To Say Nothing of the Dog

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Verity was the first one to recover. “It’s forty-five minutes till the consecration,” she said, looking at her watch… “We’ll never make it.”

“We’ll make it,” I said, grabbing up the handheld.

I rang up Mr. Dunworthy. “We’ve got it,” I said. “We need you to get us back to Oxford. Can you send a heli?”

“Princess Victoria’s attending the consecration,” he said, which didn’t seem to be an answer to my question.

“Security measures,” Verity explained. “No helis, aircraft, or zoomers allowed in the vicinity.”

“Can you arrange ground transport then?” I asked Mr. Dunworthy.

“The tube’s faster than any ground transport that we can send,” he said. “Why not just bring it on the tube?”

“We can’t,” I said. “We need at least,” I looked over at the treasures, which Verity was already carting down the attic stairs, “270 to three hundred cubic feet of transport space.”

“For the bishop’s bird stump?” he said. “It hasn’t grown, has it?”

“I’ll explain when I get there,” I said. I gave him Mrs. Bittner’s address. “Have a crew waiting for us when we get there,” I said. “Don’t let the consecration begin till we arrive. Is Finch there?”

“No, he’s over at the cathedral,” Mr. Dunworthy said.

“Tell him to stall,” I said. “And don’t let Lady Schrapnell find out about this if you can help it. Ring me back as soon as you’ve arranged for transport.”

I stuck the handheld in my blazer pocket, picked up the bishop’s bird stump, and started down the stairs with it. The handheld rang.

“Ned,” Lady Schrapnell said. “Where have you been? The consecration’s in less than three-quarters of an hour!”

“I know,” I said. “We’re coming as fast as we can, but we need transport. Can you arrange for a lorry? Or tube transport?”

“Tube transport is only for cargo,” she said. “I don’t want you to let the bishop’s bird stump out of your sight for one second. It’s been lost once. I don’t want it lost again.”

“Neither do I,” I said and rang off.

I picked up the bishop’s bird stump again. The handheld rang.

It was Mr. Dunworthy. “You will not believe what that woman wants us to do! She wants you to take the bishop’s bird stump to the nearest net and take it back in time to two days ago so it can be cleaned and polished before the consecration.”

“Did you tell her that’s impossible, that objects can’t be in two places at the same time?”

“Of course I told her, and she said—”

“ ‘Laws are made to be broken,’ ” I said. “I know. Are you sending us a lorry?”

“There’s not a single lorry in Coventry. Lady Schrapnell recruited every single one in four counties for the consecration. Carruthers is ringing up car and solar rental agencies.”

“But we’ve got to have three hundred cubic feet,” I said. “Can’t you send a lorry from Oxford?”

“Princess Victoria,” he said. “It would take hours to get there.”

“Because of all the traffic,” Verity interpreted.

“If there’s too much traffic for a lorry to get to us, how are we supposed to get to the cathedral?”

“Everyone will be at the cathedral by the time you arrive. Oh, good,” he said to someone else. “Carruthers has got hold of a rental agency.”

“Good,” I said, and thought of something. “Don’t send a solar. It’s overcast here, looks like it might rain at any minute.”

“Oh, dear. Lady Schrapnell’s determined to have the sun shining for the consecration,” he said, and rang off.

This time I made it all the way down to the second floor with the bishop’s bird stump before the handheld rang again. It was Mr. Dunworthy again. “We’re sending a car.”

“A car won’t be big enough for—” I began.

“It should be there in ten minutes,” he said. “T.J. needs to talk to you about the incongruity.”

“Tell him I’ll talk to him when I get back,” I said, and rang off.

The handheld rang. I switched it off and finished carrying the bishop’s bird stump down to the little foyer, which was already filled with things.

“They’re sending a car,” I said to Verity. “It should be here in ten minutes,” and went in the parlor to see Mrs. Bittner.

“They’re sending a car to take us to the consecration,” I told her. She was sitting in one of the chintz-covered chairs. “Can I fetch you your coat? Or your bag?”

“No, thank you,” she said quietly. “You’re certain it’s a good idea to take the bishop’s bird stump out into the world, that it won’t alter history?”

“It already has,” I said. “And so have you. You realize what you’ve done means, don’t you? Because of you, we’ve discovered a whole class of objects which can be brought forward through the net. Other treasures which were destroyed by fire. Artworks and books and—”

“Sir Richard Burton’s writings,” she said. She looked up at me. “His wife burnt them after he died. Because she loved him.”

I sat down on the sofa. “Do you not want us to take the bishop’s bird stump?” I said.

“No.” She shook her white head. “No. It belongs in the cathedral.”

I leaned forward and took her hands. “Because of you, the past won’t be as irretrievable as we thought it was.”

“Parts of the past,” she said quietly. “You’d best go bring the rest of the things down.”

I nodded and started back up to the attic. Halfway up the stairs I ran into Verity, carefully carrying down the capper’s pall on her outstretched arms.

“It’s simply amazing,” she said in a very good imitation of Mrs. Mering’s voice, “the treasures people have in their attics.”

I grinned at her and went on up. I brought down the children’s cross and the altar plate and was on my way down with the Sixteenth-Century wooden chest when Verity called up the stairs to me. “The car’s here.”

“It’s not a solar, is it?” I called down to her.

“No,” she said. “It’s a hearse.”

