Princess Arjumand began to struggle. “You’re not dry yet,” I said, and went on rubbing her.
She continued to struggle, and after a minute I unwrapped her from the blazer and let her go. She walked with rather bedraggled dignity past Cyril to the middle of the seat, sat down, and began to lick herself.
I draped my blazer over the prow to dry, and looked at my pocket watch again. A quarter to IV. I’d have to wake Verity up, even though she was obviously dead to the world if none of this had wakened her. I snapped my pocket watch shut.
Verity opened her eyes. “Ned,” she said sleepily. “Did I fall asleep?”
“Yes. Do you feel better?”
“Better?” she said vaguely. “I . . . what happened?” She sat up. “I remember coming through and . . .” Her eyes widened. “I was time-lagged, wasn’t I? I did all those drops to May and August.” She put her hand to her forehead. “How awful was I?”
I grinned. “Worst case I’ve ever seen. Don’t you remember?”
“Not really,” she said. “It’s all sort of a blur, and in the background there was this sound like a siren . . . .”
“The All-Clear,” I said.
“Yes, and a sort of wheezing, snorting—”
“Cyril,” I said.
She nodded. “Where are we?” she said, looking round at the willows and the water.
“About half a mile upstream from Muchings End,” I said. “You were in no shape to see anyone till you’d had some sleep. Do you feel better now?”
“Um hmmm,” she said, stretching. “Why is Princess Arjumand all wet?”
“She fell in while fishing,” I said.
“Oh,” she said, yawning.
“You’re certain you feel better?” I said.
“Yes. Much.”
“Good,” I said, unlooping the rope. “Then we’d better be getting back. It’s nearly time for tea.” I took the oars and maneuvered us out from under the willows and onto the river.
“Thank you,” she said. “I must have been in pretty bad shape. I didn’t say anything humiliating, did I?”
“Only that Napoleon lost the battle of Waterloo because of his hemorrhoids,” I said, rowing downstream, “a theory, by the way, that I wouldn’t advise sharing with Professor Peddick and the Colonel.”
She laughed. “No wonder you had to shanghai me. Did I tell you what T.J.’s doing with the battle of Waterloo?”
“Not exactly,” I said.
“He’s running incongruity simulations of the battle,” she said. “Waterloo’s a battle that’s been analyzed in microscopic detail. An elaborate comp simulation of the battle was done in the Twenties.” She leaned forward. “T.J.’s using that model and introducing incongruities that might change events. You know, like what if Napoleon had sent Ney a readable message instead of an indecipherable one? What if D’Erlon had been wounded?”
“What if Napoleon hadn’t had hemorrhoids?”
She shook her head. “Only things an historian could have done,” she said, “like switching messages or firing a musket ball. And then he’s comparing the slippage configurations to our incongruity.”
“And?”
“He just started,” she said defensively, “and it’s all just theoretical,” which meant she didn’t want to tell me.
“Did you find out from Warder how much slippage there was on your drop?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said. “Nine minutes.”
Nine minutes.
“What about the drops you did to May and August?”
“It varied. The average was sixteen minutes. That tallied with previous drops to the Victorian era.”
We were nearly to Muchings End. I pulled out my pocket watch and looked at it. “We should be home in time for tea,” I said, “and so there may not be any questions. If there are, we rowed up to Streatley to post signs for the jumble sale.” I pulled on my damp blazer, and Verity straightened her hair and put on her hat.
Sixteen minutes, and Verity’s drop had been nine. Even if her drop had had an average amount of slippage, she would have been too late, or too early, to rescue the cat and cause the incongruity. And at nine minutes, the slippage obviously hadn’t been stretched to its limits. So why hadn’t the net increased the slippage to the average? Or slammed shut before the incongruity could happen? And why had it slammed shut now, on Carruthers?
The dock was only a few hundred yards ahead. “With luck, no one will even know we’ve been on the river,” I said, and pulled in toward the dock.
“Our luck seems to be out,” Verity said.
I turned round in my seat. Tossie and Terence were running down to the riverbank, waving to us.
