To Say Nothing of the Dog

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

It took the better part of an hour and a bottle of benzene to get the Balmain’s Luminous Paint off Cyril, with Princess Arjumand assisting, and the fumes must have got to us, because the next thing I knew, Baine was shaking me and saying, “Sorry to wake you, sir, but it’s past six, and Colonel Mering asked me to wake him and Professor Peddick at seven.”

“Umm,” I said, trying to come awake. Cyril burrowed deeper into the covers.

“Jimmy Slumkin, sir,” Baine said, pouring hot water into the washbowl.

“What?”

“The true name of the Count. Jimmy Slumkin. It was on his passport.”

Slumkin. Well, so much for the Count as the mysterious Mr. C, which was probably just as well, but I wished we had at least one suspect. Verity’s Lord Peter’s and Monsieur Poirot’s problem was always that they had too many suspects. I had never heard of a mystery where the detective didn’t have any.

I sat up and put my feet over the bed. “With an ‘S’ or a ‘C’?”

Baine stopped setting the straight razors out and turned to look curiously at me. “I beg your pardon, sir?”

“Slumkin. Is it spelled with an ‘S’ or a ‘C’?”

“An ‘S,’ ” he said. “Why, sir?”

“Madame Iritosky told Miss Mering she would marry someone whose name began with a ‘C,’ ” I said, stretching the truth a bit.

He turned back to his razors. “Really. Perhaps the ‘C’ stood for Count.”

“No,” I said, “she very definitely specified a Mr. C. You don’t know of any eligible gentlemen in the area whose names begin with ‘C,’ do you?”

“Gentlemen?” he said. “No, sir.”

I got shaved and dressed and then tried to get Cyril out of bed. “I am not going to carry you this time.”

“It’s rather cold and cloudy outside this morning,” Baine said, not helping matters. “You’d best wear a coat.”

“Cloudy?” I said, wrestling Cyril to the edge of the bed.

“Yes, sir,” Baine said. “It looks as though it might rain.”

Baine hadn’t exaggerated. It looked like it might pour at any minute, and it felt like I had just made a drop into the middle of December. Cyril took one sniff out the door and bolted halfway up the stairs before I was able to catch him and carry him down again. “It’s not that cold in the stable,” I told him, which was a flat lie. It was freezing, and dark. The groom must have overslept, too.

I groped for matches and a lamp, and lit it. “Hullo,” Verity said. She was sitting on a stack of hay bales, swinging her legs. “Where have you been?”

“What are you doing out here?”

“Madame Iritosky and the Count left at four. They bribed the groom to take them to the station.”

Cyril, who claims he cannot make it up the height of a single stair tread without assistance, made a flying leap onto the hay bales and into Verity’s lap.

“Hullo, Cyril,” Verity said. “I thought perhaps you were right about Count de Vecchio being Mr. C, so I followed them out to make certain he didn’t carry Tossie off with him.”

“He’s not Mr. C,” I said. “He’s Jimmy Slumkin.”

“I know,” she said, scratching Cyril behind the ears. “Also known as Tom Higgins, Comte de Fanaud, and Bob ‘the Weasel’ Wexford. I went through after they left and checked Scotland Yard’s archives. I also know why they were here.”

“To case the joint?”

“Probably,” she said. Cyril turned on his side, sighing. Verity stroked his stomach. “It seems that night before last Madame Iritosky gave a special séance for the Psychic Research Society so they could test her authenticity. They bound her hands and feet and locked her in her cabinet, after which the spirit of Cleopatra appeared, played a tambourine, and danced around the table, touching the participants and telling them to beware the sea.”

She grinned at me. “Unfortunately, one of the Psychic Research Society members was so overcome by Cleopatra’s charms that, in spite of Madame Iritosky’s warnings, he grabbed her wrist and attempted to pull her onto his lap.”

“And then what?”

“The spirit yanked his hair and bit him. He yelped, and at that point another Psychic Research Society member turned up the lights, unlocked the cabinet—”

“Which was, oddly enough, empty.”

