The Merfolk Murders (audio story)

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The Merfolk Murders was the first story in the audio anthology The Dream Team, produced by Big Finish Productions. It was written by Tim Foley.

Publisher's summary[[edit] | [edit source]]

St Andrews, Scotland, 1940. The Merfolk are a university society meeting through the summer to discuss murder mystery stories. Innocent escapism during wartime, they say. Their latest book is The Casebook of Orion Hood – whose hero is all-too-familiar to the Doctor...

When a real-life murder occurs soon after their gathering, the Doctor's friends encourage him to investigate. Is one of the Merfolk responsible? Was this crime the result of espionage or envy? The Doctor must embrace his deerstalker once more and solve this wartime mystery – before the killer can strike again!

Plot[[edit] | [edit source]]

Part one[[edit] | [edit source]]

The TARDIS lands in St Andrews in August 1940 and the Doctor, Adric, Nyssa and Tegan meet Athena, to whom the Doctor introduces his companions as prospective students of the University of St Andrews. Athena invites the group to join a gathering of the literary and dramatic association, the Merfolk, at Castle Sands, an offer which the Doctor accepts upon learning that the society will be discussing The Casebook of Orion Hood. In the meantime, the travellers head into town and are split into two groups when Tegan holds Adric back to discuss the fact that the Doctor seems to be hiding something from them. The Doctor and Nyssa bump into Seb, who points them to a tearoom and keeps the fact that he recognises the Doctor to himself.

Tegan takes Adric to a bookshop and finds a copy of The Casebook of Orion Hood whilst Adric looks at books on mathematics and meets Henry, a fellow wunderkind and member of the Merfolk who puts the copy of The Casebook of Orion Hood on his account when Tegan finds it. The two of them are shown the way to Castle Sands by Professor Hodgson, the Merfolk's patron, where they are reunited with the Doctor, Nyssa, Athena and Henry and meet Seb and Kowalski, a soldier. Before the meeting, Adric and Tegan confront the Doctor with the book's illustrations of the previous Doctor and he explains that he and Sarah solved mysteries together which Sarah fictionalised in the beginning of the 20th century under the name "Sarah Joan Watson".

Athena leaves the meeting when her claim of having witnessed a murder the previous summer is again dismissed as a lie. Once the meeting is over, Adric and Henry eat the leftover sandwiches and go to Henry's dorm, Nyssa learns to skip stones with Kowalski until he has to leave for roll call and Tegan accepts Professor Hodgson's invitation to Seaview House, agreeing to meet up with the Doctor at St Salvator's Quad by sundown. Seb, whose uncle works at the ministry, reveals that he knows that the Doctor is an ally of Churchill and asks for his assistance in finding a German spy in St Andrews, but he declines. When he regroups with his companions, he learns that Henry and Professor Hodgson have received letters from Athena claiming to have proof of the murder she claims to have witnessed.

The travellers are given rooms at St Salvator's Hall and the Doctor and Tegan go to Athena's, but Seb informs them that she has not returned to the building since the morning and that he too received one of her letters. Before midnight, the Doctor, Tegan and Seb go to the ruined castle per the letters' instructions whilst Adric and Nyssa spot and join Henry and Kowalski on Castle Street and go to the castle despite the Doctor's orders to keep watch from their rooms. Nyssa and Kowalski attend to Henry when he falls ill and the Doctor and Tegan find Athena in the castle, murdered by strangulation despite nobody having seen anyone enter the castle.

Part two[[edit] | [edit source]]

Nyssa, Tegan, Professor Hodgson and Seb discuss the murder whilst Kowalski finds a phone box to contact his commanding officer and the Doctor and Adric take Henry to the hospital, learning that he had ptomaine poisoning from Athena's sandwiches. Tegan joins them at the hospital and appoints herself as the Doctor's assistant as he investigates the murder, but he does not wish to get involved and goes with her to give their witness statements to the police, leaving Adric with Henry. She answers the telephone to Athena's sister, Anna, in Professor Hodgson's place and informs her of her death, an experience which makes her realise why the Doctor does not wish to play detective.

Adric tells Henry about Athena's murder once he wakes up and agrees with an earlier statement he made about murder being like mathematics and that they are capable of solving it. He writes a list of all possible suspects and Henry insists that he includes their own names and those of the Doctor, Nyssa and Tegan, but states that Professor Hodgson could have no role given that she was not there at the castle.

When Kowalski returns to the others following his phone call, he tells Nyssa that his letter asked him to meet with Athena at 11:30 rather than at midnight like the others and that he is in trouble for sneaking away from barracks. Nyssa finds him after he leaves and they bond over the both of them being refugees who lost their home, then they head to the castle together to look around for clues that might have been missed. She finds a hook in the ground and Kowalski quickly makes excuses to leave.

Tegan takes the Doctor to the TARDIS and presents him with his previous self's detective outfit, explaining that she wears her air stewardess uniform to remind herself of her duty to assist others and that the detective outfit could do the same for the Doctor. He agrees to wear it, although he had already decided to take the case to do right by Athena given the apparent incompetence of the police, and wonders if the letters were indeed written by Athena. He and Tegan visit Seb's home given that he claims to be a junior agent of the War Office and smell gas.

