I opened the bureau and looked at the clothes Baine had neatly stacked inside. The shirts all belonged to Elliott Chattisbourne and the Victorian era. And the collars and cuffs and nightshirt. I wasn’t as certain of the socks, but I must have been wearing the pair I’d come through in or the net wouldn’t have opened. Unless of course I was going to cause an incongruity, in which case there wouldn’t even be any increased slippage.

And if the continuum had been trying to get rid of Verity and me, why hadn’t the net just refused to open the first time we tried to come back from Oxford after we’d reported in? Why hadn’t it refused to open when Verity tried to take Princess Arjumand through? Baine wasn’t trying to drown the cat. He’d have been delighted to find Verity standing there by the gazebo with Princess Arjumand, delighted she’d waded in and rescued her. Why hadn’t it refused to open when Verity tried to come through to Muchings End in the first place? It didn’t make sense.

I opened the bottom drawer. Baine had thoughtfully folded my too-small shirts and waxed my too-small patent leather shoes. I put them in the carpetbag and looked round the room for any other stray items. Not the straight razors, thank goodness. Nor the silver-backed brushes.

My straw boater was lying on the nightstand. I started to put it on and then thought better of it. It was hardly the occasion for jauntiness.

None of it made sense. Why, if the continuum hadn’t wanted us meddling, had it landed me forty miles away? And Carruthers in a marrows field? Why had it refused to open for Carruthers for three weeks after the raid? Why had it sent me to 2018 and 1395 and Verity to 1940? And, the most important question of all, why had it brought us back now?

“An American!” Mrs. Mering shrieked from the end of the corridor. “It’s all Mr. Henry’s fault. His disgraceful American ideas of class equality!”

Definitely time to go. I closed the carpetbag and went out into the corridor. I stopped at Verity’s door and raised my hand to knock, and then thought better of that, too.

“Where is Jane?” Mrs. Mering’s voice rang out. “Why isn’t she back yet? Irish servants! This is all your fault, Mesiel. I wanted to hire—”

I made a speedy and quiet exit down the stairs. Colleen/Jane was standing at the foot of them, twisting her apron in her hands.

“Has she dismissed you?” I asked her.

“No, sorr, not yet,” she said, looking up nervously in the direction of Mrs. Mering’s room. “But she’s that angry.”

I nodded. “Has Miss Brown come down?”

“Yes, sorr. She said to tell you she would wait for you at the station.”

“The station?” I said, and then realized she meant the drop. “Thank you, Jane. Colleen. And good luck.”

“Thank you, sorr.” She started up the stairs, crossing herself as she went.

I opened the front door, and there stood Finch, in his morning coat and butler’s derby, his hand already reaching for the knocker.

“Mr. Henry,” he said. “Just the person I came to see.”

I shut the door behind me and led him over to where we couldn’t be observed from the windows.

“I’m so glad I caught you before you left, sir,” he said. “I have a dilemma.”

“I’m hardly the person to ask,” I said.

“You see, sir, my mission’s nearly completed, and I might be able to depart as early as tomorrow morning, but Mrs. Chattisbourne is having a tea tomorrow afternoon to plan the St. Anne’s Day Sale of Work. It’s terribly important to her, and so I’d planned to stay on to see that everything went well. That kitchen maid of hers, Gladys, has the mind of a rabbit, and—”

“And you’re afraid you’ll miss the consecration if you stay a few more days?” I said.

“No. I asked Mr. Dunworthy and he said it was quite all right, they could bring me through at the same time. No, my dilemma is this.” He held out a square envelope with the initials M.M. embossed in gold script on it. “It’s an offer of employment from Mrs. Mering. She wants me to come and be her butler.”

So that was why Colleen/Jane had her cloak on. With Mrs. Mering’s only daughter gone, run off to elope with the butler, and her heart broken, the first thing she had done was to send Colleen/Jane over to the Chattisbournes’ to filch Finch.

“It’s a very good offer, sir,” Finch said. “There are a number of advantages to taking it.”

“And you’re thinking of staying in the Victorian era permanently?”

“Of course not, sir! Although,” he said wistfully, “there are moments when I feel I have found my true métier here. No, my dilemma is that Muchings End is much more convenient to my mission than the Chattisbournes’. If I am reading the signs correctly, I should be able to complete my mission tonight and it won’t matter, but it might turn out to take several days. And if that were the case, my mission—”

“What is your mission anyway, Finch?” I said, exasperated.

He looked pained. “I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to say. I was sworn to secrecy by Mr. Lewis, and I have also witnessed events you are not yet aware of, and have access to information you have not, and I dare not jeopardize the success of either of our missions by speaking out of turn. As you know, sir, ‘Loose lips sink ships.’ ”

I had that odd, disorienting sensation again, of things up-ending and reorienting themselves, and I tried to grab hold of it, like I had grabbed onto the pedestrian gate.

“Loose lips sink ships.” I knew who had said that. I had, thinking about Ultra and Coventry and secrets as crisis points. It was something about Ultra, and what would have happened if the Nazis had found out we had broken their code — no, it was no use. Just as things were starting to shift, it was gone again.

“If the mission should go several days,” Finch was saying, “Muchings End is much closer both to the vicarage and the drop. And it’s not as if I would be leaving Mrs. Chattisbourne in the lurch. I have already found an excellent butler for her through an agency in London. I intend to telegraph him of the vacant position just before I leave. But it doesn’t seem fair to accept the position with Mrs. Mering when I will not be staying. I suppose I could attempt to find a second but—”

“No,” I said. “Take the position. And don’t give any notice when you leave. Just disappear. Mrs. Mering needs to suffer the slings and arrows of unreliable domestic help so she can learn to appreciate her new son-in-law. Plus, it will teach her not to steal her friends’ servants.”

“Oh, good, sir,” he said. “Thank you. I shall tell her I can take the position after Mrs. Chattisbourne’s tea party.” He started up to the door again. “And don’t worry, sir. It’s always darkest before the dawn.”

He raised the knocker, and I hurried out to the gazebo. At the last minute, I remembered the coveralls and the Burberry and went back down to the wine cellar to collect them and put them in my carpetbag to take through. The coveralls had an ARP patch on them and Burberry hadn’t begun manufacturing his raincoats till 1903, fifteen years from now, and the last thing we needed was another incongruity.

I shut up the carpetbag and started out to the drop again, wondering if Verity would be there or if she would have gone on ahead to Oxford to avoid awkward goodbyes.

But she was there, in the white hat, with her bags on either side of her, as if she were on a railway platform.

I came up beside her. “Well,” I said, setting down my carpetbag.

She looked at me from behind her white veil, and I thought, it truly is too bad I didn’t singlehandedly save the universe. Since I hadn’t, I looked at the peonies behind the gazebo and said, “When’s the next train?”

“Five minutes,” she said. “If it opens.”

“It will open,” I said. “Tossie’s married Mr. C, Terence is getting engaged to Maud, their grandson will fly a night raid to Berlin, the Luftwaffe will leave off bombing aerodromes and begin bombing London, and all’s right with the continuum.”