Neither, I thought. “Down,” I said. “Where is the telegraph office?”

“Down,” she said delightedly. “Then you’ve already seen it. Lovely, isn’t it?” She handed me a fringed yellow satin pillow with the mill and “Souvenir of Iffley” stencilled on it.

I handed it back. “Very nice. Where can I send a telegram?”

“From the postal office, but I always think it’s so much nicer to send a letter, don’t you?” She whipped out writing paper. Each sheet had “Greetings from Abingdon,” inscribed on the top. “Ha’pence a sheet and a penny for the envelope.”

“No, thank you. Where did you say the postal office was?”

“Just down the street. Opposite the abbey gate. Have you seen it? We’ve got a lovely replica of it. Or perhaps you’d like one of our china dogs. Handpainted. Or we’ve some lovely penwipers.”

I ended up buying a china bulldog that bore no resemblance to Cyril—or to a poodle for that matter—to get away, and sought out the gate and the postal office.

Professor Peddick wasn’t there, and the mobcapped old woman behind the counter didn’t know if he had been. “My husband’s gone home for his dinner. He’ll be back in an hour. Out for a trip on the river, are you?” she said, and tried to sell me a vase with a picture of Iffley Mill painted on it.

He hadn’t been in the greengrocer’s either. I bought a souvenir tooth glass inscribed “Holiday Greetings from the River Thames.” “Have you any salmon?” I asked.

“We do,” yet another mobcapped old woman said and set a tin on the counter.

“I meant fresh,” I said.

“You can catch it yourself,” she said. “Abingdon’s got the best fishing on the entire river,” and tried to sell me a pair of rubber fishing waders.

I came out of the shop and said to Cyril, who had been waiting patiently outside each door, “Where to now?”

Abingdon had been built around a mediaeval abbey. The ruins, including the granary and a croft, were still there, and they seemed like the likeliest places for Professor Peddick to be, but he wasn’t there. Or in the cloisters.

Neither was anyone else. I knelt down next to the cloister wall, set the bottle of milk on a stone, and opened the carpetbag.

Cyril sat down, looking disapproving.

“Princess Arjumand?” I said, lifting her out. “Want some breakfast?”

I set her down, and she walked a few feet across the grass and then took off like a shot and disappeared round the corner of a wall.

I told you so, Cyril said.

“Well, don’t just stand there. Go after her,” I said.

Cyril continued sitting.

He had a point. Our chasing after her in the woods hadn’t been a roaring success. “Well, what do you suggest then?”

He lay down, his muzzle against the milk bottle, and it wasn’t a bad idea. I got the saucer out of the carpetbag and poured some milk into it. “Here, cat,” I called, setting it out in front of the wall. “Breakfast!”

As I say, it wasn’t a bad idea. It did not, however, work. Neither did searching the ruins. Or the town square. Or the streets of half-timbered houses.

“You knew what cats were like,” I said to Cyril. “Why didn’t you warn me?”

But it was my fault. I had let her out, and she was probably on her way to London this morning to meet Gladstone and cause the fall of Mafeking.

We had come to the outskirts of the village. The road petered out and ended in a hay field crisscrossed with narrow streams.

“Perhaps she’s gone back to the boat,” I said hopefully to Cyril, but he wasn’t listening. He was looking at a dirt path leading off toward a bridge over a narrow stream.

And there by the bridge was Professor Peddick, knee-deep in the stream with his trousers rolled up, holding a large net. Behind him on the bank was a tin kettle with water in it and, no doubt, fish. And Princess Arjumand.

“Stay here,” I said to Cyril. “I mean it,” and crept up on the crouched cat, wishing I’d had the foresight to buy a net.

Princess Arjumand crept toward the kettle, her white paws silent in the grass, and the professor, as intent as the cat, stooped and lowered the net slowly toward the water. Princess Arjumand peered into the kettle and stuck her paw experimentally into the water.

I pounced, clapping the open carpetbag over her and scooping her up like the fish she was after. So did Professor Peddick, bringing the net down and up again with a wriggling fish in it.

“Professor Peddick!” I said. “We’ve been looking everywhere for you!”

“Stickleback,” he said, extracting the fish from the net and tossing it in the kettle. “Excellent pitches for trout along here.”

“Terence sent me to fetch you,” I said, extending a hand to help him up the bank. “He’s anxious to get on to Pangbourne.”

“‘Qui non vult fieri desidiosus amet,’ ” he said. “Ovid. ‘Let the man who does not wish to be idle, fall in love,’ ” but he climbed out and sat down on the bank and put his shoes and socks back on. “Pity he never met my niece, Maudie. He’d have liked her.”

I picked up the tin kettle and the net. It had “Souvenir of the River Thames,” printed on the handle. Cyril was still sitting where I’d told him to stay. “Good boy!” I said, and he galloped over and crashed into my knees. Water slopped out of the kettle.

Professor Peddick stood up. “Onward. The day’s half over,” he said, and set off briskly for the village.

“You did send your telegram?” I asked him as we passed the postal office.

He put his hand inside his coat and pulled out two yellow slips. “The abbey has some small historical interest,” he said, sticking them back inside his coat. “It was pillaged by Cromwell’s men during the Protectorate.” He stopped at the gate. “There’s a Fifteenth-Century gateway here you should see.”

“I understand Professor Overforce considers the Protectorate a result of natural forces,” I said, and steered him, ranting, down to the dock where an old woman in a mobcap was trying to sell Terence a mug with a picture of Boulter’s Lock on the side.

“Such a nice reminder of your trip downriver,” she said. “Each time you take your tea, you’ll think of this day.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Terence said, and to me, “Where have you been?”

“Fishing,” I said. I climbed in the boat, set the carpetbag down, and reached out my hand to help Professor Peddick, who was bent over his kettle of fish, peering at them through his pince-nez.

“He did send his telegram, didn’t he?” Terence said to me.

I nodded. “I saw the yellow slips.”

Cyril had lain down on the quay and was deep in slumber. “Come along, Cyril,” I said. “Professor? Tempus fugit!”

“Do you know how late it is?” Terence said, waving his pocket watch in front of my nose. “Drat! It’s nearly eleven.”

I sat down at the oars and put the carpetbag between my knees. “Don’t worry,” I said. “It’s all clear sailing from here.”

“There is nothing—absolutely nothing—half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats. . . .”

The Wind in the Willows

Kenneth Graham

C H A P T E R  T E N

Clear Sailing—A Non-Picturesque Stretch of River—Mystery of Victorians’ Sentimentality Regarding Nature Solved—Importance of Jumble Sales to the Course of History—We See Three Men in a Boat, To Say Nothing of the Dog—Cyril vs. Montmorency—The Episode of the Maze—A Traffic Jam—A Teakettle—Importance of Trifles to the Course of History—Another Swan— Shipwreck!—Similarities to the Titanic—A Survivor—A Swoon

Amazingly, we did have clear sailing, or, rather, rowing. The river was smooth and empty, with a fresh breeze blowing across it. The sun glittered brightly on the water. I remembered my seat, kept my knees both open and closed, feathered, kept the trim, and pulled strongly, and by noon we were through Clifton Lock and could see the chalk cliff of Clifton Hampden with the church perched atop it.

The map called this stretch “the least picturesque on the Thames” and suggested we travel by rail to Goring to avoid it. Looking at the lush green meadows, crisscrossed with flowering hedges, the riverbanks lined with tall poplars, it was hard to imagine what the picturesque stretches would look like.

There were flowers everywhere—buttercups and Queen Anne’s lace and lavender lady’s smock in the meadows, lilies and blue flags growing along the banks, roses and ivy-leaved snapdragons in the lockhouse gardens. There were even flowers in the river. The waterlilies had pink cup-shaped blossoms, and the rushes were topped with nosegays of purple and white. Iridescent blue-green dragonflies darted between them, and monstrous butterflies flitted past the boat and came to rest momentarily on the overbalanced luggage, threatening to topple it over.

Off in the distance, a spire could be glimpsed rising above a clump of elm trees. The only thing lacking was a rainbow. No wonder the Victorians had waxed sentimental about nature.

Terence took the oars, and we rowed round a curve in the river, past a thatched cottage decked with morning glories and toward an arched bridge built of golden-tinted stone.

“Dreadful what’s been done to the river,” Terence said, gesturing at the bridge. “Railway bridges and embankment cuts and gasworks. They’ve completely spoilt the scenery.”

We passed under the bridge and round the curve. There were scarcely any boats on the river. We passed two men in a fishing punt, moored under a beech tree, and they waved at us and held up an enormous string of fish. I was grateful Professor Peddick was asleep. And Princess Arjumand.

I’d checked on her when Terence and I changed places, and she was still out cold. Curled up inside the carpetbag with her paws tucked under her furry chin, she didn’t look capable of altering history, let alone destroying the continuum. But then neither had David’s slingshot or Fleming’s moldy petri dish or the barrel full of jumble sale odds and ends Abraham Lincoln had bought for a dollar.

But in a chaotic system, anything from a cat to a cart to a cold could be significant, and every point was a crisis point. The barrel had held a complete edition of Blackstone’s Commentaries, which Lincoln could never have afforded to buy. They had made it possible for him to become a lawyer.

But a chaotic system has feedforward loops, too, and interference patterns and counterbalances, and the vast majority of actions cancel each other out. Most rainstorms don’t defeat armadas, most tips don’t cause revolutions, and most of the things one buys at a jumble sale don’t do anything but gather dust.

So the chances of the cat changing the course of history, even if she’d been missing four days, were infinitesimal, especially if we continued to make such excellent time.

“I say,” Terence said, unpacking the bread and cheese he’d bought for lunch in Abingdon, “if we’re able to keep this up, we should be able to make Day’s Lock by one,” he said. “There’s nobody on the river.”

Except for a single boat coming up the river toward us with three men in it, all in blazers and mustaches, and with a small dog perched on the bow, looking alertly ahead. As they drew nearer, their voices came to us clearly across the river.

“How much farther before it’s your turn, Jay?” the rower said to the one lying in the bow.

