The Aunt Paradox (Reeves & Worcester Steampunk Mysteries)

by Chris Dolley

  “That’s all very well. But why not tell the truth?”

  “If you turn to the next page, sir, you will see that you tried that.”

  I turned to the next page. More italicised witness statements, but this time they were mine.

  “It appears that your account of the time machine, the twenty-nine Aunt Charlottes, and turning HG Wells into a woman, did not play well to the jury, sir.”

  It had not. According to Horace Smallpiece the court had had to be cleared for excessive laughter, and one of the jurors had had an unfortunate accident which required a change of clothing to be sent for.

  “Miss Emmeline gets a mention, sir.”

  I braced myself for another body blow and turned to the next page.

  But the more I read, the more uplifted I felt. Emmie hadn’t deserted me! She chained herself to the gallery on day one, the witness box on day two, and on day three — after having both her favourite chain and her spare one confiscated on the door — she threw herself in front of the judge as he entered the courtroom and brought him down. She wasn’t allowed in after that, but kept vigil outside, throwing rocks at the prosecuting barristers.

  I was touched beyond words.

  “It would appear that, at the time of publication, Miss Emmeline is chained to railings outside Parkhurst prison, sir.”

  “Is that where I am, Reeves? Parkhurst?”

  “Yes, sir. The jury found you guilty, but the judge decided against the death penalty due to your good family and ... other reasons.”

  “Other reasons, Reeves?”

  “I am speaking his words, sir. Your good family and obvious mental negligibility.”

  I harrumphed. I’m not a man generally given to harrumph, but in the circs I felt entirely justified.

  “And where are you now, Reeves? Does it say? In the services of a new master?”

  Reeves turned several pages before replying.

  “I ... I appear to have been de-activated, sir, and...”

  “What is it, Reeves.” The poor man looked in shock. I’m sure I saw a wisp of steam escape from his left ear.

  “It says here that I am on display in Madame Tussaud’s Chamber of Horrors, sir. I am the Mayfair Maniac’s Robot.”

  I forgave all instantly.

  Eight

  suggested to Reeves that he might benefit from a soothing oil change in a darkened room, but he declined.

  “We must prevent this future from happening, sir. It is an abomination.”

  We were agreed upon that. I also had a yearning to fly the time machine to Parkhurst to see Emmeline, and break my future self out of chokey. But Reeves counselled against it. He considered it a distraction, and that our priority was to uncover the identity of the person who was manipulating time against us and to put a stop to them.

  “Why these five people, Reeves? Are they five strangers chosen at random to get me out of the way? You’d have thought one would have been enough. And why not murder me instead?”

  “It is most perplexing, sir. From reading Mr Smallpiece’s account, it appears that all the deceased personages had their pockets emptied and clothing labels removed. That, and the evidence that our mystery person chose victims from the past — and as no one came forward to identify the gentlemen in the present, I think we can safely regard that as a fact — gives weight to the theory that our mystery person went to immense length to hide their identities.”

  “Are you saying they’re not random?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I thought so. Just checking.”

  “I have just noticed something else, sir.”

  “What?”

  “The body that we moved one week into the future, and placed in the bath, was found in your bedroom, sir. Five days earlier. All the bodies were discovered at the same time.”

  I reached for the gin bottle. I had been trying to slow my intake of the fortifying liquid in case I overindulged, but it was at this point that I decided that one could not fully comprehend time travel sober.

  “That, sir,” continued Reeves, “testifies both to his persistence and his continued access to a time machine. I believe it likely that he will use the time machine to undo anything we undertake to stop him.”

  “Forgive me, Reeves, if this is an obvious question, but don’t we have the time machine?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “So where does this other time machine come from? Are there two?”

  “There may be two, sir, but I suspect there is just the one. When we were considering candidates for cases that we may have been working on, we neglected to consider the future.”

  “You’ll have to slow down, Reeves. Are you saying that this time machine — the one with us now in the sitting room — is, in the future, being used against us by our mystery murderer?”

