Doctor Who_ Foreign Devils - Andrew Cartmel [40]
Elder-Main ran forward into the room and stopped in shock near the Doctor. 'Don't break anything sir –' he said. The Doctor seemed to not hear him. He was staring across the now cleared space of the bureau at the mirror mounted on the wall above. 'Zoe, do you remember me saying to you that there was something odd about this mirror?' Zoe came over and joined him, glad to leave Thor Upcott's corpse to Carnacki's attentions. 'Yes, I remember you mentioning something.' The Doctor was staring at the mirror. 'What do you notice about it?' Elder-Main was watching the Doctor, visibly trembling with anxiety as he hastily rearranged the bottles on the bureau. He seemed afraid that the Doctor was about to smash something delicate and priceless, ruining it forever. Zoe studied the mirror. 'For one thing,' she said, 'It's positioned so that someone on the couch – the seduction couch – can see themselves reflected in it.'
'Alternatively,' said the Doctor, staring into the strange gaze of his own reflection, 'it is so positioned as to provide a good view of the couch for someone standing behind the mirror.' 'Behind the mirror?'
Elder-Main suddenly gave a little tremor and a moan and said, 'All right, sir. You don't need to keep on with the cat and mouse game.' The Doctor turned to him in astonishment. 'What do you mean?'
'I confess,' said the butler. Everyone stared at him. 'What on earth are you talking about, man?' demanded Carnacki, rising from Thor's body. 'Are you saying that you committed these murders?' The butler, thought Zoe. The butler did it. No, it couldn't be.
In fact, Elder-Main was shaking his head vigorously. 'Not the murders sir, no. This is what I'm talking about.' He went to the bookshelf to the right of the dresser and pulled out a volume by de Sade. There was an immediate metallic click and the matching bookshelf on the other side of the dresser swung out from the wall, hinging like a door. 'All I'm confessing to is being inside there . . . And watching.' Elder-Main pulled the bookcase door fully open revealing a space behind, which he entered in what was obviously a familiar routine. The others followed him into a shallow cavity inside the wall, like a half-width corridor. This narrow space, its walls lined with rough lathes, extended either way into shadowy cobwebbed darkness, perhaps winding throughout the entire house. The space was dark except for immediately beside them, where a wide band of light entered via the mirror in Thor Upcott's bedroom. From this side of the wall it was as transparent as window glass, though with an odd silvery sheen to it. 'A two way mirror,' said the Doctor. 'Much as I surmised.' 'I don't understand,' said Carnacki.
'Mr Thor liked to have someone in here in the viewing gallery, sir,'
explained Elder-Main. 'To watch him when he was . . . entertaining. He said it gingered him up.'
'I see,' said Carnacki, although he still sounded baffled. 'And how long has this arrangement obtained?'
'Oh, years and years, sir. Ever since Mr Thor had the mirror installed.'
'I see,' repeated Carnacki, his voice growing tight with excitement as he began to see the implications. The Doctor watched in silence, letting Carnacki take the lead. 'And you were in here last night . . . ' The butler looked at him in the dim light from the mirror and suddenly turned and hurried back into the bedroom. The others followed him. Elder-Main closed the bookcase behind them, sealing off the passage. Then he turned and stared at them with a haunted look. 'Mr Carnacki's right,' said the Doctor. 'You were in there last night and you saw the murder take place.'
Elder-Main went to the bureau and pulled the stopper out of a crystal decanter with shaking hands. He poured himself a large glass of whisky,