To Say Nothing of the Dog (68 page)

“Look, I’m sorry to break up this tender scene,” I said, “but the consecration’s in two hours.”

“All
right,”
Warder snapped, gave one last smoothing to Carruthers’s collar, and stomped back to the console. Love may conquer all, but old dispositions die hard, and I hoped Baine intended to live near a river in the States.

Warder lowered the veils and Carruthers disappeared. “If he’s not back safely in ten minutes,” she said, “I’m sending
you
to the Hundred Years’ War.” She turned on Verity. “You promised you’d press the surplices.”

“In a minute,” I said, handing Verity one of the facsimile sheets.

“What are we looking for?” Verity said.

“Letters to the editor. Or an open letter. I’m not certain.”

I leafed through the
Midlands Daily Telegraph.
An article about the King’s visit, a casualties list, an article beginning, “There is heartening evidence of Coventry’s revival.”

I picked up the
Coventry Standard.
An advertisement for ARP Sandbags, Genuine Government Size and Quality 36s 6d per hundred. A picture of the ruins of the cathedral.

“Here are some letters,” Verity said, and handed me her sheet.

A letter praising the fire service for their courage. A letter asking if anyone had seen Molly, “a beautiful ginger cat, last seen the night of 14 November, in Greyfriars Lane,” a letter complaining about the ARP wardens.

The outside door opened. Verity jumped, but it wasn’t Lady Schrapnell. It was Finch.

His butler’s frock coat and his hair were flecked with snow, and his right sleeve was drenched.

“Where have you been?” I asked. “Siberia?”

“I am not at liberty to say,” he said. He turned to T.J. “Mr. Lewis, where is Mr. Dunworthy?”

“In London,” T.J. said, staring at the comp screen.

“Oh,” he said, disappointed. “Well, tell him—” he looked warily at us, “—the mission is completed,” he wrung out his sleeve, “even though the pond was solid ice, and the water was freezing. Tell him the number of the—” another look at us, “—the number is six.”

“And I don’t have all day,” Warder said. “Here’s your bag.” She handed him a large burlap sack. “You can’t go through like that,” she said disgustedly. “Come on. I’ll get you dried off.” She led him into the prep room. “I’m not even the tech. I’m only substituting. I’ve got altar cloths to iron, I’ve got a ten-minute intermittent to run—” The door shut behind them.

“What was that all about?” I said.

“Here,” Verity said, handing me a facsimile sheet. “More letters to the editor.”

Three letters commenting on the King’s visit to Coventry, one complaining about the food at the mobile canteens, one announcing a jumble sale at St. Aldate’s for the victims of the air raid.

Finch, dried and combed, came back in with Warder, who was still complaining. “I don’t see why you have to bring them all through today,” she said, marching over to the console to punch keys. “I’ve got
three
rendezvouses to bring in, fifty—”

“Finch,” I said. “Do you know if Mrs. Bittner intends to attend the consecration?”

“Mr. Dunworthy had me send her an invitation,” he said, “and I should have thought she, of all people, would have wanted to see Coventry Cathedral restored, but she wrote to say she was afraid it would be too fatiguing.”

“Good,” I said, and picked up the
Standard
for the twelfth and paged through it. No letters. “What about the
Telegraph?”
I asked Verity.

“Nothing,” she said, putting them down.

“Nothing,” I said happily, and Carruthers appeared in the net, looking bemused.

“Well?” I said, going over to him.

He reached in his pocket for the jotter and handed it to me through the veils. I flipped it open and started down the list of church officials, looking for a name. Nothing. I turned the page to the church livings.

“The head of the Flower Committee in 1940 was a Mrs. Lois Warfield,” Carruthers said, frowning.

“Are you all right?” Warder said anxiously. “Did something happen?”

“No,” I said, scanning the church livings. Hertfordshire, Surrey, Northumberland. There it was. St. Benedict’s, Northumberland.

“There was no Miss Sharpe on any of the committees,” Carruthers said, or on the church membership roster.”

“I know,” I said, scribbling a message on one of the pages of the jotter. “Finch, ring up Mr. Dunworthy and tell him to come back to Oxford immediately. When he gets here, give him this.” I tore it out, folded it over, and handed it to him. “Then find Lady Schrapnell and tell her not to worry, Verity and I have everything under control and not to begin the consecration till we get back.”

