City of Death

by Douglas Adams

  The Doctor sucked his thumb tenderly, and stroked K-9. Well, maybe he’d not got to meet Leonardo, but he had still learned a thing or two. And caused mischief.

  ‘Mission accomplished,’ he chuckled. Feeling very pleased with himself, he activated the Fast Return Switch and sent the time machine plunging towards twentieth-century France. Hopefully.

  Only when he was falling through the Time Vortex did the Doctor realise what he should have done. He should have gone back outside the TARDIS and reasoned with Tancredi. Told him that the Time Lords were on to Scaroth and he needed to abandon his plan pronto before they came down on him with all their pomp and might. Well, mostly pomp.

  Instead of which, the Doctor now realised he’d left Scaroth with the impression that he and Romana were just wandering dilettantes. Which may well have been true, but was terribly unhelpful.

  No, he should definitely have gone back and said something. Naturally the French had a phrase for it. The art of coming up with a pithy comeback just a bit too late. L’esprit d’escalier. One thing the Daleks had no sense of.

  * * *

  Tancredi flailed miserably into the manifestation, trying to sort out the tangle of his thoughts. He had been so close, so close to giving them the secrets of time travel, pulled from a very Time Lord. And he’d failed.

  He was snatched momentarily out of the gestalt by a large blue box saying ‘Boo!’ It had hollered at him and then hurtled out of existence. The universe sighed with relief. Tancredi gaped in amazement, and then plunged back into the abyss.

  * * *

  Five centuries later, Count Carlos Scarlioni emerged from the gestalt, to find himself standing in his library. He knew so much. Some of it would fade, but this time, oh yes, this time, there was something he had to cling on to.

  ‘The Doctor,’ he murmured. ‘So the Doctor has the secret.’

  His smile was wide and hungry.

  ‘The Doctor. And the girl.’

  14

  MATERIAL WITNESS

  The exhibits in M. Bertrand’s art gallery had passed a relatively peaceful night. Now, as dawn rose over Paris, the gallery’s newest and loudest exhibit returned with a happy thud.

  Peering out through the door, the Doctor found himself exactly where he wanted to be. It was worse than he’d thought. For the TARDIS to end up exactly where the Doctor had asked it to go meant that something was very badly wrong with the space-time continuum.

  The interfaces between the twelve segments of Scaroth were forming a causal link through planet Earth’s history. This meant two things. One, time travel was going to be a doddle so long as the Doctor didn’t mind meeting a lot of ranting lunatics in wigs. And two, Scaroth’s plans were drawing to their conclusion.

  ‘The centuries that divide me shall be undone?’ he muttered to K-9. ‘I don’t like the sound of that at all.’

  * * *

  Outside M. Bertrand’s gallery, he pulled the door shut behind him. He reached up to the alarm above the door, found the wires severed by the sonic screwdriver and twisted them back together, all the while looking like a child who definitely hasn’t done anything wrong, certainly didn’t break anything and has been very well behaved all afternoon.

  ‘The centuries that divide me?’ he muttered again, wiping his fingerprints off the door handle.

  He set off into Paris at his most worried saunter.

  * * *

  The Doctor was still worried as he crossed in front of the Notre-Dame cathedral. He reached a corner, stood outside a café, and sucked the air. To the left the Louvre, to the right the Château. He wondered about barging in to confront the Count, teeth blazing and hope something brilliant sprang to mind. Or, he could just make sure that the Mona Lisa wasn’t still happily sitting smirking exactly where she was supposed to be. Perhaps that would be an idea.

  Slightly sadly, the Doctor decided to do the sensible thing first. Feeling he was forgetting something, he set off, away from the café.

  * * *

  Inside the café, Romana’s eyes opened to find someone had placed a fresh cup of coffee on her table. She looked up blearily, wondered why the world hurt so much, and then noticed le Patron placidly moving between the tables, sweeping up the mounds of broken glass. She smiled at the old man. He gave her the merest of unconcerned shrugs and carried on sweeping.

