“Yes, sir,” he said. He was holding Tossie’s white boots. They had ruffles on the toes. “I find Mr. Toynbee’s The Industrial Revolution very relaxing. Would you like me to fetch it for you?”
“No, that’s quite all right,” I said. “Feel as though I shall be able to sleep now.”
Which was a blatant lie. I had far too many things to worry about to be able to fall asleep—how I was going to get my collar on and my tie tied in the morning. What Time Travel was going to discover about the consequences of my not returning Princess Arjumand to Muchings End for four full days. What I was going to tell Lady Schrapnell.
And even if I were able to stop worrying, there was no point in trying to sleep. It was already getting light. In a few minutes, sun would be streaming through the windows, and the bird Luftwaffe were already returning for a second raid. And I didn’t dare fall asleep for fear of suffocation at the hands of Princess Arjumand.
She had taken over both pillows in my absence. I tried to push her gently to one side without waking her, and she stretched curvingly and began flipping her tail on my face.
I lay there under the lash and thought about the bishop’s bird stump.
I not only didn’t know where it was, I didn’t have any idea what could possibly have happened to it. It had stood in the church for eighty years, and there was no indication it hadn’t been there during the raid. In fact, there were a lot of indications that it had been. The order of service I’d found in the rubble proved it had been there four days before the raid, and I had seen it there myself on the day before that, the ninth, after the Prayers for the RAF Service and Baked Goods Sale.
I supposed it might have been removed for safekeeping at the last minute, but that hardly seemed likely when neither the Purbeck marble baptismal font nor the organ Handel had played on had been sent to the country or put down in the crypt, even though in retrospect they obviously should have been. And the bishop’s bird stump looked far more indestructible than the marble baptismal font.
It was indestructible. The roof collapsing on it wouldn’t have even chipped its cherubs. It should have been standing there in the ashes, rising above the rubble, untouched, unscathed, un—
When I woke, it was full daylight and Baine was standing over me with a cup of tea.
“Good morning, sir,” he said. “I took the liberty of returning Princess Arjumand to her mistress’s room.”
“Good idea,” I said, realizing belatedly that I had a pillow and was able to breathe.
“Yes, sir. It would be most distressing to Miss Mering to wake and find her gone again, though I can quite understand Princess Arjumand’s attachment to you.”
I sat up. “What time is it?”
“Eight o’clock, sir.” He handed me the cup of tea. “I am afraid I was unable to retrieve the majority of your and Mr. St. Trewes’s and Professor Peddick’s luggage,” he said. “These were all I was able to find.”
He held up the size small suit of evening clothes Finch had packed for me. “I am afraid there has been considerable shrinkage, due to their immersion in the water. I have therefore sent for replacements, and—”
“Replacements?” I said, nearly spilling my tea. “From where?”
“Swan and Edgar’s, of course, sir,” he said. “In the meantime, your boating costume.”
He had done more than press it. My shirt was bleached and starched to within an inch of its life, and the flannels looked like new. I hoped I would be able to figure out how to get into them. I sipped thoughtfully at my tea, trying to remember how the tie had gone.
“Breakfast is at nine, sir,” Baine said. He poured out hot water from the ewer into the bowl and opened the box of razors.
The tie probably didn’t matter. I would cut my throat shaving before I ever got to it.
“Mrs. Mering wishes everyone to be down to breakfast by nine o’clock as there are a great many preparations to be made for the church fete,” he said, laying out the razors, “particularly as regards the jumble sale.”
The jumble sale. I had almost managed to forget about it, or perhaps I was only in denial. I seemed to be doomed to attend bazaars and church fetes no matter what century I went to.
“When is it to be held?” I asked, hoping he would say next month.
“The day after tomorrow,” Baine said, draping a towel over his arm.
Perhaps we’d be gone by then. Professor Peddick would be eager to go on to Runnymede to see the meadow where the Magna Carta was signed, to say nothing of its excellent perch deeps.
Terence wouldn’t want to go, of course, but he might not have any say in the matter. Mrs. Mering had taken a pronounced dislike to him, and I had a feeling she would like him even less when she found out he had designs on her daughter. And hadn’t any money.
