Doctor Who: Black Orchid (7 page)

‘That’s dancing?’

Tegan stopped, aggrieved. ‘It can’t be that bad.’

‘No, no!’ said Nyssa hastily. ‘I don’t mean it’s bad. On Traken our dancing is much more formalised. More of a ritual, really.’

‘Show me!’ demanded Tegan.

‘Oh, I couldn’t. Not by myself. You’d laugh.’

There was a tap on the door and Ann came in, followed by her maid carrying two cardboard boxes. Ann was radiantly happy. ‘My dears, I’ve had an absolutely ripping idea.’

For a moment Tegan was visited by a vision of the girl enthusiastically tearing clothes to shreds. Nyssa clapped her hands and stared with admiration at Ann’s costume.

‘Oh, how lovely! That’s lovely!’

Pleased, Ann twirled this way and that, showing off the dress. ‘I’m so glad you think so. But... first... Tegan.’ She turned to the maid who took the lid from one of the boxes.

‘This is for you,’ and so saying she lifted up the taffeta dress. ‘You’re a wood nymph.’ Tegan looked happily at the spritely confection of a dress. It suited her mood exactly.

‘Thank you, Ann. That’s nice. I shall enjoy being a wood nymph.’

Ann turned importantly to the other box. ‘But just look what we’ve got here!’ The maid removed the lid and Ann lifted from the box a costume identical to the one she was wearing. ‘There! With the head-dress nobody, but nobody, will be able to tell us apart. Isn’t that topping?’

Nyssa was thrilled. ‘Quite topping,’ she agreed. Tegan looked at the other two with quiet amusement. Identical dresses were anathema to female sartorial judgement except when it concerned twins it seemed.

Nyssa slipped into the dress excitedly. It fitted perfectly.

With the head-dress in place and the long hair tucked underneath it the two girls were indistinguishable. Ann took Nyssa by the hand and turned to Tegan. ‘See if you can tell us apart. Close your eyes, count to five and then open them again!’

Tegan did as she was bidden and Ann looked at Nyssa and put a warning finger to her lips. She then changed places with her twin. Tegan opened her eyes and looked at the two girls with pleasure and amusement.

‘I’m only guessing but... you’re Ann,’ she announced happily and pointed a finger.

‘Wrong,’ said Nyssa triumphantly and all three chuckled delightedly.

‘This is going to be such fun,’ said Ann.

‘But not for poor Lord Cranleigh,’ murmured Tegan.

‘Oh, Charles will love it. He only has to do this.’ Ann moved the left shoulder strap of her dress a little to one side to reveal a small mole. ‘Unless you’ve got one too, Nyssa.’

Nyssa shook her head. ‘Just as well,’ said Tegan. ‘It could lead to all sorts of complications if you put your mind to it.’

The Doctor had indulged himself with a good long soak in the bath reflecting that the afternoon’s exercise, being exceptional, would remind him on the morrow of muscles he’d forgotten he had. It was the price the amateur cricketer paid for the opening game of the season and in the Doctor’s case his extraterrestrial activity forbade seasonal involvement in a game demanding the teamwork of twenty-two English-speaking men or women. He towelled himself vigorously and hummed quietly to himself.

In the bedroom a barely audible click at the panelling beside the bed preceded the appearance of the vertical black slit that slowly widened until the gap was large enough to admit a figure wearing the executioner’s triangular mask. The bed was between the secret door and the bathroom and the executioner crept slowly along the length of the bed to the foot of it as noiseless as a shadow.

The Doctor slipped into a dressing gown and vocalised the tune he was humming:
I want to be happy...
The masked figure stopped near the foot of the bed and turned to look at the door in the panelling and then at the bedroom door which was closer. The executioner flitted to the door but had no time to open it before the Doctor came into the bedroom. The figure shrank into the deep shadow near the door.
...but I can’t be happy... until I’ve made...
The Doctor broke off as he saw the gaping hole in the wall by the bed.

It was startling enough to absorb his whole attention and directed his eyes away from the shadow by the bedroom door as he made his way round the bed to the door in the panelling.

