When the streamers of light once more swirled around the train and released
their grip, Rose, Tegan, Liz and Sara found themselves sitting at their
original table. The town outside was no longer nameless, but Nameless.

Rose took a deep breath, and let it out slowly.

"That was just so weird," she said.

"You're not kidding." Tegan drummed her fingers on the table. "The way we
were all different people, but still the same... Liz, was any of that stuff
true? About you and the Brigadier, or you and Jean?"

Liz smiled wryly. "I might ask the same about you and Nyssa. I think the
mystery had to come up with a shameful secret for each of us, based on our
own lives. Something that would have been scandalous in the 1930s. Adultery
and unorthodox sexual practices for me, illegitimacy for Rose. Of course, she
isn't illegitimate, but that would be the closest it could get to her
relationship with her father. Suspicion of theft for you, because that's
something your character could easily be accused of."

"And a dubious crush on another girl," Tegan added, with a rueful smile. "I
can't *believe* I said all that stuff about Nyssa. If she ever finds out I'll
never live it down."

"And I got homicide," Sara said. "Of course, that one was easy."

There was an awkward silence.

"There's one thing I don't understand," Liz said.

Rose grimaced. "I can't believe you just said that."

"How did you get the suspects to do what you said all evening? Come and be
interviewed when we called, and so on? Did you pretend to be a detective?"

"Got it in one." Rose grinned. "Look, here's my card."

She handed over a wallet.

"'Rose Tyler,'" Liz read. "Registered private investigator."

"Psychic paper. Says what I want it to say."

"Yes, so I see. 'Greatest living detective'. 'Solver of over fifty mysteries
which baffled the police.' You don't undersell yourself, do you?"

She tossed the wallet to Tegan, who opened it and promptly dropped it as if
it was red hot.

"What's the matter?" Rose asked. "Couldn't you see anything? The Doctor said
that might happen, in rare cases."

Tegan shook her head.

"Oh no," she said. "It wasn't blank. Definitely not."

She pushed the wallet away from her with her fingertips.

Rose got to her feet, and looked round.

"They've all gone," she said. "Tom, the Colonel, Maria, everyone. Do you
think any of it was real?"

"Maria..." Tegan hurried to join her. "You know, I almost hope she wasn't
real. Knowing your boyfriend killed your dad because of you... I don't have
the words for it."

"Perhaps she wasn't." Rose pointed at the bloodstain, where the body had
been. As they watched, it faded, like a dream at sunrise.

"I suppose they can't replace the carpet on each trip," Sara said.

"I dare say the food was real," Liz said. "I'm not feeling suddenly empty
or anything."

"But the rest of it?" Rose persisted.

"It felt real while we were doing it." Tegan slowly sat down in the
corner-seat that Maria had previously occupied. "I suppose that's the
important thing."

*

The lighted platforms of the station drifted into view through the windows.
With a groan of brakes and a shudder, the train ground to a halt. Their
journey was finally at an end. Tegan, Rose, Sara and Liz walked slowly down
the aisle, each in turn taking a last look around the carriage before
disembarking. As they stepped down onto the platform, so did the other three
groups.

"I hope that blood washes out of my dress," Vicki said, peering at her
reflection in the carriage window. "It disappeared off the carpet, why did it
have to stay on me?"

"You should not wash out bloodstains. A true warrior bears her enemy's blood
with pride," Leela retorted.

Harry and Zoë emerged behind them.

"Sorry," Harry said. "I still don't think I've got it. Why did the lights
go out when they did?"

"Oh, Harry!" Zoë sounded as if she'd been saying little else all evening.
"It's perfectly simple. The murderer rode on the train the previous week,
and he bribed the steward to find out how the lights worked."

"But the steward said he hadn't taken any bribes."

"No, that was the steward tonight. The one he bribed was the one the week
before, and it wasn't the same man. It's all quite straightforward..."

