To Say Nothing of the Dog

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Well, it wasn’t exactly the ending of an Agatha Christie mystery, with Hercule Poirot gathering everyone together in the drawing room to reveal the murderer and impress everyone with his astonishing deductive powers.

And it definitely wasn’t a Dorothy Sayers, with the detective hero saying to his heroine sidekick, “I say, we make a jolly good detectin’ team. How about makin’ the partnership permanent, eh, what?” and then proposing in Latin.

We weren’t even a halfway decent detectin’ team. We hadn’t solved the case. The case had been solved in spite of us. Worse, we had been such an impediment, we’d had to be packed off out of the way before the course of history could correct itself. This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but an elopement.

Not that there wasn’t whimpering. Mrs. Mering was doing a good deal of that, not to mention weeping, wailing, and clutching the letter to her bosom.

“O, my precious daughter!” she sobbed. “Mesiel, don’t just stand there. Do something.”

The Colonel looked around uneasily. “What can I do, my dear? According to Tossie’s letter, they are already afloat.”

“I don’t know. Stop them. Have the marriage annulled. Wire the Royal Navy!” She stopped, grabbed her heart, and cried, “Madame Iritosky tried to warn me! She said, ‘Beware of the sea!’ ”

“Pah! Seems to me if she’d truly had any contact with the Other Side, she could have given a better warning than that!” Colonel Mering said.

But Mrs. Mering wasn’t listening. “That day at Coventry. I had a premonition — oh, if I had only realized what it meant, I might have saved her!” She let the letter flutter to the floor.

Verity stooped and picked it up. “ ‘I will write when we are settled in America,’ ” she said softly. “ ‘Your repentant daughter, Mrs. William Patrick Callahan.’ William Patrick Callahan.” She shook her head.

“What do you know?” she said softly. “The butler did it.”

As she said it, I had the oddest sensation, like one of Mrs. Mering’s premonitions, or a sudden shifting underfoot, and I thought suddenly of anti-cathedral protesters and Merton’s pedestrian gate.

“The butler did it.” And then something else. Something important. Who had said that? Verity, explaining the mystery novels? “It was always the least likely suspect,” she had said in my bedroom that first night. “For the first hundred books or so, the butler did it, and after that he was the most likely, and 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, and…”

But that wasn’t it. Someone else had said, “The butler did it.” But who? Not anyone here. Mystery novels hadn’t even been invented, except for The Moonstone. The Moonstone. Something Tossie had said about The Moonstone, about being unaware you were committing a crime. And something else. Something about disappearing into thin air.

“And the neighbors!” Mrs. Mering wailed. “What will Mrs. Chattisbourne say when she finds out? And the Reverend Mr. Arbitage!”

There was a long moment during which only the sound of her sobbing could be heard, and then Terence turned to me and said, “Do you realize what this means?”

“Oh, Terence, you poor, poor boy!” Mrs. Mering sobbed. “And you would have had five thousand pounds a year!” and allowed herself to be led weeping from the room by Colonel Mering.

We watched them climb the stairs. Halfway up, Mrs. Mering swayed in her husband’s arms. “We shall have to hire a new butler!” she said despairingly. “Where shall I ever find a new butler? I blame you entirely for this, Mesiel. If you had let me hire English servants instead of Irish—” She broke down, weeping.

Colonel Mering handed her his handkerchief. “There, there, my dear,” he said, “don’t take on so.”

As soon as they were out of sight, Terence said, “Do you Realize What This Means? I’m not engaged. I’m free to marry Maud. ‘Oh, frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!’ ”

Cyril clearly Realized What It Meant. He sat up alertly and began to wag his entire body.

“You do know, don’t you, old fellow?” Terence said. “No more sleeping in the stable for you.”

And no more baby talk, I thought. No more putting up with Princess Arjumand.

“It’s the soft life for you from now on,” Terence said. “Sleeping in the house and riding on trains and all the butcher’s bones you like! Maud adores bulldogs!”

Cyril smiled a wide, drooling smile of pure happiness.

“I must go up to Oxford immediately. When’s the next train? Pity Baine’s not here. He’d know.” He leaped up the stairs. At the top, he leaned down over the railing and said, “You do think she’ll forgive me, don’t you?”

