Burke and Blades in: The Palaeolithic Problem

I
 
The country house of Lady Helen Winthrop was a modest affair, if your idea of a modest affair is six months in Paris with more damned whores and sodomites than you can shake the Old Testament at. Not a corner was spared some souvenir picked up by Lord Winthrop at some exotic period, including an early contraceptive device used by Cleopatra, which Lady Helen insisted be covered with a sheet. Detectives Burke and Blades, newly reassigned to the Linear Violations division of Scotland Yard, were visiting Winthrop Manor about one of the Lord’s recent adventures. The gentleman’s pursuit of time travel was one thing, but it was Burke and Blades’ job to ensure that Victorian standards of decency were not imperilled by interference from other ages.
 
‘Of course, as you know, I’m a good Christian woman’ said Lady Helen. ‘I spend whatever time I can in London preaching to the poor unfortunates, fallen women and their ilk.’ She wrinkled her nose and looked at her teacup. ‘So when my husband began talking all this Edward Lear nonsense about men who look like monkeys, or whatever it was, I made it known to him that his encounter had been with an illusion of Beelzebub, not legitimate history.’ She clutched the crucifix pendant hung from her neck.
 
Blades, whose social status was higher than Burke’s if not at her Ladyship’s height, spoke next. ‘I understand, your Ladyship, and you have performed a great service for your country in the moral instruction of your husband. Only, there is still a delicate matter at hand... Lord Winthrop appears to have acquired such an, ahem, illusion, in the form of a chap who walks with his knuckles against the ground...’
 
‘Oh, that idiot!’
 
‘So you’ve seen him?’
 
‘But of course! My husband had some depraved idea about training him to be our new manservant. He wanted to test that infernal Mr Darwin’s theory of evolution, and see if under the correct tutelage this so-called “early man” could be raised to the level of a modern man. I quite refused any such notion, and said that if he brought that brimstone beast anywhere near this house, he’d soon be a late man!’
 
Thankfully, Burke and Blades had managed to distract Lady Helen from the discreet removal of her husband’s pummelled corpse. They only hoped that she wouldn’t recall and come to regret her last remark on learning of her husband’s death.
 
II
 
The carriage out of Essex and back to London was thick with an air of melancholy. ‘What’ll happen to the chap if one of our lads catches him alive?’ said Burke.
 
‘That’s unlikely’ said Blades. ‘The Winthrop woods are copious enough to roam in for weeks without arriving anywhere. He’ll either die of exposure to the elements or a farmer will shoot him, thinking he’s a poacher. If we’re very unlucky, a hunting party will find their dogs devouring the biggest, ugliest fox they’ve ever caught.’
 
‘We’re lucky, I suppose, that this Winthrop fella shaved and tarted him up.’
 
‘How so?’
 
‘Well, then we can say that he was just a mongol, escaped from the asylum, not an “early man.”
 
‘Mongoloid’ Blades corrected, quietly. He was considering his colleague’s point, gazing blankly at the last of the Essex foliage.
 
III
 
The Lady had been informed of her Lord’s death and was naturally hysterical, requiring a realignment of her humours by means of the latest vibration techniques. She was kept in a boudoir chosen for its relaxing yellow wallpaper and frequently administered pelvic massages, with an electromechanical device just recently pioneered. ‘On her back, in bed, with a rocket up her Magpie Lane all day’ Detective Burke summarised as he read the morning paper in Blades’ office. ‘If she did that in a Whitechapel guest house she’d be called a whore and slung out. But do it in a country house with a doctor and three chambermaids watching, and suddenly it’s modern medicine.’
 
The offices for Linear Violations were in a lather that morning, due to an impending parade in which Her Majesty Queen Victoria would be a participant, passing Scotland Yard on her way through the city. It was of absolute importance that no time-travel-related unseemliness be allowed to stray within a mile of the royal chariot, so all testing of new machine models had been halted, delaying the granting of licenses to would-be travellers.
 
Detective Blades finished a report, leaned back in his chair, and looked out the window at the lazy morning sky. It had been three weeks since they’d left Essex. The Early Man, as he’d now been unofficially dubbed, still hadn’t been found. Blades supposed that he’d fallen into a ravine and struck his head.
 
