I sat down opposite her. “Personally, my money’s on the curate,” I said. “A bit too pop-eyed and pompous for my taste, but then Tossie’s already demonstrated how wretched her taste is, and you saw how he was ogling her. My bet is that he shows up at Muchings End tomorrow on some pretext or other — he’s decided to become a spiritist, or he wants advice on the coconut shy, or something — they fall in love, she drops Terence like a hot potato, and the next thing you know, they’re posting the banns for Miss Tossie Mering and the Reverend Mr.—”

“Dolt,” Verity said.

“It’s a perfectly legitimate theory,” I said. “You heard the two of them cooing about the Albert Mem—”

“Doult. D-O-U-L-T,” she said. “The Reverend Mr. Doult.”

“Are you certain?”

She nodded grimly. “Mrs. Mering told me his name when we were getting into the carriage. ‘A well-intended young man, the Reverend Mr. Doult,’ she said, ‘but lacking in intelligence. He refuses to see the logic of the afterlife?’ ”

“You’re sure it was Doult, and not—”

“Colt?” she said. “I’m positive.” She shook her head. “The curate wasn’t Mr. C.”

“Well, then, it must have been one of the men on the platform at Reading. Or Muchings End’s curate.”

“His name is Arbitage.”

“So he says. what if he’s operating under an alias?”

“An alias? He’s a clergyman.”

“I know, and the Church would be particularly unforgiving of youthful misbehavior and misdemeanors, which would be why he had to take an assumed name. And his constantly being at Muchings End shows he’s interested in her. And, speaking of which, what is this peculiar fascination she has for curates?”

“They all need wives to help them with the Sunday school and the church fêtes.”

“Jumble sales,” I muttered. “I knew it. The Reverend Mr. Arbitage is interested in spiritism,” I said to Verity. “He’s interested in vandalizing old churches. He’s—”

“He’s not Mr. C,” Verity said. “I looked him up. He married Eglantine Chattisbourne.”

“Eglantine Chattisbourne?” I said.

She nodded. “In 1897. He became the vicar of St. Albans in Norwich.”

“What about the station guard?” I said. “I didn’t catch his name. He—”

“Tossie didn’t even glance at him. She hasn’t shown the slightest interest in anybody all day.” She leaned tiredly back against the seat. “We have to face it, Ned. The life-changing experience didn’t happen?”

She looked so discouraged I felt I had to try and cheer her up. “The diary didn’t say she had the life-changing experience in Coventry,” I said. “All it said was, ‘I shall never forget that day we went to Coventry.’ It might have happened on the way home. Mrs. Mering had a premonition something terrible was going to happen,” I said, and smiled at her. “Perhaps there’ll be a train wreck, and Mr. C will pull Tossie out of the wreckage.”

“A train wreck,” she said longingly. She stood and picked up the shawl. “We’d better be getting back before Mrs. Mering sends someone to look for us,” she said resignedly.

I opened the door. “Something will happen, you’ll see. There’s still the diary. And Finch’s related project, whatever that is. And we’ve still got a half-dozen stations and a change of trains before Muchings End. Perhaps Tossie will collide with Mr. C on the platform in Reading. Or perhaps she already has. When you didn’t come back, her mother sent her to look for you, and as the train swayed going round a curve, she fell into his arms. Dashing, titled, as insufferable as she is, and he happens to be the sculptor of the bishop’s bird stump, and she’s in his compartment right now, discussing Victorian art.”

But she wasn’t. She was still in her corner, looking moodily out at the rain, when we entered our compartment.

“There you are,” Mrs. Mering said. “Where have you been? I’m nearly frozen.”

Verity hastened to drape the shawl around Mrs. Mering’s shoulders.

“Did you tell Baine we wanted our tea?” Mrs. Mering said.

“I am just on my way to do so now,” I said, my hand on the door handle. “I met Miss Brown on my way there and accompanied her back,” and ducked out.

I expected to find Baine deep in Toynbee’s The Industrial Revolution or Darwin’s Descent of Man, but his book lay open on the seat beside him, and he was staring out at the rain. And apparently thinking about his aesthetic outburst and what the consequences of it might be, because he said gloomily, “Mr. Henry, might I ask a question about the States? You have been there. Is it true America is the Land of Opportunity?”

I really should have studied Nineteenth Century. All I could remember was a civil war, and several gold rushes. “It is definitely a country where everyone is free to voice his opinion,” I said, “and does so. Particularly in the western states. Mrs. Mering would like tea,” I told him and then went out on the rear platform and stood there with my pipe, pretending to smoke and looking at the rain myself. It had subsided into a misty drizzle. Heavy clouds hung grayly over the muddy roads we rattled by. Retreating to Paris.

Verity was right. We had to face it. Mr. C wasn’t going to show up at Reading or anywhere else. We had attempted to mend the tear in the continuum by tying the broken threads together again, getting Tossie to the appointed place on the appointed day.

But in a chaotic system, there was no such thing as a simple tear. Every event was connected to every other. When Verity waded into the Thames, when I walked down the tracks to the railway station, dozens, thousands of events had been affected. Including the whereabouts of Mr. C on 15 June, 1888. We had broken all the threads at once, and the fabric in the space-time loom had come apart.

“ ‘Out flew the web and floated wide,’ ” I said aloud. “ ‘ “The curse is come upon me,” cried the Lady of Shalott.’ ”

“Eh, what’s that?” a man’s voice said, opening the door and coming out on the platform. He was stout, with an enormous set of Dundreary whiskers and a meerschaum pipe which he tamped down violently. “Curse, did you say?” he said, lighting his pipe.

“Tennyson,” I said.

“Poetry,” he growled. “Lot of rot, if you ask me. Art, sculpture, music, what use are they in the real world?”

“Exactly,” I said, extending my hand. “Ned Henry. How do you do?”

“Arthur T. Mitford,” he said, crushing my hand in his grip.

Well, it was worth a try.

“Don’t believe in curses,” he said, sucking fiercely on his pipe. “Or Fate, or destiny. Lot of rot. A man makes his own destiny.”

“I hope you’re right,” I said.

“Of course I’m right. Look at Wellington.”

I knocked the tobacco out of my pipe onto the rails below, and started back to the compartment. Look at Wellington. And Joan of Arc at Orléans. And John Paul Jones. They had all succeeded when everything looked lost.

And the continuum was tougher than it looked. It had slippage and backups and redundancy. “Missing you one place, we meet another.” And if so, what I’d told Verity might be true, and Mr. C might be on the platform at Reading. Or in our compartment at this very moment, punching our tickets or hawking sweetmeats.

He wasn’t. Baine was, handing round china cups and dispensing tea, which was having an unfortunate revivifying effect on Mrs. Mering. She sat up straight, arranged her plaid shawl around her, and set about making everyone miserable.

“Tossie,” she said. “Sit up properly and drink your tea. You were the one who wanted tea. Baine, didn’t you bring lemon?”

“I will see if there are any for sale in the station, madam,” he said and departed.

“Why is this such a long stop?” Mrs. Mering said. “We should have taken an express. Verity, this shawl gives no warmth at all. You should have told Jane to bring the cashmere.”

The train started up, and after several minutes, Baine reappeared, looking like he had had to run for it. “I’m afraid they hadn’t any lemon, madam,” he said, producing a bottle of milk from his pocket. “Would you care for milk?”