Doctor Who: Black Orchid (14 page)

‘No, Madge,’ interrupted Sir Robert smoothly, ‘not until the police get here.’

‘But you are the police,’ protested Lady Cranleigh.

‘Precisely,’ responded Sir Robert. ‘And that makes it imperative that Sergeant Markham and Doctor Hathaway both be here before the body is moved.’

Lady Cranleigh took refuge from the Doctor with a display of social outrage. ‘But my guests...!’ Sir Robert took his cue and took control. He looked directly at his host.

‘Charles, I suggest you call it a day. Tell your guests there’s been an accident and ask them to leave. But first, ring the station. Tell them what’s happened.’ He flicked a look at the Doctor and then at Lady Cranleigh. ‘Tell them there’s been an accident and ask them to send Doctor Hathaway.’

The Doctor watched Lady Cranleigh’s clenched hands relax. Her son moved off quickly and then turned back to look at the Doctor. ‘What about him?’

‘Leave everything to me please, Charles.’

‘Righto.’

Sir Robert waited for Cranleigh to go and then looked at the two women on the stairs. ‘Madge?’

‘I wish to remain, Robert,’ said Lady Cranleigh.

‘As you please,’ said the knight formally and directed his attention at the Doctor. ‘Well, sir? Is all this the reason why you wished to remain incognito?’

‘No, it isn’t,’ said the Doctor with a controlled impatience.

‘Then perhaps you’ll be good enough to tell me your name.’

‘You already know my name.’

‘You are known only as the Doctor.’

‘That’s right.’

‘Doctor who?’

‘If you will.’

Sir Robert sighed. There would obviously be no profit from this line of enquiry. ‘Have you any means of indentification?’ he asked.

‘No. I’ve never needed any.’

‘Fortunate man,’ rejoined Sir Robert wryly. ‘But you say that you’re from Guy’s Hospital and that you were sent here by Doctor Handicombe as a replacement player in today’s match.’

‘I never said any such thing,’ corrected the Doctor.

‘But Handicome did send you?’

‘No. You all assumed he had.’

‘Then why didn’t you deny it?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘You don’t know?’

‘Yes, all right. I do know. I couldn’t resist the game of cricket.’

Sir Robert frowned. He was deeply worried that such an exemplary cricketer appeared not to have an exemplary character to match. It denied a whole code of ethics, contradicted a whole way of life. ‘Then you weren’t sent here?’

The Time Lord hesitated. The question had to be answered truthfully and it wouldn’t be the first time that the Grand Council on Gallifrey had seen fit to nudge the TARDIS towards moral intervention. He remembered the Master’s attempt to topple King John of England. ‘It’s possible I might have been.’

‘You might have been?’

‘Let’s say I’m here by accident... by chance.’

‘By chance? You and your friends... or perhaps I should call them accomplices?’ Sir Robert had been reminded suddenly of the uncanny coincidence presented by the appearance of Nyssa. What if it was no coincidence? What if it was some diabolical foreign plot... some anarchist plot to substitute a double for Ann and infiltrate the House of Lords? It wasn’t all that far-fetched. He recalled that fellow Winston Churchill, when he was Home Secretary, directing the siege of Sidney Street. Those people had been anarchists led by Peter the Painter who had subsequently disappeared. The whole puzzling affair had never been satisfactorily explained and this Doctor and his accomplices, with the exception of the girl Tegan who said she was Australian, had been deliberately vague about their place of origin. Where was Traken? What was an Alzarian?

‘By chance?’ he repeated. ‘You’re all here by chance?’

‘Yes,’ replied the Doctor evenly, ‘but I’d be grateful if you’d leave my friends out of this.’

‘I see. Then you agree that whatever "this" is... you’re in it?’

The Doctor sighed deeply and looked at Lady Cranleigh who avoided his eyes. He was in it, all right. In it up to his neck. The distant band stopped playing abruptly in mid-number. Lord Cranleigh would now be on the terrace making an appeal to his guests among whom was the murderer of James... and of Digby? The Doctor was powerless to prevent the guests from dispersing. He was not only bound by his word to Lady Cranleigh; he doubted his capacity to influence Sir Robert in any action since he was unquestionably under suspicion. ‘By chance,’ mused Sir Robert. ‘But you are a doctor of medicine?’

‘Among other things.’

‘What other things?’

‘My doctorate extends to mathematics, moral philosophy and history,’ said the Doctor modestly. The statement was impressive but, to his listeners, hardly more credible than his protestations of innocence.