“And tore the veils off Cleopatra, who turned out to be Madame Iritosky. Three days later she and her accomplice sailed for France, where she was exposed by Richet, who believed in everybody, and after that for Calcutta, where she learned a new set of tricks from an Indian fakir. In 1922, she went to America, just in time to be exposed as a fraud by Houdini, and thence back to Oxford, where Arthur Conan Doyle pronounced her ‘the greatest medium I have ever seen. There can be no doubt of the truth of her mediumistic talents.’ ”

She looked fondly at Cyril. “When we’ve got Tossie safely connected to Mr. C,” she said, scratching behind his ears, “I think I’ll take you back with me.”

She looked up at me impishly. “I’m kidding,” she said. “I’ve sworn off incongruities. I would like to have a bulldog, though.”

“Me, too,” I said.

She ducked her head. “They haven’t got Carruthers out yet,” she said. “The net still won’t open. Warder thinks perhaps it’s a temporary blockage. She’s switched to an accelerated four-hour intermittent to try and get past it.”

“Has T.J. solved the mystery of why the incongruity was able to get past the net’s defenses?” I asked.

“No. He’s figured out why Napoleon lost the battle of Waterloo, though.” She grinned, and then said more seriously, “And he was finally able to generate an incongruity.”

“An incongruity?” I said. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“It was only a simulated incongruity. And it’s not the right sort. It occurred as part of a self-correction. It was one of those sims where he had an historian kill Wellington. When he introduced a second historian into the sim, the historian was able to steal the rifle that the first historian was going to shoot Wellington with and bring it forward through the net, so that it prevented an incongruity rather than causing one. But he said to tell you that at least it proves bringing something forward through the net is theoretically possible, even if it didn’t apply to our case.”

Theoretically possible. It still didn’t solve the problem of getting the net open to get the first historian through to kill Wellington in the first place.

“Anything else?” I asked.

“No. He and Mr. Dunworthy were happy that we’d managed to persuade Tossie to go to Coventry. They both think the fact that they haven’t been able to find any increased slippage around the original drop means the incongruity was short-term and that all it needs to correct itself is for us to get her to St. Michael’s on time.”

She ducked her head again. “And, if it does, we’ll be done here and have to go face Lady Schrapnell. And I promised I’d help you find the bishop’s bird stump. So I decided to wait for you.”

She shifted Cyril off her lap and pulled a pen, a bottle of ink, and some sheets of paper out of her pocket and set them on the hay.

“What’s all that for?” I asked.

“For making a list of all the possibilities of what might have happened to the bishop’s bird stump. Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane made a list in Have His Carcase.”

“There’s no such thing as listing all the possibilities,” I said. “The continuum’s a chaotic system, remember?”

She ignored me. “In an Agatha Christie mystery, there’s always one possibility you haven’t considered, and that’s the solution to the mystery. All right,” she said, dipping her pen in the ink. “One, the bishop’s bird stump was in the cathedral during the raid and was destroyed in the fire. Two, it was in the cathedral, survived the fire, and was found in the rubble. Three,” she said, writing busily, “it was rescued during the raid.”

I shook my head. “The only things saved were a flag, two sets of candlesticks, a wooden crucifix, and the altar books. There’s a list.”

“We are writing down all the possibilities,” she said. “Later, we’ll eliminate the ones that are impossible.”

Which so far was all three.

“Four,” she said, “it survived the raid, even though it didn’t make the list for some reason, and it’s stored somewhere.”

“No,” I said. “Mrs. Bittner went through all the things in the cathedral when they sold it, and it wasn’t there.”

“Lord Peter didn’t keep contradicting Harriet when she was making a list,” she said. “Five, it wasn’t in the church during the raid. It was removed sometime between the tenth and the fourteenth of November.”

“Why?” I said.

“For safekeeping. With the east windows.”

I shook my head. “I went to Lucy Hampton rectory to see. The only things they had of Coventry’s were the windows.”

