Doctor Who_ The Infinity Doctors - Lance Parkin [8]
Finally, he took a spoon and swirled the contents of each cup in turn. The operation complete, the Doctor passed a cup over to both of the guards, taking the third for himself.
Raimor took his cup, and almost immediately he’d managed to slop a little of the drink into the saucer. The liquid was brown, grey vapour was drifting up from it. Raimor sniffed it and took a swig. It was bitter, almost acidic, but that was counterpointed by the milk. Probably a plant extract of some kind. Pleasant enough.
‘A display cabinet was smashed open in the Archives,’ he explained. ‘We don’t know why.’
The Doctor sipped at his tea. ‘Who says there has to be a reason?’
‘Well, sir, that’s what we thought: it was probably just vandals.’
The Doctor smiled. ‘You misunderstand me.’ He pointed at the pocket watch that nestled between the teapot and milk jug. ‘How did that get there?’
Raimor hadn’t noticed the watch on the table before. ‘You must have just put it there,’ he concluded.
‘Must I?’
‘It doesn’t have to have been you,’ Peltroc offered. ‘It could have been someone else.’
‘Why?’
‘Things don’t just happen,’ Peltroc explained. ‘If I find a coin in the street, then that’s because someone has dropped it.’
The Doctor raised an eyebrow. ‘And that’s the only possible explanation?’
Peltroc screwed his face up. ‘The owner of the coin…
might… have put it there deliberately.’
‘But this watch wasn’t here a moment ago, and now it is.’
He paused. ‘What if there were two watches?’
The Doctor glanced down, and feigned amazement at the two identical watches he saw there. ‘Two watches. Or perhaps the same watch, twice over. Time and space are elegantly inter-related, you know. Time is relative, as they say.’
‘A trick, my Lord,’ Raimor said, a little impatiently. ‘You are trying to make a philosophical point, sir, using the watch.’
The Doctor grinned. ‘And now both the watches have vanished, anyway.’
‘My Lord, if we could return to the crime.’
‘What has it got to do with me?’ The Doctor scowled. His face fell. ‘I’m not a suspect, am I, Captain?”
Raimor chuckled politely. ‘No, sir. The room is owned by the Prydonian College and as the most senior member of the chapter –’
‘Apart from the Magistrate,’ the Doctor pointed out.
‘Well, yes, sir…’
‘We thought it might be the aliens, my Lord,’ Peltroc stammered from his seat.
The Doctor cocked his head to one side. ‘Why do you think that?’
‘No Gallifreyan would do that sort of thing.’
‘But the aliens don’t actually arrive here until tomorrow night, do they?’
The two guards looked at each other. That hadn’t occurred to them.
‘They did it with this brick,’ Peltroc said helpfully, holding out the offending article.
The Doctor smiled forgivingly as he examined it. ‘I don’t suppose you brought the lock up?’
‘Er, no, sir.’
‘What sort of lock was it?’
‘Retinal.’
The Doctor pursed his lips. ‘Why smash it open? They are straightforward enough to bypass.’
‘If you’ve got Gallifreyan eyes,’ Peltroc murmured to himself.
‘Even if you haven’t, it’s still quite easy,’ the Doctor assured him.
Raimor continued his story. ‘The alarm went off, but the iron shutters and bell were both jammed somehow.’
‘It would only take a couple of blocks of wood and a cushion or two,’ the Doctor mused to himself. ‘Was it the nearest cabinet to the door?’
Raimor tried to remember. ‘No, there was a stuffed bird and… the smashed cabinet was right at the back of the room.’
The Doctor smiled. ‘So what was taken?’
‘Taken?’ they said simultaneously.
‘We don’t think anything was taken,’ Peltroc explained.
‘Just vandalised.’
The Doctor rolled his eyes. ‘Someone walked into a room, disabled the alarm, walked up to the back wall, smashed off a lock and broke into a single case, leaving everything else intact. Hardly the actions of a mindless vandal.’ He narrowed his eyes. ‘Although he’s clever, he’s not very well informed.
He managed to pick the only day of the week that your patrol is up there. He’s lucky you didn’t walk straight in on him.’
‘We don’t know if anything