All Clear

Mr. Dunworthy sank down heavily onto the chair, and Polly saw with dread how painfully he moved, how frail he was. She’d assumed she’d be killed just before her deadline by a bomb or shrapnel, but there were other ways of eliminating someone who might create a paradox—complications following an injury, or pneumonia.

“I should have thought of this before,” Mr. Humphreys was saying. “There should always be chairs in this bay, so that visitors can sit and contemplate The Light of the World.” He smiled happily up at it. “It’s a painting which cannot be understood in a few moments of looking. It requires time.”

“Time,” Mr. Dunworthy said bitterly.

Oh, God, Polly thought. He does have a deadline.

“Did you tell Mr. Hobbe you were a fellow admirer of The Light of the World, Miss Sebastian?” Mr. Humphreys asked brightly. “That was why I wished the two of you to meet, Mr. Hobbe. I knew I was right to insist on its being here in St. Paul’s, even though only as a copy. ‘It belongs here,’ I told Dean Matthews. ‘Who knows what good may come from some visitor’s seeing it?’ And now look, it’s brought the two of you together. God truly does work in mysterious—”

Mr. Humphreys stopped at a sound of voices and looked out across the nave. The three sailors who’d been in the north transept were looking at the bricked-up Wellington Monument.

“Oh, good, they didn’t leave after all,” Mr. Humphreys said. “If I may take leave of you for a moment, I need to speak with them. I did not finish telling them the story of Captain Faulknor.”

He hurried off. Polly knelt in front of Mr. Dunworthy. “When were you here in the Blitz before?”

“When I was seventeen,” he said. “And again when I was—”

“No, no, the dates. What dates were you here doing observations?”

“In May and in October and November.”

“And that’s all?”

“No,” he said, and she could tell from his face that this was it, the bad news.

Oh, God, she thought.

“September the seventeenth.”

But both that and his assignments to October and November were safely past. Might he have come through early for the May raids to set things up as she’d done for Dulwich? “When did you come through for the big raids?”

“May first.”

“And those were the only times? You weren’t here in February or March or April?”

He shook his head.

Thank goodness. She’d been terrified he’d say he’d been here tomorrow. Or tonight. May was dreadful enough, but it was three months off, and if the problem was just slippage …

“You mustn’t worry,” she said. “One of our drops is bound to open by then, Eileen’s or mine or the one in Hampstead Heath. And if you know what’s causing the problem … You do, don’t you?”

“Yes,” he said dully. “I know what’s causing the problem. I kept hoping it meant something else. When I found out I’d come through in December, I thought perhaps it was all right and you’d completed your assignment and were safely back in Oxford, but when I saw you at St. Paul’s—”

“I saw you, too,” Polly said, but he went on as if she hadn’t spoken.

“—and when I saw the three of you the next morning, sitting on the steps, I was afraid he was right.”

“You saw Merope and Michael and me?” Polly said, bewildered. Why hadn’t he come over and told them he was there? And who was he afraid was right? Right about what?

There was clearly a good deal here she didn’t understand, but this was no time to ask questions. Mr. Dunworthy looked exhausted and ill. His face was pinched with cold, and he’d begun to shiver. And Mr. Humphreys had said he’d been here all afternoon. He’d had no business spending the day in such a chill, drafty place when he was only just out of hospital. He’d had one relapse already. And The Light of the World’s lantern, for all its golden-orange glow, didn’t give off any warmth.

She needed to get him home to a real fire.

“Mr. Dunworthy,” she said. “I think we should go—”

“And then, when I heard about Michael, when I learned he’d been killed, I was certain. Polly, I am so sorry.”

“There’s nothing to be sorry for. It wasn’t your fault,” she said briskly. “We mustn’t stay here in this cold.”

She took both his hands in hers. They were like ice. “Let me take you home, and—”

He cut her off with a bitter laugh. “Home.”

“I meant home here. In Bloomsbury, mine and Merope’s,” she said, wondering how on earth she was going to get him there. A taxi would be best, but she hadn’t enough for the fare. She supposed she could leave Mr. Dunworthy in the taxi when they got there and run inside to fetch the fare, but it was a good deal of money. Till she was actually taken on as an air-raid warden, they shouldn’t be spending …

She thought suddenly of her promise to Hattie to be at the Alhambra for rehearsal by three. Even though everything was changed now that Mr. Dunworthy was here, she still owed it to Hattie to let her know she wouldn’t be there, especially after Hattie had covered for her, and it would be well after five before they arrived home. She’d have to try to get him to the tube station and ring from there.