“Oh. Well, what if some member of the congregation took the bishop’s bird stump home for safekeeping? Or to polish it or something, so that it just happened to be out of the cathedral that night?”

“If that happened, why didn’t the person bring it back?”

“I don’t know,” she said, biting her lip. “Perhaps he was killed during the raid, by a high-explosive bomb, and whoever inherited it didn’t know it belonged to the cathedral.”

“Or he could have thought to himself, ‘I can’t do this to the people of Coventry. They’re already going to have to suffer the loss of their cathedral. I can’t inflict the bishop’s bird stump on them as well.’ ”

“Be serious,” she said. “What if he didn’t bring it back because it was destroyed in the raid, by a bomb or something.”

I shook my head. “Even a high-explosive bomb couldn’t destroy the bishop’s bird stump.”

She flung the pen down. “I am so glad we’re going to Coventry today so I can actually see the bishop’s bird stump. It cannot possibly be as bad as you say.”

She looked thoughtful. “What if the bishop’s bird stump was involved in a crime? It was used as a murder weapon, and it got blood on it, so they stole it to keep anyone from finding out about the murder.”

“You have been reading too many murder mysteries,” I said.

She dipped her pen in the ink again. “What if it was stored in the cathedral, but inside something else, like Poe’s ‘The Purloined Letter’?” She started to write and then stopped and frowned at the pen. She pulled an orange dahlia penwiper out of her pocket.

“What are you doing?” I said.

“Wiping my pen,” she said. She stuck the pen into the dahlia and wiped it off between the layers of cloth.

“It’s a penwiper,” I said. “A pen wiper! It’s used to wipe pens!”

“Yes,” she said, looking at me dubiously. “There was ink on the point. It would have blotted the paper.”

“Of course! So you wipe it on a penwiper!”

“How many drops have you had, Ned?” she said.

“You’re a wonderful girl, you know that?” I said, grabbing her by the shoulders. “You’ve solved a mystery that’s been plaguing me since 1940. I could kiss—”

There was a bloodcurdling scream from the direction of the house, and Cyril buried his face in his paws.

“What now?” Verity said, looking disappointed.

I let go of her shoulders. “The daily swoon?”

She stood up and began brushing straw off her skirts. “This had better not be anything that keeps us from going to Coventry,” she said. “You go first. I’ll come in through the kitchen.”

“Mesiel!” Mrs. Mering shrieked. “O, Mesiel!”

I took off for the house, expecting to find Mrs. Mering laid out among the bric-a-brac, but she wasn’t. She was standing halfway down the stairs in her wrapper, clutching the railing. Her hair was in two operatic braids, and she was waving an empty velvet-lined box.

“My rubies!” she was wailing to the Colonel, who had apparently just come out of the breakfast room. He still had his napkin in his hand. “They’ve been stolen!”

“I knew it!” the Colonel, shocked into using a subject, said. “Should never have allowed that medium person in the house!” He threw down the napkin. “Thieves!”

“O, Mesiel,” Mrs. Mering said, pressing the jewel case to her bosom, “surely you don’t think Madame Iritosky had anything to do with this!”

Tossie appeared. “What’s happened, Mama?”

“Tocelyn, go and see whether any of your jewelry is missing!”

“My diary!” Tossie cried and scampered off, nearly colliding with Verity, who must have come up the back stairs.

“What is it?” Verity said. “What’s happened?”

“Robbed!” the Colonel said succinctly. “Tell Madame Whatever-Her-Name-Is and that Count person to come down immediately!”

“They’ve gone,” Verity said.

“Gone?” Mrs. Mering gasped, and I thought she was going to pitch over the stairs.

I raced up and Verity hurried down, and we supported Mrs. Mering down the steps and into the parlor. We deposited her, sobbing, on the horsehair sofa.

