“Nonsense!” Mrs. Mering said. “Dogs haven’t any feelings.”

“Never mind, Cyril,” Professor Peddick said. “You can come with me out to the fishpond. I’ve always been extremely fond of dogs. So has my niece, Maud. Feeds them from the table.” They walked off together.

“Do get in, Mr. St. Trewes,” Mrs. Mering said. “You will make us late for the train. Baine, did you pack my lorgnette?”

We finally left for the station at half-past ten. “Remember,” Verity said to me as I helped her into the carriage, “Tossie’s diary only says ‘the trip to Coventry.’ It doesn’t say which part of the trip. Mr. C could be someone at the station or on the train.”

We arrived at the station at 11:09. The train had already gone, which was probably just as well since it took us nearly ten minutes to get everyone and everything out of the carriages. By the time we got out onto the platform, there was no one there.

“I don’t see why the train couldn’t have waited!” Mrs. Mering said. “A few minutes either way surely wouldn’t make a difference. So inconsiderate!”

“I know it’s going to rain and ruin my travelling dress,” Tossie fretted, looking at the sky. “O, Terence, I do hope it doesn’t rain on our wedding day.”

“ ‘Ah festal day, so fair, so bright,’ ” Terence quoted, but absently, looking off toward Muchings End. “If it does rain, I hope Professor Peddick won’t leave Cyril outside.”

“I do hope they don’t decide to go fishing in this weather,” Mrs. Mering said, “what with Mesiel’s weak chest. He caught a dreadful chill last spring. He was in bed for two weeks, and such a frightening cough! The doctor said it was a miracle it didn’t go into pneumonia. Mr. Henry, do go and see if there’s any sign of the train.”

I walked down to the far end of the platform to check. When I came back, Verity was standing apart from the others. “I’ve been thinking about the bishop’s bird stump,” she said. “In The Moonstone, the jewel was taken by someone who didn’t know he’d stolen it. He was sleepwalking, and he put it in something, and then a second person stole it from him. What if the person who took it—?”

“Was sleepwalking?” I said. “In Coventry Cathedral?”

“No. Didn’t know they were committing a crime.”

“Exactly how many drops have you done in the past week?” I asked.

Baine reappeared, with a porter who was at least seventy years old, and they and the groom began transferring our luggage from the carriages to the edge of the platform. Verity looked speculatively at the porter.

“No,” I said. “She was married to him for over fifty years. That means he’d have to live to be a hundred and twenty.”

“Did you see any sign of the train, Mr. Henry?” Mrs. Mering called.

“No, I’m afraid not,” I said, walking over to her.

“Where can it be?” she said. “I hope its being late isn’t an omen. Mr. Henry, have the carriages gone?”

“We must go to Coventry today,” Verity said. “What would Madame Iritosky think of us if we ignored the spirits’ message?”

“She herself thought nothing of departing in the middle of the night in response to a message she received,” I said, wishing the bloody train would hurry up and come. “And I have no doubt the weather will be fine when we reach Coventry.”

“And there are such lovely things in Coventry,” Verity said and then obviously couldn’t think of any.

“Blue dye,” I said. “They are famous for their Coventry-blue dye. And ribbons.”

“I might buy some for my trousseau,” Tossie said.

“Professor Peddick tends to be absentminded,” Terence said wistfully. “He won’t go off and leave Cyril, do you think?”

“Azure ribbons, I think, for my going-away hat,” Tossie said. “Or baby blue, perhaps. What do you think, Mama?”

“Why can’t these trains arrive at the time listed on the schedule instead of making us wait for hours?” Mrs. Mering said.

And so on. The train arrived at exactly 11:32, pulling into the station with an impressive whoosh of steam, and Verity practically pushed everyone onto the train, keeping an anxious eye out for anyone who looked like he might be Mr. C.

Baine assisted Mrs. Mering up the steps and into our compartment and then ran back to supervise the porter in loading our belongings. Jane settled Mrs. Mering in her seat, gave her her lorgnette, her embroidery, found her handkerchief and her shawl, and then bobbed a curtsey and climbed down the steps.

“Where’s she going?” I said to Verity, watching Jane hurry down the platform to the rear of the train.

“To second-class,” she said. “Servants don’t travel with their employers.”

“How do they do without them?”

“They don’t,” she said, catching up her skirts and starting up the steps.

They certainly didn’t. Baine came back as soon as everything was aboard to bring Mrs. Mering a lap robe and ask if there was anything else she needed.

“A cushion,” she said. “These railway seats are so uncomfortable.”

“Yes, madam,” he said, and took off at a gallop. He returned in under a minute, disheveled and out of breath, with a brocade-covered cushion.

“The train from Reading is a corridor train, madam,” he panted, “but this one has only compartments. I will, however, attend you at each stop.”

“Were there no direct trains to Coventry?” she said.

“Yes, madam,” Baine said. “At 10:17. The train is about to leave, madam. Is there anything else?”

“Yes, the Baedeker. And a rug to put my feet on. The condition of these railway compartment floors is disgraceful.”

Mrs. Mering had obviously never been on the tube. It is a temporal universal that people never appreciate their own time, especially transportation. Twentieth-Century contemps complained about cancelled flights and gasoline prices, Eighteenth-Century contemps complained about muddy roads and highwaymen. No doubt Professor Peddick’s Greeks complained about recalcitrant horses and chariot wheels falling off.

I had ridden on trains before, in the 1940s, most recently to Hampton Lucy to see if the bishop’s bird stump was there with the east windows, but those trains had been packed with soldiers, the windows had been covered with blackout curtains, and all the fittings had been removed to make ammunition. And, even if it hadn’t been wartime, they had been nothing to this.

The high-backed seats were upholstered in green velveteen, and the walls above were panelled in polished mahogany inlaid with a pattern of flowers. There were rich green plush curtains hung at the windows, and gas lamps in brackets on both sides, covered with etched-glass lampshades, and the luggage rack overhead, the hand rails, the arm rests, the curtain rings, were all of polished brass.

Definitely not the tube. And, as the train lurched slowly forward (with Baine making a last flying run to deliver the Baedeker and the rug and another back to second-class) and then picked up speed through the beautiful, misty countryside, definitely nothing to complain about.

That did not stop Mrs. Mering from complaining about the soot blowing in the window (Terence closed the window), about the stuffiness of the compartment (Terence opened the window again and drew the curtains), about the dimness of the day, the roughness of the ride, the hardness of the cushion Baine had brought her.

She gave a little screamlet each time the train stopped, started, or went round a curve, and a large one when the railway guard came in to take our tickets. He was even older than the porter, but Verity leaned forward to look at his name badge and subsided pensively in her seat after he’d gone.

“What was the guard’s name?” I asked her when I helped her down at Reading Station, where we were to change trains.

“Edwards,” she said, looking around the platform. “Do you see anyone who looks like he’d be willing to marry Tossie?”

“What about Crippen over there?” I said, nodding my head toward a pale, timid-looking young man who kept looking down the track and sticking his finger nervously in his collar.