Doctor Who: Black Orchid (12 page)

Lady Cranleigh’s eyes went wide with shock as the Indian raced up the steps. She hurried after him as fast as her wide skirt would allow her. ‘Lady!’ called the Indian through the door. No sound came from the other side and the Indian avoided looking at Lady Cranleigh as she left the steps for his side.

‘Ann!’ she cried. ‘Ann!’

Silence.

The Indian attempted to put the key in the lock with an anxious, unsteady hand before realising that the keyhole was blocked by the key inserted from the inside. He looked fearfully at Lady Cranleigh. ‘The key is on the inside,’ he whispered.

‘Push it through, man!’ said Lady Cranleigh fiercely.

‘Push it through!’

The Indian again attacked the lock with the spare key but the one in the lock resisted all pressure.

Ann was too affected by the sorrowing creature to respond to Lady Cranleigh’s cries from beyond the heavy door and, for the same reason, was oblivious of the metallic tapping and scratching as the Indian probed the lock. She felt drawn to the monstrous deformity kneeling pathetically before her. She eased slowly forward. ‘Don’t cry!’ she said softly through her tears. ‘Don’t cry!’

‘Ann!’ called Lady Cranleigh desperately. ‘Ann!’

The creature’s burning eye brimmed and his webbed hand snatched at Ann’s fingers. Ann blenched and shivered as revulsion returned to her. She felt her fingers being pulled nearer to the gashed face and, with a frightened gasp, wrenched her hand free. She ran to the door, turned the key and tugged at the handle. The door was pushed open by the Indian and Ann ran out to the landing and into the open arms of Lady Cranleigh.

The creature had not moved. Handing the spare key back to Lady Cranleigh, the Indian slipped into the tower room and closed the door quietly on the two women. Held in comforting arms Ann wept anew, unable to speak.

‘There, there,’ murmured Lady Cranleigh, ‘There, there.’

The Indian relocked the door from:the inside and pocketed the key. He moved to the creature which had sat back on its haunches and was rocking to and fro and moaning softly.

‘Oh, my friend.’ The Indian helped the creature to its feet and steered it with infinite gentleness to the bed where he encouraged it to sit. He sat beside it and took a hideous hand in both of his. ‘Oh, my friend, forgive me! It is the time of the moon, of the ripe moon, and I should not have left you. I should not have left you to the other one. But I am here with you again. You shall rest and all will be well again. Contentment will come to you.’

Rising from the bed the Indian approached a white-painted metal cabinet fixed to the wall between bookshelves. He selected one of the small keys that hung in a bunch from a chain about his neck and opened the cabinet. From it he took an enamel kidney bowl which contained a hypodermic syringe and needle, a glass ampoule and a small metal finger-saw. Using the saw he broke open the ampoule and filled the syringe with its contents. He took a wad of cotton wool, drenched it with surgical spirit and returned to the gently moaning creature on the bed.

‘My friend... my good friend...’

‘Who is that poor creature?’ asked Ann.

She had allowed herself to be led from the secret part of the house which had frightened her every bit as much as the incarcerated creature itself. She sat in Lady Cranleigh’s private sitting room, the glass of brandy held tightly in her still trembling hands.

‘Take a little more of that!’ advised the once more cool and collected dowager. Ann sipped a little of the unpleasant fiery spirit and shuddered. Lady Cranleigh looked down from the window onto the terrace thronged with her neglected guests. The band began to play again and the dancing recommenced. She looked at her future daughter-in-law, her beautiful face enigmatic.

‘I want to know,’ insisted Ann.

‘He’s a friend of the Indian.’

‘That awful man with the lip?’

Lady Cranleigh left the window and moved to sit opposite Ann. ‘He’s not awful,’ she said patiently. ‘He’s a very good man... and a very important man in his own country. The chief of his tribe.’

‘Then what’s he doing here?’

‘George sent him.’

‘George did?’ Ann turned to look at a framed photograph of the ninth Marquess, the man she was to have married.

‘His name is Dittar Latoni,’ went on Lady Cranleigh.

‘He once saved George’s life, although he maintains it was George who saved his. George was grateful to Dittar and wanted me to have him here. It was the least I could do.’

‘And he’s happy to stay here? I don’t understand.’