Tossie appeared breathlessly at the top of the stairs. “O, Mama, my garnet necklace is missing!” she cried, pattering down the stairs, “and my pearls, and my amethyst ring!” But instead of running into the parlor, she disappeared down the corridor and reappeared a moment later, carrying her diary. “Thank goodness I hid my diary in the library, in amongst all the other books where no one would notice it!”

Verity and I looked at each other.

“Knew all this table-tipping nonsense would come to no good,” Colonel Mering said. “Where’s Baine? Ring for him!”

Verity started for the bellpull, but Baine was already there, carrying a chipped pottery jug.

“Put that down,” Colonel Mering ordered, “and go fetch the constable. Mrs. Mering’s necklace is missing.”

“And my amethyst ring,” Tossie said.

“I removed Mrs. Mering’s rubies and the other pieces of jewelry last night for cleaning,” Baine said. “I had noticed when the ladies wore them last, they seemed somewhat dimmed.” He reached in the jug. “I left them to soak overnight in a solution of vinegar and baking soda. He pulled out the ruby necklace and handed it to Colonel Mering. “I was just returning the things to their cases. I would have mentioned it to Mrs. Mering, but she was busy with her guests.”

“I knew it!” Mrs. Mering said from the sofa. “Mesiel, how could you have suspected dear Madame Iritosky?”

“Baine, check on the silver,” Colonel Mering said. “And the Rubens.”

“Yes, sir,” Baine said. “What time would you like the carriages brought round?”

“Carriages? What for?” the Colonel said.

“To take us to Coventry,” Tossie said. “We are going to St. Michael’s Church.”

“Pah!” Colonel Mering said. “No business going anywhere. Thieves in the neighborhood! No telling when they might come back!”

“But we have to go,” Verity said.

“The spirits summoned us,” Tossie said.

“Stuff and nonsense!” Colonel Mering sputtered. “Probably concocted the whole thing to get us all out of the house so they could come back and steal our valuables!”

“Concocted!” Mrs. Mering said, rising up majestically from the sofa. “Are you implying the spirit message we received last night was not genuine?”

Colonel Mering ignored her. “We won’t need the carriages. And better make certain the horses are there. No telling what—” He looked suddenly stricken. “My Black Moor!”

I thought it unlikely that Madame Iritosky would steal the Colonel’s goldfish, even if she had been foiled in the matter of the rubies, but it seemed like a bad idea to tell the Colonel that. I stepped back to let him pass as he shot out the door.

Mrs. Mering sank back down on the sofa. “O, that your father would doubt Madame Iritosky’s genuineness! It is a mercy she’s gone and is not here to suffer such vile accusations!” She thought of something. “What reason did she give for their departure, Baine?”

“I was unaware of their departure until this morning,” Baine said. “It appears they left sometime during the night. I was extremely surprised. I had told Madame Iritosky that I felt certain you would write the Psychic Research Society this morning and ask them to come witness the manifestation, and I supposed of course that she would have stayed for that, but perhaps she had urgent business elsewhere.

“No doubt,” Mrs. Mering said. “The spirits’ summons may not be denied. But the Psychic Research Society here! How thrilling that would have been!”

The Colonel came back in, carrying Princess Arjumand under his arm and looking grim.

“Is your Black Moor safe, sir?” I asked anxiously.

“For the moment,” he said, dumping the cat on the floor.

Tossie scooped her up.

“No coincidence that they arrived when they did, on the day before my red-spotted silver tancho was to arrive,” the Colonel said. “Baine! Want you to stand guard over the fishpond all day. No telling when they might come back!”

“Baine is going with me,” Mrs. Mering said, rising from the sofa, looking like a Valkyrie with her braids and the light of battle in her eyes. “And we are going to Coventry.”

“Balderdash! Not going anywhere. Intend to stay here and defend the battlements!”

“Then we shall go without you,” she said. “The spirits’ summons cannot be denied. Baine, when is the next train to Coventry?”

“Nine-oh-four, madam,” Baine said promptly.

