Doctor Who_ Father Time - Lance Parkin [8]
There was no answer. The snow, was falling faster now, it was even beginning to drift up against the side of the police box. Despite her scarf and gloves, Mrs Castle was starting to get a little cold. More importantly, she knew Arnold could be seriously injured, and that she had to get help to him.
She tried the door handle, and was surprised when the door opened – she had expected it to be locked. The door was solid oak, and very heavy, but it opened silently and reassuringly. With a nervous look around, Mrs Castle stepped inside, out of the wind and the snow.
The hallway was dark. Some people have a telephone in the hall, but Mrs Castle was disappointed to discover that the owners of this house didn’t. She stepped, ever so carefully, further along the long hallway. She felt very guilty, walking around someone else’s house. Whatever the circumstances, it didn’t feel right.
‘Hello?’ she called out, but there was no reply.
The carpet was thick, and quite old by the look of it. But the tables and picture frames were good quality. Mrs Castle wondered if she should take her boots off – she’d wiped her feet outside, but there would still be slush on them. She told herself off for being so silly – she was breaking and entering, after all. The owners wouldn’t mind the dirty footprints – they’d mind the person who made them.
The front door closed behind her, the latch clicking.
Mrs Castle was worried that the owners of the house would find her. Out in the country, people had shotguns. She was an intruder, and the people here could be old, or scared of burglars. If they were in the habit of leaving their door unlocked in the night, then she wouldn’t be surprised if there had been burglars here in the past.
‘Hello?’ she called again.
There was a long, carpeted staircase leading upstairs, and the hallway led through to a gloomy kitchen. There was one other door, down here, and as Mrs Castle approached she realised there was a light on.
She knocked on the door.
‘Excuse me,’ she said, as politely as she could manage.
No one answered. Mrs Castle was beginning to think the owners were out. When she went out she sometimes left a light on to fool burglars. Of course, if the people who lived here were that worried about burglars, she would have advised them to lock their front door.
She went into the room. The remains of a log fire were glowing in the fireplace at one end, and candlesticks were dotted about, casting warmth and shadowy light around the room.
The room was cluttered with old furniture, heavy-framed paintings of people and places, chunks of machinery and bits of scientific apparatus. There was an old microscope, and a very modern-looking telescope.
Next to a huge armchair in the middle of the room was a pile of books – all sorts of books: leather-bound hardbacks, cheap paperbacks, big textbooks, even a couple of Blue Peter annuals. All of them had bookmarks, and on top of the pile was a travel chess set, quite an old, battered one. There was a game in progress, and Mrs Castle (who was something of an expert) guessed that it had been under way for some time. Despite herself, Mrs Castle bent over to get a better look at the game.
It was then that she saw there was a man, fast asleep in the armchair.
He didn’t look like a farmer – he looked like a poet. Mrs Castle knew, of course, that farmers didn’t always look like farmers, and so some of them might look like poets. She knew a few poets from a local writing group, and they were scruffy enough to be farmers. But she knew what she meant.
He was not an old man, but not really a young man, either – he looked older than she was, but she was only twenty-six. His long face was oval, with an aristocratic nose and a full mouth. He had a high forehead, framed with long light-brown hair. He looked warm and peaceful, and his skin was milky pale. He wore a long, dark,