Doctor Who_ Ghost Light - Marc Platt [27]
Ernest sat down. He noticed that Mrs Pritchard was hovering beside Josiah’s desk.
‘I am afraid that something unforseen has arisen,’ said Josiah. ‘I regret I must ask you to wait a little longer.’
This was becoming tiresome, but Ernest Matthews, like a terrier, never let go once he had taken a bite.
‘After coming so far sir, I have no intention of leaving until I have gained full satisfaction.’
‘Then we are in accord,’ smiled Josiah. ‘Mrs Pritchard, see to it that the dean’s time passes as quickly as possible.’
‘Very good, sir.’ Mrs Pritchard raised the handkerchief, into which she had just emptied half a bottle of chloroform, and smacked it full into Ernest’s face.
As his mind swam into a tunnel of oblivion, Ernest heard Gwendoline, his demurest of angels, embarking upon the jaunty chorus of her song.
‘That’s the way to the zoo,
That’s the way to the zoo.
The monkey house is nearly full
But there’s room enough for you.
Take a bus to Regent’s Park,
Make haste before it shuts.
‘I’ll come again on Monday
And I’ll bring you lots of nuts.’
Josiah regarded the unconscious Ernest, but his thoughts were elsewhere. If the escaped creature could learn to speak, then it might have learned to reason too. It could plot against him; it could smash everything that he, Josiah Samuel Smith, had worked for. Ridiculous! It was the basest of animals. It had simply learned to mimic human speech like a parrot.
‘For the collection, sir?’ enquired Mrs Pritchard, waiting patiently beside her victim.
‘No, not yet,’ said Josiah. His plans for the future would not be curtailed now. ‘This specimen is for the toybox. I think he’ll be most amusing.’
Nonetheless, Josiah had wasted too much time on Ernest Matthews. The creature had to be recaptured before it broke out into the house’s open areas. The Doctor must be found too and his help enlisted. If he proved troublesome, then there was plenty of room in the toybox.
Desperate to be on her own, Ace had found her way back to the trophy room. Yet it wasn’t easy to give the Doctor the slip: she heard him come in behind her and gently call her name but there was no way she was going to face him. She just kept thinking how he could do all this to her. She tried determinedly to keep her anger under control, but he was out of order and she had to say so.
‘It’s true, isn’t it? This is the house I told you about,’ she said.
He was right at her shoulder, speaking in her ear like a tempter, but she would not look at him. The piano tinkled mockingly away in the distance.
‘When you were fourteen, you came over the wall for a dare,’ said the Doctor.
‘That’s your surprise, isn’t it? Bringing me back here.
And it wasn’t a dare!’
‘Remind me what it was that you sensed when you got into the house. An aura of intense evil?’
What was this? she thought. Emotional therapy? He had gone far enough and she was going to turn the tables.
‘Don’t you have things you hate?’
The Doctor shrugged. ‘I can’t stand burnt toast and I loathe bus stations. They’re nasty places, full of lost souls and lost luggage.’
‘I told you I never wanted to come back here!’
‘And then there’s unrequited love,’ he continued sadly,
‘and tyranny and cruelty..
‘Too right!’
He began to edge round beside her. ‘We each have a universe of our own terrors to face.’
She met his gaze head on. ‘Then let me face them on my own terms!’
She turned away again and tried to concentrate on a display of neatly labelled crustacean shells. There was nothing else to say. Why couldn’t he leave her alone?
‘Don’t tell me you didn’t want to know what happened to this house?’ he persisted.
‘No!’
‘But you’ve already learned something that you’d never have recognized when you were fourteen.’
‘Like what?’
‘The nature of the horror you sensed here in a hundred years’ time.’
She knew he was right... as usual. And she had known the answer too if only she had stopped to think about it.
Somehow it was always worse when it was on Earth.
‘It’s alien,’ she said and the thought filled