Doctor Who_ Camera Obscura - Lloyd Rose [68]
‘I don’t want to be rodents. Rodents won’t have a chance against Sabbath even if he is the Coyote. This is too much like that cartoon planet, Anj. I don’t feel I was at my best there.’
‘But all they did was tear up the house. Oh, and jerk the cat up the chimney.’
‘Cats and chimneys. It’s not relevant.’
‘No,’ she said gloomily.
‘It’s not the image we want in front of us when we confront him.’
‘No.’
‘I mean, we worked with him once, remember?’
‘That was before he tore out the Doctor’s heart.’
‘Yeah,’ he admitted.
She said in a small voice: ‘I can still hear his screams.’
‘Yeah,’ said Fitz after a beat.
They walked on for a few minutes without speaking.
‘But, Anj,’ he said finally, ‘this was the Doctor’s idea. He must have had a good reason for it. He just didn’t tell us.’
‘As usual,’ she muttered. ‘Here’s the park. You’d better consult that very useful map.’
The house, when they located it, was dark.
‘What if he’s not home?’ Anji said worriedly. ‘He could be out cruising the centuries in that timesub of his.’
‘One way to find out.’ Fitz yanked the bell pull. If this produced any noise, it didn’t come through the thick door. They waited. Fitz stepped back and looked the house up and down. ‘Nice place.’
‘I suppose we’re at the right one. That map wasn’t exactly to scale.’
‘I didn’t see anything that could have been those puffy shapes, did you?’
This question was apparently inconsequential to Anji; in any case, she didn’t reply. Fitz walked up and down, admiring the long windows. ‘I think the curtains are drawn tight. So someone might be here.’
‘Well, we can’t just go from mansion to mansion pulling the bell at this hour.’
‘Rich area,’ Fitz observed. ‘Bound to be well patrolled. We’d better hope we don’t end up jailed for trespassing.’
‘Great,’ she muttered.
‘I, at least, am dressed like a gent. You look like a, what, an urchin? Or Is that a fish?’
‘Both,’ she said glumly. She was starting down the steps to join Fitz when the door silently swung open. They peered in at an elegant entrance hall, softly lit by a gas-flame chandelier. At the back, two graceful matching staircases curved up and met at a high landing, above which a large bevelled window caught gleams from the chandelier. The floor was composed of black and white squares of marble, softly lustrous in the gaslight.
‘Cor,’ said Fitz.
‘Showy,’ she sniffed, though she was impressed in spite of herself. ‘The door opening by itself like that. Like that haunted house at Disneyland.’
‘Could have been answered by an ape,’ Fitz observed.
Anji had nothing to say to that. They stepped inside. The door quietly shut. Anji half-expected arms holding candelabra to swing out from the wall, an image from an old film she couldn’t quite remember. But nothing of the sort happened. Fitz simply pointed to a door to the left that stood open, and they walked through it into a drawing room in which Sabbath was sitting by the fire.
Confounding Anji’s prejudices, he was wearing a beautifully tailored dark suit. He lounged in a wing chair to one side of the fireplace, facing them, his long legs stretched out comfortably, a large brandy snifter in one hand. In front of him, not too near the fire, sat a small, slender-legged table bearing a bottle and two more snifters. A pair of wing chairs were drawn near to this. Tall candles in equally tall silver candlesticks burned on either end of the marble mantel. Sabbath smiled, showing his fine white teeth. Not for the first time, Anji was struck by his eyes, merry, brilliant and cruel – the eyes of a genius gypsy, she thought unwillingly. Maybe even the gypsies’ king.
‘We were about to give up,’ she said with irritation.
‘Never give up,’ Sabbath purred. ‘Isn’t that the Doctor’s motto? Please, have a seat and a drink. I can recommend the brandy.’
They sat and he poured for them. Anji glimpsed an embossed imperial seal on the bottle. She warmed the glass in her hands, an action that drew an amused approving glance from Sabbath, and took a hesitant sip, then stared down at the liquid she had just tasted.
‘Ambrosial