‘Hello?’ he said. ‘Anyone there?’ He advanced one foot into the void and again called, ‘Hello?’ He was answered by the hollow echo of his own voice. The Doctor withdrew his foot and examined the door closely. Such secret doors were a commonplace in houses of this period giving access, as they did, to priest holes - hiding places for the persecuted clergy and, at a later time, the Royalists hunted by the forces of Oliver Cromwell. The Doctor ran his fingers along the three edges of the door seeking a catch without success. There was always the possibility that the door may have opened of its own accord; a vibration perhaps? The Doctor’s light baritone was hardly operatic but singers had been known to crack glasses with their voices; why not open doors? The Doctor shifted his attention from the door to the void beyond and, once again, his consuming curiosity was to prove his downfall. He stepped through the door, his eyes probing the dark.

The masked figure slid silently from the shadows and sped across the room. The door in the panelling snapped shut and the Doctor rounded in the dark to push against the door. ‘Who’s there?’ He rapped on the panelling. ‘Is anyone there? Hello?’ Again his hands wandered about in vain exploration. On the other side of the secret door the executioner moved decisively to the foot of the bed. The deformed hands gathered up the Pierrot costume.

The Doctor abandoned his search for a door fastening in favour of deeper penetration into the dark. It was probable the area had another exit. He edged his way cautiously forward, testing the ground carefully one foot at a time while feeling the cold damp walls of the narrow passage with prying fingers. ‘Why do I always let my curiosity get the better of me?’ he muttered.

The thronged south terrace of the hall was pink and gold in the rays of the lowering sun. A band beat and howled the ragtime with the unabashed enjoyment peculiar to jazz musicians. Their happy sounds infected the multitude of dancers whose costumes ranged through history, literature and zoology with great diversity and originality. Lady Cranleigh’s beautiful and elegant Marie Antionette was dancing with a striking Lewis Carroll Carpenter whose costume partner, the Walrus, was tripping the light fantastic with a rather large canary. Ann, dancing with her fiance’s Beau Brummell, exchanged a wink with her twin as Nyssa passed by on her way to join Adric who, excluded by shyness from the dancing, was casting appreciative eyes at the exotic cold buffet.

‘When do we get to that?’ he asked Nyssa quietly.

‘Don’t you think about anything else? And how did you know it was me?’

‘I just know.’

‘Oh!’ Nyssa stamped her foot in irritation. Adric really was impossible at times. If Tegan couldn’t tell which was which, how could he? But she wasn’t going to let him spoil her evening. ‘This is going to be much more fun than I thought,’ she said. She looked across at Tegan who danced by with Sir Robert attired in flamboyant Restoration finery. ‘I think you have to ask me to dance.’

‘Why?’ asked Adric vacantly.

Nyssa fought against the returning irritation. ‘Because that’s what everybody else has been doing.’

Adric’s eyebrows arched high in disbelief. ‘What! All these people?’

‘Not me, you idiot! Each other. Come on! Ask me!’

Adric looked down at his feet and then at the feet nimbly moving all about him. ‘I don’t think I can do this,’

he said disconsolately. ‘Of course you can,’ declared Nyssa bossily. ‘Just follow me! Come on!’

Determined to enjoy herself to the full, Nyssa bore off the reluctant Adric. With a natural sense of timing she improvised brilliantly and was even able to communicate something of her expertise to her unwilling partner. Sir Robert watched them go by and smiled a little tightly to Tegan.

‘I hope Lord Cranleigh has the right one. It’s a little naughty really,’ he chuckled.

‘I think it’s great hoot,’ said Tegan briskly.

‘A great what?’

‘Hoot.’

‘Hoot?’ Sir Robert looked at his partner in some perplexity. Tegan smiled and pursed her lips in an audible pout that produced a sound rather like a laugh. The unusual word tumbled into place for Sir Robert. ‘Ah, yes,’

he said happily. ‘Hoot.’

The Marquess of Cranleigh looked adoringly at the merry eyes laughing at him through the mask. They were unmistakably Ann’s eyes for these were eyes that allowed him to see only that which was reserved for him. But he couldn’t possibly tell her that, for it would spoil her fun and he did all he could these days to protect his future wife’s new found happiness and contentment. She had come courageously through a sad time for them all.

‘There is one way of not getting you mixed up,’ he said.

‘What’s that?’

‘To have every dance with you.’

‘Foiled again,’ she laughed. ‘You’re the host.’