“Where are you going?” Finch said.

“You promised you’d iron the choirboys’ surplices,” Warder said accusingly.

“We’ll try to be back by eleven,” I said, taking Verity’s hand. “If we’re not, stall.”

“Stall!” Finch said, horrified. “The Archbishop of Canterbury’s coming. And Princess Victoria. How am I supposed to stall?”

“You’ll think of something. I have the highest faith in you, Jeeves.”

He beamed.
“Thank
you, sir,” he said. “Where shall I tell Lady Schrapnell you’ve gone?”

“To fetch the bishop’s bird stump,” I said, and Verity and I took off at a lope for the tube station.

The sky outside was gray and overcast. “Oh, I hope it doesn’t rain for the consecration,” Verity said as we ran.

“Are you joking?” I panted. “Lady Schrapnell would never allow it.”

The tube station was jammed. Masses of people, wearing hats and ties and carrying umbrellas, poured up the steps.

“A cathedral!” a girl in braids carrying a Gaia Party sign grumbled as she swept past me. “Do you
know
how many trees we could have planted in Christ Church Meadow for the cost of that
building?”

“At any rate, we’re going out of town,” I called to Verity, who’d gotten separated from me. “The trains
out
of Oxford should be less crowded.”

We pushed our way over to the escalators. They were no better. I lost sight of Verity and finally found her a dozen steps below me. “Where’s everyone going?” I called.

“To meet Princess Victoria,” the large woman carrying a Union Jack on the step behind me said. “She’s travelling up from Reading.”

Verity had reached the bottom of the escalator. “Coventry!” I called to her, pointing over the heads of the crowd toward the Warwickshire Line.

“I know,” Verity shouted back, already headed down the corridor.

The corridor was jammed, and so was the platform. Verity pushed her way over to me. “You’re not the only one who’s good at solving mysteries, Sherlock,” she said. “I’ve even figured out what Finch is up to.”

“What?” I said, but a train was pulling in. The crowd surged forward, pushing us apart.

I fought my way over to her again. “Where are all
these
people going? Princess Victoria’s not in Coventry.”

“They’re going to the protest,” a boy in braids said. “Coventry’s holding a rally to protest the disgraceful theft of their cathedral by Oxford.”

“Really?” Verity said sweetly. “Where’s it being held? In the shopping center?” and I could have kissed her.

“You realize,” she said, pushing a hand-painted sign that read, “Architects Against Coventry Cathedral” out of her face, “that there’s probably a time-traveller from a hundred years in the future in this crowd who thinks this is all unbelievably quaint and charming.”

“That’s impossible,” I said. “What
is
Finch up to?”

“He’s been—” she started, but the doors were opening and people were jamming onto the train.

We got separated again in the process, and I found myself half a car away from her, shoved into a seat between an old man and his middle-aged son.

“But why rebuild Coventry Cathedral, of all things?” the son was complaining. “If they had to rebuild something that had been destroyed, why not the Bank of England? That would have been of some use at least. What good’s a cathedral?”

“ ‘God works in a mysterious way,’ ” I quoted, “ ‘His wonders to perform.’ ”

Both of them glared at me.

“James Thomson,” I said.
“The Seasons.”

They glared some more.

“Victorian poet,” I said, and subsided between them, thinking about the continuum and
its
mysterious ways. It had needed to correct an incongruity, and it had done so, putting into action its entire array of secondary defenses, and shutting down the net, shifting destinations, manipulating the slippage so that I would keep Terence from meeting Maud, and Verity would arrive at the exact moment Baine threw the cat in. To save the cat that killed the rat that ate the malt that lay in the house that Jack built.

“Coventry,” the station sign read, and I fought my way out from between the bankers and off the train, motioning to Verity to get off, too. She did, and we fought our way up the escalators and out into Broadgate in front of the statue of Lady Godiva. It looked even more like rain. The protesters were putting their umbrellas up as they started for the shopping center.

“Should we ring her up first?” Verity said.

“No.”

“You’re sure she’ll be at home?”

“I’m sure,” I said, not at all certain.

But she was, though it took her a little time to open the door.

“Sorry, I’m having a bout of bronchitis,” Mrs. Bittner said hoarsely, and then saw who we were. “Oh,” she said.

