To Say Nothing of the Dog (29 page)

He looked at me steadily, the boot hanging from his mouth, laces dangling.

“I mean it,” I said. “I don’t care if you catch catarrh. Or pneumonia.”

Cyril considered a moment longer and then dropped the boot and lay down with his flat nose just touching it.

I dived for the boot, hoping it belonged to Professor Peddick, who would never notice the teeth marks, or Terence, whom it would serve right. It was a woman’s boot. And not Verity’s. She had been wearing white ones, like Tossie’s.

“This is Mrs. Mering’s boot!” I said, shaking it at him.

Cyril responded by sitting up alertly, ready to play.

“This is serious!” I said. “Look at it!”

Actually, except for a great deal of drool, it did not seem to have sustained much damage. I wiped it off against my trouser leg and opened the door. “Stay!” I ordered Cyril and went to put it back.

I had no idea which was Mrs. Mering’s door, and no way of seeing which had a boot missing, coming straight from my lit room. And no time to let my eyes adjust to the pitch-darkness. And
no
desire to have Mrs. Mering catch me crawling about the corridor on all fours.

I went back in the room, got the lamp, and shone it round the corridor till I found a door with one boot. Second from the end. And between it and my door the statue of Laocoön, Darwin, and a papier-mâché table with a large fern on it.

I ducked back in, shut the door, replaced the lamp, picked up the boot, and opened the door again.

“—tell you I saw a light,” a voice that could only be Mrs. Mering’s said. “An eerie, floating, ethereal light. A spirit light, Mesiel! You must get up!”

I shut the door, blew out the lamp, and crept back over to the bed. Cyril was in it, nicely ensconced among the pillows. “This is all your fault,” I whispered, and realized I was still holding Mrs. Mering’s boot.

I stuffed it under the covers, decided that would be
truly
incriminating, started to hide it under the bed, thought better of
that,
and stuck it between the springs and the feather-stuffed mattress. And then sat there in the dark, trying to determine what was happening. I couldn’t hear any voices over Cyril’s snoring, and there was no sound of doors opening nor any light under my door.

I gave it another few minutes and then took off my boots, tiptoed over to the door, and opened it a crack. Darkness and silence. I tiptoed back to the bed, cracking my big toe on the looking glass and my shin on the nightstand, lit the lamp again, and got ready for bed.

The last few minutes seemed to have sapped what little strength I had, but I undressed slowly and carefully, noting how my collar and braces fastened and looking at the tie in the mirror as I untied it so that I could put it on in more or less the same arrangement tomorrow. Not that it mattered. I would already have cut my throat shaving. Or been revealed as a thief and a foot-fetishist.

I took off my still-soaking socks, put on the nightshirt, and got in bed. The springs sagged, the feather-stuffed mattress gave no support, the sheets were cold, and Cyril had all the covers. It felt wonderful.

Sleep, Nature’s soft Nurse, the honeyed dew of holy rest, the balm of woe, sweet, blessed unravelling sleep.

There was a knock on the door.

It’s Mrs. Mering, I thought, looking for her shoe. Or spirits. Or the Colonel, whom she made get up.

But there was no light under the door, and the knock, repeated, was too soft. It’s Terence, I thought, wanting Cyril now that I’ve done all the work.

But in case it wasn’t, I lit the lamp, put on the dressing gown, and flung the coverlet over Cyril to cover him up and then went and opened the door.

It was Verity. In her nightgown.

“What are you doing here?” I whispered at her. “This is the Victorian era.”

“I know,” she whispered back, sidling past me into the room. “But I’ve got to talk to you before I go report to Mr. Dunworthy.”

“But what if someone comes in?” I said, looking at her white nightgown. It was a very modest sort of nightgown, with long sleeves and a high, buttoned-up neck, but I didn’t think that would impress Terence. Or the butler. Or Mrs. Mering.

“No one will come in,” she said, and sat down on the bed. “Everyone’s gone to bed. And the walls in these Victorian houses are too thick to hear through.”

“Terence has already been here” I said. “And Baine.”

“What did
he
want?”

“To tell me he hadn’t been able to salvage the luggage. Terence wanted me to sneak Cyril up from the stables.”

At the mention of his name, Cyril emerged from the covers, blinking sleepily.

