Hercule and the Doctor

by Christopher Ruz Hayes-Kossmann

  Hercule and the Doctor

  by Christopher Ruz

  Hercule and the Doctor is collected in Future Tides, a 60,000 word, 18 story omnibus encompassing all of Christopher Ruz's work published between 2007 and 2011. Future Tides: The Collected Works of Christopher Ruz is only $6.99 on Kindle.

  Copyright © Christopher "Ruz" Hayes-Kossmann 2011 All Rights Reserved. No part of this document may be reproduced or copied without written consent from the author.

  Hercule and the Doctor

  I saw the Doctor in the audience, three rows from the back, and I knew he'd come for me.

  It was the conclusion of act one. Sir Roger Ackroyd lay slumped across his desk with a knife jutting from his neck. I, playing Poirot, had just lit my pipe (a prop, the bowl packed with incense) and was contemplating the elaborate mechanics of blackmail when I glanced out into the floods. He sat hunched, the curly mop of his hair lit in silhouette, a woollen scarf striped with beige and ochre tumbling over his shoulders. As I watched, he took a small paper packet from inside his coat and popped something into his mouth. Even at such a distance, I knew it was a jellybaby.

  Acts two and three were a blur. I arrested Doctor Sheppard, the curtain fell, and we slipped into the dressing rooms to withering applause. Ann was already making accusations, you came in too late, remember the beat and if you'd put out the flyers like you were supposed to-

  I pushed past. Phillipe grabbed me by the arm. "Not staying for nibblies?"

  "Got someone to see." I pulled free and ran through the backstage tunnels into the foyer of the Radcliffe Civic Theatre. The crowd was already dispersing, but I saw a crown of curly hair bobbing by the double-glass doors, and I wriggled through to grab the man's sleeve.

  "Doctor?"

  He turned, one brow raised. Middle aged, big nosed, smiling with his eyes. The curly hair was undoubtedly a wig but it was easy enough to squint and believe in the costume. "Yes?"

  "You're the Doctor, aren't you? I mean, you're dressed-"

  "Yeah, that's me. Fourth. Baker. Hey, you were Poirot. You weren't bad." He grinned, showing big buck-teeth. "I thought Poirot was Belgian, not French?"

  "They changed it for the play." I brushed his scarf with the back of my hand. Rough wool, just as I'd always imagined. "Damn. The Doctor."

  "Careful with the threads," he said. "Can't get it grubby. Hey!" He grinned maniacally as he reached inside his coat. "Been wanting to say this for ages. Would you like a jellybaby?"

  We went to the Bridge Tavern overlooking the river. I paid. The water was speckled with candy wrappers and bottlecaps. He said, "Is the moustache real, or do you stick it on?"

  "All real." I tweaked it to demonstrate.

  "And the belly?"

  "Also real. Unfortunately."

  His name was Steve, and he was in town for a Doctor Who fanclub meet. Except, in typical Steve fashion, he'd arrived a week early. "It's always that way. Or sometimes a week late. Mum used to say I just didn't get time. Which is ironic, I suppose."

  I was on my third pint and the world was beginning to fizz around the edges. "But you're the goddamned master... lord, sorry, lord of time, aren't you?"

  "One of many." He pouted. "This is Dad's coat. He thinks it's all ridiculous. Grown man dressing like a poofter, he says."

  "What would he know?" I drained the glass. "I mean, how is this any different? Poirot, I mean." I fell into the exaggerated accent that was part Suchet and part Ustinov. "No no no mon ami, it keeps the little grey cells working?"

  Steve grinned beneath the foam of beer. His scarf of many colours dragged along the floor, twining around the legs of his barstool. "So, why?"

  "Why what?"

  "Why Poirot? Why me? You one of the fanclub?"

  "Doctor." I pushed my empty glass aside and waved to the bartender for another. "I've been waiting for you since I was a boy. You see, I have a mystery."

  * * *

  When I was eleven years old I took my little sister exploring. Elizabeth was eight, and smart; she knew her times-tables up to twelve, and spent her nights reading her children's bible with the diligence of a monk.

