A Murder Shall Commence.

Chapter 7

"Hopefully Fisher'll pull some strings" I said, sounding too flippant, even, for my tastes.

"Where is that lot, anyhow?" Dr. Scott asked. I sighed heavily, taking a sip of my tea.

"I walked out on them. We all pushed ourselves too hard, and I cracked" I admitted sadly.

"So now you've decided to go solo?" was the next question.

"Yes, I have!" I said briskly, almost desperately. I knew he was trying to talk me out of it, but I just couldn't let him.

"Look, I'm tired, and drugged on caffeine, and stressed and worried and upset and probably completely off my head, but someone's going to die tomorrow, actually die, there's going to be a murder, and I'm the only one smart enough to work out the puzzles and I need to do this now, because I don't have time. I can't let this person die."

It had all come out of my mouth in a bit of a rush, and both of us knew it. Dr. Scott stood up, and plodded over to the sink, leaving his cup there and turning to face me.

"I'm going to make you a deal, Alianna Winter" he said levelly. "And it's in your own best interests to take it, so I suggest you do."

"Alright" I muttered quietly.

"The sun won't rise until at least half past seven tomorrow morning" the doctor began. "And I assume, for the crazy scheme you've got in your head, you'll need some level of darkness. It is now" he looked at the clock "half past ten. Which gives us nine hours from now. My ultimatum is this: at half past two, in four hours time, we will go to the Crystal Palace, and we will get you inside it, and out of it, if indeed possible. But during all the time before we go in and after we come out up until at least dawn, you are going to lie on that sofa, and you are going to sleep. I will drug you, if I have to, but you have to sleep."

I pouted, but inwardly I thought it was an excellent idea. Staying up until two in the morning on the previous night was doing me no favours.

"Alianna" the doctor said sternly. I humphed.

"Alright. But you might have to drug me."

He did, in fact, have to drug me, and he left me curled up in a tiny ball on his sofa, breathing deeply and calmly for the first time in ages. The four hours flew by far too quickly, whether it was because of my lack of sleep or the drugs I didn't know, and I woke to a bitter taste of brandy on my lips.

"Are you still up for this?" Dr. Scott said quietly, as I sat up and stretched.

"Course" I smiled, still feeling a little drowsy. "It's going to be a long night of walking. I doubt there'll be any cabs around, and we've got to go via Praed Street. I need to drop into that theatre again." I flicked up and caught a single key, which seemed to Dr. Scott like I had produced it out of nowhere.

"We'd better get going, then" the doctor sighed. "I'm going to regret this in the near future, but we'd better go."

The street was even colder than before when we entered out onto it. Dr. Scott looked up at the dark sky. There were no stars.

"We might get ourselves a snowstorm tonight" he murmured to nobody in particular. I bit my lip as we began our walk.

"Let's hope it doesn't."

It took us longer than I would have liked to get back to Praed Street. Leaving Dr. Scott on the sidewalk, I let myself in to the back door, and quickly changed into another set of raggedy clothes and another flat cap. Dr. Scott insisted I put my dress in his bag, so I did, and we began the walk from Paddington to the Crystal Palace. The Palace itself was a huge glass greenhouse, a replica of the site of the Great Exhibition, an attraction created by Queen Victoria's husband, Prince Albert, to showcase all of the amazing things made in the British Empire. It wasn't on the original site now, but it was still a big glass greenhouse.

A few flakes of snow were falling as we arrived at the Crystal Palace. We could see two guards posted at the front entrance, and I waited in the shadows while Dr. Scott, pulling his coat collar up and his hat down, took a little bottle out of his bag, which he then left, and shuffled over to them. I didn't see what he did exactly, but in our earlier discussions I had gathered he was using a similar drug to one I had used to feign a fainting fit, at a funeral a very very long tine ago.

The guards dropped drowsily to the floor, and Dr. Scott snaffled the key and unlocked the door as I ran to join him. He passed me the key.

"Try and stick to the plan. If all goes wrong, meet back at Harley Street" he muttered, as I locked myself in, and he moved quickly away.

I turned. The snowflakes were getting bigger, thicker and more frequent, and were resting like a blanket on the glass roof above me. The exhibits around seemed to swarm across the floor, stained blue by the darkness and the snow against the glass. It was a forest of frozen shapes and looming shadows, with the silence filling the spaces so heavy and so thick I could only hear my breathing in my ears, and through the evangelical stillness I felt like I could hear the snowflakes landing like fairy feet on the Crystal Palace.

There was a little white label on the exhibit to my immediate left. I squinted, and made out a little number one. To the left of that, there was a label with a number two. I smiled. Easy enough.

I ran through the rows of inanimate objects, counting as I went, feeling fleet of foot and more alive than I had in a long time. I reckoned part of it was the adrenaline, but it was mostly the lack of skirts.

I skidded to a halt in front of exhibit number 34. It was an old sewing machine, like I had hoped, and in the dim light I could just about make out a little golden crown emblem painted on the side. On the baseplate, pinned down by the needle, I saw a slip of paper. Bingo.

Carefully, I eased it free, and stuffed it in my pocket, but then a banging of the front door turned my blood to ice. Obviously the guards had woken up, and had two sets of keys. Two beams of golden light cut through the blue-white ice-world I stood in, as the two guards each took one of the two aisles and began to walk up it. Due to the twists and turns, they couldn't see me yet, but I knew they would soon.

Fighting down the bubble of panic in my throat, I looked around desperately.

Then a wicked little smile filtered across my face.

Next to the sewing machine, there was a display of little clocks, probably from all over the British Empire. Feeling slighty guilty, I grabbed the biggest, ducked past the sewing machine and threw it as hard as I could at the glass pane in front of me.

It shattered.

And I dived through it.