Doctor Illuminatus Read online

  The sound Pip had heard was that of Gazer grinding his teeth, which had been filed to points.

  The light grew brighter and split into two beams, like brilliant halogen eyes in the darkness. They were rapidly approaching the house, moving fast across the field.

  In an instant, the hippies were gone. The eyes moving towards the house were extinguished. All that was left was a small, nondescript moth scrabbling against the windowpane, attracted by Pip’s bedside lamp.

  From downstairs came the sound of a door slowly opening, footsteps and a voice which called out, as if reciting a nursery rhyme, “We’re back! We’re back! It’s time to hit the sack. No time to take another tack. We’re off to hit the sack.”

  Another voice said, “I hope you remembered not to touch the chicken.”

  “Did you sleep well?” Mrs. Ledger asked Sebastian at breakfast the following morning.

  “Yes, thank you very much, Mrs. Ledger,” Sebastian replied, casting Pip a sidelong glance. “It was much more comfortable than my normal bed.”

  “Would you like me to drive you home?” Mrs. Ledger offered. “I shall be going into Brampton with Pip. I have some shopping to do and Pip has a doctor’s appointment later in the morning. I can easily drop you off.”

  “It is most kind of you, Mrs. Ledger,” Sebastian said, “but I would not wish to inconvenience you.”

  “You don’t have a bicycle,” she came back. “It must be a long walk to your home. And I assure you, it will not inconvenience me one . . .”

  “We’re going fishing,” Tim butted in, rescuing the situation and bringing an end to his mother’s oblique inquisition.

  Pip and her mother departed as soon as breakfast was over, leaving Tim and Sebastian in the kitchen. Together, they cleared away the breakfast plates and boxes of cereal.

  “Why does de Loudéac keep on targeting the house?” Tim mused. “Is it you he’s after?”

  “I think not,” Sebastian said. “He knows of me, of my whereabouts. It would be much easier for him to catch me off my guard away from the house, which is where he knows I have my greatest power. For de Loudéac to come here is, from his point of view, foolish.”

  “Is he trying to scare us out?”

  “Again, I think not. We do not hide here. We frequently leave this sanctuary. He has plentiful opportunity.”

  “Is it, like,” Tim considered, “he’s sending in his troops to spy on us?”

  “Once more, I think not. Why use his cohorts? He need dispatch but one mouse to be his spy. One ant. No,” Sebastian said, “he wants something, yet I cannot assess what it is.”

  “How can we find out?”

  “With ease,” Sebastian replied, and he smiled. “This morning, I think we shall go a-hunting. Do you possess a bicycle?”

  Ten minutes later, the house locked up and the alarm system activated, they set off for Brampton. Tim rode his mountain bike while Sebastian took Mr. Ledger’s racing cycle. All down the drive and for the two hundred meters of road, Sebastian weaved from one side of the road to the other, much to Tim’s dismay.

  “You can ride a bike, can’t you?” he asked Sebastian nervously, all the while listening out for any approaching vehicle.

  “I have been known to,” came the reply, “but it is not a mode of transportation with which I am familiar nor have any great experience.”

  By the time they had covered a mile, however, Sebastian was more steady and coped well even when a large truck overtook them.

  “If we meet my mother in town . . .” Tim began as they freewheeled down a gentle slope in the road.

  “You need not be worried on that account,” Sebastian reassured him. “She will not see us.”

  They reached the town, and Sebastian pulled up outside a garage.

  “We shall leave the bicycles here,” he announced, dismounting and heading for a huge pile of old tires waiting to be taken away for disposal.

  Tim was worried. “What if somebody finds the bikes and nicks them?”

  “Nicks?”

  “Steals, pilfers, filches, walks off with . . .”

  “They will be quite secure,” Sebastian said, disappearing round the corner of the tire mound.

  Tim followed him, leaning his mountain bike against his father’s racer.

  “What next?” he asked.

  “Our plan now is to seek out de Loudéac in the town. This will not be hard. I believe I will be able to locate him, for I have come to know his ways.”

  “And we can always follow our noses,” Tim added wryly.

