To Say Nothing of the Dog (32 page)

One has not lived until one has carried a sixty-pound dog down a sweeping flight of stairs at half-past V in the morning. Outside, the grounds had the rosy flush of dawn, the grass bright with diamond dew, the roses just op’ing their sweet faces, all of which indicated I was still suffering from severe to terminal time-lag, which meant when I saw Verity at breakfast I would still be completely under her spell, even though she had told Lady Schrapnell I knew where the bishop’s bird stump was.

In the meantime, the bird Luftwaffe must have gone back to refuel, and the world lay silent in the early light, a silence as much a part of the past as Victorian country houses and boating on the Thames, the stillness of a world that had yet no ken of airplanes and traffic jams, of incendiaries and pinpoint bombs, the still and holy hush of an idyllic world gone by.

It was too bad I wasn’t in a position to appreciate it. Cyril weighed a ton, and set up a pathetic and piercing whine as soon as I set him down. I almost tripped over the slumbering stableboy on the way out, and, back inside the house, I nearly collided with Baine in the upper hall.

He was setting polished boots in neat pairs outside the bedroom doors. In the second before he saw me, I wondered when
he
slept.

“Couldn’t sleep,” I said, dropping the subjects of my sentences like Colonel Mering in my nervousness. “Went downstairs looking for something to read.”

“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 fête,” 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 fêtes 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 spoonful 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.

“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.”