Загадка дома с привидениями

The Doctor lurched into her, grabbed her arm, and they sprinted down a stone corridor.

‘I punched Dracula!’ he said triumphantly, then winced as he flexed his fingers. ‘He has a very hard face.’

‘I bet. First time you’ve met him?’

‘No, but the first time it was an android, second time it was Vlad the Impaler and the third time it was a Cyber-Dracula, so I don’t really think they count. Ha! Count.’

‘You are hilarious,’ Martha muttered.

‘This plan of yours,’ Martha said, panting quietly, ‘do you really have one or were you just saying you did to look clever in front of Cotterill?’

‘I really have one,’ the Doctor said. ‘And I don’t need to look clever. I am clever. The fact that I look clever is merely a bonus.’

'I try my best to stay away from mysteries, young man. Terrible things, they are. They lead to all sorts of... answers.'

‘Mrs O’Grady,’ the Doctor repeated. ‘You wouldn’t happen to have a first name, would you?’

‘Yes I do,’ said Mrs O’Grady. ‘Mrs.’

‘What a fully developed character you must be,’ the Doctor said, raising a sceptical eyebrow.

‘You’ve got Dracula climbing up your tower.’

Rapunzel clapped her hands excitedly. ‘Is Dracula a prince?’

‘He’s a count.’

She sagged. ‘Oh.’

There was movement up ahead: two teenagers, a pale boy and a nervous girl, walked into a clearing. The sun broke through the clouds and the boy started to sparkle.

Martha felt the Doctor’s eyes on her and she blushed. ‘Do not judge me.’

There was movement, and then a rope came tumbling out of the window, batting gently against Martha’s shoulder, unravelling all the way down to the bottom. No, not a rope. A thick braid of golden hair.

‘You have got to be kidding,’ Martha muttered.

The Doctor was shouting again. ‘I know her! I’ve met her! Tell her I said hi!’

‘I never said I saw them in the woods. I never said I knew what you were talking about. What are you talking about? Strange? Lights? Woods? What? I’m the caretaker. I take care of the cottage and the grounds. Not the woods. Not any strange lights. Not that there are any. But if there were some, I wouldn’t know about them. And I don’t, because there aren’t.’ His face twitched. ‘Any.’

The Doctor smiled again. ‘I don’t find you suspicious at all.’

‘Doctor,’ Martha said, having no other choice but to ask the question, ‘are we... are we in a book?’

‘We’re not in a book. We can’t be in a book.’ The Doctor looked around. ‘We might be in a book.’

“First rule of being a detective,' the Doctor said a he knocked on the door, 'is to observe. Observe the obvious, and observe the not-so-obvious. Observing the not-so-obvious is not as easy as observing the obvious, but if it were easy everyone would be at it.”