  “I posit the possibility, sir. We may have been engaged in the future to investigate these murders, and the murderer decided to move all the bodies back in time to incriminate the detective who was investigating him.”

  “The bodies he’d already moved forward in time so they wouldn’t be recognised?”

  “Exactly, sir.”

  I wondered how Murgatroyd of the Yard would have taken such news. Not best pleased, would have been my guess. Bodies moving back and forth through time. Behind the sofa one day, in the bath a week later, and then back five days to appear in one’s bedroom. Where would they go next? Murgatroyd would have had the time machine hanged, drawn and quartered, and then displayed in Madame Tussaud’s alongside the Mayfair Maniac’s Robot!

  “What if we destroy the time machine? Wouldn’t that stop him?” I said.

  “I fear the current timeline is so convoluted that it would be impossible to calculate the outcome, sir. It may prevent the murders but, equally, it may not. And once the machine is destroyed, we would be unable to use it to rectify the situation. You could find yourself in Parkhurst for life.”

  “And you at Madame Tussaud’s.”

  “Indeed, sir.”

  I took a long sip of gin.

  “It seems to me, Reeves, that our mystery murderer is most afraid of having those bodies identified, don’t you think? All that trouble he’s gone too.”

  “Indeed, sir.”

  “That settles it then. Prepare the time machine, Reeves. We shall have their names before sundown.”

  “We will, sir?”

  “We will, Reeves.”

  I carefully cut the photographic plates out of Horace Smallpiece’s libellous tome and pocketed them.

  “We’re going to the 1850s, Reeves. Destination: the Sloths. Someone there’s bound to recognise these men.”

  ~

  “I think another gentleman’s club would be safer, sir. The Sportsman, perhaps?”

  “Nonsense. You forget how we’re dressed, Reeves. We’d stand out a mile in those other clubs. The Sloths have never been stuffy. Always help a chap out, that’s our motto.”

  “Perhaps if I stayed with the machine, sir?”

  “If you must. Now what year, do you think? 1850? 1855?”

  “I would suggest a date after 1850, sir. Older gentlemen are slower to adopt the changing fashions than others. A coat from the 1850s could be worn by such a gentleman many years later.”

  “But these other chaps are younger, Reeves.” I showed him the full set of plates. “Can you date a man from his collar?”

  “Difficult, sir. Perhaps if we try 1851?”

  Off to 1851 we went, arriving in a very different sitting room to the one we’d left. All my furniture had gone, and in had come all this Rococo Revival stuff. It looked very much like Stiffy’s Great Aunt Augusta’s drawing room, but without the elephants.

  We didn’t materialise. We’d barely arrived before Reeves had us turned around and sweeping out through the window. We flew to the Sloths at second storey height, and I must say, I preferred it to its ground level cousin. No unexpected spectral Hansom Cab came careering through the Worcester frame. Instead we glided, m
ost sedately, and could look down upon the London of 1851 bustling beneath us.

  “You will remember the dangers of changing the timeline, sir? I hesitate to mention it, but if you could keep your interaction with club members to the barest minimum...”

  “You are speaking to a future inmate of Parkhurst prison, Reeves. I shall be caution itself.”

  We entered the Sloths via a second storey window. Reeves found a secluded spot in the library — always the emptiest room in the Sloths — and materialised long enough for me to hop out. He then faded from view.

  The decor of the library was pretty much unchanged since the last time I’d been there — dark, full of books, and lots of comfortable armchairs one could fall asleep in. None appeared to be occupied, so I headed downstairs towards the more populated part of the club.

  “Who the devil are you, sir?” bellowed a military looking moustachioed chap at the foot of the stairs.

  “Me, sir?”

  “Yes, you, sir.”

  “I’m ... Nebuchadnezzar Blenkinsop.”

  “Never heard of you. And what, pray, are you wearing?”

  “What this? I’ve just returned from Paris. They’re all wearing it over there.”

