A/N: I am so sorry for not updating sooner. I started my school placement and still being ill just drained everything i had left. Please forgive me and enjoy the chapter.
"I'm gonna kill him one of these days." Donna moaned as they searched the rooms upstairs.
"Get in line, Donna. I'm first. I still owe him an earful when I see him somewhere in his past." Kari told her, pulling out her sonic screwdriver and turning it on. "I'm also going to kill him if he keeps telling everyone I'm his wife."
Donna just smiled at her a little. "It's only your cover story. I wouldn't worry about it too much."
"Well, there's nothing in here either. Come on, let's go and check out the other rooms." Kari didn't feel much like talking. She was thinking about the Doctor too much, when she knew she needed to focus on the task at hand. "Let's try this one." She said, stopping at the door she knew would be locked.
"You won't find anything in there." The butler said, creeping up on the pair.
"How comes it's locked?" Donna asked, trying the door again.
"Lady Eddison commands it to be so."
"And I command it to be otherwise. Scotland Yard. Pip, pip." Donna ordered, moving away from the door so that he could unlock it for them. "Why's it locked in the first place?"
"Many years ago, when my father was butler to the family, Lady Eddison returned from India with malaria. She locked herself in this room for six months until she recovered. Since then, the room has remained undisturbed."
He opened the door and Kari and Donna stepped inside, the butler right behind them. "There's nothing in here." He insisted.
"How long's it been empty?" Donna asked, as they both looked around the room. It looked like it was made up for a child. The curtains were closed and there was a teddy at the end of the bed.
"Forty years." The butler told them.
"Why would she seal it off?" Donna wondered. "All right, we need to investigate. You just buttle off." Kari made sure to close the door properly before she looked around the room with Donna.
"So, what do you think, Donna?" Kari asked, keeping her eyes firmly fixed on the window.
"I dunno. It seems a little bit weird if you ask me. Why lock up a room for forty years? Unless you were hiding something." Kari couldn't help but smile at her.
"Very good, Miss Noble. We'll make a detective out of you yet." Donna couldn't help but laugh at her a little.
"1926, they've still got bees." Donna said, hearing the buzzing noise. "Oh, what a noise. All right, busy bee, I'll let you out."
"No, Donna. Just, stay there. Let me do this." Donna just looked at her. "Trust me, get ready to run."
Kari cautiously walks over to the window and pulls back the red curtain, revealing a rather abnormally large wasp hovering around outside the window.
"That's impossible." Donna cried as it smashed through the window.
"Doctor! Get your backside up here right now!" Kari cried, hoping that he could hear her.
"Doctor!" Donna called, backing away from the advancing wasp and over to the window.
"Donna, sun, magnifying glass." Kari called to her. Donna got the hint and the magnifying glass up, angling it so that the light hit the wasp.
It screeched in pain and Donna made a run for the door with Kari.
"Doctor!" They both shouted as soon as the door was closed. They turned around and jumped when they heard a thud, and saw the sing sticking through the bottom half of the door.
"It's a giant wasp." Donna cried, as the Doctor and Agatha arrived.
"What do you mean, a giant wasp?" The Doctor asked, looking at her and Kari in confusion.
"I mean, a wasp that's giant."
"It's only a silly little insect." Agatha told her, not understanding the seriousness of the situation.
"When I say giant, I don't mean big, I mean flipping enormous." Donna cried. "Look at its sting." She said, moving away from the door.
The Doctor and Agatha looked at it with wide eyes. "Let me see." The Doctor pushed the door open and ran into the room. "It's gone." He said, noticing the room was now empty. "Buzzed off."
"But that's fascinating." Agatha said, getting a better look at the sting stuck in the door.
"Don't touch it." Kari cried, pulling the woman away from it. "Doctor, can I show you?" She asked him, feeling a little nervous. He nodded at her and went and stood in front of her. She placed her hands on the side of his head before resting her forehead against his. She let him see exactly what happened when the wasp crashed into the room.
When she pulled away the Doctor was smiling at her. "You're getting good at that." He told her, making her blush a little. She had wanted to try doing something like that for a while now, and she wasn't even sure it was going to work when she showed him what happened with Van Statten. But it had, and now she was finding it easier to concentrate on doing it.
He went over to the stinger and scraped off some of the residue that had been left behind with a pencil and wiped it off in a test tube. "Giant wasp. Well, tons of amorphous insectivorous life forms, but none in this galactic vector."
"I think I understood some of those words. Enough to know that you're completely potty." Agatha said, looking at him strangely.
