Doctor Who: Black Orchid
On a lazy June afternoon in 1925 the TARDIS
materialises at the tiny railway station of Cranleigh Halt. Warmly welcomed by the local gentry, the time-travellers look forward to a well-deserved rest from their adventures.
After a stunning performance at a friendly cricket match, the Docto, together with Tegan, Adric and Nyssa, is invited to a splendid masked ball by Lady Cranleigh and her son, Charles.
But a dark menace haunts the secret corridors of Cranleigh Hall. And before the ball is over, the quiet summer will by shattered by the shocking discovery of a brutal murder . . .
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Science Fiction/TV Tie-in
DOCTOR WHO
BLACK ORCHID
Based on the BBC television serial by Terence Dudley by arrangement with the British Broadcasting Corporation
TERENCE DUDLEY
Number 113 in the
Dr Who Library
A TARGET BOOK
published by
The Paperback Division of
W. H. Allen & Co. PLC
A Target Book
Published in 1987
by the Paperback Division of W.H. Allen & Co. PLC
A Howard & Wyndham Company
44 Hill Street, London W1X 8LB
First Published in Great Britain by
W.H. Allen & Co. PLC 1986
Novelisation copyright © Terence Dudley, 1986
Original script copyright © Terence Dudley, 1982
‘Doctor Who’ series copyright © British Broadcasting Corporation 1982, 1986
The BBC producer of
Black Orchid
was John Nathan-Turner
the director was Ron Jones
Printed and bound in Great Britain by
Anchor Brendon Ltd, Tiptree, Essex
ISBN 0 426 20254 6
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
9 The Secret of Cranleigh Hall
The young man in the white jacket was a professional and knew he had very little time left. His right foot kicked back savagely and repeatedly with all his failing strength but, although the heel of his shoe thudded cruelly into his attacker’s legs, it did nothing to lessen the grip of the mishapen hands about his throat.
He tore again at the hands with his fingernails but it was in desperation born of despair, for his experience told him that there was no feeling in the brutish hands that were choking him to death. He drove back with his elbows, first one and then the other but again the body of the grunting beast behind him proved impervious. With the singing in his ears he knew he had nothing to lose by attempting a final ruse. Fighting his instinct for self preservation he forced himself to go limp. The trick worked, for a moment later the fearsome hands loosened their grip and the young male nurse allowed himself to slip to the floor at his assailant’s feet.
He lay on the floor taking the air into his deprived lungs as silently as possible, thankful for the stertorous, guttural noises coming from his patient. He lay with his eyes open, conscious that the lack of light in the corridor would support his subterfuge, and bit his lip as a well shod foot stirred his oustretched arm before stepping over it. He listened to his patient’s unhurried retreat and was tempted to lie where he was until the monster was well clear when he would summon help from the Indian. But as the danger diminished and the singing in his head subsided he remembered he was a professional, and a very highly paid professional at that. Unpleasant though the job was, he considered himself lucky to have it and he would be foolish to throw it away by compounding his carelessness with cowardice. If anyone in the household was harmed through this escape the blame would attach to him. He’d been warned by the Indian never to turn his back when the moon was full, but he had dismissed this as superstitious rubbish. He knew better now. He got cautiously to his feet.
The chapel clock began to strike three.
Ann Talbot stirred as the reverberating bell penetrated her sleep. Her small face, framed by the dark, bobbed hair and washed white by the shafted moonlight, took on a restless, resentful expression. Her slight body twisted in the expansive fourposter bed as if turning from the offending strokes of the relentless hammer.
She never stayed at Cranleigh Hall long enough to become used to the pervasive sound of the chapel clock at night in spite of being given a room as far from the tolling bell as the sprawling Jacobean mansion would allow.
Charles said it would be different when they were married and her stays at Cranleigh became longer. He never heard the clock, he said. It had long ago become submerged in that part of his mind reserved for all too familiar sounds.
Ann’s fitful sleep was still deep enough to keep from her the small, sharp click that emanated from the panelled wall beside her bed and the controlled, rhythmic, stertorous sound in the void beyond a section of the panelling as it hinged back. There was no further movement for fully a minute during which time the laboured breathing settled to a lengthened rhythm. Then an amorphous shadow detached itself from the black void and eased slowly towards the sleeping girl.
Moonlight filtered to a pair of monstrously deformed hands clasped together in front of the slowly moving shadow. The hands moved up out of the light to a face masked in shadow and the breathing became muffled.