  “Paris, you say?”

  “Yes, I was over there on an errand, sorting out someone’s will. I say, you couldn’t help me, could you?”

  “You don’t want to borrow money, do you?”

  “Quite the reverse. I’m trying to track down five heirs. But instead of giving me five names to look for, they gave me five pictures!”

  “Pictures?”

  “I know. Strange, isn’t it? Look, here they are.” I handed him the photographic plates. “Do you recognise any of them? Those Frenchies think they live in London.”

  My moustachioed chap didn’t recognise a single one of them, but he took me into the dining room and called his friends over to meet me. The club motto was as true in 1851 as it was in 1904. Always help a chap out.

  In less than five minutes we had names of four of our mystery departed. The body in the bath was identified as one Jasper Evershot. Body number two was Henry Molesworth. And then came Algernon Throgmorton-Undershaft and Percy Baekeland.

  “I wonder what the link between them all is,” I said. “Do all these chaps know each other?”

  “In passing, maybe. Don’t see much of Henry these days. Jasper was sent to Manchester to work for his uncle.”

  “They are all alive though?”

  “I saw Algernon last week,” said one. “I haven’t seen Percy for a while,” said another. “None of them are members of the Sloths.”

  I tried a few other enquiries but could tell I wasn’t going to winkle out much more. The fifth chap was a mystery, and the other four were but passing acquaintances.

  But I had four names. And a copy of Who’s Who waiting for me back in 1904.

  ~

  I was feeling decidedly peckish by the time I’d hopped back into the machine and brought Reeves up to date viz. my adventures.

  “I think a spot of lunch is called for, Reeves. I don’t think I’ve eaten in decades. What is the time, by the way?”

  “Difficult to say, sir. We have been living between the hours of eleven o’clock and noon for some while.”

  We sailed back to the flat. Reeves dialled up 1904 and then, much to my surprise, drove the machine straight through the sitting room wall.

  “Reeves?”

  “As Mr Wells’ machine appears to be staying with us a little longer, sir, I thought the spare bedroom would make a better home for it. It does take up a lot of room, and if I am to prepare luncheon...”

  Once the time machine was parked to Reeves’s satisfaction, I headed straight to the shelves for Who’s Who, leaving Reeves to oil off into the kitchen to prepare lunch.

  I tried Henry Molesworth first. And there he was, a man of the correct vintage, and he was still alive.

  I took the book through to Reeves.

  “I say, Reeves. Shouldn’t these chaps be dead?”

  “One would expect them to be missing, sir. Presumed dead perhaps but, as their bodies won’t appear for another two days, they would not have had a burial in the 1850s.”

  My gin levels were in need of topping up.

  “So this Henry Molesworth must be the wrong Molesworth. It says here he married a second wife in 1889.”

  “Possibly, sir. There is also the possibility that Mr Molesworth’s murder has not yet taken place.”

  “Explain, Reeves.”

  “We know that five bodies are discovered in this flat on Wednesday morning, sir. What we do not know is whether that timeline is the timeline we are currently residing in.”

  By this time I wasn’t sure which timeline I was residing in. We’d changed it so often.

  “Do timelines wear out, Reeves?”

  “Pardon, sir?”

  “All this changing back and forth. Must be wearing, don’t you think? Could we wear it out?”

  “No, sir. Have you located any of the other deceased?”

  I tried Algernon Throgmorton-Undershaft next. Wouldn’t be many of them. And I was right. There wasn’t any of them. There was a Cornelius and a Hildebrand, but as for Algernons — not a sausage.

  Somewhat dispirited I moved on to Jasper Evershot, the man we’d stowed in the bath. I found three, but only one was of the right age. I read a little further ... and there it was — disappeared mysteriously in 1855, believed drowned.

  I showed Reeves. “You don’t think he drowned in our bath, do you, Reeves?”

