Doctor Who_ The Banquo Legacy - Andy Lane [84]
The dim light caught the layers of paint (like make-up) as I stepped down from the chair, throwing shadows like tears or scars across Dodds’s cheek. The lights were low, and the glow from the dying embers of the fire was all but extinguished.
Stratford turned the painting over as I brushed the dust off the embroidered seat of the Chippendale. The fastening was indeed a chain, but it was relatively thin and had been doubled in order to take the weight of the portrait.
‘Rope might be better,’ I suggested, hoping that the Doctor would not expect me to find him a few yards of that as well.
‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘The trouble is, we don’t really know how strong the thing is.’ He pulled experimentally at the chain.
‘Do you mean the “thing", sir,’ Baker asked, confused, ‘or the chain?’
‘Well, either, if it comes to that,’ the Doctor answered, looking across from the chain to Baker. He seemed about to continue, but his voice caught in his throat. I followed his gaze over Baker’s shoulder to the doorway.
Where Catherine Harries stood.
We were all surprised.
‘What are you doing down here, Catherine?’ Stratford asked. ‘You’re supposed to be with the others.’
‘I thought I should tell you,’ she said simply, not moving from the doorway. Her face was a blank, a contrast to the mask of concentration she had worn earlier. A white, Italianate mask of emptiness; unreadable.
‘Tell us? Tell us what, Miss Harries?’ the Doctor asked. His face seemed suddenly to have lost its boyish enthusiasm, as if he already guessed what was to follow.
‘That you were wrong, Doctor.’ Even the inflection was gone. My skin started to creep with a slow, scrabbling certainty. Beside me I felt Stratford tense.
‘What about?’ But I had begun to guess.
‘About my subconscious control of Richard.’
‘You mean that you don’t have any control of him?’ Stratford asked.
‘Oh no. I can control him. I do control him.’
‘Then what do you mean, miss?’ Only Baker had not yet realised, as Stratford’s short step backwards betrayed.
‘The control is not subconscious. We know exactly what we are doing. We have always known.’
Baker’s mouth dropped open, and with the immaculate timing of melodrama and the precision of the commedia dell’arte, Richard Harries’s bloodied form stepped into the doorway beside his sister…
* * *
THE REPORT OF INSPECTOR IAN STRATFORD (20)
I had done it again. With my renowned clumsiness in total control I had once again misread the situation disastrously. Little things now began to add up in my mind: odd words, looks, gestures on the part of Catherine Harries. All of them pointers towards the inevitable truth. Inevitable only in hindsight, but that did not stop me from feeling like a complete fool.
Seeing Catherine Harries and her brother side by side for the first time I could appreciate the similarity in build. They were both short, but the base metal of Richard’s stockiness and apelike stance were transformed in Catherine to the gold of a shapely figure, her femininity emphasised by the tightness of her dress. A chill ran through me as I looked between them – twins, but with a hideous difference. The stark skull and ripped flesh of Richard Harries was the blueprint for the beauty of his sister. Her beauty was a mask covering his truth.
‘What have you done to the others?’ asked Hopkinson from my side. I cast a sidelong glance at Baker. His face was pale and waxen, and the skin seemed to hang heavy on his bones.
(And under the skin I could trace the outlines of his skull, the rims of his eye sockets and the hard corners of his