CHAPTER TWENTY

The trip home closely resembled Napoleon’s retreat from Waterloo: a great deal of panic, hurry, and confusion, followed by inaction and despair. Jane nearly got left behind in the scramble for the station, Mrs. Mering threatened to faint again, and there was another cloudburst just as we rolled up. Terence nearly poked Tossie in the eye trying to get the umbrellas up.

Baine was holding the train by brute force. “Hurry,” I said to Mrs. Mering, helping her out of the hansom cab, “the train’s pulling out.”

“No, no, it mustn’t leave without us,” she said, sounding genuinely urgent. “My premonition—”

“Then we must hurry,” Verity said, taking her other arm, and we propelled her across the platform to first-class.

The station guard, still arguing with Baine, gave up at the sight of Tossie struggling with her skirts and her ruffled parasol and helped her board, tipping his hat gallantly. “I know,” I muttered. “Get his name.”

There was no time to find a porter. Terence and I, ignoring the conventions of class, grabbed the hampers, satchel, parcels, rugs, and Jane out of the hansom cab and flung them willy-nilly into the second-class carriage.

I ran back to pay the driver, who tore off as soon as the money was in his hands as if Blücher's Prussians were after him, and ran back onto the platform. The train had started to move, its heavy wheels turning in a slow but mounting acceleration. The station guard stepped back from the edge of the platform, his hands clasped behind his back. “What’s your name?” I gasped, running up.

Whatever he answered, the train’s whistle drowned it out completely. The train began to pick up speed.

“What?” I shouted. The whistle blew again.

“What?” he shouted.

“Your name,” I said.

“Ned!” Terence shouted from the first-class platform. “Come on then!”

“I’m coming. What’s your name?” I shouted to the guard and jumped for it.

I missed. My right hand caught the brass railing and I hung there for an instant. Terence grabbed my left arm and hauled me up onto the step. I grasped the railing and turned around. The station guard was trotting toward the station, his head ducked into his pulled-up collar.

“Your name!” I shouted into the rain, but he had already disappeared into the station.

“What was that all about?” Terence said. “You very nearly ended up like Anna Karenina.”

“Nothing,” I said. “Which is our compartment?”

“Third back,” he said and started down the corridor to where Verity stood, looking back at the platform, which was now rapidly receding from us. Rain poured down on its empty boards.

“ ‘Thy fate is the common fate of all,’ ” Terence quoted. “ ‘Into each life some rain must fall, Some days must be dark and dreary,’ ” and opened the compartment door. Mrs. Mering sat slumped against the cushions in a state of semicollapse, holding a lace-edged handkerchief to her nose.

“Are you certain Tossie’s mother wasn’t the one who had the life-changing experience?” I whispered to Verity.

“Mr. Henry, Verity, do come in and sit down,” Mrs. Mering said, waving the handkerchief. I caught a blast of Parma violets. “And shut the door. You’re causing a draft.”

We came in. I shut the door. We sat down.

“ ‘And homeward bound we wend our merry way,’ ” Terence quoted, smiling at everyone.

No one smiled back. Mrs. Mering sniffed at her handkerchief, Verity looked worried, and Tossie, huddled in the corner, positively glared at him.

If she had had a life-altering experience, she certainly didn’t look it. She looked tired and sulky and damp. Her ruffled organdy was limp and non-fluttering, and her golden curls had begun to frizz.

“We might at least have stayed for tea, Mama,” she said fretfully. “The curate intended to ask us, I’m sure of it. It isn’t as if this were the only train. If we’d taken the 5:36, we’d have had plenty of time for tea.”

“When one has a dreadful premonition,” Mrs. Mering said, obviously feeling better, “one does not stop for tea.” She waved the handkerchief, and I got another staggering whiff of violets. “I tried to tell Mesiel he should come with us.”

“Did your premonition specify it was Colonel Mering who was in danger?” Verity asked.

“No,” Mrs. Mering said, and got that odd, probing-a-tooth look again. “It… there was… water—” She gave a tiny scream. “What if he’s fallen in the fishpond and drowned? His new goldfish was to arrive today.” She sank back against the cushions, breathing into the handkerchief.

“Papa knows how to swim,” Tossie said.

“He might have hit his head on the stone edging,” Mrs. Mering said stubbornly. “Something dreadful’s happened. I can feel it!”

She wasn’t the only one. I glanced sideways at Verity. She was looking calmly desperate. We needed to talk.

“Can I fetch you anything, Mrs. Mering?” I said. I wasn’t sure how to get Verity out of the compartment. Perhaps I could get the railway guard to give her a message. I’d cross that railway bridge when I came to it. “It’s rather chilly in here. Can I fetch you a travelling rug?”

“It is cold,” she said. “Verity, go and tell Jane I want my Scottish shawl. Tossie, do you want yours?”

“What?” Tossie said uninterestedly, looking out the window.

“Your shawl,” Mrs. Mering said. “Do you want it?”

“No!” Tossie said violently.

“Nonsense,” Mrs. Mering said. “It’s cold in here,” and to Verity, “Bring Tossie’s shawl.”

“Yes, Aunt Malvinia,” Verity said and went out.

“It is cold in here,” I said. “Shall I ask the guard to bring in a stove? Or a heated brick for your feet?”

“No. Why on earth don’t you want your shawl, Tossie?”

“I want my tea,” Tossie said to the window. “Do you think I’m aesthetically uneducated?”

“Of course not,” Mrs. Mering said. “You speak French. Where are you going, Mr. Henry?”

I took my hand off the compartment door. “I just thought I’d step out onto the observation platform for a moment,” I said, taking out a pipe as proof.

“Nonsense. It’s pouring rain out there.”

I sat down, defeated. Verity would be back in a moment, and we’d have missed our chance. The way we had missed our chance in Coventry.

“Mr. St. Trewes,” Mrs. Mering said, “go and tell Baine to bring us some tea.”

“I’ll do it,” I said, and was out of the compartment before she could stop me. Verity would already be on her way back with the shawl. If I could stop her before she got to the end of the second-class carriage, we could—

A hand reached out of the second-to-last compartment, grabbed my sleeve, and yanked me inside. “Where have you been?” Verity said.

“It isn’t easy to get away from Mrs. Mering,” I said, taking a look down the corridor to make sure there was no one coming before I shut the compartment door.

Verity pulled down the shades. “The real question is, what do we do now?” She sat down. “I was sure getting her to Coventry would do the trick. She’d see the bishop’s bird stump, she’d meet Mr. Whatever-His-Name-Is-Beginning-With-a-C, her life would be changed, and the incongruity would be fixed.”

“We don’t know that it wasn’t. She may have had her life changed, and we just don’t know it yet. There were those men on the platform in Reading, and the conductor, and the curate. And the one who looked like Crippen. And Cyril. We mustn’t forget his name begins with a ‘C.’ ”

She didn’t even smile. “Tossie didn’t let him come to Coventry, remember?”