A Study in Scarlet
Thirteen
The Doctor's plan left the Attaway Arms Company factory decimated. Jenny Flint had not been idle while Thirteen had been kidnapped and re-educated for the better part of an hour, and it was upon Clara's rescuing the Doctor and the knocking-unconscious of Gertrude Fisher that all of the lights in the complex went out, and every last generator died. The two of them and Jenny had run into each other in the fray of freeing suffragettes and other women, who promptly went on to help them free more and more women, until the women in a position of manipulated command were overcome by sheer amount of bodies trying to force their way out of the room and sabotage the machinery.
This chaos also meant Madame Vastra abandoned her attempt to find them a getaway vehicle and instead came inside to try and find her wife and see that she was okay. Of course, a minor riot like this wasn't going to put Jenny out at all, but the Doctor supposed Vastra did worry in the same way she herself worried about Clara. Would the intangible 'Phantom' be pushed to the ground and trampled on by the crowd of stampeding activists? Most certainly not. But did the Doctor still cling to her hand to keep her close and within reach should she fall and find herself trapped under boots and feet and heels? Most certainly she did.
After silence fell in the facility, it took the Doctor another ten minutes to get the lights and machines back working, just without any victims to impose themselves upon. It was a good thing, really, that when she had been clubbed on the back of the head she had dropped her sonic screwdriver; it had rolled underneath one of those booths nearby, and was spied later on by Jenny, who struggled a while to get it to work for her. The Doctor was quite impressed, though, with the efficiency she had shut down operations using an alien gadget like the sonic. While the Doctor busied herself with that, the quartet exchanged their stories of what they had been doing: the incident crawling through the shower drain, and that of Maud Watts' investigation.
"It is exactly as I suspected," Vastra said, "Mind control. You see, if you had just come with us, you would have seen her curious electrode burns and her subconscious trigger phrases for yourself."
"And if you'd have come with us you would have just seen the machines and figured it all out in a second," the Doctor argued.
"But we would have been putting ourselves in danger," Vastra countered, "We may have all ended up like you."
"Speed is of the essence."
"Hardly! Whatever this subterfuge is, it has been going on for the longest time. There is no reason to rush and draw attention to ourselves, not like this mess here," Vastra said.
"Alright, the two of you used different methods," Clara interrupted loudly, "Each to their own, now can't you behave? Nobody can do anything about it now and everyone is alright." And then both of them demanded of Clara why she was taking the other's side, leaving Jenny Flint to shout at them to just shut up. Then they listened. And the Doctor had got the lights back on.
"What now?" Jenny asked.
"I'm not sure. All of these women working here were just as brainwashed as the others," Vastra said, "Hence the assumption a third party is at work, working through all of them, assuming control of the female population."
"Alright, but if you want control of the populace, why go for the half of it that don't have any rights or power?" Clara asked her.
"That's your mistake. You're assuming they don't have control of the other half already. Of course, these machines are using human materials to an alien design specification," Vastra explained, "I doubt we will find much in this building at all. They have covered their tracks very well, not so much as an incriminating paper trial with half a dozen names of top politicians and misogynists on it. The machines are nothing more than squatters."
"Then how are they stopping any old person wandering in here, or trying to buy the place?" Jenny asked.
"Dirty tactics, I assure you. Buying everybody out, killing them, maybe? This operation will take an awful lot of money and co-operation," Vastra said, "Some sort of group, with respect for each other, operating to keep themselves hidden. Yes, I think everything is coming together now… all we need is a way to reverse this brainwashing, to repair what damage has been done to the women of Lambeth and the rest of London."
"So – this Mrs Watts," Thirteen interrupted, "She fell unconscious when you started questioning her? Because that sounds like a failsafe to me, and you don't need a failsafe if your methods are fool-proof. So there has to be some way to reverse the conditioning, clearly."
"My thoughts exactly."
"It's like hypnosis; a trigger phrase would do it. We just don't know what the trigger phrase is," said the Doctor, "If they're this careful about making sure nobody can find out who's using the building, there's no way they'll pick a simple phrase to just guess, or that they'd leave it lying around. None of the women here would know it or their own conditioning would be broken."
"I fear you are correct," Vastra nodded, "And that there is nothing more to be gained from being here, in this dreadful place. The mould is terrible."
"So, what? We're at a dead end?" Clara asked.
