Doctor Who_ The Banquo Legacy - Andy Lane [6]
Scratching? She could hear scratching. His nails perhaps. A nervous gesture. She had known someone once who… But that was almost a lifetime ago.
‘Did you come to talk?’ she asked. ‘About old times?’
‘I came to read. About old times.’
‘Then you are blessed with eyes that are better than mine.’
‘Or cursed.’ Her whining breaths mixed with his stertorous rasps. ‘Where do you keep them? The manuscripts.’
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ she lied, even as she felt her blood run cold.
‘Where are they?’
‘What manuscripts?’
‘The account written by your late husband.’
‘Ah.’
‘And the one written by your former lover.’
She breathed heavily for a few moments, summoning up the breath to answer. ‘You know of them?’
Another pause, as if he was considering his reply. Then: ‘Obviously.’
That caught her. She felt it. And she knew that it was indeed time… ‘They are in the middle drawer of the cabinet. I like to keep them close.’ Her wrinkled hand described an arc towards the cabinet by the bed. Towards the drawer he had already opened.
He swept the tumbler and the small vase of dying flowers from the top with a gesture, and put the two sets of papers in their place. One was held together with rusted paperclips. They had left brown marks etched into the mottled paper. The other was bound with a faded, brittle ribbon. He snapped it, then reached into his jacket pocket.
‘You know, I only read them the once,’ she said. The scratching sound was louder now. A staccato tapping, at once rhythmic yet random. She peered through the gloom to see what he had placed beside the papers. There was something by each pile. He was turning the leaves of both manuscripts at once. She could see the blurred motion of the pages. And beside each, glinting, scratching shuffling was… She stretched slightly closer as she spoke. ‘They brought back such memories.’
‘I can listen as well as read,’ he said softly. ‘Tell me your memories. Everything. Somewhere in here, or here. Or in your mind.’
‘Is what?’
‘The answer. The information I need.’
‘I remember…’ she began. But then a breeze lifted the curtain slightly, allowed a little light to spill into the room.
And she caught sight of his face. His eyes. She gasped and sank back into the bed. ‘How – how can you read?’
‘I can’t,’ he told her. ‘But I have friends who can.’
And in the same flutter of the curtain of time she remembered. And she saw what he had placed beside the papers on the cabinet. And the horror and the terror merely sharpened her memories.
* * *
Body
* * *
THE ACCOUNT OF JOHN HOPKINSON (1)
I knew that the snow would hamper my progress from the small railway station at Three Sisters to the Manor. But I needed to clear the fog from my mind and so, despite the additional inconvenience, I walked. The winter of 1898 was unusually cold in that part of South-East England, I recall. As the trees thinned out around the path, I found myself looking at Banquo Manor. Somehow, seeing it so suddenly, and noting the carriage drawing away down the drive having delivered my luggage, made me feel the more uneasy. There was no going back now.
I realised with a frown that I had stopped in my tracks, and mentally shook myself to wake up. I was, after all, only meant to be here for a few days, and if staying with an old friend also counted as work then so much the better. The presence of Richard Harries was something that I could well have done without, but since it was his experiment that I was here to witness this was scarcely feasible. What exactly it was that I was to witness I had no idea, but there had to be a solicitor present. And an observer from the Society for the Propagation of the Forensic Sciences; and probably Her Majesty as well, knowing Harries’s penchant for the melodramatic, especially where his work was concerned.
Looking up at the Manor House it seemed the ideal setting for a strange, secret