‘And what, may I ask, is such a person doing here by chance?’ persisted Sir Robert. There was no escape for the Doctor. He just had to go on giving truthful answers to awkward questions until the inevitable declaration of his fantastic identity would plunge him into the deepest possible hot water.

‘I’m very much afraid that if I tell you... you won’t believe me.’

‘Without a doubt, if you go on telling lies. But you’re going to have to give account of yourself sooner or later and I must remind you that I’m the Lord Lieutenant of this county and the Chief Constable and that you, sir, are under suspicion of murder.’

The Doctor drew a deep breath. ‘I’m a Time Lord.’

Sir Robert blinked and looked at the two women on the stairs. ‘You’re a
what
?’

‘I told you,’ the Doctor grimaced.

‘I think you’d better try again.’

‘I travel in space and time,’ the Doctor groaned on. ‘... I have a time-machine...’ He ground to a halt as he saw Sir Robert’s lip curl, and then became inspired as an aspect of English literature surfaced in his memory. ‘Perhaps you may have read H. G. Wells.’

Sir Robert’s lips continued to curl into a convolution of derisive disbelief before they opened to announce: ‘I know H. G. Wells. He writes fiction.’

The implication in the last word and the honed edge on Sir Robert’s voice were not lost on the unhappy Doctor.

There was only one way of combatting disbelief in the TARDIS and that was to expose it to vulgar gaze, to demonstrate it. But the TARDIS was at Cranleigh Halt railway station and the Chief Constable was not going to be persuaded into an unnecessary visit to a police box. The thought crossed his troubled mind that he could produce its Servicing Certificate which recorded all services and modifications in its long history and his hand was halfway to his breast pocket before he remembered that his tail coat was upstairs in his room. In any case the document was computer software and just as incredible to the feudal forces of 1925 England as a time-machine. There was nothing for it but to enlist the aid of Lady Cranleigh and expose the existence of the other body, however distasteful.

‘I’m sorry, Lady Cranleigh...’

‘Sorry, Doctor?’ Her eyes were wide and her head held high. It came suddenly to the Doctor that she must now suspect him of Digby’s death also. After all, he couldn’t prove that he’d arrived here only this afternoon. He turned to the Chief Constable. ‘There’s something you should know, Sir Robert.’

‘Yes?’

The Doctor turned to look at Lady Cranleigh before continuing. She returned the look without faltering, her eyes outstaring his. He pointed to the body of the footman.

‘This poor man isn’t the only victim. There’s another body.’

‘Another body?’ Sir Robert looked involuntarily at Lady Cranleigh.

‘A servant called Digby,’ said the Doctor.

‘Digby?’ The name was clearly unknown to Sir Robert who glanced again at the impassive Lady Cranleigh.

‘He’s in the annexe.’

‘Annexe? What annexe?’ Sir Robert turned to his hostess. ‘Madge?’ Lady Cranleigh said nothing, her eyes still directly holding those of the Doctor. In the distance the guests could be heard departing, and departing quietly in consideration of the circumstances that had broken up a festive occasion. A few motor-car doors and receding engines were the only distinctive sounds.

‘There’s a secret annexe,’ said the Doctor quietly.

‘A secret annexe? Madge?’ repeated Sir Robert, turning to Lady Cranleigh for confirmation.

The dowager Marchioness looked at her perplexed questioner with a monumental calm before directing her statement at the Doctor. ‘Like Mr Wells, the gentleman appears to have a vivid imagination.’

The Doctor was ill prepared for what, for him, was an act of arrant betrayal. He found it difficult to believe his ears but, shocked as he was, the startled look that Ann threw at the older woman wasn’t lost on him. Neither was it lost on Lady Cranleigh. Ann looked back at the Doctor and glimpsed him in a new light. Here was another who knew of the annexe. Was her future mother-in-law going to deny its existence?

‘The annexe I’m talking about isn’t in my imagination but in my experience,’ the Doctor managed at last.

‘I understood you to be talking about a body,’ said Lady Cranleigh distantly. The Doctor no longer had any compunction about offending the susceptibilities of this woman so clearly aligned against him. ‘I showed you the body of a man called Digby hidden in a cupboard.’

‘Did you?’ The eyes were cold and fixed.

‘I showed it to you and the Indian.’

Sir Robert was startled. ‘The Indian?’

‘A South American Indian,’ went on the Doctor implacably. ‘I’ve forgotten his name but he has a protruding lower lip... achieved under traction with a plate.

It’s a characteristic of some tribes. Once seen, never forgotten.’

