Doctor Who_ All-Consuming Fire - Andy Lane [73]
We've been spending our time trying to find those boxes. A couple of locals say they saw them being unloaded at the station, but after that the trail goes cold. Jabalhabad is a large place, and they could be anywhere.
Colonel Warburton has been a brick (is that what they say in Victorian times? Slang is so ephemeral: here today, old hat tomorrow). His bungalow is a large, rambling, mud-brick building. It's thatched on top, has walls made of reeds covered in cow-dung and whitewash, rattan screens over the windows and muslin ceilings. I've always been good on materials. I'm sure there are things living up there: I can hear them moving round, and the muslin shifts from time to time as if something has rested its weight on it.
We were introduced to Warburton's secretary: a thin, rather diffident man who held out his hand for shaking like a man might proffer a rather dubious anchovy. His name was Smithee. I decided straight away that I didn't like him: an impression reinforced at dinner yesterday when a kitehawk managed to swoop down and make off with the roast as it was being carried along the veranda from the kitchen to the dining room. The rest of us cursed and raved, but Smithee walked calmly out and took potshots at the bird with a revolver. It wouldn't have done any good - the food would have been inedible, whatever happened - but it seemed to make him feel better.
I was getting ready for this bean-feast tonight up at the Great Panjandrum's palace, when I realized I was missing something. I'd 'liberated' a full set of evening wear from my disappointed suitor back in Bombay, and studied enough men one night to know where the cummerbund went, but somehow I must have dropped one of the cufflinks. I couldn't eat dinner with one sleeve dangling in the soup, so I decided to borrow one from Colonel Warburton. I wandered around the bungalow - which was TARDIS-like in its deceptively spacious interior - but couldn't find him. I popped out on to the veranda, just in case he was out there, and found his wife Gloria instead.
Her hair was piled high on her head, and she was wearing a floor-length gown and white gloves up to her elbows. That didn't faze me: the archaeology of fashion was a minor interest of mine. What did surprise me slightly was the Indian bearer on his knees beside her with his hands under her gown.
'Could I trouble you for a cuff . . : I said, and trailed off into silence. Don't get. me wrong - I'm no prude, it's just that all the research I've ever done on nineteenth-century Earth suggests that the British were sexually repressed to an incredible degree. The rumour that they put little skirts on piano legs is probably just a joke, but I did read once about a Victorian woman who had little suits made for her goldfish, and another one in France who set aside money in her will for clothes for snowmen. Faced with this scene, I had one of those moments I've started getting recently where, for a second, I don't know where or when I am.
She must have seen my confusion and mistaken it for embarrassment.
'Insecticide,' she confided. 'Keeps the mosquitoes out.' The bearer withdrew his hands, stood up and bowed to her. He was holding a large, syringe-like object. I could see faint wisps of a white, powdery substance creeping from beneath her hem.
'How do you avoid the snakes?' I asked snappily. 'Use a mongoose?'
She smiled and changed the subject.
'My husband and Mr Holmes are taking a turn around the grounds. Was there something that I could help you with?'
I smiled back.
'No, thank you,' I said, turning to go.
There was an explosion somewhere nearby. The sound was curiously dull and flat. I could smell an acrid, burnt odour. Cordite? Mrs Warburton and I looked at each other.
I ran to where the sound had come from. It was the bathroom. There was nothing but an ominous silence in there now. I kicked the door in.