“Does it have the coffin in it?”

“No.”

“Good. Then it should be large enough,” I said, and carried out the chest.

It was an ancient fossil-fueled hearse which looked like it had been used in the Pandemic, but it was at least large and opened at the back. The driver was staring at the heap of treasures. “Having a jumble sale, are you?”

“Yes,” I said, and put the chest in the back.

“It’ll never all fit,” he said.

I shoved the chest as far forward as it would go and took the silver candelabrum Verity handed me. “It’ll fit,” I said. “I am an old hand at packing. Give me that.”

It all fit, though the only way we could make it work was by putting the statue of St. Michael in the front seat. “Mrs. Bittner can sit up front,” I told Verity, “but you and I will have to sit in the back.”

“What about the bishop’s bird stump?” she said.

“It can sit on my lap.”

I went back inside to the parlor. “We’ve got the car loaded,” I said to Mrs. Bittner, “are you ready?” even though it was obvious she wasn’t. She was still sitting quietly in the chintz-covered chair.

She shook her head. “I will not be going with you after all,” she said. “My bronchitis—”

“Not going?” Verity said from the door. “But you’re the one who saved the treasures. You should go and see them in the cathedral.”

“I have already seen them in the cathedral,” she said. “They cannot look any more beautiful than they did that night, among the flames.”

“Your husband would want you there,” Verity said. “He loved the cathedral.”

“It is only an outward symbol of a larger reality,” she said. “Like the continuum.”

The driver stuck his head in the door. “I thought you said you were in a hurry.”

“We’re coming,” I said over my shoulder.

“Please come,” Verity said, kneeling beside the chair. “You should be there.”

“Nonsense,” Mrs. Bittner said. “You don’t see the guilty party accompanying Harriet and Lord Peter on their honeymoon, do you? No. The guilty party is left alone to contemplate his sins and consider the consequences of his actions, which is what I intend to do. Although in my case, the consequences are not quite what one would have expected. They take a bit of getting used to. I have been wearing sackcloth and ashes so long.”

She flashed us a sudden smile, and I saw all at once what Jim Dunworthy and Shoji Fujisaki and Bitty Bittner had all fallen in love with.

“You’re certain you won’t come?” Verity said, fighting back tears.

“Next week. When my bronchitis is better,” she said. “I’ll let you two give me a personal tour.”

“You said you had to be in Oxford by eleven,” the driver said. “You’ll never make it.”

“We’ll make it,” I said, and helped Mrs. Bittner to her feet so she could walk us out to the car.

“You’re certain you’ll be all right?” Verity said.

Mrs. Bittner patted Verity’s hand. “Perfectly all right. Everything has turned out far better than could have been expected. The Allies have won World War II,” she smiled that Zuleika Dobson smile again, “and I have got that hideous bishop’s bird stump out of my attic. What could be better?”

“I couldn’t see over the cross, so I put it up front,” the driver said. “You two will have to sit in the back.”

I kissed Mrs. Bittner on the cheek. “Thank you,” I said and crawled in. The driver handed me the bishop’s bird stump. I set it on my lap. Verity crawled in across from me, waving to Mrs. Bittner, and we were off and running.

I turned the handheld back on and rang up Mr. Dunworthy. “We’re on our way,” I said. “We should be there in about forty minutes. Tell Finch he needs to keep stalling. Have you arranged to have a crew there to meet us?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Good. Is the archbishop there yet?”

“No, but Lady Schrapnell is, and she’s having a fit. She wants to know where you found the bishop’s bird stump and what sort of flowers are supposed to go in it. For the order of service.”

“Tell her yellow chrysanthemums,” I said.

I rang off. “All taken care of,” I said to Verity.

“Not quite, Sherlock,” she said, sitting against the side of the hearse with her knees hunched up. “There are still a few things that need explaining.”

“I agree,” I said. “You said you knew what Finch’s related mission was. What is it?”

“Bringing back nonsignificant objects,” she said.

“Nonsignificant objects? But we’ve only just found out that’s possible,” I said. “And nonsignificant objects didn’t have anything to do with our incongruity.”

“True,” she said, “but for over a week, T.J. and Mr. Dunworthy thought they did and were trying all sorts of things.”

“But nothing burned down in Muchings End or Iffley while we were there. What did Finch bring through? Cabbages?”

The handheld rang. “Ned,” Lady Schrapnell said. “Where are you?”

“On our way,” I said. “Between—” I leaned forward to our driver. “Where are we?”

“Between Banbury and Adderbury,” he said.

“Between Banbury and Adderbury,” I said. “We’ll be there as soon as we can.”

“I still don’t see why we couldn’t have shipped it back to the past,” Lady Schrapnell said. “It would have been so much simpler. Is the bishop’s bird stump in good shape?”

There was no answer to that. “We’ll be there as soon as we can,” I said again, and rang off.

“All right, it’s my turn to ask the questions,” Verity said. “There’s still something I don’t understand. How did getting Tossie to Coventry on the fifteenth of June to see the bishop’s bird stump and fall in love with Baine fix the incongruity?”

“It didn’t,” I said. “That isn’t why Tossie was there.”

“But her seeing the bishop’s bird stump inspired Lady Schrapnell to rebuild Coventry and send me back to read the diary, which led me to rescue Princess Arjumand—”

“Which was all part of the self-correction. But the principal reason Tossie had to be there on the fifteenth was so she could be caught flirting with the Reverend Mr. Doult.”

