Doctor Who_ Wolfsbane - Jac Rayner [59]
They carried her back into the dining room, and laid her out on the floor by the still unconscious Trelawny. Harry hoped he wouldn‟t wake suddenly before they‟d had a chance to make better arrangements, he wasn‟t sure how many more shocks the old man could take. Come to that, he wasn‟t entirely sure how many more shocks he could take.
The two doctors examined the dead girl. „She must have been out there when the land, you know, came to life,‟ Harry said. „And it got her. Horrible way to go.‟
„I don‟t think that‟s what happened,‟ said the Doctor, prying open the girl‟s jaws with a table knife. „Look, not a crumb of dirt inside the mouth. Yes, one of her first instincts would have been to close her mouth, but if she‟d been buried alive like that, I think some earth would have got in.‟ He asked Harry to bring a table lamp down to the floor, and angled it on her face, scraping away the earth around the girl‟s nose.
And the same goes for here. It‟s all on the outside, no indication that she‟d breathed any in - which she couldn‟t help but do. No, I‟d say she was dead already.‟ He pointed at a mark on the forehead, brushing the mud away. „I‟d say she fell, hit her head - that‟s what killed her. Then, later, the land covered her up.‟
There was a scuffling noise at the window, and the wolf jumped back in. It - she - came over to the dead girl, sniffing and snuffling in what Harry considered a highly inappropriate manner. „She‟s not going to try to eat her, is she?‟ he said to the Doctor, worriedly.
„Tonight, Emmeline‟s human mind has control over the wolf,‟ the Doctor said. „Otherwise we would not be happily standing in the same room as her.‟
„Happily‟ might be taking it a bit far, Harry thought.
The wolf padded out of the door. „Gone to change?‟ Harry suggested.
It seemed so, because not long after Emmeline came back, a woman again. Again, she stayed in the doorway.
„The witch got away,‟ Emmeline said. „I think magic was used to hide her path, for I can follow the trail of a human.‟
She indicated Jane‟s body on the floor. „And I could smell Hester on her,‟ she said. „Just a trace. On her neck, her wrists, there is the sweat and it smells of Hester.‟
Harry mentally filed that under things he would rather not have known. But the Doctor was pacing the room now. Yes, yes, yes! That makes sense.‟ He stopped and swung round to face Harry, his audience. How about this? Hester wants her second night sacrifice. She‟s already killed one girl from this house, obviously she‟s not worried about committing murder on her own doorstep. Jane is next in line. Perhaps she went to subdue her with a spell but it didn‟t work and Jane ran; perhaps she lured her out here somehow before Jane realised what was happening. But Jane runs, and trips, and hits her head. Hester is panicking, sweaty, bends down to check her pulse. But the girl is dead. So she leaves the body here and goes to look elsewhere for a victim.‟
„Well It made sense to Harry, just about, it could have happened like that, but - „don‟t quite know how to put this, but... well, horrible thing to talk about... couldn‟t she have used, er, Jane still? From what you were saying earlier, she just had to spill the blood on the ground, sort of thing...‟
Emmeline shook her head. „The blood must be fresh, alive, pumping from the heart. Not heavy, flat, lifeless blood.‟
Well, that cleared up that one.
„By the way,‟ said Emmeline, „your young man upstairs is getting restless, I believe. He is staying there because you instructed him to stay there, but I think he would like to know what is happening.‟
The Doctor slapped himself on the forehead. „Godric! Come on, Harry.‟
Harry gestured at the two prone bodies. „Er...‟
„Yes, of course,‟ said the Doctor. Together they picked up the unconscious Trelawny, and carried him off to his own bed. Then they went to tell Godric what was going on.
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