She stood back so we could enter. “Come in. I’ve been expecting you.” She held out her veined hand to Verity. “You must be Miss Kindle. I understand you are a fan of mystery novels, too.”

“Only those of the Thirties,” Verity said apologetically.

Mrs. Bittner nodded. “They are quite the best.” She turned to me. “I read a great many mystery novels. I am particularly fond of those in which the criminal nearly gets away with the crime.”

“Mrs. Bittner,” I said, and didn’t know how to go on. I looked helplessly at Verity.

“You’ve puzzled it out, haven’t you?” Mrs. Bittner said. “I was afraid you would. James told me you were his two best pupils.” She smiled. “Shall we go into the drawing room?”

“I . . . I’m afraid we haven’t much time . . .” I stammered.

“Nonsense,” she said, starting down the corridor. “The criminal is always given a chapter in which to confess his sins.”

She led us into the room where I’d interviewed her. “Won’t you sit down?” she said, indicating a chintz-covered sofa. “The famed detective always gathers the suspects together in the drawing room,” she said, moving slowly toward a sideboard considerably smaller than the Merings’, steadying herself on the furniture, “and the criminal always offers them a drink. Would you care for some sherry, Miss Kindle? Would you care for some sherry, Mr. Henry? Or
sirop de cassis?
That’s what Hercule Poirot always drank. Dreadful stuff. I tried it once when I’d been reading Agatha Christie’s
Murder in Three Acts.
Tastes like cough medicine.”

“Sherry, thank you,” I said.

Mrs. Bittner poured two glasses of sherry and turned to hand them to us. “It caused an incongruity, didn’t it?”

I took the glasses from her, handed one to Verity, and sat down beside her. “Yes,” I said.

“I was so afraid it had. And when James told me last week about the theory regarding nonsignificant objects being removed from their space-time location, I knew it must have been the bishop’s bird stump.” She shook her head, smiling. “Everything else that was in the cathedral that night would have burned to ashes, but I could see by looking at it that it was indestructible.”

She poured herself a glass of sherry. “I tried to undo what I’d done, you know, but I couldn’t get the net to open, and then Lassiter—that was the head of faculty—put on new locks, and I couldn’t get into the lab. I should have told James, of course. Or my husband. But I couldn’t bear to.” She picked up the glass of sherry. “I told myself the net’s refusing to open meant that there hadn’t been an incongruity after all, that no harm had been done, but I knew it wasn’t true.”

She started for one of the chintz-covered chairs, moving slowly and carefully. I jumped up and took the glass of sherry for her till she had sat down.

“Thank you,” she said, taking it from me. “James told me what a nice young man you were.” She looked at Verity. “I don’t suppose either of you have ever done something you were sorry for afterward? Something you’d done without thinking?”

She looked down at her sherry. “The Church of England was shutting down the cathedrals that couldn’t support themselves. My husband loved Coventry Cathedral. He was descended from the Botoner family who built the original church.”

And so are you, I thought, realizing now who it was Mary Botoner had reminded me of, standing there in the tower arguing with the workman. You’re a descendant of the Botoners, too.

“The cathedral was his life,” she went on. “He always said that it wasn’t the church building that mattered, but what it symbolized, yet the new cathedral, ugly as it was, was everything to him. I thought if I could bring back some of the treasures from the old cathedral,” she said, “it would be good publicity. The tourists would flock to see them, and the cathedral wouldn’t have to be sold. I thought it would kill my husband if it had to be sold.”

“But hadn’t Darby and Gentilla proved it was impossible to bring things forward through the net?”

“Yes,” she said, “but I thought since the things had ceased to exist in their own space-time, they might come through. Darby and Gentilla had never tried to bring through anything that didn’t still exist in its own time.” She twisted the stem of the glass in her hands. “And I was fairly desperate.”

She looked up. “So I broke into the lab late one night, went back to 1940, and did it. And the next day, James telephoned to tell me that if I wanted a job, that Lassiter had authorized a series of drops to Waterloo, and then he told me—” She stopped, staring into the past. “—he told me that Shoji had had a breakthrough in temporal theory, that he’d discovered why it was impossible to bring things forward through the net, that such an action would cause an incongruity that could change the course of history, or worse.