Greatest Detectives

Thirteen

The Doctor had to pick some more pockets while they were out, because they had to re-purchase quite a lot of the fruit and veg they'd bought, and because she'd had to pay for all those aniseed balls she hurled at the police officers. It was a bit annoying, but she always thought stealing was a victimless crime, especially when the people she was stealing from were all rich. She saw herself more like Robin Hood than anything else. It was often very evident where Jenny got her penchant for thievery from, and their time stranded in 1912 was no exception. And, to make up for the morally grey area of robbery, the Doctor had to use a portion of her stolen money to fund Clara's morally grey habit of smoking.

So that was why Clara Oswald now sat leaning over the writing desk in the parlour with a cigarette between her teeth, revelling in the lack of anti-smoking laws, even though the smell kept making Thirteen cough. Generally, Thirteen had sunk into the activity of helping Strax put things where they were meant to be in the pantry and the kitchen, with Strax debating putting in an order of coal from wherever it was they bought from. Upon occasion, Clara would call through and ask her for a suggestion of a word to be supplanted in place of one she wasn't very fond of.

Strax was hauling a sack of potatoes through the kitchen while Thirteen thought of the wittiest way to comment on the irony of a Sontaran carrying potatoes, when the doorbell was rung. Strax having his stubby arms full, and Clara knee-deep in a quagmire of poetry, it fell to the Doctor to go and answer it. It was fair enough; had they not offered to take on the joint-role of maid while they stayed? Answering the door wasn't something she could complain about, when she had agreed to help. When she walked through the parlour she could hear Clara muttering to herself through her little cloud of cigarette smoke.

"Zenith," she muttered, "What's a zenith, sweetheart?"

"Like a peak. Or, in astronomy, the point right above you. Like the reverse of a focus in an earthquake," she said as she walked past. Clara seemed pleased with that, but the Doctor didn't stick around in that room which was beginning to smell very pungent. Vastra did not care if Clara smoked in the house, though. The most recent medical journals at that time declared smoking to be good for the health, opening up the lungs, or something. Yes, the Doctor thought as she approached the door, the lungs would be very opened up during autopsies to try and figure out why they had turned black and killed themselves.

The Doctor turned the handle to open the heavy front door and was pulled out of her thoughts on tobacco very suddenly by the sight of the one woman who had, less than two hours ago, promised to never show her face to the Doctor again.

"God dammit! You again!" she exclaimed in horror at the sight of Emmeline Pankhurst, her and her veil to hide her face and her bag full of improvised explosives. But going by her expression, Pankhurst had not expected to see the Doctor there.

"I don't see what it is about my presence that makes you believe this sort of language is acceptable," she said coolly, then with a tone of greater annoyance, "I suppose it had to be you, didn't it? Funny. I don't see a trace of your box around here." The Doctor crossed her arms, but did not move to let Pankhurst into 13 Paternoster Row.

"What are you after? Were you following me?"

"I wouldn't follow you if my life depended on it, Doctor. I said I have an important appointment to keep with a private investigator. Or rather, an important appointment to make. Upon rumours of the sex of this figure, I supposed they might be sympathetic enough with the cause and familiar enough with myself to allow me the impoliteness of being so presumptuous that they would take the time to see me," Pankhurst, "But it seems it's been you all along. Not that I would have known before, considering I hadn't the foggiest you had swapped your body for another's. You are, then, the world's greatest detective?"

"The-?" the Doctor was surprised, but annoyed at herself for not figuring out that Pankhurst might be around the City of London to see the 'private investigator' they were lodging with. The commotion at the door with the Doctor preventing Pankhurst's entry prompted Strax, followed almost immediately by Clara, to investigate, as the Doctor rubbed her eye in confusion.

"I do say! What is this?" Pankhurst asked, pointing something out on the Doctor's hand. Her left hand. "The Doctor has taken a husband, has settled down?"

"Not exactly," Thirteen said, being cautious.

"Who is this woman? I am not to let anyone into the house without them having an appointment, and I am not to let anybody make appointments," Strax said, "Shall I get the bazooka?"

"No, Strax," Thirteen sighed.

"Ah. You want the force gun, then? An excellent choice. Tears your opponent limb from limb from afar – glorious to watch. Or would you rather I fetch the flintlocks to stage a duel?"

"What is this creature?" Pankhurst stared at Strax, who suddenly grew a might offended.

"I might say the same to you," he said.

"Well don't," the Doctor said sharply, "Go and make a tray of tea, would you? We have a guest."

