Doctor Who_ Ghost Light - Marc Platt [23]
He did not like their implications.
He was aware of Ace’s chin resting on his shoulder as she also followed Nimrod’s departure. ‘He’s a Neanderthal, isn’t he?’ she whispered.
He nodded. ‘The finest example I’ve seen this side of the Pleistocene era.’
‘I am no longer surprised by anything in this place,’
announced Ernest, who was becoming vexed at the lack of attention he was receiving. He was ignored as Josiah muttered private instructions to Mrs Pritchard.
The Doctor waited for Ace to ask him why Nimrod was there. He was surprised when the question did not come and wondered whether she was working out the answer for herself. He hoped she would tell him too. To his annoyance, he noticed that in their absence, Ernest had finished off the rest of the seedcake.
Suddenly, the Doctor remembered Ace’s dinner-jacket and remarked, ‘Did I ever take you to see Georges Sand?’
‘Who’s he?’ she asked.
‘She was Frederic Chopin’s girlfriend. How about Der Rosenkavalier? Die Fledermaus? ‘
‘Opera!’ she grimaced.
He shrugged and tried again. ‘Vesta Tilley?’
Ace thought for a moment and then concluded triumphantly, ‘Burlington Bertie from Bow!’
‘Hnun. And yours needs some attention,’ he commented, affectionately straightening her tie. The male impersonators of the Victorian music hall were probably not what Ace had in mind, but she had nevertheless skilfully adapted her appearance to suit her surroundings on her own terms, which was just as well, thought the Doctor.
From somewhere nearby he heard the clink of metal. A couple of centuries before, the sound could have meant that instruments of torture were being set up. These days it would be the laying of cutlery for dinner.
Josiah finished his discourse with Mrs Pritchard and turned back to the company.
‘Shall we go in to dinner, my friends?’ he smiled.
‘This way please,’ said Mrs Pritchard. She led the way through another door into the blood-red dining room.
Ernest rose and went willingly, followed by Gwendoline and Ace. The Doctor mused for a moment on the perversities that made such a satisfying theatrical experience of tragedy. And now it was dinner time in Josiah’s house; how very civilized the business of torture had become. Breaking from his reverie, he saw his host waiting upon him. Josiah leered, his arm outstretched like a showman indicating the way.
Ah well, head on the block again, thought the Doctor.
He brushed some crumbs of cake from his jumper and went into dinner.
6
That’s the Way to the Zoo
Even as he loped along the painted tunnel towards the chamber, Nimrod knew that he had been wrong to delay.
Redvers Fenn-Cooper had said little that Nimrod did not already know: ‘The burning light is angry. It sleeps in the heart of the interior.’ But the explorer had good cause to remember: it was just a week since he had arrived at the house as another of Mr Smith’s guests and managed to break into one of the restricted areas.
Nimrod had got the blame for that, but he suspected that Fenn-Cooper had slipped past the obstacles far too easily. From Mrs Pritchard’s triumphant smirk, he supposed that she had been indulging her malicious streak again. There was no love lost between Nimrod and the housekeeper. If she could cause him trouble, she would. If, in this case, it also caused Redvers Fenn-Cooper to see just enough to drive him insane, then that only deepened her satisfaction.
‘And if it wakens, we shall all burn,’ Redvers had raved, speaking aloud the fears Nimrod had tried to ignore. The manservant left him babbling about doctors, living stones and Doctor Livingstone. Pausing only to stop in the drawing room to reassure the Doctor of Redvers’ safety, Nimrod had made his way with dread to the resting place of the Burning One.
The curtained chamber showed no immediate signs of damage: the