The office was littered with diaries, diagrams, and other detritus sent up from Winthrop Manor. With it, Burke and Blades were able to determine just what exactly Lord Winthrop was about when he took on his “pupil”, having illegally transported him from a distant point in the past to latter-day Essex. Apparently, the Man’s education was punctuated by ritualised reverence to images of Queen Victoria, whom Winthrop considered the ultimate in civilising influences. Yes, he was a Linear Violator, a time-based criminal, but he was also a patriot. Portraits of Her Majesty on canvas, cutlery, and other items dominated the underground cell in which the Early Man was held like a disobedient monk.
 
His imprisonment and rigorous training must have caused the fellow to snap, beating Lord Winthrop to death while his Lady was up at Ascot. The gentleman scientist’s protege, a young chap from Oxford, had been traced to a guest house and professed no knowledge of his master’s crime, though Blades was convinced that he assisted somehow in the mad scheme. The only thing which Blades didn’t understand was why, if regressed to his animal state, the Early Man used Winthrop’s cane to kill him, as opposed to his fists. He recalled how Lady Helen had talked about wanting to make her husband a late man...
 
A constable burst into the room. ‘Sorry to disturb you, sirs’ he said, out of breath. ‘But there’s been a right to-do down at Whitechapel. Something about a loony running naked ‘round a guest house...’
 
IV
 
Burke and Blades were running at a frantic pace that if achieved too often might have ruined Burke’s heart. ‘Too many hot dinners and cushy office work can do that to a chap’ remarked Blades on hearing his colleague’s complaint. The streets were predictably thronged with revellers, Union Jack bunting hung from every lamppost as if we’d just won a war. The chariot would be arriving within half a mile of its passage by the Yard any minute now. If the detectives had supposed that locating a nude Neanderthal among London’s clerks and chimney-sweeps would be a matter of moments, they were mistaken. Blades had put out an arrest for the scientist’s protege, and considered whether doing the same for Lady Winthrop, for the murder of her husband, was a good idea.  
 
Burke had talked him out of it, observing that their job was not the pursuit of justice, exactly, but the suppression of scandal. ‘Lord Winthrop stealing a half-man, half-gorilla and giving him a taste for our Queen is bad enough’ he said, ‘but arresting his lady wife for her husband’s murder? We might as well put it about that Prince Albert’s been getting his little prince studded by a whore from Venus!’
 
By the time they’d arrived at the guest house, neither the pesky protege nor the nude Neanderthal were in evidence. Searching their room, rented by a “Mr Cartwright and his Mongoloid cousin, of whom he has temporary guardianship”, the detectives found a shredded suit of clothes and a journal which illuminated the dastardly affair. Lady Winthrop had somehow discovered Early Man’s underground cell, and on seeing that her husband had lied to her about disposing of him, she flew into a rage and beat him to death. ‘Can’t say as I blame her’ said Burke, lighting a fire in the grate and throwing on it a portrait of Her Majesty covered in gunk, which he sincerely hoped was ectoplasm or some such paranormal substance. The Lady’s chambermaids, finding their mistress in a delirious state beside her husband’s corpse, had protected her, telling police that Early Man was responsible and convincing her Ladyship that it was all a bad dream in the meantime.
 
On their chase through the capital, they noticed a disturbance among a group of revellers, like a tidal wave forming. A golden chariot hove into view. ‘Grab him!’ screamed Blades, almost drowned out by the crowd’s cheers. They pushed through the throng and Burke slipped a hand around Early Man’s neck just as he stepped into the road beside the chariot. Blades got a glimpse of Queen Victoria paused mid-wave, palm open and raised as though to answer a question in a schoolhouse, looking confused while three detectives wrestled with a man caught in a very large cloak.
 
V
 
‘You can keep the cloak’ said the constable whose cloak it had been.
 
‘I think we’ll probably burn it’ said Blades, holding it at arm’s length. ‘Say, has Cartwright seen his lawyer yet?’
 
Though Lady Winthrop would be spared legal retribution for her husband’s death, the same could not be said for Mr Cartwright and his role in almost spawning the bastard son of royalty and the Palaeolithic Age. Of course, such a vile act hadn’t been either his or his Lordship’s intention. Apparently their plan was to have Early Man, whom they Christened Adam (of course), attend the parade as a mere reveller and in exposure to Her Majesty become a patriotic Brit. ‘It beggars me how clever folk can be so ruddy stupid’ said Burke, shaking his head.
 
‘Still’ said Blades, ‘all’s well that ends well. We’ve resolved yet another Linear Violation, and what’s more, Adam’s coming along quite nicely in his new role.’
 
‘New role?’
 
‘Why yes!’ said Blades, with a malevolent grin. ‘We’ve put him to work as a gaoler. He’s guarding Mr Cartwright as we speak.’