Time Rovers 03 Madman's Dance by Jana G Oliver Page A

questions and often she has no answers. She didn’t remember my name or yours, for that matter, but she insisted she had to get to this side of the river.”
    “What’s this?” Alastair carefully pulled her collar aside, making her tremble. He looked up, disgusted. “Thumb marks. Someone has attempted to strangle her.”
    “Good God,” Keats murmured.
    Jacynda looked up at the doctor as if he’d just appeared in the room. “Who are you?”
    He groaned. “Alastair. Alastair Montrose. We met at the boarding house.”
    She shook her head, brows furrowed. Then she turned to Keats. “You?”
    “Jonathon Keats. I’m with Scotland Yard. At least for the present.” She gave another shake of the head. Keats’ eyes filmed in sadness. “She wasn’t this bad a few nights ago.”
    “When was that?” Alastair asked.
    “The night Effington died. She found me in Rotherhithe. We went back to my room and—” Keats looked away, “she suddenly went hysterical, claiming that we were on a sinking ship. She said this temporary madness was because of her job, that she comes from the future. Quite impossible.”
    Alastair fixed him with a look. “Was that all that happened?” he asked evenly.
    Keats nodded too quickly for Alastair’s liking. Jacynda was rolling the edge of her shawl up and down in rhythmic fashion, watching them with childlike fascination.
    The kettle’s whistle cut through the air and Alastair found himself welcoming the distraction. He assembled the tea and returned with the pot, placing it on the table with two of the new cups Mrs. Butler had purchased. He’d expected happier circumstances for their first use. While he sliced the cheese, he debated. Even if Jacynda and Keats had become lovers, her condition rendered the question moot. There was no point in hiding the truth from his friend any longer.
    “She did not lie to you, Keats,” Alastair informed him quietly. “She is from the future.”
    “Nonsense!” the sergeant spluttered, hot tea splashing over the edges of his cup as he replaced it firmly on the saucer. “If she’s going mad, just tell me. Don’t cloak it as some ridiculous tale.”
    “It is not a ridiculous tale. I have seen her travel into the future.”
    “Nonsense,” Keats repeated. In his distraction he was stirring the tea, though he’d added nothing to it.
    “Remember that night when she was knifed in the alley, and no one could find her? She went to her time to be healed. The knife had slit her lung. She would have died here.”
    Keats’ face darkened. “I simply refuse to believe that you—you, of all people—would accept the ramblings of an obviously misguided woman as truth. You’re so under her spell that you don’t know what you’re saying.”
    “I saw the technology she carries with her,” Alastair insisted, his voice rising. “It was no parlour trick.”
    Keats opened his mouth to deliver a broadside, then stopped. “My God, you’re serious.”
    “If you handed me a Bible, I’d swear upon it.” Alastair took a deep breath. “Her lover, Mr. Stone, was from the future as well. That is why she dared not go to the police. As she put it, how do you solve the murder of a man who hasn’t been born yet?”
    Keats rose from his chair and paced in the small room, his face wrinkled in thought. As he passed Jacynda, she shyly pointed at the cheese. He handed her some and she started to nibble on it, watching him the entire time.
    Keats finally came to rest in his chair.
    “This is too outlandish to believe,” he declared with a shake of the head. “It can’t be possible to journey through time.” He looked back up at Alastair. “Can it?”
    Sensing an opening, Alastair pressed his advantage. “Yet it is possible to send wireless messages through the air, to light whole streets with electricity. We even journey by train beneath London’s streets. Feats that would have seemed remarkable to people a hundred years ago!”
    Keats stared at Jacynda for a