“For being engaged to the wrong girl?” I said. “A minor infraction. Happens all the time. Look at Romeo. He’d been in love with some Rosalind person. It never seemed to bother Juliet.”

“ ‘Did my heart love till now?’ ” he quoted, extending his hand dramatically down toward Verity. “ ‘Forswear it, sight! For I ne’er saw true beauty till this night.’ ” He disappeared down the upstairs corridor.

I looked at Verity. She stood with her hands on the newel post and was gazing sadly after Terence.

By tomorrow she’ll be back in the 1930s, I thought, Realizing What It Meant. She would be back to documenting the Depression and reading mystery novels, her beautiful red hair in a pageboy, and her long legs, which I had never seen, encased in silk stockings with a seam down the back. And I would never see her again.

No, I would probably see her at the consecration. If I were still allowed to come. If Lady Schrapnell didn’t permanently assign me to jumble sale duty when I told her that the bishop’s bird stump hadn’t been in the cathedral.

And if I did see Verity at the consecration, what exactly was I supposed to say to her? All Terence had to apologize for was thinking he’d been in love. I had to apologize for being such a liability in the scheme of things that I’d had to be shut up in a dungeon during the denouement. Not exactly something to be proud of. It was just as well I’d be stuck behind the fancy goods stall.

“I’m going to miss all this,” Verity said, her eyes still on the stairs. “I should be glad it’s all worked out so well, and that the continuum’s not going to collapse…” She turned her beautiful naiad’s eyes on me. “You do think the incongruity’s repaired, don’t you?”

“There’s a train at 9:43,” Terence said, racketing down the stairs with a valise in one hand and his hat in the other. “Baine thoughtfully left a Bradshaw in my room. Arrives at 11:02. Come along, Cyril, we’re going to go get engaged. Where’s he got to? Cyril!” He disappeared into the parlor.

“Yes,” I said to Verity. “Completely repaired.”

“Ned, you can arrange to have the boat sent back to Jabez, can’t you?” Terence said, reappearing with Cyril. “And the rest of my things sent to Oxford?”

“Yes,” I said. “Go.”

He pumped my hand. “Goodbye. ‘Friend, ahoy! Farewell, farewell!’ I’ll see you next term.”

“I… I’m not certain about that,” I said, and realized how much I was going to miss him. “Goodbye, Cyril.” I leaned down to pat him on the head.

“Nonsense. You’re looking much better since we’ve been at Muchings End. You’ll be entirely cured by Michaelmas term. We’ll have such jolly times on the river,” Terence said, and was gone, Cyril trotting happily after him.

“I want them out of this house immediately,” Mrs. Mering’s voice said, overwrought, and we both looked up the stairs.

A door slammed overhead. “Absolutely out of the question!” Mrs. Mering said, and then the low sound of voices murmuring. “…and tell them…”

More murmuring. “I want you to go downstairs immediately and tell them. This is all due to them!”

More murmuring, and then, “If she’d been a proper chaperone this would never ha—”

A door shutting cut her off, and a minute later Colonel Mering came down the stairs, looking extremely embarrassed.

“All been too much for my poor dear wife,” he said, looking at the carpet. “Her nerves. Very delicate. Rest and absolute quiet is what she needs. Think it best you go to your aunt in London, Verity, and you back to—” He looked at a loss.

“To Oxford,” I said.

“Ah, yes, to your studies. Sorry about this,” Colonel Mering said to the carpet. “Glad to arrange for the carriage.”

“No, that’s all right,” I said.

“No trouble,” he said. “Will have Baine tell—” he stopped, looking lost.

“I’ll see that Miss Brown gets to the station,” I said.

He nodded. “Must go see to my dear wife,” he said, and started up the stairs.

Verity went after him. “Colonel Mering,” she said, following him halfway up the stairs. “I don’t think you should disown your daughter.”

He looked embarrassed. “Afraid Malvinia’s quite determined. Dreadful shock, you know. Butler and all that.”

“Baine — I mean, Mr. Callahan — did prevent Tossie’s cat from eating your Black Moor,” she said.

Wrong thing to say. “He didn’t prevent it from eating my globe-eyed nacreous ryunkin,” he said angrily. “Cost two hundred pounds.”

“But he did take Princess Arjumand with him so she can’t eat any more of your goldfish,” she said persuasively, “and he prevented Madame Iritosky from stealing Aunt Malvinia’s ruby necklace. And he’s read Gibbon.” She put her hands on the newel post and looked up at him. “And she is your only daughter.”

