'Why hold the meeting at all?' asked Eliot.

'Ramsay MacDonald insisted. He wanted a Council of State to hold power during the King's incapacity. As in 1928. MacDonald's a terribly nervy fellow, you know.'

'Isn't the King's death a favourite moment for revolution? Lord Wigram can tell us.'

On Eliot's right was a straight-backed, smooth-faced man with a clipped moustache, a former Bengal Lancer in his mid-sixties. He wore a starched shirt and dinner-jacket. A dying King created difficulties of convention-no gentleman in the 1930s dined in a lounge suit, but doctors could hardly attend the sickbed as though dressed for the play. Eliot and Dawson retained their professional uniform of morning coats, striped trousers and wing collars.

'Yes, indeed,' said Wigram, the King's private secretary. He could talk of constitutional subtleties like the King's butler of the wines in his cellar. 'On the death of King Edward, a troop of Life Guards was under orders at Albany Street Barracks, ready to be turned out within five minutes of a trumpet call.'

'Perhaps I deserved their attentions?' suggested Eliot. 'Remember, I was a bolshevik. I'd probably have stood cheering, if we'd cut the hedonistic old gentleman's head off in Whitehall like Charles the First's.'

'You cannot make our flesh creep,' Dawson chaffed him. 'Even Mr Pickwick's Fat Boy had to grow up. Wigram, we shall need to compose a bulletin.'

'Yes. I looked out the final one on King Edward in 1910.' Wigram efficiently produced a folded sheet from his inside pocket.

'I know what it says. I signed it,' Dawson reminded him. "His Majesty's condition is now critical" was stark enough for the morning papers. Now we have the wireless. The BBC will want something to put on the air between nine and ten, when people start going to bed. We must send a message which will touch their hearts.'