"A dead end? Never. No, I know exactly the place we must go, and I have this mystery almost wrapped up myself, as I'm sure the Doctor does as well," Vastra said, nodding (the Doctor didn't think she quite understood it as well as Vastra, but, after all, Vastra was the world's greatest detective.) "We must go to The Scarlet Door."
"Oh, bleeding hell…" Jenny grumbled. Vastra's smile twitched, but she pretended she didn't hear that.
"Where?" Thirteen asked.
"A place where some valued contacts of mine reside."
"I think you enjoy visiting The Scarlet Door a bit too much, you know," Jenny quipped, "Every other case you have you find an excuse to go there."
"And it always turns out to be useful!" Vastra argued with her.
"That's one word for it."
"I'm confused, where are we going?" the Doctor persisted.
"To a place of negotiable affection," Vastra said cryptically, and Clara seemed to realise what she was talking about.
"It's a brothel, sweetheart," Clara explained.
"Yes, quite," said Vastra, "An upmarket one, a place frequented only by the crème de la crème of society. Strictly male society. And I must talk to the Abbess; if this conspiracy has reached the ears of Pankhurst, I am sure they have reached the ears of Cathy Redbreast. And I daresay she will be of more help, since she has a more economic stake in the personal affairs of men and women alike." Jenny was still not very happy about this, but as usual Vastra's logic was sound. The madam of a well-to-do bordello would undoubtedly have her ear to the ground. And so, The Scarlet Door was where they headed, in a carriage stolen from the outside of the factory.
Thirteen had thought 'The Scarlet Door' must be a euphemism, and so she was very surprised when they came to a hotel-looking building with dark windows, no signpost and a bright-red wooden door. She supposed that door was the only shred of identifying information on the whole building, and if this was really the kind of place where men of worth frequented, this 'Cathy Redbreast' woman probably didn't have anything to worry about in terms of crossing the law. The Doctor herself had nothing against brothels, and neither did Clara. She also had nothing against Clara visiting such a place at that moment; the more dangerous place for Clara Oswald to go was a dive bar, not a fancy sort of establishment where the women needed to be plied with a hefty amount of cash rather than just a few dregs of whatever was the cheapest and dirtiest alcohol available. Even if Clara's eyes had a certain habit of wandering, on occasion.
Vastra knocked on the door in a very unusual way, and a blot of light became visible as somebody on the other side removed the cover of a peephole within to get a look at who it was. The peephole closed and another compartment slid open, a very narrow one to reveal only a pair of eyes.
"Who is the prime minister?" asked a girl's voice.
"Ah, I have this one," said Vastra, "Emmeline Pankhurst." The Doctor was taken aback, and the girl inside laughed and then slid the hatch shut and unlocked the door from the inside. It took the Doctor just a moment to understand that code, a typical kind of secret password where the password was unspecified: there was merely a question, a certain way of answering, this way being with any word which began with the second-to-last letter of the question itself.
"That'll be the day, won't it, ma'am?" she joked. So, clearly, this woman had not been brainwashed. "Guests with you? Why won't you ever bring guests with you we can serve?"
"Oh, we shan't be a drain on your resources I'm sure, Molly. Now, I must speak with Cathy, is she with a client?"
"Oh, no, ma'am, she is in low spirits recently," the girl, Molly, said, "Business things, I assume, but it's not for me to say. No doubt she will tell you herself, she's no stranger to hospitality."
"I doubt Cathy is a stranger to anything, for the right price," Vastra said, and the girl laughed again. Vastra was having a lot of fun making this random, young escort giggle. Jenny did not look happy to be there. Still, though, the Doctor would swear on her own life that Madame Vastra wold not even think of being unfaithful, and especially not while she had her mind so wrapped up with their case.
Molly then went to take them to Cathy, leading them through what really was a house of wonders. To Clara, of course. Not to the Doctor. The Doctor did not care one jot about the pink silk draped down the walls and over the plush, goose-feather cushions and pillows on all the soft furnishings, or about the girls standing around in some of the finest lingerie that side of the Thames had to offer. Why would the Doctor care at all about any of that? And she definitely didn't.
Clara elbowed her.
"Stop staring," she hissed.
"I was not!" Thirteen protested.
"Stare at me, if you have to." So the Doctor did that instead. Not that she had been staring at anybody in the first place, of course.