  She sipped her coffee tenderly and wondered if Paris did such a thing as a bacon sandwich. No sign of the Doctor. On the one hand, it would be nice to know she wasn’t stranded here for ever. On the other hand, she wasn’t sure she could survive his booming tones just now.

  She looked over at Duggan, sprawled fast asleep at the next table. He was snoring. For once he looked almost at peace. Romana caught herself smiling fondly at him. Duggan wasn’t a bad man, she supposed, in his own blunt way. No. Stop that. You’re getting as bad as the Doctor. Next you’ll be asking if we can keep him.

  She stepped over to the snoring detective. She noticed le Patron had also placed a cup of coffee on his table.

  ‘Wake up,’ she whispered. ‘Your coffee will get cold.’

  No response.

  She tapped Duggan gently on the shoulder. He leapt up, pulling his gun from his pocket, sending the coffee cup smashing to the ground.

  Romana winced. Everything was rather louder than it needed to be today.

  ‘What?’ snarled Duggan, whirling around himself in a fighting posture.

  Le Patron immaculately swept the coffee cup up from around his feet.

  Romana handed Duggan her cup. ‘Here. Have some coffee.’

  Duggan slugged it back, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and then slumped back down at the table, dejected as a bloodhound. ‘That’s it. I’m washed up.’

  He remembered the Chief had once told him scathingly, ‘Duggan, you’re the kind of chap who can’t fall out of his chair without missing the floor.’ Duggan had always thought that a little unfair, and yet, here he was. ‘I’m sent to Paris just to check if anything odd is happening in the art world. And what happens? The Mona Lisa gets pinched from under my nose. Odd isn’t in it.’

  Duggan took another slurp of Romana’s coffee. He put the cup down. She reached for it hopefully. It was annoyingly empty.

  ‘Well,’ she said crisply. ‘When you’ve quite finished with that coffee we’d better go and get the Mona Lisa back, hadn’t we?’

  ‘Which one?’ growled Duggan, a trifle too loudly for Romana’s taste. ‘I’ve seen seven!’ His fist started to pound the table rhythmically. She wished he wouldn’t do that. ‘Seven! Mona! Lisas!’ Oh, he was going to do that. ‘What are we going to see today? A couple of dozen Eiffel Towers lying about?’

  ‘The real Mona Lisa,’ Romana muttered through gritted teeth. ‘We’ll go and find the original one.’

  ‘But how do you account for the others?’ Duggan was starting to whine.

  Romana shut her eyes and thought about regenerating. Maybe that would make the pain behind her eyelids go away. Was this what it was like for the Doctor, always being followed around and constantly being nagged with obvious questions? Well, was it? What do we do now, Romana? What does it all mean, Romana? How do we save the planet, Romana? She counted quickly to ten million and then answered. ‘Oh, I expect Scarlioni located his seven buyers, popped back in time, had a chat to Leonardo, got him to rustle up another six, bricked them up in his cellar to age properly, stole the one from the Louvre and now sells the whole lot for enormous profit. Sound reasonable?’

  Yeah right. Duggan made a sour face. ‘I used to do divorce investigations,’ he muttered glumly. ‘It was never like this.’

  Le Patron shuffled over and brought Romana a fresh cup of coffee. Heaven.

  ‘As far as I can see,’ Romana continued, thinking aloud, ‘there’s only one flaw in my line of reasoning.’

  ‘Go on, surprise me.’

 
Duggan reached for Romana’s coffee. She swatted him away.

  ‘That equipment of Kerensky’s wouldn’t work effectively as a time machine.’

  ‘Keep on surprising me.’

  ‘Well . . .’ Romana held up two sugar cubes. ‘You can have two adjacent time continua running at different rates, but without a field interface stabiliser you can’t cross from one to the other.’

  ‘A what? You can’t?’

  She bumped the two sugar cubes together. They remained, like Duggan, obstinately solid. Then she dropped them into the coffee and swirled a spoon around in it until the sugar lumps were firmly dissolved. ‘Something like that, I guess.’ She sipped her coffee. ‘Come on, let’s get along to the Château, where at least you can thump somebody.’

