Strange Darkness;Always the Third Doctor!;Jo Grant;Katy Manning;Jon Pertwee;UNIT;TARDIS;Strange Darkness Episode Three
Strange Darkness
Episode Three
Written by Jeri Massi
Jo could not be sure, but when she came down to the police station the next morning, it looked as though Inspector Jules had pressed his shirt before covering it with the cheap gabardine coat. In what she realized was a nervous habit, he ran his hand through his unruly brown and gray hair as soon as he saw her coming down the hall.
"Miss Grant, you seem very well this morning," he said. He stepped aside as she entered the cluttered office ahead of him. The piles and piles of folders and papers had been re-stacked into uniform columns, though they still covered every available surface except for his chair on one side of the desk and hers on the other. "I hope you slept well after yesterday's misadventure," he said.
She turned and tried to smile. "Well, actually not," she admitted. "Kept waking up--very sudden fits and starts."
"Ah!" This reaction obviously was very familiar to him. "Here is tea for you." He passed her a mug of tea and tried to sound brisk as he gestured for her to sit. "You said some things of great value yesterday. Great insight. I don't mind telling you I don't know what we're dealing with. Can your UNIT colleagues spare you to go with me on interviews?"
She nodded. "Yes."
He took his own tea and went around the desk to his chair. As he'd done the day before, he sat with a great sigh of pleasure, as though getting off his feet was a rare treat, and then he looked at her with his wide, dark eyes. "You've been crying, Miss Grant."
She didn't know what to say, and after a moment he glanced into the depths of his mug and told her, "I once worked with a woman. Been raped. I was a young fool then, not nearly so wise as I am now," And he smiled a slight, self-deprecating smile at her. "I kept telling her she had to get over it. Kept warning her not to obsess on it so much. Kept harping that now that it was done, the thing was to get on with her life." He looked away and lifted his eyebrows. "All very true, I suppose."
"Did she?" Jo asked.
"Did she what? Get on with her life?" He shook his head. "A few years later, she killed herself." He hesitated, still looking out the window as though something out there had caught his attention. "What a fool I was, Miss Grant. That was my first and sharpest lesson in the psychology of women." He looked at her. "Something may be perfectly true and yet perfectly useless, you know. Oh, you probably do know that. It was me that had to learn it."
"You think she killed herself because she was a woman?" Jo asked.
"I think she killed herself because she had been degraded and humiliated. There was nobody to talk with, truly communicate with. She had to walk a very lonely road, I expect, and there was nobody--at any juncture--to walk with her. I would have done her better if I'd just shut up and listened." He took a long draw at his tea, and then he added, "To me, it was just a specialized kind of assault, though brutal, I knew. To her, it was both intimate and horrifying and belittling. I didn't know what I was about." He set the mug down. He waited and then looked at her again. "Do you want to tell me why you cried this morning?"
Jo realized that the Inspector thought she was still coming to terms with Cally's attack on her. She set his mind at rest. Her own pity for Cally and the break down of his mind made the attack very impersonal to her. It was the summary actions of the Brigadier and the Doctor that hurt so much. "After I got back to my HQ yesterday," she said. "I was put on medical leave. They took away my passes and cards and keys. Even all my notes on the case. To prevent me from working on it."
"And you don't want that?"
Even then she felt tears sting her eyes. "They said they were doing it to protect me, but . . . I don't know, I have to work on this case. Because I know I can, and I know it has to be done." She brought herself under control. "I don't want to be protected. I want to risk it. But they never thought of that. Not even the Doctor. It's not as though I would be the only woman in danger. All women are in danger right now. I have a right to take the risk."
He took up his mug. "So you do." He smiled a rueful smile. "I'm risking three or four women on the force here already. I risk them every day. Always room for one more. You can work with me this morning."
"You don't think there's a problem?"
He shrugged and stopped short of drinking to say, "It's naught to me that you're on medical leave. You're still a member of UNIT, and you still have a handle on this case." He drained the mug at a single draught, sighed with great satisfaction, and set the mug down. "If you're ready, we'll go take a look at this Women's Health Centre."
* * * *
The Brigadier was down in the lab by six a.m. He was not at all surprised to find the Doctor already at work. A radiant light, emitted from a screen the size of an A3 sheet of paper, wavered on the walls with ghostly and delicate iridescence.
