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'Speaking of the family,' said the Doctor, 'Was Colonel Marlowe your uncle by blood or by marriage?'

'By blood of course. He was our father's brother. Why?'

'Because your brother seemed oddly unwilling to answer that simple question.'

'I can't imagine why. Probably just being bloody-minded.'

'Well, thank you for answering my questions.' The Doctor went and joined Zoe by the door.

'You're not going, are you Doctor?' The man suddenly had the vulnerable eyes of a lonely child. 'Surely you have time for a game of chess?' Thor turned to his chessboard with a hungry look. 'No I'm sorry, but we must be going. And I think Zoe would be safer if she came with me.'

'Safer?' Thor chuckled. 'You're depriving me of every possible pleasure, Doctor.' He settled onto his bed and, puffing at his cigar, picked up a newspaper. Zoe got the feeling that they had been dismissed. But the Doctor was leaving in his own time. 'Be careful Mr Upcott,' he said. Thor looked bleakly at him over the newspaper. 'Why, Doctor?'

'Because I have reason to believe your life is in danger.'

Chapter Eight

The Doctor and Zoe were in the corridor, moving rapidly away from Thor's room when they heard footsteps. They turned to see Pemberton at the far end of the corridor, running towards them. He ran with a strange spavined, splay-footed gait. 'Doctor!' he yelled. The Doctor and Zoe turned to watch him approach. 'Mr Upcott seems upset about something,' murmured the Doctor. Upcott was running along the corridor at top speed, flailing his long limbs. He careened into a small three legged table with a dusty green potted aspidistra sitting on it and sent the shrub spinning off to crash on the floor, spilling rich black loam on the white marble. He ran up to them gasping. 'My wife!' he gasped.

Half an hour later Zoe was standing beside the Doctor in the bathroom of the late Mrs Upcott. It was a big room with a fireplace at one end and a view from the north facing window out over the rolling fields of Kent in the direction of Canterbury. A skylight in the sloping roof let in ample daylight on the bathtub, a tall proud creation of cast iron and enamel. In the tub was the dead woman, Millicent Upcott. She sat there, only her head and shoulders showing in a cooling tub full of soapy water with an incongruous wooden duck floating forlornly on the foamy surface. Carnacki crouched over her, studying the tattoo on her forehead with a magnifying glass. 'Another red dragon,' he said. The Doctor moved restlessly to the window and peered out at the rolling miles of snow, gleaming in the afternoon sunlight. Zoe joined him.

'So much for your theory about the killer only operating by night, Doctor,' she said in a shaky voice. It helped to try and pretend to be a detective, assisting the Doctor and Carnacki in the investigation of the murder. 'It's still fully daylight.'

The Doctor wagged his head in rapid disagreement. 'I'm not sure I'm quite ready to abandon that theory.' Just then the bathroom door opened and Pemberton Upcott came in, his face drawn and haggard. He looked at them and then went to the bathtub. He crouched beside it, as close as he could get to the body of his wife. He knuckled a tear from his eye. 'Dead,' he said.

The Doctor, Carnacki and Zoe all murmured conventional words of consolation, the way you do when someone is bereaved.

'Murdered,' rasped Pemberton Upcott, his shoulders heaving histri

onically.

'Evidently,' said the Doctor.

'Just like the others,' said Pemberton, his voice a raw sob. He closed his eyes and put his face against his wife's cold cheek. 'With not a single incriminating mark left on her body.'

The Doctor and Carnacki exchanged a glance that Pemberton was not meant to see.

Zoe was desperate to ask them what was going on. But this was clearly not the time or place. Pemberton kneeled by the tub, hunched over his wife's body as if protecting her naked form from the gaze of the others in the room, and sobbed quietly.

'Do you