Doctor Who_ The Paradise of Death - Barry Letts [24]
‘I have. And the subjects are all ready for you. But the odd thing is – ’
‘Let’s have a shufty, eh?’
‘A what?’
‘A look-see, a viewing, an ocular demonstration.’
Ignorant as well! ‘Where’s Tom? As if I didn’t know.’
He strode to the door and pushed it open. A large and puzzled-looking man in the corridor looked up from the telephone. ‘I’m sorry, I got to go,’ he said into the mouthpiece. ‘I know, but – I tell you, I got to go! I’m sorry!’ He put the phone down and came into the room.
‘Sorry, Prof,’ he said.
The Professor followed him in. ‘How is your love life then?’
‘Sorry?’
‘Getting our oats, are we?’
The attendant looked even more puzzled. ‘That’s just it.
Never stops whingeing, does she?’
‘I should be infinitely obliged to you if you could tear yourself away. Dr Prebble and I would like to get home some time tonight. We have our own oats to consider.’
‘Sorry, Prof,’ said Tom and pulled out one of the drawers.
Willow looked down at the naked figure with the front of its skull smashed in, several ribs protruding from the chest, and a compound fracture of the right arm. There was a label tied around the left foot. On it was written‘William Jephthah Grebber’.
‘Nothing odd that I can see.’
‘It’s the other one. Thank you, Tom.’
The attendant pulled out the next drawer. ‘This one hasn’t got a name, Prof,’ he said. The label simple said
‘Doctor?’
Willow looked up. ‘Wrong body, Tom,’ he said.
‘Where’d you get this chap?’
‘No, no, this is the one. I was here when they were both brought in,’ said Dr Prebble, hopping from one foot to the other like a schoolboy bursting to pee.
The Professor looked again. Surely this man had never fallen over two hundred feet? Perfect in form, the alabaster figure was without blemish or mutilation of any sort.
‘How very – odd,’ he said.
‘I told you! There’s not a single bone broken!’
‘ “ ‘Curiouser and curiouser,’ said Alice.” ’ The Professor’s eyes gleamed in the harsh light. ‘In the circumstances, I think we should give this gentleman a certain priority.’
As his assistants lifted the body onto the stone slab in the middle of the room, he walked over to the table where his instruments were. He surveyed the range of scissors, saws, chisels and the rest, spread out for his choice. He picked up a fine-pointed dissecting knife with a four-inch blade as sharp as an old fashioned cut-throat razor.
‘Now, what’ll it be?’ he said. ‘A selection from White Horse Inn?’
Chapter Nine
The Brigadier had tried no less than twelve times to get through to the mortuary and had eventually been told by the operator (having said that he’d been trying for nearly forty minutes, which was stretching the truth by a factor of four) that the line was ‘engaged, speaking’. Driven as much by his frustration as his concern for the Doctor, he had decided to go straight there in the Doctor’s car. After all, it was only a matter of ten minutes away.
Now, as he was hurrying down the bare corridor of gloss-painted brick, he was guided by the sound of a powerful baritone voice singing, only slightly out of tune,
‘I wish you all a last goodbye,’ which did nothing to allay his anxiety.
Pushing open the door after a perfunctory knock, he was greeted by the sight of the singer in question, with a knife in his hand which was about to be plunged into the neck of a clearly unregenerated Doctor. ‘Stop!’ he cried.
The concert came to an end. The soloist lowered the knife, looking up in mild irritation. ‘Who are you, sir?
What do you think you’re doing?’
The Brigadier took a deep