Reginald Carruthers
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Reginald (disambiguation)for other, similarly-named pages.
Sir Reginald Carruthers, MP was a 19th century British politician.
By the 1880s, he was the husband of Anne Carruthers and father of Thomas Carruthers, and lived in a stately house on Regent Street. (GAME: "Murder on Regent Street" [+]Part of The Iytean Menace, Loading...{"namedep":"Murder on Regent Street","1":"The Iytean Menace (game)"}) A wealthy man, he represented Plymouth in Parliament and was a conservative, often viewed as the "model Victorian gentleman". Like his friend Colonel Malcolm Fraser, he had an interest in exotic and unusual artefacts, collecting in his study "an interesting assortment of weapons and other trophies" from "the Sudan, Afghanistan, and South America". In 1883, this brought him in contact with Jack Bannister, who sold him several cylinders of a green chemical powder which he claimed came from China, but had in actuality been dug up from a buried Iytean starship.
Eventually, Carruthers decided Bannister was most likely a fraudster and ceased to buy from him, but not before introducing him to the Colonel, whom Bannister convinced his artefacts were Atlantean in origin. However, he still kept the cylinders of green powder in his collection. Eventually, he showed them to his friend Doctor Henry Jellicoe, who insisted on taking one home to analyse it. Unbeknownst to Carruthers and to himself, Jellicoe was in the process of being possessed by an escaped Iytean criminal; contact with the powder allowed the creature to temporarily overtake him. Desiring more powder, the possessed Jellicoe, now known as "Ned Hines", broke into Carruthers's home that same night to steal the cylinder. Scotland Yard found no leads as to the culprit's identity, but Carruthers privately suspected Colonel Fraser, leading to a falling-out between the two men. (GAME: "Dealing With the Unexpected" [+]Part of The Iytean Menace, Loading...{"namedpart":"Dealing With the Unexpected","1":"The Iytean Menace (game)"})
Three months later, in early 1885, being fearful of running out of powder and intent on finding more by any means necessary, an increasingly desperate Hines broke in the Carruthers house again and confronted Carruthers himself. The politician desperately swore that he didn't know where Banniste and his associate Jenkins could be found, or how to contact them; however, this only succeeded in making Hines fly into a blind rage, and he brutally murdered Carruthers before escaping. (GAME: "Murder on Regent Street" [+]Part of The Iytean Menace, Loading...{"namedep":"Murder on Regent Street","1":"The Iytean Menace (game)"}) The murder was investigated by the fairly useless, self-important Inspector James Newcombe of Scotland Yard, who ended up being a hindrance to the Time Lord Rollo and his companions, who were also trying to investigate Carruthers to figure out the whys and wherefores of the anachronistic presence of alien technology in Victorian London on behalf of the Celestial Intervention Agency. However, they were eventually able to speak with Carruthers's son, Thomas, and obtain useful information from him. (GAME: "Murder on Regent Street" [+]Part of The Iytean Menace, Loading...{"namedep":"Murder on Regent Street","1":"The Iytean Menace (game)"}, "Further Investigations" [+]Part of The Iytean Menace, Loading...{"namedep":"Further Investigations","1":"The Iytean Menace (game)"})