Colonel Mering looked down at me for support. “What do you think, Henry? Will this butler fellow make her a good husband?”

“He has her best interests at heart,” I said firmly.

The Colonel shook his head. “Afraid my wife is quite determined never to speak to her again. Said from this moment forth, Tossie is dead to her.” He went sadly up the stairs.

“But she’s a spiritist,” Verity said, pursuing him. “She is quite capable of speaking to the dead.”

His face lit up. “Capital idea! Could have a séance.” He went happily up the stairs. “Loves séances. Could rap out, ‘Forgive.’ Bound to work. Never thought all that medium poppycock would be of any use.”

He rapped loudly three times on the banister. “Capital idea!”

He started down the corridor and then stopped and put his hand on Verity’s arm. “Should pack and depart for the station as soon as possible. Your own best interests at heart. Nerves, you know.”

“I quite understand,” Verity said and opened the door to her room. “Mr. Henry and I shall be gone directly.” She shut her door behind her.

Colonel Mering disappeared down the corridor. A door opened and shut, but not before Mrs. Mering’s voice had boomed out like the Red Queen’s, “…gone yet? I thought I told you—”

Time to depart.

I went upstairs and into my room. I opened the wardrobe and got out my carpetbag. I set it on the bed and then sat down beside it and thought about what had just happened. The continuum had somehow managed to correct the incongruity, pairing off lovers like the last act of a Shakespearean comedy, though just how it had managed it wasn’t clear. What was clear was that it had wanted us out of the way while it was doing whatever it was doing. So it had done the time-travel equivalent of locking us in our rooms.

But why had it sent us to Coventry’s air raid, a crisis point, where presumably we could do a lot more damage? Or was Coventry a crisis point?

Its being off-limits had seemed to indicate it was a crisis point, and logically Ultra’s involvement should make it one, but perhaps the raid was only off-limits when we were looking for the bishop’s bird stump, because Verity and I had already been there. Perhaps it had been off-limits to give us a clear field.

To do what? To watch Provost Howard take candlesticks and Regimental Colors to the police station and see that the bishop’s bird stump wasn’t among the things saved? To see that it wasn’t in the church during the raid?

I would have given anything not to have seen that, not to have to tell Lady Schrapnell. But it was definitely not there. I wondered who had stolen it and when.

It had to have been that afternoon. Carruthers said the Flower Committee biddy Miss Sharpe had said she’d seen the bishop’s bird stump when she left the cathedral after the Advent Bazaar and Soldiers’ Christmas Parcel Effort meeting, that she’d stopped and pulled three dead flowers out of it.

Everything started to shift, the way it had when Finch said, “You’re on Merton’s playing fields,” and I grabbed for the bedpost like it was the pedestrian gate.

A door slammed. “Jane!” Mrs. Mering’s voice said from the corridor. “Where is my black bombazine?”

“Here, mum,” Jane’s voice said.

“O, this won’t do at all!” Mrs. Mering’s voice again. “It’s entirely too heavy for June. We shall have to order mourning clothes from Swan and Edgar’s. They had a lovely soft black crepe with jet trim on the bodice and a pleated underskirt.”

A pause, either for weeping or wardrobe-planning.

“Jane! I want you to take this note over to Notting Hill. And not a word to Mrs. Chattisbourne. Do you hear?” Slam.

“Yes, mum,” Jane said timidly.

I stood there, still clutching the bedpost, trying to recall the idea, the odd sensation I’d had a moment ago, but it was gone, as quickly as it had come, and that must have been what had happened to Mrs. Mering there in the cathedral. She hadn’t had a message from the spirit world, or from Lady Godiva either. She had looked at Baine and Tossie, and for an instant things had shifted into their true orientation, and she had seen what was happening, what was going to happen.

And then she must have lost it, because otherwise she’d have dismissed Baine on the spot and sent Tossie off on a Grand Tour of Europe. It must have gone as instantly as it came, the way mine just had, and that odd, chipped-tooth-probing look of hers had been her trying to remember what had triggered it.

The butler did it. “If I can ever do anything to repay you for returning Princess Arjumand, I should be more than obliged,” Baine had said, and he certainly had repaid me. In spades. “The butler did it,” Verity had said, and he certainly had.

