Mr Satardoo clapped his hands together, and even though the sound was muffled by the white kid gloves he habitually wore, everyone snapped to attention.
The only members of staff not represented in the hall were the cooks, who could not risk leaving the kitchens so close to the hour set aside for luncheon.
'Now,' began Mr Satardoo, 'I want you all to pay careful attention. In a few minutes the Archduke Fernandel Aracino will arrive with his entourage, and it is imperative that he receives the kind of service that a man of his reputation would expect from our hotel. Although it is the first time he has taken a suite here – and of course for every one of our guests who takes a suite it is always the first visit – I want you to make him feel that he is among old friends. Where is Mr Mack?'
'Here, Mr Satardoo.' The little concierge stepped from behind an enormous potted aspidistra and coughed softly into his fist.
'Ah, there you are. I thought perhaps we had lost you in the loamy confines of the foliage.' Mr Satardoo was fond of teasing Mr Mack about his height. The concierge did not mind. He was happy and confident in his job, because he knew that the staff greatly respected him. Even Mr Satardoo would have admitted it, were he not so obsessed with honouring the hierarchy that placed him technically above Mr Mack in the hotel's complex chain of command.
'How long does the Archduke plan to stay with us?' asked Mr Mack.
'As long as it takes, of course.'
'And he has specifically requested the Virginia Woolf Chamber?'
'I am given to understand so.' Five gigantic suites at the top of the hotel were currently available for royal ranks. There was a sixth, but it was permanently reserved for the Princess Arthur of Connaught, in recognition of a great favour once performed by that esteemed house for the hotel's first owner.
Its real name was the Imperial Rex, but the less respectful staff had nicknamed it the Grand Finale Hotel. It had one hundred and fifty rooms, of which forty-seven were themed suites of unrivalled opulence, and like the world's most truly special hotels, it had many more staff than guests. However, the Rex was unlike any other hotel in the world, and for this reason remained hidden from the pages of those glossy volumes listing the finest places to stay. Under certain conditions its bar and restaurant were open to the casual visitor, and its rooms could be booked by families whose tiered generations were well-known to the management. Rooms were occasionally available to newcomers who made it through the deliberately labyrinthine booking procedure, but its special suites were the exclusive province of those who fulfilled more exacting criteria. Despite this seeming elitism the hotel was surprisingly egalitarian in its guest list, and so long as its conditions of stay were followed to the letter, even the poorest struggling artist might eventually be admitted to one of the suites. Its rooms were a different matter; they, and the items on the restaurant menu, remained unpriced, the tacit understanding being that if you had to ask the cost of anything at the Grand Finale, you could not afford it. It was normal for those who booked one of the forty-seven special suites to be served their meals in luxurious privacy. These suites were only full in times of great crisis, after wars, plagues and depressions, and, due to the vicissitudes of modern life, were never entirely empty.
The Rex occupied a rocky bluff overlooking the rolling jade ocean. There was a private beach, and teak-decked motorboats rode the tide in a cave cut into the ivory cliff-face, accessible by a flight of stone steps leading down from the basement. Throughout the years, it remained a dazzling white fortress of taste and calm, with an elegant double bowfront, striped emerald lawns, pergolas and a maze, and garish red and blue flags fluttering brazenly between pyramids of hyacinths all along its battlements. The hotel was simply unique, a home to great joy and sadness. A testimony, Mr Satardoo was fond of saying, to the bravery of the human soul, although there were those who were appalled that such a place should exist at all.
Mr Satardoo checked his watch and dismissed the ranks, but kept Mr Mack behind. 'I fear,' he intimated, 'we shall not be spared the distressing dilemma presented by the Crown Prince of Jhada's recent stay. The Archduke is renowned for harbouring similar proclivities.'
Mr Mack nodded sagely. While it was perfectly usual for royalty to arrive with a small army of personal staff, the Crown Prince had appeared with two dozen of his favourite concubines, giving rise to all manner of problems in protocol. 'I daresay we can solve the problem,' he replied, 'without having to resort to such drastic tactics as before. The Archduke is a man of greater sensitivities.'
'We shall have to see.' Mr Satardoo gave a grim little shake of his head, as if expecting the very worst. 'We shall have to see.' His eagle eye alighted upon the faintest smear of brass polish beneath the dolphin-handle of one of the entrance doors, and he set off with great relish on a mission to box the culprit's ears.
Malcolm Bridget did not come from an old-money family. He was not a knight or a lord or even well-connected, but the Imperial Rex had agreed to rent him a room. True it was one of the smaller chambers to the rear of the building, but it was a room nevertheless, and you could even glimpse the sea by leaning perilously from the bathroom window. Forsaking his former career as a tabloid journalist, Malcolm was now a biographer of international renown, and something about him had appealed to General Sullivan, whose snobbery was only surpassed by his admiration for biographers (it was no secret that the general hoped to persuade someone to transcribe his own history). And so here he was, seated in one of the great plush velvet armchairs in the Disraeli Lounge making surreptitious notes as the Archduke arrived.
First two liveried footmen in ash wigs and gilt epaulettes entered the lobby. They were followed by two young valets and a senior servant dressed in midnight blue. After this arrived a secretary who acted as the Archduke's liaison with the hotel staff. Mr Satardoo, Mr Mack and Mrs Opie headed the welcoming committee which stood to attention in two smart rows flanking the great staircase. The Archduke himself was as tall and frail as a bamboo pole. His white goatee thrust from his bony chin like a spurt of gun smoke, and matched the pale plume of his tricorn hat. He walked with the careful delicacy of a flamingo, an ascetic figure who whispered to his secretary as if he could hardly bring himself to discourse with the outside world. He wore presentation battledress of black and gold, for he had travelled here directly from an inspection of his troops.
Behind him, bearing all the earmarks of discretion that the Crown Prince of Jhada's concubines had lacked, were two demure women in the late bloom of their youth, dressed in matching bonnets and reticulated gowns of deep grey silk. Malcolm noted everything he saw, and was so adept at committing pen to paper that none saw him write. He knew that the Archduke's story was a sad one; he had seen one son shot dead and another blown to pieces in a terrible battle, and within two months had lost his wife during a plague that reached far within the walls of his palace, so far that he himself had only survived by sacrificing his right arm and replacing the appendage with a limb of gleaming steel.
He was ashamed of outliving his children, and of receiving his only injury from an illness instead of a war. He was disappointed by power and tired of the lies of men. So what on earth, wondered Malcolm, brought him here?
As the ladies of the Archduke rustled past and the entourage passed on to the staircase, spreading across it in a rising river, the biographer recapped his pen and sat back among the downy purple cushions, pondering the question. Fernandel Aracino's visit was just part of the puzzle. There was a sense of mystery here, of omission and discretion. The Imperial Rex withheld its true purpose from casual gaze. It went without saying that Mr Satardoo refused to allow him to interview the guests, but he could not even be shown inside any of the suites, and bribing a chambermaid had brought an indignant Mr Mack to his door.