"Boniface Clapstock," said Alistair, buttering a slice of toast.

It was a little before nine. Morning sunbeams fell through the stained glass pane of the kitchen window, casting a pretty blue square over the glasses of jam and milk jug on the breakfast table.

"What about him?" said Godwin more to his own chest than to his boyfriend. He was tying a butterfly cravat around the upturned collar of his shirt. And failing colossally.

"He's seeing a chap called Jonathan Butterhopper, or at least he was last time I looked," Alistair said.

"Good for him. How the hell does anyone manage to get these things tied on properly?" Godwin ripped the long strip of red silk from his neck, flattened it over his knee, then whipped it around his collar and started again.

Alistair placidly ate his toast, sipped his tea and watched Godwin struggle. He was going about it all wrong – one had to start from over, not under -- but Alistair knew his boyfriend wouldn't appreciate pointers until he was well and truly hissing with frustration. Then he would be able to gently pull the silk from his hands and do it for him.

Which he judged would be in about four, perhaps five, more attempts.

Alistair buttered a second piece of toast.

For some reason, Godwin had got the itch to go back to the Zoo disguised as a newspaper reporter to gather stray bits of information about how the giant octopus rampaging across London had escaped. The red cravat, one of the articles of clothing no real journalist was without, was part of the costume he had thrown together the night before from both their wardrobes in order to look the part.

But even with cravat, fingerless gloves and a top hat with a press card stuck under the goggles band, Alistair sincerely doubted the zoo keepers, or anyone from management with eyes in their heads, would believe he was who he said he was.

Godwin was simply too everything.

Too smooth, too poised, too well-spoken and, this he could say without bias, too handsome to be a scruffy newshound. One would think he was a slick-tongued insurance investigator come round to ferret out mistakes in conduct so the company could refuse pay for the loss of the exhibit and the subsequent damages. They would escort him straight to the edge of the crocodile pit and wait for him to not-so-accidentally trip.

This doomed subterfuge had something to do with Amelia Tooting-Spur. She had a plan for locating the escaped octopus, possibly for financial gain and Mastermind glory, but Godwin had been vague on that point.

What he had been unmistakably clear on was that he was merely assisting Amelia. The poor dear couldn't possibly do all of the investigating on her own and he, being the gentleman he was, had volunteered to help.

Because she needed it. Really she did.

Tosh, thought Alistair. He'd met Amelia Tooting-Spur. And while he judged her fashion sense to be only nominally better than that of a badger, he had thought her perfectly capable of singlehandedly taking down an entire contingent of Coldstream Guards and nicking their bearskins, if she had a mind to.

Luckily, she didn't. She put her considerable talent into flying blue-blooded underpants from flagpoles, and now into hunting down absconding sea life, it would seem.

Which meant Godwin was, no doubt, a willing participant, having thought up this journalist acting rouse under his own steam. The entire notion simply reeked of The Amazing Godwin and his penchant for harmless, costumed deceptions.

"Jonathan Butterhopper works at the Zoo, darling," Alistair said gently as he spread a thin layer of jam on his toast. "Why don't you chat with him over a nice pint instead of going to all the trouble of dressing up and milking information out of people who have lions to feed and manure to shovel? As amusing as that could turn out to be. I can go over to Boniface's right now and arrange it."

Godwin ripped off the cravat and threw it on the table. Without a word, he snatched up his fork and knife and dug into the cold beans and rubbery eggs congealing on his plate.

"And what if he doesn't want to talk and tells me to get stuffed?" he said between bites and sips of tepid tea. "Or rather me through you. Pretending to be a nosy journalist could possibly be the only way to find out who is...well, the only way to get the information we need. Amelia needs, I mean."

"What if he does want to talk? What if he simply cannot wait to spill all sorts of juicy details for your and Amelia's project just because you asked nicely."

"And just because you're in thick as cog grease with Boniface, I imagine."

"That too."