Only not Verity. The fur-bearing woman in Blackwell’s. “The butler always does it,” she said, and the other one, the one with the Cyril-like fur draped over her shoulders, had said, “What you think is the first crime turns out to be the second. The real crime had happened years before. Nobody even knew the first crime had been committed.” The real crime. A crime the person was unaware of having committed. And something else. About someone marrying a farmer.

“But a butler!” Mrs. Mering’s anguished voice cried from down the corridor, followed by placating murmurs.

“Never should have let them stay in the first place!” Colonel Mering said.

“If she hadn’t met Mr. St. Trewes,” Mrs. Mering wailed, “she’d never have been thinking about marriage.” Her voice died away into sobbing murmurs, and it was nice to know other people second-guessed their actions, but it was definitely time to go.

I opened the bureau and looked at the clothes Baine had neatly stacked inside. The shirts all belonged to Elliott Chattisbourne and the Victorian era. And the collars and cuffs and nightshirt. I wasn’t as certain of the socks, but I must have been wearing the pair I’d come through in or the net wouldn’t have opened. Unless of course I was going to cause an incongruity, in which case there wouldn’t even be any increased slippage.

And if the continuum had been trying to get rid of Verity and me, why hadn’t the net just refused to open the first time we tried to come back from Oxford after we’d reported in? Why hadn’t it refused to open when Verity tried to take Princess Arjumand through? Baine wasn’t trying to drown the cat. He’d have been delighted to find Verity standing there by the gazebo with Princess Arjumand, delighted she’d waded in and rescued her. Why hadn’t it refused to open when Verity tried to come through to Muchings End in the first place? It didn’t make sense.

I opened the bottom drawer. Baine had thoughtfully folded my too-small shirts and waxed my too-small patent leather shoes. I put them in the carpetbag and looked round the room for any other stray items. Not the straight razors, thank goodness. Nor the silver-backed brushes.

My straw boater was lying on the nightstand. I started to put it on and then thought better of it. It was hardly the occasion for jauntiness.

None of it made sense. Why, if the continuum hadn’t wanted us meddling, had it landed me forty miles away? And Carruthers in a marrows field? Why had it refused to open for Carruthers for three weeks after the raid? Why had it sent me to 2018 and 1395 and Verity to 1940? And, the most important question of all, why had it brought us back now?

“An American!” Mrs. Mering shrieked from the end of the corridor. “It’s all Mr. Henry’s fault. His disgraceful American ideas of class equality!”

Definitely time to go. I closed the carpetbag and went out into the corridor. I stopped at Verity’s door and raised my hand to knock, and then thought better of that, too.

“Where is Jane?” Mrs. Mering’s voice rang out. “Why isn’t she back yet? Irish servants! This is all your fault, Mesiel. I wanted to hire—”

I made a speedy and quiet exit down the stairs. Colleen/Jane was standing at the foot of them, twisting her apron in her hands.

“Has she dismissed you?” I asked her.

“No, sorr, not yet,” she said, looking up nervously in the direction of Mrs. Mering’s room. “But she’s that angry.”

I nodded. “Has Miss Brown come down?”

“Yes, sorr. She said to tell you she would wait for you at the station.”

“The station?” I said, and then realized she meant the drop. “Thank you, Jane. Colleen. And good luck.”

“Thank you, sorr.” She started up the stairs, crossing herself as she went.

I opened the front door, and there stood Finch, in his morning coat and butler’s derby, his hand already reaching for the knocker.

“Mr. Henry,” he said. “Just the person I came to see.”

I shut the door behind me and led him over to where we couldn’t be observed from the windows.

“I’m so glad I caught you before you left, sir,” he said. “I have a dilemma.”

“I’m hardly the person to ask,” I said.

“You see, sir, my mission’s nearly completed, and I might be able to depart as early as tomorrow morning, but Mrs. Chattisbourne is having a tea tomorrow afternoon to plan the St. Anne’s Day Sale of Work. It’s terribly important to her, and so I’d planned to stay on to see that everything went well. That kitchen maid of hers, Gladys, has the mind of a rabbit, and—”

“And you’re afraid you’ll miss the consecration if you stay a few more days?” I said.