  I didn't share her thirst for words. I was in the fifth grade and books were a chore. Instead, I lived for afternoon television. It was nineteen seventy-eight, and Tom Baker was the Doctor. I watched from inside my fortress of blankets as he and Leela chased down the villainous Weng Chiang, and the steel-eyed servants of the Fendahl, and the potato-headed Sontarans. I cheered for K-9, and cried when the Doctor abandoned him on Gallifrey. I ate jellybabies by the bucket.

  Elizabeth wasn't allowed to watch with me. Father said she was too young. Such things would only distract her from reading. But, from time to time, when my parents were out, I'd summon Liz down from her room and set her before the television, just to watch her squirm and cry whenever the Master appeared on screen.

  Liz was a limpet. She followed me up the hill behind our house when I went to meet my schoolmates outside the Tesco, and would burst into tears when she fell too far behind, or when I didn't meet her eyes, or when I bought a bag of Werthers Originals and refused to share. She cried a lot, those days.

  It was November that year when I took her to the Bonehouse.

  The Bonehouse sat at the end of a quiet cul-de-sac about a mile from our school, backing on to an old orchard where the trees grew tall and wild, unpruned, branches scratching at grey skies. We called it the Bonehouse because of the white wooden pillars framing the door, tall and knurled like femurs.

  The Bonehouse had been empty as long as we'd known it, and was haunted in all the ways that mattered. An unspoken treaty kept us from going inside; to be eleven years old without a haunted house is a poor thing, and a haunted house only stays that way until one boy is brave or stupid enough to knock out a window and find the halls empty of monsters.

  So the Bonehouse remained inviolate. If the Amityville Horror had been released a year earlier we'd have told stories of bleeding walls and demonic voices booming in the night, but all we had was Doctor Who. So the Bonehouse became a place where ventriloquists dolls crawled on broken legs down the halls, and creatures with tunnels of teeth coiled in the basement, and assassins from the lonely corners of space hid in cupboards waiting to devour whatever fat-cheeked children were bold enough to wander inside.

  We ate apples in the orchard, and talked of the hundreds lost inside the Bonehouse, and sometimes Liz came with us and sat silently in the shade, soaking in all our horror stories.

  She never told Mum and Dad. I never told her how grateful I was for that. I never had the chance.

  I didn't do it because I was brave. I didn't want to prove the ghost stories false. I did it because it was what the Doctor would have done.

  The house was a tumour. When Mum drove us to church on Sunday morning I pressed myself against the glass, searching for a silhouette of a steepled rooftop against the sky. When I slept I dreamed only of black corridors.

  So I left one Saturday morning, torch and Arnotts chocolate digestives in my pack. I passed Mum in the kitchen and waved goodbye.

  Then, as I was halfway out the door, she said, "Be a dear and take your sister with you, otherwise she'll sit inside all day."

  I should have seen the shape of the story already. The older brother, plans in tatters, dejectedly dragging his little sister up the street, pouting and kicking at stones. The Bonehouse looming over the horizon, slumbering, expectant. The perfect introduction to a Wednesday night Who broadcast. We look the long way, climbing a fence into the disused orchard, and picked apples for the better part of an hour. They were hard and sour but I ate them anyway, because I didn't want to tell Liz why we were really there, or how much I resented her pr
esence. But she was a smart girl. She circled the meadow twice, collecting acorns in the pocket of the blouse, silver bracelet winking on her wrist, and she said, "You want to go inside?"

  It was she that found the back door unlocked. I shoved her aside, not wanting her to steal my glory, but I hesitated at the threshold. I knew that, after today, the Bonehouse would only be another number on an abandoned street. Mysteries were only mysterious until they were solved.

  But, in time, I let go of the doorframe and fell through into the foyer.

  The Bonehouse was cold, and when I breathed it felt as if I'd taken water into my lungs, heavy and clotting. I dropped my pack and fumbled with the zipper until I found my torch and thumbed the big rubber button frantically. The circle of light it cast was unbearably thin, and as I swept the torch across the foyer I had to fight to keep from turning and running out the door, back into the safety of the trees.

  The foyer had been abandoned to the dust and rats long ago. A rug faded yellow by decades, tassels rotten and black. A pedestal that had once held a vase, now empty, draped in a ghost-white sheet. A great two-pronged staircase enveloped the foyer like hungry, grasping arms. The windows above were choked with vines and spiderwebs and what little light came through was worse than darkness. It felt greasy on my cheeks.

  If Liz wasn't there I would've run. But she was already pressing in against my back, hugging me, whispering "It smells bad. I want to go home," and if she wanted to leave there was no way I could do the same. So I went to explore.

  There was a small green door in the far wall, slightly ajar, but the thought of pushing it open made me feel as if I were falling from a terrible height. Instead I took the stairs two at a time, torchbeam bouncing across the polished rails and armchairs draped in dustsheets and floorboards stained by sunlight and time. I left her behind.

  I don't know how long I was upstairs. Three bedrooms came off the upper landing, each with old oak closets hung with wooden coathangers and ensuite bathrooms with rust locking the taps tight. I explored each with the methodical nature of a true adventurer. I looked beneath the beds, and fiddled with the locks on the leather suitcases I found there. The empty coathangers made me feel sad, although I didn't know why.

  There were no ghosts hiding in the chest of drawers, or behind the curtains. No intergalactic refugees squeezed into the shower. No killer dolls bundled up in the mouldering terrycloth towels. I was relieved and disappointed in equal measure. As an adventure for the Doctor, the Bonehouse was a poor serial.

  Then came a loud thud, like someone tripping over their own feet. Cursing echoed up the stairs. I froze in place. A caretaker? The police? I squeezed the torch in both hands until my knuckles ached, unable to move, unable to blink. Then I remembered Liz, still waiting by the back door, and I thought of Mum's anger.

  My paralysis broke, and I thumped down the stairs. The torchlight was fading, batteries already spitting their last, and when I reached the bottom I passed the light over those cold, quiet statues, those aching walls.

  Liz was gone.

  I called her name. My voice boomed back at me from the walls. I ran to the front door and pressed my face against the filthy windows, expecting to see her tossing acorns in the noon sun, but the street was empty. Then to the back door, still open, hoping she was out in the orchard. The trees were still; nothing moved in the wild grass.

  I turned back to the little green door. It had only been open a finger's width before but now it yawned wide enough for a man to slip through. A man, or a little girl.

  I could barely breathe as I nudged the door open with the toe of my shoe. Beyond was a dark staircase leading down into a cellar. The air that floated up smelled of damp and turpentine. I called, "Please, Liz-"

  From the black came the thump of heavy feet. The echo of a man's voice. Someone in the darkness said, "Grab her!"

  I ran.

  I threw myself against the front door and it popped open, spilling me out into the street. Then I waited in the bushes outside the Bonehouse for an hour, trembling and gnawing my nails bloody. Liz never came out. The house was silent and the doors stayed open.

  I eventually found the courage to stand and creep out from the wilted rhododendrons. I watched the Bonehouse, half expecting its broken windows to blink, for the whole rotten structure to peel lazily from the concrete and shamble away over the meadows.

  Something beyond the shadow of the doorway shifted, slow and lizard-like, and was still.

  * * *

  Steve stared into the dregs of his pint glass. He licked his lips. "Never found her?"

  "There's only so long you can look," I said. "They went through the house, but the police treated it like a kidnapping right from the start. Mum and Dad did alright. Never had another baby, though."

  "Jesus," he whispered. "What do you think-"

  "I don't know. Never had the guts to go back in the house. " I shrugged. "You get used to the silence. I looked for clues. I read a lot of detective stories. A lot of Agatha Christie."

  "And so-"

  I tweaked my moustache. "Of course, mon ami. I know all the stories. Seven stage productions of Alibi, one student film adaptation of And Then There Were None – even though Poirot isn't in the book – and I go to the children's hospital every other week and do a little show."

  "Does it help?"

  "What?"

  "The detectiving," Steve said. His cheeks were red and his nose was beginning to glow and I thought he looked more like Tom Baker in his last days of Doctoring, the stumble-drunk actor pushing away the photos and pens proffered to him at conventions, burning up in the glare of his fame. "Did it help you find her?"