“You’ve only been rowing ten minutes, Harris,” the one in the bow said.

“Well, then, how far to the next lock?”

The third man, who was stouter than the other two, said, “When do we stop for tea?” and picked up a banjo.

The dog caught sight of our boat and began barking. “Stop that, Montmorency,” the bow-lier said. “Barking’s rude.”

“Terence!” I said, half-rising to my feet. “That boat!”

He glanced over his shoulder. “It won’t hit us. Just hold the lines steady.”

The banjo player strummed a few out-of-tune bars and began to sing.

“Oh, don’t sing, George,” rower and bow-lier said in unison.

“And don’t you get any ideas about singing either, Harris.” Jay added.

“Why not?” he said indignantly.

“Because you only think you can sing,” George said.

“Yes,” Jay said. “Remember ‘The Ruler of the Queen’s Navy’?”

“Diddle-diddle-diddle-diddle-diddle-diddle-dee,” George sang.

“It is them!” I said. “Terence, do you know who that is? It’s Three Men in a Boat, To Say Nothing of the Dog.”

“Dog?” Terence said contemptuously. “You call that a dog?” He looked fondly at Cyril, who was snoring in the bottom of the boat. “Cyril could swallow him in one bite.”

“You don’t understand,” I said. “It’s the Three Men in a Boat. The tin of pineapple and George’s banjo and the maze.”

“The maze?” Terence said blankly.

“Yes, you know, Harris went in the Hampton Court Maze with this map and all these people followed him and the map didn’t work and they got hopelessly lost and they had to call out for the keeper to come and get them out.”

I leaned out for a better look. There they were, Jerome K. Jerome and the two friends he had immortalized (to say nothing of the dog) on that historic trip up the Thames. They had no idea they were going to be famous a hundred and fifty years from now, that their adventures with the cheese and the steam launch and the swans would be read by countless generations.

“Watch your nose!” Terence said, and I said, “Exactly. I love that bit, where Jerome is going through the lock at Hampton Court and someone calls out, ‘Look at your nose!’ and he thinks they mean his nose and they mean the nose of the boat has gotten caught in the lock!”

“Ned!” Terence said, and the three men in the boat waved and shouted, and Jerome K. Jerome stood up and began gesturing with his outstretched arm.

I waved back. “Have a wonderful trip!” I called. “Watch out for swans!” and pitched over backward.

My feet went up in the air, the oars hit the water with a splash, and the luggage in the bow toppled over. Still on my back, I made a grab for the carpetbag and tried to sit up.

So did Professor Peddick. “What happened?” he said, blinking sleepily.

“Ned didn’t watch where he was going,” Terence said, grabbing for the Gladstone bag, and I saw that we had hit the bank head-on. Just like Jerome K. Jerome had done in Chapter Six.

I looked over at the other boat. Montmorency was barking, and George and Harris appeared to be doubled over with laughter.

“Are you all right?” Jerome K. Jerome called to me.

I nodded back vigorously, and they waved and rowed on, still laughing, toward the Battle of the Swans and Oxford and history.

“I said, hold the lines steady,” Terence said disgustedly.

“I know. Sorry,” I said, stepping over Cyril, who had slept through the entire thing and who consequently missed his chance to meet a Truly Famous Dog. On the other hand, remembering Montmorency’s proclivity for fights and his sarcastic manner, it was probably just as well.

“I saw someone I knew,” I said, helping him pick up the luggage. “A writer,” and then realized that if they were just now on their way upriver, Three Men in a Boat must not have been written yet. I hoped when it came out, Terence wouldn’t read the copyright page.

“Where’s my net?” Professor Peddick said. “These waters are perfect for Tinca vulgaris.”

It took us till noon to get the luggage stowed and tied down again and to disentangle Professor Peddick from his Tinca vulgaris, but after that we made excellent time. We were past Little Wittenbaum before two. If we didn’t have any trouble at Day’s Lock, we could still be to Streatley by dinnertime.

We came through Day’s Lock in record time. And ran bang into a traffic jam.

The reason the river had been so empty before was because the entire armada had gathered here. Punts, canoes, outriggers, double-sculling skiffs, covered rowing boats, eights, barges, rafts, and houseboats jammed the river, all of them heading upstream and none of them in a hurry.

Girls with parasols chattered to girls with parasols in other boats and called to their companions to pull alongside. People on launches strung with banners reading, “Lower Middlesex Musical Society Annual Outing” and “Mothers’ Beanfeast” leaned over the railings to shout to people in pleasure boats below.

Clearly none of them had to be anywhere at a certain time. Middle-aged men on houseboats sat on the decks reading the Times while their middle-aged wives, clothespins in their mouths, hung up the washing.

A girl in a sailor dress and a beribboned straw hat poled a flat skiff slowly among them and stood there laughing when the pole stuck in the mud. An artist in a yellow smock stood motionless on a raft in the middle of the melee, painting a landscape on an easel, though how he could see said landscape over the flower-decked hats and parasols and fluttering Union Jacks, I had no idea.

A rower from one of the colleges, in a striped cap and jersey, cracked oars with a pleasure party’s paddles and stopped to apologize, and a sailboat nearly crashed into them from behind. I yanked on the lines and nearly crashed into all three.

“I’d best steer,” Terence said, scrambling up to change places when our boat hit an empty slot between a four-oared outrigger and a dinghy.

“Excellent idea,” I said, but rowing was worse. Facing backward, I couldn’t see anything and had the feeling I was going to run into the Upper Slaughter Ironmongers’ River Excursion at any moment.

“This is worse than the Henley Regatta,” Terence said, pulling on the lines. He maneuvered the boat out of the main current and off to the side, but that was even worse. It brought us into the midst of the punts and houseboats that were being towed, their towlines stretched across our path like so many tripwires.

The people towing weren’t in any hurry, either. Girls pulled a few feet and then paused to look laughingly back at the boat. Couples stopped to look longingly into each other’s eyes, letting the towline go limp in the water, and then remembered what they were supposed to be doing and yanked it up sharply. Jerome K. Jerome had written about a couple who’d lost their boat and gone on, talking and towing the frayed rope, but it seemed to me a greater danger was decapitation, and I kept glancing anxiously behind me like Catherine Howard.

There was a sudden flurry of activity upriver. A whistle shrieked and someone cried, “Look out!”

“What is it?” I said.

“A bloody teakettle,” Terence said, and a steam launch puffed through the crowd, scattering the boats and sending up a tremendous wash.

The boat rocked, and one of the oars unshipped. I made a grab for it and the carpetbag, and Terence raised his fist and cursed at the steam launch’s vanishing wake.

“They remind one of Hannibal’s elephants at the Battle of the Ticinus River,” Professor Peddick, who had just awakened, said, and launched into a description of Hannibal’s Italian campaign.

We were in the Alps and in traffic all the way to Wallingford. We sat in line for Benson’s Lock for over an hour, with Terence taking out his pocket watch and announcing the time every three minutes.

“Three o’clock,” he said. Or “A quarter past three.” Or “Nearly half past. We’ll never make it in time for tea.”

I shared his sentiment. The last time I’d opened the carpetbag, Princess Arjumand had stirred ominously, and as we pulled into the lock I could hear faint meowings, which luckily were drowned out by the crowd noise and professor Peddick’s lecturing.

“Traffic was responsible for Napoleon’s losing the battle of Waterloo,” he said. “The artillery wagons became stuck in the mud, blocking the roads, and the infantry could not make its way past them. How often history turns on such trivial things, a blocked road, a delayed corps of infantry, orders gone astray.”

At Wallingford the traffic abruptly disappeared, the punts stopping to camp and start supper, the Musical Society disembarking and heading for the railway station and home, and the river was suddenly empty.

But we were still six miles and another lock from Muchings End.

“It’ll be nine o’clock before we get there,” Terence said despairingly.

“We can camp near Moulsford,” Professor Peddick said. “There are excellent perch above the weir there.”

“I think we should stay at an inn,” I said. “You’ll want a chance to clean up. You’ll want to look your best for Miss Mering. You can shave and have your flannels pressed and your shoes shined, and we can go to Muchings End first thing in the morning.”

And I can sneak out with the carpetbag after everyone’s gone to bed, and return the cat without being seen, so that by the time Terence gets there tomorrow morning the incongruity will already be correcting itself. And he’ll find Tossie holding hands with Mr Cabbagesoup or Coalscuttle or whatever his name is.

“There are two inns in Streatley,” Terence said, consulting the map. “The Bull and The Swan. The Swan. Trotters says it brews an excellent ale.”

“It hasn’t any swans, has it?” I said, glancing warily at Cyril, who had awakened and was looking nervous.

“I shouldn’t think so,” Terence said. “The George and Dragon doesn’t have a dragon.”

We rowed on. The sky turned the same blue as my hatband and then a pale lavender, and several stars came out. The frogs and crickets started up, and more faint mewings from the carpetbag.

I pulled up sharply on the oars, making a good deal of splashing, and asked Professor Peddick exactly where his and Professor Overforce’s theories differed, which got us to Cleve Lock, where I jumped out, fed the cat some milk, and then set the carpetbag in the bow on top of the luggage as far from Terence and Professor Peddick as possible.

“The action of the individual, that’s the force driving history,” Professor Peddick was saying. “Not Overforce’s blind, impersonal forces. ‘The history of the world is but the biography of great men,’ Carlyle writes, and so it is. Copernicus’s genius, Cincinnatus’s ambition, St. Francis of Assisi’s faith: It is character that shapes history.”

It was fully dark, and the houses were lit by the time we reached Streatley.

“At last,” I said as we sighted the quay, “a soft bed, a hot meal, a good night’s sleep,” but Terence was rowing straight past it.

“Where are you going?” I said.

“To Muchings End,” he said, pulling hard on the oars.

“But you said yourself it’s too late to call,” I said, glancing yearningly back at the quay.

“I know,” he said. “I only want a glimpse of where she lives. I won’t be able to sleep, knowing she’s so close, until I’ve seen her.”