“No. I asked Mr. Dunworthy and he said it was quite all right, they could bring me through at the same time. No, my dilemma is this.” He held out a square envelope with the initials M.M. embossed in gold script on it. “It’s an offer of employment from Mrs. Mering. She wants me to come and be her butler.”

So that was why Colleen/Jane had her cloak on. With Mrs. Mering’s only daughter gone, run off to elope with the butler, and her heart broken, the first thing she had done was to send Colleen/Jane over to the Chattisbournes’ to filch Finch.

“It’s a very good offer, sir,” Finch said. “There are a number of advantages to taking it.”

“And you’re thinking of staying in the Victorian era permanently?”

“Of course not, sir! Although,” he said wistfully, “there are moments when I feel I have found my true métier here. No, my dilemma is that Muchings End is much more convenient to my mission than the Chattisbournes’. If I am reading the signs correctly, I should be able to complete my mission tonight and it won’t matter, but it might turn out to take several days. And if that were the case, my mission—”

“What is your mission anyway, Finch?” I said, exasperated.

He looked pained. “I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to say. I was sworn to secrecy by Mr. Lewis, and I have also witnessed events you are not yet aware of, and have access to information you have not, and I dare not jeopardize the success of either of our missions by speaking out of turn. As you know, sir, ‘Loose lips sink ships.’ ”

I had that odd, disorienting sensation again, of things up-ending and reorienting themselves, and I tried to grab hold of it, like I had grabbed onto the pedestrian gate.

“Loose lips sink ships.” I knew who had said that. I had, thinking about Ultra and Coventry and secrets as crisis points. It was something about Ultra, and what would have happened if the Nazis had found out we had broken their code — no, it was no use. Just as things were starting to shift, it was gone again.

“If the mission should go several days,” Finch was saying, “Muchings End is much closer both to the vicarage and the drop. And it’s not as if I would be leaving Mrs. Chattisbourne in the lurch. I have already found an excellent butler for her through an agency in London. I intend to telegraph him of the vacant position just before I leave. But it doesn’t seem fair to accept the position with Mrs. Mering when I will not be staying. I suppose I could attempt to find a second but—”

“No,” I said. “Take the position. And don’t give any notice when you leave. Just disappear. Mrs. Mering needs to suffer the slings and arrows of unreliable domestic help so she can learn to appreciate her new son-in-law. Plus, it will teach her not to steal her friends’ servants.”

“Oh, good, sir,” he said. “Thank you. I shall tell her I can take the position after Mrs. Chattisbourne’s tea party.” He started up to the door again. “And don’t worry, sir. It’s always darkest before the dawn.”

He raised the knocker, and I hurried out to the gazebo. At the last minute, I remembered the coveralls and the Burberry and went back down to the wine cellar to collect them and put them in my carpetbag to take through. The coveralls had an ARP patch on them and Burberry hadn’t begun manufacturing his raincoats till 1903, fifteen years from now, and the last thing we needed was another incongruity.

I shut up the carpetbag and started out to the drop again, wondering if Verity would be there or if she would have gone on ahead to Oxford to avoid awkward goodbyes.

But she was there, in the white hat, with her bags on either side of her, as if she were on a railway platform.

I came up beside her. “Well,” I said, setting down my carpetbag.

She looked at me from behind her white veil, and I thought, it truly is too bad I didn’t singlehandedly save the universe. Since I hadn’t, I looked at the peonies behind the gazebo and said, “When’s the next train?”

“Five minutes,” she said. “If it opens.”

“It will open,” I said. “Tossie’s married Mr. C, Terence is getting engaged to Maud, their grandson will fly a night raid to Berlin, the Luftwaffe will leave off bombing aerodromes and begin bombing London, and all’s right with the continuum.”

“In spite of us,” she said.

“In spite of us.”

We stared at the peonies.

“I suppose you’re glad it’s over,” she said. “I mean, you’ll finally be able to get what you wanted.”

I looked at her.

She looked away. “Some sleep, I mean.”

“I’m not nearly so enamored of it anymore,” I said. “I’ve learned to do without.”

We stared at the peonies some more.

“I suppose you’ll go back to your mystery novels,” I said after another silence.

She shook her head. “They’re not very true-to-life. They always end by solving the mystery and righting the wrong. Miss Marple’s never shuffled off to an air raid while they clean up the mess she’s made.” She tried to smile. “What will you do now?”