“Excellent,” she said, turning her back on the Colonel. “Bring the carriage round at a quarter past eight. We shall leave for the station at half-past.”

He did, but we didn’t. Or at half-past nine. Or ten. Luckily, there were trains at 9:49, 10:17, and 11:05, which Baine, the walking Bradshaw, rattled off each time we experienced a delay.

There were various delays. Mrs. Mering declared the drama of the morning had left her weak, and she could not go without a sustaining breakfast of blood sausage, kedgeree, and stuffed chicken livers. Tossie could not find her lavender gloves. Jane brought down the wrong shawl. “No, no, the cashmere is far too warm for June,” Mrs. Mering said. “The tartan shawl, the one from Dunfermline.”

“We’re going to miss Mr. C,” Verity said, standing waiting in the foyer while Mrs. Mering changed her hat again.

“No, we’re not,” I said. “We can leave in half an hour and still catch the 11:26, and the diary didn’t say anything about what time of day it happened. Relax.”

She nodded. “I’ve been thinking about the bishop’s bird stump,” she said. “What if someone hid something in it to keep someone else from stealing it? And they came back to take it out again, but there wasn’t time, so they just took the whole thing?” She looked up the stairs. “What can be taking them so long? It’s nearly eleven.”

Tossie came tripping down the stairs in her lavender gloves and a medley of lavender frills. She looked out the open door.

“It looks like it’s going to rain,” she said, frowning. “We shan’t be able to see any sights if it rains, Mama,” she said to Mrs. Mering, who was descending the stairs. “Perhaps we should wait till tomorrow.”

“No!” Verity said. “What if Lady Godiva has something urgent to tell us?”

“It does look like rain,” Mrs. Mering said. “Has Baine packed the umbrellas?”

“Yes,” I said. Also the guidebooks, the luncheon hamper, the smelling salts, a spirit lamp, Mrs. Mering’s embroidery, Tossie’s novel, Terence’s Tennyson, several issues of the psychic weekly magazine, The Light, and an assortment of lap robes and rugs, all of which Baine had managed to pack so well there was still room for us in the two carriages, though it was probably a good thing Professor Peddick had decided to stay with the Colonel.

“I wished to discuss several points regarding the Battle of Thermopylae with the Colonel,” he told Mrs. Mering.

“Well, don’t let him stay out if it rains,” she said, apparently softening a little toward her husband. “He’ll catch his death.”

Terence led Cyril over and hoisted him up onto the running board.

“Mr. St. Trewes,” Mrs. Mering said in Wagnerian tones, “you cannot possibly be thinking of taking that creature with you.”

Terence stopped in mid-hoist, Cyril’s hind legs dangling in the air. “Cyril’s a perfect gentleman on trains,” Terence said. “He’s been everywhere on them — London, Oxford, Sussex. He loves to look out the window, you know, at passing cats and things. And he always gets along famously with the railway guards.”

But not with Mrs. Mering.

“A railway carriage is no place for an animal,” she said.

“And I’m wearing my new travelling dress,” Tossie said, patting at the frills with a lavender glove.

“But he’ll be so disappointed,” Terence said, reluctantly lowering him to the ground.

“Nonsense!” Mrs. Mering said. “Dogs haven’t any feelings.”

“Never mind, Cyril,” Professor Peddick said. “You can come with me out to the fishpond. I’ve always been extremely fond of dogs. So has my niece, Maud. Feeds them from the table.” They walked off together.

“Do get in, Mr. St. Trewes,” Mrs. Mering said. “You will make us late for the train. Baine, did you pack my lorgnette?”

We finally left for the station at half-past ten. “Remember,” Verity said to me as I helped her into the carriage, “Tossie’s diary only says ‘the trip to Coventry.’ It doesn’t say which part of the trip. Mr. C could be someone at the station or on the train.”

We arrived at the station at 11:09. The train had already gone, which was probably just as well since it took us nearly ten minutes to get everyone and everything out of the carriages. By the time we got out onto the platform, there was no one there.

