Live and Let Drood

I’ll have his guts for garters. Possibly quite literally.”
    And, of course, then nothing would do but the Regent had to set out all the tea things and make sure we all had a nice cup of steaming-hot tea before things went any further. I sipped at mine cautiously. It was good tea. The Regent gave every indication of being a decent, genial, charming sort, but I was determined not to be taken in by appearances. There had to be some good reason why my family would never talk about the man.…And then the Regent took a sip of his tea, grimaced at the heat, poured some of his tea into his saucer and sipped the cooled tea from the saucer.
    I sat very still as a sudden chill seized my heart and my soul.
    The Regent looked at me over his tilted saucer and smiled easily at me. “I’m glad you’ve come to see me at last, Eddie. It’s been such a long time since I last saw you.”
    Molly looked quickly from the Regent to me, saw I wasn’t going to say anything, and looked back at the Regent. “You know Eddie?”
    “Of course. Though it has been many years…”
    “We’ve met before,” I said. It was a statement of fact, not a question. It was hard to speak. My lips, my face were numb with something like shock.
    “Of course we have, Eddie,” said the Regent. His voice was calm and kind. “I am your grandfather Arthur. Martha Drood’s first husband.”
    Molly was up on her feet in a moment, putting herself bodily between me and the Regent.
    “Cut the crap! Eddie’s grandfather is dead! Everyone knows that! I don’t know what you’re up to here, but I won’t let you hurt him. I’ll kill you first!”
    And then she stopped, because the Regent was smiling proudly at her. “I really am who I say I am, Molly Metcalf. And I would die before I let any harm come to my grandson here. I have to say, Eddie, I’m glad to see you have such a…protective girlfriend.”
    I rose slowly to my feet to face the Regent. Molly stepped reluctantlyback to hover at my side, scowling unhappily, so the Regent and I could stand face-to-face.
    “They told me you were dead,” I said. “Everyone in the family said you were dead, killed in the Kiev Conspiracy back in 1957.”
    “Well, they would,” said the Regent. “There is a reason why the family doesn’t talk about me. I went rogue, Eddie, because I stood up and said I no longer believed in how the family did things. I wanted to make the Droods over, into a better and more ethical organisation. More involved in protecting people than ruling them. I really thought Martha would stand by me, right up to the moment when she didn’t. We’d been so close, after all, for so many years…ran so many missions together, back when we were both Drood field agents. But once she was made Matriarch, we both had no choice but to return to the Hall and our duties. I did my best to take on the burden of day-to-day decision making, keeping the pressure off her shoulders so she could concentrate on the things that mattered. Dictating policy, directing the family, guarding Humanity from all the things that threaten it. And the work…just ground us down and drove us apart. We never seemed to have time for each other after that.…
    “We did talk about my growing doubts over how the family operated; it’s hard to overlook all the dirty business the family gets up to when you’re running things…but her answer was always, What else is there? We have a duty, she said, to stick to what we know works. When the time came…when I just couldn’t stand it any longer, because we’d lost our only daughter and her husband in the field over stupid mistakes that should never have happened…then I called an emergency meeting of the council and I stood up in front of all of them and said, No more! And Martha looked me right in the eye and ordered me to either sit down and shut up or get out. It was either complete and unswerving loyalty to her and the family or nothing. Her way or the highway…I think—I like to think—that she was actually shocked when I said I’d leave. That the Droods had become something I was ashamed to be a part of.
    “Martha never thought I’d really leave, because that would meanturning my back on her as well as the family. But…I no longer recognised her. She wasn’t the woman I’d loved and married anymore. She had to fight to be allowed to marry me, you know; had to go head-to-head with the previous Matriarch. Because she and I were second cousins. The family’s