tray up the stairs, glancing down at it when he arrived at the anteroom door: tea, honey, yogurt parfait, banana nut bread, blackberry jam, linen napkin, two silver teaspoons, and one silver butter knife. It was all there, the same items Kingsley had delivered every morning for the past twenty years. And every morning, he’d come back later to retrieve the tray, sometimes empty, sometimes exactly as he’d delivered it.
Kingsley was born to be a valet. The vocation was in his blood. His father was personal valet to Prince Nicholas, Duke of Kent and his grandfather was personal valet to Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester. It was the family business, a proud family, and it was no surprise, therefore, that Kingsley found himself also serving the royals, personal valet and chauffer to Prince Grayson, Earl of Kendal.
Of course, the job was not as prestigious as, say, personal valet to Charles, Prince of Wales and heir apparent to the British throne. Charles, after all, was internationally famous. Grayson, on the other hand, was the oft-forgotten fifth child of the queen, seventeenth in line for the throne once you factored in all the children and grandchildren of the earlier-born sons. The world would never see a King Grayson unless some monumental, cataclysmic event occurred—a meteor crashing into Buckingham Palace, for instance, with all sixteen heirs before him within.
Nevertheless, personal valet to a prince, seventeenth in line for the throne or seventeen-hundredth in line, was still a noble profession. In a world that had become coarse and vulgar, English royalty was an oasis of propriety, dignity, and decorum, not to mention grand historical tradition. This held true regardless of the level of fame, and the standard of decorum was upheld as much by the staff members as the royals themselves.
The pay was fair at best, a little-known secret of life with the royals, but Prince Grayson was otherwise generous, frequently handing Kingsley fifty-pound notes; always on a whim and at random times. The prince would be in a good mood. Kingsley might do nothing more than lay out the proper suit for the particular occasion of the day or properly arrange the prince’s toiletries or assist him with a shave. A normal, everyday task, in other words. Nonetheless, the prince would slap fifty pounds in his hand and say, “Good man!” as if Kingsley had done the grandest of favors.
Prince Grayson wasn’t always in a good mood. Kingsley suspected bipolar disorder, though as valet, the prince’s mental state was not his concern. But, for the effective execution of his duties, it paid to have at least some understanding and so Kingsley had learned over the years, with no small success, how to read Grayson’s emotional swings, sometimes anticipating them. Still, the highs and the lows often came out of the blue, defying any idea that there might be a predictable pattern.
By far, the best thing about being a valet for Prince Grayson, besides the noble calling of the profession itself, were the accommodations. The prince’s residence, a Gothic-revival style manor in St. John’s Wood, a thirty-minute drive to Buckingham Palace, was built in the Victorian era and boasted twelve thousand square feet of living area, including the servant’s floor where Kingsley lived. And the servants’ quarters were generous. Kingsley had more than a bedroom—it was more like a flat, complete with living room, large bath, even a small kitchen. The butler and maid, a married couple, lived on the premises as well in an equally large residence. There was a suite in the mansion for Grayson’s private secretary, Parker Bates, but Bates preferred to live off-residence with his family in Brixton, arriving at the prince’s manor every morning like clockwork at 8 a.m.
The prince, a single man of fifty-five, kept himself mostly to the third floor where the master suite was, a suite that made Kingsley’s look like a cheap efficiency. Also on the third floor was the prince’s study; a morning/breakfast room enclosed in glass and situated at the rear of the house that overlooked the stone courtyard below; a music room that the prince, being fairly non-musical, had converted into a media room complete with a large movie screen and state-of-the-art sound system; and a library, probably the least-used room in the house.
The second floor contained the servant’s quarters and spare bedrooms. The first floor boasted an expansive foyer, kitchen, bar room, lengthy dining room, ballroom, billiard room, Parker Bates’s office, and miscellaneous drawing rooms, each decorated in unique themes corresponding to a particular period. The official decorator of Buckingham Palace, sent to the manor by the queen herself, was responsible for the decorating. The prince had little interest in interior design and, in fact, used none of the rooms on the first floor. The manor was a showpiece of old English luxury, but Grayson rarely entertained guests. When he left his third-floor quarters, it was to leave the house, either for a royal event or obligation of some sort, of which there were too many for Grayson’s comfort, or to visit his beloved club—White’s, the legendary and exclusive London gentlemen’s club in St. James, counting among its members only royalty, the super-wealthy, or the highly connected.
He was there on the preceding night, returning home around midnight, as Kingsley noted from his bedroom, having heard a taxicab pull up to the residence at that time. The prince was good like that. His nights at the club could run quite late, but rather than inconvenience Kingsley for a lift back to the manor, he was quite comfortable taking an ordinary taxicab. It was an ironic luxury that the older-born sons could never enjoy. The biggest advantage for Grayson of being fifth born and seventeenth in line for the throne was that he remained mostly out of the public’s eye, which was perfectly fine with him. “The reclusive prince,” as the media referred to him, when they referred to him at all, was rarely recognized in public and practically never in a dark taxicab in the middle of the night.
Kingsley, tray in hand, knocked quietly on the anteroom door, heard nothing, then proceeded through the anteroom, a room larger than his own bedroom, to the prince’s bedroom door upon which he lightly rapped his knuckles.
“Sir?” he said softly.
With no response, he rapped louder. “Sir?” he spoke up. “Prince Grayson?”
Then he slowly pushed the door open, peering inside. He took a step forward and felt a strange draft in the room.
“Sir? I have your breakfast. It’s nine o’clock, sir.”
Across the large room, he could make out the master bed and realized it was unmade and empty. Then Kingsley noticed the open window at the back of the bedroom, its curtains waving lightly in the cool autumn breeze, the obvious source of the draft. The rest of the curtains of the room were drawn tight, keeping the room in a fairly dark state despite the time of day.
Kingsley felt a sense of alarm. Something wasn’t right. He sat the tray down on a Louis XV fauteuil armchair, hesitated a moment, then flipped the light switch. With a sickening feeling he spotted a trail of blood running from the bed to the open window. He darted across the room, threw open the curtains, looked below, and saw nothing. In a panic, he raced about the master suite, checking the bathroom and the dressing room. Nothing was out of place. He left the master chamber and checked every room on the third floor, dashing in and out of the prince’s study, the morning room, the media room, even the library.
“Sir?” he yelled out. “Prince Grayson!”
Then he ran back into the bedroom and looked again, dumbfounded, at the trail of blood and he knew that something terrible had occurred in that room the previous night.
Kingsley ran out of the chamber and flew down the steps, calling out for Grayson’s personal secretary. “Bates!” he shouted. “Bates! The prince is missing! Prince Grayson is gone!”