"But Doctor, we are all under orders-"

"Strax," the Doctor interrupted him and gave him an imploring look, at which point he began to grumble and toddle away on his stocky, potato legs, back to the kitchen to do as she asked. The Doctor was allowed to resume her explanation of pseudo-lesbianism after that; "What was I saying? Oh, a husband. No, I haven't a husband. You met Clara this morning."

"I'm thinking that 'lachrymose' is underutilised," Clara said, still thinking of her poems, holding a cigarette between her fingers. She was putting across a real Byronic image. All she needed was a piano and some sort of physical impairment.

"What are you implying?" Pankhurst continued.

"When I was a man, I married a woman," Thirteen began, trying to explain in a way that was the least likely to trigger a bout of homophobia. She highly doubted Vastra would help anybody with homophobic tendencies, though. "And then I changed into a woman as well, and I was still married to a woman."

"How intriguing," Pankhurst mused, "And what is she?"

"Gay," Clara answered for herself, and then after a pause, "Oh, sorry – you mean what species am I? I'm a human. Are you gonna let her in?"

"Yes, let me in, the police are patrolling St Paul's just over there very closely at the moment," she said, "Like I said, I'm wanted. I would be out in the country if I wasn't so desperate to have you investigate, Doctor."

"It's not me you're after," Thirteen said, closing the door behind Pankhurst as she finally let her in, "The 'world's greatest detective.' That's not me."

"Then who is?" Pankhurst asked, taking off her hat and veil now that she was indoors, the Doctor locking the door now with its complex, alien locking system. It was at that moment that a sound was emitted from above, a rather terrible one that was becoming sickeningly familiar to the Doctor and Clara. It sounded a little like a velociraptor on a war path, mixed with a spark of female energy.

"That's the world's greatest detective, having an orgasm," Clara said, "You'll have to wait a while to see her. Honestly, I wouldn't try to speak to her right now. It's like Jurassic Park up there. Dibs not telling her she has a guest." The Doctor glared at Clara for that.

"You owe me," Thirteen said to her on her way past, now stuck having to be the one to interrupt Jenny and Vastra. There was no way Strax was going to do it. And Clara had just called dibs, and she was much too stubborn to be bargained out of that. "I'd've thought you'd love to get a glimpse of a naked Silurian."

"That is a fair point…" Clara mused, "But, you know. I'm a married woman."

"Ha, ha."

"What do I owe you?"

"The last fifty years of my life back," the Doctor grumbled, and Clara laughed, as she trudged away towards the stairs and towards those noises they all always tried so hard to ignore. No doubt Clara would have tons of fun questioning Emmeline Pankhurst about the suffragettes. Thirteen marched right up to Madame Vastra's bedroom door and banged her fist very loudly on its surface. "Oi, Holmes and Watson, the pair of you need to put your clothes on pronto."

There was a pause, until Vastra called, "We are not to be disturbed!"

"Well, that's tough, because I've been very disturbed listening to the two of you for the last four days, and now it's time to make up the difference. You have a case."

"A case! You take the case! Take the commission, too!" Vastra called, "I am busy."

"It's intriguing," the Doctor said, though she wasn't privy to the details at all, "She'll only talk to the world's greatest detective about it."

"I'm sure you will make a fine enough substitute for the time being."

"She's had to come all the way here incognito because the police want to arrest her."

"Then let them, it's of no business of mine."

"I'll tell Emmeline Pankhurst you don't have the time to see her, then?" the Doctor said. There was a bang in the room.

"Ow! You dropped me!" Jenny Flint exclaimed. The sound of a few different deadbolts being turned on the other side of the door, and then Vastra appeared, just sticking her face through the gap and standing so that the rest of her and the rest of the room was hidden from the Doctor's gaze. Not that the Doctor wanted to see into their room at all.

"Emmeline Pankhurst?" she said, "The suffragette campaigning for women's rights?"

"She's in the parlour, Clara's talking to her."

"The poor woman being left alone having to talk to your wife about poetry and the like! Jenny and I will be down in ten minutes," Vastra declared.

"Ten minutes?" Jenny asked from within the room.

Vastra paused and then told the Doctor curtly her amendment, "Fifteen minutes." Then she made to vanish and shut the door, but the Doctor wedged a foot in it to keep it open.

"A word of advice," she began.

"Hmm?" Vastra prompted.

"Wipe your mouth before you come downstairs. Your lips are wet." And then she went that dark shade of green Silurians went when they blushed, and the Doctor let her disappear into her sex chamber to try and make herself presentable in a quarter of an hour. She half-limped down the stairs on the pain of her foot after Vastra had nearly slammed the door on it.

"What did you do to your foot, wifey?" Clara asked, frowning.

