Doctor Who_ The Adventures of Henrietta Street - Lawrence Miles [72]
Given this zealotry, it’s notable that Scarlette managed to extricate herself and Lisa-Beth from the scene of the butcher’s shop murder so easily. Even without her glass totem, Scarlette had the power to charm the socks off the local watchmen (France, like Britain, still distrusted the idea of a fully professional police force). A doubly impressive feat, when one considers that French wasn’t even her first language. She walked proudly away from the boucherie, commanding admiring glances from the men as she passed them by, Lisa-Beth skulking behind her with somewhat less enthusiasm.
The two women still had vastly different styles. Lisa-Beth was as blunt as ever, while Scarlette understood that charm and persuasion were the real weapons of choice for those of her tradition. To make the Tower of London vanish, she once said, all one had to do was talk everybody in the city into seeing it vanish, and she put great store in the fact that the word ‘glamour’ – which had once only described a kind of magical enchantment – was now beginning to have a far more fashionable meaning. But the women worked well together nonetheless, particularly now that all Lisa-Beth’s secrets were out in the open.
It’s a fact, judging by Lisa-Beth’s journals, that she recognised Juliette at once on the night of the March ball. So where had they met before, and why was their relationship spoken of in such hushed tones and vague rumours?
The simple answer is: it’s impossible to say for certain. Lisa-Beth gives teasing hints in her journals, but never comes out and says it. The best clue we have is in the nicknames Lisa-Beth gives her colleagues. Time and again, Juliette is referred to as ‘the Flower’. This might seem a harmless enough appellation, perhaps a slightly mocking reference to Juliette’s somewhat vulnerable nature. But other sources lend a more ominous significance to it. Nonetheless, whatever had passed between them in Manchester, by the time of the Paris murder Scarlette and Lisa-Beth were comfortable enough with each other’s company to return to their room at the guesthouse and openly discuss their next move.
It’s around this point that the Doctor’s narrative can be resumed. From hereon his story becomes slightly less fantastic, as the scene was reported by a witness who was, within limits, reasonably reliable. Because when the Doctor awoke from unconsciousness, he was to find himself on board Sabbath’s warship.
The Doctor had been placed in one of the ship’s cabins. Sabbath had few guests, although when he did they were given every amenity they could need (including access to Sabbath’s impressive library). But the Doctor had been picked up at short notice, so the cabin would have been largely bare, a grey metal box lit by the latest in gas technology. It’s interesting to speculate on what the Doctor’s first sight would have been, when opening his eyes. He may well have recovered to find an ape, one of Sabbath’s trained minions, looming over him with blood on its breath. If so, the manner of the ape’s dress can hardly have done anything but puzzle him. By July, Sabbath had begun to dress his ‘crew’ in grotesque parodies of the British naval uniform, without shirt or breeches but with navy blue jackets and (on formal occasions) black admirals’ hats. It must have looked revolting, to see these matted, black-furred creatures squeeze into the clothes, and it’s safe to assume that it was another of Sabbath’s jokes at the expense of authority.
There were certainly two uniformed apes in the room when the Doctor recovered, no doubt hissing with frustration at their inability to tear him apart. If Sabbath wasn’t there to see the Doctor come round, then he entered the cabin shortly afterwards. The two men greeted each other in formal, civil terms, before Sabbath engaged his ‘captive