She scrambled off the bed and picked up her paper-wrapped parcel. “It’s sort of a cross between caffeine and alcohol. The effect drops have on me. Do they affect you that way? Sort of giddy and talkative?” She gathered up her shoes and stockings. “We’ll both feel better in the morning.”

She opened the door and peered out into the blackness. “Get some sleep,” she whispered. “You look dreadful. You need to get your rest so you can help me keep Tossie and Terence apart in the morning. I’ve got it all worked out. I’ll make Terence help me set up the fortune-telling tent.”

“Fortune-telling tent?” I said.

“Yes, and you can help Tossie with the jumble sale.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Verity was not my final visitor. A half hour after she left there was another sound of scratching on the door, so faint I would not have heard it if I had been asleep.

I wasn’t asleep. Verity, with her news of increased slippage and discrepancies, had pretty much put paid to that. Not to mention Lady Schrapnell and the bishop’s bird stump.

And Cyril had somehow managed, in spite of his short legs, to sprawl over the entire width of the bed and both pillows so that there was only a narrow edge left, which I had a tendency to roll off of. I wrapped my feet round the bedpost and anchored the coverlet with my hands and thought about Lord Lucan and Schrödinger’s cat.

It had been put into a box in Schrödinger's thought experiment, along with a doomsday device: a bottle of cyanide gas, a hammer hooked to a Geiger counter, and a chunk of uranium. If the uranium emitted an electron, it would trigger the hammer which would break the bottle. That would release the gas that would kill the cat that lived in the box that Schrödinger built.

And since there was no way to predict whether the uranium had emitted an electron or not, the cat was neither dead nor alive, but both, existing as side-by-side probabilities which would collapse into a single reality when the box was opened. Or the incongruity was repaired.

But that meant there was a fifty percent probability that the incongruity wouldn’t be repaired. And for each moment the cat stayed in the box, the probability that the uranium would emit said electron became greater, and so did the likelihood that when the box was opened, the cat would be dead.

And the first line of defense had already failed. The coincidences of Tossie’s meeting Terence and my meeting Terence and our rescuing Professor Peddick and his meeting the Colonel proved that. And discrepancies were the next step.

But Terence hadn’t affected history, at least not directly, or his name would have been in the official records, and Oxford Railway Station was thirty miles and four days from Muchings End. And T.J. had said the immediate vicinity.

But what seemed to have escaped Verity in her time-lagged state was that even if their meeting wasn’t in the immediate vicinity, Mrs. Mering’s decision to take Tossie to Madame Iritosky’s was, and that was what had led to her meeting Terence and to Terence’s running into Professor Peddick and being asked to meet the agèd relicts. And running into me. And what did immediate vicinity mean anyway? T.J. hadn’t said. It might be years and hundreds of miles.

I lay there in the dark, going round and round, like Harris in the Hampton Court Maze. Baine hadn’t intended to drown Princess Arjumand, but if she hadn’t drowned and become nonsignificant, why hadn’t the net refused to open for Verity? And if she had drowned, why had it opened for me?

And why had I come through at Oxford? To keep Terence from meeting Maud? I didn’t see how that could possibly contribute to a self-correction. Or had it been to keep the cat away from Muchings End? I remembered dropping her basket at Folly Bridge when Cyril charged at me, and it nearly rolling into the river before Terence caught it. And my grabbing the carpetbag as it toppled, and sending Cyril into the drink. Had the course of history been trying to correct itself by drowning the cat, and I’d kept interfering?

But she couldn’t have been intended to drown. Baine hadn’t been trying to drown her when he threw her in. If Verity hadn’t interfered, he would have dived in, morning coat and all, and saved her. Perhaps he’d thrown her out too far, and she’d been carried away by the current and drowned, in spite of Baine’s best efforts. But that still didn’t explain—

There was a faint scratching at the door. It’s Verity, I thought. She forgot to explain Hercule Poirot’s detecting methods. I opened the door.

There was no one there. I opened the door wider and looked down the hall in both directions. Nothing but blackness. It must have been one of Mrs. Mering’s spirits.

“Mere,” a small voice said.

I looked down. Princess Arjumand’s gray-green eyes shone up at me. “More,” she said, and sauntered past me, tail in the air, jumped on the bed, and lay down in the middle of my pillow.

This left me no room at all. Plus, Cyril snored. This in itself could have been got used to, but as the night progressed, it got louder and louder, till I was afraid it was going to wake the dead. Or Mrs. Mering. Or both.

And he seemed to do variations on a theme — a low rumble, like distant thunder, a snore, an odd whuffling sound which ruffled his jowls, a snort, a snuffle, a wheeze.

None of this bothered the cat, who had settled herself on my Adam’s apple again and was purring (without variations) in my ear. I kept dozing off from cat-induced lack of oxygen and then waking up, lighting matches, and trying to read my pocket watch by them at II, III, and a quarter to IV.

I dozed off again at half-past V only to be awakened by the birds chirping the arrival of the sun. I had always been led to believe this was an idyllic, melodious sound, but this sounded more like a full-scale Nazi air raid. I wondered if the Merings had an Anderson shelter.

I fumbled for a match, realized I could read my pocket watch without it, and got up. I pulled on my clothes, put on my shoes, and began trying to rouse Cyril.

“Come along, boy, time to go back to the stable,” I said, interrupting him in mid-whuffle with a shake. “You don’t want Mrs. Mering to catch you in here. Come along. Wake up.”

Cyril opened one bleary eye, closed it again, and began to snore loudly.

“Don’t try to pull that!” I said. “It won’t work. I know you’re awake.” I poked him in his midsection. “Come along. You’ll get us both thrown out.” I tugged on his collar. He opened the eye again and staggered to his feet. He looked like I felt. His eyes were bloodshot, and he was swaying gently, like a drunk after a night on the tiles.

“Good boy,” I said encouragingly. “That’s it. Off the bed. Down we go.”

Princess Arjumand chose that moment to yawn, stretch luxuriously, and settle comfortably into a nest of bedclothes. The message couldn’t have been clearer.

“You’re not helping,” I said to her. “I know it’s not fair, Cyril, but life is not fair. I, for instance, am supposed to be on holiday. Resting. Sleeping.”

Cyril took the word “sleeping” for a command and sank back onto the pillows.