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'Shame,' he said, putting it back into the case and shutting the lid. 'It helps me concentrate.'
Peri shook her head. First it was Inspector Smith, now it was Sherlock Holmes.
The Doctor froze in his tracks and looked up slowly. 'What date did I say it was?'
'You didn't,' came the reply, 'you only said it was thirty-seven years late for the...'
'...opening of the Crystal Palace Exhibition, I know...it must be 1888...' his voice trailed off, his eyes darkened.
'1888? What's so special about that date?'
The Doctor looked down at her as she drank her tea. '1888, Peri. Don't you see?' His companion's blank expression was the only answer he needed. 'We're in London with two problems. The first is the signal we were picking up earlier...'
'And the second?'
The Doctor fixed her with a steely gaze. 'The second, my dear Peri, is that we are in London at the time of Jack the Ripper.'
iv) Turalium
 he field was no more than five minutes from London, and the brightly coloured but tatty tent sat smack in the middle of it. The entrance was parted wide open and a large crowd began to make its way inside, stopping only to grab their tickets from Morris as he sat in a small wooden shack painted with faces of the freaks they were paying to see.
'Look at this crowd,' Hardstaffe said, rubbing his hands together and eyeing the growing stack of pennies, 'We're really pulling them in tonight.'
( Elsewhere, the black clad figure moved silently around the glowing technological womb, a hand-held device in his gloved hand. A code was tapped into the small keypad. In the tent, in one of the black rooms where one of the tent, in one of the back rooms where one of the exhibits was housed, a complex looking system on the door of its cell clicked several times before giving a decisive beep. The door swung open, and the only occupant left the room, heading away from the sounds of the approaching crowd. )
'That's it, roll up, only a penny, gotta be worth it!' shouted Hardstaffe, taking over from the weakly Morris as ticket seller, knowing his more extroverted nature would get the crowds roused. Money and small scraps of paper were exchanged, people and more people went into the tent. Battling his way against them to get to Hardstaffe came Morris, his face a mask of fear.
'He's gone again! The door to his bleedin' room wide open! That nutter has got out again!'
Hardstaffe grabbed the little man by his lapels, and spat into his face, 'What do you mean? These people are here to see him!'
( Somewhere else, the gloved hand pressed a glowing red diode on the remote display. 'You have served your purpose,' the suave voice said, 'you can go now.' The button was pressed. )
Hardstaffe stopped mid-rant, his eyes suddenly glazed. Morris, a second ago chocking in his grasp, felt the tight fingers slacken. 'Mr Hardstaffe? You alright?'
Hardstaffe didn't reply. Expression fixed, a string of saliva hanging from his lower lip, the big man fell backwards, taking the whole wooden shack with him, quite dead.
'He's dead,' muttered Morris, stumbling backwards. 'He's dead!' he said to the crowd, grabbing sleeves and staring wildly. But the crowd continued to enter the tent, pushing now that they realised they didn't have to pay to see the show.
The Doctor closed his left eye and leant towards the electron microscope in the TARDIS laboratory. The machine scanned his retina in a single second pass and automatically focused onto the fragment of red crystal on the slide below.
Peri sat in a high backed wicker chair on the other side of the room, idly toying with an apple stalk between bites of the fruit. 'So what is it? A ruby?'
'Mmm?' was her only reply. She didn't bother repeating the question, she knew she would only get an answer when he was good and ready. The Doctor stood up and smiled - he was good and ready.
 
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