Doctor Who_ The Banquo Legacy - Andy Lane [111]
‘Oh yes,’ she said quietly. ‘That I do know.’ She looked at me, smiling weakly. ‘In my dreams. But I must never tell.’
I let Susan take my hand and she led me shakily into the hall, Stratford following behind us. I could sense Susan looking up at me and I returned her faint, sad smile, squeezing her waist slightly. We waited as Stratford closed the door, and then followed him out towards the pale light of dawn.
* * *
THE REPORT OF INSPECTOR IAN STRATFORD (24)
I felt sad and alone when we walked out of Banquo Manor. Hopkinson and Susan stood hand in hand, basking in the light of the dawn sun. All I knew was if I turned round I would see my shadow stretching back into the house. It was difficult to believe that it was over. It was harder to believe that it had ever happened.
Even now, as I reread these words in the comfort and distance that hindsight affords, I find it difficult to pin down my motives for writing this account – an account longer and more detailed than required by Chief Inspector Driscoll. Publication is out of the question, but I must have had some reason. I think deep down that Catherine may have been right. I do need there to be a truth. A single, simple reality that does not change depending on which person is viewing the matter. This account, as far as I am able to see it, is the truth.
I returned to the detail of police work fit in body, if not in mind. That should have been the end of it, but now I hear that I am being considered for a new post – the head of a special Scotland Yard squad set up to deal with incidents that transcend the normal and enter the realms of horror. I may protest that the last thing I need is to be reminded of what happened to me, but it will do no good. I have experience of these things now. My sanity is as nothing compared with my usefulness to the police force.
Such is the legacy of Banquo Manor.
I remember asking John Hopkinson if he thought he had changed as a result of our experiences.
He thought for a moment, then took his glasses off. ‘Yes, I believe so,’ he replied. ‘Before I went to the Manor I was incurably romantic. My dreams were always better than reality, and I hated reality for not living up to my expectations. What we went through brought me down to earth. It made me adopt a more realistic outlook. What about you?’
‘I’ve always been a pragmatist,’ I said after a moment. ‘I always believed that if a thing couldn’t be proved or demonstrated then it didn’t exist. If Banquo Manor – if the presence of the Doctor – taught me anything it taught me that there is room for unreality as well as reality in the world. Some things can’t be proven, only accepted.’
‘More things in Heaven and Earth…’ said Hopkinson, laughing.
‘Wrong play,’ I muttered, and we moved on to more comfortable subjects.
I seem to have got ahead of myself, an easy thing to do when I cannot tear my mind away from the events of those few days. The three of us left the Manor, as I have said. Somehow I could not face standing in the dawn light with Hopkinson and Susan. It seemed too much like an intrusion. I turned and walked off, around the corner of the house. I doubt whether they even saw me go.
For a while I wandered around the outside of Banquo Manor, committing its bizarre façade, its strange, non-Euclidean angles, to my memory. The house was as much a character in the drama as Richard Harries, Sergeant Baker or Simpson (whether he was merely the butler or, as the Doctor had seemed to imply, something much more besides). I could not imagine the same events occurring elsewhere.
Talking of Simpson, I came at last to the area beneath John Hopkinson’s room, where Susan Seymour had sprained her ankle during their ill-fated escape attempt and where Simpson had fallen, blinded, to his death. There was no sign of his body. Somehow, I was not surprised. During the previous thirty-six hours I had been exposed to two corpses that had come back to life – Richard Harries’s and the Doctor’s – and seen two people disappear from a small room without