Doctor Who_ The Banquo Legacy - Andy Lane [89]
‘When I am gone,’ he proclaimed, ‘think only this of me: that there is some corner of a British chimney that is forever Gallyfree.’ It was not a quotation I was entirely familiar with.
Within seconds he was gone.
Hopkinson peered upwards nervously.
‘Awfully dark,’ he said, more to himself than to us. ‘Still, there’s no time like the present.’
He too vanished upwards. For a moment or two there was the sound of scrabbling, and showers of soot flew out of the fireplace. Then there was nothing.
‘Strange,’ said Baker, peering up worriedly, ‘I thought the Doctor was German, not Irish.’
‘I’m beginning to wonder if he’s real at all,’ I muttered, but already the edges of my vision were turning grey. I was retreating down a soft hazy tunnel, and in my dreams I was back many years ago in John Hopkinson’s office in London. I was standing there in my heavy police overcoat, kneading my hat in my hands. I had not wanted to come; it was demeaning, disgraceful…
‘Forgive me for not standing…’ he said. ‘Fractured ankle; did it playing cricket. Plays up from time to time. Now, what can I do for you?’
I had not wanted to see him, I’d been expecting Gerald. He had been the family lawyer for years, handled all the arrangements when my parents died. Some sort of misunderstanding along the way…
‘Well, you see…’ I hummed and hawed, not knowing quite where to begin. How can you tell a perfect stranger that your wife has run off with another man, is living with him, sleeping with him? Cuckolded, isn’t that what they call it?
The light shone from his glasses. Even then.
‘It’s a matter of some delicacy…’
‘Of course. Perhaps you could tell me?’
So it all came out, the whole sordid story. My long hours at the Yard. My wife – bored, alone, lonely. Then the young artist with a double-barrelled name, filling her head with Mozart and romance. ‘I still love you,’ she said. But if she did, why couldn’t she stay? ‘It’s not your fault, I’m to blame.’ Then why did I feel so guilty? What had I done wrong?
Hopkinson was the model of solicitous behaviour, but underneath I could feel him squirming with embarrassment and distaste. He was obviously new at this job, perhaps as new as I was at the Yard. Thrown in at the deep end. God, I wish I hadn’t come. I wish I wish I wish…
Hopkinson opened a drawer and pulled out a furry bundle. ‘Could I offer you a rat?’ he enquired. ‘They’re very good.’
The rat fixed me with its red eyes and I screamed.
And woke up again to the drawing room, the silence, and Baker.
* * *
THE ACCOUNT OF JOHN HOPKINSON (21)
The chimney was filthy, or so it seemed in the dark, claustrophobic passage up which I pushed myself, feet braced against the sides, my arms pulling my body upwards seemingly for ever. The blackness was physical, solid; lumps of soot disintegrated as my face touched them, showering invisible black dust into my straining eyes, rained down by the Doctor’s scramblings ahead of me.
I could no longer tell whether my eyes were open or closed until the dry, clinging powder burst over them. It lined my face and my clothes, covering me in the darkness that had spawned it. I pushed on through, and felt it in my hair, my shoes, in the air I breathed – it was the air I breathed. I feared I should choke as the darkness scrabbled in my throat as I did in the brickwork. It caked my nostrils, grew tighter on my flinching skin and pressed against my clothes as my jacket tore on the ragged wall. I was grateful I had kept it on – that could have been my flesh tearing open – yet it hampered my freedom of movement.
Movement.
Yet it seemed that it was the chimney that was moving, trying to cough me out. But what I feared most was not that I should spend the rest of my miserable life crawling upwards towards a cross-shaft that had never existed, or that I should suffocate or be crushed slowly to death in this living blackness, but that I would have to cough – and that either Catherine Harries or the shattered remains of what