“Jumble sales, probably. I should imagine Lady Schrapnell will assign me to permanent coconut shy duty when she finds out the bishop’s bird stump wasn’t there after all.”

“Wasn’t where?”

“In the cathedral,” I said. “I got a clear view of the north aisle as we were leaving. The stand was there, but no bishop’s bird stump. I hate to tell her, she had her heart so set on its having been in the cathedral. You were right. Strange as it may seem, someone must have removed it for safekeeping.”

She frowned. “Are you certain you were looking in the right place?”

I nodded. “In front of the parclose screen of the Smiths’ Chapel, between the third and fourth pillars.”

“But that’s impossible,” she said. “It was there. I saw it.”

“When?” I said. “When did you see it?”

“Just after I came through,” she said.

“Where?”

“In the north aisle. The same place it was when we were there yesterday.”

There was a faint whisper of air, and the net began to shimmer. Verity stooped to pick up her bags and stepped down onto the grass.

“Wait.” I grabbed her arm. “Tell me exactly when and where you saw it.”

She looked anxiously at the shimmering net. “Shouldn’t we—”

“We’ll catch the next one,” I said. “Tell me exactly what happened. You came through in the sanctuary—”

She nodded. “The sirens were going, but I couldn’t hear any planes, and it was dark in the church. There was a little light on the altar and another one on the rood screen. I thought I’d better stay near the drop, in case it opened again right away. So I hid in one of the vestries and waited, and after a while I saw torches over by the vestry door, and the fire watch came in, going up to the roofs, and I heard one of them say, ‘Had we better start carrying things out of the vestries?’ so I sneaked into the Mercers’ Chapel and hid. I could still see the drop from there.”

“And then the Mercers’ Chapel caught on fire?”

She nodded. “I started for the vestry door, but there was all this smoke, and I must have got turned around. I ended up in the choir. That’s when I hit my hand on the arch and cut it. I remembered that the tower hadn’t burned, so I got down on the floor and worked my way along the choir railing to the nave and then crawled down the nave till the smoke got less thick and I could stand up.”

“And when was that?”

“I don’t know,” she said, looking anxiously at the net. “What if it doesn’t open again? Perhaps we should discuss this in Oxford.”

“No,” I said. “When did you stand up in the nave?”

“I don’t know. A little before they started carrying things out.”

The shimmer flared into light. I ignored it. “All right. You crawled down the nave—” I prompted.

“I crawled down the nave and after I’d gone about halfway, the smoke started to thin out, and I could see the west door. I took hold of the pillar I was next to and stood up, and there it was, in front of the screen. On its stand. It had a big bouquet of yellow chrysanthemums in it.”

“You’re certain it was the bishop’s bird stump?”

“It doesn’t exactly look like anything else,” she said. “Ned, what’s this all about?”

“What did you do then?”

“I thought, well, at least I’ve accomplished something. I can tell Ned it was there during the raid. If I make it out of here. And I started toward the tower door. The aisle was blocked with a pew that had got knocked over, and I had to go round it, and before I could reach the tower, the fire watch came in and started carrying things out.”

“And?” I prompted.

“I ducked across into the Cappers’ Chapel and hid.”

“How long were you in there?”

“I don’t know. A quarter of an hour or so. One of the fire watch came back in and got the altar books. I waited till he was gone, and then I went out to look for you.”

“Out the south door?” I said.

“Yes,” she said, looking at the net. It was beginning to dwindle and fade.

“Were there people outside on the steps when you went out?”

“Yes. If we’ve missed our chance to go home—”

“Did any of the fire watch go near the bishop’s bird stump?”

“No. They went into the sanctuary and the vestries and one of them ran down and got the altar cross and the candlesticks out of the Smiths’ Chapel.”

“And that’s all he got?”

“Yes.”

“You’re certain?”

“I’m certain. He had to go round the back of the nave and up the south aisle with them, because of the smoke. He ran right past me.”

“Did you see any of them in the Drapers’ Chapel?”

“No.”

“And you didn’t go in the Drapers’ Chapel?”

“I told you. I came through in the sanctuary, and I was in the Mercers’ Chapel and then the choir. And that’s all.”

“Could you see the north door from where you were hiding?”

She nodded.

“And no one went out that way?”