“Oh!” she said. “By the girl with the penwipers.”

“Very good, Harriet,” I said. “The girl with the penwipers. Whose name was Miss Delphinium Sharpe.”

“The woman in charge of the Flower Committee.”

“Not anymore,” I said. “When she saw Tossie flirting with the Reverend Mr. Doult, she was, you may remember, extremely upset. She flounced off with her penwipers, and as we were leaving the church, she was walking up Bayley Lane, her long nose in the air. I saw the Reverend Mr. Doult hurrying after her to placate her. And, now this is the part I’m not certain of, but my guess is, in the course of the argument that followed, she burst into tears, and he ended up proposing. Which meant that the Reverend Mr. Doult didn’t stay in the cathedral position, but obtained a church living in some rural vicarage.”

“That’s why you wanted the list of church livings.”

“Very good, Harriet. He was much quicker off the mark than I expected. He married her in 1891 and got a parish the following year in Northumberland.”

“So she was nowhere near Coventry on the night of the fourteenth of November, 1940,” she said. “And, being busy with parish jumble sales and scrap metal drives, paid no attention to a certain bishop’s bird stump being missing.”

“So she didn’t write a letter to the editor,” I said, “and everyone else just assumed it had burned up in the fire.”

“And Ultra’s secret was safe.” She frowned. “And the whole thing, my rescuing Princess Arjumand and us going to Oxford to see Madame Iritosky and your preventing Terence from meeting Maud and loaning him the money for the boat and the séance and everything, it was all part of the self-correction? Everything?”

“Everything,” I said, and then thought about what I’d said. Just how elaborate had the self-correction been and what all had been involved? Professor Peddick’s and Professor Overforce’s feud? The Psychic Research Society? The donation of the sugared-violets box to the jumble sale? The fur-bearing ladies in Blackwell’s?

“I still don’t understand,” Verity said. “If all the continuum needed to do was to keep Delphinium Sharpe from writing a letter to the editor, there had to be simpler ways to do it.”

“It’s a chaotic system,” I said. “Every event is connected to every other. To make even a small change would require far-reaching adjustments.”

But how far-reaching? I wondered. Had the Luftwaffe been involved? And Agatha Christie? And the weather?

“I know it’s a chaotic system, Ned,” Verity was saying. “But there was an air raid going on. If the self-correction’s an automatic mechanism, a direct hit would have corrected the incongruity much more simply and directly than some scheme involving cats and trips to Coventry.”

A direct hit from a high-explosive bomb would have eliminated any threat Delphinium Sharpe posed to Ultra, and there wouldn’t have been any consequences. Over five hundred people had been killed in Coventry that night.

“Perhaps Delphinium Sharpe, or one of the other people in the west door that night, had some other part to play in history,” I said, thinking of the stout ARP warden and the woman with the two children.

“I’m not talking about Delphinium Sharpe,” Verity said. “I’m talking about the bishop’s bird stump. If the Smiths’ Chapel had taken a direct hit, Miss Sharpe would have believed the bishop’s bird stump was destroyed and wouldn’t have written her letter. Or it could have taken a direct hit before Lizzie Bittner came through, so she couldn’t cause the incongruity in the first place.”

She was right. A direct hit was all it would have taken. Unless the high-explosive bomb would alter something else. Or unless the bishop’s bird stump had some other part to play in the plan. Or the continuum had some other, subtler reason for using the correction it had.

Plans, intentions, reasons. I could hear Professor Overforce now. “I knew it! This is nothing but an argument for a Grand Design!”

A Grand Design we couldn’t see because we were part of it. A Grand Design we only got occasional, fleeting glimpses of. A Grand Design involving the entire course of history and all of time and space that, for some unfathomable reason, chose to work out its designs with cats and croquet mallets and penwipers, to say nothing of the dog. And a hideous piece of Victorian artwork. And us.

“History is character,” Professor Peddick had said. And character had certainly played a part in the self-correction-Lizzie Bittner’s devotion to her husband and the Colonel’s refusal to wear a coat in rainy weather, Verity’s fondness for cats and Princess Arjumand’s fondness for fish and Hitler’s temper and Mrs. Mering’s gullibility. And my time-laggedness. If they were part of the self-correction, what did that do to the notion of free will? Or was free will part of the plan as well?

“There’s something else I don’t understand,” Verity said. “The incongruity was repaired when Tossie eloped with Baine, right?”

I nodded.

“Then why was Delphinium Sharpe there? Didn’t T.J. say the probabilities collapsed into the true course of events as soon as the incongruity was repaired?”

“But the incongruity hadn’t been repaired when we were there,” I said. “Baine had thrown Tossie in the water, but they hadn’t run off together yet. And until they did, the incongruity still wasn’t completely repaired.”

“Of course they had. They’d run off together on June eighteenth, 1888. And it was a foregone conclusion once he kissed her, so why were we sent to Coventry at all? It obviously wasn’t to make Tossie elope with Baine.”

I knew the answer to that one at least. “To find the bishop’s bird stump,” I said. “I needed to see the doors and the empty wrought-iron stand to realize what had happened.”

“But why?” she said, still frowning. “It could have fixed it without even letting us know it had.”

“Out of pity?” I said. “Because it knew Lady Schrapnell would kill me if I didn’t find it in time for the consecration?”

