Doctor Who: Black Orchid (13 page)

‘Doctor?’

‘I’m afraid his neck’s broken,’ the Doctor said quietly.

‘He’s dead?’

‘I’m afraid so.’

‘Oh, poor chap!’ Lord Cranleigh knelt quickly by the body. A close look at the unfortunate footman was all the confirmation he needed. ‘He must have fallen down the stairs.’

The Doctor was on the point of contradicting the statement when he remembered the presence of the servants and his promise to Lady Cranleigh. The dead man was too far away from the foot of the stairs for his neck to have been broken in a fall and the broken neck wasn’t entirely without precedent. This was a case where what was called ‘foul play’ had to be suspected, and he had promised discretion. Lord Cranleigh straightened and turned to the butler, ‘Brewster, I’m terribly sorry about this. I think, perhaps, we’d better move him to be... well, decent.’

‘Yes, milord.’

‘No!’ Put in the Doctor. ‘I’m sorry to interrupt, Lord Cranleigh, but may I have a quiet word?’ The perplexed young nobleman allowed himself to be led a little apart from the embarrassed but impassive butler and footman. ‘I think it would be wise,’ whispered the Doctor, ‘to leave him where he is until the police get here.’

‘The police?’ echoed Lord Cranleigh.

‘Yes.’

‘Good Lord! You don’t think...?’ He left the question unfinished, overcome by shock at the Doctor’s implication.

‘It may not be an accident,’ whispered the Doctor. ‘He’s too far away from the stairs.’

‘Good Lord,’ murmured Cranleigh, aghast. He looked hard at the body and then at the waiting servants. Not an accident? Then what? And who would want to hurt James?

‘All right, Brewster, thank you. That’s all.’ The servants turned to go. ‘But please ask Sir Robert if he’ll be kind enough to come here.’

‘Yes, milord.’

‘And not a word about this to anyone else.’

‘Milord.’

The Doctor waited until they were alone before moving to the table to pick up Ann’s head-dress. ‘I found this on the floor.’ Cranleigh took the cap and mask with the mockingly waving antennae and looked at it with mounting apprehension. ‘My fiancée was wearing this,’ he said. He looked at the Doctor without seeing him, his mind elsewhere, with Ann.

‘I really think the police should be informed,’ said the Doctor after a very long silence.

‘Sir Robert will know what to do,’ replied Cranleigh distractedly. ‘He’s not only Lord Lieutenant, he’s the Chief Constable.’ He turned the head-dress over and over in his hands, keeping a growing anxiety from his guest.

‘In the hall?’ repeated Sir Robert.

‘Yes, Sir Robert,’ murmured Brewster with a mammoth discretion and withdrawing quickly, implying that the Chief Constable would do well to do likewise. Sir Robert offered his apologies and withdrew accordingly. Tegan followed in his wake to join up with the abandoned Nyssa and to distance herself from the feeding Adric.

‘Enjoying yourself?’ asked Nyssa.

‘Too right,’ said Tegan. ‘Seen anything of the Doctor?’

‘Not for some time.’

‘He’s missing all the fun.’

Nyssa looked past Tegan at the group her friend had just left, her interest centred on the Centurion from whom she’d been rescued earlier. ‘Who
is
that man?’ she asked.

Tegan turned to follow Nyssa’s look. ‘What man?’

‘The one dressed as a soldier. That aggressive helmet and all that leather.’

‘The Centurion? Oh, I don’t know. I’ve forgotten his name but they call him Tiny for short.’

‘Tiny? But he’s huge.’

Tegan looked at Nyssa calculating how long it might take to explain the irony implicit in Anglo Saxon nicknames - let alone the meaning of ‘nickname’. ‘Don’t let it worry you, Nyssa,’ she said.

‘What worries me is that I talked to him... well,
he
talked to
me
... and I didn’t understand a word he said.’

‘I know,’ agreed Tegan. ‘He’s not very bright, but he
is
something of a celebrity.’

‘Is he?’

‘Oh, yes. He stroked Oxford home last year.’

‘Stroked Oxford home?’

Tegan heard Nyssa’s teeth grind together and saw her eyes cross. Too late she realised she had introduced yet another British sport that she would have to explain. As if instructing the uninitiated in the art of cricket wasn’t enough, she was now stuck with making sense out of the annual Oxford and Cambridge boat race.

‘Ann was wearing this.’

‘Or was it the other one?’ asked Sir Robert.

‘No,’ insisted Lord Cranleigh. ‘Nyssa’s out on the terrace. I’ve just left her. This is Ann’s.’

