As soon as she’d gone, I said, “Why did you call the maid Colleen?”

“It’s her name,” she said, “but Mrs. Mering didn’t think it was fashionable for a servant. Too Irish. English servants are what’s en vogue.”

“So she made her change it?”

“It was a common practice. Mrs. Chattisbourne calls all of her maids Gladys so she doesn’t have to remember which is which. Weren’t you prepped on this?”

“I wasn’t prepped at all,” I said. “Two hours of subliminals, real-time, which I was too time-lagged to hear. On the subservient status of women, mostly. And fish forks.”

She looked appalled. “You weren’t prepped? Victorian society’s highly mannered. Breaches of etiquette are taken very seriously.” She looked curiously at me. “How have you managed thus far?”

“For the past two days I’ve been on the river with an Oxford don who quotes Herodotus, a lovesick young man who quotes Tennyson, a bulldog, and a cat,” I said. “I played it by ear.”

“Well, that won’t work here. You’ll have to be prepped somehow. All right, listen,” she said, leaning across the table, “here’s the short course. Formality is the main thing. People don’t say what they think. Euphemisms and politeness are the order of the day. No physical contact between the sexes. A man may take a lady’s arm, or help her over a stile, or up the steps into a train. Unmarried men and women are never allowed to be alone together,” she said, in spite of the fact that we seemed to be. “There must be a chaperone present.”

As if on cue, Jane reappeared with two cups of tea and set them down in front of us.

“Servants are called by their first names,” Verity said as soon as she’d gone, “except for the butler. He’s Mr. Baine or Baine. And all cooks are Mrs., no matter what their marital status, so don’t ask Mrs. Posey about her husband. This household has a parlormaid, that’s Colleen—I mean, Jane—a scullery maid, a cook, a footman, a groom, a butler, and a gardener. It had an upstairs maid, a lady’s maid, and a bootboy, but the Duchess of Landry stole them.”

“Stole them?” I said, reaching for the sugar.

“They didn’t eat sugar on their porridge,” she said. “And you should have rung for the servant to pass it to you. Stealing each other’s servants is their chief entertainment. Mrs. Mering stole Baine from Mrs. Chattisbourne and is currently in the process of trying to steal her bootboy. They didn’t put milk on it either. No swearing in the presence of ladies.”

“How about ‘balderdash’?” I said. “Or ‘pshaw’?”

“ ‘Pshaw,’ Mr. Henry?” Mrs. Mering said, sweeping in. “What are you pooh-poohing? Not our church fête, I hope? It benefits the restoration fund, such a worthwhile project, Mr. Henry. Our poor parish church is in such desperate need of restoration. Why, the baptismal font dates back to 1262. And the windows! Hopelessly mediaeval! If our fête is a success we hope to purchase all new ones!”

She heaped her plate with kippers and venison and wolf, sat down, and swept her napkin off the table and onto her lap. “The restoration project is all our curate Mr. Arbitage’s doing. Until he came the vicar wouldn’t even hear of restoring the church. I’m afraid he is quite old-fashioned in his thinking. He refuses even to consider the possibility of communication with the spirits.”

Good man, I thought.

“Mr. Arbitage, on the other hand, embraces the idea of spiritism, and of speaking with our dear departed ones on the Other Side. Do you believe contact is possible with the Other Side, Mr. Henry?”

“Mr. Henry was inquiring about the church fête,” Verity said. “I was just going to tell him about your clever idea of a jumble sale.”

“O,” Mrs. Mering said, looking flattered. “Have you ever been to a fête, Mr. Henry?”

“One or two,” I said.

“Well, then, you know that there are donated fancy goods and jellies and needlework tables. My idea was that we also donate objects that we no longer have any use for, all sorts of things, dishes and bric-a-brac and books, a jumble of things!”

I was gazing at her in horror. This was the person who had started it all, the person responsible for all those endless jumble sales I’d been stuck at.

“You would be amazed, Mr. Henry, at the treasures people have in their attics and storerooms, sitting there covered in dust. Why, in my own attic I found a tea urn and a lovely celery dish. Baine, were you able to get the dents out of the tea urn?”

“Yes, madam,” Baine said, pouring her coffee.

“Would you care for coffee, Mr. Henry?” Mrs. Mering asked.

I was surprised at how pleasant Mrs. Mering was being to me. It must be the politeness Verity had referred to.

Tossie came in, carrying Princess Arjumand, who had a large pink bow tied round her neck. “Good morning, Mama,” she said, scanning the table for Terence.

“Good morning, Tocelyn,” Mrs. Mering said. “Did you sleep well?”

“O yes, Mama,” Tossie said, “now that my dearum-dearums pet is safely home.”  She snuggled the cat. “You slept cuddled next to me all night long, didn’t you, sweetum-lovums?”

“Tossie!” Mrs. Mering said sharply. Tossie looked chagrined.

Obviously some sort of breach of etiquette, though I had no idea what. I would have to ask Verity.

Colonel Mering and Professor Peddick arrived, talking animatedly about the battle of Trafalgar. “Outnumbered twenty-seven to thirty-three,” the Colonel was saying.

“Exactly my point,” Professor Peddick said. “If it hadn’t been for Nelson, they’d have lost the battle! It’s character that makes history, not blind forces! Individual initiative!”

“Good morning, Papa,” Tossie said, coming over to kiss the Colonel on the cheek.

“Good morning, Daughter.” He glared at Princess Arjumand. “Doesn’t belong in here.”

“But she’s had a terrible ordeal,” Tossie said, carrying the cat over to the sideboard. “Look, Princess Arjumand, kippers,” she said, put one on a plate, set it and the cat down, and smiled defiantly at Baine.

“Good morning, Mesiel,” Mrs. Mering said to her husband. “Did you sleep well last night?”

“Tolerably,” he said, peering under the wolf. “And you, Malvinia? Sleep well, my dear?”

This was apparently the opening Mrs. Mering had been waiting for. “I did not,” she said, and paused dramatically. “There are spirits in this house. I heard them.”

I knew I shouldn’t have trusted Verity with her “The walls in these country houses are thick. One can’t hear a thing through them.”

“O, Mama,” Tossie said breathlessly, “what did the spirits sound like?”

Mrs. Mering got a faraway look. “It was a strange, unearthly sound such as no living being could make. A sort of sobbing exhalation like breathing, though of course the spirits do not breathe, and then a . . .” she paused, searching for words, “. . . a shriek followed by a long painful gasp, as of a soul in torment. It was a dreadful, dreadful sound.”

Well, I would agree with that.

“I felt as though it were trying to communicate with me, but could not,” she said. “O, if only Madame Iritosky were here. I know she would be able to make the spirit speak. I intend to write to her this morning and ask her to come, though I fear she will not. She says she can only work in her own home.”

With her own trapdoors and hidden wires and secret connecting passages, I thought, and supposed I should be grateful. At least she wasn’t likely to show up and expose my harboring of Cyril.

“If she could have but heard the spirit’s fearful cry, I know she would come to us,” Mrs. Mering said. “Baine, has Mr. St. Trewes come down yet?”

“I believe he is coming momentarily,” Baine said. “He took his dog for a walk.”

Late for breakfast, and walking his dog. Two strikes against him, though Mrs. Mering didn’t look as irritable as I’d thought she might.

“Hullo,” Terence said, coming in, and without Cyril. “Sorry I’m late.”

“That’s perfectly all right,” Mrs. Mering said, beaming at him. “Do sit down, Mr. St. Trewes. Would you care for tea or coffee?”

“Coffee,” Terence said, smiling at Tossie.

“Baine, bring coffee for Mr. St. Trewes.”

“We’re all so delighted you’ve come,” Mrs. Mering said. “I do hope you and your friends will be able to stay for our church fête. It will be such fun. We shall have a coconut shy and a fortuneteller, and Tocelyn will be baking a cake to raffle. Such an excellent cook, Tocelyn, and so accomplished. She plays the piano, you know, and speaks German and French. Don’t you, Tossie, dear?”

“Oui, Mama,” Tossie said, smiling at Terence.

I looked questioningly at Verity. She shrugged back an “I don’t know.”

“Professor Peddick, I do hope your pupils can spare you for a few days,” Mrs. Mering was saying. “And Mr. Henry, do say you’ll help us with the Treasure Hunt.”

“Mr. Henry has been telling me he lived in the States,” Verity said, and I turned and looked at her in astonishment.

“Truly?” Terence said. “You never told me that.”

“It . . . it was when I was ill,” I said. “I . . . was sent to . . . the States for treatment.”

“Did you see Red Indians?” Tossie asked.

“I was in Boston,” I stammered, silently cursing Verity.

“Boston!” Mrs. Mering cried. “Do you know the Fox sisters?”

“The Fox sisters?” I said.

“The Misses Margaret and Kate Fox. The founders of our spiritist movement. It was they who first received communications from the spirits by rapping.”

“I’m afraid I didn’t have that pleasure,” I said, but she had already turned her attention back to Terence.

“Tocelyn embroiders beautifully, Mr. St. Trewes,” she said. “You must see the lovely pillowcases she has sewn for our fancy goods stall.”

“I am certain the person who purchases them will have sweet dreams,” Terence said, smiling goopily at Tossie, “ ‘a dream of perfect bliss, too beautiful to last. . . .’ ”

The Colonel and the professor, still at Trafalgar with Nelson, pushed back their chairs and stood up, muttering, one after the other, “If you’ll excuse me.”

“Mesiel, where are you going?” Mrs. Mering said.

“Out to the fishpond,” the Colonel said. “Show Professor Peddick my nacreous ryunkin.”

“Do wear your greatcoat then,” Mrs. Mering said. “And your wool scarf.”  She turned to me. “My husband has a weak chest and a tendency to catarrh.”

Like Cyril, I thought.

“Baine, fetch Colonel Mering’s greatcoat,” she said, but they were already gone.

She turned back immediately to Terence. “Where do your people come from, Mr. St. Trewes?”

“Kent,” he said, “which I always thought the fairest spot on earth till now.”

“Might I be excused, Aunt Malvinia?” Verity said, folding her napkin. “I must finish my glove boxes.”

“Of course,” Mrs. Mering said absently. “How long have your family lived in Kent, Mr. St. Trewes?”

As Verity passed me, she dropped a folded note in my lap.

“Since 1066,” Terence said. “Of course, we’ve improved the house since then. Most of it’s Georgian. Capability Brown. You must come and visit us.”

I unfolded the note under the table and sneaked a look at it. It read, “Meet me in the library.”

“We should love to come,” Mrs. Mering said eagerly. “Shouldn’t we, Tocelyn?”

“Oui, Mama.”

I waited for an opening and dived in. “If I might be excused, Mrs. Mering,” I began.

“Absolutely not, Mr. Henry,” she said. “Why, you haven’t eaten a thing! You must have some of Mrs. Posey’s eel pie. It is unparalleled.”

It was, and so was the kedgeree, which she made Baine dump on my plate with a large shovel-like utensil. A kedgeree spoon, no doubt.

After some eels and as little kedgeree as possible, I made my escape and went to look for Verity, though I had no idea where the library was. I needed one of those diagrams like in Verity’s detective novels.

I tried several doors and finally found her in a room lined from floor to ceiling with books.

“Where have you been?” Verity said. She was seated at a table covered with a litter of shells and pots of glue.

“Eating vile, unspeakable things,” I said. “And answering questions about America. Why on earth did you tell them I’d been to America? I don’t know anything about the States.”

“Neither do they,” she said imperturbably. “I had to do something. You haven’t been prepped, and you’re bound to make mistakes. They think all Americans are barbarians, so if you use the wrong fork, they’ll put it down to your having spent time in the States.”

“Thank you, I suppose,” I said.

“Sit down,” she said. “We need to plan our strategy.”

I looked at the door, which had an old-fashioned key in the lock. “Should I lock the door?”

“It’s not necessary,” she said, selecting a flat pinkish shell. “The only person who ever comes in here is Baine. Mrs. Mering disapproves of reading.”

“Then where did all this come from?” I said, indicating the rows of brown- and scarlet-bound books.

“They bought it,” she said, swabbing glue on the shell.

“Bought what?”

“The library. From Lord Dunsany. The person Baine worked for before he came to the Chattisbournes. The Chattisbournes are who Mrs. Mering stole Baine from, though I think Baine actually chose to come. For the books.” She stuck the shell down on the box. “Sit down. If anyone comes in, you’re helping me with these.” She held up a completed box. It was covered with shells of assorted sizes in the shape of a heart.

“That’s absolutely hideous,” I said.

“The entire Victorian era had the most atrocious taste,” she said. “Be glad it’s not hair wreaths.”

“Hair wreaths?”

“Flowers made out of dead people’s hair. The mother-of-pearl shells go along the edges,” she said, showing me, “and then a row of cowrie shells.”  She shoved a glue pot at me. “I found out from Baine why Mrs. Mering’s suddenly so friendly toward Terence. She looked him up in DeBrett’s. He’s rich, and he’s the nephew of a peer.”

“Rich?” I said. “But he didn’t even have enough money to pay for the boat.”

“The aristocracy are always in debt,” she said, looking at a clamshell. “He’s got five thousand a year, an estate in Kent, and he’s second in line to the peerage. So,” she said, discarding the clamshell, “our priority is to keep Tossie and Terence away from each other, which will be difficult with Mama matchmaking. Tossie’s collecting things for the jumble sale this morning, and I’m going to send you with her. That’ll keep them apart for at least half a day.”

“What about Terence?” I said.

“I’m going to send him to Streatley after the Chinese lanterns for the fête. I want you to try to find out from Tossie if she knows any young men whose names begin with ‘C.’ ”

“You’ve checked in the neighborhood for ‘C’’s, I suppose,” I said.

She nodded. “The only two I’ve been able to discover are Mr. Cudden and Mr. Cawp, the farmer who’s always drowning kittens.”

“Sounds like a match made in heaven. What about Mr. Cudden?”

“He’s married,” she said glumly. “You’d think there’d be lots of Mr. C’s. I mean, look at Dickens—David Copperfield, Martin Chuzzlewit, Bob Cratchet.”

“Not to mention the Admirable Crichton,” I said, “and Lewis Carroll. No, that won’t work. It wasn’t his real name. Thomas Carlyle. And G.K. Chesterton. Eligible suitors all,” I said. “What are you going to do while I’m with Tossie?”

“I’m going to search Tossie’s room and try to find her diary. She’s hidden it, and I had to cut my search short. Jane came in. But this morning they’ll all be working on the fête, so I won’t be interrupted. Failing that, I’ll go through to Oxford and see what the forensics expert’s been able to find out.”

“Ask Warder how much slippage there was on the drop when you rescued Princess Arjumand,” I said.

“Going through to Oxford with her, do you mean?” she said. “There’s never any slippage on return drops.”

“No,” I said, “the drop where you came through and saw the cat.”

“All right. We’d better get back in there.” She stuck the cork in the glue pot, stood up, and rang for Baine.

“Baine,” she said when he appeared, “have the carriage brought round immediately, and then come to the breakfast room.

“As you wish, miss,” he said.

“Thank you, Baine,” she said, picked up the shell-covered box, and led the way back to the breakfast room.

Mrs. Mering was still interrogating Terence. “O, how exquisite!” she said when Verity showed her the box.

“We still have a good deal to do for the fête, Aunt Malvinia,” she said. “I so want the jumble sale to be a success. Have you your list?”

“Ring for Jane to bring it,” Mrs. Mering said.

“She has gone to the vicarage to fetch the bunting,” Verity said, and as soon as Mrs. Mering had left the room to get the list, “Mr. St. Trewes, may I prevail on you for a favor? The Chinese lanterns we had intended to string between the stalls have not been delivered. Would you be so good as to go to Streatley for them?”