They found Cathy the mistress in a snug office-like room behind a small bar, and she really did look like she was in a rather dour mood. Molly knocked on the door and opened it to let them in; apparently Vastra was a woman who needed no introduction, nor did she need to cover her face, as she lifted the veil up once they were in this private room of the cathouse, a place which smelt of perfume and sweat.
"A fine day for you to drop by," Cathy said once pleasantries had been exchanged and once Molly had left to go and wait by the door to let clients in, "Mostly because business is terrible. We have only two clients in the building at present, two clients to fill sixteen rooms. It's a hideous thing." Cathy Redbreast – a name the Doctor thought was most definitely fake – was a middle-aged woman who still took a great deal of care with her appearance and looked pretty dapper because of it. Jenny skulked by the door to keep an ear out for anything suspicious, leaving Thirteen and Clara to observe everything side-by-side, since Vastra had stolen the only other chair in the room.
"I suspected as much," Vastra said, "I have a few questions about your girls, though. General ones. Have you noticed any sort of disillusionment lately?"
"Being a prostitute is hardly the same thing as fighting for women's rights," Jenny muttered.
"Is it not a woman's right to do whatever profession she chooses, Jenny?" Cathy asked her, "You know we have had this debate many times. The girls are well cared for and may choose their own destiny. No 'disillusionment' with the girls, per se, but with the men? Well, the business has been going sour for months now."
"Just like the suffragette movement," the Doctor mused, "But this is the reverse."
"It isn't the reverse, it's all the same thing. This is no subjugation of women, and I would say the sexism built into their 're-programming' is merely a way to keep them docile and avoid suspicion. After all, what say a police officer if a man reports his wife is mysteriously doing all of the cleaning, when previously she was out being an anarchist five nights a week? They would tell him to count his blessings," Vastra said, "No, they are following an archetype of society."
"There's that 'they' again," said Clara.
"What clients have you got in at the moment, Cathy dear?" Vastra asked.
"What clients! You have some nerve."
"What if I happened to drop a guinea on my way out of here?"
"Well then I should have to tell you one of them is a rather dull man by name of Hingley who is the layabout grandson of the founder of an iron manufacturer. The ones who built the anchor for that ocean liner which sank just this week," Cathy explained, "Then I'm sure the other is one regular of ours whom Delilah says is very subdued recently, the honourable Earl of Crewe. Or, in fact, is he not the Marquess of Crewe now?"
"He is the Marquess indeed," said Vastra, her eyes lighting up with this news, "I must see him at once."
"See him? Whatever for? Delilah was having a pitiful enough time trying to get him to be excited about anything without somebody else going barging in there," Cathy argued.
"But the Marquess of Crewe is none other than the current Secretary of State for India, previously the Secretary of State for the Colonies. As a matter of urgency, this man may hold the key to cracking the trickiest case I have had recently!" Vastra exclaimed, "A case which puts all of humankind in danger."
"Humankind, Vastra?" Cathy jibed.
"I am empathetic towards humanity, and you must remove this man from the company of your girl Delilah at once, or suffer the consequences," Vastra ordered, "Whatever her fees are, I shall pay them for you to do me this favour, as well as the guinea I may drop from my pocket as I leave."
"Then I suppose that is an offer I can't refuse with business being so bland," Cathy said.
"Your business will likely be restored if I am successful with this endeavour."
"Oh, wonderful," Jenny grumbled sourly. The Doctor and Clara did not say a word, barely needed to say a word. Vastra was doing a good enough job of investigating without their input. Cathy left the office and led them back through the main area of The Scarlet Door, past the girls who were mostly gossiping with each other in the absence of their clients. She took them all the way upstairs to the first floor, balconies overlooking the silky, rosy lobby below. On their way they had passed through another door with notably fake sounds of female pleasure and male grunting emanating from within, but the room they were actually going to merely bore noises of bickering.
Cathy knocked sharply on the door.
"Delilah, you are being recalled," she called through, and promptly the door was opened by Delilah, who was struggling to put her clothes back on and was red-faced and in a foul temper. The Doctor stepped away from her.
"I shouldn't think you'll get much luck with him, expect another request for a refund, just like the last time. I told you it wasn't anything to do with Molly, it's him," she said, "Like playing snooker with a rope in there trying to make it do anything." Clara repressed a laugh and coughed oddly, and got a judgmental look from Delilah. "Who are they? Newbies?" She only recognised Jenny and Vastra.