“Oh, Cousin, you’ll never guess what’s happened!” Tossie cried. “Mr. St. Trewes and I are engaged!”
“. . . they don’t seem to have any rules in particular; at least,
if there are, nobody attends to them—and you’ve no idea
how confusing it is all the things being alive.”
Alice in Wonderland
CHAPTER 16
Chance of Rain—Another Swan—What People Buy at Jumble Sales—Numbers Three, Seven, Thirteen, Fourteen, and Twenty-eight—I Have My Future Predicted—Things Are Not What They Seem—I Depart for the Other Side—The Battle of Waterloo—Importance of Good Penmanship—A Fateful Day—Number Fifteen—A Plan—An Unexpected Arrival
It’s not your fault, ” Verity said. We were arranging items in the jumble sale stall the next morning, our first chance to talk since the “thrilling news,” as Mrs. Mering put it.
“It was my fault,” Verity said, setting out a china wooden shoe with a blue-and-white windmill on it. “I should never have let T.J. send me on so many drops.”
“You were only trying to find out something that might help us,” I said, unwrapping an egg-boiler. “I was the one who left Terence and Tossie alone.” I set it on the counter. “And gave him the idea. You heard him last night. He wouldn’t have proposed if I hadn’t spouted that nonsense about ‘fleeting time’ and ‘miss’d opportunities.’”
“You were only doing what I told you to,” she said, opening a Japanese fan. “‘Turn the Titanic, Ned,’ I said. ‘Don’t worry. We won’t hit the iceberg.’”
“Not set up yet?” Mrs. Mering said, and we both jumped. “It’s nearly time for the fete to open.”
“We’ll be ready,” Verity said, setting out a soup tureen in the shape of a head of lettuce. Mrs. Mering looked worriedly at the overcast sky. “O, Mr. Henry, you don’t think it will rain, do you?”
Of course not, I thought. Fate is against me.
“No,” I said, unwrapping an etching of Paolo and Francesca, another couple who had come to a bad end.
“O, good,” she said, dusting off a bust of Prince Albert. “O, there is Mr. St. Trewes. I must go speak to him about the Pony Ride.”
I watched her interestedly as she swooped down on Terence. She was wearing a blue garden party dress, with all the requisite Victorian puffs and frills and rosettes and insets of lace, but over it she had flowing robes striped in red, yellow, and purple, and round her forehead was a wide velvet band with a large ostrich feather stuck in it.
“She’s the fortuneteller,” Verity explained, setting out a pair of sewing scissors in the shape of a heron. “When she reads my fortune, I intend to ask her where the bishop’s bird stump is.”
“It may well be here,” I said, trying to find a place to set the Widow Wallace’s banjo. “It would fit right in.”
She looked at the array of things on the counter. “It certainly is a jumble,” she said, adding a mustache cup to the mess.
I looked critically at it. “It still lacks something,” I said. I went and snatched a penwiper from Tossie’s stall and stuck it between a paperweight and a set of tin soldiers. “There. It’s perfect.”
“Except for the fact that Tossie and Terence are engaged,” she said. “I should never have assumed she’d stay at the Chattisbournes’ all afternoon.�
��
“The question is,” I said, “not whose fault it is they got engaged, but what we’re going to do now.”
“What are we going to do now?” Verity said, rearranging a pair of Harlequin and Columbine figurines.
“Perhaps Terence will get a good night’s sleep, come to his senses, and decide it was all a horrible mistake,” I said.
She shook her head. “That won’t help us. Engagements in Victorian times were considered nearly as serious as marriage. A gentleman couldn’t just break an engagement without a dreadful scandal. Unless Tossie breaks it herself, there’s no way Terence can get out of the engagement.”
“Which means her meeting Mr. C,” I said. “Which means our finding out who he is, and the sooner the better.”
“Which means one of us reporting back to Mr. Dunworthy and finding out if the forensics expert has managed to decipher his name yet,” she said.
“And that will be me,” I said firmly.
“What if Lady Schrapnell catches you?”