“I don’t see why the train couldn’t have waited!” Mrs. Mering said. “A few minutes either way surely wouldn’t make a difference. So inconsiderate!”

“I know it’s going to rain and ruin my travelling dress,” Tossie fretted, looking at the sky. “O, Terence, I do hope it doesn’t rain on our wedding day.”

“ ‘Ah festal day, so fair, so bright,’ ” Terence quoted, but absently, looking off toward Muchings End. “If it does rain, I hope Professor Peddick won’t leave Cyril outside.”

“I do hope they don’t decide to go fishing in this weather,” Mrs. Mering said, “what with Mesiel’s weak chest. He caught a dreadful chill last spring. He was in bed for two weeks, and such a frightening cough! The doctor said it was a miracle it didn’t go into pneumonia. Mr. Henry, do go and see if there’s any sign of the train.”

I walked down to the far end of the platform to check. When I came back, Verity was standing apart from the others. “I’ve been thinking about the bishop’s bird stump,” she said. “In The Moonstone, the jewel was taken by someone who didn’t know he’d stolen it. He was sleepwalking, and he put it in something, and then a second person stole it from him. What if the person who took it—?”

“Was sleepwalking?” I said. “In Coventry Cathedral?”

“No. Didn’t know they were committing a crime.”

“Exactly how many drops have you done in the past week?” I asked.

Baine reappeared, with a porter who was at least seventy years old, and they and the groom began transferring our luggage from the carriages to the edge of the platform. Verity looked speculatively at the porter.

“No,” I said. “She was married to him for over fifty years. That means he’d have to live to be a hundred and twenty.”

“Did you see any sign of the train, Mr. Henry?” Mrs. Mering called.

“No, I’m afraid not,” I said, walking over to her.

“Where can it be?” she said. “I hope its being late isn’t an omen. Mr. Henry, have the carriages gone?”

“We must go to Coventry today,” Verity said. “What would Madame Iritosky think of us if we ignored the spirits’ message?”

“She herself thought nothing of departing in the middle of the night in response to a message she received,” I said, wishing the bloody train would hurry up and come. “And I have no doubt the weather will be fine when we reach Coventry.”

“And there are such lovely things in Coventry,” Verity said and then obviously couldn’t think of any.

“Blue dye,” I said. “They are famous for their Coventry-blue dye. And ribbons.”

“I might buy some for my trousseau,” Tossie said.

“Professor Peddick tends to be absentminded,” Terence said wistfully. “He won’t go off and leave Cyril, do you think?”

“Azure ribbons, I think, for my going-away hat,” Tossie said. “Or baby blue, perhaps. What do you think, Mama?”

“Why can’t these trains arrive at the time listed on the schedule instead of making us wait for hours?” Mrs. Mering said.

And so on. The train arrived at exactly 11:32, pulling into the station with an impressive whoosh of steam, and Verity practically pushed everyone onto the train, keeping an anxious eye out for anyone who looked like he might be Mr. C.

Baine assisted Mrs. Mering up the steps and into our compartment and then ran back to supervise the porter in loading our belongings. Jane settled Mrs. Mering in her seat, gave her her lorgnette, her embroidery, found her handkerchief and her shawl, and then bobbed a curtsey and climbed down the steps.

“Where’s she going?” I said to Verity, watching Jane hurry down the platform to the rear of the train.

“To second-class,” she said. “Servants don’t travel with their employers.”

“How do they do without them?”

“They don’t,” she said, catching up her skirts and starting up the steps.

They certainly didn’t. Baine came back as soon as everything was aboard to bring Mrs. Mering a lap robe and ask if there was anything else she needed.

“A cushion,” she said. “These railway seats are so uncomfortable.”

“Yes, madam,” he said, and took off at a gallop. He returned in under a minute, disheveled and out of breath, with a brocade-covered cushion.

“The train from Reading is a corridor train, madam,” he panted, “but this one has only compartments. I will, however, attend you at each stop.”