  “In a manner of speaking,” Sebastian replied. “In fact, we shall follow my nose.” He stood with his feet apart, his hands on his hips. “And now for our disguise.”

  “Disguise!” Tim said. “What disguise?”

  “It is time, Tim,” Sebastian answered, “that you undertake the experience of shape-shifting.”

  At this, Sebastian put his hand on Tim’s shoulder and murmured something in what Tim assumed was Latin. He felt slightly odd for a few seconds, but it passed.

  Sebastian had vanished. Tim looked around, wondering what he should do next.

  A Jack Russell terrier appeared from behind the tire stack. It was white with brown markings.

  “If you contrive to call me Patch or Spot,” the dog declared, “I shall be mortified. Try to think of something more original.”

  Tim’s mouth fell open.

  “Come, Tim,” the dog continued. “You are to take me for a walk around the town. I shall direct us. You just follow. Now, attach the leash to my collar and we shall be on our way.”

  Although he had no idea how it had got there, Tim found he was holding a dog lead and did as he was told.

  “It is you, isn’t it?” Tim ventured. “I mean, like, you’re Sebastian.”

  “Indeed,” replied the Jack Russell. Its lips lifted in a canine smile.

  “This,” Tim said, “could be fun.”

  Sebastian the terrier tugged on the lead and they set off. Looking back to check the bicycles were safe, Tim could see no sign of them whatsoever.

  They had not gone fifty meters along the pavement before, ahead of them, Pip and her mother stepped out of the baker’s shop. Tim’s step faltered. The terrier looked up.

  “Don’t be concerned. Walk on,” the dog said, although the words sounded more like a canine snarl than a sentence.

  “Where to next, Mum?” Tim heard his sister ask. “The greengrocer’s,” his mother decided. “They sell bedding plants.”

  With that, they turned towards Tim and Sebastian the Jack Russell. Playing the part, the dog started wagging his tail furiously, tugging Tim in the direction of his mother and sister. He steeled himself for the encounter.

  Sebastian uttered a little yelp of greeting.

  “Hello,” Pip said, bending to stroke him. Then, looking straight at Tim, she asked, “What’s his name?”

  What on Earth, Tim thought, was going on? Here he was, walking through Brampton with a dog on a lead and neither his sister nor — of all people — his mother saw fit to take him to task for it.

  Flustered and nonplussed, he replied, “Patch.” He was tempted to add What’s the matter with you two? but resisted it.

  The dog cast him an askance look, jumped up on his hind legs and gave Pip a quick lick on her chin.

  “He’s certainly a happy little chap,” Tim’s mother said. “Come along, Pip.”

  Pip gave the dog a final rub behind its ear and went off after her mother. It was then Tim caught sight of himself in the baker’s shop window. He was a middle-aged, white-haired lady in a prim, two-piece suit and a white blouse with a rhinestone brooch shaped like a butterfly pinned to it.

  “Patch!” the dog muttered with disdain.

  “Never mind your name,” Tim replied. “Do I really look like ... like a retired primary-school headmistress?”

  “If you think you look thus,” Sebastian said, “then thus you look and thus will others see you. Now, let us continue our hu
nt.”

  “You could at least have made me into a man,” Tim complained, but Sebastian was already at the end of his lead, tugging hard.

  They reached the post office. Coming down the steps was a shabbily dressed old man walking with the aid of an adjustable cane, a scratched leather shopping bag in the other hand. For just a moment, Sebastian stiffened. He need not have bothered. Tim caught the unpleasant and now all-too-identifiable whiff of sweat, urine and cheesy feet.

  The old man stood by the letter box, surveying the street, taking in every detail with his shifty eyes. To kill time and disguise their presence, Sebastian cocked his leg against a bus-stop sign.

  Not believing himself to be not under observation, de Loudéac set off along the pavement. He walked with a shuffling gait, leaning on the stick, his back slightly hunched, but his head up, facing forward, looking hastily from side to side every dozen steps.

  Tim and Sebastian followed at a distance, Tim pausing to look in a shop window every now and then, Sebastian sniffing at lampposts, a black-and-gold trash bin and a terra-cotta trough full of flowers outside Curlers ’n’ Clippers, the ladies’ hairdresser’s salon.