“I will take that risk,” I said. “ You are not going anywhere.”
“I think that’s probably a very good idea,” she said, putting her hand to her forehead. “I’ve been remembering some of the things I said in the boat yesterday.” She ducked her head. “I want you to know that I only said those things about Lord Peter Wimsey and your hat because of the time-lag and the hormonal imbalance, and not because—”
“Understood,” I said. “And I do not, when in my right mind, see you as a beautiful naiad, drawing me down and down into the deep to drown in your watery embrace. Besides,” I said, grinning, “Pansy Chattisbourne and I are already promised to one another.”
“Perhaps you’d like to buy her an engagement gift then,” she said and held up a ceramic affair decorated with gilt lace, pink ceramic gillyflowers, and an assortment of small holes.
“What is it?” I said.
“I have no idea,” she said. “You realize you’ll have to buy something, don’t you? Mrs. Mering will never forgive you if you don’t.”
She held up a wicker basket in the shape of a swan. “How about this?”
“No, thank you,” I said. “Cyril and I are not fond of swans.”
Verity set out a small lidded tin box that sugared violets had come in. “No one will buy this.”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” I said, unwrapping a water-stained copy of An Old-Fashioned Girl and setting it between two marble bookends carved in the likenesses of Dido and Aeneas, another couple who had gone up in smoke. Didn’t history have any famous couples who had got married, settled down, and lived happily ever after?
“People will buy anything at jumble sales,” I said. “At the Evacuated Children Charity Fair a woman bought a tree branch that had fallen on the table.”
“Don’t look now,” Verity said, and her voice dropped to a whisper, “but here comes your betrothed.”
I turned to see Pansy Chattisbourne bearing down on me. “Oh, Mr. Henry,” she said, giggling, “do come help me set up the fancy goods stall,” and dragged me away to arrange antimacassars and tatted handkerchief cases.
“I made these,” Pansy said, showing me a pair of slippers crocheted in a design of pansies. “Heartsease. It means, ‘I am thinking of you.’”
“Ah,” I said, and purchased a bookmark embroidered, “Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moths corrupt and thieves break in and steal. Matthew 6:19.”
“No, no, no, Mr. Henry,” Mrs. Mering said, swooping down on me and my cross-stitched tea cloths like some colorful bird of prey, “you’re not supposed to be here. I need you over here.”
She led me down the lawn past the knitted and crocheted goods stall and the fishing pond stall and the coconut shy and the tea tent to a spot at the end of the lawn where a plot of sand had been laid out inside a wooden frame. Baine was dividing the sand into foot-wide squares with the blade of a small shovel.
“This is our Treasure Hunt, Mr. Henry,” she said, handing me a stack of folded pasteboard squares. “These are for numbering the squares. Have you any shillings, Mr. Henry?”
I fished out my purse and tipped it into my cupped hand.
She scooped up all the coins. “Three shillings for the minor prizes,” she said, plucking out three silver coins and handing them back to me, “and the rest of this will do excellently for change at the woolen goods booth.”
She handed me back a single gold coin. “And you’ll need this,” she said, “for purchasing treasures at the jumble sale.”
Definitely related to Lady Schrapnell.
“I will let you choose which squares to bury the shillings and the Grand Prize in. Take care no one sees you,” she said. “Avoid the corner squares and all the lucky numbers—Three and Seven and Thirteen—people always choose those first, and if someone finds the treasure early, we shan’t make any money for the restoration. Also, avoid the numbers under twelve. Children always choose their age. And Fourteen. Today’s the fourteenth of June, and people always choose the date. Make certain they only dig in one square. Baine, where is the Grand Prize?”
“Right here, madam,” Baine said, handing her a brown-paper-wrapped parcel.
“The price for digging is tuppence a square or three for fivepence,” she said, unveiling the parcel, “and here is our Grand Prize.”
She handed me a plate with a painting of Iffley Mill and the words “Happy Memories of the Thames” on it. It looked just like the one the mobcap in Abingdon had tried to sell me.
“Baine, where is the shovel?” Mrs. Mering said.