“But it’s dangerous to be on the river at night,” I said. “There are shoals and eddies and things.”

“It’s only a short way,” Terence said, rowing determinedly. “She said it was just past the third island.”

“But we won’t be able to see it at night,” I said. “We’ll get lost and go over a weir and be drowned.”

“There it is,” Terence said, pointing at the shore. “She told me I’d know it by the gazebo.”

The white gazebo gleamed faintly in the starlight, and beyond it, across a sloping lawn, was the house. It was enormous and extremely Victorian, with gables and towers and all sorts of neo-Gothic gingerbread. It looked like a slightly smaller version of Victoria Station.

Its windows were all dark. Good, I thought, they’ve gone to Hampton Court to raise Catherine Howard’s ghost or off to Coventry. I’ll be able to return the cat easily.

“There’s no one there,” I said. “We’d best start back to Streatley. The Swan will be all booked up.”

“No, not yet,” Terence said, gazing at the house. “Let me gaze a moment longer on the hallowed ground whereon she walks, the sacred bower wherein she rests.”

“It does look as though the family has retired for the evening,” Professor Peddick said.

“Perhaps they’ve only got the curtains drawn,” Terence said. “Shh.”

That seemed unlikely, given the pleasantness of the evening, but we obediently listened. There was no sound at all from the shore, only the gentle lap of water, the murmur of a breeze through the rushes, the soft chirrup of frogs croaking. A meowing sound from the bow of the boat.

“There,” Terence said. “Did you hear that?”

“What?” said Professor Peddick.

“Voices,” Terence said, leaning out over the gunwale.

“Crickets,” I said, edging toward the bow.

The cat meowed again. “There!” Terence said. “Did you hear that? It’s someone calling us.”

Cyril sniffed.

“It’s a bird,” I said. I pointed at a tree by the gazebo. “In that willow. A nightingale.”

“It didn’t sound like a nightingale,” Terence said. “Nightingales sing of summer ‘in full-throated ease and pour their souls abroad in ecstasy.’ This didn’t sound like that. Listen.”

There was a snuffling sound in the front of the boat. I whirled round. Cyril was standing on his hind legs, his front paws on the stack of luggage, sniffing at the carpetbag and nudging it with his flat muzzle toward the edge.

“Cyril! Don’t!” I shouted, and four things happened at once. I dived forward to grab the carpetbag, Cyril started guiltily and backed against the wicker basket, Professor Peddick said, “Take care you do not step on the Ugubio fluviatilis,” and leaned sideways to pick the kettle up, and Terence turned round, saw the carpetbag toppling, and dropped the oars.

I tried, in mid-lunge, to avoid the oar and the professor’s hand, and fell flat, Terence intercepted the basket, the professor clutched his kettle of fish to his breast, and I caught the carpetbag by a corner just as it toppled over. The boat rocked dangerously. Water slopped over the bows. I got a better grip on the carpetbag, set it on the stern seat, and pulled myself to a sitting position.

There was a splash. I grabbed for the carpetbag again, but it was still there, and I peered at the bow, wondering if the oar had gone in.

“Cyril!” Terence shouted. “Man overboard!” He began stripping off his jacket. “Professor Peddick, take the oars. Ned, get the life preserver.”

I leaned over the side of the boat, trying to see where he’d gone in.

“Hurry!” Terence said, pulling off his shoes. “Cyril can’t swim.”

“He can’t swim?” I said, bewildered. “I thought all dogs could swim.”

“Indeed. The term ‘dog paddle’ is derived from the instinctive knowledge of swimming Canis familiaris possesses,” Professor Peddick said.

“He knows how to swim,” Terence said, stripping off his socks, “but he can’t. He’s a bulldog.”

He was apparently right. Cyril was dog-paddling manfully toward the boat, but his mouth and nose were both underwater, and he looked desperate. “I’m coming, Cyril,” Terence said and dived in, sending up a wave that nearly sunk him altogether. Terence started to swim toward him. Cyril continued to paddle and sink. Only the top of his wrinkled brow was still above the water.

“Bring the boat to port, no, starboard. To the left,” I shouted and began rummaging for the life preserver, which we had apparently packed on the bottom. “As bad as the Titanic,” I said, and then remembered it hadn’t sunk yet, but no one was listening.

Terence had Cyril by the collar and was holding his head up above the water. “Bring the boat closer,” he shouted, spluttering, and Professor Peddick responded by nearly running him down. “Stop! No!” Terence shouted, waving his arm, and Cyril went under again.

“To port!” I shouted. “The other way!” and leaned over and grabbed Terence by the scruff of his neck. “Not me!” Terence gasped. “Cyril!”

Between us we hoisted a very waterlogged Cyril into the boat where he coughed up several gallons of the Thames. “Put a blanket round him,” Terence said, clinging to the bows.

“I will,” I said, extending my hand. “Now you.”

“I’m all right,” he said, shivering. “Get the blanket first. He catches chills easily.”

I got the blanket, wrapping it round the massive shoulders that had proven Cyril’s downfall, and then we set about the tricky business of getting Terence back in the boat.

“Keep low,” Terence ordered, his teeth chattering, “we don’t want anyone else to go in.”

Terence was no better at following directions than Professor Peddick had been. He persisted in trying to get a leg up over the bow, a motion that caused the bow to slant at an angle almost as bad as that of the Titanic.

“You’ll capsize us,” I said, wedging the carpetbag under the seat. “Hold still and let us haul you in.”

“I’ve done this dozens of times,” Terence said, and swung his leg up.

The gunwale dipped all the way to water level. Cyril, bunched in his blanket, staggered, trying to keep his feet, and the pile of luggage in the bow tilted precariously.

“I’ve never tipped a boat over yet,” Terence said confidently.

“Well, at least wait till I’ve shifted things,” I said, pushing the portmanteau back into place. “Professor Peddick, move all the way to that side,” and to Cyril, who had decided to come over, trailing his blanket, to see how we were doing, “Sit. Stay.”

“It’s all a matter of getting the proper purchase,” Terence said, shifting his grip on the gunwale.

“Wait!” I said. “Careful—”

Terence got his leg into the boat, raised himself on his hands, and pulled his torso up onto the gunwales.

“God himself could not sink this ship,” I murmured, holding the luggage in place.

“All in the balancing.” He hoisted himself into the boat. “There, you see,” he said triumphantly. “Nothing to it,” and the boat went over.

I have no idea how we got to shore. I remember the portmanteau sliding down the deck at me, like the grand piano on the Titanic, and then a lot of swallowing of water and clutching at the life preserver, which turned out to be Cyril, sinking like a stone, followed by more swallowing, and the dead man’s carry, and we were all sitting on the shore dripping and gasping for breath.

Cyril was the first to recover. He tottered to his feet and shook himself all over us, and Terence sat up and looked out at the empty water.

“ ‘And fast through the midnight dark and drear,’ ” he quoted, “ ‘Like a sheeted ghost, the vessel swept/Tow’rds the reef of Norman’s Woe.’ ”

“Naufragium sibi quisque facit,” Professor Peddick said.

Terence gazed out at the dark water. “She’s gone,” he said, exactly like Lady Astor had, and I stood up, suddenly remembering, and waded into the water, but it was no use. There was no sign of the boat.

An oar lay half on shore, and, out in the middle of the river, the professor’s kettle bobbed past, the only survivors of the shipwreck. There was no sign of the carpetbag anywhere.

“ ‘Down came the storm, and smote amain/The vessel in its strength,’ ” Terence quoted. “ ‘He cut a rope from a broken spar/And bound her to the mast.’ ”

Princess Arjumand hadn’t had a chance, wedged under the seat like that. If I’d let her out when she meowed, if I’d told Terence I’d found her, if I’d come through where I was supposed to and hadn’t been so time-lagged—

“ ‘At day-break, on the bleak sea-beach/A fisherman stood aghast,’ ” Terence recited. “ ‘To see the form of a maiden fair/Lashed close to a drifting mast,’ ” and I turned to tell him to shut up and saw, behind us, white in the starlight, the gazebo where I was to have returned the cat.

Well, I had returned her, all right, and finished the murder the butler had started. And this time Verity hadn’t been there to rescue her.

“ ‘The salt sea was frozen on her breast,’ ” Terence intoned, “ ‘the salt tears in her eyes. . . .’ ”

I gazed at the gazebo. Princess Arjumand, unbeknownst in her wicker basket, had nearly been run over by a train, been rolled into the Thames and been knocked in by Cyril and Professor Peddick, and had been rescued each time, only to drown here. Perhaps T.J. was right, and she had been meant to drown, and no matter how much Verity or I or anyone meddled, it was fated to end this way. History correcting itself.

Or perhaps she had simply run out of lives. I could count five of the nine she had used up in the last four days.

I hoped that was it, and not my complete incompetence. But I didn’t think so. And I didn’t think Verity would think so either. She had risked life and limb and Mr. Dunworthy’s wrath to rescue it. “I won’t let you drown it,” she’d said. I doubted very much she would accept the course of history as an excuse.

The last thing I wanted to do was face her, but there was nothing else for it. Cyril, in spite of shaking himself all over us, was drenched, and so was Professor Peddick, and Terence looked half-frozen.

“ ‘Such was the wreck of the Hesperus,’ ” he said, his teeth chattering so he could scarcely recite, “ ‘in the midnight and the snow.’ ”

We had to get dried off and out of these clothes, and there was no other house in sight besides Muchings End. We had to go wake up the household and ask for shelter, even though it meant facing Tossie and having her ask if we’d found her “precious darling Juju.” Even though it meant telling Verity.

“Come along,” I said, taking Terence’s arm. “Let’s go up to the house.”

He didn’t budge. “ ‘Christ, save us all from a death like this,’ ” he said, “ ‘on the reef of Norman’s Woe.’ Jabez is going to charge us fifty pounds?”

“We’ll worry about that later,” I said. “Come along. We’ll try the French doors first. There’s a line of light under them.”