"She shut the door on it!" Thirteen protested, holding it in the air rather than put any weight on it once she had returned. She told Pankhurst, after getting the adequate sympathy she desired from her wife (who pouted and did her best "Aw"), "World's greatest detective up there says she'll be fifteen minutes."

"Really? You got them to stop?" Clara asked.

"They're very excited to meet Mrs Pankhurst. Anyway. I've decided what you owe me; you owe me a date," Thirteen declared, "And I get to pick when it is and where it is and what we do. You're at my mercy."

"That's either romantic or you're threatening to execute me," Clara said.

"I wonder if an execution could be romantic…"

"Let's not try and find out, eh? But, fine, a date. Although I withdraw my offer to help you find a solution to your tampon problem now," Clara said.

"Clara! I need your help with that!"

"What problem might that be?" Pankhurst interrupted them.

"The Doctor needs to think of a way to punish some girls who were throwing tampons around the school canteen. She's a teacher now," Clara said.

"You? A teacher?" Pankhurst said, "A teacher of what?"

"History at the moment," the Doctor answered begrudgingly, "Clara teaches literature."

"A literary mind! There are not enough of those in the female population, I do worry. Were you saying you were from the future? I do marvel at what the education system might be like then…" And so for the next fifteen minutes Clara merely told Emmeline Pankhurst some uninteresting facts about the surge of academies in Twenty-First Century Great Britain. The Doctor had little to say on the matter, and just hung around to stop Clara from saying anything she oughtn't to. But it had been a long time, and even in the company of one such as Pankhurst, Clara had learnt decades ago what she should and should not say.

Eventually, Jenny descended from the stairs. This was the first time the Doctor had seen that girl fully dressed to an acceptable standard the whole time they had been staying. It was practically a miracle – when she heard her walking down the stairs she had averted her eyes out of sheer habit.

"Is Vastra going to make her do that one-word test?" Clara asked.

"Oh, no, she says no such test is required of Mrs Pankhurst," Jenny said, curtseying to Pankhurst.

"Why not? Because she's famous? Famous people can lie," Clara argued, "The Doctor lies all the time."

"I think she should make her do the test," the Doctor muttered, "She's a rogue. Anything could happen. We caught her trying to steal nitroglycerin in the market."

"Well, maybe… the lady of the house might change her mind, then," Jenny said, then to Pankhurst, "Right this way, ma'am."

"I wouldn't shake her hand if I were you, who knows where it's been," the Doctor muttered a few words of advice to Pankhurst, who was puzzled, but did not question it. Especially when Jenny kept her hands behind her back.

"The lady of the house – I wish you called me the lady of the house," Clara said quietly to Thirteen as they followed the other two up the stairs to Vastra's conservatory she always kept full of tropical plants.

"I'd rather not. I hope Strax hurries up with that tea," she mumbled.

And there was Vastra, actually clothed as well (for once), and sitting in one of the chairs in the very foliage-heavy room that was always kept much hotter than the Doctor would like. She did not know how Jenny coped with such heat, living in a time period before antiperspirant. Now, maybe the Doctor was in a little bit of a mood with Madame Vastra for all the persistent sex-noises she was forced to endure, but this was still Vastra's house, and Vastra's livelihood, and though the Doctor was not her biggest fan, Emmeline Pankhurst was still Vastra's client. All Thirteen had done was let her into the house. Pankhurst would have shown up regardless of the fiasco in the market that morning; unless, of course, the police had caught her without the Doctor's timely intervention. So she decided to be polite and stand in the corner, beneath the shadow of one of Vastra's many plants (some of which were long-extinct and had been given to Vastra by the Doctor herself, no less), to observe.

"Are you going to do the one-word test?" Clara put the same question to Vastra herself now, after Vastra – complete with her veil to hide her reptilian features – had invited Pankhurst to sit in the empty seat opposite her in the dense thicket of the conservatory. The Doctor thought Vastra always looked like the ghost in The Woman in Black when she had her veil on (a comment Clara found funny.)

"I apologise for the intrusion, my dear – but I fear this matter is much too complex to be given in one-word rhetoric," Pankhurst said. Through her veil, Vastra met Clara's eyes.

"She says the matter is too complex."

"You made my Echo do the one-word test."

"Of course, your Echo was on the prowl looking for the Doctor, and we hadn't a clue who she was. And that was when he was in his isolation, I'm sure you'll recall?" that question was addressed to the Doctor directly, but the Doctor did not reply to Vastra.

"Drop it, Coo," she whispered softly to Clara, and Clara did, crossing her arms and leaning sulkily on the wall to watch. She kept getting irritated by a leaf hanging down at just the right height to tickle the top of her head, and every time she absently swatted it, only for it to swing back to its same position, the Doctor smiled slightly. But that observation was neither here nor there – more important things were afoot.

