“Did your premonition specify it was Colonel Mering who was in danger?” Verity asked.
“No,” Mrs. Mering said, and got that odd, probing-a-tooth look again. “It… there was… water—” She gave a tiny scream. “What if he’s fallen in the fishpond and drowned? His new goldfish was to arrive today.” She sank back against the cushions, breathing into the handkerchief.
“Papa knows how to swim,” Tossie said.
“He might have hit his head on the stone edging,” Mrs. Mering said stubbornly. “Something dreadful’s happened. I can feel it!”
She wasn’t the only one. I glanced sideways at Verity. She was looking calmly desperate. We needed to talk.
“Can I fetch you anything, Mrs. Mering?” I said. I wasn’t sure how to get Verity out of the compartment. Perhaps I could get the railway guard to give her a message. I’d cross that railway bridge when I came to it. “It’s rather chilly in here. Can I fetch you a travelling rug?”
“It is cold,” she said. “Verity, go and tell Jane I want my Scottish shawl. Tossie, do you want yours?”
“What?” Tossie said uninterestedly, looking out the window.
“Your shawl,” Mrs. Mering said. “Do you want it?”
“No!” Tossie said violently.
“Nonsense,” Mrs. Mering said. “It’s cold in here,” and to Verity, “Bring Tossie’s shawl.”
“Yes, Aunt Malvinia,” Verity said and went out.
“It is cold in here,” I said. “Shall I ask the guard to bring in a stove? Or a heated brick for your feet?”
“No. Why on earth don’t you want your shawl, Tossie?”
“I want my tea,” Tossie said to the window. “Do you think I’m aesthetically uneducated?”
“Of course not,” Mrs. Mering said. “You speak French. Where are you going, Mr. Henry?”
I took my hand off the compartment door. “I just thought I’d step out onto the observation platform for a moment,” I said, taking out a pipe as proof.
“Nonsense. It’s pouring rain out there.”
I sat down, defeated. Verity would be back in a moment, and we’d have missed our chance. The way we had missed our chance in Coventry.
“Mr. St. Trewes,” Mrs. Mering said, “go and tell Baine to bring us some tea.”
“I’ll do it,” I said, and was out of the compartment before she could stop me. Verity would already be on her way back with the shawl. If I could stop her before she got to the end of the second-class carriage, we could—
A hand reached out of the second-to-last compartment, grabbed my sleeve, and yanked me inside. “Where have you been?” Verity said.
“It isn’t easy to get away from Mrs. Mering,” I said, taking a look down the corridor to make sure there was no one coming before I shut the compartment door.
Verity pulled down the shades. “The real question is, what do we do now?” She sat down. “I was sure getting her to Coventry would do the trick. She’d see the bishop’s bird stump, she’d meet Mr. Whatever-His-Name-Is-Beginning-With-a-C, her life would be changed, and the incongruity would be fixed.”
“We don’t know that it wasn’t. She may have had her life changed, and we just don’t know it yet. There were those men on the platform in Reading, and the conductor, and the curate. And the one who looked like Crippen. And Cyril. We mustn’t forget his name begins with a ‘C.’ ”
She didn’t even smile. “Tossie didn’t let him come to Coventry, remember?”
I sat down opposite her. “Personally, my money’s on the curate,” I said. “A bit too pop-eyed and pompous for my taste, but then Tossie’s already demonstrated how wretched her taste is, and you saw how he was ogling her. My bet is that he shows up at Muchings End tomorrow on some pretext or other — he’s decided to become a spiritist, or he wants advice on the coconut shy, or something — they fall in love, she drops Terence like a hot potato, and the next thing you know, they’re posting the banns for Miss Tossie Mering and the Reverend Mr.—”
“Dolt,” Verity said.
“It’s a perfectly legitimate theory,” I said. “You heard the two of them cooing about the Albert Mem—”
“Doult. D-O-U-L-T,” she said. “The Reverend Mr. Doult.”
“Are you certain?”
She nodded grimly. “Mrs. Mering told me his name when we were getting into the carriage. ‘A well-intended young man, the Reverend Mr. Doult,’ she said, ‘but lacking in intelligence. He refuses to see the logic of the afterlife?’ ”
“You’re sure it was Doult, and not—”
“Colt?” she said. “I’m positive.” She shook her head. “The curate wasn’t Mr. C.”
“Well, then, it must have been one of the men on the platform at Reading. Or Muchings End’s curate.”
“His name is Arbitage.”
“So he says. what if he’s operating under an alias?”
“An alias? He’s a clergyman.”
“I know, and the Church would be particularly unforgiving of youthful misbehavior and misdemeanors, which would be why he had to take an assumed name. And his constantly being at Muchings End shows he’s interested in her. And, speaking of which, what is this peculiar fascination she has for curates?”
“They all need wives to help them with the Sunday school and the church fêtes.”
“Jumble sales,” I muttered. “I knew it. The Reverend Mr. Arbitage is interested in spiritism,” I said to Verity. “He’s interested in vandalizing old churches. He’s—”
“He’s not Mr. C,” Verity said. “I looked him up. He married Eglantine Chattisbourne.”
“Eglantine Chattisbourne?” I said.
She nodded. “In 1897. He became the vicar of St. Albans in Norwich.”
“What about the station guard?” I said. “I didn’t catch his name. He—”
“Tossie didn’t even glance at him. She hasn’t shown the slightest interest in anybody all day.” She leaned tiredly back against the seat. “We have to face it, Ned. The life-changing experience didn’t happen?”
She looked so discouraged I felt I had to try and cheer her up. “The diary didn’t say she had the life-changing experience in Coventry,” I said. “All it said was, ‘I shall never forget that day we went to Coventry.’ It might have happened on the way home. Mrs. Mering had a premonition something terrible was going to happen,” I said, and smiled at her. “Perhaps there’ll be a train wreck, and Mr. C will pull Tossie out of the wreckage.”
“A train wreck,” she said longingly. She stood and picked up the shawl. “We’d better be getting back before Mrs. Mering sends someone to look for us,” she said resignedly.
I opened the door. “Something will happen, you’ll see. There’s still the diary. And Finch’s related project, whatever that is. And we’ve still got a half-dozen stations and a change of trains before Muchings End. Perhaps Tossie will collide with Mr. C on the platform in Reading. Or perhaps she already has. When you didn’t come back, her mother sent her to look for you, and as the train swayed going round a curve, she fell into his arms. Dashing, titled, as insufferable as she is, and he happens to be the sculptor of the bishop’s bird stump, and she’s in his compartment right now, discussing Victorian art.”
But she wasn’t. She was still in her corner, looking moodily out at the rain, when we entered our compartment.
“There you are,” Mrs. Mering said. “Where have you been? I’m nearly frozen.”
Verity hastened to drape the shawl around Mrs. Mering’s shoulders.
“Did you tell Baine we wanted our tea?” Mrs. Mering said.
“I am just on my way to do so now,” I said, my hand on the door handle. “I met Miss Brown on my way there and accompanied her back,” and ducked out.
I expected to find Baine deep in Toynbee’s The Industrial Revolution or Darwin’s Descent of Man, but his book lay open on the seat beside him, and he was staring out at the rain. And apparently thinking about his aesthetic outburst and what the consequences of it might be, because he said gloomily, “Mr. Henry, might I ask a question about the States? You have been there. Is it true America is the Land of Opportunity?”