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finish searching the ruins, and Lady Schrapnell—”
    “—is the least of our worries. Which is something I never thought I’d find myself saying,” he said ruefully. “I gather Mr. Finch has explained the situation?”
    “Yes. No,” I said. “Perhaps you’d better review it for me.”
    “A crisis has developed regarding the net. I’ve notified Time Travel and—Finch did Chiswick say when he’d be here?”
    “I’ll check on it, sir,” he said, and went out.
    “A very serious situation,” Mr. Dunworthy said. “One of our historians—”
    Finch came back in. “He’s on his way over,” he said.
    “Good,” Dunworthy said. “Before he gets here, the situation is this: One of our historians stole a fan and brought it back through the net with her.”
    A fan. Well, that made a good deal more sense than a rat. Or a cab. And it explained the pinching part. “Like Lady Windermere’s mother,” I said.
    “Lady Windermere’s mother?” Mr. Dunworthy said, looking sharply at Finch.
    “Advanced time-lag, sir,” Finch said. “Disorientation, difficulty in distinguishing sounds, tendency to sentimentalize, impaired ability to reason logically,” he said, emphasizing the last two words.
    “Advanced?” Dunworthy said. “How many drops have you made?”
    “Fourteen this week. Ten jumble sales and six bishops’ wives. No, thirteen. I keep forgetting Mrs. Bittner. She was in Coventry. Not the Coventry I was in just now. Coventry today.”
    “Bittner,” Mr. Dunworthy said curiously. “This wasn’t Elizabeth Bittner, was it?”
    “Yes, sir,” I said. “The widow of the last bishop of Coventry Cathedral.”
    “Good Lord, I haven’t seen her in years,” he said. “I knew her back in the early days when we were first experimenting with the net. Wonderful girl. The first time I saw her I thought she was the most beautiful creature I’d ever seen. Too bad she had to fall in love with Bitty Bittner. She was absolutely devoted to him. How did she look?”
    Hardly like a girl, I thought. She’d been a frail, white-haired old lady who had seemed ill-at-ease through the whole interview. She had probably thought Lady Schrapnell was going to recruit her and send her off to the Middle Ages. “She looked very well,” I said. “She said she had some difficulty with arthritis.”
    “Arthritis,” he said, shaking his head. “Hard to imagine Lizzie Bittner with arthritis. What did you go and see her for? She wasn’t even born when the old Coventry Cathedral burned down.”
    “Lady Schrapnell thought the bishop’s bird stump might have been stored in the crypt of the new cathedral and that since Mrs. Bittner was there when the cathedral was sold, she might have supervised the cleaning out of the crypt and have seen it.”
    “And had she?”
    “No, sir. She said it had been destroyed in the fire.”
    “I remember when they had to sell Coventry Cathedral,” he said. “People had lost interest in religion, attendance was down at the services . . . Lizzie Bittner,” he said fondly. “Arthritis. I suppose her hair’s not red anymore either?”
    “Preoccupation with irrelevancies,” Finch said loudly. “Miss Jenkins said Mr. Henry had a severe case of time-lag.”
    “Miss Jenkins?” Mr. Dunworthy said.
    “The nurse who examined Mr. Henry at Infirmary.”
    “Lovely creature,” I said. “A ministering angel, whose gentle hands have soothed many a fevered brow.”
    Finch and Mr. Dunworthy exchanged looks.
    “She said it was the worst case of time-lag she’d ever seen,” Finch said.
    “Which is why I came to see you,” I said. “She’s prescribed two weeks of uninterrupted bed rest, and Lady Schrapnell—”
    “Will never allow that,” Mr. Dunworthy said. “The cathedral’s consecration is only seventeen days away.”
    “I tried to tell the nurse that, sir, but she wouldn’t listen. She told me to go to my rooms and go to bed.”
    “No, no, first place Lady Schrapnell would look.