"Then, pray tell, what are the details of this case you bring before me?" Vastra asked, leaning forwards, intrigued. She had her glass of blood on the table next to her, which she often pointed out to intimidate whomever she was questioning. She didn't do that this time, though she took a few sips from it.

"I worry about the integrity of the Women's Social and Political Union at this time," Pankhurst explained, "If we were not so careful about who we allowed entry, I would think an imposter in the ranks was responsible. It's a principle of the WSPU to remove any member who begins to question the legitimacy of the cause – anybody who does not believe wholeheartedly in equal rights for women."

"Understandable," Vastra nodded along. She was never normally so accommodating to clients. The Doctor was only half listening to what they were talking about; the rest of her attention was taken up by Clara. Which was funny, because Clara wasn't even doing anything. The Doctor just found her very captivating sometimes.

"Well, of course, there are those of us who simply cannot stomach the activism, so we are quite used to losing members, often at the same rate of which we gain new ones. But, as of recently, there has been a sudden halt on the amount of people joining the cause in its London branches, and an increase in those abandoning it. And more interestingly, the matter was brought to my attention by the husband of one of my ex-converts, who claimed I had manipulated his wife beyond recognisability, and no longer was he going to pledge his allegiance to the suffrage cause either," Pankhurst continued. And now the Doctor was growing intrigued.

"Manipulated in what fashion?" Vastra asked. As they spoke, Strax finally made his appearance with this tea he had been making. It had taken him a while, but maybe he'd tried to boil the kettle with a flamethrower, or something.

"It is beyond me, I'm afraid, I am less involved recently with the groundwork," she said, "But this is an issue that appears to be permeating higher into the ranks. My own daughter Christabel has been expressing some doubts, and an unusual distance in her daily presence. It is worrying. She used to be the strongest warrior of all of us in pursuit of votes for women. Yet I am too notorious throughout London to do any of my own investigations – and alas, deductions are not my area of expertise, so I did intend to seek out the basis for the rumours in the city that London's greatest detective is a woman, in the hope she may be sympathetic enough to aid me. For whatever fee, of course."

"Have you considered the prospect of a discreet smear campaign in the workplaces of these women, possibly leading to them abandoning the Union?" Vastra inquired. The Doctor tugged on one of Clara's crossed arms so that Clara let her arms drop to the side, meaning the Doctor could subtly hold her hand behind their backs', standing against her after Clara flashed a smile her way. With her free hand Clara took a cup of tea from Strax, but the Doctor was growing too invested to notice when he asked her if she would like one as well.

"I have heard of no such smear campaign, no worse than the newspapers normally report," Pankhurst said, helping herself to milk and sugar in her teacup.

"May I ask – you said you didn't personally know the majority of these suffragettes? But I assume the most dedicated ones are the ones you are acquainted with?"

"You may be right in that assumption."

"Then, that is the thing most intriguing. But would it not also mean they are the ones most susceptible to merely being convinced otherwise?"

"Ah, but I have met one of them, you see – a promising girl, Maud Watts*," Pankhurst explained, "She is vastly different. You would have to see it for yourself, but her husband soon shouted me out of the house upon recognising me. I daresay he would not recognise you, though."

"He would certainly remember me if he had met me before," Vastra said.

"Believe me, ma'am, I am very aware that people often leave the cause when they take issue with our methods, but this is something different. I fear the husband of that other girl who accused me of manipulation is in the very vein you and I should be looking into, but as for myself, I must seek a refuge in London to keep away from the police," she said.

"Is there anything these women have in common at all, aside from their connection to the WSPU?" Vastra inquired, "Otherwise I am afraid I find myself short on leads."

"I can think of nothing," Pankhurst said apologetically, "Whatever information on them you like, though, I can provide, I have with me the WSPU membership book, an account of all those valuable women helping the cause."

"May I see this book?" Vastra asked, and Pankhurst fumbled around for a moment until she drew one such notebook, very small and easily concealed, from her pocket, and handed it to Vastra. "This appears to be in code, Mrs Pankhurst."

"Of course it is. You cannot really think I would carry around all the information of every suffragette under my wing not written in a code?" Pankhurst asked, and the Doctor saw Vastra smile a little through the veil. Clearly, Emmeline Pankhurst was a woman after Madame Vastra's own heart. Pankhurst quickly explained how the code worked, which she would most likely not have done were she speaking to a male private eye, and Vastra puzzled over the ones Pankhurst had marked as those who had curiously left the Union.