"Been working all night?" Lethbridge-Stewart asked.
UNIT's science officer was squinting at the screen, which was marked with grid lines. A rainbow of colors suddenly shot across it.
"What the blazes is that?" the Brigadier asked.
"A useful little device from my TARDIS." The Doctor nodded at a tiny, enclosed container beneath the screen. "It can sort out compounds by molecular structure. Not a perfect identifier of materials, but much more efficient than the titration and solvent tests of your typical forensics lab."
"What's it telling you?"
The Doctor glanced at him. "It's picking up very faint traces of magnesium from the head of the disposable syringe."
The Brigadier was instantly concerned. "Is magnesium poisonous?"
With a look of wry exasperation, the Doctor switched off the machine. The dancing, watery lights disappeared. "Magnesium chloride is most commonly marketed to soothe stomach trouble," he said.
The Brigadier raised a single eyebrow. "Well that sounds remarkably helpful."
"It has other uses."
"Are you going to tell me?"
You make a drug," the Doctor explained. "A medicine, a preparation. It acts very specifically, but it has to get to where it's going in the patient, so you put a stabilizer of sorts on it; a binder. Most medicinal drugs are bound to salts--very often magnesium chloride or potassium bromide--things like that. The patient takes the medicine. Water in the patient's body will pull out the binding salt, which is effectively inactive. Once the salt is pulled out of the medicine, the medicine can become active and do its work. The stabilizer gives the drug a chance to get into the body and get dispersed. Otherwise, much of the dose would be ineffective."
"So the yohimbe stuff in the syringe was bound with magnesium chloride," the Brigadier said. "Sounds harmless, I suppose."
The Doctor straightened up and folded his arms. "But it wasn't, Brigadier. The binder on the commercial preparation was potassium bromide. There was no magnesium in the solution itself, nor should there have been according to the company that manufactured it. The magnesium was down in the metal tip of the syringe." He glanced at the Brigadier. "It looks as though somebody coated the inside of the tip of the syringe with something else. A second drug or compound was added, possibly dried onto the inside of the syringe tip."
"So that when the man injected himself with the yohimbe," the Brigadier began.
"He also injected himself with a second drug."
"But you don't know what it was?"
The Doctor shook his head. "There's no trace of it," he said. "I nearly missed the magnesium. A police lab would certainly never have detected it."
"So now we know that this is an intelligent hand at work," the Brigadier said. "It's not an illness or an aberration or a hallucination of some kind. Where did that syringe come from?"
The Doctor nodded over at the sheets on the wall. "The wife was a nurse. She gave it to the husband. We'll have to go question him further."
The Brigadier flipped through several of the reports. "Wasn't there a brand name of the preparation listed in the reports?"
"Yes, and I traced it back to the company, but the wrapping on the product didn't match," the Doctor told him. "Whoever doctored the syringe had to remove it from its original packaging. He or they then shrink-wrapped it in clear coating. Whoever is responsible may have released an entire batch of these things."
"So it wasn't altered by the manufacturer."
"Most likely not. They've got incredible quality checks at their facility. Only a massive conspiracy could accomplish such a thing, and I don't think that's likely."
"All right, let's go, then. The yohimbe fellow is named Drayer. He's been transferred to a psychiatric holding pen of sorts."
* * * *
Inspector Jules' tiny, battered car was almost small enough to laugh at. They got inside, and he had to pass her enormous sheaves and files to hold on her lap as he drove with careless precision through the narrow streets.
"Who is this Doctor fellow?" he asked her. "I mean, I know he's the science advisor over there and all. But you mentioned him this morning. He your boss?"
"I'm his assistant," she said.
"Been with him long?"
"Just short of a year now."
"Like him?"
"He's incredible," she said. "A bit unpredictable at times. Absolutely brilliant."
He tried to sound off hand. "Is he good to you?"
She hesitated. "He's very good to me," she said at last. "In his way. I suppose I'm his favorite, but there are days when everybody walks on eggs around him." She wondered if she were being unfair to the Doctor. She was, after all, very angry with him at the moment. "Well," she added. "He's not been altogether happy working at UNIT. It's difficult to explain. You might say he was put at UNIT as a sort of punishment--a kind of restriction."