“Were there no direct trains to Coventry?” she said.

“Yes, madam,” Baine said. “At 10:17. The train is about to leave, madam. Is there anything else?”

“Yes, the Baedeker. And a rug to put my feet on. The condition of these railway compartment floors is disgraceful.”

Mrs. Mering had obviously never been on the tube. It is a temporal universal that people never appreciate their own time, especially transportation. Twentieth-Century contemps complained about cancelled flights and gasoline prices, Eighteenth-Century contemps complained about muddy roads and highwaymen. No doubt Professor Peddick’s Greeks complained about recalcitrant horses and chariot wheels falling off.

I had ridden on trains before, in the 1940s, most recently to Hampton Lucy to see if the bishop’s bird stump was there with the east windows, but those trains had been packed with soldiers, the windows had been covered with blackout curtains, and all the fittings had been removed to make ammunition. And, even if it hadn’t been wartime, they had been nothing to this.

The high-backed seats were upholstered in green velveteen, and the walls above were panelled in polished mahogany inlaid with a pattern of flowers. There were rich green plush curtains hung at the windows, and gas lamps in brackets on both sides, covered with etched-glass lampshades, and the luggage rack overhead, the hand rails, the arm rests, the curtain rings, were all of polished brass.

Definitely not the tube. And, as the train lurched slowly forward (with Baine making a last flying run to deliver the Baedeker and the rug and another back to second-class) and then picked up speed through the beautiful, misty countryside, definitely nothing to complain about.

That did not stop Mrs. Mering from complaining about the soot blowing in the window (Terence closed the window), about the stuffiness of the compartment (Terence opened the window again and drew the curtains), about the dimness of the day, the roughness of the ride, the hardness of the cushion Baine had brought her.

She gave a little screamlet each time the train stopped, started, or went round a curve, and a large one when the railway guard came in to take our tickets. He was even older than the porter, but Verity leaned forward to look at his name badge and subsided pensively in her seat after he’d gone.

“What was the guard’s name?” I asked her when I helped her down at Reading Station, where we were to change trains.

“Edwards,” she said, looking around the platform. “Do you see anyone who looks like he’d be willing to marry Tossie?”

“What about Crippen over there?” I said, nodding my head toward a pale, timid-looking young man who kept looking down the track and sticking his finger nervously in his collar.

“None of Crippen’s wives managed to stay married to him for fifty years,” she said, watching a large and irritable man with sidewhiskers who kept bellowing, “Porter! Porter!” to no avail. The efficient Baine had commandeered all of them before the train even stopped and was directing the disposition of the Mering effects.

“What about him?” I said, pointing at a five-year-old boy in a sailor suit.

A young man in a boater and a mustache came bolting onto the platform and looked wildly around. Verity gripped my arm. He saw Tossie, standing with Mrs. Mering and Jane, and started toward her, smiling.

“Horace!” A girl waved from another group of three ladies, and Horace raced over to her and began apologizing profusely for being late to meet them.

I looked guiltily over at Terence, thinking about the fateful meeting I’d made him miss.

The young man left with the three ladies, the sidewhiskered man grabbed up his own bags and stormed off, which left Crippen, now warily eyeing a station guard.

But even if he or the young man with the boater had been suddenly smitten, Tossie wouldn’t have noticed them. She was too busy planning her wedding.

“I shall carry orange blossoms for my bouquet,” she said, “or white roses. Which do you think, Terence?”

“ ‘Two roses on one stem on one slender spray,’ ” Terence quoted, looking longingly at a woman carrying a terrier, “ ‘in sweet communion grew.’ ”

“O, but orange blossoms have such a sweet smell.”

“There are far too many trains,” Mrs. Mering said. “They cannot possibly need all these trains.

Baine finally got everything and everyone on the train and arranged in an even more opulent compartment, and we started for Coventry. After a few minutes, a guard, this one much younger and actually quite good-looking, came along the corridor and punched our tickets. Tossie, deep in planning her trousseau, didn’t so much as glance up, and what made us think that when we got to Coventry she would even notice Mr. C, engrossed as she was in her wedding plans with Terence? What made us think she would even notice the bishop’s bird stump?

