“It doesn’t exactly look like anything else,” she said. “Ned, what’s this all about?”
“What did you do then?”
“I thought, well, at least I’ve accomplished something. I can tell Ned it was there during the raid. If I make it out of here. And I started toward the tower door. The aisle was blocked with a pew that had got knocked over, and I had to go round it, and before I could reach the tower, the fire watch came in and started carrying things out.”
“And?” I prompted.
“I ducked across into the Cappers’ Chapel and hid.”
“How long were you in there?”
“I don’t know. A quarter of an hour or so. One of the fire watch came back in and got the altar books. I waited till he was gone, and then I went out to look for you.”
“Out the south door?” I said.
“Yes,” she said, looking at the net. It was beginning to dwindle and fade.
“Were there people outside on the steps when you went out?”
“Yes. If we’ve missed our chance to go home—”
“Did any of the fire watch go near the bishop’s bird stump?”
“No. They went into the sanctuary and the vestries and one of them ran down and got the altar cross and the candlesticks out of the Smiths’ Chapel.”
“And that’s all he got?”
“Yes.”
“You’re certain?”
“I’m certain. He had to go round the back of the nave and up the south aisle with them, because of the smoke. He ran right past me.”
“Did you see any of them in the Drapers’ Chapel?”
“No.”
“And you didn’t go in the Drapers’ Chapel?”
“I told you. I came through in the sanctuary, and I was in the Mercers’ Chapel and then the choir. And that’s all.”
“Could you see the north door from where you were hiding?”
She nodded.
“And no one went out that way?”
“It was locked,” she said. “I heard one of the fire watch tell another to unlock the north door, that the fire brigade would bring the hoses in that way, and he said they’d have to do it from the outside, because of the Smiths’ Chapel being on fire.”
“What about the west door? The tower door?”
“No. The fire watch all went out the vestry door.”
“Did you see anyone else in the cathedral?” I said. “Besides the fire watch? And the firemen?”
“In the cathedral? Ned, it was on fire.”
“What were the fire watch wearing?”
“Wearing?” she said bewilderedly. “I don’t know. Uniforms. Coveralls. I… the verger was wearing a tin helmet.”
“Were any of them wearing white?”
“White? No, of course not. Ned, what—?”
“Could you see the west door — the tower door — from where you were hiding?”
She nodded.
“And no one went out the west door while you were there? You didn’t see anyone in the Drapers’ Chapel?”
“No. Ned, what’s this all about?”
The north door was locked, and Verity had a clear view of the south door, and there were people — that knot of roof — watchers and the two louts by the lamp-post-outside the whole time.
The fire watch was using the vestry door, and shortly after Provost Howard made it out with the altar books, it was blocked by fire. And there were people by the vestry door, too. And the stout ARP warden making the rounds. And the dragon lady head of the Flower Committee was standing militant guard outside the west door. There was no way out of the cathedral.
There was no way out of the cathedral. There was no way out of the lab. And no place to hide. Except the net.
I grabbed both of Verity’s arms. I had hidden in the net, behind the theatrical curtains, and listened to Lizzie Bittner say, “I’d do anything for him.” In Oxford in 2018. Where T.J. had discovered a region of increased slippage.
“It’s because we don’t have the treasures Canterbury and Winchester have,” Lizzie Bittner had said. Lizzie Bittner, whose husband was a descendant of the Botoners who had built the church in 1395. Lizzie Bittner, who had lied about the lab’s being open. Who had a key.
“What you think is the first crime turns out to be the second,” the fur-bearing woman had said. “The first crime had happened years before.” Or after. This was time travel, after all. And in one of the Waterloo sims, the continuum had gone back to 1812 to correct itself.
And the clue, the little fact that didn’t fit, was the increased slippage. The increased slippage that hadn’t happened on Verity’s drop, that should have prevented her from rescuing the cat, from committing the incongruity in the first place. Five minutes either way would have done it, but instead there’d been nine minutes’ worth. Nine minutes that had put her right at the scene of the crime.
“Every one of the simulated incongruities has increased slippage at the site,” T.J. had said. Every single one of them. Even the ones in which the incongruity was too great for the continuum to correct it. Every single one. Except ours.
And all we had was a cluster of slippage in 2018, which T.J. had said was too great for being that far from the site. And Coventry. Which was a crisis point.
“Ned,” Verity said urgently. “What’s wrong?”
“Shh,” I said, holding onto her arms like I had held onto the green metal uprights of Merton’s pedestrian gate. I almost had it, and if I didn’t jar it with any sudden movements or distractions, I would see the whole thing.
The slippage was too far from the site, and discrepancies were only found in the immediate vicinity of the incongruity. And the fur-bearing lady in Blackwell’s had said, “I’m glad she married him.” She had been talking about some woman who had married a farmer. “If she hadn’t, she’d still be trapped in Oxford, serving on church committees and running jumble—”
“Ned?” Verity said.
“Shh.”
“She was convinced the bishop’s bird stump had been stolen,” Carruthers had said, talking about the “bitter old spinster sort,” Miss Sharpe, who had been in charge of the Flower Committee.
And the ARP warden had said, “Come along, Miss Sharpe,” to the gray-haired woman guarding the west door. The gray-haired woman who had reminded me of someone, and she had said, “I have no intention of going anywhere. I am the vice-chairman of the Cathedral Ladies’ Altar Guild and the head of the Flower Committee.”
“Miss Sharpe,” he had called her.
Miss Sharpe, who had been so upset she’d accused everyone of knowing about the raid in advance. Who’d even written a letter to the editor.
She’d sent a letter to the paper, saying someone had advance knowledge of the raid.
In Coventry, which had known about the raid in advance. Which, unlike Muchings End, wasn’t an historical backwater. Which was a crisis point. Because of Ultra.
Because if the Nazis found out we had their Enigma machine, it could change the course of the war. The course of history.
And the only instance of something being brought forward through the net was as part of a self-correction.
I was gripping Verity’s arms so hard it had to be hurting her, but I didn’t dare let go. “That young woman in the cathedral,” I said. “What was her name?”
“In the cathedral?” Verity said bewilderedly. “Ned, there wasn’t anyone in the cathedral. It was on fire.”
“Not during the raid,” I said. “The day we went there with Tossie. The young woman who came to see the curate. What was her name?”
“I don’t… It was a flower name,” she said. “Geranium or—”
“Delphinium,” I said. “Not her first name. Her last name.”
“I… it began with an ‘S.’ Sherwood, no, Sharpe,” she said, and the world shifted 180 degrees, and I wasn’t at Balliol’s gate, I was on Merton’s playing fields, and there, in Christ Church Meadow, was Coventry Cathedral, the center of it all.
“Ned,” Verity said urgently. “What is it?”
“We’ve been looking at this the wrong way round,” I said. “You didn’t cause an incongruity.”
“But — the coincidences,” she stammered, “and the increased slippage in 2018. There had to have been an incongruity.”