Doctor Who_ All-Consuming Fire - Andy Lane [21]
'Yes,' she said, and I could tell that she was struggling to suppress some deep emotion. 'For my husband's sake.'
'And your husband is dead?'
'Yes, how did you know?'
'The footprints outside. We have been the first men to walk from the gate to the door in some time.'
I reached across to pat her hand. She was really a most attractive woman.
'Patrick was killed in. . .' she sobbed, and took a tiny lace handkerchief from her sleeve '. . . the most terrible manner. He had been in London on business . . . he was the captain of a lighter, you see, and he had to go to Admiralty House . . . something to do with his licence . . . and he was making his way back through Trafalgar Square, and..'
She broke down in tears, dabbing at her eyes with the lace. I could fill in the rest of the story myself. The Trafalgar Square riots were still a fresh scar in the mind of every decent Englishman. The summer had been completely rainless. Sewage, instead of being washed away, had been left to rot in the streets. The heat had aggravated the unsanitary conditions. Squalor bred disaffection, disaffection turned to unrest, and unrest led to riots. Trafalgar Square had seen the worse: a mob of drunken and enraged loungers who destroyed property in a wild orgy of wanton behaviour. General Sir Charles Warren, Commissioner for Police in the Metropolitan Area, had taken it into his incompetent head to order a sabre-charge by the Life Guards. The riot became a rout, but at the cost of men's lives. It had been a black day for British justice.
'My dear woman,' I murmured, placing a reassuring hand on her shoulder.
'He was just passing through...' she wailed. 'He wasn't even involved! But he was wearing his uniform, and they mistook him for a policeman...'
'You said that you were studying for his sake? Is this studying connected to the Library of St John the Beheaded, in Holborn?'
She looked up at the Doctor, so surprised that she forgot she was crying.
'Yes, but how . . .?'
'There has been some trouble,' I said. 'Nothing that should bother you, but we need to talk to all the people who have visited the Library recently.'
'I was there last week: She looked more closely at the Doctor. 'In fact, I do believe that you were as well.'
She glanced over at me. A thrill ran through my nerves, a feeling similar to the descriptions written by those who have received shocks from electrical equipment.
'I am sure I would have remembered your face, Dr Watson, had you been there,' she said, and lowered her gaze.
'If you don't mind me asking,' I said, 'for what reason were you at the Library?'
'My husband was in fear of his life, even before he left for London that day,'
she said simply. 'He . . . ah!' She raised a hand to her heaving bosom.
'Excuse me, gentlemen, a touch of heartburn, I fear.'
'I am a doctor,' I said quickly. 'Perhaps . . .?'
'I am sure it will pass,' she said, and smiled slightly. 'But thank you for your kind offer. My husband, as I said, was in fear for his life. He talked of some plan that he had stumbled on, something hideous and important, but no matter how I pleaded, he would not tell me. 'Best not to know,' he said. She sighed. 'I believe that he was killed because of his knowledge. I believe that he was lured to Trafalgar Square and, under cover of the riot, he was murdered.'
Her plain statement caused shivers to run up and down my spine.
'And the Library?' the Doctor prompted.
'I said that Alexander would not talk of his discovery. That is not quite true.
He would have nightmares, and during them he would murmur words which were strange to me. When I was sorting through his possessions following .
. . following the riots, I discovered a membership card