Lady Cranleigh sighed. ‘I know. It’s difficult. One needs to understand an entirely different culture. Dittar’s gods are gods of retribution and atonement. When George died Dittar blamed himself. He had a need to stay here and atone for his sin... continuing with George’s spirit. For him the Venezualan jungle can no longer be his home. His gods decree against it.’

‘And that poor thing locked away up there?’

‘A survivor of an earlier expedition. He’s thought to be German or Swiss but no identification was ever found. And when the Butiu indians did that to him they cut out his tongue. But for Dinar he would have died, but when George found them both the poor soul was already out of his mind.’

Ann took another sip of her brandy. ‘How long have they been here?’

‘Since George died.’

‘Two years?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why was I never told?’

‘We thought it best you shouldn’t know. The fewer people the better.’

Outside the band was playing another lively quickstep accompanying the many shuffling feet on the terrace. All those guests oblivious of the secret of Cranleigh Hall. Ann closed her eyes in an attempt to shut out the thought.

‘Who does know?’

‘Only Charles and me.’

‘The servants?’

‘No. I think they may suspect, but they all knew George and loved him. They would respect his wishes as they respect his memory. It’s unthinkable that Dittar and his friend should be uncared for in some institution.’

Ann looked down at her brandy suspiciously. It had burned her throat and now warmed her stomach and she felt better but she was so confused. She put the glass on the table next to her. ‘Why did George keep this a secret from me? I don’t understand. If you knew, why couldn’t I know?

We were to be married. I thought he loved me.’

Lady Cranleigh rose to pour herself a little brandy and looked with compassion on the fragile, vulnerable girl. ‘Of course he loved you, child... in his way.’

‘What d’you mean?’

‘My dear, George lost his heart long before he met you..

lost it to that filthy jungle.’ Ann was startled by the sudden passion in the older woman’s voice. ‘It was something he shared with no one. Not with me... not with his brother..

nor, my child, with you.’ Lady Cranleigh drank her brandy at a gulp; something else about her that Ann found startling. It was so uncharacteristic of the woman she felt she knew. She was beginning to wonder if she knew anyone. Lady Cranleigh put down her glass and came to sit next to Ann on the sofa. She took the girl’s hands in hers and held them firmly. With frank eyes she looked directly into Ann’s. ‘But there’s something you haven’t told me.’

‘What’s that?’

‘How you came to be in the room.’

Confusion pushed in again on Ann, hurling at her fragments of a half-remembered nightmare. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Ann. You must know.’

‘I don’t. I was dancing with someone. I thought at first it was that Doctor. He was dressed as Pierrot... the costume Charles got for him... but he said he wasn’t.’

‘Said he wasn’t?’

‘Yes.’

‘He spoke to you?’

Ann thought for a moment. ‘No, he didn’t say anything.

He just kept shaking his head.’

‘I see.’

‘And then he started to take liberties and I got frightened. James came by and I... ...’ Total recall of the frightening incident came back to Ann with a rush. ‘James!

He attacked James! And he hurt him! And then I don’t remember anymore except waking up in that room... with...

with that thing.’ Ann put shaking fingers to her temple which had begun to ache unbearably. She had been attacked by one man and trapped in that room by another?

No! That couldn’t be. And no! It couldn’t be the same man. Could it have been that hideous Indian. No. There was that horrid lip. Suddenly she wanted to be with Charles. She wanted... Lady Cranleigh’s voice broke through her confusion.

‘Ann, I want you to promise me something.’

‘What?’

‘That whatever happens you’ll say nothing about the annexe or what you’ve seen in it.’

‘I... I... don’t know...’ Ann was hesitant, tremulous.

‘
Promise me!
’

There were a few guests who still dallied with the delicacies of the buffet but most had elected to rejoin the dancing. Adric was among those who dallied. He moved slowly along the line of laden tables with the plate in his hand already full to overflowing. It wasn’t that Adric was greedy so much as curious: a trait that had endeared him to the Doctor. There was the widest possible variety of food to choose from and Adric’s curiosity extended to all of it. He picked his way along the tables as delicately as a jungle cat in search of particularised prey. He wandered along under Brewster’s benevolent eye. Brewster the butler, more royal than the king, more gracious than his employer, more jealous of his social status, watched the boy with warm amusement beneath his careful servant’s mask, flattered that the repast for which he was responsible should command such devotion. As Adric drew level, Brewster proffered a dish of mousse de foies de volaille.

