I raised my eyebrows. “Do you mean God rejected it?”

“I mean God wanted a better version-the crocodile we know now-and replaced it.”

I had never heard of such a thing. I wanted to ask Lord Henley more about this idea, but he always stated things so baldly that there was no room for questions. He made me feel an idiot, even when I knew he was a bigger one than I.

It was just as well that we were interrupted by Molly Anning. Mercifully she did not bring the crying baby, but arrived trailing Mary and the smell of cabbage. “I’m Molly Anning, sir,” she said, wiping her hands on her apron and looking around her, for she would never have been inside the Assembly Rooms. “I run our fossil shop. What was it you wanted?” She was the same height as Lord Henley, and her level gaze seemed to subdue him a little. She surprised me too. I had never heard of the workshop being called a shop, or of her having anything to do with it. But then, without a husband, she had to take on new tasks. Running a business appeared to be one of them.

“I want to take this specimen, Mrs Anning. If your daughter will allow it,” Lord Henley added with a touch of sarcasm. “But then, your daughter answers to you, does she not?”

“Course.” Molly Anning barely glanced at the skull. “How much you want to pay, then?”

“Three pounds.”

“That-” I began.

“I expect there be plenty of gentlemen prepared to pay more,” Molly Anning talked over me. “But we’ll take your money, if you like, as a deposit for the whole creature once Mary finds it.”

“And if she doesn’t?”

“Oh, she’ll find it all right. My Mary always finds things. She’s special like that-always has been, since she was struck by lightning. That were in your field, weren’t it, Lord Henley, where she was struck?”

Several things astonished me: that Molly Anning was talking so confidently to a member of the gentry; that she had rather cleverly allowed him to name his price, throwing him off balance and getting an idea of the worth of an object whose value she didn’t know; that she had the cunning to make the lightning strike seem to be his responsibility. Most surprising, though, she had actually complimented her daughter just when Mary needed it. I’d heard people say that Molly Anning was an original; now I understood what they meant.

Lord Henley hardly knew how to respond. I stepped in to help him out. “Of course, the Annings will give you the head for three pounds if the body isn’t found within, shall we say, two years?”

Lord Henley glanced from Molly Anning to me. “All right,” he replied at length, placing his hand again on his prize.

After encountering the skull, I found it difficult to sleep, dreaming of the eyes of animals I had looked into: horses, cats, seagulls, dogs. There was a flatness in them, the lack of a God-given spark, that frightened me into wakefulness.

On Sunday I remained behind after the service at St Michael’s, waving on Bessy and my sisters. “I will catch you up,” I said, and stood at the back of the church, waiting for the vicar to finish his goodbyes to the other parishioners. Reverend Jones was a plain man, with a boxy head and close-cropped hair, whose thin lips twisted and turned even when every other part of him was still. I had not spoken with him except to mouth pleasantries, for he was uninspiring during services, his voice reedy, his sermons lacklustre. However, he was a man of God, and I hoped he might be able to give me guidance.

At last only a girl remained behind, sweeping the floor. Reverend Jones was going up and down the pews, picking up hymn sheets and checking for gloves or prayer books left behind. He did not see me. Indeed, it felt as if he did not want to see me. His pastoral duties over for the day, he was doubtless thinking about the dinner he would soon sit down to and the sleep by the fire afterwards. When I cleared my throat and he looked up, he could not stop his mouth tightening into a brief grimace. “Miss Philpot, is this handkerchief yours?” He held out a ball of white cloth, probably hopeful that I could be easily dismissed.

“I’m afraid not, Reverend Jones.”

“Ah. You are looking for something else, perhaps? A purse? A button? A hair pin?”

“No, I wished to discuss a matter with you.”

“I see.” Reverend Jones pushed out his lips. “My dinner will be ready soon and I need to finish up here. You don’t mind…?” He continued along the pews, straightening cushions as I trailed behind. All the while I could hear the scratch of the girl’s broom on the floor.

“I wanted to ask you what you thought of fossils.” In trying to hold his attention, my voice came out louder than I had intended in the empty church. The sweeping stopped, but Reverend Jones continued up the aisle to the oak pulpit, where he picked up his own handkerchief and put it in his pocket.

“What do I think of fossils, Miss Philpot? I do not think of them.”

“But do you know what they are?”

“They are skeletons that have been compressed by rock over time to become stone themselves. Most educated people know that.”

“But the skeletons-are they of creatures that still exist today?”

Reverend Jones hurried to the altar and gathered up a set of candlesticks and the altar cloth. I felt like an idiot following him about.

“Of course they exist,” he said. “All of the creatures God made exist.” He opened a door in the aisle to the left of the altar, which led to a small back room where church bits and pieces were stored. Over his shoulder I spied a jug labelled “Holy Water” sitting on a table. I remained in the doorway while Reverend Jones shut the candlesticks and cloth in a cupboard. “I’m afraid I don’t understand your question, Miss Philpot,” he called over his shoulder.

I opened my purse and poured into my palm a few bits of fossils that had found their way there. Most of my pockets and purses held fossil pieces. Reverend Jones’ mouth twisted in disgust as he glanced at the contents: ammonites, belemnite shafts, a chunk of fossilised wood, a length of crinoid stem. He reacted as if I had trailed horse dung into the church on my shoes. “Why on earth are you carrying those about?”

Ignoring his question, I held out an ammonite. “I should like to know where the live versions of these are, Reverend Jones, for I have never seen one.” As we gazed at the fossil, I felt for a moment that I was being sucked into its spiral, farther and farther back in time until the past was lost in the centre.

Reverend Jones’ response to the ammonite was more prosaic. “Perhaps you haven’t seen them because they live out at sea, and their bodies only wash up after they die.” He turned away and, pulling the door shut, locked it with the deft turn of a key, a gesture he seemed to enjoy.

I stepped in front of him so that he could not hurry off to his dinner. Indeed, he could not move at all, but was pinned in the corner. Not being able to get away from me and my awkward questions seemed to disturb Reverend Jones even more than my bringing out the ammonite had. He whipped his head from side to side. “Fanny, have you done yet?” he called. There was no response, however. She must have gone outside to dump the sweepings.

“Have you heard about the crocodile head the Annings have found in the cliffs and are showing at the Assembly Rooms?” I asked.

Reverend Jones forced himself to look straight at me. He had narrow eyes that seemed to be seeking out a horizon even when they were set on mine. “I know of it, yes.”

“Have you seen it?”

“I have no desire to see it.”

I was not surprised. Reverend Jones showed no curiosity about anything other than what would soon be on his plate. “The specimen does not look like any creature that lives now,” I said.

“Miss Philpot-”

“Someone-a member of this congregation, in fact-has suggested that it is an animal that God rejected in favour of a better design.”