Doctor Who_ The Gunfighters - Donald Cotton [38]
And he carried his drink over to a pleasant table near the window to reread that exciting bit in Volume Two, where Caesar carves up Gaul into three parts. And he was thus engaged, when Steven and the Doctor came in.
19
Post Mortem
They were in high, or at least somewhat elevated, spirits.
Escaping from a lynch mob will sometimes do that for you.
And now the TARDIS, with all its promise of more sophisticated disasters to come, beckoned them backwards. All that was left for them to do was to collect Dodo, tell her how brave they’d been and then fly off to health and happiness in some galactic cataclysm. Fine, and also dandy – if you care for that sort of thing!
‘Intrepid’ is the word which suits them, at this point.
Why, they were even whistling ‘The Happy Wanderer’, which just shows you...
So they approached Charlie – who, for some reason, was slumped across the reception-desk – and clearing their throats, and pleased to be able to do so, they asked for their keys.
He was quite obviously not thinking on his feet this morning, and ignored the simple request.
‘Dear me,’ said the Doctor, ‘the man is incapable of performing his duties!’ Which is one way of putting it, I suppose...
‘Asleep at his post,’ said Steven. ‘Dangerous, I’d have thought, in a place like this.’ And he shook Charlie by the shoulder.
Apart from disturbing a couple of blue-tail flies who had thought the site ripe for development, this did nothing but reveal a spreading pool of blood on the hotel register; which proceeded to find its own level, and drip into the ullage.
‘Great Heavens, he seems to be dead!’ diagnosed the Doctor.
The corpse’s lolling head appeared to nod in confirmation, as Charlie continued his interrupted journey to the grass roots.
‘Heart failure...’ suggested Ringo, from his breakfast nook. ‘High livin’ an’ hard liquor don’t pay...’
‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ said Steven. ‘He’s been shot! Look
– you can see where the bullet... where the bullet... Excuse me a moment...’ And he utilised the sink for his own purposes...
‘But this is outrageous!’ complained the Doctor. ‘He had no business whatever to get himself killed! He should have been guarding Dodo with his life, a man in his position!’
A man in Charlie’s position wasn’t rightly able to guard anything much, save maybe a few earthworms. But nevertheless, Ringo took the cue.
‘Looks like he already done that,’ he said: and thought he might as well hoist a little Latin up the gallows, to see if anyone would swing from it.
‘ Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? ’ he drawled. There was a surprised pause. Ah, well... ‘Which means,’ he sighed,
‘who’s gonna look after the goddam guards?’ (A favourite gag of Caesar’s, by all accounts.)
‘There is absolutely no need to translate,’ said the Doctor, ‘I know perfectly well what you mean. After all, Sapientia urbs conditur, as you may have heard.’
‘What?’ asked Steven, returning when empty.
‘A city is founded on wisdom, my boy! How pleasant to meet an educated man at last!’
‘Likewise, I’m sure,’ said Johnny, lighting up like the fourth of July in Chicago. This was it! The intellectual soulmate he’d been waiting for! Suddenly all those long hours bent over a hot vocabulary had been worth it!
‘So requiescat in pace, hey?’ he crowed, flipping a coin onto Charlie’s stomach. ‘Towards the funeral,’ he explained, ‘ De mortuis nil nisi bonum! ’
‘What?’ said Steven, again.
‘Nothin’s too good for a goddam corpse,’ said Ringo.
‘That’s about it, ain’t it, friend?’ he asked the Doctor.
‘Well, in a somewhat loose version of the idiomatic vernacular, I suppose...’ the Doctor agreed. ‘But surely, my dear fellow, rather than voicing such flowery exequies, we should be asking ourselves who can possibly have committed this completely unjustified homicide?’
‘Not much question about that, I’d say,’ volunteered the conscienceless Ringo, blandly. ‘Seems like that Doc Holliday won’t never mend his uncivilised, medical-school ways!’
‘Holliday?’ snapped the Doctor, not wishing much to be reminded of the man. ‘What