Doctor Who: Target - Novelisations [100] - The Two Doctors by Robert Holmes

Author:Robert Holmes
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Science-Fiction - Doctor Who
ISBN: 9780426202011
Publisher: Target Books
Published: 1985-12-14T23:00:00+00:00

8

Company of Madmen

Shadows thickened in the decaying loggia at the back of the house. The oppressive heat of the day had faded to a pleasant, languorous warmth. Bees, working the last hour of the day-shift, hummed drowsily in the flowers of the hibiscus tree under which Oscar Botcherby crouched.

It was an entrancing evening. Even the sun, still hanging low on the horizon, seemed reluctant to make its final bow. Oscar knew the feeling. There was always a sadness, an emptiness, as the curtain fell for the last time and the applause faded; time then to remove the cossie and the make-up and become an ordinary, boring person again in an ordinary, boring world.

He nudged the young policewoman beside him. ‘I made a triumphant tour of your country once,’ he said, ‘in “The Way of the World”. I suppose you did not have the good fortune to see me?’

‘Alas,’ said Peri, shaking her head.

‘I was wonderful,’ Oscar said modestly. ‘The theatre critic of the Boston Globe wrote me the most glowing tribute. “Mr Botcherby’s performance was quite monumental,” he wrote.’

‘Really?’

‘Of course, being a critic, he added “in its ineptitude” – but they have to do that to please their readers.’

Peri stifled a giggle. ‘That’s a glowing tribute?’

‘My dear, you should have seen what he wrote about the rest of the cast – the poor, sacrificial lambs.’

‘What are you acting in at the moment?’

‘I am between roles at present so I’m managing a little restaurant for a friend of mine – La Piranella in the Arab Quarter.’

Anita, overhearing this, concealed a smile. Oscar had been running the restaurant for three years to her certain knowledge.

Suddenly Oscar jumped as though bitten. ‘Oh, look!’ he exclaimed. ‘Over there.’

Peri tensed. ‘I don’t see anything.’

‘Just there! An exquisite little feathered gothic. If only I’d brought my net…’

Jamie muttered something. It sounded like ‘Haud ye weesht, mon.’

Peri thought they were all getting a bit on edge. It was several minutes since the Doctor had slipped off into the shrubbery, saying he wanted to survey the house at close quarters. There had been no sign of him since.

A light came on in one of the upper rooms. It was the first indication of any life at all inside the silent hacienda.

She wondered if the Doctor had seen it.

As it happened he had. He was working his way cautiously round the exterior of the house, listening for movements inside and trying to peer in through the blank, shuttered windows, when the light came on some twelve feet above his head. His instinctive reaction was to shrink back into the bushes under the wall.

Nothing further happened, however, and after a minute or so he straightened and stood staring up at the lighted window. A long time ago someone had nailed a trellis to the wall and its sagging quadrilaterals now provided precarious support for an ancient, intertwined creeper. It looked far from safe but the Doctor had a burning desire to see into that window. He began to climb.

In the room above, Shockeye o’ the Quawncing Grig was enjoying himself.

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