Alexander sat down slowly. ‘We could push for a revolution now, declare a workers’ state. I always thought it could be real now, that it could be done. But there’s no time. Damn it, if only you’d told me earlier! I have to get a telegraph, there’s only a few weeks before it all starts, have to…’ He found that he was staring at his hands, and suddenly burst into great sobs. ‘Poison gas? How can they contemplate poison gas?’

Benny went to him and held him. ‘I’m so sorry. What have 1 done to you?’

‘Did it to myself, loved one,’ he said, quietening after a while. ‘God, what do I say to Richard when I next see him?’

‘There’s nothing you can say. I don’t want to raise false hopes, but it may not happen. His death, I mean. I don’t know what records you were accessing, but if they’re ones from the future, then all sorts of things may have happened in between. Time’s very big. We don’t get to see it all. That’s all I can say, really.’

Bernice was rapidly starting to feel as if she’d killed Richard Hadleman herself.

‘Damn it, Alexander, I wish you hadn’t looked.’

Alexander pulled out a big spotted handkerchief and blew his nose, quickly wiping his tears away, though a hard emptiness remained. ‘Why, if I may ask, did you and your friend decide to visit us here?’ he asked. ‘Are we morbid zoo creatures, on the brink of extinction?’

Benny leant on his shoulder. ‘Wasn’t my choice. He wanted to come here and suffer a bit, I think.’

The doorbell chimed. Alexander rose and visibly pulled himself together, buttoning his waistcoat. ‘I’ll have to go through all that business of going to prison,’ he muttered. ‘I might be too old to be conscripted, though, at least initially. What a winter it’s going to be for us all.’

As he wandered downstairs, Benny grabbed the unit, and tapped out a request.

Shuttleworth, Alexander: No records.

She leant back and switched the thing off, hiding it in a deep pocket. She had already broken several laws of time before breakfast. Oh, and ruined somebody’s life. She was definitely going to have words with the Doctor about this.

Assuming, of course, the Doctor ever existed again.

Constance strode merrily into the room, wearing green velvet pantaloons. ‘Put on my bloomers,’ she explained. ‘And how are you both this morning?’

Benny glanced at Alexander’s deathlike face as he stamped back up the stairs.

‘We’ve been better.’

‘So, are we going to go and get this thing of yours from whoever’s got it?’

Constance asked as Alexander led them through the darkened corridors of the museum, refusing to open any curtains.

‘That’s the plan. Alexander says he has something to help us,’ Benny whispered, wondering why she was whispering. Despite everything, Constance’s chirpiness was raising her spirits too.