Doctor Who_ All-Consuming Fire - Andy Lane [25]
Mac's eyes were starting from their sockets, and I was dimly aware that nearby conversations were dying away as the habitués of the Tank became aware of our morbid conversation.
'By 1763,' the Doctor continued, 'enough people had died that Jonas Dupont of Germany published a book on the subject entitled De Incendiis Corporis Humani Spontaneis. You yourself, Doctor, may have come across a report in the 1835 issue of the Transactions of the Medical Society of Tennessee concerning a Mr James Hamilton, who was out walking one day when a flame burst like a lighted gas-jet from his leg. Mr Hamilton was lucky enough to be able to extinguish the flame, but the Countess von Gorlitz was not so fortunate. You might have read about her in the edition of The Times dated 18 April 1850, Inspector. She burned to a cinder on the other side of a curtain to her husband without him noticing a thing. Doctor Watson, of course, would be familiar with the more detailed reports of her death carried by The Lancet and The London Medical Gazette.'
Silence had descended across the entire room. The Doctor's voice -
hushed, and yet penetrating - commanded the attention of the assembled multitude. My mouth was dry, and I drained my tankard of porter in a single gulp. I took a deep breath and wiped my moustache. The smell of roast beef somewhere in the vicinity made me acutely and incongruousfy aware of how long it had been since I had eaten.
'And what of Mrs Rooney, whose cremated corpse was discovered in a friend's living room on Christmas Eve 1885 - less than two years ago, gentlemen - in Seneca, Illinois, along with the body of her husband, who had slept through her death but died of asphyxiation from the smoke. There were no signs of fire in the room, save for the burnt floorboards beneath her and a slight scorching to a tablecloth, and nothing remained of her but a blackened skull, part of a vertebra, a foot and a mound of ashes.'
The Doctor's voice rolled around the final syllables as if he were pronouncing the crack of doom itself. The bar was silent, its inhabitants frozen with drinks half-way to their mouths, or cigars dropping glowing ash upon their waistcoats, spellbound by the Doctor's recitation. I felt the cold hand of terror clutch at my heart: such things should not be, not in Victoria's England, not in a rational scientific world. They belonged to an older, darker age.
'Another drink, anyone?' said the Doctor brightly. 'I appear to have finished my sarsaparilla.'
As conversations sprung up again across the room and the Doctor made for the bar, Mac's eyes met mine.
'Well; I'm convinced,' he said. 'And I've got enough evidence to silence Bradstreet. He's a superstitious man, and much afeared of the medical profession. If I can quote references at him the way your friend here did to us, there'll be no case to answer.'
The Doctor returned with a pint for each of us and another sarsaparilla for himself.
'What is the matter, Doctor?' I asked, noting his frown.
'Don't drink anything,' he whispered. 'I think somebody is trying to poison us!'
'Great Scott!' I cried. Inspector MacDonald lowered the glass from which he was about to sip.
'What makes you think that?' he asked carefully.
'I caught a whiff of the porter as the barman pulled the pints,' the Doctor hissed, his gaze darting around the room. 'There's strychnine in it! We may already have ingested a lethal dose from the last round.'
MacDonald laughed, and dug me in the ribs with his elbow. I could not help smiling.
'You're obviously new to city ways, Doctor,' he said. 'You'll find strychnine in most London beers. Gives it a bit of body.'
The Doctor gulped, and took a sip of his sarsaparilla.
'I trust that soft drinks are safe,' he said.
The conversation moved into other channels as we drank, and we parted as dusk fell. The Doctor and I decided to walk back to Baker Street together, the evening being so pleasant and our spirits buoyed up with drink. As we strolled, I leaning upon my stick, he swinging