They pulled in to a tiny illegal parking spot in front of the Women's Health Centre. She had thought that Jules would reply to her, but instead he said, "Well, here we are. I'm going to give you opportunity to ask questions if you like. Tricky thing about questioning people is that sometimes they respond better to one person than the other. Come on, then."
* * * *
The husband of the late Nurse Evelyn Drayer was being kept in ward in a room at a private mental hospital. As the Doctor drove through the crowded streets and heavy traffic, the Brigadier looked through Jo's carefully kept notebook. He compared data to the interview transcripts.
"He injected himself about ten minutes before the murder. Intended use of the drug was as an aphrodisiac, but there was no sign of sexual assault." The Brigadier closed the notebook.
"Straight for the throat like the others," the Doctor said. "No messing about."
Driving at high speed, he navigated their way to quieter streets; further on the buildings became far less cramped, and bits of green lawns and gardens dotted the scenery. At long last, the Doctor pulled into a drive before a vast, majestic building that looked like a grand old house.
"Nice place to be locked up," the Brigadier observed.
"Incarceration is never pleasant, Brigadier," the Doctor told him curtly as they climbed out. "As I well know." He thrust his hands in his pockets and strode up the walk. Apparently, making calls with the Brigadier instead of Jo made his mood darker. Neither of them had yet mentioned her, and the presence of her absence was like a weight.
They were admitted into the hushed confines of the great house. In spite of efforts to keep the place as familiar and comfortable as possible, cameras and corner mirrors dotted the ceilings at intervals. Signs here and there warned that certain hallways were off--limits, and enormous security bolts adorned certain doors.
The Doctor and the Brigadier were led through one such heavy door by a male attendant who did nothing more than to shoot an appraising glance at the Doctor's clothing and then lead the two of them to Mr. Drayer.
Drayer had a private room, the bed equipped with railings and certain, smaller fittings that looked like they might be eyelets for restraints. He was a shrunken little man, clad in plain pajamas. Dried remains of scrambled eggs were dribbled down the front of his pajama top. Drayer was on Valium, a far higher dosage than Stan Bilkins had gotten. He seemed to have floaters before his eyes, and every now and then he made a futile grab at them.
The Doctor frowned and took the man's pulse. He turned to the attendant. "Is this how you treat all your difficult cases?" he asked. "Narcotic cocktails?"
"Doctor's orders, mate," the attendant said. "Would you rather we let him hang himself with the sheets? Or tie him down day and night?"
The Brigadier inserted his face into the patient's line of vision. "Mr. Drayer, can you hear me?"
"Are you the police?" Drayer asked. "Something's happened to my Evey. She's in there."
"I am the police," the Brigadier asserted, and saw with satisfaction that the authority in his voice brought the man around a little more.
"We found a syringe," the Brigadier told him. "A syringe of medicine--"
"She wanted me to try it. Made me all hot--like."
"Where did you get it from?"
"She give it to me."
"Where did she get it?"
Drayer made a grab for another invisible object in front of his face. "Them things are annoying, but I can't shoo them off," he said.
"Mr. Drayer!" The Brigadier made his voice stern. "Where did your wife get that syringe?"
Drayer's eyes became even more vacant.
"Evey," he said. The Brigadier frowned, but just as he would have tried again, Drayer spoke. "Nurse friend of hers give it to her. Very popular in Americer. For men who've had prostrate troubles."
"What friend?" the Brigadier asked.
"Nurse friend."
"What is her name?" the Brigadier asked.
"All right then, I says, I'll try it to please you, I says. Find that pretty gown I like so much. With the pink frill, Evey. I'll buy that champagne you like so much. What about the perfume from Harrod's? Eh? How many?"
The Doctor set the man's wrist back down on the bed and shook his head at the Brigadier. "Come on. They have children and neighbors. We can find out from them. It may very well have been somebody she worked with."
* * * *
"Right then, Dr. Mayes," Inspector Jules said as he and Jo Grant accepted chairs in Doctor Maye's tiny office. She slid into her own, slightly more elaborate chair. She was an attractive and very capable looking woman, Jo thought, perhaps mid forties, but perhaps older: hair done in an older style from a salon, eyebrows penciled in elegant lines. The walls of the office were lined with certificates, citations, and awards.