  They had to stop longer than usual by the flower display as de Loudéac was studying the headlines at a newsstand. Tim, concentrating on their quarry, did not notice the hairdresser glaring at him through the window, nor did he see the door open.

  “Excuse me, madam,” the hairdresser said.

  Not realizing he was being addressed, Tim continued to watch de Loudéac surreptitiously.

  “I said,” the hairdresser repeated starchily, “excuse me, madam.”

  Tim turned, to be confronted by a woman in a pink pinafore, with an array of hair clips attached to the neck strap.

  Sebastian started to lift his hind leg.

  “I would be most grateful,” the hairdresser continued tartly, “if you would take your dog elsewhere. Those flowers cost a lot of money.”

  Sebastian let out a tiny squirt of urine and lowered his leg.

  “Well, really!” the hairdresser exclaimed with disgust. “Some people have no respect for the property of others.”

  “I’m terribly sorry,” Tim apologized. “I’m afraid my mind was elsewhere. Patch! You naughty boy!”

  The hairdresser turned on her heels in a huff. Tim coughed. Had that really been his voice? All fruity, upper-crust and plummy . . .

  “You should control your dog better,” whined the Jack Russell, and he tugged on the leash.

  De Loudéac went a short way, then turned into the butcher’s shop.

  “Go in and see what he’s buying,” Sebastian growled. Tim tied the lead to a hook in the butcher’s shop wall, beneath a notice that read, Please leave your dog

  here, and went in. Sebastian sat and scratched behind his right ear with his right hind leg.

  De Loudéac was standing at the counter, purchasing two lambs’ hearts. When he turned to leave, he looked Tim straight in the eye.

  “Good morning,” Tim greeted him cheerily, glad the smell of the butcher’s shop went some way towards disguising the old man’s vile cocktail of body odors.

  “It is for some,” de Loudéac muttered, and he walked to the door where he stood, counting his change.

  “What can I get for you, madam?” It was the butcher, wearing a white apron and a straw boater with a blue hatband.

  Tim had to think fast. He had no money on him and he did not want to buy anything — yet to make no purchase, having entered the shop, would seem suspicious.

  “Do you have any marrow bones?” he inquired. “For my dog,” he added hastily.

  “I’m sure we can find something for him,” the butcher replied and, reaching into a tray under the counter, produced a huge bone. “Here we are. That’ll keep him busy for a while. Shall I wrap it or,” he looked over Tim’s shoulder to where Sebastian was looking in from the door, not a meter from de Loudéac’s feet, “would he like it straight away?”

  “Straight away,” said Tim, not wanting to be hampered by having to carry a bone down the street in a plastic bag.

  De Loudéac had still not gone. Tim had to stall. “How much is that?” he asked, ready to declare he had forgotten his purse or left his handbag in the baker’s, at home, in his car.

  “No charge, madam,” the butcher replied.

  In a mirror behind the butcher, on which was engraved B. Whitton & Son: Purveyors of Fine Meats & Poultry, Tim was relieved to see de Loudéac step out into the street.

  “Are you quite sure?” he asked, buying just a little more time.

  “Quite,” said the butcher with a smile. “I hope the little chap enjoys it.” He laughed. “It’s almost as big as he is.”

  Tim thanked the butcher and, taking the bone, went outside.

  “There you are, Patch,” he said loudly. “Here’s a lovely big bone . . .” He lowered his voice. “And you can carry it. It’ll teach you to drop me in it by swinging your leg on those flowers.”

  The Jack Russell did not say anything but gave Tim a filthy look, reluctantly took hold of the bone in his teeth and, once the lead was untied from the hook, set off after de Loudéac who was, by now, thirty meters away. At the first corner, he dropped the bone in the gutter.

  De Loudéac’s next stop was the fishmonger’s stall Tim had seen on market day. He bought a piece of smoked haddock, placing it in his shopping bag with the lambs’ hearts.

  Tim bent down to pretend to adjust Sebastian’s collar.