She might even pack us off directly after breakfast, pleading the preparations for the jumble sale, the incongruity could begin correcting itself, and I could take a nice long nap on the river while Terence rowed. If I hadn’t killed myself with the straight razors before that.
“Would you care to have me shave you now, sir?” Baine said.
“Yes,” I said, and bounded out of bed.
I needn’t have worried about the clothes either. Baine fastened my braces and my collar, constructed the tie, and would have tied my shoes if I’d let him, I didn’t know whether from gratitude or if this was the usual custom of the times. I would have to ask Verity.
“Which room is breakfast in?” I asked Baine.
“The breakfast room, sir,” he said. “First door on your left.”
I went tripping downstairs, feeling positively cheerful. A good old-fashioned English breakfast, bacon and eggs and orange marmalade, all served up by a butler, was a delightful prospect, and it was a beautiful day. Sun streamed in over the polished banisters and onto the portraits. Even Lady Schrapnell’s Elizabethan ancestor looked cheerful.
I opened the first door to the left. Baine must have told me wrong. This was the dining room, almost entirely filled with a massive mahogany table and an even more massive sideboard with an assortment of covered silver dishes on it.
The table had cups and saucers and silverware on it, but no plates, and there was no one in the room. I turned to start back out and look for the breakfast room and nearly collided with Verity.
“Good morning, Mr. Henry,” she said, “I hope you slept well.”
She was wearing a pale-green dress with tiny pleats in the bodice and had a green ribbon bound round her piled-up auburn hair, and I obviously needed a good deal more sleep before I was over my time-lag. I noticed shadows under her green-brown eyes, but otherwise she was still the most beautiful creature I’d ever seen.
She went over to the sideboard. “Breakfast is served from the sideboard, Mr. Henry,” she said, taking a flower-rimmed plate from a large stack. “The others will be down shortly.”
She leaned toward me to hand me the plate. “I am so sorry I told Lady Schrapnell you knew where the bishop’s bird stump was,” she said. “I must have been more time-lagged than I realized, but that’s no excuse, and I want you to know I’ll do everything I can to help you find it. When’s the last time anybody saw it?”
“I saw it on Saturday the ninth of November, 1940, after the Prayers for the RAF Service and Baked Goods Sale.”
“And no one saw it after that?”
“No one’s been able to get through after that till after the raid. The increased slippage around a crisis point, remember?”
Jane came in with a pot of marmalade, set it on the table, bobbed a curtsey, and left. Verity stepped over to the first of the covered dishes, which had a statuette of a flopping fish for a handle.
“And it wasn’t found in the rubble after the raid?” she said, lifting the lid by the fish.
“No,” I said. “Good Lord, what’s that?” I was staring at a bed of blindingly yellow rice with strips of flaked white in it.
“It’s kedgeree,” she said, putting a small spo
onful on her plate. “Curried rice and smoked fish.”
“For breakfast?”
“It’s an Indian dish. The Colonel’s fond of it.” She put the lid back on. “And none of the contemps mention having seen it from the ninth to the night of the raid?”
“It was listed in the order of service for Sunday the tenth, under the flower arrangements, so presumably it was there during the service.”
She moved down to the next covered dish. This lid had a large antlered deer. I wondered briefly if they represented some sort of code, but the next one down was a snarling wolf, so I doubted it.
“When you saw it on the ninth,” Verity said, “did you notice anything unusual about it?”
“You’ve never seen the bishop’s bird stump, have you?”
“I mean, had it been moved? Or damaged? Did you notice anyone hanging about it or see anything suspicious?”
“You’re still time-lagged, aren’t you?” I asked.
“No,” she said indignantly. “The bishop’s bird stump is missing, and it can’t just have disappeared into thin air. So someone must have taken it, and if someone took it, there must be a clue to who it was. Did you notice anyone standing near it?”
“No,” I said.
“Hercule Poirot says there’s always something that no one noticed or thought was important,” she said, picking up the Stag at Bay.