"Lost its sting though. That makes it defenceless." Donna pointed out.
"Oh, creature that size?" The Doctor said, thinking and smiling at Kari. "Got to be able to grow a new one."
"And it will have by the next time we see it." Kari mumbled.
"Can we return to sanity? There are no such things as giant wasps." It would appear that Agatha was getting a little irritated with the way the Doctor was carrying on now.
"Exactly. So, the question is, what's it doing here?" He said, looking at Kari.
"Sorry, Doctor. Spoilers. I'm going to have to let you work this one out on your own." She told him, knowing he was hoping for some information from her.
"Not even a little bit of help?" He pleaded.
Kari just shook her head. "Sorry. But I'll give you one tiny, little thing. You're in for a shock later." He looked at her in complete and utter confusion. He really had no idea what she was saying.
They three of them were heading down the stairs when they heard someone scream from outside. Kari grabbed the Doctor's hand and dragged him outside, the others following behind. They made it to Miss Chandrakala, the housekeeper, lying on the gravel with a stone gargoyle on top of her. There was blood coming from her mouth, her eyes open. Kari knew she was barely alive and wouldn't last much longer.
"The poor… little… child." The woman managed to say, before taking her last breath.
That was when they heard the buzzing again and saw the wasp above them. "There!" The Doctor called, pointing to it. "Come on!" He grabbed Kari and pulled her back inside the house with him, trying to find where the wasp was going.
"Hey, this makes a change. There's a monster, and we're chasing it." Donna called as she followed behind with Agatha.
"It can't be a monster." Agatha protested. "It's a trick. They do it with mirrors." She suddenly changed her mind when they came face to face with it in the corridor up stairs. "By all that's holy."
"Oh, but you are wonderful." The Doctor commented, looking at it in awe. Kari couldn't stop herself from rolling her eyes, he always got that way when he saw something new. "Now, just stop. Stop there." He ordered it, as it came towards them.
It only just missed them when Donna pulled out her magnifying glass. "Oi, fly boy." She called, getting its attention. It flew off, scared that it was going to be hurt again.
"Come on, we can't let it get away. We have to catch it before it reverts back to human form." Kari said, dragging the Doctor along the corridor with her.
"Where are you? Come no. There's nowhere to run. Show yourself." He shouted. All the doors along the corridor opened, and the occupants stepped out slightly. "Oh, that's just cheating." The Doctor moaned.
They managed to get everyone into the drawing room, and the Doctor told them all what had happened, and that another person had now been murdered.
"My faithful companion, this is terrible." Lady Eddison cried.
"Excuse me, my lady, but she was on her way to tell you something." Davenport told her.
"She never found me. She had an appointment with death instead."
"She said, 'the poor little child'. Does that mean anything to anyone?" The Doctor asked, looking around the room at everyone.
"No children in this house for years. Highly unlikely there will be." Colonel Curbishley said, looking at his son.
"Mrs Christie, you must have twigged something. You've written simply the best detective stories." Lady Eddison told her, hoping that she would be able to solve the murders.
"Tell us, what would Poirot do?" Reverend Golightly asked her.
It would appear that even Colonel Curbishley thought she could work it all out. "Heaven's sake, cards on the table, woman. You should be helping us."
"But, I'm merely a writer." She protested. Kari couldn't help but feel sorry for her, she was having so much pressure put on her, so much expected from her.
"But surely you can crack it?" Robina said. "These events, they're exactly like one of your plots." She pointed out.
"That's what I've been saying." Donna called out. "Agatha, that's going to mean something."
"But what?" Agatha asked. "I've no answers. None. I'm sorry, all of you. I'm truly sorry, but I've failed. If anyone can help is, then it's the Doctor, not me." Everyone just turned and looked at him expectantly.
"Your time to shine, Doctor." Kari called to him, as Agatha walked out of the room.
Everyone started getting back to whatever they were doing before hand, while Donna went to check on Agatha, leaving Kari and the Doctor alone.
"So, who's the murderer then?" The Doctor asked her, hoping that she would slip up and tell him.
"The wasp." She replied, grinning at him. "Come on, how many times have I ever slipped up?"
The Doctor thought about it for a moment. "Only a few times. But it was never anything big." He told her.
"Well then, nice try, but not going to work."
"Are you okay? You've been really quiet. I know it's still early, but you're usually more talkative than this. Especially when you're around Donna." He asked her, wrapping an arm around her waist.