  “What next?” he whispered.

  “Now, I trust, we shall discover his place of domicile.” But de Loudéac did not head home. He went down a residential side street and stopped outside a house with a polished brass plaque by the door. There were no shop windows to linger at here. Tim and Sebastian had no alternative but to keep on walking, closer and closer to their prey. They were within five meters when de Loudéac took a few steps towards them and vanished down a cobbled passageway. Tim, not daring to follow him, stopped at the house door. The brass plaque read, Keith Markham BVetMed., DVOphthal., MRCVS.

  “It’s a vet’s!” he exclaimed.

  “Let me off the leash,” Sebastian said urgently.

  Tim undid the clip. The Jack Russell scampered off down the passageway. Seconds passed. Tim, unsure what to do, grew increasingly worried, glancing down the passageway, seeing nothing but the brick walls of the buildings on either side and a padlocked gate at the end. Then came the unmistakable, hysterical barking of a terrier.

  Tim set off down the passageway, walking with as much speed as he thought a middle-aged woman might decently exhibit when looking for her dog.

  At the gate, the passageway took a right-angled corner. Tim went round it to find Sebastian, no longer a Jack Russell, standing by a row of trash bins and green garbage bags printed Incinerate only.

  “De Loudéac was in this place,” he said, “but he dissolved before I got here.”

  “Where is he now?” Tim asked.

  “I know not.” Sebastian shrugged. “Yet tell me, what did he purchase in the butcher’s shop?”

  “Lambs’ hearts. What was he doing here?” Sebastian stepped aside.

  “This,” he said.

  One of the green bags had been ripped open, its contents spilling out on to the cobbles of the passageway. Tim saw, spread about, the carcass of an old black Labrador-cross-collie dog with a gray muzzle, some offal that must have been the result of several veterinary operations and a dead cat. From its head, Tim could tell it had been a Siamese, yet that was the only clue to its identity. It had been flayed.

  Sebastian’s face held a grave look. “De Loudéac is collecting those pieces remaining that he needs to complete his homunculus,” he said, “and I believe he must have nearly all he requires by now.”

  By the time Pip and her mother arrived at the doctor’s office, just before noon, the waiting room was quiet. Most of the morning’s patients had been seen, and all the doctors except Dr. Oliver had left to make house or hospital
calls.

  Pip was the third of three people to be seen by the doctor, who had set aside the last hour before lunch to carry out minor surgical operations. Ahead of her in line was a little girl of about five with a heavily bandaged arm and an elderly woman in a floral print dress.

  A short while after the girl had been called into the nurse’s room by the doctor, the elderly lady, who was sitting opposite Pip and her mother, placed the copy of Country Life magazine she had been reading back on the magazine table and looked across the waiting room.

  “Such a tiresome thing,” she remarked, addressing Pip’s mother. “A mole on my back. Very inconvenient.” She briefly lowered her voice, adding conspiratorially, “It catches on my bra strap. Dr. Oliver says he’ll freeze it off with liquid nitrogen. Science is such a wonderful thing.”

  “My daughter is having a wart removed by the same method,” Mrs. Ledger replied. “I’m told it doesn’t even cut the skin. It’s like cauterizing with something very cold instead of very hot.”

  “And quite painless,” the woman went on, smiling at Pip. “You’ll not feel a thing. Where is your wart, dear?”

  “On my thumb,” Pip said, holding it up.

  “Oh, that’s just a little one,” the woman declared. “Doctor’ll have that off in a jiffy. But,” she continued, “when I was a little girl, they didn’t have liquid nitrogen. Do you know how we used to get rid of warts?” She did not wait for Pip’s answer. “We had them charmed away. There was a man in the next village who could wish them away. You went to him and gave him a penny and then, a week later, your wart would be gone. Just like that! My mother used to say it was magic.”

  This talk of charms and magic put Pip instantly on the alert. If de Loudéac could be a blackbird, then transforming himself into a pleasant woman in a summer dress would be a piece of cake.

  “There’s no accounting for some things,” Mrs. Ledger commented. “Science is all very well, but there’s a lot we don’t know yet.”