  * * *

  While Romana and Duggan were making their way towards the Château, the Doctor was crossing a busy stretch of road on the other side of the Seine. Two tourists asked him to take their picture. He obliged, and then made his way past the Pont Neuf at a run.

  * * *

  Although museums are decidedly boastful about the things they do have, they are reticent to the point of shyness about the things they are lacking. The theft of the Mona Lisa was about to become the biggest news story across the world but, from the outside, the Louvre looked pretty much as normal. Perhaps a few more badly parked police cars than usual. On the inside, the Mona Lisa gallery simply read ‘fermé’ without further explanation. Someone had placed an easel nearby with a placard advertising some simply lovely Dutch paintings of rotten fruit that disappointed tourists might care to have a look at. On the whole, they did not.

  * * *

  Harrison Mandel had been feeling rather intimidated by Elena.

  Like most Parisians, she didn’t seem to really have a job, or, if she did, it appeared to involve going into an office, pecking some people on the cheek, and then going out for coffee. She had a wearingly endless amount of time to drag him to art in the hopes that he would be enraptured by it.

  Most of it had seemed nice enough, but he could really take it or leave it.

  He’d frankly been dreading the Louvre. It seemed so big. So many things that Elena would say lots of clever things about and then wait for him to say something vaguely coherent. He’d only try his best, mutter awkwardly, and then be dragged on to the next thing. Somewhere inside the Louvre was going to be what Elena had taken to calling ‘that perfect moment of beauty in Paris that would change his life for ever’. And he had the nasty suspicion they weren’t going to stop until he found it. Actually, thought Harrison, I rather like things the way they are.

  As they approached the Louvre, he couldn’t help but notice all the police cars parked up.

  ‘Oh, that’s probably the police on strike,’ Elena said, as though this were a usual occurrence.

  As they got closer, he noticed a lot of worried people muttering outside.

  ‘Oh, that’s probably just the museum staff on strike,’ Elena said, as though these things happened.

  As they got closer, Harrison saw a reporter standing with a camera crew.

  ‘Oh, that’s probably just the Mona Lisa being stolen again,’ Elena said, as though this was one less thing to worry about.

  * * *

  As the Doctor ran up, he noticed the police cars drawn up outside. A shrugging match was going on between the police and a traffic warden. The Doctor strolled past, overhearing ‘The Mona Lisa . . . stolen,’ and hurried into the museum.

  * * *

  As Madame Henriette would later tell her cats, she had had little to do that day. Sadly few people were interested in taking her exclusive, deluxe and select tours of the Treasures Of The Louvre (Excepting the Mona Lisa). She patiently explained to her furry darlings that this might be the last salmon they would see for a while. ‘If the Mona Lisa is not found,’ she sighed, ‘it will be tinned pilchards for all of us.’

  The cats looked at her vaguely and carried on eating the salmon. There would be more salmon. They knew this.

  For Madame Henriette, it had been a horrible and strange day, made more so by the sudden reappearance of that terribly odd man with the scarf. ‘He terrifies me,’ she told the cats. ‘You would not like him.’

  The cats agreed. He sounded more of a dog person.

  Madame Henriette had had little better to do than fuss anxiously around some detectives, trying to extract the smallest morsel of gossip from them. So far they’d been ignoring her birdlike attempts to talk to them. She was alarmed when the Doctor suddenly materialised at her elbow.

  ‘Excuse me,’ he bellowed to her in what was a dismal attempt at a whisper.

  Madame Henriette let out a hushed shriek.

  ‘Did you notice two people trying to stop the Mona Lisa from being stolen last night?’

  ‘M’sieur?’ Madame Henriette gasped.

  She noticed a detective turn, suddenly noticing them. This could be disastrous. It was one thing to want to know everything about the theft of the painting. It was quite another for an authorised conductrice of deluxe, exclusive and select tours to be accused of involvement in it. Disastrous.

  If this hopeless eccentric had information, she hoped that he would impart it to her subtly. Instead he seemed to be trying to land aircraft. Looking like a portrait by Toulouse Lautrec sprung to life and fallen on hard times, the man clearly had no idea of being anything other than the centre of attention.