Godwin expressed more objections, but in the end, he found himself at the sink with his shirt sleeves rolled up over his elbows doing the washing up while Alistair donned top hat and jacket, gave him a quick kiss and disappeared out the door to speak to Boniface.

The red silk cravat lay forgotten under the table with the crumbs.

At about the same time Alistair was knocking on Boniface's door, Amelia was peering down at the brownish-grey ribbon of the Thames from a cruising altitude of 50 metres. Jeremy had flown twice from Lewisham to Richmond as high as he could go in his delightful flying contraption for her to gain a "panoramic overview" and was now piloting at a lower altitude for more detailed surveillance.

The contraption, Jeremy's own design, was shaped like a Viking longboat, albeit much foreshortened. Perhaps one could term it a Viking shortboat, Amelia had mused as they'd sped over the earthen landing strip and risen into the air, her stomach sinking into her boots.

Jeremy was in the pilot's booth under the curving dragon head steering with the help of a circular ship's wheel and a collection of levers and pedals. A leather pilot's helmet was pulled down over his curls and mercury-treated goggles with a mirror finish were over his eyes so that he'd not be blinded by the morning sun.

Amelia sat behind him, leather belt strapping her firmly to her seat.

She also wore a pilot's helmet, but with low-glare purple glass goggles as Jeremy didn't have a second pair of the mirrored kind. She didn't mind. She could see perfectly well everything she wanted to.

And what she saw as they tuckered over the river were twisty trails of mud that writhed a good hundred metres from the banks down cobbled streets, growing ever fainter until they disappeared altogether. At points they were hard to make out among the subsequent streaks left by wagons and other wheeled things on the surface of the roads, but they were still visible if one looked hard and specifically enough.

Why hadn't the independent aircraft like themselves or at least a Zeppelin crew reported the trails? It was not as if they were invisible.

Amelia shook her head as she noted down nine points where the octopus had emerged from the sludge of the river. Nine points and not a word breathed in the newspapers she had read in the Society's library or gossiped about at Rose's afternoon at home!

Was it confidential investigation information or was all of airborne London asleep?

Poppycock with five broken cogs, Amelia thought. What mattered was that they had been correct! The dreaded sea monster had been hiding in the Thames all this time, just waiting to crawl out and wreak havoc wherever and whenever the mood struck.

Or, if Godwin was correct and there was no reason to believe he wasn't, whenever the mood struck the shadowy figure in the background who was pulling the strings.

Amelia felt like cheering, so she let out an extended screeching impression of a chimpanzee who had just discovered the world's largest cache of bananas.

"Spot something interesting?" Jeremy shouted over the whine of the propeller.

"Lots! Can you go lower?"

"What?"

"LOWER PLEASE!"

Jeremy descended another ten metres.

The surface of the Thames was opaque, even at this height.

Over the past few years, the government had responded to the general public outcry over the infernal stink from the river and banned the disposal of offal, animal cadavers and industrial waste into it. That had lessened the smell considerably, but even now the Thames was little better than an open sewer, collecting whatever rubbish the capitol threw into it.

What would certainly be a boon to future historians, as the articles in the talking hoardings were never tired of pointing out, made it rather a hazardous nuisance for the modern Londoner.

Amelia could only agree.

She pushed the goggles up onto her helmet and lifted her binoculars to her eyes. Pressing levers and readjusting focus, she searched for the shape of the creature under the water in a zig-zag pattern...but she could see nothing except barges, all manner of unidentified floating rubbish and the white circles of swans and diving seagulls.

The Thames was a thick as burnt custard.

Not even with her most powerful lens was she be able to make out anything below the surface. No matter! She knew where it was hiding now. What a huge leap forward in the race to capture it before it set about the next phase of its operation.

Or, indeed, before the Metropolitans found it, which would completely ruin the fun.

Amelia pulled the goggles back down over her eyes, packed away her binoculars, leaned back and simply enjoyed the view of the cram-packed city, the gentle fields beyond, the puffy clouds and the passing public Zeppelins for the rest of the flight.