Jules flipped open a small, hand--held notepad.
"Just the facts, Inspector?" she asked archly.
Jo smiled in spite of herself, and to her surprise, Inspector Jules smiled as well. He fished in a pocket for a pencil.
"No, we've modernized a bit," he said lightly. "We can also accept opinions now. From medical people any way."
He scanned the tiny paper in front of him, then looked at Rocelyn Mayes. "Did you notice anything unusual about either of the couples in question, Doctor?"
She shook her head. "The two appointments were nearly two weeks apart, Inspector," she told him. "I don't remember Bilkins very well except--excuse me--his clothes were so ratty. And he smoked inside the waiting room until we asked him not to--"
"How did he respond to that?"
She shrugged. "He opened the front door and flipped his cigarette out onto the street. There was nothing hostile about him that I recall." She paused and then added, "And I'm sure I would have recalled any hostility." She frowned and crinkled her fine, thin eyebrows. "I believe he was a bit nervous." She glanced at her narrow, immaculate desktop, on which she had placed a couple open files. "Yes, that's right. His fiancée was pregnant. So we most likely shuffled him off to the second waiting room."
Jules raised his own frowsy eyebrows. "I don't see the connection."
She smiled at him. "Well Inspector, we can't have men fumbling about, bursting into tears, or raising their voices in front of the other patients, can we?" she asked. "We see women who are under great stress and strain as it is--pregnancy, miscarriage, breast cancer. If we have anybody in the waiting room who is too overtly nervous or emotional, we put him into a room a bit more removed from the others."
"Bilkins thought you put him there because there was something wrong with Joan," Jo ventured.
This observation startled her, and she thought for a moment. Realization dawned. "Oh dear. I suppose it would come across that way, wouldn't it? But no, Miss Grant, when we put somebody off to the side like that, it has nothing to do with the patient's condition, but with the person himself."
Dr. Mayes pulled the other folder out to glance at it. She looked back at Jo. "Men, you see: boy friends, husbands, fathers: you tell them the girl is pregnant, and they may cause quite a scene right there. I've learned the hard way that if somebody walks in and is agitated, it's best to usher them off to the side for some safe keeping."
"And that's mostly men?" Jules asked.
"Yes, Inspector. Some men take the news of pregnancy--or cancer, or disease--in a woman they regard as belonging to them almost as an affront, a slap in the face. Not all men, mind you. But some. Being in front of other women in the waiting room actually heightens such a man's emotional state." She glanced at Mary McClellan's folder and said absently, "Chalk it up to male egocentricity I suppose--assuming that every woman everywhere is somehow evaluating them." She glanced up with a wry smile. "We all know that men like to perform." This sounded to Jo like a remarkably cool put--down, issued with just a hint of challenge to the Inspector. He remained unruffled.
"You thought McClellan was performing?" Jules asked.
"I wasn't sure. He was very agitated. Nervous and worried. All the same." She sat up straighter and closed both folders. "Neither man as far as I recollect showed the least inclination to do violence to any woman any where. Bilkins, as I recall, was very pleased to know that she was pregnant. They went out all smiles. McClellan was a bit pale, but sheepish too, when I brought him in here and explained some of the finer points of the facts of life to him."
Jo took up the question. "Finer points of the facts of life?"
"How minor infections are passed from a man to a woman, Miss Grant. The way a woman's reproductive and urinary tract are more conducive to infection than a man's. McClellan was stunned to realize that even a loving husband could cause pain or trauma to his dearly devoted wife." At the contempt in her voice, Jo barely refrained from shooting a glance at Jules. Doctor Mayes stood and took up the folders. "Just wait, I thought, until he gets her pregnant. He's in for a rude awakening as her, uh, lord and protector." And she looked at Jo as though sharing a grim joke. "If that's all, Inspector?"
"Is there a discreet way we might take a look at this waiting room, Doctor?" he asked.
"Certainly. It has two doors on it, one to the front area, and one to a hallway that leads back here. Come this way."
The second waiting room was different from the bright, airy waiting room out front: no windows, the walls painted a dark mauve, and very dim lighting, which Dr. Mayes improved by turning a knob in the wall. As the lights came up, revealing the rather dark walls and low, comfortable chairs, Jules turned to her, "Is it always kept so dim in here?"