"Those two? No, darling. The blonde one I hear is an American, and what man is going to pay for an American when they are in London? And the brunette is from the North, so the same rule applies. We have an image of high-class to maintain, we cannot be letting any moor-born 'lass' run around our corridors," Cathy said, managing to greatly offended both the Doctor and Clara.
"I'm not even from the moors!" Clara argued, "I'm from Lancashire."
"Those dirty lakes? Even worse," Cathy said coolly, "On your way, Delilah, your pay won't be docked."
"It better not be," the half-naked Delilah muttered, then she skulked away to go downstairs and return to her fellows, while the four of them entered the room, which was just as grandly-furnished as the rest of the brothel. More silk, more red, a vase of roses – in 1912, it was classy, but in the 21st Century, it would be seedy. Then again, it kind of was seedy already. Best give people what they expected from a brothel, the Doctor thought. There was no point making it seem like something else.
"I pay you for your discretion, woman!" the Marquess of Crewe shouted at Cathy, "This is abominable." He didn't have any pants on.
"I do say, Robert, two years ago when you were only an Earl you didn't act this way," Cathy remarked, "And I note that on the last three visits you have failed to cough up a single shilling. My discretion has to be bought, and you have not been keeping up with your payments."
"Who have you brought? Muscle? You're going to kick me out?"
"Most definitely not," said Vastra herself, "This is not the mild-mannered Marquess I remember hearing nervous speeches from. A manipulation is at play here. I suspect that who we are talking to is barely more Marquess than other, at this point. Now, Cathy, you should leave us. Things may get messy."
"Not if what Delilah says is true, they won't. Don't forget you owe me," Cathy said, and then left the room.
"Who are you?" the man asked, "A woman should know her place, but you are hardly a woman yourself."
"Restrain that man," Vastra ordered nobody in particular, and so it was Jenny who went to grab him, Jenny giving him a swift punch in the gut and holding his arms behind his back tightly. It had to be said, Robert Crewe-Milnes was quite a weedy fellow. But then, what did one expect from a British politician? "Clara, may I have a hairpin?" Clara always got a bit fussy about her hair when they went to a period like this one, and had a rather elaborate hairstyle currently with maybe half a dozen hairpins holding it in place. Regrettably, she parted with one of them and gave it to Vastra, who quickly bent it out of shape until it was just a long piece of metal.
"What are you doing?" the Doctor asked her suspiciously.
"Finding us the real culprit. Clara, help Jenny to keep that man as still as possible. I would hate to kill him by accident when the Marquess himself is, I suspect, innocent of all wrongdoing." Clara used her telekinesis to keep the man, held by Jenny, nothing more than a statue, Jenny holding his mouth shut when he began to shout.
"Whoa, hey!" the Doctor yelled at Vastra when she more or less pounced on that man and seemed to ram the warped hairpin into his ear, and he tried to scream.
"Stay quiet! I said I don't want to kill him," she said. Clara covered her mouth with her hand in horror. Then the Marquess of Crewe went limp all of a sudden and his watering eyes closed, and Vastra drew her hairpin out of his ear (it had gone in much deeper than the Doctor thought remotely safe, and she was quite scared that Robert might be dead) with an air of triumph, and Jenny dropped the body onto the floor. The Doctor immediately went to check for a pulse. "Don't worry, Doctor, he will be fine soon enough. It is this I was looking for." There was a pulse, thankfully, but all thought of the Marquess' wellbeing went out of her head when she stood up and saw what was impaled on the end of Clara's borrowed hairpin.
It was very small, perhaps only a little more than an inch long, and looked to the Doctor like a caterpillar, only it was bright orange and rather than having legs in the usual places it had maybe a hundred legs wrapping all the way around its body – optimised for crawling into ears, she supposed – and it wriggled around angrily on the end of the pin, unable to escape.
"That was in his ear?" Jenny exclaimed.
"Never underestimate something based on how small it is," Vastra said, "Of course, it all makes sense now."
"Uh, does it?" Clara asked, unsure.
"Why, yes, indeed," Vastra nodded, "Now, Doctor, did you ever hear of an earthquake in India in 1860?"
"There are a lot of earthquakes in India," said the Doctor.
