Doctor Who: Black Orchid (9 page)

Down the wide main staircase of the Hall came a figure costumed as Pierrot, the role assigned to the Doctor. Its progress was slow, even ponderous, but inexorable. A brooding power flowed from the unsighted vents in the opaque mask of painted pathos. Down, down the figure came, a danger, a deadliness in the deliberate descent. A figure of fun inviting pity, unreal, unfleshed but somehow ferocious.

A footman, carrying a laden tray across the hall beneath, paid the menacing figure little attention. To him it was but one more guest making his passage to the kitchens that much more urgent. The figure left the stairs and padded along the hall towards the music and the laughter on the terrace.

The Doctor had remained long enough in his hiding place to give Lady Cranleigh and the Indian time to move well away. He now crossed the room in quiet haste and opened the door to peer into the passage. All clear. No sound. He waited a moment longer before leaving the safety of the bedroom, closing the door quietly behind him. He moved onto the third and last door which stood a little ajar. He eased the door and found himself looking into a neat bathroom. At the end of the passage a flight of steps spiralled upwards. Cautiously, the Doctor began to climb.

On the terrace the Charleston had been succeeded by a waltz, the sedate movement of which was far better suited to the motley apparel of the gently swaying dancers. Adric, whose confidence had been so gloriously restored, ebbed and flowed ebulliently with
The Blue Danube
to the delight of his partner. So joyful was he at his new-found skill that the sight of a number of guests beginning to regale themselves at the buffet tables moved no interest in him.

He was content to dance on rejoicing in the movement and the music and the rapport with the partner he was now sure could not be Nyssa.

Then he saw something that prickled the skin at the nape of his neck. Standing near the glass door at the edge of the terrace was the figure of a clown: a Pierrot, he was later to discover. But there was something about the figure that drove a wedge of fear into his happy mood. He couldn’t think what it was about the figure that made him suddenly afraid. Was it something to do with the sightless black holes in the mask of the painted face? They seemed to be turned on him, only him, piercing him through and through. The figure held so still that, for a moment, Adric thought it could be nothing more than a lifeless effigy, a large party decoration. He looked away, but when he looked back again the figure was gone.

The Doctor neared the top of the steps to see that they stopped at a small landing with nothing beyond but a heavy wood door reinforced by iron brackets. It stood ajar.

The Doctor considered the implications of this soberly.

From the passage below there had been nowhere else to go but up these steps. Therefore, he had to assume that Lady Cranleigh and the Indian had come this way and were in the room beyond. If this was so, he had to face them, he decided. He had nothing to hide or be ashamed of. He had lost his way, that’s all. He had seen a strange opening in the wall of his room which hadn’t been there before and he’d investigated. Unfortunately, the panel had closed behind him and he couldn’t get back. His only recourse was to go on and he’d found himself here. Sorry!

‘Hello!’ he called.

There was no answer. He waited in a chilling silence.

‘Hello!’ he called again. Still nothing. He continued to the landing and tapped on the door. A sixth sense distilled danger from the heavy atmosphere. Alert, he pushed at the door and it swung back, grunting on its solid hinges.

Bracing himself the Doctor entered the room. It was empty.

The Doctor wasn’t surprised to see yet another well-appointed room with ample evidence of being lived in. But unlike the rooms below the furnishing was opulent, with books and flower prints lining the walls. He looked at the tidy desk, the well-tended fireplace, the dining table, the deep armchairs and the luxurious bed before becoming aware of the distant dance music. He turned in the direction of the sound and saw the barred window. He moved round the room making a close examination of the walls. There had to be a secret exit to explain the disappearance of Lady Cranleigh and the Indian for, hiding in the bed-sitting-room below, he’d not heard the squeal of the cupboard door that had given him noisy access. And yet it was hardly likely that such a means of escape could exist so high up in what was obviously a tower. And then there were the barred window.and the heavy door. This room was some sort of prison; a comfortable prison but, none the less, a prison. No, the walls would not yield. Then the Doctor reflected that if his hostess and her exotic companion hadn’t climbed the steps to this place there must be another way out of the passage beneath.

