Silhouette by Justin Richards Read Free Book Online Page B

the whole area an eerie, unreal quality.
    ‘I thought they had lamp-lighters to go round putting the lights on,’ she said.
    ‘Not any more,’ the Doctor told her. ‘In the early days of gas lamps that’s how it worked, but by now they’re almost all automatically controlled. They’re aclever lot, the Victorians. Invented all sorts of things, including powered flight.’
    ‘No,’ Clara told him. She knew this one. ‘That was the Wright Brothers. The first powered flight was at Kittyhawk in America.’
    ‘They had good publicists,’ the Doctor replied. ‘Everyone remembers the Wright Brothers. But that was the first powered flight
outdoors
.’
    ‘Outdoors?’
    ‘The Victorians had powered flight long before that, but indoors. Inside big warehouses. It was a sort of gimmick. A spectacle. An amusement. They didn’t regard it as being especially useful.’
    ‘So they let the Wright Brothers take the credit?’
    ‘It’s not the British way to boast, or to steal other people’s thunder. They invented the computer during the Second World War and didn’t bother to tell anyone about it for decades. I bet the kids in your class are all only too happy to let someone else take the credit when they do well at something. The same way that I’m always happy for you to take the credit for our achievements.’
    She could see from the way his mouth twitched that he was joking, and punched his shoulder lightly. ‘We should find Jenny. If she’s still here.’
    ‘She is.’ The Doctor pointed to the slight, dark-haired young woman walking towards them.
    *
    With the afternoon turning to evening and the temperature dropping, Jenny suggested they all return to Paternoster Row for supper and the benefit of a warm fire. Clara was more than happy to agree. The cold was eating through the soles of her boots and she wasn’t sure she had much feeling left in the tips of her fingers.
    Strax appeared briefly at dinner, telling them proudly that his own investigations were ongoing and that he expected to eliminate some suspects soon. By ‘eliminate’, Clara did not think he meant exonerate them from suspicion. For most of the evening, she and the Doctor sat with Vastra and Jenny in the drawing room, chatting over tea and later wine.
    Inevitably, their discussions returned to the dead of Marlowe Hapworth and the day’s investigations.
    ‘He was definitely at the Carnival,’ Jenny said. ‘I found several people as swore they’d seen him. And he was especially interested, according to one geezer I spoke to, in the shadow puppet show. Went back afterwards to find the people as run it.’
    ‘Silhouette,’ the Doctor said. ‘We spoke to her too. It was an impressive show.’
    ‘You think Hapworth might have seen something he shouldn’t?’ Vastra asked.
    ‘Backstage at the Shadowplay,’ Clara added.
    ‘I think he saw, or overheard something,’ the Doctor agreed. ‘Not necessarily to do with the Shadowplay.Maybe he went back into the tent and found someone else there, or heard someone talking through the tent wall. Or …’ He lapsed into silence, staring into the fire.
    ‘What about the scene of the crime?’ Clara asked. ‘Any good clues there?’
    ‘Alas, no,’ Vastra admitted. ‘A dead body in a locked room. Simple, and quite impossible.’
    ‘What about the origami connection?’
    ‘The what?’ Jenny asked.
    Clara gave them a brief account of how they had followed Milton to the empty house, and the origami bird they had found on the windowsill.
    ‘A connection,’ the Doctor said. ‘Possibly a significant one. But I still don’t see how it all fits together.’ He leapt to his feet. ‘I know what we need!’
    ‘What?’ Clara asked.
    ‘A good night’s sleep. Followed by a hearty breakfast. Then another day of investigating.’
    ‘But investigating what?’ Vastra said. ‘There is little more to be learned either from Hapworth’s study or from his manservant.’
    ‘The Carnival of Curiosities