Inside was a mass of pungent-smelling brown objects. “What’s that?”
“Devilled kidneys,” she said, “braised in chutney and mustard. In Hercule Poirot mysteries, there’s always one little fact that doesn’t fit, and that’s the key to the mystery.” She picked up a charging bull by the horns. “This is cold ptarmigan.”
“Aren’t there any eggs and bacon?”
She shook her head. “Strictly for the lower classes.” She held out a shellacked fish on a fork. “Kipper?”
I settled for porridge.
Verity took her plate and went over and sat down on the far side of the huge table. “What about when you were there after the raid?” she said, motioning me to sit down across from her. “Was there any sign of the bishop’s bird stump having been in the fire?”
I opened my mouth to say, “The cathedral was completely destroyed,” and then stopped, frowning. “Actually, there was. A charred flower stem. And we found the wrought-iron stand it stood on.”
“Was the stem from the same kind of flower that was listed in the order of service?” Verity asked, and I was about to say there was no way to tell when Jane came in again, bobbed, and said, “Tea, ma’am?”
“Yes, thank you, Colleen,” Verity said.
As soon as she’d gone, I said, “Why did you call the maid Colleen?”
“It’s her name,” she said, “but Mrs. Mering didn’t think it was fashionable for a servant. Too Irish. English servants are what’s en vogue.”
“So she made her change it?”
“It was a common practice. Mrs. Chattisbourne calls all of her maids Gladys so she doesn’t have to remember which is which. Weren’t you prepped on this?”
“I wasn’t prepped at all,” I said. “Two hours of subliminals, real-time, which I was too time-lagged to hear. On the subservient status of women, mostly. And fish forks.”
She looked appalled. “You weren’t prepped? Victorian society’s highly mannered. Breaches of etiquette are taken very seriously.” She looked curiously at me. “How have you managed thus far?”
“For the past two days I’ve been on the river with an Oxford don who quotes Herodotus, a lovesick young man who quotes Tennyson, a bulldog, and a cat,” I said. “I played it by ear.”
“Well, that won’t work here. You’ll have to be prepped somehow. All right, listen,” she said, leaning across the table, “here’s the short course. Formality is the main thing. People don’t say what they think. Euphemisms and politeness are the order of the day. No physical contact between the sexes. A man may take a lady’s arm, or help her over a stile, or up the steps into a train. Unmarried men and women are never allowed to be alone together,” she said, in spite of the fact that we seemed to be. “There must be a chaperone present.”
As if on cue, Jane reappeared with two cups of tea and set them down in front of us.
“Servants are called by their first names,” Verity said as soon as she’d gone, “except for the butler. He’s Mr. Baine or Baine. And all cooks are Mrs., no matter what their marital status, so don’t ask Mrs. Posey about her husband. This household has a parlormaid, that’s Colleen—I mean, Jane—a scullery maid, a cook, a footman, a groom, a butler, and a gardener. It had an upstairs maid, a lady’s maid, and a bootboy, but the Duchess of Landry stole them.”
“Stole them?” I said, reaching for the sugar.
“They didn’t eat sugar on their porridge,” she said. “And you should have rung for the servant to pass it to you. Stealing each other’s servants is their chief entertainment. Mrs. Mering stole Baine from Mrs. Chattisbourne and is currently in the process of trying to steal her bootboy. They didn’t put milk on it either. No swearing in the presence of ladies.”
“How about ‘balderdash’?” I said. “Or ‘pshaw’?”
“‘Pshaw,’ Mr. Henry?” Mrs. Mering said, sweeping in. “What are you pooh-poohing? Not our church fete, I hope? It benefits the restoration fund, such a worthwhile project, Mr. Henry. Our poor parish church is in such desperate need of restoration. Why, the baptismal font dates back to 1262. And the windows! Hopelessly mediaeval! If our fete is a success we hope to purchase all new ones!”
She heaped her plate with kippers and venison and wolf, sat down, and swept her napkin off the table and onto her lap. “The restoration project is all our curate Mr. Arbitage’s doing. Until he came the vicar wouldn’t even hear of restoring the church. I’m afraid he is quite old-fashioned in his thinking. He refuses even to consider the possibility of communication with the spirits.”