She nodded. "Has a calming effect, Inspector. A dim, quiet room can calm the nerves."
"I see. I'm a man who likes a bit of sunlight, myself," he said.
Jo noticed the vents placed at the four corners of the room. Rocelyn Mayes saw the young woman's glance at the corners. "We try to keep at least one door open so that anybody in here does not feel cut off. But if we use the room for consulting, we have assured ourselves of a good air circulation by means of the air conditioning."
One of the women who worked at the desk came to the door that led out to the front area. "Inspector Jules?" she asked. "There's a call for you, sir."
"Oh! Thanks." He turned to Dr. Mayes. "Is there someplace private where I could take it?"
"Follow me." She turned to go, and Jo said, "I'll meet you out front, Inspector."
The interruption could not have come at a better moment. As soon as Dr. Mayes led Jules around the corner, Jo Grant dragged a soft chair to one corner and nimbly hopped up to get a better look at the vent. She could not pry it off and had no tools to assist her, so she pressed her face against it, shielded her eyes, and tried to look inside. It looked like nothing but the inside of an HVAC tube. She had a tiny light attached to her key chain. She fished it out and held it against the grilling.
The grilling itself cast bars of shadow where the light fell inside the air shaft, but she was able to glimpse a small brass-colored pipe, hardly wider than a string of licorice, mounted on a small metal bulb. Something that looked like the motor to a toy car was mounted behind the bulb. Jo opened her mouth in surprise, and at this exact moment the air conditioning came on. The tiny pipette released something with the hiss of a small compressor.
Had her eyes been in the line of fire, she would have been blinded. As it was, she got a mouth full of cold liquid that she spit out at once. She suddenly gagged. It was air freshener.
She slid down the chair and dug a handkerchief from her pocket and then gagged into it. She spit out as much as she could and at the same time inhaled the cotton smell of the cloth. For several moments she thought she was about to be very ill, but gradually the gagging in her throat subsided. She heard Jules out front and hurried out to meet him.
"The leukemia patient, Harding," he said. "He died about an hour ago. We've got to go down and see the wife. We need that body for autopsy. Maybe you can help me convince her."
She still had the handkerchief pressed to her mouth, and she nodded. But out on the street she suddenly stopped and gagged again. Jules seized her and got her head pointed more or less behind a tiny hedge that made a puny barricade of green between the building and the sidewalk. She threw up. He held her forehead. She threw up again, but after the second spell she calmed down. He set her back on her feet. "What was that all about?" he asked, but then he said, "Never mind, come on." He helped her into the car.
He got them tea from a small shop, and she rinsed out her mouth and spit out the first few swallows of tea. The exhaust fumes of the city, the scent of stale and sugary biscuits and buns from the open doorway of the shop, all helped to clear her head from the concentrated air freshener. She sat in the car and breathed the air and drank the tea. He ran in to get more and then finally settled down in the driver's seat.
She was mostly recovered by then, and she told him what had happened. He was startled at her nimbleness in making such a quick examination, and his wide, dark eyes showed approval of her quick wits. But when she told him about the air freshener, he tried to look concerned, but a laugh shook him. He laughed again. "That must have been awful," he began, but another laugh came right from his chest, a deep, short laugh that was infectious in its good natured humor.
She had not swallowed much of the air freshener, but she'd inhaled a concentrated dose of it. Yet as its effects were fading, she was able to smile at him as he laughed in spite of his own efforts to be concerned and polite. "I'm not laughing at your pain, Jo," he said
"I know that. You've been very kind," she said. "Go ahead and laugh. It is funny, I suppose."
He started the tiny car and handed her his tea to hold. "Come on, Let's get to the hospital."
* * * *
The Doctor and Brigadier met the daughter of the Drayers as they exited Mr. Drayer's room. She was thin like her father, small, but wiry and energetic. She looked just a bit like a Chihuahua. She frowned at sight of the Brigadier's uniform and snapped, "Haven't you bothered my father enough? What else is there to ask him?"
"Madam," the Brigadier said. "I am not a police officer. I am with a UN investigative force."
"UN?" she asked. "What's the UN got to do with my father?"