But she was right. The bishop’s bird stump could have continued to sit in Mrs. Bittner’s attic, gathering dust, now that the incongruity was fixed and the Nazis hadn’t found out about Ultra. So why had I been sent to the lab in 2018 and to Blackwell’s and the air raid and been given such obvious clues if it hadn’t mattered whether the bishop’s bird stump was found or not? Would its eventual discovery after Mrs. Bittner’s death have caused some other incongruity? Or was there some reason it needed to be in the cathedral for the consecration?

“We’re coming up on Oxford,” the driver said. “Where do you want me to go?”

“Just a minute,” I said and rang up Mr. Dunworthy.

Finch answered. “Thank goodness,” he said. “Take Parks Road to Holywell and Longwell and then turn south on the High and turn off onto Merton’s playing fields. Take the access road. We’ll be waiting for you at the vestry door. Do you know where that is?”

“Yes,” I said. “Did you get that?” I asked the driver.

He nodded. “You’re taking this lot to the cathedral?”

“Yes.”

“Waste of money and everybody’s time, if you ask me,” he said. “I mean, what good is a cathedral?”

“You’d be surprised,” Verity said.

“Turn in here,” I said, looking for Merton’s pedestrian gate. “Finch, we’re here,” I said into the handheld, and to the driver again, “Go round to the east end. The vestry door’s on the south side.”

He pulled up next to the vestry door, where Finch had a dozen people waiting for us. One of them opened the back door, and Verity scrambled out and started giving orders. “The altar cloth goes in the Smiths’ Chapel,” she said, “and so does this candlestick. Take care you don’t get the reconstructions mixed up with the real things. Ned, hand me the capper’s pall.”

I laid it over her outstretched arms, and she started up the steps with it.

I picked up the handheld. “Finch, where are you?”

“Right here, sir,” he said at the door of the hearse. He was still in his butler’s frock coat, though his sleeve was now dry.

I handed him the enameled pyx. “The consecration hasn’t begun yet, has it?”

“No, sir,” he said. “There was an unfortunate jam-up in St. Aldate’s. Fire engines and ambulances completely blocking the street. It turned out to have all been an unfortunate mix-up,” he said, completely poker-faced, “but it took some time to clear up. No one was able to get near Christ Church Meadow for nearly an hour. And then the bishop was delayed. His driver took a wrong turn and ended up in Iffley. And now there seems to be some mix-up over the tickets.”

I shook my head admiringly. “Jeeves would have been proud of you. To say nothing of Bunter. And the Admirable Crichton.” I lifted out the bishop’s bird stump.

“Can I take that for you, sir?”

“I want to deliver this myself.” I nodded with my head at the children’s cross. “That goes in the Girdlers’ Chapel. And the statue of St. Michael goes in the choir.”

“Yes, sir,” he said. “Mr. Lewis is looking for you. He has something he needs to discuss with you concerning the continuum.”

“Fine,” I said, wrestling with the misericord. “As soon as this mess is over.”

“Yes, sir,” he said. “And at some point, sir, I need to speak with you about my mission.”

“Just tell me one thing,” I said, sliding the misericord out and handing it over to two first-year students. “Was your mission bringing back nonsignificant objects?”

He looked appalled. “It most certainly was not.”

I picked up the bishop’s bird stump. “Do you know where Lady Schrapnell is?”

“She was in the vestry a moment ago, sir.” He looked up at the sky. “Oh dear, it’s looking more and more like rain. And Lady Schrapnell wanted everything to be just as it was on the day of the raid.”

I carried the bishop’s bird stump up the steps and in the vestry door, and this was appropriate: carrying the bishop’s bird stump in through the same door Provost Howard had carried the candlesticks and the crucifix and the Regimental Colors out of. The treasures of Coventry.

I opened the door and took it into the vestry. “Where’s Lady Schrapnell?” I asked an historian I recognized from Jesus.

She shrugged and shook her head. “No,” she called to someone in the sanctuary. “We still need hymnals for the last five rows of pews in the north aisle. And three Books of Common Prayer.”

I went out into the choir. And chaos. People were running about, shouting orders, and there was a loud sound of hammering from the Mercers’ Chapel.

“Who took the Book of the Epistles?” a curate shouted from the lectern. “It was here just a moment ago.”

There was a chord from the organ, and the opening notes of “God Works in a Mysterious Way His Wonders to Perform.” A thin woman in a green apron was sticking long pink gladiolas in a brass vase in front of the pulpit, and a stout woman in glasses with a sheet of paper was going up to person after person, asking them something. Probably she was looking for Lady Schrapnell, too.

The organ stopped, and the organist shouted up to someone in the clerestory, “The trumpet stop’s not working.” Choirboys in linen surplices and red cassocks were wandering about. Warder must have got the surplices ironed, I thought irrelevantly.

“I don’t see what it matters whether the inside of the choir stalls is finished,” a blonde with a long nose was saying to a boy lying half under one of the choir stalls. “Nobody will be able to see it from the congregation.”

“ ‘Ours is not to reason why,’ ” the boy said. “ ‘Ours is but to do or die.’ Hand me that laser, will you?”

“Pardon me,” I said. “Can either of you tell me where Lady Schrapnell is?”

“The last time I saw her,” the boy said from under the choir stall, “she was in the Drapers’ Chapel.”

