To Say Nothing of the Dog

CHAPTER TWELVE

The crisis was Cyril. “A stable! He’s never slept outside, you know,” Terence said, apparently forgetting about the night before.

“Poor Cyril!” he said, looking desperate. “Cast into outer darkness! With horses!” He paced the length of the room. “It’s barbaric, expecting him to sleep outside after he’s been in the river. And in his condition!”

“His condition?” I said.

“Cyril has a weak chest,” he said. “A tendency to catarrh.” He stopped pacing to peer out between the curtains. “He’s probably already caught a cough. We’ve got to get him inside.” He let the curtains drop. “I want you to sneak him up to your room.”

“Me?” I said. “Why can’t you sneak him up to your room?”

“Mrs. Mering will be watching out for me. I heard her tell the butler he was to see to it that the animal slept outside. Animal!”

“Then how can I get him in?”

“The butler will be watching me, not you. You should have seen the look on his face when I told him he had to stay. Absolutely betrayed. ‘Et tu, Brute.’ ”

“All right,” I said. “But I still don’t see how I’m supposed to get past Baine.”

“I’ll go and ring for a cup of cocoa. That’ll keep him out of your way. You’re an absolute brick to do this. ‘Best friend, my wellspring in the wilderness!’ ”

He opened the door and looked both ways. “All clear for the moment. I’ll give it five minutes so you can put your boots back on, and then ring for the refreshments. If he does catch you, you can simply tell him you’ve come out for a smoke.”

“And if he catches me on the way back with Cyril in tow?”

“He won’t. I’ll ask for a glass of claret, as well. Chateau Margaux, ‘75. These country houses never have a decent wine cellar.”

He looked both ways again and sidled out, shutting the door softly behind him, and I went over to the bed and looked at my socks.

It is not an easy thing to put on a wet sock, let alone a wet boot on over it, and there was a certain reluctance involved. It took me well over five minutes to put them on and start down. I hoped that the Merings’ wine cellar was at the opposite end of the house.

I opened the door a crack and peered down the corridor. I couldn’t see anyone, or anything, for that matter, and wished I had paid more attention to the placement of the furniture and statuary.

It was so dark I debated going back for the lamp with the dangling crystals on it, trying to weigh which was worse: being caught by Mrs. Mering when she saw the light or being caught by Mrs. Mering after I’d crashed into the statue of Laocoön.

I decided the latter. If the servants were up, and I didn’t see how they could not be, with all those tablecloths to wash and starch, they’d see the light and come scurrying up to ask me if there was anything else, sir. And my eyes were gradually adjusting to the darkness, enough at any rate to make out the outline of the corridor. If I kept to the very center of it I should be all right.

I felt my way to the head of the stairs, tripping over a large fern that rocked wildly on its stand before I managed to steady it, and what turned out to be a pair of boots.

I puzzled over those and what they meant the rest of the way to the staircase, and nearly tripped over another pair, Tossie’s dainty white lace-up boots this time, and remembered the subliminals saying something about people putting their boots outside their doors at night for the servants to polish. No doubt after they were done with doing up the tablecloths and brewing cocoa and swimming down the Thames looking for stray boats.

There was more light here. I started down the stairs. The fourth step creaked loudly and when I looked anxiously back up the stairs there was Lady Schrapnell, glaring at me from the head of the stairs.

My heart stopped cold.

When it finally started up again, I realized she was wearing a pleated ruff and one of those long, pointed waists, and that Lady Schrapnell was still safely on the Other Side and this must be one of the Merings’ Elizabethan ancestors. And no wonder Victorian country houses had a reputation for being haunted.

The rest of the way was easy, though I had a bad moment at the front door when I thought it was locked and I might have to go through that maze of a parlor and out the French doors, but it was only bolted, and it made scarcely any noise when I shoved the bolt back. And the moon was shining outside.

I had no idea which of several outbuildings shining whitely in the moonlight was the stable. I tried a potting shed and what turned out to be a henhouse before the whinny of horses, no doubt awakened by the hens, put me in the right direction.

And Cyril looked so pathetically glad to see me that I was sorry for the curses I’d been rehearsing for Terence. “Come along, old fellow,” I said. “You have to be very quiet. Like Flush, when Elizabeth Barrett Browning eloped.”

Which had been in these times, come to think of it. I wondered how she had managed to sneak down the stairs and out of a pitch-black house without killing herself. And carrying a suitcase and a cocker spaniel, too. I was beginning to have a lot of respect for the Victorians.

Cyril’s version of being quiet consisted of heavy breathing punctuated by snorts. Halfway up the steps, he stopped cold, staring up at the head of the stairs.

“It’s all right,” I said, urging him on. “It’s only a painting. Nothing to be afraid of. Careful of the fern.”

We made it down the corridor and into my room without incident. I shut the door and leaned gratefully against it. “Good boy. Flush would be proud of you,” I said, and saw that he had a black boot in his mouth, which he had apparently picked up along the way. “No!” I said and lunged for it. “Give me that!”

Bulldogs had originally been bred to grab a bull’s nose and hang on for dear life. That trait persisted. I yanked and pulled and tugged to no avail. I let go. “Drop that boot,” I said, “or I am taking you straight back out to the stable.”

He looked at me steadily, the boot hanging from his mouth, laces dangling.

“I mean it,” I said. “I don’t care if you catch catarrh. Or pneumonia.”

Cyril considered a moment longer and then dropped the boot and lay down with his flat nose just touching it.

I dived for the boot, hoping it belonged to Professor Peddick, who would never notice the teeth marks, or Terence, whom it would serve right. It was a woman’s boot. And not Verity’s. She had been wearing white ones, like Tossie’s.

“This is Mrs. Mering’s boot!” I said, shaking it at him.

Cyril responded by sitting up alertly, ready to play.

“This is serious!” I said. “Look at it!”

Actually, except for a great deal of drool, it did not seem to have sustained much damage. I wiped it off against my trouser leg and opened the door. “Stay!” I ordered Cyril and went to put it back.

I had no idea which was Mrs. Mering’s door, and no way of seeing which had a boot missing, coming straight from my lit room. And no time to let my eyes adjust to the pitch-darkness. And no desire to have Mrs. Mering catch me crawling about the corridor on all fours.

I went back in the room, got the lamp, and shone it round the corridor till I found a door with one boot. Second from the end. And between it and my door the statue of Laocoön, Darwin, and a papier-mâché table with a large fern on it.

I ducked back in, shut the door, replaced the lamp, picked up the boot, and opened the door again.

“—tell you I saw a light,” a voice that could only be Mrs. Mering’s said. “An eerie, floating, ethereal light. A spirit light, Mesiel! You must get up!”

I shut the door, blew out the lamp, and crept back over to the bed. Cyril was in it, nicely ensconced among the pillows. “This is all your fault,” I whispered, and realized I was still holding Mrs. Mering’s boot.

I stuffed it under the covers, decided that would be truly incriminating, started to hide it under the bed, thought better of that, and stuck it between the springs and the feather-stuffed mattress. And then sat there in the dark, trying to determine what was happening. I couldn’t hear any voices over Cyril’s snoring, and there was no sound of doors opening nor any light under my door.

I gave it another few minutes and then took off my boots, tiptoed over to the door, and opened it a crack. Darkness and silence. I tiptoed back to the bed, cracking my big toe on the looking glass and my shin on the nightstand, lit the lamp again, and got ready for bed.

The last few minutes seemed to have sapped what little strength I had, but I undressed slowly and carefully, noting how my collar and braces fastened and looking at the tie in the mirror as I untied it so that I could put it on in more or less the same arrangement tomorrow. Not that it mattered. I would already have cut my throat shaving. Or been revealed as a thief and a foot-fetishist.

I took off my still-soaking socks, put on the nightshirt, and got in bed. The springs sagged, the feather-stuffed mattress gave no support, the sheets were cold, and Cyril had all the covers. It felt wonderful.

Sleep, Nature’s soft Nurse, the honeyed dew of holy rest, the balm of woe, sweet, blessed unravelling sleep.

There was a knock on the door.

It’s Mrs. Mering, I thought, looking for her shoe. Or spirits. Or the Colonel, whom she made get up.

But there was no light under the door, and the knock, repeated, was too soft. It’s Terence, I thought, wanting Cyril now that I’ve done all the work.

But in case it wasn’t, I lit the lamp, put on the dressing gown, and flung the coverlet over Cyril to cover him up and then went and opened the door.

It was Verity. In her nightgown.

“What are you doing here?” I whispered at her. “This is the Victorian era.”

“I know,” she whispered back, sidling past me into the room. “But I’ve got to talk to you before I go report to Mr. Dunworthy.”

“But what if someone comes in?” I said, looking at her white nightgown. It was a very modest sort of nightgown, with long sleeves and a high, buttoned-up neck, but I didn’t think that would impress Terence. Or the butler. Or Mrs. Mering.

“No one will come in,” she said, and sat down on the bed. “Everyone’s gone to bed. And the walls in these Victorian houses are too thick to hear through.”

“Terence has already been here” I said. “And Baine.”

“What did he want?”

“To tell me he hadn’t been able to salvage the luggage. Terence wanted me to sneak Cyril up from the stables.”

At the mention of his name, Cyril emerged from the covers, blinking sleepily.

“Hullo, Cyril, Verity said, petting him on the head. He lay his head on her lap.

“What if Terence comes back to check on him?” I said.

“I’ll hide,” she said calmly. “You have no idea how glad I was to see you, Ned.” She smiled up at me. “When we got back from Madame Iritosky’s, Princess Arjumand still wasn’t here, and when I went to report back last night, Mrs. Mering caught me on my way out to the gazebo. I managed to convince her I’d seen a spirit and was chasing it, and then she insisted on getting everyone up and searching the entire grounds, so I couldn’t go through and I didn’t have any idea what had happened.”

It really was too bad. The naiad was sitting on my bed in her nightgown, her Pre-Raphaelite auburn hair streaming down her back. She was here, smiling up at me, and I was going to have to ruin it all. Still, the sooner I got it over with, the better.

“And then this morning,” she was saying, “I had to accompany Tossie to a meeting at the church, and—”

“I brought the cat through,” I said. “It was in my luggage. Mr. Dunworthy must have told me I had it, but I was too time-lagged to hear him. I had it all along.”

“I know,” she said.

“What?” I said, wondering if I was experiencing Difficulty in Distinguishing Sounds again.

“I know. I reported back this afternoon and Mr. Dunworthy told me.”

“But—” I said, trying to take this in. If she’d been back to 2057, then that radiant smile—

“I should have guessed when I saw you at Iffley,” she said. “Sending historians on holiday isn’t Mr. Dunworthy’s style, especially not with Lady Schrapnell breathing down his neck and the consecration in only two weeks.”

“I didn’t know I had it till after I saw you at Iffley,” I said. “I was looking for a tin-opener. I know you said to keep Terence away from Muchings End, but I thought it was more important to get the cat returned. The plan was for us to stop at an inn in Streatley, and I’d sneak her back during the night, but Terence insisted on rowing down, and then the cat started meowing, and Cyril started sniffing at it, and he fell in, and then the boat capsized and… you know the rest,” I finished lamely. “I hope I did the right thing.”

She bit her lip, looking worried.

“What? You don’t think I should have brought her back?”

“I don’t know.”

“I thought I should get her back here before there were any other consequences.”

“I know,” she said, looking genuinely distressed. “The thing is, you weren’t supposed to have brought her through in the first place.”

“What?” I said.

“When Mr. Dunworthy found out about the Coventry slippage, he called off the drop.”

“But—” I said. “I wasn’t supposed to bring Princess Arjumand through? But I thought you said the Coventry slippage was unrelated, that it was due to a crisis point.”

“It was, but while they were checking it, T.J. compared the slippage patterns to Fujisaki’s research, and they decided the lack of slippage surrounding the original drop meant it was a nonsignificant event.”

“But that’s impossible. Animate creatures can’t be nonsignificant.”

“Exactly,” she said grimly. “They think Princess Arjumand was nonanimate. They think she was intended to drown.”

This was making no sense. “But even if she drowned, her body would still interact with the continuum. It wouldn’t just disappear.”

“That’s what Fujisaki’s research was about. She’d be reduced to her component parts, and the complexity of their separate interactions would drop exponentially.”

Meaning her poor body would drift down the Thames, decomposing into carbon and calcium and interacting with nothing but the river water and hungry fishes. Ashes to ashes. Dust to nonsignificance.

“Which would make it possible,” Verity said, “for her to be removed from her space-time location without any historical effect. Which meant she shouldn’t be sent back from the future at all.”

“So you didn’t cause an incongruity by taking her through the net,” I said. “But I did, by bringing her back.”

She nodded. “When you didn’t come, I was afraid they might have sent Finch or someone after you to tell you to drown Princess Arjumand.”

“No!” I said. “No one’s drowning anyone.”

She rewarded me with one of her devastating smiles.

“If she’s a nonsignificant event, we’ll take her back to the future,” I said firmly. “We’re not going to drown her. But that doesn’t make any sense,” I said, thinking of something. “Her drowning, if that’s what would have happened, would have had consequences, the same consequences her disappearance had: everyone looking for her, your going to Oxford, Tossie’s meeting Terence.”

“That’s what I tried to tell Mr. Dunworthy,” she said. “But T.J. said Fujisaki said those would have been short-term consequences without historical repercussions.”

“In other words, they would have gotten over the cat,” I said, “if I hadn’t walked in with her.”

“And you wouldn’t have walked in with her, if I hadn’t interfered in the first place,” she said ruefully.

“But you couldn’t let it drown,” I said.

“No,” she said, “I couldn’t. And what’s done is done, and I’ve got to tell Mr. Dunworthy and find out what we do next.”

“What about the diary?” I said. “If there were references to her after the seventh, that would prove she hadn’t drowned. Couldn’t the forensics expert look for her name?”

Verity looked unhappy. “She did. The configuration of letters, actually — two very long words beginning with capital letters — but the only references are in the days immediately following, and she hasn’t been able to translate them yet. Mr. Dunworthy says they may only be references to her being missing, or to her having drowned.”

She stood up. “I’d better go report in. After you realized you had Princess Arjumand, what happened? When did Terence and Professor Peddick find out you had her?”

“They didn’t,” I said. “I kept her hidden till we got here. In a carpetbag. Terence thinks she was on the shore when we—” “Landed” wasn’t quite the right word. “—arrived.”

“And nobody else saw her?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “She got away twice. Once in the woods and once at Abingdon.”

“She escaped from the carpetbag?”

“No, I said. “I let her out.”

“You let her out?”

“I thought she was tame,” I said.

“Tame?” she said, amused. “A cat?” She looked at Cyril. “Didn’t you fill him in?” she said to him. She looked at me. “But you didn’t see her interacting with anyone else?”

“No,” I said.

“Well, that’s good. Tossie hasn’t met any other strange young men whose names don’t begin with “C” since we came home.”

“I take it Mr. C hasn’t turned up,” I said.

“No,” she said, frowning, “and I haven’t been able to get a look at Tossie’s diary either. Which is why I need to report in. Perhaps the forensics expert has been able to decipher the name. Or one of the references to Princess Arjumand. And I need to tell them she’s back and—”

“There’s something else you need to tell them,” I said.

“About Professor Peddick and the coincidence of his knowing Colonel Mering? I already thought of that.”

“No,” I said. “Something else. I made Terence miss meeting Professor Peddick’s niece.” I explained what had happened at the railway station.

She nodded. “I’ll tell Mr. Dunworthy,” she said. “Meetings—”

There was a knock on the door.

Verity and I froze. “Who is it?” I said.

“It’s Baine, sir.”

I mouthed silently at Verity, “Can I tell him to go away?”

“No,” she mouthed back, flipped the bedclothes over Cyril, and started to crawl under the bed.

I grabbed her arm and mouthed, “The wardrobe.”

“Coming, Baine,” I called. “Just a minute,” and opened the doors to the wardrobe. She dived in. I shut the door, opened it and shoved the tail of her nightgown in, shut it again, checked to make certain no bits of Cyril were sticking out from under the coverlet, stationed myself in front of the bed, and said, “Come in, Baine.”

He opened the door, carrying a folded stack of shirts. “Your boat has been found, sir,” he said, heading straight for the wardrobe.

I stepped in front of him. “Are those my shirts?”

“No, sir,” he said. “I borrowed these from the Chattisbournes, whose son is in South Africa, until you can have your own things sent up.”

My own things. And where exactly was I supposed to tell him to send? But I had more immediate problems. “Put the shirts in the bureau,” I said, keeping between him and the wardrobe.

“Yes, sir,” he said, and laid them neatly in the top drawer. “There is also a suit of evening clothes and one of tweeds, which I am having cleaned and altered to fit. They will be ready in the morning, sir.”

“Good,” I said. “Thank you, Baine.”

“Yes, sir,” he said and went out without even being told.

“That was a close—” I began and he came back in carrying a tray with a china cup, a silver pot, and a small plate of biscuits.

“I thought you might care for some cocoa, sir.”

“Thank you.”

He set it on the nightstand. “Would you like me to pour it out for you, sir?”

“No, thank you.”

“There are additional bedcovers in the wardrobe, sir,” he said. “Would you like me to put one on the bed?”

“No!” I said, moving to block him. “Thank you. That will be all, Baine.”

“Yes, sir,” he said, but he still stood there, fidgeting. “Sir,” he said nervously, “if I might have your permission to speak…”

Either he knows Verity’s in the wardrobe, I thought, or he knows I’m an impostor. Or both.

“What is it?” I said.

“I… just wanted to say…” again that nervous hesitation, and I saw that he looked pale and haggard, “…to say how very grateful I am to you for returning Princess Arjumand to Miss Mering.”

It wasn’t what I expected to hear. “Grateful?” I repeated blankly.

“Yes, sir. Mr. St. Trewes told me you were the one who had found her, after your boat capsized and you had swum ashore. I hope you don’t think I’m speaking out of my place, sir, but Miss Mering is extremely fond of her pet, and I would never have forgiven myself if anything had happened to her.” He hesitated, looking nervous again. “It was my fault, you see.”

“Your fault?” I said blankly.

“Yes, sir. You see, Colonel Mering collects fish. From the Orient. He keeps them in a pond in the rockery.”

“Oh,” I said, wondering if my time-lag symptoms were recurring again. I couldn’t seem to see the connection.

“Yes, sir. Princess Arjumand has an unfortunate penchant for catching Colonel Mering’s goldfish and eating them, in spite of my best efforts to prevent her from doing so. Cats, as you know, are quite impervious to threats.”

“Yes,” I said. “And cajoling and pleading and—”

“The only disciplinary measure that I have found to have any effect on her is—”

It all came suddenly, blindingly clear. “Throwing her in the river,” I said.

There was a sound, like a gasp, from the wardrobe, but Baine didn’t seem to notice. “Yes, sir,” he said. “It doesn’t cure her, of course. It’s necessary to reinforce the message approximately once a month. I only throw her out a short way. Cats swim quite well, you know, when they are forced to. Better than dogs. But this last time she must have got caught in the current and—” He buried his face in his hands. “I feared she had drowned,” he said despairingly.

“Here,” I said, taking his arm and helping him into the chintz-covered chair. “Sit down. She hasn’t drowned. She’s perfectly all right.”

“She ate the Colonel’s silver Emperor fantail. An extremely rare fish. The Colonel had it shipped all the way from Honshu, at great expense,” he said, anguished. “It had arrived only the day before, and there she was, sitting next to the dorsal fin, calmly licking her paws, and when I cried out, ‘Oh, Princess Arjumand! What have you done?’ she looked up at me with an expression of utter innocence. I’m afraid I quite lost my temper.”

“I quite understand,” I said.

“No.” He shook his head. “I carried her out to the river and flung her out as far as I could and then walked away. And when I came back—” he buried his face in his hands again, “there was no sign of her anywhere. I searched everywhere. These last four days I have felt like Dostoyevsky’s Raskolnikov, unable to confess my crime, racked with guilt for having murdered an innocent creature—”

“Well, not quite innocent,” I said. “She did eat the silver Emperor fantail.”

He didn’t even hear me. “She must have been carried away by the current and come ashore farther downstream, wet, lost—”

“Full of fantail,” I said to keep him from burying his face in his hands again. And double-gilled blue chub, I thought.

“I couldn’t sleep. I realized that I— I knew that Miss Mering would never be able to forgive me if any harm had come to her precious pet, yet I feared that with her good heart she might, and I would not be able to bear her forgiveness or forgive myself. Yet I knew I had to tell her, and I had determined to do so tonight, after the séance, and then the French doors opened, and it was a miracle. There was Princess Arjumand, safely returned, thanks to you!” He clasped my hands. “You have my most profound gratitude, sir! Thank you!”

“Perfectly all right,” I said, pulling my hands away before he smothered them with grateful kisses or something. “Glad to do it.”

“Princess Arjumand might have starved or frozen to death or been killed by wild dogs or—”

“No use worrying about things that didn’t happen,” I said. “She’s safely home.”

“Yes, sir,” he said, and looked like he might go for my hands again.

I stuck them behind my back.

“If there is anything, anything I can do to return the service you have done me and show my gratitude, I would do it in an instant.”

“Yes, well…” I said. “Thank you.”

“No, thank you, sir,” he said and, grabbing my hand from behind my back, shook it heartily. “And thank you for hearing me out. I hope I haven’t spoken out of turn, sir.”

“Not at all,” I said. “I appreciate your telling me.”

He stood up and straightened his lapels. “Would you like me to press your coat and trousers for you, sir?” he said, regaining his composure.

“No, that’s all right,” I said, thinking that the way things had gone thus far I might need them. “You can press them later.”

“Yes, sir,” he said. “Will there be anything else, sir?”

Probably, I thought, the way this night is going.

“No,” I said. “Thank you. Good night, Baine. Get some rest. And don’t worry. Princess Arjumand’s home safe and sound, and no harm done.” I hope.

“Yes, sir,” he said. “Good night, sir.”

I opened the door to let him out and held it open a crack to watch him till he reached the door to the servants’ quarters and went through it, and then went over to the wardrobe and knocked quietly.

There was no answer.

“Verity?” I said, and pulled the double doors open. Verity was sitting huddled in the wardrobe, her knees hunched against her chest. “Verity?”

She looked up at me. “He wasn’t going to drown her,” she said. “Mr. Dunworthy said I should have thought before I acted. He would have come back and rescued her if I hadn’t interfered.”

“But that’s good news,” I said. “It means she wasn’t a nonsignificant event, and my returning her didn’t create an incongruity.”

She nodded, but without conviction. “Perhaps. But if Baine had rescued her, she wouldn’t have been missing for four days. They wouldn’t have gone to Madame Iritosky’s, and Tossie would never have met Terence.” She scrambled out of the wardrobe. “I’ve got to tell Mr. Dunworthy this.” She started for the door. “I’ll be back as soon as I can and tell you what I find out.”

She put her hand on the door. “I won’t knock,” she whispered. “If Mrs. Mering hears knocking, she’s liable to think it’s spirits rapping. I’ll scratch on the door, like this.” She demonstrated. “I’ll be back soon,” she said, and opened the door.

“Wait,” I said, and retrieved Mrs. Mering’s boot from under the mattress. “Here,” I said, thrusting it at Verity. “Set this in front of Mrs. Mering’s door.”

She took the boot. “I won’t even ask,” she said, grinned, and slid out the door.

I didn’t hear any statuary crashes, or cries of, “The spirits!” from Mrs. Mering’s room, and after a minute I sat down in the chair to wait. And worry.

I wasn’t supposed to have brought the cat through. I remembered now Mr. Dunworthy saying, “Stay right there!” but I had thought he meant not to leave the net.

And it wouldn’t be the first time a miscommunication had affected history. Look at the countless times when a message which had been misunderstood or failed to get through or fallen into the wrong hands had changed the outcome of a battle: Lee’s accidentally dropped plans for Antietam, and the Zimmerman telegram, and Napoleon’s illegible orders to General Ney at Waterloo.

I wished I could think of an instance in which a failure to communicate had had anything but disastrous results. I wasn’t sure there were any. Look at Hitler’s migraine on D-Day. And the Charge of the Light Brigade.

Lord Raglan, standing on a hill, saw the Russians trying to retreat with captured Turkish artillery and ordered Lord Lucan to stop them. Lord Lucan, not on a hill and possibly suffering from Difficulty in Distinguishing Sounds, didn’t catch the word “Turkish,” couldn’t see any artillery except the Russian cannons pointed straight at him, and ordered Lord Cardigan and his men to charge straight at them. With predictable results.

“Into the Valley of Death rode the six hundred,” I murmured, and heard a faint scratching on the door.

I didn’t see how it could possibly be Verity. She’d scarcely been gone long enough to make it out to the gazebo and back, let alone to the future.

“Who is it?” I whispered through the door.

“Verity,” she whispered back.

“I told you I’d scratch on the door,” she said when I let her in. She had a brown paper parcel under her arm.

“I know,” I said, “but you were only gone five minutes.”

“Good,” she said. “That means there wasn’t any slippage, which is a good sign.” She sat down on the bed, looking pleased with herself. The news must be good.

“What did Mr. Dunworthy say?” I asked.

“He wasn’t there,” she said happily. “He’d gone up to Coventry to see Elizabeth Bittner.”

“Mrs. Bittner? The wife of the last bishop of Coventry?”

She nodded. “Only he didn’t go to see her in her capacity as bishop’s wife. She apparently worked on the net back in the early days. Do you know her?” she asked curiously.

“Lady Schrapnell had me interview her about the bishop’s bird stump.”

“Did she know where it was?”

“No.”

“Oh. Can I eat your biscuits?” she said, looking hungrily at the tray on the nightstand. “I’m starving.” She picked one up and took a bite out of it.

“How long were you there?” I asked.

“Hours,” she said. “Warder wouldn’t tell me where T.J. was — he was hiding from Lady Schrapnell, and he’d told Warder not to tell anyone where he was. It took me forever to track him down.”

“Did you ask him about my making Terence miss meeting Maud?”

“Yes,” she said. “Can I have your cocoa?”

“Yes. What did he say?”

“He said he thinks it’s unlikely that Terence was supposed to have met Maud, or if he was, that the meeting was nonsignificant, because if it had been, the net wouldn’t have opened.”

“But if my bringing the cat through caused an incongruity?” I said.

She shook her head. “T.J. doesn’t think it did. He thinks I caused it.”

“Because of what Baine told us.”

She nodded. “That, and the excessive slippage.”

“But I thought that was supposed to be due to Coventry’s being a crisis point.”

She shook her head. “Not the area of slippage in Coventry. The one in Oxford. In April of 2018.”

“2018? What crisis point is that?”

“It’s not, to anyone’s knowledge,” she said. “That’s why Mr. Dunworthy went to see Mrs. Bittner, to see if she remembers anything unusual about the drops or the time travel research they did that year that might account for it, but neither of them could remember anything. So if I caused the incongruity, then your bringing the cat back wouldn’t have. It would have been correcting it, and so it should have made things better, not worse. And having Terence miss meeting someone would hardly make things better, especially if meeting them might have kept him from getting to Iffley in time to see Tossie. Which means Terence must not have been supposed to meet Maud, and we don’t have to worry about it being a symptom the incongruity’s getting worse.”

“A symptom? What do you mean?”

“According to Fujisaki, the first line of defense is excessive slippage. Then, if that fails to correct the incongruity, there’s an increase in coincidental happenings, and if that fails, then discrepancies appear.”

“Discrepancies? You mean the course of history begins to alter?”

“Not at first. But the incongruity makes it destabilize. The way T.J. explained it was, that instead of there being a single fixed course of events, there becomes a superposition of probabilities.”

“Like in Schrodinger’s box,” I said, thinking of the famous thought experiment with the Geiger counter and the bottle of cyanide gas. And the cat.

“Exactly,” Verity said happily. “The course of events that will happen if the incongruity’s corrected, and if it’s not, both exist side by side, sort of. When the self-correction’s completed, they collapse into one course of events or the other. But until that happens, there may be discrepancies between the observed and recorded events. Only the only record we have is Tossie’s diary, and we can’t read that, so there’s no way to tell whether Terence and Maud’s not meeting is a discrepancy or not.”

She bit into another biscuit. “That’s why I was gone so long. After I talked to T.J., I went over to the Bodleian to start a search on Terence and then over to Oriel to ask the forensics expert to look for references to him in the diary and to see if she’d found out Mr. C’s name.”

“And had she?” I said, thinking perhaps this was why Verity seemed so happy.

“No. She’d recovered one entire passage, which unfortunately was a description of a dress Tossie was having made. Four paragraphs of pintucks, Brussels lace, French embroidery, openwork insets, and—”

“Ruffles,” I said.

“Ruffles and more ruffles,” she said disgustedly. “And not a word about the cat or the trip to Coventry or the bishop’s bird stump. I don’t suppose you have any chocolate stashed away? Or cheese? I’m so hungry. I intended to go back to Balliol and eat dinner after I talked to the forensics expert, but on the way there, I ran into Lady Schrapnell.”

“Lady Schrapnell?” I said. I’d nearly forgotten her in all the other crises. “She doesn’t know where I am, does she? You didn’t tell her, did you?”

“Of course not,” she said, taking a swig of the cocoa. “I didn’t tell her about the cat either. She demanded to know what I was doing there, and I told her I needed a new costume for day after tomorrow. Warder was livid.”

“I can imagine.”

“And then she stood there while I was being fitted, telling me all about you and how you’d gone off somewhere and Mr. Dunworthy wouldn’t tell her where you were, and how T.J. Lewis refused to go back to 1940 to check on the bishop’s bird stump just because the Twentieth Century was a ten for blacks, which was ridiculous, how dangerous could an air raid be?” She drained the last of the cocoa and peered into the pot. “And how the workmen were being completely impossible about the choir and told her the choir stalls wouldn’t be completed for another month and how that was completely out of the question, the consecration was in thirteen days.”

She poured the last drops of cocoa into her cup. “She wouldn’t leave, even when Warder took me into the prep room to try on the dress. I had to have her go out and stall Lady Schrapnell while I telephoned the Bodleian and got the results of the search on Terence.”

“And? Was he supposed to meet Maud?”

“I don’t know,” she said cheerfully. “The search didn’t turn up anything. No medals, knighthoods, elections to Parliament, arrests, convictions, news stories. No mention at all in the official records.”

“No marriage license?”

She shook her head and reached for the last biscuit. “His parish church was destroyed in the Blitz, and I didn’t have time to do a global, but I left a message for Mr. Dunworthy with Warder, telling him to do one as soon as he got back from Coventry, but if Terence isn’t mentioned in the official records, it means he didn’t affect history, which means the meeting doesn’t matter. Which goes along with what T.J. said about the discrepancies, which is that only the immediate area surrounding the incongruity is destabilized. And the meeting was four days from the time I rescued the cat, and Oxford Railway Station’s over thirty miles from Muchings End, which is hardly the immediate vicinity. So it isn’t a discrepancy, and the incongruity isn’t getting worse.”

“Umm,” I said, wishing I were as convinced as she was.

“But if Tossie marries Terence instead of Mr. C, that would definitely be a discrepancy, so we need to steal the diary and find out who he is and get them married as soon as possible, and in the meantime we need to keep Terence away from Tossie. And find the bishop’s bird stump,” she added, licking biscuit crumbs off her fingers.

“What?” I said. “I thought you didn’t tell Lady Schrapnell where I was.”

“I didn’t,” she said. “I told her you’d found out where the bishop’s bird stump was and were off fetching it!”

“You what?” I said, sitting down on Cyril.

“She was determined to find you,” she said. “The craftsmen have refused to make a reproduction of the bishop’s bird stump, and she’s furious. It was only a matter of time till she checked Warder’s drop records and came after you,” she said reasonably, “and that’s all we need.”

She had a point. “But what’s going to happen when she finds out I don’t have the slightest idea where the bishop’s bird stump is and never did? The consecration’s in two weeks, and I’m not supposed to be doing any drops.”

“I’ll help you,” she said, “and we won’t need to go anywhere. Poirot says all you need to solve a mystery is ‘the little gray cells.’ ”

“Poirot?” I said. “Who’s Poirot? The curate?”

“No,” she said. “Hercule Poirot. Agatha Christie. He says—”

“Agatha Christie?” I said, completely lost.

“The mystery writer. Twentieth Century. My assignment before Lady Schrapnell took over Oxford and my life, was the 1930s, and it’s an absolutely grim time: the rise of Hitler, worldwide depression, no vids, no virtuals, no money to go to the cinema. Nothing at all to do except read mystery novels. Dorothy Sayers, E.C. Benson, Agatha Christie. And crossword puzzles,” she said, as if that explained everything.

“Crossword puzzles?” I said.

“Are not particularly useful to our present situation. But mystery novels are. Of course they’re usually about murder, not robbery, but they always take place in a country house like this, and the butler did it, at least for the first hundred mystery novels or so. Everyone’s a suspect, and it’s always the least likely person, and after the first hundred or so, the butler wasn’t anymore — the least likely person, I mean — so they had to switch to unlikely criminals. You know, the harmless old lady or the vicar’s devoted wife, that sort of thing, but it didn’t take the reader long to catch on to that, and they had to resort to having the detective be the murderer, and the narrator, even though that had already been done in The Moonstone. The hero did it, only he didn’t know it. He was sleepwalking, in his nightshirt, which was rather racy stuff for Victorian times, and the crime was always unbelievably complicated. In mystery novels. I mean, nobody ever just grabs the vase and runs, or shoots somebody in a fit of temper, and at the very end, when you think you’ve got it all figured out, there’s one last plot twist, and the crime’s always very carefully thought out, with disguises and alibis and railway timetables and they have to include a diagram of the house in the frontispiece, showing everyone’s bedroom and the library, which is where the body always is, and all the connecting doors, and even then you don’t have a prayer of figuring it out, which is why they have to bring in a world-famous detective—”

“Who solves it with little gray cells?” I said.

“Yes. Hercule Poirot, that’s Agatha Christie’s detective, and he says it isn’t at all necessary to go running about measuring footprints and picking up cigarette ends to solve mysteries like Sherlock Holmes. That’s Arthur Conan Doyle’s detective—”

“I know who Sherlock Holmes is.”

“Oh. Well, anyway, Poirot says all you need is to use ‘the little gray cells’ and think about the problem.”

“And we’ll be able to find the bishop’s bird stump. Here. In 1888,” I said, unconvinced.

“Well, it won’t be here, but we’ll be able to find out where it is from here,” she said, beaming. She settled herself on the bed. “Now, when was the last time you saw it?”

I was never going to get any sleep. I was going to have Alice in Wonderland conversation after Alice in Wonderland conversation until I died of exhaustion. Here, in the restful, idyllic Victorian era.

“Couldn’t we do this in the morning?” I said.

“Everyone will be around then,” she said, “and the sooner we find it, the sooner we can stop worrying about Lady Schrapnell barging in and demanding to know where it is. I’ve never actually seen it, you know. I’ve only heard stories. Is it truly as hideous as everyone says? It doesn’t depict the Finding of the Infant Moses by Pharaoh’s Daughters, does it, like that awful thing we saw at Iffley?”

She stopped. “I’m babbling, aren’t I? Just like Lord Peter. That’s Dorothy Sayers’s detective. Lord Peter Wimsey. He and Harriet Vane solve mysteries together. It’s terribly romantic, and I’m doing it again, aren’t I? Babbling, I mean. Drops have that effect on me.”

She looked ruefully at me. “And you’re suffering from time-lag and supposed to be resting. I am so sorry.”

She scrambled off the bed and picked up her paper-wrapped parcel. “It’s sort of a cross between caffeine and alcohol. The effect drops have on me. Do they affect you that way? Sort of giddy and talkative?” She gathered up her shoes and stockings. “We’ll both feel better in the morning.”

She opened the door and peered out into the blackness. “Get some sleep,” she whispered. “You look dreadful. You need to get your rest so you can help me keep Tossie and Terence apart in the morning. I’ve got it all worked out. I’ll make Terence help me set up the fortune-telling tent.”

“Fortune-telling tent?” I said.

“Yes, and you can help Tossie with the jumble sale.”