"At the moment, we are working with Scotland Yard, becoming increasingly convinced that your father was not responsible for what happened," the Brigadier told her. "He's told us that your mother had a nurse friend. Somebody who worked with her, perhaps?"
"No, that would be Adelia Davis--Addie," the woman told them. "She works just down the road from here. Nutritional Clinic, I think it's called. Pays a lot better than the NHS."
The men thanked her and left quickly.
"Wasn't that the place the Hardings used as well?" the Brigadier asked.
"Yes," the Doctor told him. "But in the list Mrs. Harding gave me, the yohimbe extract wasn't mentioned."
Just then the Brigadier's hand--held two--way radio beeped. He pulled it out. "Track leader here."
The dispatcher's voice was clear enough for the Doctor to hear the message. "Scotland Yard on the line, Track Leader. They need you at the hospital to make a case of autopsy for Mr. Harding."
"Harding's dead?" the Brigadier asked.
"Heart attack this morning, Track Leader."
"Right. We're on our way."
* * * *
"We're going right down to the hospital morgue," Jules told Jo. "We've got to stop the transfer of the body. Legally, once it's in mortuary, it will be much harder for us to get an autopsy if Mrs. Harding isn't willing."
"All right," Jo said.
All merriment gone, he glanced at her as they rocketed into the lot behind the hospital. "Look, you're a sweet young girl, another survivor of this thing, whatever it is. You've got the bruises to prove it. I'm counting on you with Mrs. Harding. You're in the strongest position to plead with her to agree to an autopsy. And this is the worst time, with him just dead a few hours."
"I'll do everything I can," she told him. "Was the heart attack expected?"
"Half expected." Jules swung into the first space large enough to fit the tiny car. "He's been quite ill. He's the one that had leukemia. Come on."
They strode quickly to the ground floor, Inspector Jules leading. He obviously had been to the hospital's stopover morgue before. They went inside, and he led her down a flight of steps. A male attendant met them down below.
"Inspector Jules," he said. "What can I do for you?"
"You've got a body here," Jules said. "I don't want it transferred yet. I'll cite suspicious circumstances."
"Let me get the office," the man said, and strode away. Jules nodded to indicate that Jo should follow him. He led her to a heavy door that she took to be the entrance to the morgue. Just then, they heard footsteps walking rapidly toward them.
"Miss Grant!" the Brigadier exclaimed.
"Jo!" the Doctor echoed him.
With his hand on the heavy handle of the door, Jules turned at the voices. "Can I help you gentlemen?" Jules asked.
"You can tell us what the blazes you're doing here!" the Brigadier exclaimed.
Jules calmly pulled out his police ID and flipped it open. "Any other questions? I see you're from UNIT. I recognize the costumes, oh, I mean uniforms."
"Look here, this young lady has been placed on--"
"Medical leave, I know. But we've just been to a doctor, and she's got a clean bill of health, so I've taken her on as a consultant."
The Brigadier's cheeks flushed scarlet. "Who the devil do you think you are?"
"I'm the man in charge of a police investigation into a series of dreadful murders, Brigadier," Jules told him. "And Miss Grant--if you will pause to remember--is an agent of the crown. The British crown. Which means that if the UN forces decide to dismiss her services, she still has a sworn oath to act in the interests of the British people. She intends to fulfill that oath, and I intend to allow her to do so."
Jo had not looked at it in this light, but she realized that Jules' assessment was correct. She was a trained British agent, attached to UNIT on special assignment. She glanced hopefully from the Inspector to the Brigadier. She hoped he would give in.
The Brigadier turned to her. "Have you no respect for authority, Miss Grant?"
"She has a greater respect for the safety of British citizenry, sir," Jules snapped. "And for her duty!"
Just then the door to the morgue swung open. The handle was jerked out of Jules' hand and it pulled him off balance. He fell inward, towards the doorway as a skinny, wraithlike figure with a balaclava over his head rushed out. The figure paused to make a single upwards swipe at Inspector Jules, and instantly blood sprayed every where in a terrible, strong arc.
Huge hands threw Jo out of the way, and she heard the Brigadier cry out, "He's cut his throat!" Then he and the Doctor were kneeling over the police Inspector, working frantically, as the assailant raced down the hall and bolted through the door that led to the outside steps. Click here to see Episode Four