But she wasn’t in the Drapers’ Chapel, or the sanctuary, or up in the clerestory. I went down into the nave.

Carruthers was there, sitting in a pew folding orders of service.

“Have you seen Lady Schrapnell?” I said.

“She was just here,” he said disgustedly. “Which is how I got stuck doing this. She suddenly decided at the last minute that the orders of service had to be reprinted.” He looked up. “Good Lord, you found it! Where was it?”

“It’s a long story,” I said. “Which way did she go?”

“Vestry. Wait. Before you go, I want to ask you something. What do you think of Peggy?”

“Peggy?”

“Warder,” he said. “Don’t you think she’s the sweetest, most adorable creature you’ve ever seen?”

“Don’t you have the orders of service folded yet?” Warder said, coming up. “Lady Schrapnell wants them for the ushers.”

“Where is she?” I asked her.

“The Mercers’ Chapel,” Warder said, and I made my escape.

But Lady Schrapnell wasn’t in the Mercers’ Chapel or the baptistry, and there were signs of activity near the west door. I was going to have to return the bishop’s bird stump myself.

I carried it across to the Smiths’ Chapel, thinking, now the wrought-iron stand will have disappeared, but it was there, right where it was supposed to be, in front of the parclose screen. I set the bishop’s bird stump carefully on it.

Flowers. It needed flowers. I went back up to the pulpit and the woman in the green apron. “The vase in front of the parclose screen of the Smiths’ Chapel needs flowers in it,” I said. “Yellow chrysanthemums.”

“Yellow chrysanthemums!” she said, snatching up a handheld and looking at it in alarm. “Did Lady Schrapnell send you? The order didn’t say anything about yellow chrysanthemums.”

“It’s a last-minute addition,” I said. “You haven’t seen Lady Schrapnell, have you?”

“Girdlers’ Chapel,” she said, jamming gladiolas in the pulpit vase. “Chrysanthemums! Where am I supposed to get yellow chrysanthemums?”

I started down the transept aisle. It was jammed with choirboys and people in academic dress. “All right!” a young man the spitting image of the Reverend Mr. Arbitage said. “Here’s the order of procession. First, the censer, followed by the choir. Then the members of the history faculty, by college. Mr. Ransome, where is your robe? The instructions clearly said full academic regalia.”

I sidled back along one of the pews to the north aisle and started up the nave. And saw Mr. Dunworthy.

He was at the entrance to the Girdlers’ Chapel, standing against one of the arches and holding onto it for support. He was holding a sheet of paper, and as I watched, it fluttered from his hand onto the floor.

“What is it?” I said, hurrying up to him. “Are you all right?”

I put my arm round him. “Come here,” I said, leading him to the nearest pew. “Sit down.” I retrieved the piece of paper and sat down next to him. “What is it?”

He smiled a little wanly at me. “I was just looking at the children’s cross,” he said, pointing to where it hung in the Girdlers’ Chapel. “And realizing what it means. We were so busy trying to solve the incongruity and pull Carruthers out and work with Finch, it never hit me till now what we’ve discovered.”

He reached for the sheet of paper I had picked up. “I have been making a list,” he said.

I looked at the sheet of paper in my hand. “The library at Lisbon,” it read. “The Los Angeles Public Library. Carlyle’s The French Revolution. The library at Alexandria.”

I looked at him.

“All destroyed by fire,” he said. “A maid burnt the only copy of Carlyle’s The French Revolution by mistake.” He took the paper from me. “This is what I was able to think of in just a few minutes.”

He folded up the list. “St. Paul’s Cathedral was vaporized by a pinpoint bomb,” he said. “All of it. The painting of The Light of the World, Nelson’s tomb, the statue of John Donne. To think that they might—”

The curate came up. “Mr. Dunworthy,” he said. “You are supposed to be in line.”

“Have you seen Lady Schrapnell?” I asked the curate.

“She was in the Drapers’ Chapel a moment ago,” he said. “Mr. Dunworthy, are you ready?”

“Yes,” Mr. Dunworthy said. He took off his mortarboard, tucked the list inside, and put it back on again. “I am ready for anything.”

I headed up the nave to the Drapers’ Chapel. The transept aisle was full of milling dons, and Warder was in the choir, trying to line up the choirboys. “No, no, no!” she was shouting. “Don’t sit down! You’ll wrinkle your surplices. I’ve just ironed them. And line up. I don’t have all day!”

I edged past her and over to the Drapers’ Chapel. Verity was there, standing in front of the stained-glass window, her beautiful head bent over a sheet of paper.

“What’s that?” I asked, going over to her. “The order of service?”

“No,” she said. “It’s a letter. Remember how, after we found Maud’s letter, I suggested to the forensics expert that she see if any letters Tossie might have sent to other people existed?” She held it up. “She found one.”

“You’re joking,” I said. “And I suppose it’s got Baine’s name in it.”

“No, Tossie’s still calling him her ‘beloved husband.’ And she signs it ‘Toots.’ But there are some very interesting things in it,” she said, sitting down in one of the carved pews. “Listen to this: ‘My darling Terence-’ ”

“Terence?” I said. “What on earth’s she doing writing to Terence?”

“He wrote to her,” she said. “That letter’s lost. This is Tossie’s reply.”

“Terence wrote her?”