‘May I tempt you to a little of this, sir?’

Adric ran curious eyes over the untouched dish, squinting suspiciously at the truffles.

‘No, thanks,’ he said happily. ‘This’ll do to be going on with.’

For the second time that evening the Pierrot descended the grand staircase in the main hall. The Doctor felt distinctly more comfortable having discarded his tail coat and was even looking forward, in some small measure, to participation in the fancy dress ball despite the cloud casting a shadow over the secret annexe and the spectre of sudden death. He wasn’t to know that he was about to move under a blacker cloud, to be visited by a grimmer spectre.

The Doctor was halfway down the stairs before he saw the body of the footman lying in the hall. He hurried down the rest of the treads to stoop into a quick and expert examination of the dead man. The Doctor straightened unsteadily. Violent death was hardly new to someone of his age and experience but to have touched two corpses, both with broken necks in the space of an hour in an English country home in the year 1925, was not only beyond his experience but beyond his understanding. What on earth was going on this time?

One of the other footmen entered the hall from the direction of the kitchens and hurried towards the terrace.

He saw the Doctor first and then the figure of his fellow servant. He stopped suddenly, his mouth open, unable to cope with the spectacle of an anonymous clown standing over a prostrate James and everything the sight implied.

The Doctor lifted a covered hand.

‘What’s your name?’

‘H... Henry, sir,’ stammered the unhappy footman.

‘Henry, would you be good enough to tell Lord Cranleigh that there’s been an accident and ask him to come here.’

‘Yes, sir,’ blurted Henry and started for the terrace.

‘And Henry!’ added the Doctor. The footman stopped.

‘Yes, sir?’

‘Please do it discreetly. There’s no need to alarm anyone.’

Henry swallowed and pointed to his fellow.

‘James, sir? He’s all right? Isn’t he, sir?’

‘Just go and get Lord Cranleigh, there’s a good fellow.’

The servant hurried on his way, flustered, frightened, fascinated. The Doctor looked down again at the body and saw, for the first time, Ann’s head dress at the foot of the stairs. He picked it up, examined it in some detail and put it down on a convenient table.

7

The declining sun drove paths of gold between the wellingtonia conifers that bordered Cranleigh Park and across the trim lawns in front of the Hall. It gave added warmth and colour to the conviviality of the proceedings as the dancers’ shadows lengthened on the terrace, but it brought no cheer to Lady Cranleigh’s carefully composed face as she gazed sombrely down on the merriment of her guests. She turned from the window and looked at Ann.

‘We’d better go down, my dear,’ she said.

Henry, the footman, crossed the terrace hurriedly but unobtrusively to speak urgently to Brewster the butler, it being the butler’s prerogative to communicate matters pertaining to domestic crises directly to his lordship.

Nyssa had accepted a plate from her host and was in the process of selecting delicately and modestly from the comestibles of the running buffet when she met Adric retracing his steps for another look at the gastronomical riches available. She looked with amazement and not a little embarrassment at the pile of food on Adric’s plate.

‘Isn’t that seconds?’

Adric didn’t much like her tone. ‘So?’

‘You pig!’

Adric sighed. ‘You can only be Nyssa.’

‘Just look at that!’

‘You look at it!’ countered Adric. ‘I’m going to eat it.’

And he moved off with his food in the direction of a group of guests which included Tegan, Sir Robert Muir and the Roman centurion.

Lord Cranleigh was approaching Nyssa bearing a glass of champagne when he was intercepted by Brewster who whispered the Doctor’s message relayed by Henry.

Cranleigh brought the champagne to Nyssa, excused himself and made his way quickly across the terrace accompanied by Brewster and Henry.

As Adric joined her, Tegan eyed his plate with a detachment that was not without wonder. ‘Have you seen the Doctor?’

‘No.’

‘Sure you’ve got enough there?’

Adric closed his eyes and summoned all his tolerance.

‘Don’t you start!’

Lord Cranleigh hurried across the hall to the Doctor followed by Brewster and Henry.