Sir Robert Muir looked from the incongruous Pierrot, whom he now knew to be the Doctor, to the Marquess’s anxious face. ‘I shouldn’t worry, Charles, she can’t be far.

Let’s look for her.’

Lord Cranleigh’s eyes rested sightlessly on his friend’s concerned face. He turned to the Doctor. ‘Where was she when you last saw her?’

‘I haven’t seen her,’ were the muffled words behind the painted mask.

‘You were dancing with her.’

‘I was?’

‘Or was it the other one?’ suggested Sir Robert.

‘No.
I
was dancing with Nyssa.’

‘Doctor?’ Sir Robert’s eyes bored into the Pierrot mask.

Embarrassment made the Doctor feel suddenly very hot.

He removed his head piece revealing a flushed, apologetic smile. ‘I’m sorry, I haven’t danced with anyone. I’ve only just come down from upstairs.’

The concern on Sir Robert’s face deepened and he looked long and hard at the Doctor before speaking. ‘But I saw you, sir.’

‘You
saw
me?’

‘Yes. You danced with one or other of the young ladies from the terrace into the drawing room. I saw you.’

The Doctor smiled broadly as the only possible explanation of Sir Robert’s statement came readily to mind. He turned from one to the other of them. ‘You saw
me
?’ he asked. ‘Or this?’ He replaced his head piece thus losing all identity.

‘Well, yes. That,’ admitted Sir Robert.

‘Then what you saw,’ the Pierrot announced triumphantly, ‘was someone dressed in an identical costume.’ And the Doctor turned to Lord Cranleigh for confirmation of this.

‘That is the only costume of its kind,’ said Cranleigh bleakly.

Another surge of embarrassment sent the Doctor’s temperature climbing but, this time, he left the head piece where it was since it was more comfortable to cover his confusion.

The only costume of its kind? His mind chased about for an alternative explanation but, whichever way it turned, any illuminating thought remained light years ahead of it. Sir Robert’s mouth had set in a thin line.

‘Would you please tell us why you deny being with Miss Talbot?’

‘I can only repeat that I’ve not laid eyes on her since the end of the cricket,’ said the harrassed Doctor.

‘That’s just not good enough, sir.’

Again the Doctor looked from one to the other. ‘Is this some sort of joke?’

‘That, sir,’ said Sir Robert, pointing to the body of the footman, ‘is hardly a joke.’

The Doctor was grateful his mask hid the hot flush that he felt burn his cheeks at the monstrous accusation. ‘You can’t think I had anything to do with that!’ The tacit response to his protest confirmed to him that they did indeed think he had something to do with that. He turned on Lord Cranleigh. ‘Please, may I make a suggestion?’

‘What is it?’

‘Find Miss Talbot and ask her. She’ll confirm that what I say is true.’

His lordship’s pale blue eyes had taken on a steely look.

They were fixed upon the Doctor with an implacability rare in the Time Lord’s experience. The eyes that had earlier acknowledged a hero now accused him of villainy.

Worse was yet to come.

‘That is precisely what I intend to do,’ said Lord Cranleigh tightly. ‘And I ask you to stay here and not attempt to leave.’

‘Of course,’ groaned the hapless Doctor. He couldn’t begin to calculate the effect it would have if he announced the existence of another dead body in the house. Without the presence of Lady Cranleigh it was hardly likely to lift suspicion from him.

‘That’s him!’

All heads turned towards the shout; to the half-landing where the treads divided and ascended separately to the floor above. Lady Cranleigh stood there with Ann.

Cranleigh bounded up the stairs to them.

‘Darling! Are you all right?’

‘Oh, Charles!’

Ann relaxed in her fiance’s arms seeking comfort, some order from the chaos of shock and confusion she’d suffered for the past hour. Over Cranleigh’s shoulder she looked down at the Pierrot again. ‘That’s who attacked me!’

‘Attacked you!’

Cranleigh pushed her a little apart from him the better to study her. ‘Are you hurt?’

‘No.’ Ann saw the body on the hall floor with the realisation that James had not been moved from the spot where she remembered seeing him fall. ‘Oh, Charles!

Something dreadful’s happening! I’m so confused.’ She pointed at the Doctor. ‘
He
did that to James! Who is he?’

The Doctor felt an unbearable prickling at the back of his neck as the adrenalin was pumped through his bloodstream by both hearts going full pelt. He removed his head piece. ‘It’s only me,’ he said with an uncharacteristic humility brought on by total mystification.