  “No, sir. If you remember, he was shot. The Who’s Who entry is interesting though as it shows that Mr Evershot’s departure was not regarded at the time as suspicious. That would appear to confirm that our time travelling nemesis is indeed killing these gentlemen rather than collecting murder victims from the past.”

  I tried the last name — Percy Baekeland — and drew a blank. Not a single Baekeland in the book.

  “I still can’t see a link between the five victims, Reeves. They’re not related. They’re not best chums. Some of them aren’t even in Who’s Who, so they can’t all be well-heeled.”

  “It is indeed a mystery, sir.”

  It was still a mystery half an hour later. I’d polished off a quarter of a salmon and sampled a rather fine Hock, but even that hadn’t been enough to inspire my little grey cells into action.

  Then there was a knock at the door, followed by several knocks in rapid succession. I looked at Reeves and could tell he was thinking the same as me. The rozzers! I ran for the sofa and peered behind it. I was relieved to see nothing there.

  The knocking started up again. “I say, is anyone at home?” came a muffled voice. It didn’t sound like a policeman.

  Reeves walked over to the door and opened it.

  And in burst HG Wells!

  “Thank God, you’re here,” said HG, rushing towards me. “I don’t know who else to turn to. You are Reginald Worcester, aren’t you? The gentleman’s consulting detective?”

  Nine

  ’d never experienced deja vu before. It was most unsettling. Had we broken the timeline and made it wrap around itself?

  “I’m HG Wells. But please call me Bertie. Everyone does. You may have heard of my time machine.”

  “In passing,” I said.

  “Well, it’s real, and someone’s stolen it! I have no idea how. I keep it in a locked room. There’s no other way in or out, and the only key has never left my possession!”

  Reeves coughed. “At what time, sir, did you first become aware of its disappearance?”

  “Twenty minutes ago. I last saw it yesterday evening.”

  “Perhaps there has a been a change of timeline, sir? Maybe your time machine has ‘disappeared’ rather than been stolen.”

  Reeves gave me an odd look. I was still trying to decipher its meaning when HG replied.

  “The timeline can’t have been rewritten,” he said. “I’ve had the time machine in my cella
r the whole time.”

  Reeves coughed again. “Perhaps Mr Worcester has an opinion on where your time machine may be, sir?”

  Mr Worcester was still baffled. Was this deja vu or one of those timeline changes? But everyone was looking at me, so I had to say something.

  “What about your Aunt Charlotte?” I asked. “Did you show her how to fly your machine?”

  “You know my Aunt Charlotte?”

  “I deduced you had an Aunt Charlotte. We consulting detectives do this all the time. I could tell by your shoes that you’d either just returned from India or had an aunt called Charlotte.”

  Reeves coughed disapprovingly.

  “My shoes? How?” said HG.

  “It would take too long to explain. Either one can deduce, or one cannot.”

  “Oh,” said HG, taking one long last look at his shoes. “No, it can’t be Aunt Charlotte. I’ve made a point of not mentioning anything to her since receiving a letter two years ago warning me against her.”

  “The Traveller?” I said.

  “Good Lord! How did you know that?”

  I was rather enjoying this. “It’s the kind of letter he would have written.”

  “You know him?”

  Reeves intervened. “I’m sure Mr Worcester could deduce the present location of your time machine, sir. If he put his mind to it.”

  “I think not, Reeves. I need more information first.”

  “Ask me anything, Mr Worcester. It’s imperative we recover this time machine as soon as possible.”

  “Righto,” I said. “Ever recall wearing a dress?”

  “You will have to excuse Mr Worcester, sir,” interrupted Reeves. “His brain is differently wired. I think what he meant to ask was ‘Is there any danger of the time machine running out of fuel?’”

  “Oh,” said HG. “Not so much now. The original batteries we built with the Traveller’s assistance were very quick to drain. And very expensive to make. But we’ve been working on a new fuel cell for the past five years. We perfected it last week. It’ll run for years now on a single fuel cell.”

  “You said ‘we,’ sir. Would that be your associates from the Royal Society who first helped you repair the machine?”