“I can’t meet the family of the girl I love like this,” Terence said, shuddering. “I haven’t any coat.”

“Here,” I said, taking off my blazer and wringing it out. “You can have mine. They won’t care that we’re not dressed for dinner. Our boat sank.”

Professor Peddick came up, squelching as he walked. “I managed to save some of the luggage,” he said, and handed me the carpetbag. “None of my specimens, though, I’m afraid. Ah, my albino Ugubio fluviatilis.”

“I can’t go up to the house without any shoes,” Terence said. “I can’t be seen half-naked by the girl I love.”

“Here,” I said, struggling to untie my wet shoelaces with one hand. “Take mine. Professor Peddick, give him your socks,” and while they wrestled with the problem of getting wet socks off and on, I sprinted over behind the gazebo and opened the carpetbag.

Princess Arjumand, only slightly damp, glared up at me from its depths for a long minute and then swarmed up my leg and into my arms.

Cats were supposed to hate getting wet, but she settled into my sopping wet sleeves contentedly and closed her eyes.

“I’m not the one who saved your life,” I said. “It was Professor Peddick,” but she didn’t seem to care. She nestled deeper against my chest and, amazingly, began to purr.

“Oh, good, Princess Arjumand is here,” Terence said, straightening the blazer. It had apparently shrunk somewhat, too. “I was right. She was here all along.”

“I do not think it is proper for an Oxford don not to wear socks,” Professor Peddick said.

“Balderdash,” I said. “Professor Einstein never did.”

“Einstein?” he said. “I don’t believe I know of him.”

“You will,” I said, and set off up the sloping lawn.

Terence had apparently been right about their having drawn the drapes. As we made our way across the lawn, the drapes were pulled back, a faint, flickering light appeared, and we could hear voices.

“This is terribly exciting,” a man’s voice said. “What do we do first?”

“Join hands,” a voice that sounded like Verity’s said, “and concentrate.”

“Oh, Mama, do ask about Juju,” and that was definitely Tossie’s. “Ask them where she is.”

“Shh.”

There was a silence, during which we crossed the remainder of the lawn.

“Is there a spirit here?” a stentorian voice called out, and I nearly dropped Princess Arjumand. It sounded exactly like Lady Schrapnell, but it couldn’t be. It must be Tossie’s mother, Mrs. Mering.

“Oh, Spirit from the Other Side,” she said, and I had to fight the impulse to run, “speak to us here in the earthly plane.”

We maneuvered our way through an herbaceous border and onto the flagged pathway in front of the French doors.

“Tell us of our fate,” Mrs. Mering boomed, and Princess Arjumand climbed up my chest and dug her claws into my shoulder.

“Enter, O Spirit,” she intoned, “and bring us news of our missing loved ones.

Terence knocked on the doors.

There was another silence, and then Mrs. Mering called, in a somewhat fainter voice, “Enter!”

“Wait,” I said, but Terence had already pulled the doors open. The curtains billowed inward, and we stood blinking at the candlelit tableau before us.

Around a black-draped round table sat four people, their eyes closed, holding hands: Verity, wearing white, Tossie, wearing ruffles, a pale young man wearing a clerical collar and a rapt expression, and Mrs. Mering, who, thank goodness, did not look like Lady Schrapnell. She was much rounder, with an ample bosom and ampler chins.

“Enter, O Spirit from the Other Side,” she said, and Terence parted the curtains and stepped inside.

“I beg your pardon,” Terence said, and everyone opened their eyes and stared at us.

We must have made rather an interesting tableau ourselves, what with Terence’s bleeding stripes and my stockinged feet and our general drowned rat appearance, to say nothing of the dog, who was still coughing up river. Or the cat.

“We have come—” Terence began, and Mrs. Mering stood up and put her hand to the ample bosom.

“They have come!” she cried, and fainted dead away.

“Methought I heard a voice cry, ‘Sleep no more.’ ”

William Shakespeare

C H A P T E R  E L E V E N

Why the Victorians Were So Repressed—Dearum Dearum Juju Weturned to Her Mistwess—Fish—A Misunderstanding—Importance of Knocking—Introductions—Irish Names—An Amazing Coincidence—More Fish—A Reluctant Departure—Another Misunderstanding—I Go to Bed—A Visitor—A Crisis

It was actually more of a swoon than a faint. She slumped sedately to the flowered carpet, managing to avoid hitting any of the furniture—no small feat since the room contained a large round rosewood table, a small triangular table with a tintype album on it, a mahogany table with a bouquet of wax flowers under a glass dome on it, a horsehair sofa, a damask loveseat, a Windsor chair, a Morris chair, a Chesterfield chair, several ottomans, a writing desk, a bookcase, a knick-knack cabinet, a whatnot, a firescreen, a harp, an aspidistra, and an elephant’s foot.

She also fell very slowly, and during the time it took her to collapse onto the carpet, I registered a number of impressions:

One, that Mrs. Mering wasn’t the only one who looked like she’d seen a ghost. The pale young man, who must be a curate, was as white as his clerical collar, and Baine, over by the door, was clutching the doorjamb for support. His expression wasn’t one of guilty horror, though. If I hadn’t known better I’d have thought it was one of relief. Or joy. Which was distinctly odd.

Two, Verity’s expression was definitely one of joy, and in my still time-lagged state I actually thought for a moment that it might be directed at me. Then it hit me that she must not have been able to report back yet. Tossie must have kept the household up again last night looking for Princess Arjumand, and so Verity didn’t know I’d been in charge of returning the cat and muffed it, and I’d have to be the one to tell her.

Which was unfortunate because, Three, even with a night’s sleep (more or less) and a moratorium on drops, she was still the most beautiful creature I’d ever seen.

And Four, that the reason Victorian society was so restricted and repressed was that it was impossible to move without knocking something over.

“Mama!” Tossie cried, and Baine, Terence, Professor Peddick, and I all started forward to break her fall and managed to crash into everything Mrs. Mering had avoided.

Terence caught Mrs. Mering, Baine turned up the gas so we could see what we’d run into, I righted the Dresden shepherdess and the stereopticon I’d knocked over, and the clergyman sat down and began mopping his forehead with a large white handkerchief. Terence and Baine helped Mrs. Mering onto a maroon velvet sofa, knocking over a bust of Pallas in the process, and Verity began fanning her.

“Baine!” she said, “tell Colleen to bring the smelling salts.”

“Yes, miss,” Baine said, still looking overcome by emotion, and hurried out.

“O, Mama!” Tossie said, starting toward her mother. “Are you all—” and caught sight of the cat, which had climbed up my chest in all the excitement.

“Princess Arjumand!” she screamed and swooped at me. “Darling, darling Princess Arjumand! You’ve come back to me!”

Darling Princess Arjumand had to be removed from my shirtfront a claw at a time. I handed her to Tossie, who clutched the cat to her ecstatically, emitting a series of delighted screams.

“O, Mr. St. Trewes,” she cooed, turning to Terence, “you’ve brought my dearum dearum Juju back to me!” She nuzzled dearum Juju. “Was oo awl wost in the scawy dawk, sweetums? Was oo fwightened? But Mr. St. Trewes was wooking for oo, wasn’t he? Can oo say sank oo to the nice mannums, darwing Juju?”

Cyril, standing next to me, snorted loudly, and even “darwing Juju” looked disgusted. Well, good, I thought, this should bring Terence to his senses, we can go back upriver to Oxford, Tossie can marry Mr. C, and the continuum will be restored.

I looked at Terence. He was beaming besottedly at Tossie. “No need to thank me, truly,” he said. “You bade me find your precious pet. ‘Tis what you will. Your wish is my command, fair lady.”

On the couch, Mrs. Mering moaned. “Aunt Malvinia,” Verity said, rubbing her hands between hers. “Aunt Malvinia?” She turned to Tossie. “Cousin, fetch Baine and tell him we need a fire. Your mother’s hands are like ice.”

Tossie went over to a long tasseled panel of embroidered damask on the wall and tugged on the tassel.

I didn’t hear anything, but there must have been a bell somewhere, because Baine appeared promptly. During his absence, he had apparently gained command of himself. His face and voice were impassive as he said, “Yes, miss?”

“Light the fire,” Tossie said without looking up from the cat.

She’d said it almost rudely, but Baine smiled and said indulgently, “Yes, miss,” and knelt by the hearth and began piling wood on the grate.

A maid with hair even redder than Verity’s hurried in, carrying a minuscule bottle. “Oh, miss, has the mistress fainted then?” she asked Verity in a brogue that instantly identified her as Irish.

“Yes,” Verity said, taking the bottle from her. She pulled the stopper out and passed it under Mrs. Mering’s nose. “Aunt Malvinia,” she said encouragingly.

“Oh, miss, was it haunts that did it?” the maid said, looking apprehensively around the room.

“No,” Verity said, “Aunt Malvinia?” and Mrs. Mering moaned, but didn’t open her eyes.

“I knew there was haunts in the house,” the maid said, crossing herself. “I saw one, Tuesday last it was, out by the gazebo—”

“Colleen, fetch a damp cloth for Mrs. Mering’s forehead,” Verity said, and a foot warmer.

“Yes, miss,” the maid said, bobbed a curtsey, and went out, still looking fearfully around.

“O pwecious Juju,” Tossie was cooing to the cat, “is oo a hungwy baby?” She turned to Baine, who had the fire laid and was about to light it. “Baine, come here,” she said imperiously.

Even though he was in the act of lighting a spill of paper, Baine got immediately to his feet and came over to her. “Yes, miss?”

“Bring Juju a dish of cream.”

“Yes, miss,” he said, smiting at the cat. He turned to go.

“And a plate of fish.”

Baine turned back. “Fish?” he said, raising an eyebrow.

Tossie’s little chin went up. “Yes, fish. Princess Arjumand has been through a dreadful ordeal.”

“As you wish,” he said, every word dripping with disapproval.

“I do wish,” she said, coloring. “Bring it immediately.”

“Yes, miss,” he said, but instead of leaving, he knelt by the hearth and methodically finished lighting the fire. He fanned it with the bellows and then carefully replaced them on the fire-irons stand before he stood up.

