The Aunt Paradox (Reeves & Worcester Steampunk Mysteries) by Chris Dolley

Author:Chris Dolley [Dolley, Chris]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: mystery, humor, steampunk, Wodehouse, time travel, Wooster
Publisher: Book View Café
Published: 2014-05-23T00:00:00+00:00

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.

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