Doctor Who_ Camera Obscura - Lloyd Rose [71]
The Doctor got out of bed, rather slowly, and made his way to the window. It was chained shut, the frame too narrow for him to squeeze through even if he broke the panes. He rubbed the dirty glass with his palm and peered out over an expanse of rolling, treeless country, almost wasteland, covered with sparse grass and bracken. In the distance, against a lowering sky, loomed a tower of tumbled stones, a rock pile made by a giant.
‘Dartmoor,’ he breathed.
There was water in the basin. The Doctor drank some from his hands, then washed his face. Dimly, he remembered Chiltern coming at him with a hypodermic back in the autopsy room. They must have made the journey to Dartmoor by train – Chiltern would have had to drug him again periodically on the trip. Had he travelled in a compartment as a very sick private patient with his personal physician, or in another damned box? His general stiffness made him suspect the latter.
He tried the door. Unlocked. He stepped into a long hallway illuminated only by a stained-glass window at the far end. Approaching this, he saw that it depicted a number of coats of arms on a dark blue ground. He didn’t find one for the name Chiltern. Not a family home then. Probably bought when the line of the original owners died out or went bankrupt.
He descended an oak staircase with a heavy, ornately carved baluster. The lower hall walls were covered with linen-fold panelling, though the floor was uncarpeted flagstone. Cold In the winter, but then, whoever spent much time in their halls? He’d found that he usually ran through the ones he encountered.
The massive front door was locked. Above it was another stained-glass window, this one a depiction of the four seasons that the Doctor thought looked Flemish. Imported and added early this century, no doubt. Everything else he’d seen appeared to be Jacobean. The place had the uncomfortable, empty chill of grand seventeenth-century houses – too much space, too little warmth.
He looked back along the hall. A door beyond the stairs that probably led to the kitchen and workrooms. And a door to either side. Eeny, meeny, miney, mo. He pushed at the left-hand door. Locked. Well, this was being made easy for him. He crossed to the right hand door and opened it.
The room he entered was sparsely furnished. Wainscotted walls with no pictures. Tall shelves with only a few books. A worn wing chair on the hearth. A threadbare Oriental rug. A few other old and neglected furnishings. Chiltern was seated at a table by the window, reading some papers. He looked up and removed his glasses. ‘Ah, here you are. How do you feel?’
‘Like I’ve been drugged and locked in a box.’
‘Exactly the case,’ said Chiltern. ‘Do you want something to eat?’
‘I’d like some water.’
‘Help yourself.’ Chiltern indicated a dented silver pitcher on a sideboard next to the door. The Doctor poured himself a glass and drank it, then poured and drank another.
‘Who’s running the shop?’ he asked.
‘If you’re referring to the clinic, my able associate Mr Mayview. He often takes over my duties when I have to be away.’
‘Nice to have good help. You’re lucky you didn’t kill me, you know. I sometimes react weirdly to drugs for human beings.’
‘Yes, I thought of that, but there was no other way.’
‘You know,’ said the Doctor, ‘I want to help you. I keep telling you that, but it never seems to penetrate.’
‘What are you doing here?’ said Chiltern. ‘On Earth?’
‘I came for the waters.’ The Doctor sensed a presence behind him and turned his head. O’Keagh. ‘Oh, Mr O’Keagh, there you are. Tell me, how exactly did you kill Scale?’
O’Keagh put out a muscular hand and pushed the Doctor firmly into the middle of the room. Then he shut the door and leaned against it, arms crossed.
‘He thinks I’m mad, doesn’t he?’ said the Doctor.
‘I think you’re mad,’ said Chiltern.
‘And yet you want my assistance.’
‘Newton was quite mad. It doesn’t necessarily affect the reasoning power.’
‘I accept the compliment.’ The Doctor’s eyes went to the window behind Chiltern. The alienist followed his glance.