*

"Wasn't it just brilliant?" Jo asked, rushing up to Tegan. "I was the niece
of an impoverished aristocrat who was posing as a princess in order to trap
a rich Viscount into marriage. But in the end I realised I was in love with
Jamie."

"Really?" Tegan asked.

"Well, not now, obviously." Jo giggled at the thought. "I meant, while we
were in the story. He was a soldier and he'd promised to marry someone, but
then she thought he was killed in the war and she married another man, and he
didn't want her to know he was still alive because she'd be unhappy. It was
terribly romantic. Did you have a guilty secret, too?"

"I was a waitress on a cruise liner," Tegan said. "I was accused of stealing
from the passengers." That was all anybody needed to know, she decided.

"Oh, poor you! And of course, it was all a red herring in the end, wasn't
it? Mind you, it wasn't as bad as Martha. The story was that she poisoned
her fiancé for his money."

"No!"

"Cross my heart."

"Mind you, that would explain what happened to Tom Milligan." Tegan looked
at Jo's shocked expression. "I'm joking. Honest. And Ace... well, take your
pick."

"She was a clerk at the Foreign Office and had an affair with a Russian
Diplomat."

"Captain Sorin. That'd make sense."

Jo took her by the hand. "Come on. I can't wait to hear what everyone else's
dark secret was..."

*

"How did you get on?" Liz asked Peri.

Peri rolled her eyes. "Don't ask. Just don't."

"It can't be that bad."

"Oh, it can. Nyssa was supposed to be Adric's cousin, secretly in love with
him--"

"You're right. It can. Stop right there."

"Yeah, that's what I thought. And I was this femme fatale who he was
chasing after. What is it about me?"

"Do I have to answer that?"

"No." Peri looked down at her low-cut dress. "Tomorrow I'm going to wear a
sweatshirt. As big and as baggy as I can find. And slacks."

"Wasn't Barbara any help?"

"She was Adric's overprotective governess. All one big screwed-up family.
What about you? You didn't have a guy to be the love interest."

"No, we all ended up as closeted lesbians. Do you want the gory details?"

"I told you all of ours. Fair's fair..."

*

"Enjoy yourself?" Rose asked.

"It was smashing!" Vicki replied. "I nearly got the right murderer three
times."

"Weren't there only four suspects?"

"Well, yes, but it was still terrific fun. And we all had really horrible
secrets, and they were all based on our real lives. I was a debutante who'd
poisoned someone by accident but if it ever came out there'd be the most
terrible scandal. And Zoë had had an affair with a famous photographer, and
Harry was a doctor who'd made a terrible mistake and killed dozens of his
patients, and Leela worked in a bank and had been accused of embezzling
thousands of pounds." She spread her hands. "I don't know *how* whoever it
was managed to come up with that one!"

"Weren't you upset? I mean, having your life turned into a clue in some
piece of fake Agatha Christie? And then it turned out none of the secrets had
anything to do with the real mystery at all?"

"But you've got to have clues, otherwise the mystery doesn't make sense."

"I'm not sure it did anyway." Rose laughed. "And you caught the murderer
in the end?"

"Well, Leela did. He tried to take me hostage, but Leela pulled the dagger
out of the dead man's body, and, well..." She gestured at the bloodstains on
her dress. "It got messy."

"Ours killed himself with poison."

"Well, it's probably slightly different each time, isn't it? Which pudding
did you choose?..."

*

The loudspeaker system interrupted the various conversations.

"All points now having been awarded," it said, "The scores were as follows.
In fourth place, with seventy-eight points, were carriage four: Adric of
Alzarius, Perpugilliam Brown, Nyssa of Traken and Barbara Wright. In third
place, with eighty-five points, were carriage three: Zoë Heriot, Vicki
Pallister, Leela of the Sevateem and Harry Sullivan. In second place, with
eighty-nine points, were carriage one: Tegan Jovanka, Sara Kingdom, Elizabeth
Shaw and Rose Tyler. And in first place, with ninety-two points, were carriage
two: Josephine Grant, Martha Jones, James McCrimmon and Dorothy McShane.
Carriage two are hereby declared the winners; please make your way to the
ticket office to collect your champagne prize."

