Doctor Who_ The Banquo Legacy - Andy Lane [61]
I felt good standing outside the front door of the Manor with Baker by my side. Even the sullen presence of Herr Kreiner, desperate to locate the Doctor and reluctant to accept the fact that his friend was almost certainly a murderer, was not enough to dent my enthusiasm. The frustrations and troubles from inside the house faded away, to be replaced by the happiness I always felt out of doors. I took a deep breath, and the frozen afternoon air stung like needles in my lungs.
The ground in front of the Manor was a mishmash of tracks. From this three sets emerged. Two I could immediately identify: those belonging to Baker and myself from the night before. The third set could only belong to the Doctor, but they deviated almost immediately from ours, heading out at right angles to the driveway towards a distant line of trees. I looked over at Baker, engulfed in an elephantine overcoat and flapping his arms to keep warm.
‘It looks as if the Doctor wasn’t trying to get to the railway station after all,’ I muttered.
‘I told you,’ Kreiner said. ‘The Doctor never runs away. He’s always there, in the thick of it, confronting –’ his eloquence seemed to peter out – ‘whatever needs to be confronted.’
‘Oh, I don’t know, sir,’ said Baker. ‘That’s a short cut to the village.’ He indicated the path taken by the Doctor with a nod of his head.
‘So why didn’t we come that way last night?’
‘It can be treacherous, sir. I didn’t want to risk it at night. Especially with a superior officer. The Doctor obviously had more confidence than me.’ A frown passed over Baker’s face. ‘Perhaps the gentleman met with an accident, sir.’
‘I hope not,’ I said. ‘He’s our main suspect at the moment, and I don’t want to lose him now.’
Kreiner snorted as we took one last look at the façade of the Manor behind us, then set off after the Doctor.
Soon we were in the trees. Their lines were abbreviated by winter so that they were just black slashes on the white parchment of the snow. High above our heads the branches fanned out so that we were walking in a maze of elongated cathedral windows – stained glass bleached to black and white. The trees were set far enough apart for us to walk abreast with the Doctor’s footprints forming a line between us; but the size of the forest was such that a clear line of sight petered out within fifty yards. A slight wind blew, but the trees were so old and firm that they scarcely showed the breeze. The cold began to bite home and I huddled deeper into my coat. I felt as if the joints of my fingers were on fire.
I think we had been travelling uphill for some time, although the white blanket covering the ground made such judgements hazardous. It certainly caused me to misjudge the height we had reached. When we emerged from the treeline we were almost at the crest of the hill, and I saw with considerable surprise that it was one of the highest points in the area around Three Sisters, and certainly the highest within the grounds of Banquo Manor.
‘Nice view,’ Kreiner said with what I took to be a measure of sarcasm.
I turned slowly. Behind me, over the tops of the trees that were reaching blindly for the sky, I could see the chimneys of the Manor House. On my left as I faced the Manor was the snaking black line of the railway, straddled by the block of the station. I completed the circuit; ahead of me was the crest of the hill, and just before the top was a small wooden hut barely large enough to hold two men. I looked questioningly at Baker.
‘Belongs to Sir George Wallace,’ said the sergeant. ‘It’s to do with this grotto of his.’
‘Grotto?’ I asked, wondering if I had heard Baker correctly.
‘Yes, sir. Sir George has some plan to make a cave in the hill. Says he wants to be able to come up here in the summer and sit in a cool cave overlooking his grounds with a bottle of crusted port. Started last summer blasting a cave out of