"Jenny, my dear – be a darling and fetch the map, won't you?" Vastra bid her wife, who vanished away for a few moments to do exactly this.

"It's Stepford Wives, then, isn't it?" Clara began while Jenny was briefly vacant, still holding the Doctor's hand, "Y'know, where they all get replaced by robots and made into ideal housewives."

"Well if that be the case, it will certainly be wrapped up very quickly," Vastra commented.

"Robots?" Pankhurst asked.

"A mechanical person," the Doctor answered, "The word comes from the Czech – it used to mean 'slave.' I don't think that kind of science fiction has really entered the general consciousness yet, though." Jenny wheeled 'the map' into the room then, which was a large and very detailed map of inner London pinned onto a drawing board. Vastra stood up and, with a bit of the thespian about her, threw off the veil in her usual over-dramatic fashion.

"I say!" Pankhurst exclaimed, "You are – you – what? I should not have given my WSPU contacts to one such as-"

"Silence your prejudices, there is a case to solve, Mrs Pankhurst," Vastra said, "This is a matter close to home for me. I may be a woman, but being an unregistered non-human citizen, I will never be enfranchised. My wife, however, may soon enjoy that liberty on both of our behalves', thanks to you and your efforts."

"Another of you married to a woman?" Pankhurst questioned them, "Are all of you unworldly types of that persuasion?"

"Not really," said Thirteen, "Just the usual amount."

"I suggest, though, if you have any tendency towards bigotry of that kind – where you might impose upon somebody who they can and cannot love – that you escape this house very quickly, because while I shall still investigate this case, I am also very capable of calling Scotland Yard and making them aware of your whereabouts," Vastra told her coolly, "We have no such WSPU affiliations to worry us about their presence, and I have a few friends who frequently ask me for help among the detectives. Now, allow me to get on with my job, because I have noticed something very interesting about the addresses of these women.

"While they share no common workplace and even a few differences of class and marital status, they are all from this same quarter of Lambeth," Vastra said, "I would suggest combing the area. There may be more affected women than just those in the ranks of the Union, if you say recruitment has utterly halted, and perhaps even men whose alteration is more easily concealed."

"You don't need to comb the area – any large building should give you clue enough," Thirteen said, "Whatever's going on needs space, and there's space in abundance in some of those factories and warehouses."

"There is an abandoned munitions factory in that district of Lambeth," Strax contributed, "I remember paying note of it, because I wondered if they were making any armaments of good quality when I saw people shuttling deliveries in and out."

"Impossible," said Vastra, "You're thinking of the Attaway Arms Company – that company went bankrupt soon after the Boer War ended, nearly ten years ago now. The building is yet to be leased out to anybody."

"Then I guess you've got your answer," Thirteen shrugged, "The Attaway Arms Company it is."

"Excellent idea," Strax declared.

"You're not coming," Thirteen told him, "Especially not if they're growing clones, or something. I'd hate for you to feel some sort of kinship and try to liberate them all."

"Doctor, allow me to express objection to your constant besmirching of the system of reproductive cloning. Especially when you yourself have a daughter of a machine."

"No," Thirteen said shortly, completely ignoring his very legitimate point about her Jenny.

"But speaking to this Watts Mrs Pankhurst is so worried about may lead to more clues about what, exactly, they are doing, without putting us in the most immediate line of danger," Vastra argued.

"The domestic approach is usually a good tactic, sweetheart," Clara said, Clara who was still holding her hand.

"Then it's settled. We'll split up. Jenny and I will go to the Attaway Arms Company – she's the best at covert ops – and Vastra and Clara can go speak to the Stepford wife."

"I thought you weren't interested in taking this case, Doctor?" Vastra challenged her.

"Before I heard all the juicy details," the Doctor said.

"Very well. Strax, you'll stay here and watch Mrs Pankhurst, give her the safe refuge she desires for the time being. Nobody will find her here, most certainly not the police," Vastra told him.

"But ma'am! You are going to a munitions factory!"

"Yes! And the Doctor is right about you not being allowed to come. Now, now, let me gather my things. The game, my friends, is on."

*The name "Maud Watts" is, in fact, a reference to the film Suffragette that came out in 2015; the main character isn't based on a real suffragette like Emily Davison and Emmeline Pankhurst are, and is played by Carey Mulligan, whom you all know as Sally Sparrow. Carey Mulligan is like, a major activist, she's pretty great and underappreciated if you ask me. Also it's a fucking good film, it has Helena Bonham Carter and Meryl Streep in it as well; you should all go watch it and learn some stuff about the history of women's rights – even you Americans had Pankhurst coming around and campaigning for the right to vote in the States