Now she was the one gaping. “You didn’t know about the cat? But I thought they were going to send the cat through with you,” and I wondered uneasily if they had intended to. Finch had told me to wait when I was standing there in the net. Had he gone to fetch the cat, and I’d made the jump before he could give it to me?

“Did they tell you they were sending it back with me?” I asked.

She shook her head. “Mr. Dunworthy refused to tell me anything. He told me I’d caused enough trouble already, and he didn’t want me meddling any further. I just assumed it was you because I saw you in Mr. Dunworthy’s office.”

“I was there to speak to Mr. Dunworthy about my time-lag,” I said. “Infirmary prescribed two weeks’ bed rest, so Mr. Dunworthy sent me here to get it.”

“To the Victorian era?” she said, looking amused.

I nodded. “I couldn’t get it in Oxford because of Lady Schrapnell—”

She looked even more amused. “He sent you here to get away from Lady Schrapnell?”

“Yes,” I said, alarmed. “She isn’t here, is she?”

“Not exactly,” she said. “If you don’t have the cat, do you know who they sent it through with?”

“No,” I said, trying to remember that conversation in the lab. “Contact someone,” Mr. Dunworthy had said. Andrews. I remembered now. Mr. Dunworthy had said, “Contact Andrews.”

“They said something about contacting Andrews,” I said.

“Did you hear them say anything else? When they were sending him through to? Whether the jump worked?”

“No,” I said, “but I was dozing a good deal of the time. Because of the time-lag.”

“When exactly did you hear them mention Andrews?”

“This morning, while I was waiting for my jump,” I said.

“When did you come through?”

“This morning. At ten o’clock.”

“Then that explains it,” she said, looking relieved. “I was worried when I got back and Princess Arjumand wasn’t there. I was afraid something had gone wrong, and sending her back through the net hadn’t worked, or that Baine had found her and thrown her in again. And when Mrs. Mering insisted on coming to Oxford to consult Madame Iritosky on her disappearance, and your young man showed up, I got truly worried. But everything’s all right. They obviously sent her through after we left for Oxford, and the visit was a good thing. It put us all out of the way so no one would see her being put back, and Baine’s here, so he can’t drown her before we get back. And the jump must have been successful, or you wouldn’t be here. Mr. Dunworthy said he was suspending all drops to the Nineteenth Century till the cat was returned. So everything’s all right. Mr. Dunworthy’s experiment worked, Princess Arjumand will be there waiting to greet us when we get back, and there’s nothing to worry about.”

“Wait,” I said, thoroughly confused. “I think you need to begin at the beginning. Sit down.”

I indicated a wooden bench with a sign on it: “Do not deface.” Next to it was a carved heart with an arrow through it and under it, “Violet and Harold, ‘59.” She sat down, arranging her white skirts gracefully about her.

“All right,” I said. “You brought a cat forward through the net.”

“Yes. I was at the gazebo, that’s where the drop is, just behind it in a little copse, it’s on a ten-minute on and off rendezvous. I’d just come through from reporting to Mr. Dunworthy, and I saw Baine, that’s the butler, carrying Princess Arjumand—”

“Wait. What were you doing in the Victorian era?”

“Lady Schrapnell sent me here to read Tossie’s diary. She thought there might be some clue in it as to the whereabouts of the bishop’s bird stump.”

Of course. I might have known all this had something to do with the bishop’s bird stump. “But what does Tossie have to do with the bishop’s bird stump?” I had a sudden horrible thought. “Please tell me she isn’t the great-great-grandmother.”

“Great-great-great-great. This is the summer she went to Coventry, saw the bishop’s bird stump—”

“—and had her life changed forever,” I said.

“An event she referred to repeatedly and in great detail in the voluminous diaries she kept for most of her life, which Lady Schrapnell read and became obsessed with rebuilding Coventry Cathedral, and had her life changed forever.”

“And ours,” I said. “But if she read the diaries, why did she have to send you back to 1888 to read them?”

“The volume in which Tossie originally recorded the life-changing experience — the one Tossie wrote in the summer of 1888 — is badly water-damaged. Lady Schrapnell’s got a forensics expert working on it, but she’s only made limited progress, so Lady Schrapnell sent me to read it on the spot.”

“But if she referred to it in great detail in the other diaries—?” I said.

“She didn’t say exactly how it changed her life or on what date she went there, and Lady Schrapnell thinks there may be other details in the volume that are important. Unfortunately, or perhaps I should say fortunately, since Tossie writes the way she talks, she keeps her diary under better lock and key than the Crown Jewels, and so far I haven’t been able to get at it.”

“I’m still confused,” I said. “The bishop’s bird stump didn’t disappear till 1940. What use is a diary written in 1888?”

“Lady Schrapnell thinks there might be a clue as to who gave it to the church. The donations records for Coventry Cathedral were burnt up during the air raid. She thinks whoever donated it, or their descendants, might have taken it away for safekeeping at the beginning of the war.”

“Whoever donated it was probably trying to get rid of it.”

“I know. But you know Lady Schrapnell. ‘No stone unturned.’ So I’ve been following Tossie around for two weeks, hoping she’ll leave her diary lying out. Or go to Coventry. She’s got to go soon. When I mentioned Coventry, she said she’d never been there, and we know she went sometime in June. But so far nothing.”

“So you kidnapped her cat and demanded her diary as ransom?”

“No,” she said. “I was coming back from reporting to Mr. Dunworthy, and I saw Baine, that’s the butler—”

“Who reads books,” I said.

“Who’s a homicidal maniac,” she said. “He was carrying Princess Arjumand, and when he got to the riverbank, a perfectly lovely June. The roses have been so pretty.”

“What?” I said, disoriented again.

“And the laburnum! Mrs. Mering has an arbor of laburnum that is ever so picturesque!”

“Begging your pardon, Miss Brown,” Baine said, appearing out of nowhere. He gave a stiff little bow.

“What is it, Baine?” Verity said.

“It’s Miss Mering’s pet cat, ma’am,” he said uncomfortably. “I was wondering if Mr. St. Trewes’s being here meant that he had located it.”

“No, Baine,” she said, and the temperature seemed to drop several degrees. “Princess Arjumand is still missing.”

“I was concerned,” he said and bowed again. “Do you wish the carriage to be brought around now?”

“No,” she said frostily. “Thank you, Baine.”

“Mrs. Mering requested that you return in time for tea.”

“I am aware of that, Baine. Thank you.”

He still hesitated. “It is half an hour’s drive to Madame Iritosky’s home.”

“Yes, Baine. That will be all,” she said and watched him till he was nearly to the carriage before she burst out, “Cold-blooded murderer! ‘I was wondering if Mr. St. Trewes might have found the cat.’ He knows perfectly well he hasn’t. And all that about being concerned! Monster!”

“Are you certain he was trying to drown her?” I said.

“Of course I’m certain. He flung her as far out as he could throw her.”

“Perhaps it’s a contemp custom. I remember reading they drowned cats in the Victorian era. To keep the population down, of all things.”

“That’s newborn kittens, not full-grown cats. And not pets. Princess Arjumand’s the thing Tossie loves most, next to herself. The kittens they drown are farm cats, not pets. The farmer just up the road from Muchings End killed a batch last week, put them in a sack weighted with stones and threw it in his pond, which is barbaric but not malicious. This was malicious. After Baine threw her in, he dusted off his hands and walked back toward the house smiling. He clearly intended to drown her.”