Part three[[edit] | [edit source]]

The unconscious Seb is saved and taken to the hospital thanks to Kowalski breaking down his door and Tegan calling for an ambulance. Given that the door was locked from the inside and there is no sign of a suicide note, the Doctor deduces that somebody tried to murder Seb and doubts that it was Kowalski given his assistance, although Tegan is suspicious of him. The Doctor realises that Seb was the only person at the castle who was in St Andrews during the time of the murder Athena claims to have witnessed the previous summer and Tegan sends him to gather Adric and Nyssa whilst she visits Morris, the porter of St Salvator's and whose predecessor, Mr Patterson, Athena claimed could corroborate her story.

Adric informs his friends that he and Henry have ruled out all of the known suspects and that Henry recalls Athena saying that she made her sandwiches in Professor Hodgson's house, something that Tegan finds suspicious given that Professor Hodgson previously claimed that she barely knew her. Tegan explains that she and Morris found an entry in one of Mr Patterson's logbooks, dated 17 August, mentioning that Miss McDonnell reported an incident which was subsequently redacted. The next day, Adric and Nyssa find a dossier on Professor Hodgson in Athena's room and Tegan distracts her whilst the Doctor uses her telephone to call Anna, who tells him that her sister's name was Andrea, that she lied about her father being a scholar and that her claim of witnessing a murder was probably a lie. The Doctor asks her for her help.

Henry gives Adric canned peaches, tells him that he rejected Athena's advances and asks him whether he has considered attending the university, having deduced that he was not really a prospective student. Kowalski refuses to tell Nyssa why he hurried away from the castle, saying that she would not understand because she is a woman, and she takes the dossier to the Doctor, who has found several other hooks in the ground at the castle. He reads that her sister, Henrietta, had a son, Maximilian, out of wedlock and asks Professor Hodgson if Athena was blackmailing her with this information, but she denies it and explains that Henrietta and Maximilian moved to Europe.

Professor Hodgson learns that her academic record was checked out with her own signature and the Doctor and Nyssa find the student records for the suspects. Tegan and Adric visit Seb in the hospital and discover that he was carrying a gun, after which Nyssa calls and warns Tegan that the Doctor has learnt that Seb is the German spy. Seb wakes up and realises that Tegan knows about the gun when she tries to stop Adric from handing his personal effects to him; he takes the gun and points it at them.

Part four[[edit] | [edit source]]

Tegan suggests that Seb takes her and Adric hostage instead of killing them, but the Doctor lies that the hospital has been surrounded to make him surrender and reveals that he learnt from the War Office that he does not have an uncle working there. Seb has been searching for academics sympathetic to the German cause and compiled the dossier on Professor Hodgson which was stolen from him the previous morning, leading to his suicide attempt. The Doctor gathers everybody in the university theatre with Anna and first addresses Kowalski, revealing that he knows that Kowalski is short-sighted and medically unsuitable to be in the army. He suggests that Athena might have been blackmailing him, but Professor Hodgson denies this.

Professor Hodgson was at the castle on the night of Athena's murder, explaining why they could hear her dog Marmalade barking, and the Doctor points out that the porter's logbook does not clarify which Miss McDonnell witnessed the murder in the summer. Anna admits that she saw two men fighting on the cliffs and that one went over, but she redacted the report she made to Mr Patterson when she started wondering if she imagined it. Mr Patterson later died of food poisoning, which brings the Doctor to Henry's lies; he lied when he said that Athena made the sandwiches at Seaview and he exploited Kowalski's poor eyesight to get him to agree that they saw Athena enter the castle on the night of her death. Athena had already been killed and hidden behind a canvas attached to one of the hooks until Henry poisoned himself and went to the beach, removing the canvas.

Henry admits that he is Maximilian Hodgson, that he killed Mr Patterson and later Athena when he came to believe that she had witnessed him killing the real Henry Cuthbertson and that he planted Professor Hodgson's papers in Athena's rooms because he was angry at her having pushed his mother away for her career. He escapes and jumps from the cliff after telling Adric that he did not lie about their friendship. The Doctor gives Seb dates of when St Andrews will be in danger throughout World War II so that he can redeem himself by saving lives and Nyssa declines to stay with Kowalski, returning to the TARDIS where the upset Adric heads to his room. At Tegan's insistence, the Doctor takes her and Nyssa to the end of the war so that they can check on Professor Hodgson.

The TARDIS instead lands over twenty years in the future and the surprised Professor Hodgson introduces Nyssa and Tegan to Kowalski's daughter, Nina, and they share mulled wine. The Doctor and Adric discuss Adric's potential interest in joining a university, which the Doctor believes would be a good idea despite him not wanting to lose Adric any time soon. Once Nyssa and Tegan rejoin them, they see The Return of Orion Hood by Janet Govanka in a bookshop window with the Doctor wearing a rainbow coat on the cover and hurry away to avoid spoiling anything about their future.

Cast[[edit] | [edit source]]

Worldbuilding[[edit] | [edit source]]

Orion Hood novels[[edit] | [edit source]]

Mathematics[[edit] | [edit source]]

Notes[[edit] | [edit source]]

Continuity[[edit] | [edit source]]

External links[[edit] | [edit source]]

v • e
The Fifth Doctor Adventures
Single releases
The Fifth Doctor Box Set
Wicked Sisters
The Lost Resort
and Other Stories
Forty: Volume 1
Forty: Volume 2
Conflicts of Interest
In the Night
The Dream Team
The Great Beyond
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