The Ghosts of N-Space - Barry Letts [12]
Together with the walled garden next to it, which must have been beautiful before it was allowed to fall into such a neglected state, it would have made a private sanctuary for the family, away from the public bustle of the bailey yard.
A bit of exploration produced an adequate bathroom, although the hot water was a bit brown; and presently, 41
refreshed in mind and body alike, she set off in search of breakfast.
Nosy, that’s what Jeremy called her. Spot on, me old mate, she thought as she seized the opportunity to do a bit of a recce.
The passages were so wide they were more, like galleries; and indeed, the walls were lined with paintings dating from the early Renaissance up to the beginning of the twentieth century, both religious subjects and portraits. One of these, a severe matron in a crinoline with hair parted in the middle and sporting utterly inappropriate ringlets, Widow Twankey style, was nothing but the Brigadier in drag. For the rest of her tour, it kept coming back into her mind, and she’d explode into another fit of giggles.
After she’d summoned up the courage to peep in a room with the door ajar and found it quite empty, she felt a bit bolder and soon established that most of the place was unused. Quite a lot of the rooms were as empty as the first she’d looked into; others were furnished but hiding themselves under modest dust sheets; others were store rooms of one sort or another.
She came to with a start as she passed an archway leading to a spiral staircase. The booming of the clock, striking eight, told her that she was at the bottom of the 42
clock tower; and reminded her of her state of imminent starvation.
Unfortunately, once she got into the castle proper, the Norman bit, the long stone corridors all seemed the same, and it was only after nearly half an hour of wandering that the smell of fresh coffee led her to her goal.
‘Buon giorno, signorina,’ said Umberto with a smile, turning from his big stove.
‘Hi there,’ said Jeremy, with his mouth full.
Things were very pleasantly back to normal. Surely last night must have been nothing but a ghastly dream?
‘If I am right, Lethbridge-Stewart,’ said the Doctor, pausing in the doorway of the TARDIS, ‘the people of this planet face one of the greatest dangers they have ever encountered.’ He disappeared inside.
The Brigadier sighed. The Doctor seemed to say something of the sort every time they worked together; and infuriatingly he always seemed to be proved right. But how pleasant it would be occasionally to be involved in a more parochial type of problem, a ‘little local difficulty’.
‘What is it this time, Doctor? The end of the world? The destruction of the planet? Or is it merely another takeover by an evil race from the other side of the galaxy?’
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The Doctor appeared again, carrying a small box shaped like an old-fashioned sea-chest. He dumped it on the large dining table and started rummaging inside.
‘If you had the slightest inkling…’ he started to say, and interrupted himself with an exasperated noise, halfway between a ‘tut’ and a ‘pshaw’.
‘Why is it things never stay where they are put?’ he said. ‘I know full well that I put my ion-focusing coil back in its place after Bertie Wells borrowed it for his invisibility experiment – ah! Here it is! What did I tell you?’ He gave the Brigadier a disapproving look, at which the recipient felt obscurely guilty, as though it was ultimately his fault that the coil had been mislaid.
‘Of course, young Bertie got it quite wrong in that little tale of his,’ he went on, as he started to fit the small coil into the apparatus he was assembling. ‘An invisible man such as he describes would be stone blind. The light would pass straight through him. With no lens to focus the light rays, and no retina for them to fall on, how could he see? All the invisible creatures I have ever met have relied for sight on parallel sensing of the trace that photons leave in N-Space.’
He looked up and evidently caught the blank look of incomprehension on his listener’s face.
‘In your terms, Lethbridge-Stewart,