“I doubt we have any fish,” he said and exited.

Tossie looked furious. “Mama!” she said, appealing to her mother, but Mrs. Mering was still out cold. Verity was spreading an afghan over her knees and arranging pillows behind her head.

I was beginning to shiver in my wet clothes. I made my way over to the fire, which was burning merrily, past the writing desk, a sewing table, and a small marble-topped table with a number of metal-framed photographs on it. Cyril was already there, dripping onto the warm hearth.

The maid Colleen hurried back in with a bowl of water. Verity took it from her, set it on the table next to a tall bronze vase full of peacock feathers, and wrung out the cloth.

“Oh, have the haunts taken her soul?” Colleen said.

“No,” Verity said, laying the cloth across Mrs. Mering’s forehead. “Aunt Malvinia,” she said, and Mrs. Mering sighed and fluttered her eyelids.

A round gentleman with a bushy white mustache came in, carrying his newspaper. He was wearing a red smoking jacket and a strange red cap with a tassel on it. “What’s all this?” he demanded. “Got so a man can’t read the Times in peace.”

“O Papa,” Tossie said. “Mama’s fainted.”

“Fainted?” he said, coming over to see her. “What for?”

“We were having a séance,” Tossie said. “We were attempting to find Princess Arjumand, and Mama was calling the spirits, and as she said, ‘O come, spirits,’ the curtains blew open, and there was a blast of chill air, and there Princess Arjumand was!”

“Harrumph,” he said. “Knew this spiritualism nonsense was a bad idea. Lot of silliness.”

Colonel Mering seemed to speak in a sort of shorthand, leaving off the subjects of his sentences. I wondered if they got somehow lost in his bushy mustache. “Hysteria,” he said. “Gets women all worked up.”

At this point, the curate cut in with, “A number of highly respected scholars and scientists are convinced of the validity of otherworldly phenomena. Sir William Crookes, the noted physicist, has written a respected treatise on the subject, and Arthur Conan Doyle is conducting—”

“Twaddle!” Colonel Mering said, which pretty much completed the collection of explosive Victorian disclaimers. “Cheesecloth and gullible women. Should be a law in Parliament against it.” He stopped short at the sight of Terence. “Who are you? Blasted medium?”

“This is Mr. St. Trewes, Papa,” Tossie interceded hurriedly. “He and his friends have returned Princess Arjumand,” she said, holding the cat up for his inspection. “She was lost, and Mr. St. Trewes found her.”

Colonel Mering looked at the cat with undisguised hatred. “Pah! Thought it had drowned, and good riddance.”

“O Papa, you know you don’t mean that!” She nuzzled the cat. “He doesn’t mean the dweadful fings he says, does he, sweetum Juju? No, he doesn’t-wuzn’t.”

The Colonel glared at Professor Peddick and then at me. “Suppose you’re table-rappers as well?”

“No,” I said. “We were out on the river and our boat capsized and—”

“Ohhh,” Mrs. Mering moaned from the couch and fluttered her eyes open. “Husband,” she said weakly, “is that you?” She reached out her hand to him. “O, Mesiel, the spirits!”

“Humbug! Lot of foolishness. Ruins your nerves and your health. Wonder someone wasn’t hurt,” the Colonel said, taking her hand. Verity relinquished her place, and Colonel Mering sat down next to his wife. “Settles it. No more séances. Absolutely forbid them in my house.”

“Baine!” he said to the butler, who had just come in carrying a dish of cream. “Throw out the books on spiritism.” He turned back to Mrs. Mering. “Forbid you to have any more to do with this medium Madame Idioskovitz.”

“Iritosky,” Mrs. Mering corrected. “O, Mesiel, you must not,” she said, clutching at his hand. “You do not understand! You have always been a skeptic. But now you must believe. They were here, Mesiel. In this very room. I had just contacted Chief Gitcheewatha, Madame Iritosky’s spirit control, and asked him regarding Princess Arjumand’s fate, and—” she gave a screamlet just like Tossie’s before going on, “—and there they were, carrying the cat in their ghostly arms!”

“Terribly sorry about that. Didn’t mean to frighten you like that,” Terence, who seemed to have caught the habit of chopping off subjects from Colonel Mering, said.

“Who is that?” Mrs. Mering demanded of her husband.

“Terence St. Trewes, at your service,” Terence said and doffed his boater, which unfortunately still had a good deal of water in the brim. It sent a shower over Mrs. Mering.

“O, O, O,” she said, uttering a whole series of screamlets, and waving her hands helplessly against the deluge.

“Most awfully sorry,” Terence said and started to offer her his handkerchief. It was even wetter, and he stopped just in time and pocketed it again.

Mrs. Mering gave Terence a frosty look and turned back to her husband. “Everyone saw them!” She turned to the curate. “Reverend, tell Mesiel you saw the spirits!”

“Well . . .” the curate said uncomfortably.

“They were draped all in seaweed, Mesiel, and shining with an ethereal light,” she said, clutching her husband’s sleeve. “They had brought a message that poor Princess Arjumand had met a watery grave.” She pointed at the French doors. “They came through those very doors!”

“Know we should have knocked,” Terence said. “Didn’t mean to barge in like that, but our boat went over and—”

“Who is this impertinent young man?” she asked her husband.

“Terence St. Trewes,” Terence explained.

“Your spirits,” Colonel Mering said.

“Terence St. Trewes,” Terence said. “And this is Mr. Ned Henry and—”

“Spirits!” Colonel Mering said contemptuously. “Hadn’t had all the lights out and been playing at table-rapping, you’d have seen they were punters who’d had a ducking. Watery grave? Bah!”

“Princess Arjumand’s quite all right, Mama,” Tossie said, thrusting the cat forward for her mother to see. “She isn’t drowned. Mr. St. Trewes found her and brought her home. Didn’t he, pwecious Juju? He did, yes, he did. He was so bwave, wasn’t he? He was, he was!”

“You found Princess Arjumand?” Mrs. Mering said.

“Well, actually Ned was the one who—”

She glared silencingly at me and then back at him, taking in our wet clothes and bedraggled state, and, presumably, our non-spiritual nature.

I thought for a moment she might faint again, and Verity moved forward and took the stopper out of the smelling salts.

Then Mrs. Mering sat up on the couch, fixed Terence with a frosty eye, and said, “How dare you impersonate a spirit, Mr. St. Trewes!”

“I . . . we . . . our boat went over, and . . .” he stammered.

“Terence St. Trewes!” she went on, “what sort of name is that? Is it Irish?”

The temperature had dropped several degrees in the room, and Terence shivered a bit as he answered, “No, ma’am. It’s an old family name. Dates back to the Conquest and all that. Knight who fought in the Crusades with Richard the Lionhearted, I believe.”

“It sounds Irish,” Mrs. Mering said.

“Mr. St. Trewes is the young man I told you about,” Tossie said, “whom I met on the river and asked to search for Princess Arjumand. And he’s found her!” She showed the cat to her mother.

Mrs. Mering ignored her. “On the river?” she said, and her stare was pure liquid nitrogen. “Are you some sort of bargeman?”

“No, ma’am,” Terence said. “I’m an undergraduate. Second year. At Balliol.”

“Oxford!” Colonel Mering snorted. “Bah!”

It looked like we were going to be tossed out on our ears in another couple of minutes, which might not be a bad thing, considering the way Tossie was carrying on about Terence. I wondered if this was some part of the continuum’s correcting itself now that “pwecious Juju” had been safely returned. I hoped so.

I also hoped I would get a chance to talk to Verity before we were shown the gate. Since that first delighted look, she hadn’t even glanced at me, and I needed at least to know what she’d found out from T.J. and Mr. Dunworthy, if anything.

“Do they teach you to break into people’s homes at Oxford?” Mrs. Mering said.

“N-no,” Terence stammered. “You said, ‘Enter.’ ”

“I was speaking to the spirits!” she said stiffly.

“Suppose you’re studying some damned modern subject,” Colonel Mering said.

“No, sir. Classics, sir. This is my tutor, Professor Peddick.”

“We didn’t mean to intrude like this,” Professor Peddick said. “These young gentlemen were kindly taking me downriver to Runnymede when—”

But the temperature had risen sharply, and the Colonel was smiling, or I thought he was, under his white mustache. “Not Professor Arthur Peddick? Wrote, ‘On the Physical Characteristics of the Japanese Shubunkin’?”

Professor Peddick nodded. “Have you read it?”

“Read it? Wrote you only last week about my globe-eyed nacreous ryunkin,” the Colonel said. “Astonishing coincidence, your showing up like this.”

“Ah, yes,” Professor Peddick said, peering at him through his pince-nez. “I’ve been intending to answer your letter. Fascinating species, the ryunkin.”

“Utterly amazing that your boat should capsize here, of all places,” the Colonel said. “What’s the likelihood of that happening? Astronomical.”

I looked over at Verity. She was watching them and biting her lip.

“You must come and see my Black Moor,” the Colonel said. “Excellent specimen. All the way from Kyoto. Baine, fetch a lantern!”

“Yes, sir,” Baine said.

“And a three-pound banded gudgeon,” the Colonel said, taking hold of Professor Peddick’s arm and leading him through the maze of furniture to the French doors. “Caught it only last week.”

“Mesiel!” Mrs. Mering snapped from the couch. “Where on earth do you think you’re going?”

“Out to the fishpond, my dear, to show Professor Peddick my goldfish.”

“At this time of night?” she said. “Nonsense! He’ll catch his death in those wet clothes.”

“Quite right,” Colonel Mering said, seeming to notice for the first time that the sleeve he was holding onto was sopping wet. “Must get you into dry things. Baine,” he said to the butler, who was just leaving, “bring Professor Peddick some dry clothes at once.”

“Yes, sir,” Baine said.

“Mr. Henry and Mr. St. Trewes will both need fresh clothes as well,” Verity said.

“Yes, miss.”

“And bring some brandy,” Colonel Mering said.