“Yes,” Verity said. “Listen: ‘My darling Terence, Words cannot properly express how happy your letter of the third made me.’ ‘Happy’ is underlined. ‘I had given up all hope of ever hearing of my precious Princess Arjumand in this world!!’ ‘World’—”

“Is underlined,” I said.

“And there are two exclamation points,” Verity said. She read on: “ ‘We were already far out to sea when I discovered her missing. My beloved husband did everything in his power to convince the captain to return to port at once, but he cruelly refused, and I thought I would never see my dearum precious Juju again in this life or know of her Fate.’ ”

“Pretty much the whole thing’s underlined,” Verity said, “and Fate is capitalized.” She read, “ ‘You cannot imagine my joy when I received your letter. It was my great fear that she had perished in the briny deep, and now to hear that she is not only alive but with you!’ ”

“What?” I said.

“The entire thing’s underlined from here on out,” Verity said. “ ‘To think of my delicate darling travelling all the way from Plymouth to Kent when Muchings End would have been much closer! But perhaps it is for the best. Mama has written that Papa recently acquired a new golden veiltail ryunkin. And I know that you will give her a good home.

“ ‘Thank you for your kind offer to send Princess Arjumand to me in the care of Dawson, but my beloved husband and I agree that, given her dislike of water, it is best that she remain in your care. I know that you and your bride Maud will love and cherish her as I have. Mama wrote me of your marriage. Though it seems to me to have been a bit hasty, and I sincerely hope that it was not done on the rebound, I am gladder than I can say that you have been able to forget me, and it is my fervent hope that you will be as happy as I and my beloved husband are! Kiss Princess Arjumand and stroke her dear sweet fur for me, and tell her that her muvver finks of her dearum dearums darling evewy day. Gratefully, Toots Callahan.’ ”

“Poor Cyril,” I said.

“Nonsense,” Verity said. “They were made for each other.”

“So are we,” I said.

She ducked her head.

“So, how’s about it, Harriet?” I said. “We make a jolly good detectin’ team, eh what? What say we make the partnership permanent?”

“No!” Warder shouted. “I told you not to sit down. Look at those wrinkles! Those surplices are linen!”

“Well, Watson?” I said to Verity. “What do you say?”

“I don’t know,” she said miserably. “What if it’s just time-lag? Look at Carruthers. He thinks he’s in love with Warder—”

“That is absolutely out of the question!” Warder snapped at a small boy. “You should have thought of that before you put your surplice on!”

“Look at her! What if, now that this is all over,” Verity said, looking earnestly up at me, you’re able to get some rest, you recover from your time-lag, and decide the entire thing was a dreadful mistake?”

“Nonsense,” I said, backing her against the wall. “Also balderdash, pishtosh, stuff-and-nonsense, humbug, and pshaw! To say nothing of poppycock! In the first place, you know perfectly well that the first time I saw you, wringing out your sleeve on Mr. Dunworthy’s carpet, it was ‘The Lady of Shalott’ to the life-webs flying, mirrors splintering, threads and glass all over the place.”

I put my hand on the wall above her head and leaned toward her. “In the second place,” I said, “it’s your patriotic duty.”

“My patriotic duty?”

“Yes. We’re part of a self-correction, remember? If we don’t get married, something dire’s likely to happen: the Nazis will realize we have Ultra, or Lady Schrapnell will give her money to Cambridge, or the continuum will collapse.”

“There you are,” Finch said, hurrying in with a handheld and a large pasteboard box. “I’ve been looking for you everywhere. Mr. Dunworthy said you and Miss Kindle were to have one, but I didn’t know if that meant one or two.”

I had no idea what he was talking about, but after a week in the Victorian era I was no longer bothered by the fact. “One,” I said.

“Yes, sir,” he said. “One,” he said into the handheld and set it down on a monument. “Mr. Dunworthy said that in light of your valuable contributions, you were to have first pick. Did you have a preference in color?” he said, opening the box.

“Yes,” Verity said. “Black. With white paws.”

“What?” I said.

“I told you he was bringing back nonsignificant objects,” Verity said.

“I should hardly call them nonsignificant,” Finch said, and lifted out a kitten.

It was the exact image of Princess Arjumand, down to the white pantaloons on her back feet, only in miniature.

“Where?” I said. “How? Cats are an extinct species.”

“Yes, sir,” he said, handing the kitten to Verity, “but there was an overabundance of them in Victorian times, with the result that farmers frequently drowned litters of kittens in an attempt to keep the population down.”

“And when I brought Princess Arjumand through,” Verity said, holding the kitten in her hand and petting it, “T.J. and Mr. Dunworthy decided to see if the kittens, once they had been put in a bag and thrown in the pond, would be nonsignificant.”

“So you were wandering all over the countryside looking for pregnant cats,” I said, looking in the box. There were two dozen kittens inside, most with their eyes still closed. “Are any of these Mrs. Marmalade’s?”

“Yes, sir,” he said, pointing at several little balls of fur. “These three tabbies and this calico. They are of course all too young to be weaned, but Mr. Dunworthy said to tell you you could have yours in five weeks. Princess Arjumand’s are slightly older since they were not found for nearly three weeks.”

He took the kitten away from Verity. “The cat will not actually belong to you,” Finch said, “and you will need to return it to the lab for cloning and regular breeding. There are not enough yet for a viable gene pool, but we have contacted the Sorbonne, Caltech, and the University of Thailand, and I will be returning to Victorian England for additional specimens.” He put the kitten back in the box.