The dance came to an end and both Nyssa and Ann waved to each other, a gesture which proved to be a pre-arranged signal. The girls ran to each other and flitted among the guests like a pair of dancing moths seeking the richest cloth onto which to home. As they moved they separated and rejoined from time to time, weaving in and out of sight in a choreographed shuffle of identities.

Lady Cranleigh frowned. A vague disquiet had taken a progressive hold on her since she had first seen the two girls dressed alike. It stirred a fear she had kept at a distance for so long. What was for everyone else a lighthearted prank was to her a reminder of a grave danger... a danger that she could do nothing to lessen by sharing. As she watched the two girls flutter this way and that, she realised that she could no longer tell them apart.

And if she could not...

The clarinetist in the band had caught the mood of the moth dance and had begun to improvise a flighty tune to accompany it that owed not a little to something familiar by Mendelssohn. It delighted the guests and struck dread in the heart of Lady Cranleigh. She wanted to cry out and stop it but that was something she could never bring herself to do. Eventually the two moths joined for the last time, fluttered for a moment in the same spot and then dipped in a curtsey that signalled the end of their performance.

Enthusiastic applause was succeeded by a delighted buzz of speculation about which was which as the girls moved on Adric and Cranleigh. The band struck up again.

‘Ann?’ asked Cranleigh.

‘Guess!’ came the reply. Cranleigh smiled as he took the girl he knew to be Ann into his arms. ‘Give me a little time,’ he said.

‘Well?’ asked Nyssa.

‘Very clever,’ said Adric, meaning it.

‘No. Which one?’

‘Nyssa, of course.’

‘Oh!’ Nyssa pouted. ‘That was just a guess.’

‘No!’

‘Oh!’

Poor Adric. It would only make matters worse if he attempted to explain to her that they’d been together long enough for him to be able to recognise certain of her little ways; her challenging stance, the set of her head when looking intently at anyone, the little intake of breath that preceded a sudden question. He was beginning to learn that in women there was no such concept as predictability.

All the same he promised himself that if Nyssa tried it on him again he’d tell her.

‘Where’s the Doctor?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know. He said he was going to have a bath.’

‘That was hours ago.’ Nyssa looked round at the whirling, kaleidoscopic dancers. The Doctor could be any number of anonymous personalities enjoying loss of identity in countless other characters. ‘What’s he wearing?’

‘I don’t know that either.’

Nyssa looked searchingly at Adric’s costume. It was a look that was intended to be withering, to contain a comment on what Nyssa took to be wilful ignorance on Adric’s part not to be more curious about what the Doctor was wearing. But the look also contained an element of envy as she admired the flounced flamboyance of a costume she knew would suit her admirably.

‘What are you supposed to be?’

‘A Cavalier or a Roundhead or something,’ Adric examined, for the umpteenth time, the unmanagable frills of lace round his cuffs that were always getting in the way and making him uncomfortably self-conscious.

‘What are they?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Adric!’

‘I didn’t like to ask. It was worn by someone who used to live here. I didn’t want to be rude.’

Adric was quite within his rights, of course, but it miffed Nyssa that this was something she had to admit to herself. And she wasn’t going to let him get away with that.

‘Well, if you don’t want to be rude you’d better ask Lady Cranleigh to dance.’

Adric looked even more self-conscious and was grateful when someone who looked like a large egg interrupted them courteously and asked Nyssa to dance. The sight of Humpty Dumpty bearing Nyssa away reminded Adric of all those goodies arranged on the buffet tables.

The Doctor, still feeling his way slowly through the impenetrable mildewed dark, came to a dead end. He stopped suddenly as first a toe and then a hand made contact with a damp stone wall. He tried to still the apprehension that always preceded panic at the realisation that there was no apparent exit from his prison within the cavity of the walls. The very secrecy that protected the fugitive also threatened the unwitting intruder. But the Doctor knew that every entrance had to be balanced by an exit even if they might be coincidental. He began slowly to retrace his steps.

The erect military-looking gentleman masquerading as the Merry Monarch and dancing with Lady Cranleigh looked over his partner’s shoulder with his mouth suddenly agape.

‘By George, that’s a good one!’

‘What’s that, colonel?’

‘That feller’s costume. And the make-up. Never seen anything like it.’

The colonel turned his partner in order for her to be able to take up his line of sight. Standing at the edge of the terrace watching the dancing was the South American Indian with the protuberant lower lip. Lady Cranleigh’s pulse raced and she caught at her escaping breath.