“It was locked,” she said. “I heard one of the fire watch tell another to unlock the north door, that the fire brigade would bring the hoses in that way, and he said they’d have to do it from the outside, because of the Smiths’ Chapel being on fire.”

“What about the west door? The tower door?”

“No. The fire watch all went out the vestry door.”

“Did you see anyone else in the cathedral?” I said. “Besides the fire watch? And the firemen?”

“In the cathedral? Ned, it was on fire.”

“What were the fire watch wearing?”

“Wearing?” she said bewilderedly. “I don’t know. Uniforms. Coveralls. I… the verger was wearing a tin helmet.”

“Were any of them wearing white?”

“White? No, of course not. Ned, what—?”

“Could you see the west door — the tower door — from where you were hiding?”

She nodded.

“And no one went out the west door while you were there? You didn’t see anyone in the Drapers’ Chapel?”

“No. Ned, what’s this all about?”

The north door was locked, and Verity had a clear view of the south door, and there were people — that knot of roof — watchers and the two louts by the lamp-post-outside the whole time.

The fire watch was using the vestry door, and shortly after Provost Howard made it out with the altar books, it was blocked by fire. And there were people by the vestry door, too. And the stout ARP warden making the rounds. And the dragon lady head of the Flower Committee was standing militant guard outside the west door. There was no way out of the cathedral.

There was no way out of the cathedral. There was no way out of the lab. And no place to hide. Except the net.

I grabbed both of Verity’s arms. I had hidden in the net, behind the theatrical curtains, and listened to Lizzie Bittner say, “I’d do anything for him.” In Oxford in 2018. Where T.J. had discovered a region of increased slippage.

“It’s because we don’t have the treasures Canterbury and Winchester have,” Lizzie Bittner had said. Lizzie Bittner, whose husband was a descendant of the Botoners who had built the church in 1395. Lizzie Bittner, who had lied about the lab’s being open. Who had a key.

“What you think is the first crime turns out to be the second,” the fur-bearing woman had said. “The first crime had happened years before.” Or after. This was time travel, after all. And in one of the Waterloo sims, the continuum had gone back to 1812 to correct itself.

And the clue, the little fact that didn’t fit, was the increased slippage. The increased slippage that hadn’t happened on Verity’s drop, that should have prevented her from rescuing the cat, from committing the incongruity in the first place. Five minutes either way would have done it, but instead there’d been nine minutes’ worth. Nine minutes that had put her right at the scene of the crime.

“Every one of the simulated incongruities has increased slippage at the site,” T.J. had said. Every single one of them. Even the ones in which the incongruity was too great for the continuum to correct it. Every single one. Except ours.

And all we had was a cluster of slippage in 2018, which T.J. had said was too great for being that far from the site. And Coventry. Which was a crisis point.

“Ned,” Verity said urgently. “What’s wrong?”

“Shh,” I said, holding onto her arms like I had held onto the green metal uprights of Merton’s pedestrian gate. I almost had it, and if I didn’t jar it with any sudden movements or distractions, I would see the whole thing.

The slippage was too far from the site, and discrepancies were only found in the immediate vicinity of the incongruity. And the fur-bearing lady in Blackwell’s had said, “I’m glad she married him.” She had been talking about some woman who had married a farmer. “If she hadn’t, she’d still be trapped in Oxford, serving on church committees and running jumble—”

“Ned?” Verity said.

“Shh.”

“She was convinced the bishop’s bird stump had been stolen,” Carruthers had said, talking about the “bitter old spinster sort,” Miss Sharpe, who had been in charge of the Flower Committee.

And the ARP warden had said, “Come along, Miss Sharpe,” to the gray-haired woman guarding the west door. The gray-haired woman who had reminded me of someone, and she had said, “I have no intention of going anywhere. I am the vice-chairman of the Cathedral Ladies’ Altar Guild and the head of the Flower Committee.”

“Miss Sharpe,” he had called her.

Miss Sharpe, who had been so upset she’d accused everyone of knowing about the raid in advance. Who’d even written a letter to the editor.

She’d sent a letter to the paper, saying someone had advance knowledge of the raid.

In Coventry, which had known about the raid in advance. Which, unlike Muchings End, wasn’t an historical backwater. Which was a crisis point. Because of Ultra.

Because if the Nazis found out we had their Enigma machine, it could change the course of the war. The course of history.

And the only instance of something being brought forward through the net was as part of a self-correction.

