“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.

As soon as she’d gone, I said, “Why did you call the maid Colleen?”

“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.”

“How about ‘balderdash’?” I said. “Or ‘pshaw’?”

“ ‘Pshaw,’ Mr. Henry?” Mrs. Mering said, sweeping in. “What are you pooh-poohing? Not our church fête, I hope? It benefits the restoration fund, such a worthwhile project, Mr. Henry. Our poor parish church is in such desperate need of restoration. Why, the baptismal font dates back to 1262. And the windows! Hopelessly mediaeval! If our fête is a success we hope to purchase all new ones!”

She heaped her plate with kippers and venison and wolf, sat down, and swept her napkin off the table and onto her lap. “The restoration project is all our curate Mr. Arbitage’s doing. Until he came the vicar wouldn’t even hear of restoring the church. I’m afraid he is quite old-fashioned in his thinking. He refuses even to consider the possibility of communication with the spirits.”

Good man, I thought.

“Mr. Arbitage, on the other hand, embraces the idea of spiritism, and of speaking with our dear departed ones on the Other Side. Do you believe contact is possible with the Other Side, Mr. Henry?”

“Mr. Henry was inquiring about the church fête,” Verity said. “I was just going to tell him about your clever idea of a jumble sale.”

“O,” Mrs. Mering said, looking flattered. “Have you ever been to a fête, Mr. Henry?”