"Yeah, I'm fine. You know what I've been through lately, I'm just trying to forget it all." She told him, leaning into his hold.
"Well, everything is fine now, I promise you." He said, kissing the top of her head.
That was when Donna and Agatha came back into the room, holding a small box. "Ah, you found something." Kari said, pulling away from the Doctor and letting him take the box.
"Ooh, someone came here tooled up. The sort of stuff a thief would use." The Doctor commented, seeing all the lock picking tools in the small box.
"The Unicorn. He's here." Agatha said in realisation.
"The Unicorn and the wasp." Kari and the Doctor said at the same time. The Doctor smiled at her, and she just smiled back.
"Your drinks, ladies. Doctor." The butler said, handing the drinks out.
"Very good, Greeves." The Doctor said, watching the butler leave.
"How about the science stuff. What did you find?" Donna asked, sitting on the sofa with Kari while the Doctor said in the armchair.
"Vespiform sting. Vespiforms have got hives in the…" He stared.
"Silfrax galaxy." Kari said at the same time, earning herself another smile.
"Again, you talk like Edward Lear." Agatha commented, not understanding a word they were saying.
"But for some reason, this one's behaving like a character in one of your books." The Doctor said to Agatha, before taking a swig of his drink.
"Cone on, Agatha What would Miss Marple do? She'd have overheard something vital by now, because the murderer thinks she's just a harmless old lady." Donna said, earning a nudge from Kari.
"Not yet, Donna." She whispered to her friend.
"Clever idea. Miss Marple? Who writes those?"
"Er, copyright Donna Noble. Add it to the list." Donna said cheerfully.
"Kari, Donna…"
Donna rolled her eyes while Kari looked at him with her eyes widened. "Okay, we could split the copyright."
"No, something inhibiting his enzymes." Kari said, rushing over to him as he cried out in pain. "He's been poisoned."
"What do we do? What do we do?" Donna asked in a panic.
Agatha sniffed the drink. "Bitter almonds. It's cyanide. Sparkling cyanide."
"Come on, kitchen, quickly." Kari said, dragging the Doctor along with her. "Don't worry, Doctor. I got this one. I know what you need, so just take it easy okay?" She said, trying to calm him a little.
"Ginger beer, I need ginger beer, right now." Kari shouted.
"The woman's gone mad." The cook called.
Kari just rolled her eyes and grabbed it from Davenport, giving to the Doctor. "I'm an expert in poisons. There is no cure. It's fatal." Agatha told the pair.
"Not for him it isn't. He can stimulate the inhibited enzymes into reversal." Kari told her, grabbing a jar of walnuts. "Protein." She said, given them to the Doctor.
"Brilliant." He said, shoving them into his mouth.
"Salt, not salt salt, that's too salty. How about some anchovies?" Kari said, grabbing them from the side and shoving them into the Doctor's hands.
He emptied the jar into his mouth. This was the bit that Kari had been dreading, this was the shock he was going to get. "Okay, right, now you need a shock. Okay, a shock. Remember I said you were in for a shock later? Well here it is." She closed her eyes tightly. "In 1941 I kissed Jack."
The Doctor looked at her with wide eyes, Kari didn't know if he was upset, angry or just hurt. But she knew she needed to make it better. She grabbed the lapels of his jacket and pulled him closer to her, kissing him fiercely.
When she finally let go of him, but not before he had kissed her back, a black cloud of smoke escaped from his mouth. "Detox. Oh, I must do that more often." He said, avoiding looking at Kari.
"Doctor, you are impossible. Who are you?" Agatha asked.
"I'm sorry." Kari called to him, knowing that she was now in some serious trouble. He still didn't look at her as he rushed out of the room.
"Hey, you okay?" Donna asked her, putting an arm around her.
Kari just shook her head. "He's going to hate me for a long time now." She whispered, holding back the tears that were forming in her eyes. She couldn't think of any other way to really shock him, and in all honesty, she didn't want Donna to kiss him.
"Nah, I'm sure he'll get over it. I mean, you only told him to shock him didn't you. I mean, it wasn't true, was it?" Donna asked her.
But all Kari could do was nod at her. "It is true, Donna. 1941, his space ship, tethered up to Big Ben." She let out a sigh. "I knew it was going to get me into trouble one day." She mumbled, before walking out of the room.
Kari found herself sitting out in the garden, away from the Doctor and everyone else. Her head was reeling, she knew the moment she had kissed Jack that it was going to bring her nothing but trouble, but she hadn't been able to resist. And that was before she knew what she did now. it was long before she knew about how the Doctor felt about her.