Nyssa’s expectation that this dancing would be fun hadn’t been disappointed. She happily followed where the accomplished Lord Cranleigh led and was even happier to see that her twin had succeeded in drawing such a polished performance from young Adric. She smiled at her partner.

‘I hope your financee doesn’t think you’re neglecting her,’ she said.

The Marquess looked across the terrace to where Ann was taking an absorbed Adric through the complexities of the Foxtrot. ‘I hardly dare disturb her,’ he grinned. ‘She’s having such a ripping time. I hope you are,’ he added gallantly.

‘Absolutely ripping,’ endorsed Nyssa.

‘I’m glad.’

They glided among the dancers passing the Walrus and the White Rabbit, Tegan and the Carpenter, and the Pierrot standing stock-still in the centre of the moving throng.

‘Ah, there you are, Doctor!’ exclaimed his Lordship, ‘I was wondering if you were all right. You look magnificent.

I hope it’s comfortable. Is it?’

The Pierrot said nothing, the sightless eyeholes directed at Nyssa. She suddenly shivered in the warm evening air when the Pierrot raised a hand as if in salutation.

Cranleigh guided her away from the solitary figure.

‘That’s the Doctor?’ asked Nyssa.

‘Splendid, isn’t he?’

The Foxtrot ended and Adric joined enthusiastically in the ripple of applause for the hard-working band. ‘You’re a wonderful dancer,’ declared Ann, ‘but I think I’ve monopolised you long enough. Let me introduce you to a friend of mine. She’s a much better dancer than I am, and I think she deserves you.’

Adric glowed at the compliment, so much so that the sudden tap on the shoulder, that punctured his euphoria, more than startled him. He turned to look up into the painted Pierrot face and gasped. The empty eyes bored blackly into him and then moved nearer causing in Adric an involuntary step backward. But the Pierrot had merely bowed in courtly fashion and was now extending a shapeless, supplicatory hand towards Ann in a request for the next dance.

Ann, thinking she knew the identity of the masked man, accepted the invitation with a little curtsey and Adric watched her borne away by the Pierrot in a laborious quickstep. Adric’s lip curled in quick contempt. Hadn’t he proved himself a better dancer than this clownish unsurper? He watched the uncertain progress of his late partner and turned towards the comfort of food and drink.

The Doctor left the foot of the steps from the tower and made his way along the passage, passing the bathroom and bedrooms and making for the panel at the back of the cupboard by which he’d come. He guessed the panel would be difficult to refind and was proved right when he gave it close examination. The surface of the partition wall was smooth and there were no tell-tale edges visible since the panel did not pivot but slid to one side. This must be the only exit and the one used by Lady Cranleigh and the Indian earlier, but it still bothered him a little that he’d not heard them use it.

First the Doctor put pressure along the whole length of the floorboard next to the wall, assuming that the mechanism that moved the panel would be triggered as for the other side. When this yielded nothing he felt along the entire length of the moulding that must border the opening. This also kept the closely guarded secret, so the Doctor began systematically to press every inch of the wall within the moulding. This diligence was rewarded when his left hand reached a mark half way down the inside of the vertical carving. A small area gave under the pressure from his fingers and the panel slid away to the left with a low, practiced sigh. The Doctor stepped through onto the squealing floorboard and opened the cupboard door into the other corridor, the panel returning to the closed position behind him.

Then he saw, with shock, that the door from the wall cavity that he’d left open was now closed. He moved past the cupboards to the place in the wall that held the pivotting panel, cursing himself for not thinking of wedging it open in some way on his outward journey. He hadn’t, of course, anticipated that the sortie from his room would result in a dead end. Here even his systematic manual search was of no use. The spring for this panel could be anywhere along the whole wall. A daunting prospect.

‘I know you’re the Doctor,’ insisted Ann, ‘because that was the costume picked out for you.’ The Pierrot shook his head slowly and firmly several times. ‘Then if you’re not the Doctor who are you?’ The Pierrot said nothing, dancing on, the sightless black eyes never moving from Ann’s face. Ann laughed nervously. ‘It’s really rather creepy. Please tell me who you are.’

