Mrs. Mering nodded dismissively. “You say Professor Peddick fell in the river?”
“Well, actually, Professor Overforce — they were discussing history, you see, and Professor Peddick said…”
I had stopped listening and was staring blankly at the wall, the way Mrs. Mering had stared with her premonition. Something someone had said — for a moment I had almost had it, the solution to the mystery, the significant clue, and Verity was right, we had been looking at it the wrong way round — but I had only had it for an instant, and then it had slipped away. It was something that one of them had said. Mrs. Mering? Terence? I squinted at Terence, trying to remember.
“…and then Professor Peddick said Julius Caesar wasn’t irrelevant and that was when Professor Overforce went in the drink.”
“Professor Overforce!” Mrs. Mering said, motioning to Verity for the smelling salts. “I thought you said Professor Peddick fell in.”
“Actually, it was more that he was pushed,” Terence said.
“Pushed!”
It was no use. Whatever my premonition had been, it was gone. And it was obviously time to intervene.
“Professor Peddick slipped and fell in,” I said, “and we rescued him and intended to take him back home, but he insisted on coming with us downriver. We stopped in Abingdon so he could send a telegram to his sister, telling her of his plans, but it obviously went astray, and when he turned up missing, she assumed that he was dead. Whereas he was really alive and with us.”
She took a deep whiff of the smelling salts. “With you,” she said, looking speculatively at Terence. “There was a cold gust of wind, and I looked up, and there you were, standing in the doorway in the darkness. How do I know you’re not all spirits?”
“Here. Feel,” Terence said, offering his arm. “ ‘Too, too solid flesh.’ ” She squeezed his sleeve gingerly. “There, you see,” he said. “Quite real.”
Mrs. Mering looked unconvinced. “The spirit of Katie Cook felt solid. Mr. Crookes put his arm round her waist at a séance, and he said she felt quite human.”
Yes, well, there was an explanation for that, and for the fact that spirits bore an unusual resemblance to people draped in cheesecloth, and with that sort of reasoning, we were never going to be able to prove we were alive.
“And they had Princess Arjumand with them,” Mrs. Mering said, warming to her theory, “who Madame Iritosky said had crossed over to the Other Side.”
“Princess Arjumand isn’t a spirit,” Verity said. “Baine caught her in the fishpond this morning, trying to catch Colonel Mering’s Black Moor. Isn’t that right, Baine?”
“Yes, miss,” he said, “but I was able to remove her before there was any harm done.”
I looked at him, wondering if he had removed her to the middle of the Thames, or if he’d been too frightened by the Verity incident to try it again.
“Arthur Conan Doyle says that spirits eat and drink in the afterlife just as we do here,” Mrs. Mering said. “He says the afterlife is just like our world, but purer and happier, and the newspapers would never print anything that isn’t true.”
And so on, until we changed trains at Reading, at which terminus the topic switched to how disgracefully Professor Peddick had behaved.
“To put his loved ones through such dreadful anguish,” Mrs. Mering said, standing on the platform watching Baine struggle with the luggage, “to leave them to sit by the window, anxiously watching for his return, and then, as the hours passed, to have all vestiges of hope fade, is the absolute height of cruelty! Had I but known how careless of his loved ones’ affections he was, I should never have opened our home and our hospitality to him. Never!”
“Should we wire ahead and warn Professor Peddick of the impending storm?” I whispered to Verity as we walked up the steps to the other train.
“When I was gone to fetch the fan,” she said, watching Tossie ahead of us with Terence, “did anyone come into the compartment, anyone at all?”
“Not a soul,” I said.
“And Tossie stayed there the whole time?”
“She went to get Baine, after her mother fainted,” I said.
“How long was she gone?”
“Only long enough to fetch Baine,” I said, and then at her crestfallen look, “She might have bumped into someone in the corridor. And we’re still not home. She might meet someone here. Or at the station at Muchings End.”
But the guard who handed her into our compartment was at least seventy, and there wasn’t a soul, departed or otherwise, on the rainy platform at Muchings End. Or at home. Except for Colonel Mering and Professor Peddick.
I should definitely have wired ahead.
“Had the most wonderful idea,” Colonel Mering said, coming happily out to greet us in the rain.
“Mesiel, where is your umbrella?” Mrs. Mering cut in before he could get any farther. “Where is your coat?”
“Don’t need ‘em,” the Colonel said. “Just been out to look at my new red-spotted silver tancho. Perfectly dry,” even though he looked fairly damp and his mustache had gone limp. “Couldn’t wait to tell you our idea. Absolutely splendid. Thought we’d come straight up to tell you, didn’t we, Professor? Greece!”
Mrs. Mering, being helped out of the carriage by Baine, who was holding an umbrella over her, looked warily at Professor Peddick, as if still not quite sure of his corporeality. “Grease?”
“Thermopylae,” the Colonel said happily. “Marathon, the Hellespont, the straits of Salamis. Laying out the battle today. Came to me. Only way to see the lay of the land. Envision the armies.”
There was an ominous peal of thunder, which he ignored. “Holiday for the whole family. Order Tossie’s trousseau in Paris. Visit Madame Iritosky. Got a telegram from her today saying she was going abroad. Pleasant tour.” He stopped and waited, smiling, for his wife’s response.
Mrs. Mering had apparently decided Professor Peddick was alive, at least for the moment. “Tell me, Professor Peddick,” she said in a voice that could have used several shawls, “before departing on this ‘tour,’ did you intend to inform your family of your plans? Or allow them to continue to wear mourning, as you have done thus far?”
“Mourning?” Professor Peddick said, pulling out his pince-nez.
“Beg pardon, my dear?” the Colonel said.
There was another extremely apt peal of thunder.
“Mesiel,” Mrs. Mering said, “you have been nursing a viper in your bosom.” She extended an accusing finger toward Professor Peddick. “This man has deceived those who befriended him, who took him in, but far, far worse, he has deceived his own loved ones.”
Professor Peddick took off his pince-nez and peered through them. “Viper?”
It occurred to me that we could stand here all night and Professor Peddick never get any closer to comprehending the calamity that had befallen him, and I wondered if I should attempt to intervene, particularly since the rain was starting up again.
I glanced at Verity, but she was looking hopefully up the empty drive.
“Professor Peddick,” I began, but Mrs. Mering was already thrusting the Oxford Chronicle at him.
“Read that,” she commanded.
“Feared drowned?” he said, putting on his pince-nez and then taking them off again.
“Didn’t you send your sister a telegram?” Terence asked. “Telling her you were going downriver with us?”
“Telegram?” he said vaguely, turning over the Chronicle as though the answer might be on the back.
“Those telegrams you sent at Abingdon,” I said. “I asked you if you’d sent your telegrams, and you said you had.”
“Telegrams,” he said. “Ah, yes, I remember now. I sent a telegram to Dr. Maroli, the author of a monograph on the signing of the Magna Carta. And one to Professor Edelswein in Vienna.”
“You were supposed to send one to your sister and your niece,” Terence said, “letting them know your whereabouts.”
“Oh, dear,” he said. “But Maudie’s a sensible girl. When I didn’t come home, she’d know I’d gone on an expedition. Not like most women, fretting and stewing and thinking you’ve been run over by a tram.”