“Can we come and see it?” Verity said.

“Certainly,” Finch said. “And you will need to be trained in its care and feeding. I recommend a diet of milk and—”

“Globe-eyed nacreous ryunkins,” I said.

Finch’s handheld bleeped. He looked at it and scooped up the pasteboard box. “The archbishop’s here, and the usher guarding the west door says it’s starting to rain. We’re going to have to let the crowd in. I must find Lady Schrapnell. Have you seen her?”

We both shook our heads.

“I’d best go find her,” he said, scooping up the pasteboard box. He bustled off.

“In the third place,” I said to Verity, picking up where I had left off, “I happen to know from that day in the boat that you feel exactly the same way I do, and if you’re waiting for me to propose in Latin—”

“There you are, Ned,” T.J. said. He was carrying a small screen and a portable comp hookup. “I need to show you something.”

“The consecration’s about to start,” I said. “Can’t it wait?”

“I don’t think so,” he said.

“It’s all right,” Verity said, “I’ll be right back,” and slipped out of the chapel.

“What is it?” I said to T.J.

“It probably isn’t anything,” T.J. said. “It’s very likely a mathematical error. Or a glitch in the system.”

“What is it?” I repeated.

“All right, do you remember how you asked me to shift the focus of the incongruity to Coventry 1940, and I did, and I told you it matched the Waterloo soup-kettle sim nearly perfectly.”

“Yes,” I said warily.

“Yes, well, ‘nearly’ is the operative word.” He brought one of his blurry gray models up on the screen. “It matched very well in the peripheral slippage, and along the main areas here, and here,” he said, pointing at indistinguishable areas. “But not in the slippage surrounding the site. And although there was slippage at the site of Mrs. Bittner’s bringing the bishop’s bird stump through, it wasn’t radically increased.”

“There wouldn’t have been room for radically increased slippage, would there?” I said. “Lizzie Bittner had to go in within a very narrow window of time — between the time the treasures were last seen and their destruction by the fire. She only had a few minutes. Increased slippage would have put her right in the middle of the fire.”

“Yes, well, even taking that into consideration, there is still the problem of the surrounding slippage,” he said, pointing at nothing. “So,” he said, flicking some more keys, “I tried moving the focus forward.” A nondescript gray picture came up.

“Forward?”

“Yes. Of course, I didn’t have enough data to pick a space-time location like you did, so what I did was to consider the surrounding slippage to be peripheral and to extrapolate new surrounding slippage, and then extrapolate a new focus from that.”

He called up another gray picture. “Okay, this is the model of Waterloo. I’m going to superimpose it over the model with the new focus.” He did. “You can see it matches.”

I could. “Where does that put the focus?” I said. “What year?”

“2678,” he said.

2678. Over six hundred years in the future.

“The fifteenth of June, 2678,” he said. “As I said, it’s probably nothing. An error in the calculations.”

“And if it isn’t?”

“Then Mrs. Bittner’s bringing the bishop’s bird stump through isn’t the incongruity.”

“But if it isn’t the incongruity… ?”

“It’s part of the self-correction as well,” T.J. said.

“The self-correction of what?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Something that hasn’t happened yet. Something that’s going to happen in—”

“—in 2678,” I said. “What’s the focus’s location?” I asked, wondering if it would be as far-flung as the date. Addis Ababa? Mars? The Lesser Magellanic Cloud?

“Oxford,” he said. “Coventry Cathedral.”

Coventry Cathedral. On the fifteenth of June. Verity had been right. We were intended to find the bishop’s bird stump and return it to the cathedral. And all of it, the selling of the new cathedral and Lady Schrapnell’s rebuilding of the old one and our discovery that nonsignificant treasures could be brought forward through the net were all part of the same huge self-correction, some Grand—

“I’m going to double-check all the calculations and run some logic tests on the model,” T.J. said. “Don’t worry. It’ll probably turn out to be nothing more than a flaw in the Waterloo sim. It’s only a rough model.”

He touched some keys, and the gray disappeared. He began folding up the screen.

“T.J.,” I said. “What do you think determined the outcome of the Battle of Waterloo? Napoleon’s handwriting or his hemorrhoids?”

“Neither,” he said. “And I don’t think it was any of the things we did sims on — Gneisenau’s retreat to Wavre or the lost messenger or the fire at La Sainte Haye.”

“What do you think it was?” I asked curiously.

“A cat,” he said.

“A cat?”

“Or a cart or a rat or—”

“—the head of a church committee,” I murmured.

“Exactly,” he said. “Something so insignificant no one even noticed it. That’s the problem with models — they only include the details people think are relevant, and Waterloo was a chaotic system. Everything was relevant.”

“And we’re all Ensign Kleppermans,” I said, “suddenly finding ourselves in positions of critical importance.”

“Yeah,” he said, grinning, “and we all know what happened to Ensign Klepperman. And what’s going to happen to me if I don’t get over to the vestry. Lady Schrapnell wants me to light the candles in the chapels.” He hastily grabbed up the screen and the comp setup. “I’d better get busy lighting. It looks like they’re about to begin.”