“And a fish,” Tossie said.

“I doubt if these gentlemen have time for a glass of brandy,” Mrs. Mering said, turning the thermostat down again. “It’s extremely late, and they will be wanting to return to their lodgings. I presume you are staying at one of the river inns, Mr. St. Trewes? The Swan?”

“Well, actually—” Terence began.

“Won’t hear of it. Nasty, common places. Appalling drains. Must stay here,” Colonel Mering said, putting up his hand to ward off objections. “Plenty of room for you and your friends. Must stay as long as you like. Excellent trolling deeps here. Baine, tell Jane to make up rooms for these gentlemen.”

Baine, who was trying to pour the brandy, fetch a lantern, and outfit half the people in the room, promptly said, “Yes, sir,” and started out of the room.

“And bring in their luggage,” Colonel Mering said.

“I’m afraid we haven’t any luggage,” Terence said. “When our boat capsized, we were lucky to make it to shore with our lives.”

“Lost a beautiful albino gudgeon,” Professor Peddick said. “Extraordinary dorsal fins.”

“Shall have to catch it again,” Colonel Mering said. “Baine, go see if you can salvage the boat and their belongings. Where’s that lantern?”

It was a wonder Baine wasn’t reading Marx, as downtrodden as he was. No, Marx was still writing it. In the Reading Room of the British Museum.

“I’ll fetch it, sir.”

“You will not,” Mrs. Mering said. “It’s far too late for fishpond excursions. I’m certain these gentlemen,” the temperature plummeted, “are tired after their adventure. Boating! In the middle of the night. It’s a wonder you weren’t all swept over a weir and drowned,” she said, looking as though she wished that that had happened. “I’m sure these gentlemen are exhausted.”

“Quite right,” the curate said, “so I will take my leave. Good night, Mrs. Mering.”

Mrs. Mering extended her hand. “O, Reverend, I am so sorry there were no manifestations tonight.”

“Next time I do not doubt we shall be more successful,” he said to Mrs. Mering, but he was looking at Tossie. “I shall look forward to our next excursion into the metaphysical. And of course to seeing you both day after tomorrow. I am certain it will be a brilliant success with you and your lovely daughter assisting.”

He leered at Tossie, and I wondered if this might be the mysterious Mr. C.

“We are delighted to assist in any way,” Mrs. Mering said.

“We are rather short of tablecloths,” the curate said.

“Baine, take a dozen tablecloths to the vicarage at once,” she said.

It was no wonder Baine had taken to pet-drowning in his spare time. Clearly justifiable homicide.

“I am delighted to have met all of you,” the curate said, still looking at Tossie. “And if you are all still here the day after tomorrow, I should like to extend an invitation to our—”

“I doubt the gentlemen will be staying that long,” Mrs. Mering said.

“Ah,” the curate said. “Well, then, good night.”

Baine handed him his hat, and he took his departure.

“You should have said good night to the Reverend Mr. Arbitage,” Mrs. Mering said to Tossie, and there went that theory.

“Professor Peddick, you must at least see my globe-eyed nacreous ryunkin tonight,” Colonel Mering said. “Baine, where’s the lantern? Excellent coloration—”

“Aiyyyy!” Mrs. Mering said.

“What?” Terence said, and everyone turned and looked at the French doors as if expecting another ghost, but there was nothing there.

“What is it?” Verity said, reaching for the smelling salts.

“That!” Mrs. Mering said, pointing dramatically at Cyril, who was warming himself at the fire. “Who let that dreadful creature in?”

Cyril stood up, looking offended.

“I . . . I did,” Terence said, hurrying over to grab Cyril by the collar.

“This is Cyril,” Verity said. “Mr. St. Trewes’s dog.”

It was unfortunate that it was at that moment that Cyril’s doggy nature asserted itself, or perhaps he was simply unnerved, as we all were, by Mrs. Mering. He shook himself all over, his jowls flapping wildly.

“O, dreadful dog!” Mrs. Mering cried, flinging up her hands even though he was half a room away. “Baine, take him outside at once!”

Baine started forward, and the thought crossed my mind that he might be some sort of serial pet murderer. “I’ll take him out,” I said.

“No, I will,” Terence said. “Come along, Cyril.”

Cyril looked at him disbelievingly.

“Terribly sorry,” Terence said, tugging on Cyril’s collar. “He was in the boat with us when it went over, and—”

“Baine, show Mr. St. Trewes the stable. Out!” Mrs. Mering said to Cyril, and he took off for the French doors like a shot, Terence right behind him.

“De naughty bad doggums is aww gone and dearum Juju don’t have to be afwaid no more,” Tossie said.

“O, this is all too much!” Mrs. Mering said, putting her hand dramatically to her forehead.

“Here,” Verity said, sticking the smelling salts under her nose. “I’ll be glad to show Mr. Henry to his room.

“Verity!” Mrs. Mering said in a voice that left no question of her being related to Lady Schrapnell. “That is quite unnecessary. The maid can show Mr. Henry to his room.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Verity said meekly and started across the room, catching her skirts up expertly so they didn’t brush against the claw-footed table legs or the scrollwork aspidistra stand. As she reached for the bellpull’s tassel, she murmured, “I am so glad to see you. I’ve been worried sick.”

“I—” I said.

“Take me up to my room, Tossie,” Mrs. Mering said. “I am feeling quite overcome. Verity, tell Baine I want a cup of chamomile tea. Mesiel, don’t bother Professor Peddick with your silly fish.”

Colleen appeared in the midst of her giving orders and was told to take me up to my room.

“Yes, ma’am,” she said, bobbed a curtsey and led me up the stairs, stopping at the bottom to light a lamp.

The decorating notion that “Less is more” had apparently not been invented yet. The walls next to the stairway and above it were solid with gilt-framed portraits of various Mering ancestors in gold lace, knee-breeches, and armor, and the corridor was lined with an umbrella stand, a bust of Darwin, a large fern, and a statue of Laocoön entangled with an enormous snake.

Colleen led me halfway down the corridor and stopped outside a painted door. She opened it, curtsied, and held it open for me. “Your bedroom, sir,” she said. Her Irish brogue made the “sir” sound like “sorr.”

This room was not quite so crowded as the parlor. It only had a bed, a washstand, a nightstand, a wooden chair, a chintz-covered chair, a bureau, a looking-glass, and an enormous wardrobe which covered one entire wall—a blessing since the wallpaper consisted of trellises up which crawled enormous blue morning glories.

The maid set the lamp on the nightstand and darted across the room to take the pitcher off the washstand. “I’ll just be bringin’ you your hot water, sorr,” she said, and ducked out.

I looked round the room. The Victorian interior decorating motto was apparently “No stone uncovered.” The bed was covered with a bedspread which was in turn covered with a white openwork crocheted thing, the dressing table and the bureau were topped with bouquets of dried flowers and white linen scarves edged with tatting, and the nightstand was draped with a paisley shawl over which lay a crocheted doily.

Even the toilet articles on the bureau had knitted covers. I took them out and examined them, hoping they weren’t as obscure as the kitchen utensils had been. No, those were brushes and that was a shaving brush and a mug with soap in it.

Twentieth Century has us use long-term depils on our drops, since shaving conditions are usually primitive, and I’d used one when I started my jumble sales, but it wouldn’t last the whole time I was here. Had the safety razor been invented in 1888?

I took the knitted case off an enameled box and opened it and got my answer. In it lay two ivory-handled straight-edge razors with lethal-looking blades.

There was a knock on the door. I opened it, and the maid came in, lugging the pitcher, which was nearly as large as she was. “Your hot water, sorr,” she said, setting the pitcher down and bobbing another curtsey. “If you’ll be needing anything else, just ring the bell there.”

She waved vaguely at a long ribbon embroidered with violets hanging above the bed, and it was a good thing I’d seen Tossie use a bellpull, or I would have taken it for part of the decorations.

“Thank you, Colleen,” I said.

She stopped in mid-bob, looking uncomfortable. “Begging your pardon, sorr,” she said, twisting the skirt of her apron in her hands, “it’s Jane.”

“Oh,” I said. “Sorry. I must have misunderstood. I thought your name was Colleen.”

She twisted some more. “No, sorr, it’s Jane, sorr.”

“Well, then, thank you, Jane,” I said.

She looked relieved. “Good night, sorr,” she said, bobbed her way out, and shut the door.

I stood there, looking at the bed almost in awe, scarcely able to believe I was actually going to get what I had come to the Victorian era for—a good night’s sleep. It seemed almost too good to be true. A soft bed, warm covers, blissful unconsciousness. No rocks, no missing cats to search for, no rain. No jumble sales, no bishop’s bird stump, no Lady Schrapnell.

I sat down on the bed. It sank in beneath me, smelling faintly of lavender, and entropy took over. I was suddenly too tired even to get undressed. I wondered how outraged Colleen—no, Jane—would be to come in and find me fully dressed in the morning.

I was still worried about incongruities and what I was going to tell Verity, but they would have to wait. And in the morning I would be rested, rejuvenated, finally cured of time-lag and able to reason out how to deal with the problem. If there was still a problem. Perhaps Princess Arjumand, safely back in the ruffled bosom of her owner, would restore balance and the incongruity would begin to heal itself. And if it didn’t, why, after a good night’s sleep I’d be able to think, able to reason out a plan of action.

The thought of that gave me the strength to spare the maid’s sensibilities. I took off my soggy coat, hung it over the bedpost, and sat down on the bed and began pulling off my boots.

I made it as far as one boot and half a saturated sock before there was a knock.

It’s the maid, I thought hopefully, bringing me a hot water bottle or a penwiper or something, and if her sensibilities are offended by a stockinged foot, so be it. I’m not putting my boot back on.

It wasn’t the maid. It was Baine. He was carrying the carpetbag. “I have been down to the river, sir,” he said, “and I regret that I was only able to save one of your baskets, your portmanteau, and this carpetbag, which was, unfortunately, empty and damaged.” He indicated one of the slits I’d cut for Princess Arjumand. “It must have been caught in a weir before it washed onto the shore. I’ll repair it for you, sir.”

