Read Online The Aunt Paradox (Reeves & Worcester Steampunk Mysteries) by Chris Dolley - Free Book Online Page A

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.