“And when I began to tell him about Captain Faulknor’s tying the two ships together, he knew all about it. ‘It bound them into one,’ he said—”
“I think Mr. Hobbe must have gone home,” Polly said, “and I must go, too. If you could just tell me the name of someone I could speak to about getting hired on by Civil Defence, I—”
“But he can’t have gone home. I don’t believe he has one. I think it may have been destroyed in the same bomb blast. I’ve found him here at night several times since then.”
“At night?”
“Yes, and that first night, when I said I’d have one of the watch accompany him home—he’s not well, and I hated to think of him out in the blackout—I asked him where he lived, and he said, ‘It doesn’t exist.’ ”
“It doesn’t—?”
“Yes, dreadful, isn’t it, to think of him bombed out in this weather, with only a shelter to—”
“You said he’s been coming in every day,” Polly said. “For how long?”
“Several weeks,” he said, walking back out to the dome. “He began coming in shortly before the New Year. I’m afraid you’ve just missed him. What a pity. I did so want you two—”
“What does he look like?”
“Look like? He’s my age, or perhaps a bit older. Tall, thin, spectacles. I think he may have been a schoolmaster. He knows all about the history of St. Paul’s. He’s clearly troubled about something. I fear his family may have been killed in the bombing, he looks so sad. That’s partly why I wanted you to meet him. I thought your being interested in The Light of the World, too, might cheer—”
He stopped in midsentence. “I know where he’ll be,” he said. “He never leaves without taking a last look at it.” He started across the nave, but Polly had already passed him, running toward the south aisle, praying he was still there.
He was. He stood in front of the painting, his hat in his hands, his shoulders slumped tiredly, looking up at Christ’s face under its crown of thorns.
“One sees something different each time one looks at it,” Mr. Humphreys had said, and it was true. This time Christ looked not bored, not frightened, but infinitely sorry for both of them.
Polly stepped forward and put her hand on Mr. Dunworthy’s sleeve. “It’s all right,” she said, and began to cry.
“But you do know, don’t you,” he said, “that you committed the murders?”
—AGATHA CHRISTIE, THE ABC MURDERS
London—Winter 1941
POLLY LOOKED AT MR. DUNWORTHY STANDING THERE IN front of The Light of the World, and for a moment she thought she must have been wrong, as she had been wrong that night outside St. Paul’s, and it wasn’t him after all, but only someone who resembled him.
He seemed far older than the Mr. Dunworthy she knew, and his shabby coat, his worn hat, had an authenticity Wardrobe could never have managed. And he looked so weary. Mr. Humphreys had said he was “troubled” and “not well,” but it was far worse than that. He looked exhausted, broken. Defeated. Mr. Dunworthy had never been defeated by anything in his life.
But Polly had known even before she saw him that it was him—and worse, that the man she’d seen looking up at the dome of St. Paul’s that night had been him, too. And the reason he looked so defeated, so … beaten, was that he was as trapped and helpless as she and Eileen were. He wasn’t here as a rescuer. He was a fellow castaway.
But the mere fact that he was here at least meant that Oxford still existed. They hadn’t altered history and lost the war. And Oxford hadn’t been destroyed in some catastrophe. Everyone there wasn’t dead. And even if Mr. Dunworthy was shipwrecked, too, he was here, and she was overjoyed to see him.
“I’m so glad—” she began, and he turned and looked at her, but there was no surprise, no joy in his face, and as she stepped toward him, he backed away from her till he came up hard against The Light of the World.
Oh, God, Mr. Humphreys had said he’d been injured by a bomb blast, that he’d been in hospital. Could he have suffered brain damage? Could that be why he’d stared at her without recognition that night, and why he looked so afraid now? Because he didn’t know her? “Mr. Dunworthy?” she said softly because Mr.
Humphreys would be here any moment. “It’s me …”
“Polly,” he murmured. “It’s really you, isn’t it? It isn’t a dream? There were times in hospital when I thought that all of it—Oxford and time travel and you—was only a dream.”
“It wasn’t,” Polly said, “and I’m really here. Eileen—Merope’s here as well. She’ll be so glad to see you! This is wonderful!” She moved to embrace him.
“No,” he said, and put up his hands to ward her off. “Not wonderful. Not when you—”
“It’s all right. We already know about the drops not working. Michael—” She stopped herself in time. She would have to tell him about Michael’s death, but not yet. He didn’t look strong enough to bear it.
“We know we’re stranded here,” she said instead, but he was shaking his head.
“You don’t know,” he said fiercely. “Polly,” he began, and then stopped, as if he couldn’t bear to tell her. And what could be worse than knowing they couldn’t get out? What could make him look so … Oh, God, she thought. It’s Colin. He came through with Mr. Dunworthy.
Colin had talked him into letting him come along. Or tricked him and ducked under the net at the last moment, as he had when he was twelve. Whichever, they had both been here, they’d both been hit by the bomb blast. And the fact that he was here alone, that he’d been at St. Paul’s alone on the twenty-ninth, could only mean one thing.
“Did Colin—?”
“Oh, my goodness!” Mr. Humphreys said, bustling up. “Do you two know each other? But what a happy
