“You can ask her your questions on the way there,” Talbot said, leading him, her arm still firmly linked in his, toward the ambulance exhibit, but he had no chance to ask Binnie anything. Half a dozen women latched on to her before they reached it, asking her questions, and when they reached the ambulance, half a dozen others were waiting for her. They insisted she climb into the back and then the driver’s seat.
He pushed through the crowd to her and leaned in the window. “If you could just clear up a few details, Mrs. Lambert,” he said. “You mentioned the bombing of Westminster Abbey. When did that happen?”
“May tenth,” Camberley said before Binnie could answer.
And so much for that clever idea, Colin thought.
“I remember,” Camberley said, “because I was supposed to go to dinner and a show that night with a simply gorgeous flight officer, and instead I spent the entire night ferrying casualties. I’ll never forgive Hitler for ruining my evening.”
“What show was he taking you to?” Binnie asked.
This is no time to be discussing “Theater During the Blitz,” Colin thought in annoyance.
“Was it the naughty revue at the Windmill?” Talbot suggested.
“ ‘We never closed,’ ” Pudge quoted.
“Nor wore any clothes,” Talbot said.
“No,” Camberley said. “He took me to a play! And I wore—”
“What sort of play?” Binnie asked. “A pantomime?”
“A pantomime?” Camberley said. “Pantomimes are for children.”
“I saw a pantomime once during the Blitz,” Binnie went on as if she hadn’t heard her. “Sleeping Beauty. At the Regent. Sir Godfrey Kingsman was the Bad Fairy.”
“Oh, speaking of sleeping,” the woman who’d passed out the name badges said, “you all must see the display on ‘Sleeping Through the Blitz.’ Do you remember Horlick’s? And those siren suits? It’s this way,” she said, and they all started through the doorway and down the corridor, taking Binnie with them.
Colin followed, but before he reached the door, a new group of women with Union Jacks on their name badges swept in, and by the time he made it into the corridor, he expected her to have vanished. But Binnie was only halfway down it, stopped in front of a black-and-white photograph of a church, its tower in flames.
“Isn’t that St. Bride’s?” Binnie asked, pointing at it. “I remember the night it burned. The raids were so terrible that night. It was sometime at the end of April—”
“No, it wasn’t,” Browne said. “St. Bride’s burned in December.”
“Oh, that’s right,” Binnie said, “the same night St. Paul’s nearly did.” She looked down the corridor at Colin. “I must have got it confused. I know something happened at the end of April.”
I found Polly and Eileen and Mr. Dunworthy, Colin thought. Thank you, he mouthed silently at Binnie, but she’d already turned back to look at the photograph.
Camberley said something to her, and the other women closed in about her, blocking her from his view. The Union Jack women surged into the corridor, chattering and exclaiming.
“Harris!” someone in a bright green hat called. “There you are. I thought I’d never find you. It’s time to go.”
Time to go. Colin squeezed out of the corridor and walked back through the exhibition toward the exit. And now all I have to do is get Mr. Dunworthy’s drop to open. If that’s the drop I used. And not get caught by the fire watch. Or, if it won’t open, find another drop. And then find Mr. Dunworthy. And the theater. But he had the name of it. And the knowledge that he hadn’t been too late, that Polly was still alive.
He reached the exit. It was flanked by a photograph of the King and Queen, waving to the jubilant VE-Day crowds from a balcony of Buckingham Palace, and a life-sized cutout of Winston Churchill making the V-for-victory sign. As he walked through the doorway, the triumphant note of the all clear sounded.
He made his way quickly through the lobby to the ticket desk. “Can you give Ann Perry a message for me?” he asked the ticket seller. “Would you tell her thank you and that the exhibition was extremely informative? And tell her I’m genuinely sorry I wasn’t who she thought I was.”
“Yes, sir.” The ticket seller wrote the message down, and Colin went outside, thinking about what he had to do. Find out the address of the Regent and how to get there from St. Paul’s, and decipher what “the end of April” meant. The twentieth? The thirtieth? He hoped it wasn’t the thirtieth. Mr. Dunworthy’s deadline was May first. The thirtieth would be cutting it a bit fine.
Binnie had said the raids were bad the night he came. That should narrow it down a bit, unless there’d been raids every night in April. He went down the steps. If he could find out what dates Sleeping Beauty had been performed, that would—
Binnie was standing down by the Lily Maid. “How did you get out here?” Colin asked.
“I used a trick I learned from Alf,” she said.
He looked back at the building. “You set the Imperial War Museum on fire?”
“No, of course not. I told them I’d dropped my contact lens,” and when he looked at her blankly, “Contacts are eyeglass lenses which fit directly on the eye.
Breakable lenses. They’re all crawling about on the floor looking for it. But I haven’t much time. I wanted to make certain you understood everything.”
“Yes. The Regent Theater. During a performance of the pantomime Sleeping Beauty.”
“No, a rehearsal,” she said.
“And you don’t know the date?”