“Here, madam,” he said, and handed me a shovel and a rake. “For smoothing the sand down after you’ve hidden the treasure,” he explained.
“Baine, what time is it?” Mrs. Mering asked.
“Five minutes to ten, madam,” he said, and I thought she was going to swoon.
“O, we’re not nearly ready!” she cried. “Baine, go and explain the fishing pond stall to Professor Peddick and bring out my crystal ball. Mr. Henry, there’s no time to waste. You must bury the treasure immediately.”
I started for the sand.
“And not Twenty-eight. That was last year’s winning square. Or Sixteen. That’s the Queen’s Birthday.”
She swept off, and I set about hiding the treasure. Baine had laid out thirty squares. Eliminating Sixteen, Twenty-eight, Three, Seven, Thirteen, Fourteen, and One through Twelve, to say nothing of the corners, didn’t leave very many choices.
I took a sharp look round, in case there were any “Souvenir of the Thames” thieves lurking in the hedge, and stuck the three shillings in Twenty-nine, Twenty-three, and Twenty-six. No, that was a corner. Twenty-one. And then stood there, trying to decide what the least-likely looking square was and wondering if I had time to go through and report to Mr. Dunworthy before the fete started.
While I was debating, the bell from Muchings End Church began to toll, Mrs. Mering gave a screamlet, and the fete was declared officially open. I hastily buried the Grand Prize in Eighteen and began raking it over.
“Seven,” a child’s voice said behind me. I turned round. It was Eglantine Chattisbourne in a pink dress and a large bow. She was carrying the lettuce soup tureen.
“I’m not open yet,” I said, raking several other squares and then stooping to place the cardboard numbers in them.
“I want to dig in Number Seven,” Eglantine said, shoving fivepence at me. “I get three tries. I want seven for my first one. It’s my lucky number.”
I handed her the shovel, and she set down the lettuce and dug for several minutes.
“Do you want to try another square?” I asked her.
“I’m not finished yet,” she said, and dug some more.
She stood up and surveyed the squares. “It’s never in the corners,” she said thoughtfully, “and it can’t be Fourteen. It’s never the date. Twelve,” she said finally. “That’s how old I am on my birthday.”
She dug some more. “Are you certain
you put the prizes in?” she said accusingly.
“Yes,” I said. “Three shillings and a Grand Prize.”
“You could say they were in there,” she said, “and truly you’d kept them for yourself.”
“They’re in there,” I said. “Which square do you want for your third try?”
“I don’t,” she said, handing me the shovel. “I want to think for a little.”
“As you wish, miss,” I said.
She held out her hand. “I want my tuppence back. For my third try.”
I wondered if she were somehow related to Lady Schrapnell. Perhaps Elliott Chattisbourne, despite appearances, was Mr. C after all.
“I haven’t any change,” I said.
She flounced off, I raked the squares flat again, and leaned against a tree, waiting for more customers.
None came. They were apparently all hitting the jumble sale first. Business was so slow for the first hour I could easily have sneaked off to the drop, except for Eglantine, who hovered nearby, plotting which square to use her last tuppence on.
And, as it developed when she had finally decided on Number Seventeen and dug to no avail, keeping her eye on me. “I think you move the prizes when no one’s looking,” she said, brandishing the toy shovel. “That’s why I’ve been watching you.”
“But if you’ve been watching me,” I said reasonably, “how could I have moved the prize?”
“I don’t know” she said darkly, “but you must have. It’s the only explanation. It’s always in Seventeen.”
Now that she was out of money, I’d hoped she would move on, but she hung about, watching a little boy choose Six (his age) and his mother pick Fourteen (the date).
“Perhaps you never put the prizes in at all,” Eglantine said after they’d left, the little boy sobbing because he hadn’t found a prize. “Perhaps you only said you did.”
“Wouldn’t you like to have a nice pony ride?” I said. “Mr. St. Trewes is giving pony rides over there.”
“Pony rides are for infants,” she said disdainfully.
“Have you had your fortune told?” I persisted.
To Say Nothing of the Dog Page 32