The statement was so bizarre, so altogether outlandish that it robbed Sir Robert of speech. He remembered that the girl Tegan had talked about seeing such a being, but perhaps this was another of the gang. The dumbfounded knight looked at Lady Cranleigh for some enlightenment but she remained silent. Ann caught her breath, suspecting that Lady Cranleigh was dissembling, but unable to confirm the existence of the Indian without being disloyal.

And what about this other body? She longed to be able to unburden her confusion on the solid Sir Robert, to confide in him the secret of the annexe. Her loyalty was strained to its limits at the mention of another body. Lady Cranleigh remained silent.

‘Body in a cupboard?’ muttered an acutely uncomfortable Sir Robert. ‘Indian with a lip?’ The Doctor decided that attack was now the only defence. He would take the battle into the enemy camp. ‘With Lady Cranleigh’s permission I’m prepared to show you.’ The Doctor was confident he could make his way back to the annexe now that he’d been shown the mechanisms that activated the panels.

‘Madge?’ murmured Sir Robert tentatively.

‘By all means,’ responded Lady Cranleigh unexpectedly.

Anything further was interrupted by the arrival of her son from the direction of the drawing room.

‘Everybody’s going,’ he announced and nodded towards the Doctor. ‘Except his friends. I’ve got them in the drawing room... with Henry keeping an eye on them until the Sergeant gets here.’

Anger suddenly erupted in the good Doctor. He’d taken enough, and for his companions to be treated with such contumely was the last straw. ‘I refuse to be talked to like a criminal any longer,’ he said loudly. ‘There’s something terribly wrong here that calls for a thorough investigation and I call on Sir Robert Muir to see that it’s carried out.’

The outburst took everyone a little by surprise, most of all Lord Cranleigh who was ignorant of all that had led up to it. ‘What’s he getting at?’ he asked Sir Robert.

‘Oh, some cock and bull story about a body in an annexe.’

Cranleigh was suddenly rigid, a fact that didn’t escape the notice of his mother or his fiancée or, for that matter, the Doctor.

‘It’s not a cock and bull story,’ the Doctor said with justified belligerence. ‘There’s a body in your secret annexe, Lord Cranleigh, and I demand the right to show it to Sir Robert.’

‘A what? A body?’

‘Yes!’

‘Oh!’ suddenly cried Ann. It was an opening Lady Cranleigh had been waiting for and she seized it. ‘Charles,’

she said, ‘Look after Ann! She’s very upset. I can deal with all this nonsense.’ She steered Ann into the arms of her son and, at the touch of comfort, the girl began to sob. Lady Cranleigh turned to Sir Robert. ‘Well, Robert? Shall we go?’ The knight wriggled uncomfortably. He couldn’t remember a more embarrassing time. All this was very much against the grain.
Very
much against the grain.

‘Very well,’ he said.

Lady Cranleigh turned to the Doctor. ‘Would you be good enough to lead the way?’ she asked with cool politeness. The Doctor nodded curtly and preceded her and Sir Robert up the stairs watched by the sorely troubled tenth Marquess who held a confused and miserable Ann in his arms and a tormenting secret in his heart.

The Doctor led the way along the main corridor on the second floor and stopped by a familiar section of panelling.

Unerringly his fingers found the protuberance in the carving that activated the secret door. He stood aside, tacitly inviting Lady Cranleigh to precede him and then indicating that Sir Robert should follow. Bringing up the rear he joined the others in the corridor from which rose the steps to the room in the tower. He turned to Sir Robert.

‘This is the annexe. Up there...’ he gestured towards the steps, ‘... is a room with bars on the window.’

‘This is one of the largest existing priest holes in the country,’ elaborated Lady Cranleigh for Sir Robert’s benefit. ‘The room at the top of the steps is the royal chamber. The bars on the window were for added protection.’

Not to be outdone, the Doctor showed Sir Robert the bathroom and then moved to the further bed-sitting room and tapped on the door. There being no response he opened the door and stepped into the room. Sir Robert followed him wonderingly, overcome by these revelations.

He’d known the Cranleighs all his life without dreaming this place existed. ‘This, I suspect,’ said the Doctor, ‘is the room used by the Indian. That gramophone record is Portugese.’

Sir Robert moved to the machine. There was no longer a record on the turntable and all the other records had been removed. ‘There’s no record here,’ he said. The Doctor looked at Lady Cranleigh whose eyes were averted. ‘Then he’s been here since I was here,’ he said unabashedly and led the way to the next room, taking note of Lady Cranleigh’s imperturbable calm.