself say, ‘he’s Vicky’s son; that ought to help!’
    The cabby nodded eagerly and Paul noticed that he was no longer grinning. As he pocketed Craddock’s tip he said, ‘Funny thing, can’t seem to get used to the idea of a king. Kind o’ permanent she was, like the Palace over there, or Nelson back in the square! You keep forgettin’, gov’nor—you know, when they play “God Save the Queen—King”!’ and he saluted, flicked his whip and bowled away towards Piccadilly.
    Craddock stood on the Club steps pondering for a moment. The man was right of course. Post-Victorian London was not the city he remembered of less than three years ago but he would have found it difficult to put the changes into words. The streets had always been jam-packed with slow-moving traffic, and reeking with odours of horse-sweat and dust, but the changes seemed to lie in the mood of passers-by, more brash and brittle than he remembered, with a little of the class rigidity gone, more audacity among the vendors, porters and draymen, less assurance in the stride of those cigar-smoking, top-hatted gentlemen, as they walked down the hill towards St James’ Palace. He went on into the plush-lined lobby and when he mentioned Mr Franz Zorndorff the doorman at once became obsequious, and directed him to the dining-room, a vast, crowded rectangle, where the clatter of cutlery and the roar of conversation was as oppressive as the uproar outside. Zorndorff appeared through a cloud of waiters, calling, ‘Ah, my boy! Not in here, not in this babel! I’ve booked lunch in the members’ dining-room upstairs,’ and he seized Craddock by the arm and steered him up a broad staircase and along a corridor to a smaller room, with the words, ‘Members Only’ painted in gilt letters on the swing doors.
    ‘You’ll have heard the news, Paul? It must be a big disappointment