She let out a sigh and put her head in her hands. She had wanted to stop the Doctor from drinking the poison completely, but she had been so focused on stopping Donna from saying something she shouldn't, that it completely slipped her mind. It was her fault that he had been poisoned, she should have stopped it.
At least that was what she kept thinking, and now the Doctor couldn't even look at her.
It was starting to get dark when she headed back inside the house. The first person she bumped into was Donna. "Where have you been? I've been looking everywhere for you." She asked her.
"Just… thinking." Kari told her quietly.
"Come on, everyone is getting ready for dinner." Donna said, linking her arm through Kari's.
She just shook her head. "No, it's okay. I'm not really hungry. You go, I'll just… wait in the drawing room or something." Kari didn't want to face the Doctor, and she was sure that he didn't want to see her either.
Donna just frowned at her. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing. Really, just go. Keep an eye on the Doctor and Agatha. Listen for the buzzing." Kari told her, before slipping away from her.
Donna just headed towards the dining room on her own. "Kari's not coming." Donna told the Doctor when she found him.
He didn't say anything, he just nodded at her and they went in the room for dinner.
Kari was sitting on the sofa in the drawing room, playing out everything that was going on at dinner in her head. She knew what was going to happen, and she really didn't want to be there. She knew that she was safe in the drawing room on her own.
It wasn't long later when the door opened and the Doctor and Agatha came in. Kari quickly shifted her gaze to the floor as Agatha sat on the sofa opposite while the Doctor stood.
"That poor footman." Donna said, as she came into the room. "Roger's dead and he can't even mourn him.1926? It's more like the dark ages."
"Did you enquire after the necklace?" Agatha asked her as she sat beside her.
"Lady Eddison brought it back from India. It's worth thousands." Donna told her.
"This thing can sting, it can fly. It could wipe us all out in seconds. Why is it playing this game?" The Doctor wondered, trying his best not to look at Kari. He knew that she was sorry, he could tell by the way she was giving him space and from what Donna had told him. But it still hurt him.
"Every murder is essentially the same. They are committed because somebody wants something." Agatha told him.
"What does a Vespiform want?"
"Doctor, stop it." Agatha called. "The murderer is as human as you or I."
"You're right. Ah, I've been so caught up with giant wasps that I've forgotten. You're the expert." He cried, looking at the woman.
"I'm not. I told you. I'm just a purveyor of nonsense."
"No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Because plenty of people write detective stories, but your are the best. And why? Why are you so good, Agatha Christie? Because you understand. You've lived, you've fought, you've had your heart broken. You know about people. Their passions, their hopes, and despair, and anger. All of those tiny, huge things that can turn the most ordinary person into a killer. Just think, Agatha. If anyone can solve this, it's you." The Doctor told her.
"You know what, I'm bored of this now. Let's just get it over with." Kari said, getting up from where she was sitting.
It didn't take long for everyone to gather in the drawing room. "I've called you here on this endless night, because we have a murderer in out midst." The Doctor told them. "Now, there is one person in this room who knows exactly who the murderer is, and every other secret you are hiding." Kari got up from where she was sitting and looked around the room.
"Robina Redmond." She said, looking at the woman. "You're the Unicorn. The real Robina Redmond never left London, and since these people have never met her before, you took her place. You saw the chance and you grasped it with both hands." She said, staring the woman down.
"How silly. What proof do you have?" Robina asked.
"Apart from the fact that your tools of the trade were found in the flowerbed below your toilet window?"
"Oh, all right then. It's a fair cop. Yes, I'm the bleeding Unicorn. Ever so nice to meet you, I don't think." She said, with a very cockney accent. "I took my chance in the dark and nabbed it. Go on then, you knobs. Arrest me. Sling me in jail." She tossed the Firestone at the Doctor who was quick to catch it.
Kari let her gaze fall on the Colonel. "Is there something you wish to tell your wife, Colonel Curbishley?" She asked him.
"Damn it, woman. You've rumbled me." He said, getting up from his wheel chair.
"Hugh, you can walk. But why?" Lady Eddison asked him in shock.
"It was his way of making sure you never left him. He was afraid you would leave him for someone else who could turn your head." Kari told her. "Now, onto the second biggest secret being held in this house, which actually leads to the first."
She looked over at Lady Eddison. "The Firestone. Brought back from India by Lady Eddison, before she met the Colonel. She came home with malaria, and confined herself to the house for six months, in a room that has been locked ever since."
