Doctor Who_ Earthworld - Jacqueline Rayner [61]
Smears of blood on the walls. But people hadn’t wanted to worry me. Hadn’t wanted to tell me what sort of hands I was going to leave my planet in.
‘Their mother – you know she was a geneticist? – she taught them science, no doubt hoping it would prove a distraction. Hanstrum – yes, as my chief technician he was allowed access to Elizabethan and the girls too – taught them about technology. Even at such a young age they excelled. I was told about their achievements, and I was so proud! I was so stupid, so blind.
‘Then. . . that morning. Hanstrum and I were just starting our daily conference. A servant came in, and told us that there were screams coming from Elizabethan’s room. We rushed straight there. There were guards, servants everywhere, panicking and yelling. And there, in the room – my beautiful wife lying on the floor. Her eyes – her beautiful dark eyes – still open. They seemed to be looking straight at me, begging, pleading for something. The girls were there. They were all screaming. They were all covered in blood. They said, later, that they’d been trying to help her. They said she’d called for them on a communicator, and they’d come to her. But she was dead when they arrived.’
‘And did she make that call, do you know?’ the Doctor asked.
‘Yes, she did. Hanstrum had been with her at the time. She was unhappy, didn’t want to be alone. He was leaving for his meeting with me, and she called for the girls to join her. It wasn’t that unusual.’
‘And it must be true, if Mr Hanstrum says so?’
The President frowned. ‘Hanstrum is completely trustworthy. My right-hand man.’
‘And did anyone see your wife after Mr Hanstrum left her? Before the girls arrived?’
Several Singalongs
111
‘No. There were guards outside her room all the time. No one else went in.’
‘Really? I see.’
‘But they heard her. No one else went in. She – she used to sing. It was one of the things I loved about her. When she was happy she couldn’t stop singing!’
‘When she was happy. But she obviously sang when she was unhappy, too.’
‘No. . . no, that wasn’t like her. . . ’
‘You’re beginning to see, aren’t you?’ said the Doctor. ‘It doesn’t make sense.
You don’t have to relive the rest. I’m sure I can guess. Dragging the girls away, locking them up – for their own safety, as much as anything, I’m sure you kidded yourself. They said they didn’t do it, but who was going to believe them? They were known to be violent and unbalanced. There was the evidence against them. And as they were young and impressionable, and irreversibly damaged by the loss of the one person who cared about them, they probably even came to believe it themselves. Just one more thing. With your wife in a coma, why didn’t you put her aside? Take a new wife, have some less homicidal children, maybe pass the succession on to them?’
Hanstrum looked confused. ‘I couldn’t. It would be against Earth law. Elizabethan had fulfilled her wifely duties, she had provided me with heirs – however undesirable. It would be unlawful to put her aside.’
‘But if she had died – that is, if you had known she was dead? Then you could have remarried? Had more children?’
‘Yes.’
‘Thank you,’ said the Doctor. ‘That’s all I wanted to know.’ He got up. And then sat down again. ‘Oh, just one more thing. . . ’
‘Yes?’ said Hoover, not quite meeting the Doctor’s gaze.
‘You say your wife was a geneticist?’
‘She was. A very great one.’
‘Hmm.’ The Doctor looked interested. ‘I’d have liked to have asked her if she’d studied the works of Gregor Mendel.’
The President shrugged. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t know who you mean.’
The Doctor smiled reassuringly. ‘Oh, he’s no one to worry about. I suppose his name’s been lost to history with so much else. But he was generally considered to be the father of genetics on Earth. The eyes have it, you might say.’
‘You don’t think they did it, do you?’ Hoover was frowning, but still seemed