Once upon a time, in a land not so far away, there lived a kindly king called King Nick, known to some of his loyal subjects as Nick the Quick, on account of his speed on a pushbike. King Nick lived in a shabby, run-down palace with his long-suffering wife, Queen Jackie and their son, Prince Kieran of Linuxburg. There had once been an army of servants at the palace; gardeners, cooks, cleaners and handymen, but King Nick had, over the years, spent so much of the royal income on bikes, that one by one, they had all been dismissed, leaving King Nick to have to do all the maintenance on the family pile and Queen Jackie to play the roles of cook, cleaner, gardener, painter and decorator and general dogsbody (some of which jobs she did better than others).

One day Princesses Alexandra and Isabelle decided that they would visit their family, so Nick the Quick and Prince Kieran started to install a new bathroom for the important visit, causing much sucking of teeth and mutterings about noggins and 600mm centres on the part of the local plumber when he saw the wall they’d put up. They ripped up the old floor, removed the piles of dead and decaying mice and drilled holes for pipes.

In the meantime, Queen Jackie started to redecorate the spare room for the princesses; she was bemused to find a large stack of mattresses with an inexplicable lump under them and asked King Nick to investigate. This proved too arduous a job for just one man, though, so he invited his good friend, the Emperor Adrian, to visit and help him.

What will the two detectives discover under the mattresses? Will it be a princess for Prince Kieran, or just a pea?………Will the bathroom be finished in time for the visit?…..

To be continued…….