‘It was you,’ said Ann without surprise.

‘Only me,’ repeated the Doctor innocently.

‘Oh, how awful!’ gasped Ann, in the grip of a sickening loathing that she should have been the victim of someone whose earlier credentials should be so beyond reproach as to be positively saint-like. Far from confirming his innocence, Ann Talbot had joined the Doctor’s accusers to the frightening extent of pointing him out as James’s murderer.

‘Look here,’ he began, with no conspicuous confidence,

‘you’re all making a big mistake. I’m every bit as confused as Miss Talbot, I can tell you.’

‘Charles!’ called Lady Cranleigh sharply as her son started back down the stairs. Cranleigh stopped and his mother drew level with him. ‘Please take this carefully,’ she said softly and for his ears alone. ‘Ann has had a very great shock, and I mean,’ she slowed her words for great emphasis, ‘... a... very... great shock.’

Cranleigh looked back anxiously at Ann. It was perfectly apparent that his mother was entirely right. He could see, even from this distance, that the girl was still trembling violently. He turned back, caught his mother’s anxious eye, and moved down the stairs to the Doctor.

‘Well? You heard Miss Talbot.’

‘Yes,’ said the Doctor as evenly as he could. ‘I heard Miss Talbot and I can only repeat that she’s mistaken.’

‘I’m not mistaken!’ Ann almost shouted, coming down to join Lady Cranleigh. ‘He danced with me and then pulled me in here. I shouted for help and James came and he did that to him! He killed him!’

‘Oh, I say,’ murmured the Doctor, ‘this really is a bit thick, you know. It’s perfectly obvious to me that Miss Talbot is mistaking me for someone else wearing exactly the same costume.’

‘And it’s perfectly obvious to me that there is no other costume and that you’re lying,’ replied Cranleigh as calmly as he could since he was fighting an irresistible urge to thrash this cricket-playing blackguard within an inch of his life.

‘I’ve made it a life-long habit never to tell a lie,’ said the Doctor with hauteur.

‘A veritable George Washington,’ sneered Lord Cranleigh. The Doctor decided to ignore the jibe and to pursue his defence on another tack. ‘May I ask Miss Talbot a question?’

‘You may not!’

‘Charles!’ interceded Sir Robert in his role as Chief Constable. ‘It can do no harm.’

Cranleigh looked at his fiancée who now had Lady Cranleigh’s arm about her and appeared to have recovered some of her composure. ‘Very well. Ask your question!’

‘Thank you,’ murmured the Doctor politely. He looked up at Ann and was not encouraged to see that she shrank from him a little. ‘Miss Talbot,’ he began, ‘did you hear my voice? Did I say anything to you?’

‘No.’

‘Did you see my face?’

‘No.’

‘Then what it comes down to is that you danced with this costume, you were brought in here by this costume, and you were attacked by this costume. Would you agree to that?’

Confusion returned to Ann with a rush. She’d not seen her attacker’s face and she’d not heard him speak and she was still striving to come to terms with finding herself with that hideous, pathetic creature in the room with the iron bars at the window. Her mouth opened but it voiced no answer.

‘Wait a bit, wait a bit!’ put in Cranleigh a little belatedly. ‘Ann, he must have asked you to dance.’

Ann thought for a moment and then shook her head.

‘He didn’t ask you?’

‘No. He... he just held out a hand.’

The Doctor looked at them all in turn with an expression of undisguised triumph, seeking to persuade his audience that his minor point was a major advantage. ‘If there is some doubt I think I deserve the benefit of it,’ he said with an attempt at modesty that fell little short of smugness.

‘You’ll get what you deserve,’ said the young nobleman darkly, with his instincts still bent on retribution for the abuse offered his beloved. But doubt now clouded his face.

Could there possibly be another costume like the one he’d found in the attic? No! He’d seen this man dancing with Ann and so had Robert. A duplication of the costume wasn’t possible. They were bound to have seen it. He looked at Sir Robert. ‘Shall you or I telephone the station?’

The Doctor was in no doubt about which station Lord Cranleigh had in mind. His educated guess was that he was about to be arrested and this called for the exposure of a potential skeleton in a Cranleigh Hall cupboard. He’d make no bones about it. Lady Cranleigh and her South American Indian guest would substantiate his claim of innocence concerning the other broken neck.

‘Lady Cranleigh,’ began the Doctor, but the lady in question cut in sharply, moving quickly down the stairs towards the body of the footman. ‘Charles, shouldn’t you...’

She gestured delicately at the embarrassment presented by the corpse.