  ‘I say,’ he boomed, waggling his hands at different heights. ‘Have you seen a pretty girl who talks rather a lot and a young man who hits things?’

  He mimed hitting. Madame Henriette squeaked. The detective watching them nudged his colleague. They both started looking in their direction, and Madame Henriette’s destitution edged a little closer.

  ‘I knew the painting was going to be stolen,’ the man informed her and the entire room. ‘As soon as I heard the theft was going to take place, I sent my friends along to stop it, which they obviously didn’t. I can’t rely on anyone.’ He pulled a face of dolorous annoyance. ‘I say. Did you see where they went?’

  Madame Henriette was aware the detectives were nudging their colleagues. They were putting down their coffees and moving closer.

  ‘No, m’sieur,’ she ventured quickly. ‘But I think, perhaps, you had better speak with the police. They’re just over there, I believe . . .’

  ‘Pah!’ The man ignored her, making a dismissive noise that was quite marvellously French. ‘No, sorry, no time.’ He shook her hand, stepped back and suddenly gave her the most beautiful ‘it’ll all be all right’ smile she had ever seen. ‘I’d love to stop and chat, but there’s the human race to think about . . . Bye now!’ With a wave, he headed out.

  Several detectives watched him go. One swigged the last of his coffee and followed at a run.

  Much to her relief, Madame Henriette found herself standing alone in a completely empty gallery, vaguely aware that something much more exciting was happening just outside. For a moment she felt sad. But she had got used to loneliness.

  ‘That man,’ said Madame Henriette to her cats later. ‘He was in the Louvre yesterday talking about the universe, and today he was worried about the human race.’ She stroked a reluctant tail. ‘You know, I think secretly he must be a Frenchman.’

  * * *

  The Doctor weaved through the tangled streets of the Marais, unaware that he was being followed. As he marched through the bustling crowds, stopping to take the occasional photograph for a tour party, he little realised that his description (at each repetition a little more outlandish) was being relayed on police car radios.

  One detective was sat outside a café watching the world go past over a brandy. He watched the third most wanted man in Paris saunter past and then strode inside to use the telephone.

  He had a message for Count Scarlioni. The Doctor was coming.

  * * *
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br />   The Doctor found the café without difficulty. The place was bustling with early-morning customers, some of them slapping each other on the backs in an early-morning bonne journée way, some of them smoking in desultory corners, and some of them crowded around a television which, the Doctor completely failed to notice, was relating the story of the theft of the Mona Lisa, accompanied by a picture of the painting herself, and also a very grainy picture of what looked worryingly like Romana and Duggan climbing over a wall.

  The Doctor swept up to the bar. ‘Patron!’ he called. ‘Have you seen those two people who I was with yesterday?’

  Le Patron stared at the Doctor, his old face completely inscrutable.

  ‘You remember,’ the Doctor cajoled. ‘We kept on being held up and attacked and smashing things?’

  Le Patron shrugged unconcernedly. He picked up the neck of a broken bottle from the table, looked at it significantly for a moment and then slung it in a bin. But that was his entire comment on the matter.

  ‘Ah. I see,’ the Doctor pressed on. ‘Did you happen to notice which way they went?’

  Le Patron shrugged once more, and, with the air of not having heard him at all, shuffled slowly and patiently away to a corner, where he rifled around amongst scraps of paper while puffing air through his teeth. The Doctor was thoroughly dismissed. The Doctor wasn’t used to being ignored, ever. And yet Paris was managing that quite well.

  ‘Thank you,’ said the Doctor to thin air. ‘Thank you very much.’

  The Doctor looked around the café. Of course they’d come back here. Romana was sensible. They’d be here at any moment. Probably just doing some shopping.

  ‘They can’t have been stupid enough to go back to the Château.’

  Le Patron shuffled over, sliding a crumpled scrap of paper across the bar to him. The Doctor read it.

  ‘Dear Doctor, we’ve gone back to the Cha—’ He groaned, crumpled the note into his pocket, waved his thanks, and ran out of the café.