Wimseyfic: The Curious Chronicle of a Close Encounter

[nineveh_uk]

tree_and_leaf linked to this Wimsey/Doctor Who crossover, constructed around an alternative explanation for the Sayers short story The Image in the Mirror. As the best bit about the original is the depiction of contemporary solutions for excess babies, this is a story crying out to be improved with aliens (I usually prefer to improve with dragons, but they take up a lot of room. I think Nine Tailors is probably the one for dragons). Unfortunately the flashes of pretty convincin’ dialogue are interspersed with rather less convincing dialogue, a rather dim Peter, and very annoying Rose (OK, I find Rose in fic annoying a lot of the time). The story omits whatever it is that Rose must have put in Peter’s drink to get him to tell her all about Harriet over lunch at the Ritz. Her suggestions that he “snog [Harriet] senseless” and that she’s just playing hard to get do offer some explanation of how he managed to get things so disastrously wrong over the next year or so, however. I'm presently re-reading Have His Carcase. Page by page I am astonished at how impressively Peter makes a hash of his relationship with Harriet. There are practically Miles Vorkosigan levels of idiocy involved.

Anyway, I thought that Peter and the Doctor (and Rose) were left, one dead alien later, with a bit of unfinished business.

The Curious Chronicle of a Close Encounter

The setter bowled back over the broad sands, deposited the stick into its master’s hand, and waited expectantly for it to be thrown again. Lord Peter Wimsey looked at his watch, the lonely sea and the sky, reckoned he had another half-hour before he needed to turn back, and hurled the object seawards. The dog yipped gratefully and flung herself in pursuit and Wimsey turned himself up the beach to avoid the groynes, which whilst undoubtedly both useful and beautiful, presented a certain challenge.

He was almost at the dunes when the man appeared, springing out of the marram on india-rubber legs in a swirl of raincoat and waving a small silver rod. It beeped. The man grinned.

‘Hello! Don’t mind me. Just doing a bit of metal-detecting. Marvellous thing, metal-detecting, never know what you might find. Nice to see you, must get on.’ He scrambled up the dune. Lord Peter, reflecting that this was that rare breed, the hobbyist who does not want to tell the bystander all about his passion, strolled on. Sally returned with a skid, and he raised his arm and half turned to throw the stick again – and stopped.

The metal-detecting man was standing on the dunes gazing back east, one arm raised to his head as if holding a pair of binoculars, his back towards Wimsey.

‘Good God’, said Peter, softly, and then much more loudly, setting off up the slope as fast as his legs could still carry him, ‘Doctor!’

‘What!’

‘I never forget a back. A face, yes, but a back is its owner’s forever – even when not attached to the right face. 1930, the Ritz and after. You were with a girl. Or perhaps I’d better not mention it in case I end up unconscious in a gutter with a dead extra-terrestrial.’

‘Hello!’ The delighted grin did not, thought Peter, particularly reflect the Doctor’s behaviour at the time. But perhaps the man had mellowed. ‘It’s Lord Peter Wimsey. Peter. Lord Peter. Wimsey. You’ve -’

‘Aged – it happens to most of us over three decades. And Wimsey will do,’ said Peter, who had noted with interest during their previous encounter that the Doctor’s egalitarianism as far as titles went extended to calling people what he wanted, and calling himself what he wanted, too, but in view of the beam in his own eye, ignored it. ‘What brings you here? Or am I better off not knowing – it will be hard to restrain my curiosity but I am prepared to make the attempt in extremis.’

‘Yeah, sorry about last time.’ The narrow shoulders shrugged embarrassedly. ‘Not one of my better days. Still, it worked out all right for Mr Cornwall.’

‘As a matter of fact, it didn’t. Oh, the police let him go – although you’d be surprised how often they don’t think another corpse turning up is proof someone’s not a murderer – but he spent the next ten years in an asylum. Of course, an honest explanation might not have helped, but we’ll never know.’

‘Oh.’

‘Still,’ said Lord Peter cheerfully, as Sally licked the Doctor’s hand, ‘we all make these little mistakes. Where’s young Rose, by the way. Has she changed her shape, too?’ He gestured at the woman on the other side of the field.

‘Oh, she’s not Rose! She’s Donna. Donna Noble. A friend. Good friend. Not that kind of friend.’

Wimsey lifted one pale eyebrow in exquisite enquiry.

‘That’s a pity. I might have had something to say to Rose.’

‘You got the girl! Oh, well done you. You are brilliant.’

‘Thank you. I did, in a manner of speaking, get the girl. But not as a result of Rose’s advice, which I foolishly attempted to follow – not the “snogging her senseless” part, which – in other words - I had already considered and dismissed as not conducive to till death do us part – but the intense and dogged pursuit bit.’

‘Didn’t work?’

‘She fled the country and told me not to write, and I spent the next three years repairing the damage. Still, all’s well that ends well. By the way, if you walk back a mile or so you’ll find some slightly peculiar green slime which I take it is not in fact down to the nuclear power station, and a pillbox in the field that wasn’t here last time I visited. And while we’re talking about noticing things, I must confess I got the two of you completely wrong, last time. You weren’t after her at all, were you?’

‘Bit young,’ said the Doctor apologetically.

‘And possibly the wrong species? How very awkward. Oh look, Miss Noble’s found something interestingly green and yaller. Well, I shan’t keep you. Harriet’s at home correcting proofs, and she’s probably reached the irritated stage by now. Besides, it took some time to get the gutter out of my trousers, and I’m fond of these. My compliments to Miss Noble, she’s a braver man than I am.’ He raised his hat. ‘There are more things in heaven and earth – no, don’t tell me, you’ve met Shakespeare. You do get about. I’d envy you, but one can’t have everything. This particular wilderness is paradise enow and all that. Do call in, should you find yourself about and off-duty; Duke’s Denver or No. 5 Audley Square. My boy Bredon’s been posted to an outfit called UNIT. I suspect he’ll have lots to ask you. I think Miss Noble’s trying to attract your attention . Do clarify that I’m not one of your exes: I have a reputation for fidelity, if nothing else.’

‘Doctor! Will you hurry up!’

‘Donna! Sorry, got to go! This is a nice ecosystem, lots of butterflies, and Lebhenite larvae aren’t any good for them at all.’

Lord Peter, observing the giant moth-like creature crawling out of the pillbox to extend sodden wings over the sand dunes, thought this all too likely. He clipped the setter’s lead onto her collar.

‘Goodbye, Doctor. Do try to prevent it eating Sally, I’m fond of her. Until next time.’

The Doctor grinned. 'I'll look forward to it.'

***

It occurs to me that I ought to mention (i.e. shamelessly promote) my first ever Wimseyfic, which was also a Doctor Who crossover starring Nine and Captain Jack in that familiar fanfic setting (well, I was writing a lot about Slytherins at the time) the slightly dull Society party: 1927.

Comments

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

As he will have to do National Service, he might as well do it somewhere interesting!

[tree_and_leaf]

It's a good idea, that.