Doctor Who TEL05 - Foreign Devils by Andrew Cartmel

Author:Andrew Cartmel [Cartmel, Andrew]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eight

The Doctor and Zoe were in the corridor, moving rapidly

away from Thor’s room when they heard footsteps. They turned to

see Pemberton at the far end of the corridor, running towards them.

He ran with a strange spavined, splay-footed gait. ‘Doctor!’ he yelled.

The Doctor and Zoe turned to watch him approach. ‘Mr Upcott

seems upset about something,’ murmured the Doctor. Upcott was

running along the corridor at top speed, flailing his long limbs. He

careened into a small three legged table with a dusty green potted

aspidistra sitting on it and sent the shrub spinning off to crash on the floor, spilling rich black loam on the white marble.

He ran up to them gasping.

‘My wife!’ he gasped.

Half an hour later Zoe was standing beside the Doctor in the bath-

room of the late Mrs Upcott. It was a big room with a fireplace at

one end and a view from the north facing window out over the rolling

fields of Kent in the direction of Canterbury. A skylight in the sloping roof let in ample daylight on the bathtub, a tall proud creation of cast iron and enamel. In the tub was the dead woman, Millicent Upcott.

She sat there, only her head and shoulders showing in a cooling

tub full of soapy water with an incongruous wooden duck floating for-

lornly on the foamy surface. Carnacki crouched over her, studying the

77

tattoo on her forehead with a magnifying glass. ‘Another red dragon,’

he said. The Doctor moved restlessly to the window and peered out

at the rolling miles of snow, gleaming in the afternoon sunlight. Zoe

joined him.

‘So much for your theory about the killer only operating by night,

Doctor,’ she said in a shaky voice. It helped to try and pretend to be a detective, assisting the Doctor and Carnacki in the investigation of the murder. ‘It’s still fully daylight.’

The Doctor wagged his head in rapid disagreement. ‘I’m not sure

I’m quite ready to abandon that theory.’ Just then the bathroom door

opened and Pemberton Upcott came in, his face drawn and haggard.

He looked at them and then went to the bathtub. He crouched beside

it, as close as he could get to the body of his wife. He knuckled a tear from his eye.

‘Dead,’ he said.

The Doctor, Carnacki and Zoe all murmured conventional words of

consolation, the way you do when someone is bereaved.

‘Murdered,’ rasped Pemberton Upcott, his shoulders heaving histri-

onically.

‘Evidently,’ said the Doctor.

‘Just like the others,’ said Pemberton, his voice a raw sob. He closed his eyes and put his face against his wife’s cold cheek. ‘With not a

single incriminating mark left on her body.’

The Doctor and Carnacki exchanged a glance that Pemberton was

not meant to see.

Zoe was desperate to ask them what was going on. But this was

clearly not the time or place. Pemberton kneeled by the tub, hunched

over his wife’s body as if protecting her naked form from the gaze of

the others in the room, and sobbed quietly.

‘Do you remember our encounter with Thor Upcott?’

‘I’m hardly likely to forget it,’ said Zoe. They were walking down

the central staircase of the house with Carnacki, leaving their host to grieve over his dead spouse.

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