I didn’t want him examining it closely and finding telltale cat hairs. “No, that’s all right,” I said, reaching for it.

“I assure you, sir,” he said, “it can be sewn so that it’s as good as new.”

“Thank you,” I said. “I’ll take care of it.”

“As you wish, sir,” he said.

He crossed to the window and pulled the curtains shut. “We are still looking for the boat,” he said. “I have notified the lock-keeper at Pangbourne Lock.”

“Thank you,” I said, impressed at his efficiency, and wishing he would go away so I could go to bed.

“Your clothes from the portmanteau are being washed and ironed for you, sir. I also retrieved your boater.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“Very good, sir,” he said and I thought he was about to leave, but instead he just stood there.

I wondered if there was something I was supposed to say to dismiss him and what it was. One didn’t tip butlers, did one? I tried to remember what the subliminals had said. “That will be all, Baine,” I said finally.

“Yes, sir.” He bowed slightly and started out, but at the door he hesitated again, as if there were something else.

“Good night,” I said, hoping that was it.

“Good night, sir,” he said and went out.

I sat down on the bed. This time I didn’t even get the boot off before there was a knock.

It was Terence. “Thank goodness you’re still up, Ned,” he said. “You’ve got to help me. We’ve got a crisis on our hands.”

“. . . the curious incident of the dog in the nighttime.”

“The dog did nothing in the nighttime.”

“That was the curious incident,” remarked Sherlock Holmes.

Arthur Conan Doyle

C H A P T E R  T W E L V E

A Rescue—Why English Country Houses Have a Reputation for Being Haunted—Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Elopement—Visitors—A Confession—The Mystery of Princess Arjumand’s Drowning Solved—More Visitors—The Charge of the Light Brigade—Rules of Mystery Novels—The Least Likely Suspect—An Unpleasant Discovery

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

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

“His condition?” I said.

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

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

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

“Then how can I get him in?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My heart stopped cold.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cyril responded by sitting up alertly, ready to play.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There was a knock on the door.

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

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

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

It was Verity. In her nightgown.

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

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

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

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

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

“What did he want?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I know,” she said.

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

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

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

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

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

She bit her lip, looking worried.

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

“I don’t know.”

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

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

“What?” I said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She rewarded me with one of her devastating smiles.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“And nobody else saw her?”

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

“She escaped from the carpetbag?”

“No, I said. “I let her out.”

“You let her out?”

“I thought she was tame,” I said.

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

“No,” I said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There was a knock on the door.

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

“It’s Baine, sir.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Good,” I said. “Thank you, Baine.”

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

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

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

“Thank you.”

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

“No, thank you.”

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

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

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

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

“What is it?” I said.

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

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

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

“Your fault?” I said blankly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I quite understand,” I said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I stuck them behind my back.

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

“Yes, well . . .” I said. “Thank you.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There was no answer.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Verity,” she whispered back.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Did she know where it was?”

“No.”

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

“How long were you there?” I asked.

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

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

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

“Yes. What did he say?”

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

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

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

“Because of what Baine told us.”

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

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

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

“2018? What crisis point is that?”

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

“A symptom? What do you mean?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Ruffles,” I said.

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

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

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

“I can imagine.”

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

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

“And? Was he supposed to meet Maud?”

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

“No marriage license?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Agatha Christie?” I said, completely lost.

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

“Crossword puzzles?” I said.

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

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

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

“I know who Sherlock Holmes is.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Fortune-telling tent?” I said.

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

“. . . there is no more admirably educational experience for a young fellow starting out in life than going to stay at a country house under a false name. . . .”

P. G. Wodehouse

C H A P T E R  T H I R T E E N

Another Visitor—Variations on a Theme—The Birds—Importance of Butlers—An Old-Fashioned English Breakfast—Wildlife—The Bishop’s Bird Stump—The One Little Fact—The Mystery of the Maid’s Name Solved—I Am Prepped—The Mystery of the Origin of the Jumble Sale Solved—My Time in the States—Victorian Handicrafts—My Boater—Mr. C—A Surprise

Verity was not my final visitor. A half hour after she left there was another sound of scratching on the door, so faint I would not have heard it if I had been asleep.

I wasn’t asleep. Verity, with her news of increased slippage and discrepancies, had pretty much put paid to that. Not to mention Lady Schrapnell and the bishop’s bird stump.

And Cyril had somehow managed, in spite of his short legs, to sprawl over the entire width of the bed and both pillows so that there was only a narrow edge left, which I had a tendency to roll off of. I wrapped my feet round the bedpost and anchored the coverlet with my hands and thought about Lord Lucan and Schrödinger’s cat.

It had been put into a box in Schrödinger's thought experiment, along with a doomsday device: a bottle of cyanide gas, a hammer hooked to a Geiger counter, and a chunk of uranium. If the uranium emitted an electron, it would trigger the hammer which would break the bottle. That would release the gas that would kill the cat that lived in the box that Schrödinger built.

And since there was no way to predict whether the uranium had emitted an electron or not, the cat was neither dead nor alive, but both, existing as side-by-side probabilities which would collapse into a single reality when the box was opened. Or the incongruity was repaired.

But that meant there was a fifty percent probability that the incongruity wouldn’t be repaired. And for each moment the cat stayed in the box, the probability that the uranium would emit said electron became greater, and so did the likelihood that when the box was opened, the cat would be dead.

And the first line of defense had already failed. The coincidences of Tossie’s meeting Terence and my meeting Terence and our rescuing Professor Peddick and his meeting the Colonel proved that. And discrepancies were the next step.

But Terence hadn’t affected history, at least not directly, or his name would have been in the official records, and Oxford Railway Station was thirty miles and four days from Muchings End. And T.J. had said the immediate vicinity.

But what seemed to have escaped Verity in her time-lagged state was that even if their meeting wasn’t in the immediate vicinity, Mrs. Mering’s decision to take Tossie to Madame Iritosky’s was, and that was what had led to her meeting Terence and to Terence’s running into Professor Peddick and being asked to meet the agèd relicts. And running into me. And what did immediate vicinity mean anyway? T.J. hadn’t said. It might be years and hundreds of miles.

I lay there in the dark, going round and round, like Harris in the Hampton Court Maze. Baine hadn’t intended to drown Princess Arjumand, but if she hadn’t drowned and become nonsignificant, why hadn’t the net refused to open for Verity? And if she had drowned, why had it opened for me?

And why had I come through at Oxford? To keep Terence from meeting Maud? I didn’t see how that could possibly contribute to a self-correction. Or had it been to keep the cat away from Muchings End? I remembered dropping her basket at Folly Bridge when Cyril charged at me, and it nearly rolling into the river before Terence caught it. And my grabbing the carpetbag as it toppled, and sending Cyril into the drink. Had the course of history been trying to correct itself by drowning the cat, and I’d kept interfering?

But she couldn’t have been intended to drown. Baine hadn’t been trying to drown her when he threw her in. If Verity hadn’t interfered, he would have dived in, morning coat and all, and saved her. Perhaps he’d thrown her out too far, and she’d been carried away by the current and drowned, in spite of Baine’s best efforts. But that still didn’t explain—

There was a faint scratching at the door. It’s Verity, I thought. She forgot to explain Hercule Poirot’s detecting methods. I opened the door.

There was no one there. I opened the door wider and looked down the hall in both directions. Nothing but blackness. It must have been one of Mrs. Mering’s spirits.

“Mere,” a small voice said.

I looked down. Princess Arjumand’s gray-green eyes shone up at me. “More,” she said, and sauntered past me, tail in the air, jumped on the bed, and lay down in the middle of my pillow.

This left me no room at all. Plus, Cyril snored. This in itself could have been got used to, but as the night progressed, it got louder and louder, till I was afraid it was going to wake the dead. Or Mrs. Mering. Or both.

And he seemed to do variations on a theme—a low rumble, like distant thunder, a snore, an odd whuffling sound which ruffled his jowls, a snort, a snuffle, a wheeze.

None of this bothered the cat, who had settled herself on my Adam’s apple again and was purring (without variations) in my ear. I kept dozing off from cat-induced lack of oxygen and then waking up, lighting matches, and trying to read my pocket watch by them at II, III, and a quarter to IV.

I dozed off again at half-past V only to be awakened by the birds chirping the arrival of the sun. I had always been led to believe this was an idyllic, melodious sound, but this sounded more like a full-scale Nazi air raid. I wondered if the Merings had an Anderson shelter.

I fumbled for a match, realized I could read my pocket watch without it, and got up. I pulled on my clothes, put on my shoes, and began trying to rouse Cyril.

“Come along, boy, time to go back to the stable,” I said, interrupting him in mid-whuffle with a shake. “You don’t want Mrs. Mering to catch you in here. Come along. Wake up.”

Cyril opened one bleary eye, closed it again, and began to snore loudly.

“Don’t try to pull that!” I said. “It won’t work. I know you’re awake.” I poked him in his midsection. “Come along. You’ll get us both thrown out.” I tugged on his collar. He opened the eye again and staggered to his feet. He looked like I felt. His eyes were bloodshot, and he was swaying gently, like a drunk after a night on the tiles.

“Good boy,” I said encouragingly. “That’s it. Off the bed. Down we go.”

Princess Arjumand chose that moment to yawn, stretch luxuriously, and settle comfortably into a nest of bedclothes. The message couldn’t have been clearer.

“You’re not helping,” I said to her. “I know it’s not fair, Cyril, but life is not fair. I, for instance, am supposed to be on holiday. Resting. Sleeping.”

Cyril took the word “sleeping” for a command and sank back onto the pillows.

“No,” I said. “Up. Now. I mean it, Cyril. Come. Heel. Wake up.”

One has not lived until one has carried a sixty-pound dog down a sweeping flight of stairs at half-past V in the morning. Outside, the grounds had the rosy flush of dawn, the grass bright with diamond dew, the roses just op’ing their sweet faces, all of which indicated I was still suffering from severe to terminal time-lag, which meant when I saw Verity at breakfast I would still be completely under her spell, even though she had told Lady Schrapnell I knew where the bishop’s bird stump was.