Good man, I thought.
“Mr. Arbitage, on the other hand, embraces the idea of spiritism, and of speaking with our dear departed ones on the Other Side. Do you believe contact is possible with the Other Side, Mr. Henry?”
“Mr. Henry was inquiring about the church fete,” Verity said. “I was just going to tell him about your clever idea of a jumble sale.”
“O,” Mrs. Mering said, looking flattered. “Have you ever been to a fete, Mr. Henry?”
“One or two,” I said.
“Well, then, you know that there are donated fancy goods and jellies and needlework tables.My idea was that we also donate objects that we no longer have any use for, all sorts of things, dishes and bric-a-brac and books, a jumble of things!”
I was gazing at her in horror. This was the person who had started it all, the person responsible for all those endless jumble sales I’d been stuck at.
“You would be amazed, Mr. Henry, at the treasures people have in their attics and storerooms, sitting there covered in dust. Why, in my own attic I found a tea urn and a lovely celery dish. Baine, were you able to get the dents out of the tea urn?”
“Yes, madam,” Baine said, pouring her coffee.
“Would you care for coffee, Mr. Henry?” Mrs. Mering asked.
I was surprised at how pleasant Mrs. Mering was being to me. It must be the politeness Verity had referred to.
Tossie came in, carrying Princess Arjumand, who had a large pink bow tied round her neck. “Good morning, Mama,” she said, scanning the table for Terence.
“Good morning, Tocelyn,” Mrs. Mering said. “Did you sleep well?”
“O yes, Mama,” Tossie said, “now that my dearum-dearums pet is safely home.” She snuggled the cat. “You slept cuddled next to me all night long, didn’t you, sweetum-lovums?”
“Tossie!” Mrs. Mering said sharply. Tossie looked chagrined.
Obviously some sort of breach of etiquette, though I had no idea what. I would have to ask Verity.
Colonel Mering and Professor Peddick arrived, talking animatedly about the
battle of Trafalgar. “Outnumbered twenty-seven to thirty-three,” the Colonel was saying.
“Exactly my point,” Professor Peddick said. “If it hadn’t been for Nelson, they’d have lost the battle! It’s character that makes history, not blind forces! Individual initiative!”
“Good morning, Papa,” Tossie said, coming over to kiss the Colonel on the cheek.
“Good morning, Daughter.” He glared at Princess Arjumand. “Doesn’t belong in here.”
“But she’s had a terrible ordeal,” Tossie said, carrying the cat over to the sideboard. “Look, Princess Arjumand, kippers,” she said, put one on a plate, set it and the cat down, and smiled defiantly at Baine.
“Good morning, Mesiel,” Mrs. Mering said to her husband. “Did you sleep well last night?”
“Tolerably,” he said, peering under the wolf. “And you, Malvinia? Sleep well, my dear?”
This was apparently the opening Mrs. Mering had been waiting for. “I did not,” she said, and paused dramatically. “There are spirits in this house. I heard them.”
I knew I shouldn’t have trusted Verity with her “The walls in these country houses are thick. One can’t hear a thing through them.”
“O, Mama,” Tossie said breathlessly, “what did the spirits sound like?”
Mrs. Mering got a faraway look. “It was a strange, unearthly sound such as no living being could make. A sort of sobbing exhalation like breathing, though of course the spirits do not breathe, and then a . . .” she paused, searching for words, “. . . a shriek followed by a long painful gasp, as of a soul in torment. It was a dreadful, dreadful sound.”
Well, I would agree with that.
“I felt as though it were trying to communicate with me, but could not,” she said. “O, if only Madame Iritosky were here. I know she would be able to make the spirit speak. I intend to write to her this morning and ask her to come, though I fear she will not. She says she can only work in her own home.”
With her own trapdoors and hidden wires and secret connecting passages, I thought, and supposed I should be grateful. At least she wasn’t likely to show up and expose my harboring of Cyril.
To Say Nothing of the Dog Page 26