“Baine can go,” Tossie said. “Terence is to go with me to the Chattisbournes’ this morning.”

“Your mother cannot spare Baine, with the tea tent to be set up,” Verity said. “Mr. Henry shall go with you. Baine,” she said to the butler who had just come in, “bring Mr. Henry a basket in which to carry the jumble sale donations. Is the carriage waiting?”

“Yes, miss,” he said, and left.

“But—” Tossie said, her mouth forming a pout.

“Here is the address,” Verity said, handing Terence a sheet of paper, “and orders for the lanterns. This is so good of you,” and hustled him out the front door before Tossie could even protest.

Baine brought the basket, and Tossie went to get her hat and gloves. “I don’t see why Mr. Henry couldn’t have gone for the lanterns,” I heard her say to Verity as they went upstairs.

“Absence makes the heart grow fonder,” Verity said. “Wear your hat with the polka-dot veil to show to Rose Chattisbourne.”

Verity came back downstairs. “I’m impressed,” I said.

“I’ve been taking lessons from Lady Schrapnell,” she said. “While you’re at the Chattisbournes’, see if you can find out when Elliott Chattisbourne—he’s the one whose clothes you’re wearing—is coming home. She could have been secretly corresponding with him since he’s been out in South Africa. Here comes Tossie.”

Tossie fluttered down the stairs in the polka-dotted veil, carrying a reticule and a parasol, and we set off.

Baine ran to catch up with us. “Your hat, sir,” he said breathlessly, handing me my boater.

My straw boater, which I had last seen floating down the river, the ribbon already beginning to fade pale blue onto the soggy straw. Baine had somehow restored it to its original state, the ribbon bright blue, the straw scrubbed and crisp.

“Thank you, Baine,” I said. “I thought it was lost forever.”

I put it on, feeling jauntier immediately and fully capable not only of keeping Tossie away from Terence but of being so charming she’d forget all about him.

“Shall we?” I said to Tossie and offered her my arm.

She looked up at me through the polka dots. “My cousin Verity says your hat makes you look feeble-minded,” she said speculatively, “but I don’t think it’s that bad. Some men simply don’t know how to wear hats. ‘Don’t you fink Mr. St. Twewes looks dashing in his boater?’ my dearums Juju said to me this morning. ‘Don’t you fink he’s the han’somest, han’somest mannums?’”

I had thought baby talk was bad, but baby talk from a cat—

“I knew a chap at school who lived near here,” I said, changing the subject to something more productive. “I can’t remember his name just now. Began with a ‘C.’ ”

“Elliott Chattisbourne?”

“No, that’s not it,” I said. “It did begin with a ‘C,’ though.”

“You knew him at school?” she said, pursing her lips. “Were you at Eton?”

“Yes,” I said. Why not? “Eton.”

“There’s Freddie Lawrence. But he went to Harrow. Were you at school with Terence?”

“This was a medium-tallish chap. Good at cricket.”

“And his name began with a ‘C’?” She shook her curls. “I can’t think of anyone. Does Terence play cricket?”

“He rows,” I said, “and swims. He’s a very good swimmer.”

“I think he’s terribly brave for rescuing Princess Arjumand,” she said. “ ‘Don’t oo fink he’s the bwavest knight in awl the world?’ Juju asked me. ‘I fink he is.’ ”

This kept up the entire way to the Chattisbournes’, which was just as well since I didn’t know any other facts about Terence.

“Here we are,” Tossie said, starting up the drive to a large neo-Gothic house.

Well, you survived that, I thought, and the rest of the morning’s bound to go easier.

Tossie stepped up to the front door. I waited for her to ring the bell and then remembered it was the Victorian era and rang it for her, and then stepped back as the butler opened the door.

It was Finch. “Good morning, miss, sir,” he said. “May I say who is calling?”

“It’s not the same game. It’s an absolutely different game, that’s the trouble.”

Darryl F. Lanuck on croquet.

C H A P T E R  F O U R T E E N

A Surprise Appearance—Jeeves—In a Flower Garden—Giggling—Dress Descriptions—An Overweight Cat—Sex and Violence—Finch Is Not at Liberty to Say—Tales of the Wild West—Amazing Treasures People Have in Their Attics—Home Again—I Am Prepped—A Civilized Game—Bad News—Croquet in Wonderland—More Bad News

I am not certain what I said or how we got in the house. It was all I could manage not to blurt out, “Finch! What are you doing here?”

It was obvious what he was doing. He was buttling. It was also obvious he had patterned himself on that greatest of all butlers, P.G. Wodehouse’s Jeeves. He had the supercilious air, the correct speech, especially the poker-faced expression down cold. You’d have thought he’d never seen me before in his life.

He ushered us inside with a perfectly measured bow, said, “I will announce you,” and started for the stairs, but he was too late.

Mrs. Chattisbourne and her four daughters were already hurrying down the stairs, burbling, “Tossie, dear, this is a surprise!”

She stopped at the foot of the staircase, and her daughters stopped, too, in a sort of ascending arrangement. They all, including Mrs. Chattisbourne, had turned-up noses and brownish-blonde hair.

“And who is this young gentleman?” Mrs. Chattisbourne said.

The girls giggled.

“Mr. Henry, madam,” Finch said.

“So this is the young gentleman who found your cat,” Mrs. Chattisbourne said. “We heard all about it from the Reverend Mr. Arbitage.”

“O, no!” Tossie said. “It was Mr. St. Trewes who returned my poor lost Princess Arjumand to me. Mr. Henry is only his friend.”

“Ah,” Mrs. Chattisbourne said. “I am so pleased to meet you, Mr. Henry. Allow me to introduce my flower garden.”

I had gotten so used to having people say nonsensical things to me in the last few days that it didn’t even faze me.

She led me over to the stairs. “These are my daughters, Mr. Henry,” she said, pointing up the stairs at them one by one. “Rose, Iris, Pansy, and my youngest, Eglantine. My own sweet nosegay, and some lucky gentlemen’s, she squeezed my arm, “bridal bouquet.”

The girls giggled in turn as she said their names and again at the end when she mentioned the bridal bouquet.

“Shall I serve refreshments in the morning room?” Finch said. “No doubt Miss Mering and Mr. Henry are fatigued from their walk.”

“How marvellous of you to think of it, Finch,” Mrs. Chattisbourne said, steering me toward the door on the right. “Finch is the most wonderful butler,” she said. “He thinks of simply everything.”

The Chattisbourne morning room looked exactly like the Merings’ parlor, only floral. The carpet was strewn with lilies, the lamps were decorated with forget-me-nots and daffodils, and on a marble-topped table in the middle of the room was a poppy-painted vase with pink peonies in it.

It was just as crowded as the Merings’, too, and being asked to sit down meant working my way through a maze of hyacinths and marigolds to a chair needlepointed in extremely realistic roses.

I sat down gingerly on it, almost afraid of thorns, and Mrs. Chattisbourne’s four daughters sat down on a flowered sofa opposite and giggled.

I found out over the course of the morning that, except for Eglantine, the youngest, who looked about ten, they giggled at all times and at virtually everything that was said.

“Finch is an absolute gem!” Mrs. Chattisbourne said, for instance, and they giggled. “So efficient! He does things before we even know we want them done. Not at all like our last butler—what is his name, Tossie?”

“Baine,” Tossie said.

“Oh, yes, Baine,” she said with a sniff. “An appropriate name for a butler, I suppose, though I have always felt it is not the name that makes the butler, but the training. Baine’s training was adequate, but hardly perfect. He was always reading books, as I recall. Finch never reads,” she said proudly.

“Wherever did you find him?” Tossie said.

“That’s the most amazing part of the whole thing,” Mrs. Chattisbourne said. (Giggles.) “I went over to the vicar’s to take him our dresser scarves for the fête, and he was sitting in the vicar’s parlor. It seems he’d been employed by a family who’d gone out to India, and he was unable to accompany them because of a sensitivity to curry.

A sensitivity to curry.

“The vicar said, ‘Do you know of anyone in need of a butler?’ Can you imagine? It was Fate.” (Giggles.)

“It sounds highly irregular to me,” Tossie said.

“Oh, of course Thomas insisted on interviewing him, and he had the most glowing references.”

All of them from people who’d gone out to India, no doubt, I thought.

“Tossie, I should be cross at your dear mother for hiring away—” she frowned in thought, “—I’ve forgotten the name again. . . .”

“Baine,” Tossie said.

“For hiring away Baine, but how can I be when I’ve found the perfect replacement?”

The perfect replacement came into the room bearing a flowered tray with a cut-glass decanter and glasses on it. “Currant cordial!” Mrs. Chattisbourne cried. “The very thing! Do you see what I mean?”

Finch began pouring the cordial and passing it around.

“Mr. Henry,” Mrs. Chattisbourne said. “Are you at school with Mr. St. Trewes?”

“Yes,” I said. “At Oxford. Balliol.”

“Are you married?” Eglantine asked.

“Eglantine!” Iris said. “It’s rude to ask people if they’re married.”

“You asked Tossie if he was married,” Eglantine said. “I heard you whispering.”

“Hush,” Iris said, turning, appropriately enough, carnation pink. (Giggles.)

“What part of England do you come from, Mr. Henry?” Mrs. Chattisbourne said.

It was time to change the subject. “I wished to thank you for your son’s loan of clothing,” I said, sipping the currant cordial. It was better than eel pie. “Is he here?”

“Oh, no,” Mrs. Chattisbourne said. “Didn’t the Merings tell you? Elliott is in South Africa.”

“He’s a mining engineer,” Tossie volunteered.

“We have just had a letter from him,” Mrs. Chattisbourne said. “Where is it, Pansy?”

The girls all got up and began looking for it with a good deal of giggling.

“Here it is, madam,” Finch said, and handed it to Mrs. Chattisbourne.

“Dear Mother and Father and Posies,” she read. “Here at last is the good long letter I had promised you,” and it became obvious she intended to read the entire thing.

“You must miss your son a great deal,” I said, trying to forestall her. “Will he be home soon?”

“Not until his two years’ tour of duty is up, eight months from now, I’m afraid. Of course, were one of his sisters to marry, he would naturally come home for the wedding.” (Giggles.)

She launched into the letter. Two paragraphs convinced me that Elliott was as silly as his sisters and had never been in love with anyone but himself in his life.

Three paragraphs convinced me Tossie didn’t care two pins for him either. She looked positively bored.

By paragraph four I was wondering why Elliott had escaped being named Rhododendron or Mugwort, and gazing at the Chattisbournes’ cat.

It was lying on a violet petit point footstool, and it was so enormous only a few violets showed round the edges. It was yellow, with yellower stripes, and even yellower eyes, and it returned my gaze with a heavy-lidded languor which I was beginning to feel myself, what with the currant cordial and Elliott Chattisbourne’s prose. I thought longingly of being back at Muchings End. Under a tree. Or in a hammock.

“What are you wearing to the fête, Rose?” Tossie asked when Mrs. Chattisbourne paused to turn over the letter to the third page.

Rose giggled and said, “My blue voile with the lace insets.”

“I’m wearing my white dotted swiss,” Pansy said, and the older girls leaned forward and began to chatter.

Eglantine went over to the footstool, picked up the cat, and dumped it on my lap. “This is our cat, Miss Marmalade.”

“Mrs. Marmalade, Eglantine,” Mrs. Chattisbourne said, and I wondered if cats were given honorifics, like cooks.

“And how are you, Mrs. Marmalade?” I said, chucking the cat under the chin. (Giggles.)

“What are you wearing to the fête, Tossie?” Iris asked.

“The new dress Papa had made for me in London,” Tossie said.

“Oh, what’s it like?” Pansy cried.

“I’ve written a description of it in my diary,” Tossie said.

Which some poor forensics expert will spend weeks deciphering, I thought.

“Finch,” Tossie said, “do hand me that basket,” and when he did, she reached under the embroidered cloth and brought out a cordovan leatherbound book with a gold lock.

And there went Verity’s hopes of stealing a look at it while we were gone. I wondered if I could possibly sneak it out of the basket on the way home.

Tossie carefully unclasped a delicate gold chain with a tiny key on it from her wrist and unlocked the diary, and then painstakingly refastened it.

Perhaps I could ask Finch to steal it for me. Or perhaps he’d already thought of it, since Mrs. Chattisbourne claimed he could read minds.

“White mignonette organdie,” Tossie read, “with an underdress of lilac silk. The bodice is made with a lace front, edged with a ruffle embroidered in ingrained colored silks of the softest shades of heliotrope, lilac, and periwinkle, worked in a pattern of violets and forget-me-nots inset with—”

The dress description was even longer than Elliott Chattisbourne’s letter. I gave myself over to some serious petting of Mrs. Marmalade.

She was not only enormous, but extremely fat. Her stomach was huge and felt oddly lumpy. I hoped she wasn’t suffering from something. An early form of the distemper that had wiped all the cats out in 2004 had been around in Victorian times, hadn’t it?

“—and a pleated lilac sash with a rosette at the side,” Tossie read. “The skirt is prettily draped and embroidered with a border of the same flowers. The sleeves are gathered, with shoulder and elbow ruffles. Lilac ribbons band—”

I felt cautiously along her underside as I petted her. Several tumors. But if it was leptovirus, it must be the early stages. Mrs. Marmalade’s fur was soft and sleek and she seemed perfectly happy. She was purring contentedly, her paws kneading happily into my trouser leg.

I was clearly still suffering from Slowness in Thinking. She doesn’t seem ill at all, I thought, even though she looks as though she’s about to explode—

“Good Lord,” I said. “This cat is pre—” and was struck in the back of the neck with a sharp object.

I stopped in mid-word.

Finch, behind me, said, “I beg your pardon, madam, there’s a gentleman here to see Mr. Henry.”

“To see me? But I—” and got clipped again.

“If you will excuse me, ladies,” I said, made some sort of bow, and followed Finch to the door.

“Mr. Henry has spent the last two years in America,” I heard Tossie say as I left the room.

“Ah,” Mrs. Chattisbourne said.

Finch led me down the corridor and into the library, and pulled the door shut behind us.

“I know, no swearing in the presence of ladies,” I said, rubbing my neck. “You didn’t have to hit me.”

“I did not strike you for swearing, sir,” he said, “though you are quite right. You should not have done it in polite company.”

“What did you hit me with anyway?” I said, feeling gingerly along my neckbone. “A blackjack?”

“A salver, sir,” he said, pulling a lethal-looking silver tray out of his pocket. “I had no alternative, sir. I had to stop you.”

“Stop me from what?” I said. “And what are you doing here anyway?”

“I am here on an assignment for Mr. Dunworthy.”

“What sort of an assignment? Were you sent to help Verity and me?”

“No, sir,” he said.

“Well, then, why are you here?”

He looked uncomfortable. “I am not at liberty to say, sir, except that I am here on a . . .” he cast about for a word, “. . . related project. I am on a different time-track from you, and therefore have access to information you have not discovered yet. If I were to tell you, it might interfere with your mission, sir.”

“And hitting me on the back of the neck isn’t interfering?” I said. “I think you’ve cracked a vertebra.”

“I had to stop you, sir, from commenting on the cat’s condition,” he said. “In Victorian society, discussion of sex in mixed company was utterly taboo. It was not your fault that you did not know. You weren’t properly prepped. I told Mr. Dunworthy I thought sending you without training and in your condition was a bad idea, but he was adamant that you should be the one to return Princess Arjumand.”

“He was?” I said. “Why?”

“I am not at liberty to say, sir.”

“And I wasn’t going to say anything about sex,” I protested. “All I intended to say was that the cat was preg—”

“Or anything resulting from sex, sir, or relating to it in any way.” He lowered his voice and leaned toward me. “Girls were kept completely ignorant of the facts of life until their wedding night, when I’m afraid it proved a considerable shock to some of them. Women’s bosoms or figures were never mentioned, and their legs were referred to as limbs.”

“So what should I have said? That the cat was expecting? In the club? In a family way?”

“You should not have said anything at all on the subject. The fact of pregnancy in people and animals was studiously ignored. You shouldn’t have referred to it at all.”

“And after they’re born and there are half a dozen kittens running all over the place, am I supposed to ignore that as well? Or ask if they were found under a cabbage leaf?”

Finch looked uncomfortable. “That’s another reason, sir,” he said obscurely. “We don’t want to draw any more attention to the situation than necessary. We don’t want to cause another incongruity.”

“Incongruity?” I said. “What are you talking about?”

“I’m not at liberty to say. When you return to the morning room, I would refrain from all mention of the cat.”

He truly did sound like Jeeves. “You’ve obviously been prepped,” I said admiringly. “When did you have time to learn so much about the Victorian era?”

“I’m not at liberty to say,” he said, looking pleased. “But I can say I feel as though this is the job I was born to.”

“Well, since you’re so good at it, tell me what I am supposed to say when I go back in there. Who am I supposed to say was here to see me?” I said. “I don’t know anyone here.”

“It won’t be a problem, sir,” he said, opening the library door with a gloved hand.

“Won’t be a problem? What do you mean? I’ll have to say something.”

“No, sir. They will not care why you were called away, so long as it has afforded them the opportunity to discuss you in your absence.”

“Discuss me?” I said, alarmed. “You mean as to my authenticity?”

“No, sir,” he said, looking every inch the butler. “As to your marriage-ability.” He led me across the corridor, bowed slightly, and opened the door with a gloved hand.

He was right. There was a sudden caught-out silence in the room, and then a spasm of giggles.

Mrs. Chattisbourne said, “Tocelyn has just been telling us about your brush with death, Mr. Henry.”

When I almost said “pregnant”? I wondered.

“When your boat capsized,” Pansy said eagerly. “But I suppose it is nothing compared to your adventures in America.”

“Have you ever been scalped?” Eglantine said.

“Eglantine!” Mrs. Chattisbourne said.

Finch appeared in the door. “I beg your pardon, madam,” he said, “but will Miss Mering and Mr. Henry be staying to lunch?”

“Oh, do stay, Mr. Henry!” the girls chimed. “We want to hear all about America!”

I spent lunch regaling them with a story of stagecoaches and tomahawks I’d stolen from Nineteenth-Century lectures I wished now I’d paid more attention to, and watching Finch. He signalled the proper utensil to use by whispering, “The fork with the three tines,” in my ear as he set the courses in front of me and by signalling discreetly from the sideboard as I held their attention with lines like, “That night sitting round the campfire, we could hear their tomtoms in the darkness, beating, beating, beating.” (Giggles.)

After lunch, Iris, Rose, and Pansy begged us to stay for a game of charades, but Tossie said we must go, and carefully relocked her diary and put it, not in the basket, but in her reticule. “Oh, but can’t you stay for just a short while?” Pansy Chattisbourne begged.

Tossie said we still had to pick up contributions from the vicar’s, for which I was grateful. I had had hock and claret at lunch and that, combined with the currant cordial and the residual effects of time-lag, made me want nothing but a long afternoon nap.

“Shall we see you at the fête, Mr. Henry?” Iris said, giggling.

I’m afraid so, I thought, hoping the vicar’s wasn’t far.

It wasn’t, but first we had to stop at the Widow Wallace’s (for a sauceboat and a banjo missing two strings), the Middlemarches’ (a teapot with the spout broken off, a vinegar cruet, and a game of Authors missing several cards), and Miss Stiggins’s (a bird cage, a set of four statuettes representing the Fates, a copy of Through the Looking Glass, a fish slice, and a ceramic thimble inscribed “Souvenir of Margate”).

Since the Chattisbournes had already given us a hat pin holder, a cushion with crewelwork violets and sweet peas, an egg boiler, and a cane with a carved dog’s head, the basket was already nearly full, and I had no idea how I was going to carry it all home. Luckily, all the vicar had to donate was a large cracked gilt-framed mirror.

“I will send Baine for it,” Tossie said and we started back.

The walk home was a repeat of the walk there, except that I was more laden and a good deal more tired. Tossie prattled on about Juju and “bwave, bwave Tewence,” and I thought about how glad I was my name didn’t begin with a “C,” and focused on finding a hammock.

Baine met us at the end of the drive and relieved me of my basket, and Cyril came running out to greet me. His unfortunate tendency to tilt to port, however, brought him up to Tossie’s feet, and she began to cry, “O naughty, naughty, bad creature!” and emit little screamlets.

“Come here, Cyril, boy!” I called, clapping my hands, and he ambled over happily, wagging his whole body. “Did you miss me, boy?”

“What, ho, the travellers return,” Terence called, waving from the lawn. “ ‘Back to the white walls of their long-left home.’ You’re just in time. Baine is setting up the wickets for a croquet match.”

“A croquet match!” Tossie cried. “What fun!” and ran up to change her clothes.

“A croquet match?” I said to Verity, who was watching Baine pound stakes into the grass.

“It was this or lawn tennis,” Verity said, “which I was afraid you hadn’t been prepped in.”

“I haven’t been prepped in croquet either,” I said, looking at the banded wooden mallets.

“It’s a very simple game,” Verity said, handing me a yellow ball. “You hit the ball through the wickets with a mallet. How did this morning go?”

“I was once a scout with Buffalo Bill,” I said, “and I’m engaged to Pansy Chattisbourne.”

She didn’t smile. “What did you find out about Mr. C?”

“Elliott Chattisbourne’s not coming home for another eight months,” I said. I explained how I’d asked her about the chap whose name I’d forgotten. “She couldn’t think of anyone it might be. But that’s not the most interesting thing I—”

Tossie came running over in a pink-and-white peppermint-striped sailor dress and a large pink bow, holding Princess Arjumand in her arms. “Juju does so love to watch the balls,” she said, setting her on the ground.

“And bat them,” Verity said. “Mr. Henry and I shall be partners,” she said. “And you and Mr. St. Trewes.”

“Mr. St. Trewes, we are to be partners,” she cried, running over to where Terence was supervising Baine.

“I thought the object was to keep Tossie and Terence apart,” I said.

“It is,” Verity said, “but I have to talk to you.”

“And I have to talk to you,” I said. “You’ll never guess who I saw over at the Chattisbournes’. Finch.”

“Finch?” she said blankly. “Mr. Dunworthy’s secretary?”

I nodded. “He’s their butler.”

“What’s he doing here?”

“He wouldn’t tell me. He said it was ‘a related project,’ and that he couldn’t tell me without interfering with ours.”

“Are you ready?” Tossie called from the stake.

“Nearly,” Verity said. “All right. The rules of the game are perfectly simple. You score points by hitting your ball through a course of six wickets twice, the four outside hoops, the center hoops, then back again in the opposite direction. Each turn is one stroke. If your ball goes through the wicket you get a continuation stroke. If your ball hits another ball, you get a croquet stroke and a continuation stroke, but if your ball goes through two hoops in one stroke, you only get one stroke. After you hit a ball, you can’t hit it again till you’ve gone through your next hoop, except for the first hoop. If you hit a ball you’ve hit, you lose your turn.”

“Are you ready?” Tossie called.

“Nearly,” Verity said to her. “Those are the boundaries,” she said to me, pointing with her mallet, “North, South, East, and West. That’s the yard line, and that’s the baulk line. Is all that clear?”

“Perfectly,” I said. “Which color am I?”

“Red,” she said. “You start from the baulk line.”

“Ready?” Tossie called.

“Yes,” Verity nodded.

“I go first,” Tossie said, stooping gracefully and putting her ball on the grass.

Well, and how difficult could it be? I thought, watching Tossie line up her shot. A dignified Victorian game, played by children and young women in long, trailing dresses on lush green lawns. A civilized game.

Tossie turned, smiled prettily at Terence, and tossed her curls. “I hope I make a good shot,” she said, and gave the ball a mighty whack that sent it through the first two hoops and halfway across the lawn.

She smiled surprisedly, asked, “Do I get another shot?” and whacked it again.

This time it nearly hit Cyril, who had lain down for a nap in the shade.

“Interference,” Tossie said. “It hit its nose.”

“Cyril hasn’t got a nose,” Verity said, placing her ball a mallet’s head behind the first hoop. “My turn.”

She didn’t hit her ball quite so violently as Tossie had, but it wasn’t a tap either. It went through the first hoop, and her next shot brought her within two feet of Tossie’s ball.

“Your turn, Mr. St. Trewes,” Tossie said, moving so her long skirt covered her ball. After his shot, when she walked over to him, her ball was a good yard farther away from Verity.

I went over to Verity. “She cheats,” I said.

She nodded. “I wasn’t able to find Tossie’s diary,” she said.

“I know. She had it with her. She read the dress description to the Chattisbourne girls.”

“Your turn, Mr. Henry,” Tossie said, leaning on her croquet mallet.

Verity had not said anything about the proper grip, and I hadn’t been paying attention. I put my ball down by the wicket and took hold of the mallet with a sort of cricket bat grip.

“Fault!” Tossie called. “Mr. Henry’s ball isn’t the proper length from the hoop. You lose a turn, Mr. Henry.”

“He does not,” Verity said. “Move your ball back the width of a mallet head.”

I did and then hit the ball more or less the right direction, though not through the hoop.

“My turn,” Tossie said and thwacked Verity’s ball completely off the court and into the hedge. “Sorry,” she said, simpered demurely, and did the same thing to Terence’s.

“I thought you said this was a civilized game,” I said to Verity, crawling under the hedge to retrieve her ball.

“I said simple,” she said.

I picked up the ball.

“Pretend you’re still looking for it,” Verity said under her breath. “After I searched Tossie’s room, I went through to Oxford.”

“Did you find out how much slippage there was on your drop?” I said, prying branches apart.

“No,” she said, looking solemn. “Warder was too busy.”

I was about to say that Warder always thought she was too busy, when she said, “The new recruit—I don’t know his name—the one who was working with you and Carruthers—is stuck in the past.”

“In the marrows field?” I said, thinking of the dogs.

“No, in Coventry. He was supposed to come through after he’d finished the rubble, but he hasn’t.”

“He probably couldn’t find the net,” I said, thinking of him messing with his pocket torch.

“That’s what Carruthers said, but Mr. Dunworthy and T.J. are worried it’s connected to the incongruity. They’ve sent Carruthers back to look for him.”

“It’s your turn, Verity,” Tossie said impatiently. She started over to us. “Haven’t you found it yet?”

“Here it is,” I called and emerged from under the hedge, holding it aloft.

“It went out here,” Tossie said, pointing with her foot to a spot several miles from where she hit it out.

“It’s like playing with the Red Queen,” I said, and handed Verity the ball.

My only goal on my next three turns was to get my ball on the same side of the court as Verity’s, a goal that was repeatedly thwarted by “Off With Her Head!” Mering.

“I’ve got it,” I said, limping over to Verity after one of Tossie’s shots had sent Terence’s ball straight into my shin, at which point Cyril had got up and moved to the far side of the lawn. “Mr. C is the physician who’s called in to doctor Tossie’s croquet casualties. What else did you find out?”

Verity lined up her shot carefully. “I found out who Terence married.”

“Please don’t say it was Tossie,” I said, standing on my good leg and rubbing my shin.

“No,” she said. She hit the ball neatly through the hoop. “Not Tossie. Maud Peddick.”

“But that’s good, isn’t it?” I said. “That means I didn’t ruin things by making Terence miss meeting Maud.”

She pulled a folded sheet of paper out of her sash and handed it surreptitiously to me.

“What’s this?” I said, sticking it in my breast pocket. “An excerpt from Maud’s diary?”

“No,” she said. “She’s apparently the only woman in the entire Victorian era who didn’t keep a diary. It’s a letter from Maud St. Trewes to her younger sister.”

“Your ball, Mr. Henry!” Tossie called.

“Second paragraph,” Verity said.

I gave the red ball an enthusiastic whack that sent it straight past Terence’s ball and into the center of the lilacs.

“I say, too bad!” Terence said.

I nodded and went crashing into the lilacs after it.

“Farewell, dear friend,” Terence called gaily, waving his mallet. “ ‘Farewell! For in that fatal word—howe’er we promise—hope—believe—there breathes despair.’ ”

I found the ball, picked it up, and moved into the thickest part of the lilacs. I unfolded the letter. It was written in a delicate, spidery hand. “Dearest Isabel,” it read, “I am so happy to hear of your engagement. Robert is a fine young man, and I only hope you will be as happy as Terence and I are. You worry that you met on the steps of an ironmonger’s, a singularly unromantic location. Do not fret. My darling Terence and I first met at a railway station. I was standing with my Aunt Amelia on the platform of Oxford Railway Station—”

I stood there looking down at the letter. The platform of Oxford Railway Station.

“—scarcely a romantic location, yet I knew instantly, there amidst the luggage vans and steamer trunks, that he was my true mate.”

Only she hadn’t. I had been there, and she and her aunt had hired a fly and gone on.

“Can’t you find it?” Terence called.

I hastily folded the letter and stuck it back in my pocket. “Here it is,” I said, and emerged from the bushes.

“It went out here,” Tossie said, indicating a totally fictitious point with her foot.

“Thank you, Miss Mering,” I said and, measuring one mallet head’s length from the edge with my mallet, placed it on the grass, and prepared to hit it again.

“Your turn is ended,” Tossie said, going over to her ball. “It’s my turn, she said, giving it an enormous whack that sent my ball right back into the lilacs.

“Roquet,” she said, smiling sweetly. “Two strokes.”

“Isn’t she a topping girl?” Terence said, helping me look for my ball.

No, I thought, and even if she were, you’re not supposed to be in love with her. You’re supposed to be in love with Maud. You were supposed to meet her at the railway station, and this is my fault, my fault, my fault.

“Mr. Henry, it’s your turn,” Tossie said impatiently.

“Oh,” I said and hit blindly at the nearest ball.

“Your fault, Mr. Henry,” Tossie said impatiently. “You’re dead.”

“What?”

“You’re dead on that ball, Mr. Henry,” she said. “You’ve hit it once already. You can’t hit it again till you’ve gone through the hoop.”

“Oh,” I said, and aimed for the wicket instead.

“Not that hoop,” Tossie said, shaking her blonde curls at me. “I call a fault for attempting to skip a hoop.”

“Sorry,” I said, trying to focus.

“Mr. Henry is used to playing according to the American rules,” Verity said.

I went over and stood next to her, watching Tossie line up her shot, setting it up like a billiards shot, calculating how the balls would ricochet off each other.

“There’s worse,” Verity said. “One of their grandsons was an RAF pilot in the Battle of Britain. He flew the first bombing raid on Berlin.”

“Terence!” Tossie said. “Your animal is in the way of my double roquet.”

Terence obediently went to shift Cyril. Tossie sighted along her mallet, measuring the angles at which the balls would collide, calculating the possibilities.

I stood there, watching Tossie line up her shot. Verity didn’t say anything. She didn’t have to. I knew all about that first bombing raid. It was in September of 1940, in the middle of the Battle of Britain, and Hitler had vowed that bombs would never fall on the Fatherland, and when they did, he had ordered the full-scale bombing of London. And then, in November, of Coventry.

Tossie swung her mallet. Her ball hit mine, ricocheted off, hit Verity’s, and went straight through the hoop.

That bombing raid had saved the RAF, which the Luftwaffe had badly outnumbered. If the Luftwaffe hadn’t switched to civilian bombing when they did, they would have won the Battle of Britain. And Hitler would have invaded.

“Pluck one thread, and the web ye mar;

Break but one

Of a thousand keys, and the paining jar

Through all will run.”

John Greenleaf Whittier

C H A P T E R  F I F T E E N

Nocturnal Visitors—A Fire—More Similarities to the Titanic—A Spirit—Sleepwalking—Pearl Harbor—Fish—A Conversation with a Workman—Finch—Up to No Good—Verity and I Go Boating on the River—Proposals in Latin, Advantages and Disadvantages of—Napoleon’s Health Problems—Sleep—Similarity Between Literature and Real Life—An Announcement

My second night at Muchings End was just as restful as the first. Terence came in to ask me what Tossie had said about him while we were at the Chattisbournes’ and didn’t I think her eyes were like “stars of twilight fair,” Cyril had to be carried down the stairs, and Baine brought me cocoa and asked me if it was true that everyone in America carried a firearm.

I told him no.

“I have also heard that Americans are less concerned with ideas of class, and that societal barriers are less rigid there.”

I wondered what class had to do with guns and if he was considering taking up a life of crime.

“It is certainly a place where everyone is free to seek his fortune,” I said. “And does.”

“Is it true the industrialist Andrew Carnegie was the son of a coal miner?” he asked, and when I said I thought so, poured my cocoa and thanked me again for finding Princess Arjumand. “It is a delight to see how happy Miss Mering is now that her pet is back.”

I thought she was happy because she’d trounced everyone at croquet, but I didn’t say so.

“If there is ever anything I can do, sir, to return the favor—”

You wouldn’t be willing to fly a bombing mission to Berlin, would you? I thought.

At the end of the croquet game, while Tossie was busy committing mayhem on Terence’s ball, Verity had whispered to me to be certain I destroyed Maud’s letter, that we were in no position to risk another incongruity. So as soon as Baine had left, I locked the door, opened the window, and held it over the flame of the kerosene lamp.

The paper flared up, curling at the edges. A fragment of it flew rapidly up, still burning, and over to the bouquet of dried flowers on the bureau. I leaped after it, crashing into the chair and making a wild grab that only sent it closer to the dried flowers.

Wonderful. In trying not to cause an incongruity, I was going to set the house on fire.

I made another slashing grab, and the burning paper twirled lightly out of my reach and settled slowly toward the floor. I dived under it, hands cupped to catch it, but it had already burnt up completely before it reached them, turned to ash and nonsignificance.

There was a scratching at the door, and I opened it to find Princess Arjumand and Verity. The cat promptly jumped up on the pillows and draped herself decoratively over them, and Verity perched on the end of the bed.

“Look,” I said. “I don’t think you have any business going through again. You’ve already made two trips in twenty-four hours, and—”

“I’ve already been,” she said, smiling happily. “And I’ve got good news.”

“Is it actually good news,” I said skeptically, “or are you just happy because of the time-lag?”

“It’s good news,” she said, and then frowned. “At least they say it is. I wanted to see what they’d found out about the grandson and the bombing raid. T.J. says the raid on Berlin isn’t a crisis point. He says there’s no increased slippage either at the airfield or in Berlin, and he ran sims on the bombing raid, and the absence of Terence’s grandson had no long-term effect in any of them. Can I have your cocoa?”

“Yes,” I said. “Why didn’t it?”

She scrambled off the bed and went over to the nightstand. “Because there were eighty-one planes involved and twenty-nine of them dropped bombs on Berlin,” she said, pouring cocoa. “One pilot wouldn’t have made a difference to the outcome, particularly since it wasn’t the amount of damage done that made Hitler retaliate, but the idea of bombs falling on the Fatherland. And there were three more raids after that.” She brought the cup and saucer over to the bed and sat down.

I had forgotten that there had been four raids. Good. That meant redundancy.

“And that’s not all,” she said, sipping cocoa. “Mr. Dunworthy says there’s every indication that Goering had already decided to bomb London, and the bombing raid was simply an excuse. So he said not to worry, he can’t see any way it would have changed the course of the war, but—”

I had known there was a “but.”

“—there is a crisis point associated with the bombing that we should know about. It’s August the twenty-fourth, the night the two German planes accidentally bombed London.”

I knew about that. It was one of Professor Peddick’s instances of individual action. And of accident and chance. The two German planes had been part of a big bombing raid on an aircraft factory at Rochester and the oil storage tanks at Thames Haven. The lead planes had been equipped with pathfinders, but the others hadn’t, and two of the planes had got separated from the others, run into flak, and decided to jettison their bombs and run for home. Unfortunately, they had been over London at the time, and their bombs had destroyed the church of St. Giles, Cripplegate, and killed civilians.

In retaliation, Churchill had ordered the raid on Berlin, and in retaliation for that, Hitler had ordered the bombing of London in retaliation for the raid on Berlin. This is the cat that killed the rat that—

“Mr. Dunworthy and T.J. can’t find any connection between Terence’s grandson and the two German planes,” Verity said, sipping cocoa, “but they’re checking on it. And there’s the possibility, since he was an RAF pilot, that he did something—shot down a Luftwaffe plane or something—that was pivotal. They’re checking on that, too.”

“And in the meantime, what are we supposed to do?”

“Everything we can to contain the situation and, if possible, get Terence back to Oxford to meet Maud. So tomorrow I want you to talk to Professor Peddick and convince him he needs to return to Oxford to see his sister and his niece. I’ll work on Terence and make another stab at the diary.”

“Do you think that’s a good idea?” I said. “I’ve been thinking, this is a chaotic system, which means cause and effect aren’t linear. Perhaps we’re just making things worse by trying to fix them. Look at the Titanic. If they hadn’t done anything to try to avoid the iceberg, they’d have—”

“Hit it head-on,” Verity said.

“Yes, and the ship would have been damaged, but it wouldn’t have sunk. It was their trying to turn it that made the iceberg scrape along the watertight compartments so that she went down like a stone.”

“So you think we should just let Tossie and Terence get engaged?” she said.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Perhaps if we stop trying to keep them apart, Terence will realize what Tossie’s really like and get over his infatuation.”

“Perhaps,” Verity said, eating cake seriously. “On the other hand, if somebody’d put enough lifeboats on the Titanic to begin with, nobody would have drowned.”

She finished her cocoa and took the cup and saucer back over to the nightstand.

“What about the slippage in 2018? Have they found out what’s causing that?” I said.

She shook her head. “Mrs. Bittner couldn’t remember anything. 2018 was the year Fujisaki did his first work on the possibility of incongruities occurring, and they made modifications to the net so it would shut down automatically if the slippage became too great, but that was in September. The area of increased slippage was in April.”

She opened the door and peered out. “Perhaps tomorrow morning Mr. C will come to help set up for the fête, and we won’t have to do anything,” she whispered.

“Or we’ll hit an iceberg,” I whispered back.

I realized as soon as I’d shut the door behind her that I hadn’t asked her about Finch.

I waited five minutes to make sure Verity had made it safely back to her room and then put on my bathrobe and tiptoed carefully down the corridor, carefully avoiding the obstacles in the dark: Laocoön, whose situation I could empathize with; fern; bust of Darwin; umbrella stand.

I tapped softly on Verity’s door.

She opened it immediately, looking upset. “You’re not supposed to rap,” she whispered, looking anxiously down the corridor to Mrs. Mering’s room.

“Sorry,” I whispered, sidling in the door.

Verity shut the door carefully. It made a soft snick. “What do you want?” she whispered.

“I forgot to ask you if you found out what Finch was doing here,” I whispered back.

“Mr. Dunworthy wouldn’t tell me,” she said, looking worried. “He told me the same thing Finch told you, that it was a ‘related project.’ I think he was sent to drown Princess Arjumand.”

“What?” I said, forgetting I was supposed to whisper. “Finch? You’re joking.”

She shook her head. “The forensics expert translated part of one of the references to Princess Arjumand. It said ‘. . . poor drowned Princess Arjumand.’ ”

“But how do they know that wasn’t written while they were still looking for her? And why would they send Finch? He wouldn’t harm a fly.”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Perhaps they don’t trust us to do it, and Finch was the only person available to send.”

I could believe that, given Lady Schrapnell’s penchant for recruiting anyone who wasn’t nailed down. “But Finch?” I said, unconvinced. “And if that’s what he’s supposed to be doing, why would they send him to Mrs. Chattisbourne’s instead of here?”

“They probably think Mrs. Mering will steal him away.”

“You have had too many drops. We will talk about this in the morning,” I said, looked out into the pitch-black hall, and slid out the door.

Verity shut the door silently behind me and I started back. Umbrella stand—

“Mesiel!” Mrs. Mering’s voice cried. The corridor sprang into light. “I knew it!” Mrs. Mering said, and advanced on me holding a kerosene lamp.

The top of the stairs was too far away to make a run for it, and anyway, Baine was coming up them, carrying a candle. There wasn’t even time to move away from my incriminating location in front of Verity’s door. This was hardly what Mr. Dunworthy meant by “containing the situation.”

I wondered if I could get away with saying I had just been downstairs to get a book. Without a candle. And where was said book? For a fantastic moment, I wondered if I could claim I was sleepwalking, like the hero in The Moonstone.

“I was—” I said, and was cut off by Mrs. Mering.

“I knew it!” she said. “You heard it, too, Mr. Henry, didn’t you?”

Tossie’s door opened and she peeked out, her hair in rag curlers. “Mama, what is it?”

“A spirit!” Mrs. Mering said. “Mr. Henry heard it, too, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” I said. “I had just come out to investigate. I thought it was an intruder, but there was no one here.”

“Did you hear it, Baine?” Mrs. Mering demanded. “A rapping sound, very faint, and then a sort of whispering sound?”

“No, madam,” Baine said. “I was in the breakfast room, setting out the silver for breakfast.”

“But you heard it, Mr. Henry,” Mrs. Mering said. “I know you did. You were white as a sheet when I came out in the corridor. There was a rapping and then whispers and a sort of—”

“Ethereal moan,” I said.

“Exactly!” Mrs. Mering said. “I think there must be more than one spirit and they are speaking to one another. Did you see anything, Mr. Henry?”

“A sort of glimmer in white,” I said, in case she’d seen Verity shutting the door, “just for a moment, and then it vanished.”

“O!” Mrs. Mering said excitedly. “Mesiel! Come here! Mr. Henry has seen a spirit!”

Colonel Mering did not respond, and in the little silence before she called to him again, the faint sound of Cyril’s snoring wafted down the corridor. We weren’t out of the woods yet.

“There!” I said, pointing to the wall above Lady Schrapnell’s portrait. “Did you hear that?”

“Yes!” Mrs. Mering said, mashing her hand to her bosom. “What did it sound like?”

“The sound of bells,” I said, improvising, “and then a sort of sob—”

“Exactly,” Mrs. Mering said. “The attic. Baine, open the attic door. We must go up.”

At this point Verity finally made an appearance, clutching her wrapper and blinking sleepily. “What is it, Aunt Malvinia?”

“The spirit I saw two nights ago out by the gazebo,” Mrs. Mering said. “It is in the attic.”

Just then Cyril gave an enormous snuffling snort from the unmistakable direction of my room.

Verity instantly looked up at the ceiling. “I hear them!” she said. “Ghostly footsteps overhead!”

We spent the next two hours in the attic, tripping over cobwebs and looking for vanishing glimmers of white. Mrs. Mering didn’t find any, but she did find a ruby glass fruit compote, a lithograph of Landseer’s The Monarch of the Glen, and a moth-eaten tigerskin rug for the jumble sale.

She insisted on poor Baine carrying them down on the spot. “Amazing, simply amazing, the treasures one finds in attics,” she said rapturously. “Don’t you agree, Mr. Henry?”

“Umm,” I said, yawning.

“I am afraid the spirit has departed,” Baine said, coming back up the attic stairs. “We may only frighten it by our further presence.”

“You are quite right, Baine,” she said, and we were able, finally, to go to bed.

I was afraid Cyril might be at it again when we came down the corridor, but there was no sound from my room. Cyril and Princess Arjumand were sitting bolt upright in the middle of the bed, engaged in a nose (such as it was for Cyril) to nose staring match.

“No staring,” I said, taking off my robe and crawling into bed. “No snoring. No sprawling.”

There was none of the above. Instead, they paced round the bed, sniffing each other’s tails (such as it was for Cyril) and looking daggers at each other.

“Lie down,” I hissed, and then lay there in the dark, worrying about what to do and thinking about the accidental bombing of London.

It made sense that that was a crisis point. There had only been two planes involved, and very little would have been required to shift the course of events: they might have spotted a landmark and realized where they were, or their bombs might have fallen on a marrows field or in the Channel, or they might have been hit by flak. Or something even smaller, some tiny event that no one was aware of. It was a chaotic system.

So there was no way to tell what we should do, or not do, and how it would affect Terence’s marrying Maud.

Cyril and Princess Arjumand were still pacing over the bed. “Lie down,” I said, and, amazingly, Cyril did, flopping at my feet. Princess Arjumand walked over to him, sat down next to his head, and smacked him smartly on the nose.

Cyril sat up, looking aggrieved, and Princess Arjumand stretched out in his place.

If only it were that simple. Action and reaction. Cause and effect. But in a chaotic system, the effect wasn’t always what one intended.

Look at the letter I’d tried to burn tonight. And the battleship Nevada. It had been damaged in the first wave of attack at Pearl Harbor, but not sunk, and it had fired up its boilers and tried to get underway and out of the harbor to where it could maneuver. And as a result it had nearly sunk in the channel, where it would have blocked the entire harbor entrance for months.

On the other hand, a radar technician at Opana Station had telephoned his superior officer at 7:05 AM., nearly fifty minutes before the attack on Pearl Harbor, and reported a large number of unidentified planes coming in from the north. His superior officer had told him to ignore it, it was nothing at all, and gone back to bed.

And then there was Wheeler Field, where, trying to protect the planes from sabotage, they had parked them all in the middle of the field. Where it had taken the Japanese Zeros exactly two and a half minutes to destroy them all.

Lady Schrapnell’s motto might be “God is in the details,” but mine was rapidly becoming, “Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.”

I was still thinking about Pearl Harbor when I went down to breakfast. Tossie was standing at the sideboard, holding Princess Arjumand and taking the lids off each of the silver serving dishes and then putting them back on with a dissatisfied expression.

It was the first time I had felt any kinship with her. Poor thing, consigned to a life of frivolousness and wretched things for breakfast. Not allowed to go to school or do anything worthwhile, and eel pie besides. I was thinking I’d been too hard on her when she slammed down the snarling wolf dtsh, picked up the silver bell sitting next to it, and rang it violently.

Baine appeared in a moment, his arms full of coconuts and a length of purple bunting draped over his shoulders. “Yes, miss?” he said.

“Why is there no fish for breakfast this morning?” Tossie said.

“Mrs. Posey is engaged in preparing the cakes and refreshments for the fxte tomorrow,” Baine said. “I told her four hot dishes were sufficient.”

“Well, they are not,” Tossie snapped.

Jane came in with an armful of antimacassars, bobbed a curtsey at Tossie, and said hurriedly, “Beggin’ your pardon, miss. Mr. Baine, the men are here with the tea tent, and Miss Stiggins’s footman is wantin’ to know where the extra chairs are to go.”

“Thank you, Jane,” Baine said. “Tell them I will be there directly.”

“Yes, sorr,” Jane said, bobbed, and ran out.

“I should like grilled trout for breakfast. Since Mrs. Posey is busy, you can prepare it,” Tossie said, and if I’d been Baine I’d have beaned her with one of the coconuts.

Baine merely looked hard at her, clearly trying to maintain a poker face, and said, “As you wish, miss.” He looked at Princess Arjumand. “If you will allow me to speak, miss, encouraging your pet to eat fish is not good for her. It only—”

“I do not allow you to speak,” Tossie said imperiously. “You’re a servant. Bring me the grilled trout immediately.”

“As you wish, miss,” he said, and started out, juggling his coconuts to keep them from falling.

“I want it served on a silver dish,” Tossie called after him. “And tie up that horrid dog of Terence’s. It tried to chase my dearums Juju this morning.”

All right, that settled it. Tossie couldn’t be allowed to marry Terence, and the hell with what our meddling might do to the continuum. A universe in which Cyril (and Baine) had to put up with that wasn’t worth having.

I ran upstairs to Professor Peddick’s room. He wasn’t there, but I found Terence in his room. He was shaving.

“I’ve been thinking,” I said, watching him brush soap on his face in fascination. “This is the third day Professor Peddick’s been away from Oxford, and we still haven’t been down to Runnymede. Perhaps we should go there today and then back to Oxford tomorrow. I mean, we’re only in the way here, what with the jumble sale and all.”

“I promised Miss Mering I’d stay and help with the fête,” he said, scraping the lethally sharp blade along his cheek. “She wants me to be in charge of the Pony Ride.”

“We could take him to Oxford on the train this afternoon,” I said, “and be back in time for the fête. The professor’s sister and niece are no doubt missing him.”

“He sent them a telegram,” Terence said, shaving his chin.

“But they may only be visiting for a short time,” I said. “It would be a shame for him to miss them.”

He looked unconvinced.

“ ‘Time is fleeting,’ ” I said, deciding perhaps a quote was what was needed, “ ‘and opportunities once miss’d, do ne’ er return.’ ”

“True,” Terence said, complacently drawing the blade across his jugular. “But people like Professor Peddick’s relations always stay forever.” He wiped the remains of the soap off with the towel. “The bluestocking niece has probably come up to campaign for women’s colleges, or suffrage, or something, and they’ll be in Oxford all term. Modern girls! Thank goodness Miss Mering is an old-fashioned girl, shy and demure and ‘sweet as the dewy, milk-white thorn, dear as the raptured thrill of joy.’ ”

It was hopeless, but I continued to try for several more minutes, and then went to work on Professor Peddick.

I didn’t make it. Mrs. Mering waylaid me on my way to the fishpond and sent me to put up placards in the village, and it was nearly noon by the time I got back.

Verity was on a ladder on the lawn, putting up Chinese lanterns between the stalls the workmen were hammering together. “Any luck with the diary?”

“No,” she said disgustedly. “I’ve searched every ruffle and cranny of her room, and nothing.” She stepped down off the ladder. “Any luck with Terence?”

I shook my head. “Where is he?” I said, looking round at the stalls. “He’s not with Tossie, is he?”

“No,” she said. “Mrs. Mering sent Terence to Goring for prizes for the fishing stall, and Tossie’s over at the Chattisbournes’ borrowing a ribbon for her hat. She should be gone all afternoon.”

“For a ribbon?”

She nodded. “I told her she needed a special shade of lilac halfway between mauve and periwinkle, with just a hint of lavender blue. And the Chattisbourne girls will want to hear all about you. Both Tossie and Terence should be safely occupied till tea.”

“Good,” I said. “I’m going to work on Professor Peddick this afternoon.”

“That is absolutely out of the question!” Mrs. Mering said, and nearly gave me a heart attack, she sounded so much like Lady Schrapnell. “The fête is tomorrow! My crystal ball must be here by then!”

I picked up a Chinese lantern so it would look like I was working and peered round the woolen goods stall at the half-constructed fortuneteller’s booth.

A workman in a frock coat and top hat and a butcher’s apron was cringing back against his carriage. “Felpham and Muncaster’s greatly regret any inconvenience this may have caused,” he was saying humbly, “and will earnestly endeavor—”

“Inconvenience!” Mrs. Mering shouted. “We are attempting to raise money for our restoration fund!”

I went back over to Verity. “The crystal ball didn’t arrive.”

“You’d think it would have foreseen that that would happen,” she said, grinning. “If you’re going to catch Professor Peddick, you’d best hurry. He and the Colonel are going fishing.”

“It must be here by this afternoon at four,” Mrs. Mering boomed.

“But, Mrs. Mering—”

“Four on the dot!”

“Do you know where Professor Peddick is?” I asked Verity.

“In the library, I think,” she said, taking another Chinese lantern and catching up her skirt to climb the ladder. “He was looking up something about the Battle of Bannockburn. Before you go,” she came back down the ladder a step. “I’ve been thinking over what you said about Finch, and you’re right. He’s not the type to drown a cat.” She put her hand to her forehead. “I don’t always think too clearly when I’m time-lagged.”

“I know the feeling,” I said.

“I haven’t been able to think what Finch is doing here, though,” she said. “Have you?”

I shook my head.

“I’m going through to see if the forensics expert’s had any luck,” she said. “I’ll see what I can find out about Finch. Mr. Dunworthy wouldn’t tell me, but perhaps I can get it out of Warder.”

I nodded and went off to find Professor Peddick, taking the long way round to make sure Mrs. Mering didn’t see me and waylay me again.

The professor wasn’t in the library or the parlor. I went out to check at the stable and then started back toward the house to ask Jane if she knew where he was.

I was halfway there when Finch came out of the servants’ door with Jane. He said something to her, and she giggled and then stood there watching him as he left, smiling and waving her apron at him.

I went over to her. “Jane,” I said. “What was Finch doing here?”

“He brought the rock cakes for the fête tomorrow,” she said, looking longingly after him. “I am wishin’ he was our butler instead of Mr. Baine. Mr. Baine’s always goin’ on at me about reading books and how I should be trying to improve myself, do I want to be a maid all my life, but Mr. Finch is ever so nice, he never criticizes, he just talks.”

“What did he talk to you about?” I said, trying to make the question casual.

“Oh, this and that. The fête tomorrow and was I going to buy any chances on the cake and Princess Arjumand’s being lost. He was particular interested in Princess Arjumand, asked me all about her.”

“Princess Arjumand?” I said sharply. “What did he say?”

“Oh, only how lucky it was she wasn’t drowned, and had she ever had kittens, Miss Stiggins was saying she was such a pretty cat, she’d like to have one of the kittens, was she always with Miss Mering or did she wander off on her own sometimes and like that.”

“Did he ask to see her?”

“He did,” Jane said, “but I couldn’t find her. I told him she was very likely out at the fishpond, trying to eat the Colonel’s goldfish.” She suddenly seemed to realize who she was talking to. “I didn’t do nothing improper, did I, sorr, talking to him? We were working the whole time.”

“No, of course not,” I said. “I only asked because I thought he might have brought the curio cabinet for the jumble sale.”

“No, sorr,” she said. “Just the rock cakes.”

“Oh,” I said and took off for the fishpond, walking till I was out of Jane’s sight and then breaking into a gallop. Verity had been right. Finch was after Princess Arjumand.

I ran across the lawn, where Mrs. Mering was still yelling at the workman, and past the spot where Verity had been hanging Chinese lanterns. The ladder was still there, but she wasn’t, and I wondered if she had gone through to Oxford already.

I sprinted past the lilacs to the gazebo and then onto the path along the riverbank. There was no sign of Princess Arjumand or of her having recently been pitched in the river, and I remembered all over again how just a few minutes could have made an enormous difference.

“Princess Arjumand!” I called, and ran down the path and across the flower garden to the rockery.

The fishpond lay in the middle of the rockery, lined with brick and covered with waterlilies. Next to the pond sat Cyril, and on the edge of the pond sat Princess Arjumand, delicately swiping her paw into the water.

“Stop that,” I said, and Cyril jumped and looked guilty.

Princess Arjumand continued to dip her paw unconcernedly in the water, as if she were trolling.

“All right, you two,” I said. “You’re under arrest. Come along.” I scooped up Princess Arjumand and started back for the house, Cyril trudging behind with his head down.

“You should be ashamed,” I said to him. “Letting her tempt you into a life of crime like that. Do you know what would have happened to you if Baine had found you?” and saw the shimmer of the net up by the gazebo.

I looked round anxiously, hoping there was no one else close enough to see it. It began to glow, and Cyril reared away from it and began to back, growling.

Verity emerged next to the gazebo and looked around. “Ned!” she said, catching sight of me, “How nice of you to come meet me!”

“What did you find out?” I said.

“And you brought Cyril,” she said, patting him on the head. “And dearum-dearums Juju,” she cooed, taking Princess Arjumand from me and cradling her in her arms. She waggled her fingers at Princess Arjumand’s paws, and Princess Arjumand batted playfully at them. “How does oo stan’ your mistwess talking ootsy-cutesy baby talk to oo?” Verity said. “Oo ought to swat her when her does it.”

“Verity,” I said. “Are you all right?”

“I’m perfectly all right,” she said, still playing with the cat’s paws. “Where’s Terence?” she said, starting toward the lawn. “I need to tell him he can’t be in love with Tossie because the fate of the free world is at stake. Also,” her voice dropped to a stage whisper, “she cheats at croquet.”

“How many drops have you had?” I demanded.

She frowned. “Sixteen. No, eight. Twelve.”  She peered at me. “It isn’t fair, you know.”

“What isn’t?” I said warily.

“Your boater. It makes you look just like Lord Peter Wimsey, especially when you tilt it forward like that.”  She started for the lawn.

I took Princess Arjumand away from Verity, dumped her on the ground, and grabbed Verity’s arm.

“I need to find Tossie,” she said. “I have a thing or two to tell her.”

“Not a good idea,” I said. “Let’s sit down a minute. In the gazebo.”  I led her toward it.

She came docilely. “The first time I ever saw you, I thought, he looks just like Lord Peter Wimsey. You were wearing that boater and—no, that wasn’t the first time,” she said accusingly. “The first time was in Mr. Dunworthy’s office, and you were all covered in soot. You were still adorable, though, even if your mouth was hanging open.” She looked at me quizzically. “Did you have a mustache?”

“No,” I said, leading her up the gazebo steps. “Now, I want you to tell me exactly what happened in Oxford. Why did you make twelve drops?”

“Seven,” she said. “T.J. wanted to test the slippage on drops to May and August of 1888. He’s looking for surrounding areas of radically increased slippage,” she said, sounding more coherent, and I wondered if the time-lag was just a temporary effect.

“He said our incongruity doesn’t fit the pattern,” she said. “There’s supposed to be an area of moderately increased slippage surrounding the focus. Do you know why Napoleon lost the Battle of Waterloo? It rained. Buckets.”

Nope. Apparently not temporary.

“Why did T.J. send you on all those drops?” I asked. “Why didn’t he send Carruthers?”

“They can’t get him out.”

“No, it’s the recruit they can’t get out,” I said.

She shook her head forcefully. “Carruthers.”

I didn’t know if what she was saying was true, or if she was confused. Or if we were even talking about the same thing—between Difficulty in Distinguishing Sounds, Blurring of Vision, and the sound of the ack-ack that was doubtless thudding in her ears, she might be having a different conversation entirely.

“Verity, I need to take you—” Where? Sleep was what she needed, but there was no way I could get her through the mine field between here and the house. The Reverend Mr. Arbitage would be on the lawn supervising the servants, Mrs. Mering would be there supervising the Reverend Mr. Arbitage, and Tossie might be back early from the Chattisbournes’ and looking for a couple of suckers for a game of croquet.

The stable? No, we’d still have to cross a corner of the lawn to get there. Perhaps the best idea was to stay here in the gazebo and try to get Verity to lie down on one of the benches.

“And what is wrong with a Grand Design, I should like to know?” Professor Peddick said from the direction of the fishpond. “Of course Overforce can’t envision a Grand Design. His idea of a plan is to train his dog to jump out of trees onto innocent bystanders.”

“Come on, Verity,” I said, raising her to her feet. “We can’t stay here.”

“Where are we going?” she said. “We’re not going to the jumble sale, are we? I hate jumble sales. I hate shells and tassels and embroidery and tatting and scrollwork and all those beads they put on everything. Why can’t they just leave well enough alone?”

“We cannot see the design because we are a part of it,” Professor Peddick’s voice, much nearer, said. “Can the thread in the loom see the pattern in the fabric? Can the soldier see the strategy of the battle he is fighting?” and I hustled Verity out of the gazebo and over behind the lilacs.

“Come on,” I said, taking her hand as if she were a child. “We’re going to go now. This way.”

I led her behind the lilacs and down the path to the river. Cyril and Princess Arjumand followed us, Princess Arjumand twining herself around our legs as we walked and impeding our progress.

“Cyril,” I whispered, “go find Terence.”

“Good idea,” Verity said. “I have a few things to say to Terence. ‘Terence,’ I’m going to say to him, ‘how can you be in love with someone who hates your dog?’ ”

We reached the towpath. “Shh,” I said, listening for Professor Peddick.

“Through art, through history, we may glimpse the Grand Design,” he said. His voice sounded farther away. “But only for a fleeting moment. ‘For His works are unsearchable and His ways past finding out,’ ” he said, his voice growing fainter. They must be going up to the house.

“I’ll bet Maud Peddick loves dogs,” Verity said. “She’s a lovely girl. She doesn’t keep a diary, she’s patriotic—”

There was no one down at the dock. I propelled Verity rapidly down the path to the river.

“She’s got a poem named after her,” Verity said. “ ‘Come into the garden, Maud, I am here at the gate alone.’ By Tennyson. Terence loves quoting Tennyson. When Maud Peddick screams, I’ll bet it’s the real thing and not some little baby scream. Oh, are we going in a boat?”

“Yes,” I said, helping her in. “Sit down.”

She stood, swaying slightly, in the stern, gazing wistfully out at the river. “Lord Peter took Harriet out boating,” she said. “They fed the ducks. Are we going to feed the ducks?”

“You bet,” I said, untying the rope. “Sit down.”

“Oh, look,” she said, pointing at the shore. “They want to come. Isn’t that sweet?”

I jerked my head up and looked at the shore. Cyril and Princess Arjumand were standing side by side on the little dock.

“Can’t Cyril come?” she said.

The thought of trying to rescue two dead weights if they went overboard was not appealing. On the other hand, if we took them with us, the Black Moor would be safe. And if Finch was trying to drown Princess Arjumand, she was safer with me.

“They can come,” I said and hoisted Cyril, two legs at a time, into the boat.

Princess Arjumand promptly turned on her heel, flouncing her pretty tail in the air, and started for the fishpond.

“Oh, no you don’t,” I said and snatched her up, handed her to Verity, who was still standing up, and untied the rope.

“Sit down,” I said and cast off. Verity sat down with a thump, the cat still in her arms. I jumped in, took up the oars, and started rowing out toward the current.

By going downstream, I could get her away faster, but we’d have to go past the house and a good section of the lawn, and I didn’t want anyone to see us. I swung the boat upstream and rowed out of sight of Muchings End as rapidly as I could. There were a lot of boats on the river. One of them waved gaily to us, and Verity waved back. I rowed faster, hoping it wasn’t one of the Chattisbourne girls.

I had thought we would be safe on the river, but I had forgotten how many people went boating in the afternoon, and fishing. It was obvious we weren’t safe, and I began looking for some safe side stream or backwater we could pull into.

“I thought you said we were going to feed the ducks,” Verity said accusingly. “Lord Peter and Harriet fed the ducks.”

“We will, I promise,” I said. On the far bank lay some weeping willows whose branches dipped almost down to the water. I rowed across the river toward them.

“Do you believe in love at first sight?” Verity said. “I didn’t. And then I saw you standing there, all covered with soot—when are we going to feed the ducks?”

I rowed in under the willows, pushing against the bank with my oar to bring us round and close to the bank. We were completely hidden from the river here. The willow branches arched over us and down into the water, enclosing us in a pale-green bower. The sun shimmered through the leaves like the net as it was about to open.

I laid down the oars and looped the rope gently over a low-hanging branch. We should be safe here.

“Verity,” I said, knowing this was probably hopeless. “What did you find out in Oxford?”

She was playing with Princess Arjumand, shaking the ribbons of her hat at her.

“Did you talk to the forensics expert?” I persisted. “Has she found out who Mr. C is?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Yes,” I said. “You know who Mr. C is?”

She frowned. “No. I mean, yes, I talked to her.” She took off her hat and began untying one of the ribbons. “She said it’s got between seven and ten letters, and the last one’s an ‘N’ or an ‘M.’ ”

It wasn’t Mr. Chips then. Or Lewis Carroll.

“I told her to stop looking for references to Princess Arjumand,” Verity said, “and to concentrate on Mr. C and the date of the trip to Coventry.” She finished untying the ribbon and dangled it at Princess Arjumand.

“Good,” I said. “You said Carruthers was stuck in Coventry. Didn’t you mean the new recruit?”

“No,” she said, playing with the ribbon. The cat reared up on her hind legs and batted at it with her white paws. “They got him out. Besides, this is different.” She danced the ribbon up and down. Cyril came over to investigate.

“How is it different?” I asked patiently.

Cyril sniffed the dangling ribbon. The cat smacked him smartly on the nose and went back to the batting. “The new recruit couldn’t find the net,” she said. “It was open. Now it’s not.”

“When they try to bring Carruthers through, the net won’t open?” I said, trying to get this straight, and she nodded.

T.J. had said net failure was a worsening sign of an incongruity.

“And they’ve tried more than once?”

“They’ve tried everything,” she said, pulling the ribbon up sharply. The cat leaped for it, and the boat rocked. “T.J.’s even trying the battle of Waterloo.”

She had said something about Waterloo before, but I’d assumed it was just babblings. “What exactly is T.J. doing?” I asked.

“Changing things,” she said, holding the ribbon very still. Princess Arjumand watched her, ready to pounce. “Opening the gate at Hougoumont, bringing up D’Erlon’s troops. Did you know Napoleon had terrible handwriting? It’s worse than Tossie’s diary. No one can decipher it.”

She jerked the ribbon suddenly. Princess Arjumand leaped for it. The boat rocked. “I think he lost the battle because of his hemorrhoids.”

Whatever T.J. was doing with Waterloo, it would have to wait. It was getting late, and Verity didn’t seem to be getting appreciably better. I obviously couldn’t take her back like this, and the only thing I could think of that might help was sleep.

“He couldn’t ride with hemorrhoids,” she said. “That’s why he stayed the night at Fleurus. And that’s why he lost the battle.”

“Yes, you’re probably right,” I said. “I think you should lie down and rest.”

She continued to dangle the ribbon. “It’s terrible, really, how important a little thing like that can be. Like my saving Princess Arjumand. Who would have thought it would lose a whole war?”

“Verity,” I said firmly and took the ribbon away from her. “I want you to lie down and rest now.”

“I can’t,” she said. “I have to go steal Tossie’s diary and find out who Mr. C is and then I have to go tell Mr. Dunworthy. I have to repair the incongruity.”

“There’s plenty of time for that,” I said. “First you need to sleep.” I pulled a slightly mildewed cushion out from under the prow and placed it on the seat. “You lie down right here.”

She lay down obediently and put her head on the pillow. “Lord Peter took a nap,” she said. “Harriet watched him sleep, and that’s when she knew she was in love with him.”

She sat up again. “Of course I knew it from the second page of Strong Poison, but it took two more books for Harriet to figure it out. She kept telling herself it was all just detecting and deciphering codes and solving mysteries together, but I knew she was in love with him. He proposed in Latin. Under a bridge. After they solved the mystery. You can’t propose till after you’ve solved the mystery. That’s a law in detective novels.”

She sighed. “It’s too bad. ‘Placetne, magistra?’ he said when he proposed, and then she said, ‘Placet.’ That’s a fancy Oxford don way of saying yes. I had to look it up. I hate it when people use Latin and don’t tell you what they mean. Do you know what Professor Peddick said to me yesterday? ‘Raram facit misturam cum sapientia forma.’ I have no idea what he meant. Something about the Grand Design, I think. Do you believe in a Grand Design, Ned?”

“We’ll talk about it later,” I said, patting the pillow. “Right now you lie down.”

She lay down again. “It was romantic, though, proposing in Latin. I think it was the boater that did it. She sat there, watching him sleep, and he looked so handsome in his boater. And his mustache. It’s a little lopsided, did you know that?”

“Yes.” I took off my blazer and put it over her shoulders. “Close your eyes and rest.”

“Will you watch me sleep?” she said.

“I will watch you sleep.”

“Good,” she said, and closed her eyes.

Several minutes went by.

“Could you take your hat off?” Verity said drowsily.

I grinned. “Certainly.”

I laid my boater beside me on the seat. She curled up on her side, her hands folded under her cheek, and closed her eyes. “It didn’t help,” she murmured.

Cyril settled into the bottom of the boat, and Princess Arjumand perched on my shoulders like a parrot and began to purr.

I looked at Verity. She had shadows under her eyes, and I realized that she hadn’t had any more sleep the last two days than I had, racing out to the drop at all hours, planning strategies, spending who knew how many hours in Oxford, researching Terence’s descendants, and talking to the forensics expert. Poor thing.

Cyril and Princess Arjumand were both asleep. I leaned forward, my elbow on my knee, and rested my cheek on my hand.

I watched Verity sleep.

It was almost as restful as sleeping myself. The boat rocked gently, and the sun through the leaves flickered softly in patterns of light and shade. She slept peacefully, quietly, her face still and untroubled in repose.

And I was going to have to face it. No matter how much sleep I got or she didn’t, she was always going to look like a naiad to me. Even lying there with her greenish-brown eyes closed and her mouth half-open, drooling gently onto a mildewed boat cushion, she was still the most beautiful creature I’d ever seen.

“ ‘She hath a lovely face,’ ” I murmured, and, unlike Terence, thought that that covered it very well.

At some point I fell asleep myself, and at some later point my head must have fallen sideways. My elbow slipped off my knee, and I sat up with a jerk.

On my shoulders, Princess Arjumand meowed, irritated at being disturbed, and jumped down onto the seat beside me.

Verity and Cyril were both still asleep. Princess Arjumand yawned widely and stretched, and then went over to the side of the boat and looked in the water. She stood up, her paws on the gunwale, and dipped a dainty white paw in the water.

The shadowy light of the sun through the willows was more angled than it had been, and there was a golden tinge to it. I pulled out my pocket watch and snapped it open. Half-past III. We had best be getting back before anyone missed us. If we hadn’t been missed already.

I hated to wake Verity up. She looked so peaceful, sleeping there, a faint smile on her lips as if she was dreaming of something pleasant. “Verity,” I said softly and leaned forward to touch her on the shoulder.

There was a splash. I lunged for the side of the boat. “Princess Arjumand!” I said, and Cyril sat up, looking surprised.

There was no sign of the cat. I leaned over the gunwale, pushing up my sleeve. “Princess Arjumand!” I reached far under the water and felt around, trying to find her. “You are not drowning! Do you hear me? Not after we’ve risked the entire universe to save you!” I said, and she bobbed up and began swimming toward the boat, her fur wet and plastered to her head.

I grabbed her by the scruff of the neck and hauled her in. She looked like a drowned rat. Cyril ambled over, looking interested, and, I thought, pleased.

I pulled out my handkerchief and swabbed at her, but it obviously wasn’t going to do the job. I looked in the prow for a blanket or a rug, but there wasn’t anything. It was going to have to be my blazer.

I removed it gently from Verity’s shoulders, wrapped Princess Arjumand in it, and began to rub her dry. “Fish are going to be the death of you, you know that, don’t you?” I said, toweling her back and tail. “Cats only have nine lives, you know, and you’ve already used up six that I know of,” I rubbed her tail. “You need to switch to a safer habit, like smoking.”

Princess Arjumand began to struggle. “You’re not dry yet,” I said, and went on rubbing her.

She continued to struggle, and after a minute I unwrapped her from the blazer and let her go. She walked with rather bedraggled dignity past Cyril to the middle of the seat, sat down, and began to lick herself.

I draped my blazer over the prow to dry, and looked at my pocket watch again. A quarter to IV. I’d have to wake Verity up, even though she was obviously dead to the world if none of this had wakened her. I snapped my pocket watch shut.

Verity opened her eyes. “Ned,” she said sleepily. “Did I fall asleep?”

“Yes. Do you feel better?”

“Better?” she said vaguely. “I . . . what happened?” She sat up. “I remember coming through and . . .” Her eyes widened. “I was time-lagged, wasn’t I? I did all those drops to May and August.” She put her hand to her forehead. “How awful was I?”

I grinned. “Worst case I’ve ever seen. Don’t you remember?”

“Not really,” she said. “It’s all sort of a blur, and in the background there was this sound like a siren. . . .”

“The All-Clear,” I said.

“Yes, and a sort of wheezing, snorting—”

“Cyril,” I said.

She nodded. “Where are we?” she said, looking round at the willows and the water.

“About half a mile upstream from Muchings End,” I said. “You were in no shape to see anyone till you’d had some sleep. Do you feel better now?”

“Um hmmm,” she said, stretching. “Why is Princess Arjumand all wet?”

“She fell in while fishing,” I said.

“Oh,” she said, yawning.

“You’re certain you feel better?” I said.

“Yes. Much.”

“Good,” I said, unlooping the rope. “Then we’d better be getting back. It’s nearly time for tea.” I took the oars and maneuvered us out from under the willows and onto the river.

“Thank you,” she said. “I must have been in pretty bad shape. I didn’t say anything humiliating, did I?”

“Only that Napoleon lost the battle of Waterloo because of his hemorrhoids,” I said, rowing downstream, “a theory, by the way, that I wouldn’t advise sharing with Professor Peddick and the Colonel.”

She laughed. “No wonder you had to shanghai me. Did I tell you what T.J.’s doing with the battle of Waterloo?”

“Not exactly,” I said.

“He’s running incongruity simulations of the battle,” she said. “Waterloo’s a battle that’s been analyzed in microscopic detail. An elaborate comp simulation of the battle was done in the Twenties.” She leaned forward. “T.J.’s using that model and introducing incongruities that might change events. You know, like what if Napoleon had sent Ney a readable message instead of an indecipherable one? What if d’Erlon had been wounded?”

“What if Napoleon hadn’t had hemorrhoids?”

She shook her head. “Only things an historian could have done,” she said, “like switching messages or firing a musket ball. And then he’s comparing the slippage configurations to our incongruity.”

“And?”

“He just started,” she said defensively, “and it’s all just theoretical,” which meant she didn’t want to tell me.

“Did you find out from Warder how much slippage there was on your drop?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said. “Nine minutes.”

Nine minutes.

“What about the drops you did to May and August?”

“It varied. The average was sixteen minutes. That tallied with previous drops to the Victorian era.”

We were nearly to Muchings End. I pulled out my pocket watch and looked at it. “We should be home in time for tea,” I said, “and so there may not be any questions. If there are, we rowed up to Streatley to post signs for the jumble sale.” I pulled on my damp blazer, and Verity straightened her hair and put on her hat.

Sixteen minutes, and Verity’s drop had been nine. Even if her drop had had an average amount of slippage, she would have been too late, or too early, to rescue the cat and cause the incongruity. And at nine minutes, the slippage obviously hadn’t been stretched to its limits. So why hadn’t the net increased the slippage to the average? Or slammed shut before the incongruity could happen? And why had it slammed shut now, on Carruthers?

The dock was only a few hundred yards ahead. “With luck, no one will even know we’ve been on the river,” I said, and pulled in toward the dock.

“Our luck seems to be out,” Verity said.

I turned round in my seat. Tossie and Terence were running down to the riverbank, waving to us.

“Oh, Cousin, you’ll never guess what’s happened!” Tossie cried. “Mr. St. Trewes and I are engaged!”

“. . . they don’t seem to have any rules in particular; at least, if there are, nobody attends to them—and you’ve no idea how confusing it is all the things being alive.”

Alice in wonderland

C H A P T E R  S I X T E E N

Chance of Rain—Another Swan—What People Buy at Jumble Sales—Numbers Three, Seven, Thirteen, Fourteen, and Twenty-eight—I Have My Future Predicted—Things Are Not What They Seem—I Depart for the Other Side—The Battle of Waterloo—Importance of Good Penmanship—A Fateful Day—Number Fifteen—A Plan—An Unexpected Arrival

“It’s not your fault,” Verity said. We were arranging items in the jumble sale stall the next morning, our first chance to talk since the “thrilling news,” as Mrs. Mering put it.

“It was my fault,” Verity said, setting out a china wooden shoe with a blue-and-white windmill on it. “I should never have let T.J. send me on so many drops.”

“You were only trying to find out something that might help us,” I said, unwrapping an egg-boiler. “I was the one who left Terence and Tossie alone.” I set it on the counter. “And gave him the idea. You heard him last night. He wouldn’t have proposed if I hadn’t spouted that nonsense about ‘fleeting time’ and ‘miss’d opportunities.’ ”

“You were only doing what I told you to,” she said, opening a Japanese fan. “ ‘Turn the Titanic, Ned,’ I said. ‘Don’t worry. We won’t hit the iceberg.’ ”

“Not set up yet?” Mrs. Mering said, and we both jumped. “It’s nearly time for the fête to open.”

“We’ll be ready,” Verity said, setting out a soup tureen in the shape of a head of lettuce. Mrs. Mering looked worriedly at the overcast sky. “O, Mr. Henry, you don’t think it will rain, do you?”

Of course not, I thought. Fate is against me.

“No,” I said, unwrapping an etching of Paolo and Francesca, another couple who had come to a bad end.

“O, good,” she said, dusting off a bust of Prince Albert. “O, there is Mr. St. Trewes. I must go speak to him about the Pony Ride.”

I watched her interestedly as she swooped down on Terence. She was wearing a blue garden party dress, with all the requisite Victorian puffs and frills and rosettes and insets of lace, but over it she had flowing robes striped in red, yellow, and purple, and round her forehead was a wide velvet band with a large ostrich feather stuck in it.

“She’s the fortuneteller,” Verity explained, setting out a pair of sewing scissors in the shape of a heron. “When she reads my fortune, I intend to ask her where the bishop’s bird stump is.”

“It may well be here,” I said, trying to find a place to set the Widow Wallace’s banjo. “It would fit right in.”

She looked at the array of things on the counter. “It certainly is a jumble,” she said, adding a mustache cup to the mess.

I looked critically at it. “It still lacks something,” I said. I went and snatched a penwiper from Tossie’s stall and stuck it between a paperweight and a set of tin soldiers. “There. It’s perfect.”

“Except for the fact that Tossie and Terence are engaged,” she said. “I should never have assumed she’d stay at the Chattisbournes’ all afternoon.”

“The question is,” I said, “not whose fault it is they got engaged, but what we’re going to do now.”

“What are we going to do now?” Verity said, rearranging a pair of Harlequin and Columbine figurines.

“Perhaps Terence will get a good night’s sleep, come to his senses, and decide it was all a horrible mistake,” I said.

She shook her head. “That won’t help us. Engagements in Victorian times were considered nearly as serious as marriage. A gentleman couldn’t just break an engagement without a dreadful scandal. Unless Tossie breaks it herself, there’s no way Terence can get out of the engagement.”

“Which means her meeting Mr. C,” I said. “Which means our finding out who he is, and the sooner the better.”

“Which means one of us reporting back to Mr. Dunworthy and finding out if the forensics expert has managed to decipher his name yet,” she said.

“And that will be me,” I said firmly.

“What if Lady Schrapnell catches you?”

“I will take that risk,” I said. “You are not going anywhere.”

“I think that’s probably a very good idea,” she said, putting her hand to her forehead. “I’ve been remembering some of the things I said in the boat yesterday.” She ducked her head. “I want you to know that I only said those things about Lord Peter Wimsey and your hat because of the time-lag and the hormonal imbalance, and not because—”

“Understood,” I said. “And I do not, when in my right mind, see you as a beautiful naiad, drawing me down and down into the deep to drown in your watery embrace. Besides,” I said, grinning, “Pansy Chattisbourne and I are already promised to one another.”

“Perhaps you’d like to buy her an engagement gift then,” she said and held up a ceramic affair decorated with gilt lace, pink ceramic gillyflowers, and an assortment of small holes.

“What is it?” I said.

“I have no idea,” she said. “You realize you’ll have to buy something, don’t you? Mrs. Mering will never forgive you if you don’t.”

She held up a wicker basket in the shape of a swan. “How about this?”

“No, thank you,” I said. “Cyril and I are not fond of swans.”

Verity set out a small lidded tin box that sugared violets had come in. “No one will buy this.”

“That’s where you’re wrong,” I said, unwrapping a waterstained copy of An Old-Fashioned Girl and setting it between two marble bookends carved in the likenesses of Dido and Aeneas, another couple who had gone up in smoke. Didn’t history have any famous couples who had got married, settled down, and lived happily ever after?

“People will buy anything at jumble sales,” I said. “At the Evacuated Children Charity Fair a woman bought a tree branch that had fallen on the table.”

“Don’t look now,” Verity said, and her voice dropped to a whisper, “but here comes your betrothed.”

I turned to see Pansy Chattisbourne bearing down on me. “Oh, Mr. Henry,” she said, giggling, “do come help me set up the fancy goods stall,” and dragged me away to arrange antimacassars and tatted handkerchief cases.

“I made these,” Pansy said, showing me a pair of slippers crocheted in a design of pansies. “Heartsease. It means, ‘I am thinking of you.’ ”

“Ah,” I said, and purchased a bookmark embroidered, “Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moths corrupt and thieves break in and steal. Matthew 6:19.”

“No, no, no, Mr. Henry,” Mrs. Mering said, swooping down on me and my cross-stitched tea cloths like some colorful bird of prey, you’re not supposed to be here. I need you over here.”

She led me down the lawn past the knitted and crocheted goods stall and the fishing pond stall and the coconut shy and the tea tent to a spot at the end of the lawn where a plot of sand had been laid out inside a wooden frame. Baine was dividing the sand into foot-wide squares with the blade of a small shovel.

“This is our Treasure Hunt, Mr. Henry,” she said, handing me a stack of folded pasteboard squares. “These are for numbering the squares. Have you any shillings, Mr. Henry?”

I fished out my purse and tipped it into my cupped hand.

She scooped up all the coins. “Three shillings for the minor prizes,” she said, plucking out three silver coins and handing them back to me, “and the rest of this will do excellently for change at the woolen goods booth.”

She handed me back a single gold coin. “And you’ll need this,” she said, “for purchasing treasures at the jumble sale.”

Definitely related to Lady Schrapnell.

“I will let you choose which squares to bury the shillings and the Grand Prize in. Take care no one sees you, she said. “Avoid the corner squares and all the lucky numbers—Three and Seven and Thirteen—people always choose those first, and if someone finds the treasure early, we shan’t make any money for the restoration. Also, avoid the numbers under twelve. Children always choose their age. And Fourteen. Today’s the fourteenth of June, and people always choose the date. Make certain they only dig in one square. Baine, where is the Grand Prize?”

“Right here, madam,” Baine said, handing her a brown-paper-wrapped parcel.

“The price for digging is tuppence a square or three for fivepence,” she said, unveiling the parcel, “and here is our Grand Prize.”

She handed me a plate with a painting of Iffley Mill and the words “Happy Memories of the Thames” on it. It looked just like the one the mobcap in Abingdon had tried to sell me.

“Baine, where is the shovel?” Mrs. Mering said.

“Here, madam,” he said, and handed me a shovel and a rake. “For smoothing the sand down after you’ve hidden the treasure,” he explained.

“Baine, what time is it?” Mrs. Mering asked.

“Five minutes to ten, madam,” he said, and I thought she was going to swoon.

“O, we’re not nearly ready!” she cried. “Baine, go and explain the fishing pond stall to Professor Peddick and bring out my crystal ball. Mr. Henry, there’s no time to waste. You must bury the treasure immediately.”

I started for the sand.

“And not Twenty-eight. That was last year’s winning square. Or Sixteen. That’s the Queen’s Birthday.”

She swept off, and I set about hiding the treasure. Baine had laid out thirty squares. Eliminating Sixteen, Twenty-eight, Three, Seven, Thirteen, Fourteen, and One through Twelve, to say nothing of the corners, didn’t leave very many choices.

I took a sharp look round, in case there were any “Souvenir of the Thames” thieves lurking in the hedge, and stuck the three shillings in Twenty-nine, Twenty-three, and Twenty-six. No, that was a corner. Twenty-one. And then stood there, trying to decide what the least-likely looking square was and wondering if I had time to go through and report to Mr. Dunworthy before the fête started.

While I was debating, the bell from Muchings End Church began to toll, Mrs. Mering gave a screamlet, and the fête was declared officially open. I hastily buried the Grand Prize in Eighteen and began raking it over.

“Seven,” a child’s voice said behind me. I turned round. It was Eglantine Chattisbourne in a pink dress and a large bow. She was carrying the lettuce soup tureen.

“I’m not open yet,” I said, raking several other squares and then stooping to place the cardboard numbers in them.

“I want to dig in Number Seven,” Eglantine said, shoving fivepence at me. “I get three tries. I want seven for my first one. It’s my lucky number.”

I handed her the shovel, and she set down the lettuce and dug for several minutes.

“Do you want to try another square?” I asked her.

“I’m not finished yet,” she said, and dug some more.

She stood up and surveyed the squares. “It’s never in the corners,” she said thoughtfully, “and it can’t be Fourteen. It’s never the date. Twelve,” she said finally. “That’s how old I am on my birthday.”

She dug some more. “Are you certain you put the prizes in?” she said accusingly.

“Yes,” I said. “Three shillings and a Grand Prize.”

“You could say they were in there,” she said, “and truly you’d kept them for yourself.”

“They’re in there,” I said. “Which square do you want for your third try?”

“I don’t,” she said, handing me the shovel. “I want to think for a little.”

“As you wish, miss,” I said.

She held out her hand. “I want my tuppence back. For my third try.”

I wondered if she were somehow related to Lady Schrapnell. Perhaps Elliott Chattisbourne, despite appearances, was Mr. C after all.

“I haven’t any change,” I said.

She flounced off, I raked the squares flat again, and leaned against a tree, waiting for more customers.

None came. They were apparently all hitting the jumble sale first. Business was so slow for the first hour I could easily have sneaked off to the drop, except for Eglantine, who hovered nearby, plotting which square to use her last tuppence on.

And, as it developed when she had finally decided on Number Seventeen and dug to no avail, keeping her eye on me. “I think you move the prizes when no one’s looking,” she said, brandishing the toy shovel. “That’s why I’ve been watching you.”

“But if you’ve been watching me,” I said reasonably, “how could I have moved the prize?”

“I don’t know,” she said darkly, “but you must have. It’s the only explanation. It’s always in Seventeen.”

Now that she was out of money, I’d hoped she would move on, but she hung about, watching a little boy choose Six (his age) and his mother pick Fourteen (the date).

“Perhaps you never put the prizes in at all,” Eglantine said after they’d left, the little boy sobbing because he hadn’t found a prize. “Perhaps you only said you did.”

“Wouldn’t you like to have a nice pony ride?” I said. “Mr. St. Trewes is giving pony rides over there.”

“Pony rides are for infants,” she said disdainfully.

“Have you had your fortune told?” I persisted.

“Yes,” she said. “The fortuneteller said she saw a long journey in my future.”

The sooner the better, I thought.

“They have some lovely penwipers in the fancy goods stall,” I said shamelessly.

“I don’t want a penwiper,” she said. “I want a Grand Prize.”

She kept an eagle eye on me for another half hour, at which point Professor Peddick came over.

“Looks exactly like the plain at Runnymede,” he said, gesturing to include the lawn with its stalls and tea tent. “The lords, with their marquees and their banners spread out across the plain, waiting for King John and his party to arrive.”

“Speaking of Runnymede,” I said, “shouldn’t we be going on downriver and then back to Oxford to see your sister and your niece? No doubt they will be missing you.

“Pah!” he said. “There’s plenty of time. They’ll be staying all summer, and the Colonel’s ordered a red-spotted silver tancho that is to arrive tomorrow.”

“Terence and I could run you home tomorrow on the train, just to check on things at home, and then you could come back to see the red-spotted silver tancho.”

“Not necessary,” he said. “Maudie’s a capable girl. I’m certain she has things well in hand. And I doubt Terence would be willing to go, now that he’s engaged to Miss Mering.” He shook his head. “I can’t say I entirely approve of these hasty engagements,” he said. “What’s your opinion of them, Henry?”

“That little pitchers have big ears,” I said, looking at Eglantine, who was standing next to the Treasure Hunt, her hands behind her back, looking earnestly at the squares.

“Pretty little thing, but knows scarcely any history,” Professor Peddick went on, not taking the hint. “Thought Nelson lost his arm fighting the Spanish Armada.”

“Are you going to dig?” Eglantine said, coming over to him.

“Dig?” Professor Peddick said.

“For treasure,” she said.

“As Professor Schliemann dug at ancient Troy,” he said, picking up the little shovel. “ ‘Fuimus Troes; fuit Ilium.’ ”

“You must pay tuppence first,” Eglantine said. “And choose a number.”

“Choose a number?” Professor Peddick said, bringing out two pennies. “Very well. Fifteen for the day and the year of the signing of the Magna Carta.” He plunked down the pennies. “The fifteenth of June, 1215.”

“That’s tomorrow,” I said. “What an excellent occasion for us to go down to Runnymede, on the very anniversary of the signing. We could telegram your sister and your niece to meet us there, and we could go down by boat tomorrow morning.”

“Too many sightseers,” Professor Peddick said. “They’d spoil the fishing.”

“Fifteen’s a very poor number,” Eglantine said. “I would have chosen Nine.”

“Here,” Professor Peddick said, handing her the shovel. “You dig for me.”

“May I keep anything I find?” she asked.

“We shall share the spoils,” he said. “ ‘Fortuna belli semper anticipiti in loco est.’ ”

“What do I get for digging if it isn’t in Fifteen?”

“Lemonade and cakes in the tea tent,” he said.

“It isn’t in Fifteen,” Eglantine said, but she began digging.

“A fateful day, the fifteenth of June,” Professor Peddick said, watching her. “Napoleon marched his army into Belgium on the fifteenth of June in 1814. Had he pressed on to Ligny instead of stopping in Fleurus, he would have split Wellington’s and Blücher’s armies apart and won the battle of Waterloo. A day that changed history forever, the fifteenth of June.”

“I told you it wasn’t in Fifteen,” Eglantine said. “I don’t think it’s in any of them. When do I get my lemonade and cakes?”

“Now, if you like,” Professor Peddick said, taking her arm and leading her off toward the tea tent, and now I could go through and report in to Mr. Dunworthy.

I started for the gazebo, and hadn’t made it three steps before I was stopped by Mrs. Chattisbourne. “Mr. Henry,” she said, “have you seen Eglantine?”

I told her she was in the tea tent.

“I suppose you have heard the delightful news of Miss Mering’s and Mr. St. Trewes’s engagement,” she said.

I said I had.

“I always think June is the perfect month for engagements, don’t you, Mr. Henry? And so many lovely young girls about. I shouldn’t be surprised if you were to become engaged, too.”

I told her Eglantine was in the tea tent.

“Thank you,” she said. “Oh, and if you see Mr. Finch, will you please tell him we are nearly out of parsnip wine at the baked goods stall?”

“Yes, Mrs. Chattisbourne,” I said.

“Finch is such a wonderful butler,” she said. “So thoughtful. Did you know he went all the way to Stowcester for seed cake for the stall? He spends every spare moment travelling the countryside, looking for delicacies for our table. Yesterday he walked to Farmer Bilton’s for strawberries. He’s quite simply amazing. The best butler we have ever had. I worry night and day that he will be stolen away from me.”

A legitimate worry under the circumstances, I thought, and wondered what Finch was really up to at Stowcester and Farmer Bilton’s. And whether Mrs. Chattisbourne would ever leave.

She did, but not before Pansy and Iris showed up, giggling, and spent tuppence apiece on Three and Thirteen (their lucky numbers). By the time I got rid of them, it had been nearly half an hour, and Eglantine was liable to be back at any moment.

I sprinted over to the driveway and the Pony Ride and asked Terence if he could watch the Treasure Hunt for me for a few minutes.

“What does it involve?” he asked suspiciously.

“Handing people a shovel and taking their tuppences,” I said, skipping the part about Eglantine.

“I’ll do it,” Terence said, tying the pony to a tree. “It sounds like a soft job compared to this. I’ve spent all morning being kicked.”

“By the pony?” I said, eyeing it warily.

“By the children.”

I showed him the layout of the Treasure Hunt and gave him the shovel. “I’ll be back in a quarter of an hour,” I promised.

“Take as long as you like,” he said.

I thanked him and took off for the gazebo. And nearly made it. At the edge of the lilacs, the curate caught me and said, “Are you enjoying the fête, Mr. Henry?”

“Tremendously,” I said. “I—”

“Have you had your fortune told?”

“Not yet,” I said. “I—”

“Then you must this very instant,” he said, grabbing me by the arm and propelling me back toward the fortune-telling tent. “It and the jumble sale are the high point of the fête.”

He shoved me through a red-and-purple flap into a tiny enclosed tent in which sat Mrs. Mering and the crystal ball, which she had apparently bullied Felpham and Muncaster’s into delivering on time.

“Sit down,” she said. “You must cross my palm with silver.”

I handed her the lone gold coin she’d left me. She handed me back several silver coins in change and then passed her hands over the crystal ball.

“I see . . .” she said in a sepulchral voice, “. . . you will live a very long life.”

It only seems long, I thought.

“I see . . . a long journey, very long . . . you are seeking something. Is it an object of great worth?” She closed her eyes and ran a hand across her forehead. “The glass is murky . . . I cannot see whether you will be successful in your search.”

“You can’t see where it is, can you?” I said, leaning over to try to see into the ball. “The object?”

“No,” she said, placing her hands over it, “. . . it . . . Things Are Not What They Seem. I see . . . trouble . . . the glass is becoming clouded . . . at the center I see . . . Princess Arjumand!”

I jumped a good foot.

“Princess Arjumand! Naughty puss!” she said, reaching under her robes. “You mustn’t come in here, you naughty bad kitty. Mr. Henry, do be so good as to take her back to my daughter. She quite spoils the atmosphere.”

She handed over Princess Arjumand, who had to be detached claw by claw from her robes. “Always causing trouble,” she said.

I carried Princess Arjumand over to the jumble sale stall and asked Verity to keep an eye on her.

“What did you find out from Mr. Dunworthy?” she said.

“I haven’t gone yet. I got waylaid by Mrs. Mering,” I said. “However, she saw a long journey in my future, so perhaps it means I’ll be able to go now.”

“She saw a wedding in my future,” Verity said. “Let’s hope it’s Tossie’s to Mr. C.”

I came round behind the counter, handed Princess Arjumand to her, and then ducked out the back way, sprinted down to the towpath and along it to the gazebo, and hid in the lilac bushes, waiting for the net to open.

It took forever to open, during which I worried about Eglantine or the curate catching me, and then, when the net finally began to shimmer, about Lady Schrapnell catching me.

I came through in a crouch, ready to bolt if Lady Schrapnell was in the lab. She wasn’t, at least in the parts that I could see. The lab looked like it had been turned into a war room. All across the wall where I had sat—how many days ago?—there was a comp setup so big it dwarfed the net console. A tall bank of monitors and three-dimensional stack screens filled the entire part of the lab that wasn’t taken up by the net.

Warder was at the console, interrogating the new recruit.

“All I know is,” the new recruit said, “he said, ‘I’m not risking you being left behind again. Get in the net,’ and I did.”

“And Carruthers didn’t say anything about doing anything before he followed you?” Warder asked. “Checking on something?”

He shook his head. “He said, ‘I’m right behind you.’ ”

“Was there anyone about?”

He shook his head again. “The sirens had gone. And there’s nobody living in that part of the city. It’s all burnt down.”

“The sirens had gone?” Warder said. “Were you under attack? Could a bomb have hit—” She looked up suddenly and saw me. What are you doing here?” she said. “What happened to Kindle?”

“Advanced time-lag, thanks to you people,” I said, flailing my way out of the veils. “Where’s Mr. Dunworthy?”

“Over at Corpus Christi with the forensics expert,” she said.

“Go tell him I’m here and need to talk to him now,” I said to the new recruit.

“I’m trying to find out what happened to Carruthers,” Warder said, flushing angrily. “You can’t just come in here and—”

“This is important,” I said.

“So is Carruthers!” she snapped. She turned to the new recruit. “Were there any delayed-action bombs in the area?”

The recruit looked uncertainly from her to me. “I don’t know.”

“What do you mean, you don’t know?” Warder said angrily. “What about the buildings and ruins in the area, were they unstable? And don’t tell me you don’t know!”

“I’d best go fetch Mr. Dunworthy,” the recruit said.

“All right,” Warder snapped. “Come straight back. I’ve some more questions to ask you.”

The recruit made his escape, brushing past T.J., who was on his way in with a stack of books, vids, and disks. “Oh, good,” he said when he saw me. “I want to show you both—” He stopped, looking round. “Where’s Verity?”

“In 1888,” I said. “She got time-lagged doing all those drops for you.”

“They didn’t turn up anything,” he said, trying to set the stack down without it falling over, “which doesn’t make any sense. There’s got to be increased slippage around the site. Here, let me show you.”

He started to lead me over to the comp setup and then stopped and went over to the console and asked Warder, “Was there slippage on Ned’s drop?”

“I haven’t had time to calculate it,” Warder said. “I’ve been trying to get Carruthers out!”

“Okay, okay,” T.J. said, holding up his hands defensively. “Could you please calculate it?”

He turned to me. “Ned, I want to show you—”

“What’s this about slippage on my drop?” I said. “There isn’t any slippage on return drops.”

“There was on Verity’s last drop,” he said.

“What’s causing it?”

“We don’t know yet,” he said. “We’re working on it. Come here. Let me show you what we’re doing.” He led me over to the comp setup. “Did Verity tell you about the Waterloo sims?”

“More or less,” I said.

“Okay, it’s very hard to make an accurate comp model of an historical event because so many factors are unknown, but Waterloo’s an exception. The battle’s been analyzed and every incident’s been described down to a microscopic level. Also,” he said, his black fingers typing rapidly, “it has several crisis points and a number of factors which could have made the battle go either way: the violent rainstorms on the sixteenth and seventeenth, General Grouchy’s failure to come up—”

“Napoleon’s bad penmanship,” I said.

“Exactly. Napoleon’s message to D’Erlon and the failure to take Hougoumont, among others.”

He hit more keys, leaning round to see the bank of stack screens behind him.

“All right, here’s what we’ve been looking at,” he said, picking up a lightpen and walking over to the center screen. “This is a sim of Waterloo as it actually happened.”

The screen showed a three-dimensional gray blur with lighter and darker areas. “This is the battle,” he said, switching on the pen and pointing it into the center of the three-dimensional blur. “And here,” he pointed at the edges, are the surrounding temporal and locational areas the battle affected.”

The light darted back to the center and rapidly pointed to several places. “Here you can see the battle at Quatre Bras, the fight for Wavre, the charge of the Old Guard, the retreat.”

I couldn’t see anything but assorted gray blurs. I felt the way I always do when a doctor shows me a scan. “Here you see the lungs, the heart—” I never see anything of the sort.

“What I’ve done is introduce simulated incongruities into the model and see how the sim changes,” he said.

He moved to the screen on the left. As near as I could tell, it looked identical to the one in the center. “In this one, for example, Napoleon sent an illegible order to D’Erlon to turn toward Ligny, with the result that he brought his men up behind Napoleon’s left flank instead of ahead of it and was mistaken for the enemy. I introduced a simulated historian here,” he said, pointing at gray, “who substituted a legible order for Napoleon’s note, and as you can see, it changed the picture radically.”

I would have to take his word for it.

“When the incongruity’s introduced, you get a pattern of radically increased slippage at the site,” he pointed with the lightpen, “and then slightly lower levels here and here surrounding the site, and then smaller peripheral patches as the system corrects itself.”

I squinted at the screen, trying to look intelligent.

“In this case, the system was able to self-correct almost immediately. D’Erlon issued the orders to his second-in-command, who gave them to a lieutenant, who couldn’t hear him for the artillery fire, and sent the troops up on the left flank after all, and the situation reverted to its original pattern.”

He pointed the lightpen at the top row of screens. “I tried a number of variables of varying severity. In this one, the historian breaks the lock on the gate at Hougoumont. In this one, he spoils an infantryman’s shot so Letort isn’t killed. In this one here, the historian intercepts a message between Blücher and Wellington,” he said, pointing at one screen after another. “They vary greatly in their impact on the situation and in how long it takes the continuum to self-correct.”

He pointed at more screens. “This one took a few minutes, this one took two days, and there doesn’t seem to be a direct correlation between the seriousness of the incongruity and its consequences. In this one,” he pointed at the far left bottom screen, “we shot Uxbridge to prevent his suicidal charge, and his second-in-command immediately took up the charge with the same result.

“On the other hand, in this one,” he indicated a screen in the second row, we had an historian dressed as a Prussian soldier stumble and fall during the fight for Ligny, and the self-correction was enormous, involving four regiments and Blücher himself.”

He moved to a screen in the center. “In this one, we changed the circumstances at La Sainte Haye. The thatched roofs caught fire from the artillery shells, and a chain of men with soup kettles full of water managed to put the fires out.”

He pointed at a spot near the center. “I introduced an historian here to steal one of the soup kettles. It created a major incongruity, and the interesting thing is that the self-correction didn’t just involve increased slippage here and here,” the light pointed at the top of the screen, “but here, before 1814.”

“It went back in the past and corrected itself?”

“Yes,” he said. “In the winter of 1812, there was a bad snowstorm, which caused a deep rut in the road in front of La Sainte Haye, which caused an oxcart passing over it to lose part of its load, including a small wooden keg full of beer, which a servant found and carried home to La Sainte Haye. The keg, with the top hacked off, was substituted for the missing soup kettle in the bucket brigade, the fires were put out, and the incongruity was repaired.”

He went back to the comp, hit more keys, and brought up a new set of screens. “This one, where Gneisenau retreats to Liege, and this one, in which the historian helps push a cannon out of the mud, show self-corrections in the past, too.”

“That’s why you had Verity do drops in May?” I said. “Because you think the incongruity may have attempted to adjust itself before it happened?”

“But we haven’t found any slippage anywhere except for your drop,” he said, sounding frustrated. “Every one of these,” he waved at the screen, no matter how large or how small the self-correction, has the same basic pattern: radically increased slippage at the site, moderately increased slippage in the immediate area, and then isolated pockets of slippage farther from the site.”

“Which doesn’t match our incongruity at all,” I said, staring at the screen.

“No,” T.J. said, “it doesn’t. The slippage on Verity’s drop was nine minutes, and I haven’t been able to find any radical increase in slippage anywhere near the site. The only slippage at all is the cluster in 2018, and it’s much greater than it should be, that far from the site.”

He went to the comp, typed something in, and came back to the left-hand screen, which had changed slightly. “The only one that’s been close is this one,” he said. “We had the historian fire an artillery shell that killed Wellington.”

He felt in his pockets for the lightpen, couldn’t find it, and settled for his finger. “See this? Here and here, you have radically increased slippage, but it can’t contain the altering events and discrepancies which develop here and here and here,” he said, pointing at three spots close to the focus, “and the amount of slippage drops off sharply here, and you can see here,” he pointed farther out, “the backups start to fail, and the net begins to malfunction as history starts to alter course.”

“And Napoleon wins the battle of Waterloo.”

“Yes,” he said. “You can see the parallels to your incongruity here,” he pointed at darker gray, “where there’s a pocket of increased slippage nearly seventy years from the site, and here,” he pointed at a spot of lighter gray, “in the lack of slippage at a short distance from the site.”

“But there’s still radically increased slippage at the site,” I said.

“Yes,” he said grimly. “In every single incongruity we’ve tried. Except yours.”

“But at least you’ve been able to prove that incongruities are possible,” I said. “That’s something, isn’t it?”

“What?” he said blankly. “These are all just mathematical sims.”

“I know, but you’ve shown what would happen if—”

He was shaking his head violently. “What would happen if we really tried to send an historian to Waterloo to intercept a message or shoot a horse or give directions is that the net wouldn’t open. Historians have been trying for over forty years. No one can get within two years and a hundred miles of Waterloo.” He waved angrily at the banks of screens. “These sims are all based on a net without any safeguards.”

So we were right back where we started.

“Could something have overridden the safeguards on Verity’s drop?” I said. “Or made them malfunction?”

“That was the first thing we checked. There was no sign of anything but a perfectly normal drop.”

Mr. Dunworthy came in, looking worried. “Sorry I took so long,” he said. “I went to see if the forensics expert had made any progress on either the name or the date.”

“Has she?” I said.

“Where’s the recruit?” Warder cut in crabbily before Mr. Dunworthy could answer. “He was supposed to come back with you.”

“I sent him over to the cathedral to keep Lady Schrapnell occupied so she wouldn’t come over while Ned was here,” he said.

And I trusted him to do that about as much as I trusted him to find his way home, so we’d better make this short.

“Has the forensics expert decoded Mr. C’s name?”

“No. She’s narrowed the number of letters down to eight, and she’s located the Coventry entry, and is working on the date.”

Well, that was something. “We need it as soon as possible,” I said. “Terence and Tossie got engaged yesterday.”

“Oh, dear,” Mr. Dunworthy said, and looked around as if he would have liked to sit down. “Betrothal was a very serious matter in Victorian days,” he said to T.J.

He turned back to me. “Ned, the two of you still don’t have any leads as to Mr. C’s identity?”

“No, and we still haven’t been able to get hold of the diary,” I said. “Verity’s hoping Mr. C comes to the church fête today.”

I tried to think if there was anything else I should tell or ask them. “T.J., you said something about slippage on the return drops?”

“Oh, yes. Warder!” he called across to the console, where she was violently pounding keys. “Have you figured the slippage yet?”

“I am trying to—”

“I know, I know, you’re trying to get Carruthers out,” T.J. said.

“No,” she said. “I am trying to bring Finch through.”

“It can wait,” T.J. said. “I need the slippage on Ned’s return drop.”

“All right!” she said, her seraphim’s hundred eyes flashing. She beat on the keys for half a minute. “Three hours, eight minutes.”

“Three hours!” I said.

“It’s better than Verity’s last drop,” Mr. Dunworthy said. “That was two days.”

T.J. held his hands out, palms up, and shrugged. “There hasn’t been any on any of the sims.”

I thought of something. “What day is it?”

“Friday,” T.J. said.

“It’s nine days till the consecration,” Mr. Dunworthy said, thinking. “The fifth of November.”

“Nine days!” I said. “Good Lord! And I don’t suppose the bishop’s bird stump has turned up?”

Mr. Dunworthy shook his head. “Things don’t look good, do they, Ensign Klepperman?”

“There’s one thing that does,” T.J. said, darting back to the comp and hitting keys. “I did a bunch of scenarios on the Berlin bombing.” The screens changed to a slightly different pattern of gray blurs. “Missing the target, plane getting hit, pilot getting hit, even eliminating the pilot and plane altogether, and none of them affects the outcome. London still gets bombed.”

“That is good news,” Mr. Dunworthy said wryly.

“Well, it’s something anyway,” I said, wishing I could believe it.

The net shimmered, and Finch appeared. He waited for Warder to raise the veils and then came straight over to Mr. Dunworthy and said, “I have excellent news regarding the—” He stopped and looked at me. “I will be in your office, sir,” he said and went out hastily.

“I want to know what Finch is up to,” I said. “Did you send him back to drown Princess Arjumand?”

“Drown—?” T.J. said, and started to laugh.

“Did you?” I demanded. “And don’t tell me you’re not at liberty to say.”

“We are not at liberty to tell you what Finch’s mission is,” Mr. Dunworthy said, “but I can tell you, Princess Arjumand is perfectly safe, and that you will be pleased with the results of Finch’s mission.”

“If Henry’s going back,” Warder said irritably from the console, “I need to send him now so I can start the half-hour intermittent on Carruthers.”

“We need the forensics expert’s information as soon as you have it,” I said to Mr. Dunworthy. “I’ll try to come through tonight or tomorrow.”

Mr. Dunworthy nodded.

“I don’t have all day,” Warder said. “I am trying—”

“All right,” I said, and went over to the net.

“What time do you want to be sent back to?” Warder asked. “Five minutes after you left?”

Hope suddenly leaped up like one of Wordsworth’s rainbows. “I can go back to whenever I want?”

“It’s time travel,” Warder said. “I haven’t got all—”

“Half-past four,” I said. With luck, there would be twenty minutes’ slippage, and the fête would be completely over.

“Half-past four?” Warder said, looking belligerent. “Won’t someone have missed you?”

“No,” I said. “Terence will be delighted he doesn’t have to go back to the Pony Ride.”

Warder shrugged and began setting up the coordinates. “Step in the net,” she said, and hit the “send” key.

The net shimmered, and I straightened my boater and tie and strode happily back to the fête. It was still overcast, so I couldn’t see the sun to tell what time it was, and my watch was useless, but the crowd seemed a bit thinner. It must be at least half-past three. I went over to the jumble sale stall to report to Verity that I had nothing to report.

She wasn’t there. The stall was being tended by Rose and Iris Chattisbourne, who tried to sell me a silver sugar hammer.

“She’s in the tea tent,” they said, but she wasn’t there either.

Cyril was, hoping against hope someone would drop a sandwich, and giving the impression that he’d been there all day. I bought him a currant bun and myself a rock cake and a cup of tea and took them back over to the Treasure Hunt.

“You weren’t gone very long,” Terence said. “I told you to take as long as you liked.”

“What time is it?” I said with a sinking feeling. “My watch—stopped.”

“ ‘It was the very best butter,’ ” Terence quoted. “It’s five past twelve. I don’t suppose you’d like to take the Pony Ride for a bit?” he said hopefully.

“No,” I said.

He wandered morosely off toward the drive, and I sipped my tea and ate my rock cake and thought about the unfairness of Fate.

It was a very long afternoon. Eglantine, who had cadged another fivepence from one of her sisters, spent most of the afternoon squatting next to the sand, plotting her strategy.

“I don’t think any of the squares has the Grand Prize in it,” she said, after she’d squandered tuppence on Number Two.

“It does,” I said. “I put it in there myself, whether you believe me or not.”

“I do believe you,” she said. “The Reverend Mr. Arbitage saw you do it. But someone might have stolen up and taken it when nobody was here.”