Doctor Who_ The Banquo Legacy - Andy Lane [21]
The mist seemed to have ended and the night was of that crystal quality that one sees only in the winter when the very cold of the air itself seems to sharpen the edges of the trees against the moon and bring the clouds so close that one wants to reach out and pluck them from the sky. The stars sparkled like ice and the snow sang clearly with the breeze that drew away my steamlike breath.
I stood for a while, wondering whether the moon – or I – would ever tire of the images that flowed before it, and the constantly changing shadows that danced across the lawn like patterns thrown up by a magic lantern. It was while I was thus preoccupied that I saw the shooting star.
In a moment it was gone, but I could still see its pale-green trail across my retina for a while, until finally it succumbed to my blinking. My first idea was to run for all I was worth and see where it had fallen, for it had seemed so close that it must surely have landed in the Manor grounds. But while I still stood, entranced, the oblivious laughter from the drawing room reached me and the spell was broken. I crossed myself for the luck I wanted, shivered, and slipped inside the house.
* * *
THE REPORT OF INSPECTOR IAN STRATFORD (3)
It was just short of eight o’clock when I tapped on the door of the police station. My aunt went to bed early every night, and so I decided to check in quickly with the local constabulary before I arrived on her doorstep. A muffled reply from within invited me to open the door. Sergeant Baker sat behind a desk at the far side of a plain and purely functional room, separated from me by a waist-high bench. Although we had never met, my aunt had pointed him out before. He was a short, tubby man with more hair in his handlebar moustache than on his head. His hair was ginger and contrasted disconcertingly with his sea-green eyes. He had always put me in mind of the archetypal rural bobby, but he was highly respected in the village.
‘Sergeant Baker?’ I asked, more to start the conversation than anything else.
‘Evening, sir,’ he said. ‘Well, night almost. What brings you here at this time?’
‘Inspector Stratford,’ I said by way of introduction, expecting him to straighten up respectfully. He merely smiled.
‘Visiting your aunt, sir?’
‘I am in fact down here on duty.’
‘I know, sir,’ Baker admitted. ‘Your Chief Inspector Driscoll telephoned me this morning to tell me the situation.’
He gestured towards a telephone on the desk, but I was too busy contemplating Driscoll’s unpleasantness to notice. Not only had he known about the necessity for my trip a good few hours before he told me, but he had also pulled the rug from under my feet by telling some country bumpkin police sergeant first. I had the dubious consolation of knowing that I was not special. He treated everyone that way.
I mustered all my reserves of calmness. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘that saves me the trouble of explaining the situation. What is your estimation?’
‘Well, sir –’ he paused and looked thoughtful – ‘if you ask me, there’s something odd going on up at the Manor. You see, Sir George Wallace, who owns the Manor, has sent all the servants away bar the butler and the maid. Now, what with himself and his wife, Mr Hopkinson, Professor Harries and the ladies, that’s a powerful lot of work for just two servants.’
‘I take the point. Who’s Harries?’
‘Ah, Professor Harries is a scientist, sir.’ He pronounced the term with some emphasis, as if it took on a different connotation when it was applied to Harries. ‘He’s been staying with Sir George Wallace for almost a year now, if my memory serves.’
‘What’s he like?’
‘We don’t rightly know, sir. It’s a rare day when we see him in the village.’
‘And the ladies?’
‘Professor Harries’s sister and his fiancée, I understand, sir. Don’t know much more about them than that.’
‘Hmm, quite a gathering.’ I made as if to stand up. ‘Well, if you’ll allow me a few moments to see my aunt, we can be off to the Manor. I want to get this questioning over with as