“Hullo, Cyril, Verity said, petting him on the head. He lay his head on her lap.

“What if Terence comes back to check on him?” I said.

“I’ll hide,” she said calmly. “You have no idea how glad I was to see you, Ned.” She smiled up at me. “When we got back from Madame Iritosky’s, Princess Arjumand still wasn’t here, and when I went to report back last night, Mrs. Mering caught me on my way out to the gazebo. I managed to convince her I’d seen a spirit and was chasing it, and then she insisted on getting everyone up and searching the entire grounds, so I couldn’t go through and I didn’t have any idea what had happened.”

It really was too bad. The naiad was sitting on my bed in her nightgown, her Pre-Raphaelite auburn hair streaming down her back. She was here, smiling up at me, and I was going to have to ruin it all. Still, the sooner I got it over with, the better.

“And then this morning,” she was saying, “I had to accompany Tossie to a meeting at the church, and—”

“I brought the cat through,” I said. “It was in my luggage. Mr. Dunworthy must have told me I had it, but I was too time-lagged to hear him. I had it all along.”

“I know,” she said.

“What?” I said, wondering if I was experiencing Difficulty in Distinguishing Sounds again.

“I know. I reported back this afternoon and Mr. Dunworthy told me.”

“But—” I said, trying to take this in. If she’d been back to 2057, then that radiant smile—

“I should have guessed when I saw you at Iffley,” she said. “Sending historians on holiday isn’t Mr. Dunworthy’s style, especially not with Lady Schrapnell breathing down his neck and the consecration in only two weeks.”

“I didn’t know I had it till after I saw you at Iffley,” I said. “I was looking for a tin-opener. I know you said to keep Terence away from Muchings End, but I thought it was more important to get the cat returned. The plan was for us to stop at an inn in Streatley, and I’d sneak her back during the night, but Terence insisted on rowing down, and then the cat started meowing, and Cyril started sniffing at it, and he fell in, and then the boat capsized and . . . you know the rest,” I finished lamely. “I hope I did the right thing.”

She bit her lip, looking worried.

“What? You don’t think I should have brought her back?”

“I don’t know.”

“I thought I should get her back here before there were any other consequences.”

“I know,” she said, looking genuinely distressed. “The thing is, you weren’t supposed to have brought her through in the first place.”

“What?” I said.

“When Mr. Dunworthy found out about the Coventry slippage, he called off the drop.”

“But—” I said. “I wasn’t supposed to bring Princess Arjumand through? But I thought you said the Coventry slippage was unrelated, that it was due to a crisis point.”

“It was, but while they were checking it, T.J. compared the slippage patterns to Fujisaki’s research, and they decided the lack of slippage surrounding the original drop meant it was a nonsignificant event.”

“But that’s impossible. Animate creatures can’t be nonsignificant.”

“Exactly,” she said grimly. “They think Princess Arjumand was nonanimate. They think she was intended to drown.”

This was making no sense. “But even if she drowned, her body would still interact with the continuum. It wouldn’t just disappear.”

“That’s what Fujisaki’s research was about. She’d be reduced to her component parts, and the complexity of their separate interactions would drop exponentially.”

Meaning her poor body would drift down the Thames, decomposing into carbon and calcium and interacting with nothing but the river water and hungry fishes. Ashes to ashes. Dust to nonsignificance.

“Which would make it possible,” Verity said, “for her to be removed from her space-time location without any historical effect. Which meant she shouldn’t be sent back from the future at all.”

“So you didn’t cause an incongruity by taking her through the net,” I said. “But I did, by bringing her back.”

She nodded. “When you didn’t come, I was afraid they might have sent Finch or someone after you to tell you to drown Princess Arjumand.”

“No!” I said. “No one’s drowning anyone.”

She rewarded me with one of her devastating smiles.

“If she’s a nonsignificant event, we’ll take her back to the future,” I said firmly. “We’re not going to drown her. But that doesn’t make any sense,” I said, thinking of something. “Her drowning, if that’s what would have happened, would have had consequences, the same consequences her disappearance had: everyone looking for her, your going to Oxford, Tossie’s meeting Terence.”

“That’s what I tried to tell Mr. Dunworthy,” she said. “But T.J. said Fujisaki said those would have been short-term consequences without historical repercussions.”

“In other words, they would have gotten over the cat,” I said, “if I hadn’t walked in with her.”