  I ducked my head. "There are stories. Ghost stories. People say if you stand outside the Bonehouse at night, you can hear her crying. She says help, help. But I went and listened, and I heard different." I clutched at an empty glass. "She's saying, Harold. She's calling my name."

  Maybe he pitied me. Maybe he thought it was all a joke, a piss-take between two grown men. Maybe, in that moment, he understood exactly what I needed.

  "You want to go back," he said.

  "I couldn't go alone."

  "Would the Doctor abandon a friend in need?" As if by magic, he produced a slim aluminium tube like a socket wrench. At the top was a steel ring, cut into three like the blades of a miniature turbine. A sonic screwdriver.

  "Let's get going," he said. "Before I get sober."

  * * *

  The Bonehouse squatted at the end of the cul-de-sac, scowling with broken windows, gutters choked with leaves, paint peeling from rotten boards. The wind sobbed around the steeples. If I closed my eyes, I could hear Liz's voice in the breeze.

  Steve hugged himself beneath his brown coat. The ends of his scarf were filthy with mulch. The walk seemed to have woken him up, and he twisted his hands. "God, it's cold out. You know, I have coffee at the hotel-"

  "Can't you hear her, mon ami?"

  "Just the wind. Look, Harold-"

  "Poirot." I tried to look apologetic. "It helps me think."

  "Fine, Poirot. You know a way in?"

  I did. When I told him I'd never come back to this place I'd lied. I'd stood in the shadows of the Bonehouse many times over the past years, watching the gaping black mouth of the front doors, waiting for them to spring to life and drag me in, screaming, fingernails gouging strips from the dirt. I'd circled the house and found all the weak windows, the points in the wainscotting where the boards peeled back, but I'd never been able to work up the nerve to pry them apart.

  But today, I had the Doctor with me.

  The Bonehouse doors were closed with a heavy chain and a yale padlock the size of my fist, but the second window along had been cleaned out long ago and boarded over. I wriggled the nails loose. "You see, there is always a way for the thinking man, n'est-ce pas?"

  "Christ." Steve wiped his nose on his sleeve. "You first."

  The boards came away easily. Steve helped me up, and I climbed through into t
he shadows of the Bonehouse for the first time in twenty years.

  The house was silent. The noises of taxis and grey owls on the hunt was dimmed; the only sound was the murmur of breath. The air was thick and treacly and when I said, "Doctor?" my voice was muted in the stillness. The world outside the Bonehouse had ceased to exist; air did not travel that far and there was nothing left to echo.

  Steve was close behind. "Bastard thing..." His scarf was caught on a nail and it tore as he tugged it free. He stared at the frayed ends forlornly. "No chance I can get this mended by Friday."

  I took my penlight from my coat pocket and let it wander. Mould and rat droppings, the vague odour of marijuana. At my feet was an empty bottle of Lucozade with a section of rubber pipe jutting from the plastic, yellow bong-water collecting in the bottom. Orange carapaces of cigarette butts strewn across the carpet. A pair of underpants draped carefully over the banister. The twin staircases loomed.

  Steve said, "I think I cut myself. God, I've got a splinter the size of a truck."

  "Quiet! How will we be able to hear her with you prattling?"

  "Mate," he said. "I'll go, if you want me. This is your show. This place creeps the hell out of me."

  I ducked my head. "Sorry. Got carried away."

  "Beer talking, is it?"

  "No. Just the years."

  The staircase made mourning noises beneath our feet as we went up to the bedrooms. "They searched the place, right?"

  "On the first night. I remember the police calling her name. She didn't call back. They looked in the cupboards, the bathrooms-"

  "Basement?"

  I froze, one hand resting on the balustrade, the other gripping the torch so tight it ached. I remembered that green door, and the voices beyond. "There was nobody there. Maybe I imagined them. Fuck, I don't know." I sucked my lower lip and tried to calm. Poirot never said fuck. Poirot was always poised. He saw what others didn't see. "They took me down there. There's a cupboard, and an old sink, and a space under the stairs." I closed my eyes. Police in blue uniforms. The slow sweep of torchbeams. The silver buttons on their jackets shimmering in the gloom. A chorus of voices, Elizabeth, Elizabeth! Come out!