"Yes, but this one is of particular significance because it happened in Raipur, one of the parts of the country least likely to receive earthquakes, and there were no reliable reports of seismic activity in the entire country at all. Maybe I would have gone to India to investigate myself, had I been freed from my internment beneath the London Underground yet, but I only read about it years later and thought of wasn't of the remotest significance. Merely paranoid humans, or something harmless, as there were reports of bright lights in the sky like a comet that evening, as well. Yet, I would hazard a guess that whatever came down to Earth that night in 1860 was containing these little creatures which make their nest inside human heads.
"Why India, you ask? Well, because of those flowers we found in the window box of Maud Watts, flowers which I did not fail to notice in the other window boxes of all the houses with the curious flower displays. Crocus asperata, a genus which I pointed out to Clara has been extinct until some point in the last century, the mid-1870s, in fact. Yet, here it is, an allegedly extinct flower, sitting around very prettily in the window box of a brainwashed housewife. Yet, these dates are of more significance when one takes into account dates of significance for the British Empire; an earthquake in 1860, two years into the period of British rule of India, which began in 1858. And in the mid-1870s-"
"Victoria became Empress of India," Clara said.
"Well, she did, yes, but two years before that happened the late King Edward VII went on quite a long sabbatical in India. And, clearly, those jungles are home to all kinds of dangerous parasites," Vastra said, nodding at the caterpillar-thing writhing around on the pin. "And here is where it gets interesting – this is, like I said, no attempt to crush women and their right to vote. This is a carefully orchestrated invasion, invasion of the whole planet, seizing the British Empire first of all and then moving on to the rest of the world. Like Gertrude Fisher said to you, Doctor, that they weren't supposed to have reached the Americans yet. Though I doubt she knew hardly anything more than that.
"Of course all the evidence points towards this careful infiltration of British society – namely the occupation of the Attaway Arms Company factory. It would take a lot of money and a lot of important people to keep anyone from trying to rebuild on that large area of Lambeth, and you can be sure people were – and still are – desperate to do such a thing. Along with that the cost of the manufacturing of the brainwashing devices must have been obscene, to say the least. But this was a very last-minute kind of operation, you see, and the brainwashing of the women comes from the rising threat of the suffragette movement, and Emmeline Pankhurst herself. Pankhurst is merely too elusive to be caught, or you could bet she would suffer the same fate."
"I don't get it," said Jenny, "If they can crawl into the ears of men and control their brains, these worm-things, why can't they just do the same to women?"
"The same reason the control does not fully take hold! Poisons in the body, my darling Jenny," Vastra continued, "The poor Marquess was still fulfilling his old habits of visiting prostitutes while being strangled by this mite within his brain, and no doubt that fact is why this invasion has gone ahead so subtly, without anybody noticing. I suspect that Cathy's business taking a hit is to avoid 'fraternising with the enemy' – the female enemy – or something similarly absurd. But, of course, with men in command already, they hardly have to be altered at all. And the reason, you think, why all this now? If, as I say, they have been living in this country since the 1870s at least? Well because, of course, up until 1901, a woman was on the throne of England. And then it was the somewhat useless Edward VII who cannot even stop the rising tide of socialism – a more anti-monarchy movement if there ever was one – in his own kingdom. But now with George V, something is actually being done, and things like these abductions are being sanctioned. But only to stamp out women's voices."
"Poisons like what?" Clara asked.
"I dare say that if one of you two were to spit on this creature, we would see those effects for ourselves," Vastra said, and Clara (who still had something to be gained by way of personal hygiene) licked the end of her finger and touched, flinching a little, the head of the caterpillar-thing. And it made a tiny shrieking noise, like that which comes out of a bottle if you don't quite close it properly as the air gets released, and smoky curled off it: it had literally been burned by Clara's touch. "It has an allergy, I suspect, to oestrogen. They must brainwash the women because they cannot control them like they can the men, and they cannot completely take control because men themselves are not without a sliver of that more feminine hormone. And all that those extinct flowers must be are relics brought from India by the old king himself and his cronies, and now they place them in the windows of those women they take as a way to show which ones have been 'got' already. As though painting a cross on the door of the house of a plague victim, marking it off. They are hard to miss, after all.
"And now, all that is left to do is come up with a plan to thwart this most dastardly and covert invasion and attempt at domination." Vastra looked at the Doctor when she said that, who sighed.
"A plan to do what?"
"Why, to get into Number 10, of course: this is a conspiracy which goes all the way to the top, to Asquith himself, and I will leave its conclusion to you, Doctor."
"Oh," said Thirteen dryly, "Great."