It did. The choirboys and dons were more or less lined up, the woman in the green apron was gathering up scissors and buckets and flower-wrappings, the boy had come out from under the choir stall. “Is the trumpet stop working now?” a voice called down from the clerestory, and the organist shouted back, “Yes.” Carruthers and Warder were standing by the south door, their arms full of orders of service and each other. I went out into the nave, looking for Verity.

“Where have you been?” Lady Schrapnell said, bearing down on me. “I have been looking all over for you.” She put her hands on her hips. “Well,” she demanded. “I thought you said you’d found the bishop’s bird stump. Where is it? You haven’t lost it again, have you?”

“No,” I said. “It’s in front of the parclose screen of the Smiths’ Chapel where it’s supposed to be.”

“I want to see it,” she said and started for the nave.

There was a fanfare, and the organist launched into “O God Who Doeth Great Things and Unsearchable.” The choirboys opened their hymnals. Carruthers and Warder pulled apart and took up their positions by the south door.

“I don’t think there’s time,” I said. “The consecration’s about to start.”

“Nonsense,” she said, barging through the choirboys. “There’s plenty of time. The sun isn’t out yet.”

She pushed through the dons, parting them like the Red Sea, and started down the north aisle to the Smiths’ Chapel.

I followed her, hoping the bishop’s bird stump hadn’t mysteriously disappeared again. It hadn’t. It was still there, on its wrought-iron flower stand. The woman in the green apron had filled it with a lovely arrangement of white Easter lilies.

“There it is,” I said, presenting it proudly. “After untold trials and tribulations. The bishop’s bird stump. What do you think?”

“Oh, my,” she said, and pressed her hand to her bosom. “It really is hideous, isn’t it?”

“What?” I said.

“I know my great-great-great-great-grandmother is supposed to have liked it, but my God! What is that supposed to be?” she said, pointing at the base. “Some kind of dinosaur?”

“The Signing of the Magna Carta,” I said.

“I’m almost sorry I had you waste so much time looking for it,” she said. She looked thoughtfully at it. “I don’t suppose it’s breakable?” she said hopefully.

“No,” I said.

“Well, I suppose we have to have it for authenticity’s sake. I certainly hope the other churches don’t have anything this hideous in them.”

“Other churches?” I said.

“Yes, haven’t you heard?” she said. “Now that we’re able to bring objects forward through the net, I have all sorts of projects planned. The San Francisco earthquake, the MGM back lot, Rome before the fire Julius Caesar set—”

“Nero,” I said.

“Yes, of course. You will have to bring back the fiddle Nero played.”

“But it didn’t burn in the fire,” I said. “Only objects that have been reduced to their component parts—”

She waved her hand dismissively. “Laws are made to be broken. We’ll start with the fourteen Christopher Wren churches that were burned in the Blitz, and then—”

“We?” I said weakly.

“Yes, of course. I’ve already specifically requested you.” She stopped and glared at the bishop’s bird stump. “Why are those lilies? They are supposed to be yellow chrysanthemums.”

“I think lilies are extremely appropriate,” I said. “After all, the cathedral and all its treasures have been raised from the dead. The symbolism—”

She wasn’t impressed with the symbolism. “The order of service says yellow chrysanthemums,” she said. “ ‘God is in the details.’ ” She stormed off to find the poor defenseless woman in the green apron.

I stood there, looking at the bishop’s bird stump. Fourteen Christopher Wren churches. And the MGM back lot. To say nothing of what she might come up with when she Realized What It Meant.

Verity came up. “What’s wrong, Ned?” she said.

“I am fated to spend my entire life working for Lady Schrapnell and attending jumble sales,” I said.

“Pish-tosh!” she said. “You are fated to spend your life with me.” She handed me the kitten. “And Penwiper.”

The kitten didn’t weigh anything. “Penwiper,” I said, and it looked up at me with gray-green eyes.

“Mere,” it said, and began to purr, a very small purr. A purrlet.

“Where did you get this kitten?” I said to Verity.

“I stole it,” she said. “Don’t look like that. I intend to take it back. And Finch will never miss it.”

“I love you,” I said, shaking my head. “If I’m fated to spend my life with you, does that mean you’ve decided to marry me?”

“I have to,” she said. “I just ran into Lady Schrapnell. She’s decided what this cathedral needs is—”

“A wedding?” I said.

“No, a christening. So they can use the Purbeck marble baptismal font.”

“I don’t want you to do anything you don’t want to,” I said. “I could sic Lady Schrapnell on Carruthers and Warder, and you could make a run for it to someplace safe. Like the Battle of Waterloo.”

There was a fanfare, the organ launched into “The Heavens Are Declaring the Glory of God,” and the sun came out. The east windows burst into blue and red and purple flame. I looked up. The clerestory was one long unbroken band of gold, like the net at the moment of opening. It filled the cathedral with light, illuminating the silver candlesticks and the children’s cross and the underside of the choir stalls, the choirboys and workmen and eccentric dons, the statue of St. Michael and the Dance of Death and the orders of service. Illuminating the cathedral itself — a Grand Design made of a thousand thousand details.

I looked at the bishop’s bird stump, cradling the kitten in the crook of my arm. The stained-glass window behind outlined the bishop’s bird stump in glorious colors, and the window of the Dyers’ Chapel opposite tinted the camels and the cherubs and the Execution of Mary, Queen of Scots emerald and ruby and sapphire.

“It is hideous, isn’t it?” I said.

Verity took my hand. “Placet,” she said.