“Fifty-two,” I muttered.

“I beg your pardon?” the curate said.

“Nothing,” I said. “You’re modernizing the tower, too?”

“Yes. It and the spire are being completely recased. It’s rather rough here, ladies.” He offered Tossie his arm.

Mrs. Mering took it. “Where is your crypt?” she asked.

“The crypt?” he said. “Over here,” he pointed in the direction of the hoarding, “but it’s not being modernized.”

“Do you believe in the world beyond?” Mrs. Mering said.

“I… of course,” he said, bewildered. “I’m a man of the cloth.” He smiled protuberantly at Tossie. “I am of course merely a curate at present, but I hope to be offered a living next year in Sussex.”

“Are you familiar with Arthur Conan Doyle?” Mrs. Mering demanded.

“I… yes,” he said, looking even more bewildered. “That is, I’ve read A Study in Scarlet. Thrilling story.”

“You have not read his writings on spiritism?” she said. “Baine!” she called to the butler, who was neatly standing the umbrellas next to the door. “Fetch the issue of The Light with Arthur Conan Doyle’s letter in it.”

Baine nodded, opened the heavy door, and disappeared into the deluge, pulling his collar up as he went.

Mrs. Mering turned back to the curate. “You have heard, of course, of Madame Iritosky?” she said, steering him firmly in the direction of the crypt.

The curate looked confused. “Is she something to do with jumble sales?”

“She was right. I can feel the presence of the spirits here,” Mrs. Mering said. “Have you any history of ghosts here at St. Michael’s?”

“Well, actually,” the curate said, “there is a legend of a spirit having been seen in the tower. The legend dates back to the Fourteenth Century, I believe,” and they passed beyond the hoardings to the Other Side.

Tossie looked after them uncertainly, trying to decide whether she should follow them.

“Come look at this, Tossie,” Terence said, standing in front of a brass inscription. “It’s a monument to Gervase Scrope. Listen to what it says, ‘Here lies a poor tossed tennis ball/Was racketed from spring to fall.’ ”

Tossie obediently came over to read it, then to look at a small brass plate to the Botoners, who had built the cathedral.

“How quaint!” Tossie said. “Listen. ‘William and Adam built the tower, Ann and Mary built the spire. William and Adam built the church, Ann and Mary built the choir.’ ”

She moved on to look at a large marble monument to Dame Mary Bridgeman and Mrs. Eliza Samwell, and then an oil painting of “The Parable of the Lost Lamb,” and we proceeded round the nave, stepping over boards and bags of sand, and stopping at each of the chapels in turn.

“Oh, I do wish we had a guidebook,” Tossie said, frowning at the Purbeck marble baptismal font. “How can one tell what to look at without a guidebook?”

She and Terence moved on to the Cappers’ Chapel. Verity paused and gently tugged on my coat-tails, pulling me back. “Let them get ahead,” she said under her breath.

I obediently stopped in front of a brass of a woman in Jacobean costume dated 1609. “In memory of Ann Sewell,” it read. “A worthy stirrer-up of others to all holy virtues.”

“Obviously an ancestor of Lady Schrapnell’s,” Verity said. “Have you found out the curate’s name?”

When would I have had the chance to do that? I thought. “You think he’s Mr. C?” I said. “He did seem taken with her.”

“Every man seems taken with her,” she said, looking at Tossie, who was hanging on Terence’s arm and giggling. “The question is, is she taken with him? Do you see the bishop’s bird stump?”

“Not yet,” I said, looking round the nave. The flowers in front of the choir hoardings were in plain brass vases, and the sawdust-covered roses in the Cappers’ Chapel were in a silver bowl.

“Where is it supposed to be?”

“In the fall of 1940, standing against the parclose screen of the Smiths’ Chapel,” I said. “In the summer of 1888, I have no idea. It could be anywhere.” Including under one of those green tarps or somewhere behind the hoardings.

“Perhaps we should ask the curate where it is when he comes back,” she said anxiously.

“We can’t,” I said.

“Why not?”

“First, it’s not the sort of thing that would be in Baedeker. The average tourist, which is what we’re supposed to be, would never have heard of it. Second, it’s not the bishop’s bird stump yet. It only became the bishop’s bird stump in 1926.”

“What was it till then?”

“A cast-iron footed pedestal firugeal urn. Or possibly a fruit compote.”

The sound of hammering behind the hoardings stopped abruptly, and there was the ghostly sound of swearing.

Verity glanced at Tossie and Terence, who were pointing at a stained-glass window, and then asked, “What happened in 1926?”

“There was a particularly acrimonious Ladies’ Altar Guild meeting,” I said, “at which someone proposed the purchase of a bird stump, which was a sort of tall ceramic vase popular at the time, for the flowers in the nave. The bishop had recently instituted cost-cutting measures for the running of the cathedral, and the proposal was voted down on the grounds that it was an unnecessary expense and that there must be something around somewhere they could use; i.e., the cast-iron footed pedestal firugeal urn which had been in storage down in the crypt for twenty years. It was thereafter referred to somewhat bitterly as ‘the bishop’s notion of a bird stump,’ and eventually shortened to—”

“The bishop’s bird stump.”

“But if it wasn’t the bishop’s bird stump when Tossie saw it, how does Lady Schrapnell know what she saw?”

“She described it in considerable detail in her diaries over the years, and when Lady Schrapnell first proposed her project, an historian was sent back to identify it in the spring of 1940 from the descriptions.”

“Could the historian have stolen it?” she asked.

“No.”

“How can you be certain?”

“It was me.”

“Cousin,” Tossie called. “Do come see what we’ve found.”

“Perhaps she’s found it without us,” I said, but it was only another monument, this one with a row of four swaddled infants carved on it.

“Isn’t it cunning?” Tossie said. “Look at the dearum-dearum babies.”

The south door opened, and Baine came in, sopping wet and clutching the issue of The Light inside his coat.

“Baine!” Tossie called.

He came over, leaving a trail of water. “Yes, miss?”

“It’s chilly in here. Fetch my Persian shawl. The pink one, with fringe. And Miss Browns.”

“Oh, that isn’t necessary,” Verity said, looking pityingly at Baine’s bedraggled appearance. “I’m not cold at all.”

“Nonsense,” Tossie said. “Bring both of them. And see they don’t get wet.”

“Yes, miss,” Baine said. “I shall fetch them as soon as I’ve brought your mother her book.”

Tossie put her lips in a pout.

“Oh, look, Cousin,” Verity said before she could demand Baine go get the shawls now. “These misereres show the Seven Works of Mercy,” and Tossie obediently went into the Girdlers’ Chapel to admire them, followed by the black marble altar tomb, assorted fan vaulting, and a monument with a particularly long and illegible inscription.

Verity took the opportunity to pull me ahead. “‘What if it isn’t here?” she whispered.

“It’s here,” I said. “It didn’t disappear till 1940.”

“I mean, what if it isn’t here because of the incongruity? What if events have changed, and they’ve already moved it down to the crypt or sold it at a jumble sale?”

“The bazaar’s not till next week.”

“Which aisle did you say it was in in 1940?” she said, starting purposefully toward the back of the nave.

“This aisle,” I said, trying to catch up, “in front of the Smiths’ Chapel, but that doesn’t mean that’s where it is now—” I said, and stopped because it was.

It was obvious why they had put the bishop’s bird stump in this particular aisle. In 1888 the light in this part of the nave had been very dim, and one of the pillars blocked it from the view of the rest of the church.