I was gripping Verity’s arms so hard it had to be hurting her, but I didn’t dare let go. “That young woman in the cathedral,” I said. “What was her name?”

“In the cathedral?” Verity said bewilderedly. “Ned, there wasn’t anyone in the cathedral. It was on fire.”

“Not during the raid,” I said. “The day we went there with Tossie. The young woman who came to see the curate. What was her name?”

“I don’t… It was a flower name,” she said. “Geranium or—”

“Delphinium,” I said. “Not her first name. Her last name.”

“I… it began with an ‘S.’ Sherwood, no, Sharpe,” she said, and the world shifted 180 degrees, and I wasn’t at Balliol’s gate, I was on Merton’s playing fields, and there, in Christ Church Meadow, was Coventry Cathedral, the center of it all.

“Ned,” Verity said urgently. “What is it?”

“We’ve been looking at this the wrong way round,” I said. “You didn’t cause an incongruity.”

“But — the coincidences,” she stammered, “and the increased slippage in 2018. There had to have been an incongruity.”

“There was,” I said. “And, thanks to my amazing little gray cells, I know when it happened. And what caused it.”

“What?”

“Elementary, my dear Watson. I will give you a clue. Several clues, in fact. Ultra. The Moonstone. The Battle of Waterloo. Loose lips.”

“Loose lips?” she said. “Ned—”

“Carruthers. The dog that didn’t bark in the night. Penwipers. Pigeons. The least likely suspect. And Field General Rommel.”

“Field General Rommel?”

“The battle of North Africa,” I said. “We were using Ultra to locate Rommel’s supply convoys and sink them, being careful to send out a reconnaissance plane to be seen by the convoy so the Nazis wouldn’t get suspicious.”

I told her about the fog and the plane being unable to find the convoy, the RAF and the Navy’s simultaneous arrival, and about what Ultra had done afterward — the telegram, the planted rumors, the messages intended to be intercepted. “If the Nazis had found out we had Ultra, it would have changed the outcome of the war, so they had to set in motion an elaborate intelligence mission to correct the slip-up.” I beamed at her. “Don’t you see? It all fits.”

It all fit. Carruthers being trapped in Coventry, my making Terence miss meeting Maud, Professor Overforce pushing Professor Peddick in the Thames, even all those bloody jumble sales.

The fur-bearing ladies in Blackwell’s, Hercule Poirot, T.J., Professor Peddick with his talk of the Grand Design, all of them had been trying to tell me, and I’d been too blind to see it.

Verity was looking worriedly at me. “Ned,” she said, “exactly how many drops have you had?”

“Four,” I said. “The second of which was to Blackwell’s, where I overheard three fur-bearing matrons having an extremely enlightening discussion of a mystery novel, and the first of which was to the lab in 2018, where I heard Lizzie Bittner say she would do anything to keep Coventry Cathedral from being sold to a gaggle of spiritualists.”

The net began to shimmer faintly.

“What if there was an incongruity?” I said. “A slip-up? And the continuum, trying to protect the course of history, set in motion a sophisticated system of secondary defenses to correct the problem? Like Ultra, sending out telegrams and false leads, implementing an elaborate plan involving the drowning of cats and séances and jumble sales and elopements. And dozens of agents, some of whom weren’t even aware of the true purpose of the mission.”

The peonies glittered brightly. “In the best detective tradition, I cannot prove any of this,” I said. “Therefore, Watson, we must go collect evidence.” I picked up Verity’s bags and deposited them next to the peonies. “ ‘Quick, Watson! A hansom cab!’ ”

“Where are we going?” she said suspiciously.

“To the lab. 2057. To check the Coventry local papers and the cathedral’s committee rosters for 1888 and 1940.”

I took her arm, and we stepped into the shimmering circle. “And then,” I said, “we will go to get the bishop’s bird stump.”

The light began to grow. “Hold on,” I said and stepped out of the net to get the carpetbag.

“Ned!” Verity said.

“Coming,” I said. I opened the carpetbag, took out the boater, shut the bag and carried it back into the circle. I set the bag down and put the boater on at a jaunty angle that would have made Lord Peter proud.

“Ned,” Verity said, stepping back, her greenish-brown eyes wide.

“Harriet,” I said, and pulled her back into the already shining net.

And kissed her for a hundred and sixty-nine years.