She would. She had to. The trip to Coventry had changed her life and inspired her great-great-great-great-granddaughter to make ours miserable.

After a few miles, Baine arrived, spread white linen napkins on our laps, and served us a sumptuous luncheon, which cheered everyone considerably (except possibly Baine, who had made approximately two hundred trips between first and second class, bringing us cold roast beef and cucumber sandwiches and Mrs. Mering a fresh handkerchief, her other gloves, her sewing scissors, and, for no discernible reason, Bradshaw’s Railway Guide).

Terence looked out the window and announced it was clearing off, and then that he could see Coventry, and before Jane and Baine had time to gather up everything and fold up Mrs. Mering’s lap robe, we were standing on the platform in Coventry, waiting for Baine to unload our luggage and find us a carriage. It had not cleared off, nor did it look like it was going to. There was a fine mist in the air, and the city’s outline was blurred and gray.

Terence had thought of a poem suitable to the occasion and was declaiming it. “ ‘I waited for a train at Coventry,’ ” he quoted. “ ‘City of three spires…’ ” He stopped, looking puzzled. “I say, where are the three spires? I only see two.”

I looked where he was pointing. One, two, and a tall box-like structure stood out against the gray sky.

“St. Michael’s spire is being repaired,” Baine said, struggling under a load of rugs and shawls. “The porter informed me that the church is undergoing extensive restorations at the moment.”

“That explains why Lady Godiva spoke to us now,” Mrs. Mering said. “The spirits’ resting place must have been disturbed.”

The mist deteriorated into a drizzle, and Tossie gave a screamlet. “My travelling dress!” she cried.

Baine appeared, unfurling umbrellas. “I have obtained a closed carriage, madam,” he told Mrs. Mering, handing them to Terence and me to hold over the ladies.

Jane was put into a hack with the luncheon hamper and the rugs and shawls and told to meet us at the church, and we drove into town, the horses clattering along narrow brick-paved streets lined with old, half-timbered buildings that leaned out over the street. A Tudor inn with a painted sign hanging above the door, narrow brick shops selling ribbons and bicycles, narrower houses with mullioned windows and tall chimneys. The old Coventry. This would all be destroyed by fire along with the cathedral that November night in 1940, but it was hard to imagine it, clopping along the damp, placid streets.

The driver pulled the horses to a stop at the corner of St. Mary’s Street, the street Provost Howard and his little band had paraded down, carrying the candlesticks and crosses and the regimental flag they’d rescued from the burning cathedral.

“Cahnt gawna fur thuhsahth dawblottuff,” the driver said in an impenetrable dialect.

“He says he can’t take the carriage any farther,” Baine translated. “Apparently the route to the cathedral is blocked.”

I leaned forward. “Tell him to go back along this street to Little Park Street. That will take us to the west doors of the church.”

Baine told him. The driver shook his head and said something unrecognizable, but turned the horses around and started back up Earl Street.

“O, I can feel the spirits already,” Mrs. Mering said, clutching her bosom. “Something is about to happen. I know it.”

We turned up Little Park Street toward the cathedral. I could see the tower at the end of the street, and it was no wonder we hadn’t been able to see the third spire from the railway station. It was encased in wooden scaffolding from a third of the way up all the way to the top, and, except that it had gray cloth tarps draped across it instead of blue plastic, it looked the way it had looked last week when I’d seen it from Merton’s pedestrian gate. Lady Schrapnell was more authentic than she knew.

The piles of red sandstone blocks and heaps of sand in the churchyard looked the same, too, and I worried that the entire approach to the church might be blocked, but it wasn’t. The driver was able to pull the carriage up directly in front of the west doors. On them was a large, hand-lettered sign.

“Iffley’s churchwarden’s been here,” I said, and then saw what it said: