But why had it sent us to Coventry’s air raid, a crisis point, where presumably we could do a lot more damage? Or was Coventry a crisis point?
Its being off-limits had seemed to indicate it was a crisis point, and logically Ultra’s involvement should make it one, but perhaps the raid was only off-limits when we were looking for the bishop’s bird stump, because Verity and I had already been there. Perhaps it had been off-limits to give us a clear field.
To do what? To watch Provost Howard take candlesticks and Regimental Colors to the police station and see that the bishop’s bird stump wasn’t among the things saved? To see that it wasn’t in the church during the raid?
I would have given anything not to have seen that, not to have to tell Lady Schrapnell. But it was definitely not there. I wondered who had stolen it and when.
It had to have been that afternoon. Carruthers said the Flower Committee biddy Miss Sharpe had said she’d seen the bishop’s bird stump when she left the cathedral after the Advent Bazaar and Soldiers’ Christmas Parcel Effort meeting, that she’d stopped and pulled three dead flowers out of it.
Everything started to shift, the way it had when Finch said, “You’re on Merton’s playing fields,” and I grabbed for the bedpost like it was the pedestrian gate.
A door slammed. “Jane!” Mrs. Mering’s voice said from the corridor. “Where is my black bombazine?”
“Here, mum,” Jane’s voice said.
“O, this won’t do at all!” Mrs. Mering’s voice again. “It’s entirely too heavy for June. We shall have to order mourning clothes from Swan and Edgar’s. They had a lovely soft black crepe with jet trim on the bodice and a pleated underskirt.”
A pause, either for weeping or wardrobe-planning.
“Jane! I want you to take this note over to Notting Hill. And not a word to Mrs. Chattisbourne. Do you hear?” Slam.
“Yes, mum,” Jane said timidly.
I stood there, still clutching the bedpost, trying to recall the idea, the odd sensation I’d had a moment ago, but it was gone, as quickly as it had come, and that must have been what had happened to Mrs. Mering there in the cathedral. She hadn’t had a message from the spirit world, or from Lady Godiva either. She had looked at Baine and Tossie, and for an instant things had shifted into their true orientation, and she had seen what was happening, what was going to happen.
And then she must have lost it, because otherwise she’d have dismissed Baine on the spot and sent Tossie off on a Grand Tour of Europe. It must have gone as instantly as it came, the way mine just had, and that odd, chipped-tooth-probing look of hers had been her trying to remember what had triggered it.
The butler did it. “If I can ever do anything to repay you for returning Princess Arjumand, I should be more than obliged,” Baine had said, and he certainly had repaid me. In spades. “The butler did it,” Verity had said, and he certainly had.
Only not Verity. The fur-bearing woman in Blackwell’s. “The butler always does it,” she said, and the other one, the one with the Cyril-like fur draped over her shoulders, had said, “What you think is the first crime turns out to be the second. The real crime had happened years before. Nobody even knew the first crime had been committed.” The real crime. A crime the person was unaware of having committed. And something else. About someone marrying a farmer.
“But a butler!” Mrs. Mering’s anguished voice cried from down the corridor, followed by placating murmurs.
“Never should have let them stay in the first place!” Colonel Mering said.
“If she hadn’t met Mr. St. Trewes,” Mrs. Mering wailed, “she’d never have been thinking about marriage.” Her voice died away into sobbing murmurs, and it was nice to know other people second-guessed their actions, but it was definitely time to go.
I opened the bureau and looked at the clothes Baine had neatly stacked inside. The shirts all belonged to Elliott Chattisbourne and the Victorian era. And the collars and cuffs and nightshirt. I wasn’t as certain of the socks, but I must have been wearing the pair I’d come through in or the net wouldn’t have opened. Unless of course I was going to cause an incongruity, in which case there wouldn’t even be any increased slippage.
And if the continuum had been trying to get rid of Verity and me, why hadn’t the net just refused to open the first time we tried to come back from Oxford after we’d reported in? Why hadn’t it refused to open when Verity tried to take Princess Arjumand through? Baine wasn’t trying to drown the cat. He’d have been delighted to find Verity standing there by the gazebo with Princess Arjumand, delighted she’d waded in and rescued her. Why hadn’t it refused to open when Verity tried to come through to Muchings End in the first place? It didn’t make sense.
I opened the bottom drawer. Baine had thoughtfully folded my too-small shirts and waxed my too-small patent leather shoes. I put them in the carpetbag and looked round the room for any other stray items. Not the straight razors, thank goodness. Nor the silver-backed brushes.
My straw boater was lying on the nightstand. I started to put it on and then thought better of it. It was hardly the occasion for jauntiness.
None of it made sense. Why, if the continuum hadn’t wanted us meddling, had it landed me forty miles away? And Carruthers in a marrows field? Why had it refused to open for Carruthers for three weeks after the raid? Why had it sent me to 2018 and 1395 and Verity to 1940? And, the most important question of all, why had it brought us back now?
“An American!” Mrs. Mering shrieked from the end of the corridor. “It’s all Mr. Henry’s fault. His disgraceful American ideas of class equality!”
Definitely time to go. I closed the carpetbag and went out into the corridor. I stopped at Verity’s door and raised my hand to knock, and then thought better of that, too.
“Where is Jane?” Mrs. Mering’s voice rang out. “Why isn’t she back yet? Irish servants! This is all your fault, Mesiel. I wanted to hire—”
I made a speedy and quiet exit down the stairs. Colleen/Jane was standing at the foot of them, twisting her apron in her hands.
“Has she dismissed you?” I asked her.
“No, sorr, not yet,” she said, looking up nervously in the direction of Mrs. Mering’s room. “But she’s that angry.”
I nodded. “Has Miss Brown come down?”
“Yes, sorr. She said to tell you she would wait for you at the station.”
“The station?” I said, and then realized she meant the drop. “Thank you, Jane. Colleen. And good luck.”
“Thank you, sorr.” She started up the stairs, crossing herself as she went.
I opened the front door, and there stood Finch, in his morning coat and butler’s derby, his hand already reaching for the knocker.
“Mr. Henry,” he said. “Just the person I came to see.”
I shut the door behind me and led him over to where we couldn’t be observed from the windows.
“I’m so glad I caught you before you left, sir,” he said. “I have a dilemma.”
“I’m hardly the person to ask,” I said.
“You see, sir, my mission’s nearly completed, and I might be able to depart as early as tomorrow morning, but Mrs. Chattisbourne is having a tea tomorrow afternoon to plan the St. Anne’s Day Sale of Work. It’s terribly important to her, and so I’d planned to stay on to see that everything went well. That kitchen maid of hers, Gladys, has the mind of a rabbit, and—”
“And you’re afraid you’ll miss the consecration if you stay a few more days?” I said.
“No. I asked Mr. Dunworthy and he said it was quite all right, they could bring me through at the same time. No, my dilemma is this.” He held out a square envelope with the initials M.M. embossed in gold script on it. “It’s an offer of employment from Mrs. Mering. She wants me to come and be her butler.”