“And you wouldn’t have walked in with her, if I hadn’t interfered in the first place,” she said ruefully.

“But you couldn’t let it drown,” I said.

“No,” she said, “I couldn’t. And what’s done is done, and I’ve got to tell Mr. Dunworthy and find out what we do next.”

“What about the diary?” I said. “If there were references to her after the seventh, that would prove she hadn’t drowned. Couldn’t the forensics expert look for her name?”

Verity looked unhappy. “She did. The configuration of letters, actually—two very long words beginning with capital letters—but the only references are in the days immediately following, and she hasn’t been able to translate them yet. Mr. Dunworthy says they may only be references to her being missing, or to her having drowned.”

She stood up. “I’d better go report in. After you realized you had Princess Arjumand, what happened? When did Terence and Professor Peddick find out you had her?”

“They didn’t,” I said. “I kept her hidden till we got here. In a carpetbag. Terence thinks she was on the shore when we—” “Landed” wasn’t quite the right word. “—arrived.”

“And nobody else saw her?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “She got away twice. Once in the woods and once at Abingdon.”

“She escaped from the carpetbag?”

“No, I said. “I let her out.”

“You let her
out?”

“I thought she was tame,” I said.

“Tame?” she said, amused. “A cat?” She looked at Cyril. “Didn’t you fill him in?” she said to him. She looked at me. “But you didn’t see her interacting with anyone else?”

“No,” I said.

“Well, that’s good. Tossie hasn’t met any other strange young men whose names don’t begin with “C” since we came home.”

“I take it Mr. C hasn’t turned up,” I said.

“No,” she said, frowning, “and I haven’t been able to get a look at Tossie’s diary either. Which is why I need to report in. Perhaps the forensics expert has been able to decipher the name. Or one of the references to Princess Arjumand. And I need to tell them she’s back and—”

“There’s something else you need to tell them,” I said.

“About Professor Peddick and the coincidence of his knowing Colonel Mering? I already thought of that.”

“No,” I said. “Something else. I made Terence miss meeting Professor Peddick’s niece.” I explained what had happened at the railway station.

She nodded. “I’ll tell Mr. Dunworthy,” she said. “Meetings—”

There was a knock on the door.

Verity and I froze. “Who is it?” I said.

“It’s Baine, sir.”

I mouthed silently at Verity, “Can I tell him to go away?”

“No,” she mouthed back, flipped the bedclothes over Cyril, and started to crawl under the bed.

I grabbed her arm and mouthed, “The wardrobe.”

“Coming, Baine,” I called. “Just a minute,” and opened the doors to the wardrobe. She dived in. I shut the door, opened it and shoved the tail of her nightgown in, shut it again, checked to make certain no bits of Cyril were sticking out from under the coverlet, stationed myself in front of the bed, and said, “Come in, Baine.”

He opened the door, carrying a folded stack of shirts. “Your boat has been found, sir,” he said, heading straight for the wardrobe.

I stepped in front of him. “Are those my shirts?”

“No, sir,” he said. “I borrowed these from the Chattisbournes, whose son is in South Africa, until you can have your own things sent up.”

My own things. And where exactly was I supposed to tell him to send? But I had more immediate problems. “Put the shirts in the bureau,” I said, keeping between him and the wardrobe.

“Yes, sir,” he said, and laid them neatly in the top drawer. “There is also a suit of evening clothes and one of tweeds, which I am having cleaned and altered to fit. They will be ready in the morning, sir.”

“Good,” I said. “Thank you, Baine.”

“Yes, sir,” he said and went out without even being told.

“That was a close—” I began and he came back in carrying a tray with a china cup, a silver pot, and a small plate of biscuits.

“I thought you might care for some cocoa, sir.”

“Thank you.”

He set it on the nightstand. “Would you like me to pour it out for you, sir?”

“No, thank you.”

“There are additional bedcovers in the wardrobe, sir,” he said. “Would you like me to put one on the bed?”

“No!” I said, moving to block him. “Thank you. That will be all, Baine.”

“Yes, sir,” he said, but he still stood there, fidgeting. “Sir,” he said nervously, “if I might have your permission to speak . . .”

Either he knows Verity’s in the wardrobe, I thought, or he knows I’m an impostor. Or both.