The shape stopped at the edge of the bed and one eye, above the hands, caught a glimmer of light from the distant mullioned window. Narrowed and unwinking the eye fixed upon Ann, taking in her every restless movement.
One of the monstrous hands began to inch forward.
A sudden sound from the void at the wall arrested the movement of the hand, and the eye flicked away from Ann, as the figure retreated into deep shadow. The muffled breathing stopped.
The white coat of the male nurse filled the gap in the panelled wall and glared in the revealing moonlight as the young man crept cautiously into the bedroom. He looked cursorily at the girl in the bed and shaded his eyes from the moonlight as he peered round the shadows. He heard the rasp of resumed breathing too late. A crippling blow to the back of his neck robbed him of his legs but a massive strength behind the deformed hands prevented his body from collapsing to the floor. The nurse was borne high to the opening in the panelled wall and on the black side of the partition the breathing became less tortured as the body ceased to be a burden.
The squeal of old hinges was exaggerated in the deep stillness that followed the strident clanging of the chapel clock and Ann came fully awake. She lay rigid for several fearful moments after her mind focussed on the reality of unfamiliar shadows cut sharp by the blades of moonlight.
Then she sat up and reached for the bedside lamp. The light, suffused by the silk shade, banished the most frightening of the shadows and softened the edges of her fear. Ann eased herself down from the huge bed and moved like a ghost to the bedroom door. The key appeared to be as she’d left it. Her hand found the door knob. She turned it slowly and gently, and pulled. The door was still locked.
She breathed a sigh of relief and went back to bed.
Locking the door had become a habit whenever she stayed at Cranleigh. It helped to get her to sleep, to help her cope with the inevitability of the nightmares she invariably had when she stayed here. Charles laughed at her, not unkindly. She knew he did it to still her anxiety but it was something he couldn’t be expected to understand and, like most people faced with something they didn’t understand, he was embarrassed and laughed.
George was never like that.
He
would have understood. But then she’d never had nightmares at Cranleigh when George was alive. Everybody said that it was the shock of George’s death that caused them and that everything would settle down... settle into place... in time.
They meant, of course, when she’d had time to forget George. But she knew she would never forget him. She had loved George as she knew she could never love his brother, but this was something Charles
did
understand, or said he did. She would come to love him in time, he said. He would make her love him.
But it was George she saw in those dreams: George dying in that awful Orinoco river; George with those frightful-looking Indians... the ones with lower lips pushed out with plates... like platforms... like ducks... dreadful!
She put out the lamp and lay thinking about the man she had promised to marry, the brother of the man she really loved swallowed forever by the rain forests of South America.
It wasn’t until Ann’s breathing had settled in sleep that the panelled door moved the last two inches to close with a gentle click.
1
Charles Percival Beauchamp, tenth Marquess of Cranleigh flipped the half-crown into the air and watched it spin in the bright morning sunlight.
‘Heads,’ said an elegant young man languidly. Both watched the coin fall to the closely-cropped turf, tail side uppermost.
‘We’ll bat,’ decided his lordship as he recovered his coin.
‘On that?’ questioned the elegant young man not so languidly. He looked out across the trim expanse of cricket field towards the distant strip of sage green at either end of which sets of three stumps stood erect. ‘Why don’t we delay the start? Give it a chance to dry out a bit.’
‘No,’ said Lord Cranleigh firmly.
‘My lot won’t mind if it’ll give your chap a chance to get here.’
The young nobleman smiled in acknowledgement of his opponent’s sporting offer and looked down at the turf still damp from the light, early morning rain. The surface would favour the fielding side, giving a grip to the ball on the wicket and slowing down the run-rate in the outfield. A delay in starting this annual match with the county side would indeed give more time for his substitute player to arrive from London, but it was an event in support of charity and many of his tenants were engaged in voluntary tasks in a complicated administrative process that would be severely embarrassed by the smallest postponement. He would bat and take his chances. Cricket was more than a game, it was a way of life. And the name of the game was synonymous with integrity.
‘Thanks, old man,’ murmured Cranleigh, ‘but we’ll bat.’
He watched the visiting skipper mount the steps to the pavilion with thoughtful eyes and his generous mouth, under the trim fair moustache, drooped a little at the corners now that he was alone. He wondered again what sort of player ‘Smutty’ had sent in his stead. ‘Smutty’
Handicombe was one of the finest batsmen of his generation and could have turned out for England if his professional commitments had allowed. It was, one supposed, quite remarkable that this was the first match London’s leading brain surgeon was to miss in the last five years. But he’d promised to send a reliable deputy and