She and her silent partner had danced to within speaking distance of her fiancée a couple of times, and on these occasions Cranleigh had beamed upon her and nodded with easy familiarity at the disregarding Pierrot which had suggested to Ann that her partner was indeed the Doctor.

The dance came to an end with the drummer beating out the characteristic roll that announced the band was about to take a short break but the Pierrot danced on, taking Ann with him across the terrace towards the windows of the drawing room.

‘The music’s stopped,’ said Ann, but if her partner heard her he paid no attention. She tried to remove her hand from his but her action only caused the grip about it to tighten. ‘Please!’ gasped Ann. ‘You’re hurting me!

Please
!’ But she was whirled on towards the windows.

She looked back at the other dancers but those who were not drifting towards the buffet tables were looking at her with amusement. The mask she wore effectively hid her unhappy expression from the watching Nyssa.

‘What
is
the Doctor doing?’ Nyssa wanted to know.

‘I fancy it’s more a case of what Ann’s doing,’ suggested Lord Cranleigh. ‘My guess is that she’s up to some prank involving you both. We’ll know soon enough. Come, let me get you some refreshment.’ He gently but firmly steered her away.

Working his way methodically along the wall, the Doctor had come close enough to the other end of the corridor to see something that had escaped his notice: another door. It had no jamb or surround like the others, being flush to the wall and was thus invisible to the Doctor when he first came out of the dark behind the wall of his room. The only indication that it was a door came from the small catch that served as a handle. The Doctor grasped it and pulled.

What lay beyond was no way back to the rest of the house but another cupboard. It contained no books... no clothes. Just several cardboard boxes and the crumpled body of a young man dressed in a short white coat, whose eyes were wide open and fixed in death.

5

Ann’s unhappy bewilderment had smouldered into anger.

This really was beyond a joke. She guessed her mysterious partner must be one of the visiting cricket team; a young man, outside her set, taking liberties because he’d already had too much to drink.

‘Stop this!’ she commanded. ‘Stop it, I say!’ But the bizarre gyration continued in the centre of the drawing room. Ann tried again to pull away from the implacable grip on her left hand but succeeded only in painfully wrenching her shoulder. ‘You’re hurting me!’ she cried.

For answer the Pierrot pulled her to him and seized her other hand. Gasping protests, Ann was pirouetted through the doors and into the hall to the foot of the stairs where the manic movement stopped. Again Ann tried to pull free but the grip on her was unrelenting.

‘All right!’ she gasped furiously. ‘You’ve had your fun.

Now stop it, d’you hear!’

She glared at the painted mask the bottom part of which was given an incongruous movement by the rasping breathing beyond; a sucking in and exhalation of breath that was accompanied by a sinister, guttural clicking.

Ann’s fury turned abruptly to fear. Suddenly she knew this was no joke. Suddenly she knew she was in great danger. The advance of cold terror had a curious calming affect on her: the cool consideration of a dangerous situation that is the birth of courage.

‘If you don’t let me go,’ she said quietly, ‘I shall call for help, whoever you are.’

The clicking beyond the mask changed to a low groan followed by a gurgling, inarticulate answer to her appeal.

Ann found herself being drawn by powerful arms even nearer to the fearful Pierrot. She screamed. ‘Help!’

The Pierrot pulled her towards the stairs with Ann wrenching at the grip of her attacker’s hands and kicking at his legs. Time and time again the toes of her shoes made desperate, brutal contact of which her persecutor seemed oblivious. Her screams intensified. ‘Help, somebody!

Help
!’

A footman came from the drawing room carrying an ice bucket in which were several empty champagne bottles. He had heard the cries for help before seeing the couple struggling together at the foot of the stairs. He hesitated.

He was a servant and was in no position to question the behaviour of guests even if that behaviour was violent. It was above his station in life to comment publicly on the horseplay of his superiors. Such high jinks had to be ignored. The gentry had laws unto themselves and the privacy of their own homes included the total discretion of their servants. The footman continued imperturbably on his way.

‘James!’

The scream stopped the footman in his tracks. He turned and saw anguish on Ann’s face in spite of the half mask, and he had been directly named. ‘Help me! Help me, please!’ The Pierrot was growling now like a ravening animal and a ferocious effort had dragged Ann to the third tread of the stairs.