The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack - Mark Hodder [149]
"Eighteen years is a long time; memory plays tricks; doubt casts the past in a different light. Frankly, I never expected to see Edward Oxford again, and, after a while, I didn't much care. He became nothing more than a symbol to me, an example of `trans-natural' man, free from the shackles of law and morals and propriety. He was Spring Heeled Jack! A myth! A bogeyman! A fantasy!
"Then disaster struck. Two years ago, in March of 1859, I broke my neck in a riding accident. I wasn't expected to live. News of this reached you, Isambard, and you sent Miss Nightingale to my assistance. She removed me from the hospital where I lay and took me to her medical laboratories, where, with consummate skill, she managed to preserve my brain by grafting it into the body of one of her experimental animals. The result, you see before you. Ma'am, I have said it before and I'll say it again: I am forever in your debt."
Nurse Nightingale acknowledged his words with a nod.
"The accident," continued the ape, "revived my interest in Edward Oxford, for, obviously, I would much prefer life as a man than life as an ape, and with his time suit, I-or someone else-could travel back to prevent the fall that put me in this position.
"You all know what happened next: I made it known to Isambard that, with his help, I could secure a time-travel device. In the past, I had explained to him certain future technologies-such as geothermal and electrical power, rotor-winged flight, and engine-pulled vehicles-and he had been able to build machines based on these small insights, which Edward Oxford had given me. Isambard therefore had no reason to doubt me and communicated the possibility of time travel to you; you began your experimental programmes in the knowledge that the device will allow you to see the results; and here we are today-all reliant on that bizarre suit to achieve our aims!"
"And yesterday?" asked Laurence Oliphant. "Did he show up?"
"Yes. He did not, of course, expect to find me in this condition, but I would be lying if I told you he was shocked. The man is so far gone that everything seems an illusion to him now. Discovering that his friend the marquess had become Mr. Belljar the primate was no stranger to him than the fact that men in this day and age smoke pipes and cigars and are never seen outside without a hat upon their head! He didn't tarry. I handed him the list of girls and he departed."
"To find the one with the birthmark and rape her," interrupted Florence Nightingale, with distaste.
"Yes," grunted Beresford. "It's a crazy scheme, I'll admit, though it was I who thought of it. There are six girls. Sarah Shoemaker, daughter of Jennifer Shepherd, is sixteen years old. Unfortunately, her whole family emigrated to South Africa and I've not been able to trace her. The others though are all still in or near London. They are Marian Steephill, aged thirteen, daughter of Lizzie Fraser; Angela Tew, aged fifteen, daughter of Tilly Adams; Lucy Harkness, eighteen, daughter of Sarah Lovitt; Connie Fairweather, seventeen, daughter of Mary Stevens; and Alicia Pipkiss, fifteen, daughter of Jane Alsop.
"The seventh of the original Battersea girls-by which I mean the mothers-Deborah Goodkind, went insane after Oxford examined her back in 1838. She died childless in Bedlam some years ago."
"A paradox," observed Darwin, in his weirdly harmonic voice. "For if she, in his history, had mothered his ancestor, then in approaching her he made himself doubly extinct!"
Oliphant gave a sibilant laugh: "This time-travel business seems excessively complicated!"
"More so than you imagine, my friend," croaked Beresford, "for when I gave him the list yesterday, I already possessed evidence that he's been acting upon it!