Doctor Who_ Foreign Devils - Andrew Cartmel [24]
Pemberton suppressed his irritation. 'It was locked from the inside. And only the Colonel had a key.'
For the first time Zoe made herself look down, and saw the man from the lounge sprawled there on the floor. The red faced man who had so mercilessly heckled Celandine Gibson in the course of her seance. He wasn't so red faced now.
'There was only one key to the billiard room?' persisted Carnacki. 'Yes, it's sort of my private retreat. I don't even let my brother in here, much less anyone else.'
'What happens if a guest wants a game of billiards?' said the Doctor. Pemberton looked at him with exasperation. 'Then they just have to make do with one of the tables in the smoking room.'
Poor guests, thought Zoe.
'So there's just the one key,' concluded Pemberton.
'Yet you lent it to the Colonel,' said Carnacki, speaking for the first time since they had entered the room.
'The Colonel was my uncle,' said Pemberton, looking down at the body. He said this with an air of finality, as if it explained everything. But Carnacki apparently wasn't satisfied. 'Why were you so helpful?' he said.
'What do you mean? He was my uncle.' Pemberton looked at Carnacki with barely concealed anger.
Carnacki was unperturbed. 'Yes, but uncle or not, he had offended
you.'
'What do you mean? Who says that?'
The Doctor intervened. 'No one says it. But it was perfectly obvious to anyone who was present in the lounge during Miss Gibson's performance. You were dreadfully embarrassed by his loud remarks.' Zoe looked at Pemberton Upcott in a new way. He suddenly looked like a potential murderer.
'Remarks,' added Carnacki, 'that were boorish and antagonistic in the extreme.' He looked at the man lying on the carpet. 'While not wishing to speak badly of the dead, the Colonel's behaviour was ill mannered and unforgivable.' He looked at Pemberton Upcott with a cold light in his eyes. 'And he was behaving this way on an occasion where you had gone to a great deal of trouble to arrange an entertainment for your guests. An occasion that meant a great deal to you, one where you might say you felt your honour, or at least your self esteem, was at stake. And here was the Colonel, trying to spoil everything.' The Doctor shook his head and added, 'I seem to remember some particularly unfortunate remarks about squirrels.'
Pemberton looked down at the body on the floor then back up at the others. When he spoke, he seemed genuinely sad and for the first time Zoe had a sense of the man as a real human being with feelings. 'Uncle was outspoken and something of a fool, it's true. But he wasn't a bad old skin. And while I was furious with him for making a display of himself, I had some understanding of what motivated his remarks.'
'What could motivate such rudeness?' said Carnacki, stepping towards the drinks table and looking at a brandy snifter that sat there, with an inch of amber spirit still in it. He looked at Pemberton. 'Besides strong drink I mean.'
'My uncle wasn't drunk. At least not by his standards. No, it was fear rather than intoxication that caused him to behave like that.' 'Fear?' said Zoe. 'Fear of the supernatural,' said the Doctor.
Pemberton gave him a sharp look. 'That's right. My uncle had a life long dread of anything to do with the occult or the unknown. How did you know that?'
'By his remarks in front of the medium. Why else should a man be so abusive to a young woman, unless he feared what she might reveal to him?' The Doctor crouched beside the dead man. 'Isn't that right, Colonel?' Then the Doctor looked up at the others. 'And he fled from the room, as soon as evidence of Miss Gibson's powers became impossible to ignore. That confirmed my assessment of him.' All the talk of drink seemed to have made Pemberton thirsty. He moved to the table and poured a measure from the cognac decanter. 'It's true. He was very shaken by the seance.'
'A man who was forced to reappraise his beliefs,' said Carnacki. 'A man therefore in great spiritual distress.'
Pemberton nodded. 'He wanted to be left alone.