*

"We won! We won!" Jo capered about, waving wildly.

"Congratulations, team." Martha shook Ace's hand, then Jo's, then hugged
Jamie.

"That was some serious weirdness going on in there," Ace said. "I mean, Jo
and Jamie?"

"I'd be willing to give it a try," Jamie volunteered.

They looked at him.

"You're both very bonny lassies as well," he added, with an unrepentant
grin.

"He's incorrigible," Martha said. "Come on, let's get the champagne. At
least then he'll have his hands full."

*

"Well, at least we all had a good time," said Harry. "Didn't we?"

"I found the evening stimulating," Leela agreed.

They looked around. Zoë was sitting on a bench, her head in her hands and
Vicki's arm round her shoulders.

"I am calm," she was reciting quietly. "I am rational. All is well with the
world. I will not let defeat upset me. Even if Jamie is never going to let me
forget this."

"I thought you couldn't forget things anyway," Vicki volunteered helpfully.

Zoë briefly looked up. "I'd have had a good try."

*

"So, we came last," Peri said. "It doesn't surprise me."

"No," Nyssa replied. "And we know whose fault that is, don't we?"

From somewhere, Adric found the courage to reply.

"It's nothing to do with me," he said. "I got the right murderer before any
of you. If you hadn't been caught up with that silly theory about the
waiter..."

"If all three of you had expended half the effort on solving the crime that
you had on bickering and glaring at each other, we'd have won easily," said
Barbara wearily. "Good night."

She stalked off. Peri stood uncertainly for a few moments, and then did
likewise.

"You realise the evening's over now?" Nyssa asked. "There's nothing stopping
me killing you."

"And enough methods, too," Adric replied. "Electrocute me, tie me to the
tracks, behead me with that butter knife you hid up your sleeve. Why haven't
you done it already?"

Nyssa looked him in the eye.

"Haven't we seen enough murder for one night?" she asked.

Adric met her gaze. "Only you can decide that, Nyssa."

"Oh well, when you put it like that..." She whipped out the knife from its
hiding place and ran at him, screaming "Die, swamprat!"

Adric turned to run, tripped, and pitched down the subway stairs, breaking
his neck and several other bones. Before anyone could get to his body, it
vanished in a puff of orange smoke.

"So there," Nyssa said, and set out on her own way home. But she didn't
seem particularly happy.

*

"That wasn't bad," Liz said. "Second. We did pretty well, all things
considered."

"First would've been nicer," Sara said.

"Well, yes, but look at Jo. She's so happy now. It'd be churlish to want
that taken away from her."

"Then call me churlish," Tegan said. "I'd have liked to have won. After
a night of stabbings and poisonings and people prying into our innermost
secrets a prize might have helped."

"Yours weren't *real* innermost secrets, though," Rose said. "Were they?"

"That isn't the point," Tegan replied, realising even as she spoke that she
could only be convincing Rose that it was. "It was just... it's all going
round and round in my head now, and I want it to stop."

Rose shrugged. "Oh, well. Sara and I are going to the Round to plan our
strategy. Do you want to come too?"

"What strategy?"

"For finding out who's running these trips and what they're up to. They've
got to be up to something, right?"

"It can wait," Tegan said firmly.

"See you next time, then."

"Next time?"

"If there is one. You will be coming, won't you?"

Tegan shook her head. "I won't say it wasn't interesting. But I think once
was quite enough for me."

= = = =

Notes:
- Liz smokes a pipe in a couple of the Expanded Universe books and
spinoff videos, and I thought it was appropriate for her in-story
persona here.

- I hold no brief on whether any character's guilty secret is in any sense
true. Except for Sara's, of course, which is about as canon as it gets.

- "Doctor Who" characters belong to the BBC.

- This Time Round was created by Tyler Dion.




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