In the meantime, the bird Luftwaffe must have gone back to refuel, and the world lay silent in the early light, a silence as much a part of the past as Victorian country houses and boating on the Thames, the stillness of a world that had yet no ken of airplanes and traffic jams, of incendiaries and pinpoint bombs, the still and holy hush of an idyllic world gone by.

It was too bad I wasn’t in a position to appreciate it. Cyril weighed a ton, and set up a pathetic and piercing whine as soon as I set him down. I almost tripped over the slumbering stableboy on the way out, and, back inside the house, I nearly collided with Baine in the upper hall.

He was setting polished boots in neat pairs outside the bedroom doors. In the second before he saw me, I wondered when he slept.

“Couldn’t sleep,” I said, dropping the subjects of my sentences like Colonel Mering in my nervousness. “Went downstairs looking for something to read.”

“Yes, sir,” he said. He was holding Tossie’s white boots. They had ruffles on the toes. “I find Mr. Toynbee’s The Industrial Revolution very relaxing. Would you like me to fetch it for you?”

“No, that’s quite all right,” I said. “Feel as though I shall be able to sleep now.”

Which was a blatant lie. I had far too many things to worry about to be able to fall asleep—how I was going to get my collar on and my tie tied in the morning. What Time Travel was going to discover about the consequences of my not returning Princess Arjumand to Muchings End for four full days. What I was going to tell Lady Schrapnell.

And even if I were able to stop worrying, there was no point in trying to sleep. It was already getting light. In a few minutes, sun would be streaming through the windows, and the bird Luftwaffe were already returning for a second raid. And I didn’t dare fall asleep for fear of suffocation at the hands of Princess Arjumand.

She had taken over both pillows in my absence. I tried to push her gently to one side without waking her, and she stretched curvingly and began flipping her tail on my face.

I lay there under the lash and thought about the bishop’s bird stump.

I not only didn’t know where it was, I didn’t have any idea what could possibly have happened to it. It had stood in the church for eighty years, and there was no indication it hadn’t been there during the raid. In fact, there were a lot of indications that it had been. The order of service I’d found in the rubble proved it had been there four days before the raid, and I had seen it there myself on the day before that, the ninth, after the Prayers for the RAF Service and Baked Goods Sale.

I supposed it might have been removed for safekeeping at the last minute, but that hardly seemed likely when neither the Purbeck marble baptismal font nor the organ Handel had played on had been sent to the country or put down in the crypt, even though in retrospect they obviously should have been. And the bishop’s bird stump looked far more indestructible than the marble baptismal font.

It was indestructible. The roof collapsing on it wouldn’t have even chipped its cherubs. It should have been standing there in the ashes, rising above the rubble, untouched, unscathed, un—

When I woke, it was full daylight and Baine was standing over me with a cup of tea.

“Good morning, sir,” he said. “I took the liberty of returning Princess Arjumand to her mistress’s room.”

“Good idea,” I said, realizing belatedly that I had a pillow and was able to breathe.

“Yes, sir. It would be most distressing to Miss Mering to wake and find her gone again, though I can quite understand Princess Arjumand’s attachment to you.”

I sat up. “What time is it?”

“Eight o’clock, sir.” He handed me the cup of tea. “I am afraid I was unable to retrieve the majority of your and Mr. St. Trewes’s and Professor Peddick’s luggage,” he said. “These were all I was able to find.”

He held up the size small suit of evening clothes Finch had packed for me. “I am afraid there has been considerable shrinkage, due to their immersion in the water. I have therefore sent for replacements, and—”

“Replacements?” I said, nearly spilling my tea. “From where?”

“Swan and Edgar’s, of course, sir,” he said. “In the meantime, your boating costume.”

He had done more than press it. My shirt was bleached and starched to within an inch of its life, and the flannels looked like new. I hoped I would be able to figure out how to get into them. I sipped thoughtfully at my tea, trying to remember how the tie had gone.

“Breakfast is at nine, sir,” Baine said. He poured out hot water from the ewer into the bowl and opened the box of razors.

The tie probably didn’t matter. I would cut my throat shaving before I ever got to it.

“Mrs. Mering wishes everyone to be down to breakfast by nine o’clock as there are a great many preparations to be made for the church fête,” he said, laying out the razors, “particularly as regards the jumble sale.”

The jumble sale. I had almost managed to forget about it, or perhaps I was only in denial. I seemed to be doomed to attend bazaars and church fêtes no matter what century I went to.

“When is it to be held?” I asked, hoping he would say next month.

“The day after tomorrow,” Baine said, draping a towel over his arm.

Perhaps we’d be gone by then. Professor Peddick would be eager to go on to Runnymede to see the meadow where the Magna Carta was signed, to say nothing of its excellent perch deeps.

Terence wouldn’t want to go, of course, but he might not have any say in the matter. Mrs. Mering had taken a pronounced dislike to him, and I had a feeling she would like him even less when she found out he had designs on her daughter. And hadn’t any money.

She might even pack us off directly after breakfast, pleading the preparations for the jumble sale, the incongruity could begin correcting itself, and I could take a nice long nap on the river while Terence rowed. If I hadn’t killed myself with the straight razors before that.

“Would you care to have me shave you now, sir?” Baine said.

“Yes,” I said, and bounded out of bed.

I needn’t have worried about the clothes either. Baine fastened my braces and my collar, constructed the tie, and would have tied my shoes if I’d let him, I didn’t know whether from gratitude or if this was the usual custom of the times. I would have to ask Verity.

“Which room is breakfast in?” I asked Baine.

“The breakfast room, sir,” he said. “First door on your left.”

I went tripping downstairs, feeling positively cheerful. A good old-fashioned English breakfast, bacon and eggs and orange marmalade, all served up by a butler, was a delightful prospect, and it was a beautiful day. Sun streamed in over the polished banisters and onto the portraits. Even Lady Schrapnell’s Elizabethan ancestor looked cheerful.

I opened the first door to the left. Baine must have told me wrong. This was the dining room, almost entirely filled with a massive mahogany table and an even more massive sideboard with an assortment of covered silver dishes on it.

The table had cups and saucers and silverware on it, but no plates, and there was no one in the room. I turned to start back out and look for the breakfast room and nearly collided with Verity.

“Good morning, Mr. Henry,” she said, “I hope you slept well.”

She was wearing a pale-green dress with tiny pleats in the bodice and had a green ribbon bound round her piled-up auburn hair, and I obviously needed a good deal more sleep before I was over my time-lag. I noticed shadows under her green-brown eyes, but otherwise she was still the most beautiful creature I’d ever seen.

She went over to the sideboard. “Breakfast is served from the sideboard, Mr. Henry,” she said, taking a flower-rimmed plate from a large stack. “The others will be down shortly.”

She leaned toward me to hand me the plate. “I am so sorry I told Lady Schrapnell you knew where the bishop’s bird stump was,” she said. “I must have been more time-lagged than I realized, but that’s no excuse, and I want you to know I’ll do everything I can to help you find it. When’s the last time anybody saw it?”

“I saw it on Saturday the ninth of November, 1940, after the Prayers for the RAF Service and Baked Goods Sale.”

“And no one saw it after that?”

“No one’s been able to get through after that till after the raid. The increased slippage around a crisis point, remember?”

Jane came in with a pot of marmalade, set it on the table, bobbed a curtsey, and left. Verity stepped over to the first of the covered dishes, which had a statuette of a flopping fish for a handle.

“And it wasn’t found in the rubble after the raid?” she said, lifting the lid by the fish.

“No,” I said. “Good Lord, what’s that?” I was staring at a bed of blindingly yellow rice with strips of flaked white in it.

“It’s kedgeree,” she said, putting a small spoonful on her plate. “Curried rice and smoked fish.”

“For breakfast?”

“It’s an Indian dish. The Colonel’s fond of it.” She put the lid back on. “And none of the contemps mention having seen it from the ninth to the night of the raid?”

“It was listed in the order of service for Sunday the tenth, under the flower arrangements, so presumably it was there during the service.”

She moved down to the next covered dish. This lid had a large antlered deer. I wondered briefly if they represented some sort of code, but the next one down was a snarling wolf, so I doubted it.

“When you saw it on the ninth,” Verity said, “did you notice anything unusual about it?”

“You’ve never seen the bishop’s bird stump, have you?”

“I mean, had it been moved? Or damaged? Did you notice anyone hanging about it or see anything suspicious?”

“You’re still time-lagged, aren’t you?” I asked.

“No,” she said indignantly. “The bishop’s bird stump is missing, and it can’t just have disappeared into thin air. So someone must have taken it, and if someone took it, there must be a clue to who it was. Did you notice anyone standing near it?”

“No,’ I said.

“Hercule Poirot says there’s always something that no one noticed or thought was important,” she said, picking up the Stag at Bay.

Inside was a mass of pungent-smelling brown objects. “What’s that?”

“Devilled kidneys,” she said, “braised in chutney and mustard. In Hercule Poirot mysteries, there’s always one little fact that doesn’t fit, and that’s the key to the mystery.” She picked up a charging bull by the horns. “This is cold ptarmigan.”

“Aren’t there any eggs and bacon?”

She shook her head. “Strictly for the lower classes.” She held out a shellacked fish on a fork. “Kipper?”

I settled for porridge.

Verity took her plate and went over and sat down on the far side of the huge table. “What about when you were there after the raid?” she said, motioning me to sit down across from her. “Was there any sign of the bishop’s bird stump having been in the fire?”

I opened my mouth to say, “The cathedral was completely destroyed,” and then stopped, frowning. “Actually, there was. A charred flower stem. And we found the wrought-iron stand it stood on.”

“Was the stem from the same kind of flower that was listed in the order of service?” Verity asked, and I was about to say there was no way to tell when Jane came in again, bobbed, and said, “Tea, ma’am?”

“Yes, thank you, Colleen,” Verity said.