"Stop, please." Lady Eddison cried.
"I'm sorry." Kari told her softly. "But you fell pregnant in India. Unmarried and ashamed, you hurried back to England with your confidante, a young maid who later became your housekeeper, Miss Chandrakala."
"Clemency, is this true?" The Colonel asked her.
"My poor baby." She cried. "I had to give him away. The shame of it."
"Lady Eddison, it wasn't a normal pregnancy, was it?" Kari asked her, knowing that it would soon be time to hand it over to the Doctor. She knew that she had stolen the limelight from Agatha Christie, but she just wanted it all over now. She wanted to leave, she wanted to jump somewhere else.
"How can you know that?" Lady Eddison asked.
"When you heard that buzzing sound in the dining room, you said, it can't be. Why did you say that?" The Doctor asked, finally taking over.
"You'd never believe it."
"The Doctor has opened my mind to believe many things." Agatha told the woman gently.
"It was forty years ago, in the heat of Delhi, late one night. I was alone, and that's when I saw it. A dazzling light in the sky. The next day, he came to the house. Christopher, the most handsome man I'd ever seen. Our love blazed like a wildfire. I held nothing back. And in return he showed me the incredible truth about himself. He'd made himself human, to learn about us. This was his true shape." Lady Eddison explained.
"I loved him so much, it didn't matter. But he was stolen from me. 1885, the year of the great monsoon. The river Jumna rose up and broke its banks. He was Taken At The Flood. But Christopher left me a parting gift. A jewel like no other. I wore it always. Part of me never forgot. I kept it close, always."
"Just like a man. Flashes his family jewels and you end up with a bun in the oven." Robina said, earning a fierce glare from Kari.
"A poor little child. Forty years ago, Miss Chandrakala took that newborn babe to an orphanage. But Professor Peach worked it out. He found the birth certificate." Agatha said. Kari had filled her in on everything before they summoned everyone else. She didn't care that she was now taking over. As long as it was all over with soon.
"Oh, that's maiden. Maiden name." Donna called in realisation.
"Precisely" Agatha told her. "Miss Chandrakala feared that the Professor had unearthed your secret. She was coming to warn you."
"Reverend Golightly, you are the murderer. You are the Vespiform. You are Lady Eddison's lost child." Kari called out, finally getting to the end of her tether. She couldn't stand the way the Doctor was avoiding her.
"You realised your inheritance. After all these years, you knew who you were. Oh, and then it all kicks off, because this isn't just a jewel. It's a Vespiform telepathic recorder. It's part of you, your brain, your very essence. And when you activated, so did the Firestone." The Doctor added, trying to explain everything and reason what Kari had said.
"It beamed your full identity directly into your mind. And, at the same time, it absorbed the works of Agatha Christie directly from Lady Eddison. It all became part of you. The mechanics of those novels formed a template in your brain. You've killed, in this pattern, because that's what you think the world is. It turns out, we are in the middle of a murder mystery. One of yours, Dame Agatha."
"Dame?" Agatha questioned.
"Oh. Sorry, not yet." The Doctor mumbled, realising his mistake.
When the Reverend tried to protest, his voice started buzzing. He became more and more angry and suddenly turned into the giant wasp that everyone had heard about.
"No. No more murder. If my imagination made you kill, them my imagination will find a way to stop you, foul creature." Agatha called, running out of the room with the Firestone in her hand.
Kari watched as the Doctor and Donna both ran out after her, the Vespiform right behind them. She knew what was going to happen now, and she didn't care if she missed it. At the end of it, he would die, but let Agatha Christie live.
She decided to make her way back to the TARDIS. The moment she placed her hand on the door, it clicked open. "Thanks." She whispered to the ship as she stepped inside. She made her way to her room, knowing that the Doctor and Donna would come back with Agatha, drop her off at a hotel in Harrogate with no memory of what had happened.
The TARDIS gave a little hum and a shake, letting Kari know that the Doctor and Donna were back. But she didn't move. She stayed on her bed, staring at the ceiling, thinking about everything that had just happened. She pulled the small blue box out of her bag and opened it. As she looked at the ring, tears started prickling her eyes.
A/N: Again I am sorry for taking so long to update. Only 4 more weeks till half term though.
I hope you liked this chapter, I had more idea's for this episode then I knew what to do with. So let me know what you guys think. I promise to get the next chapter up during the week.
And a big thank you to everyone who has reviewed and those who have stuck with the story when i've not updated as regularly as I should have.
Pippa.