to Bath when she was actually buried under a wall in Jermyn Street. Could the same thing have happened with Polly’s retrieval team? Could they have seen or heard something that made them reach an erroneous conclusion about where she was? Could they be off looking for her on Regent Street or in Knightsbridge? Or another city?
But she hadn’t gone off without telling anyone where she was going, like Marjorie, and she hadn’t been blown off-course. She was exactly where she’d told the lab—and Colin—she’d be: working in a department store on Oxford Street and sleeping in a tube station that had never been hit. And Doreen’s having come to Notting Hill Gate to tell her about Marjorie proved that Townsend Brothers knew how to find her if the retrieval team asked for her. And this was time travel—
“Wrong, wrong, wrong!” Sir Godfrey bellowed. Polly scrambled to find her place, but this time he was yelling at the rest of the cast. “Your chances of rescue are nearly nonexistent. You’re far from the shipping lanes, and when word of the loss of your ship reaches England, you will almost certainly be given up for dead.”
Given up for dead. What if, rather than thinking she was somewhere else, the retrieval team thought she was dead? When Doreen had first told her about Marjorie, she’d thought she was dead, and when she’d seen the wreckage of St. George’s, she’d thought Sir Godfrey and the others were. And they’d thought she was dead, too. Sir Godfrey had insisted that the rescue squad dig for her. What if, during that time the retrieval team had come, and the rector had told them she was dead? Or what if he’d—?
“Miss Laburnum,” she whispered, “after St. George’s was destroyed, did you—?”
“Lady Mary, did you have some comment on this scene?” Sir Godfrey asked, his voice dripping with sarcasm.
“No. I’m sorry, Sir Godfrey.”
“As. I. Was. Saying,” Sir Godfrey said, emphasizing each word, “only the butler, Crichton, and Lady Mary,” he glowered at her, “have realized the gravity of their plight at this point, and it is that which provides the humor, such as it is, in this scene. Lady Agatha, you stand here,” he said, taking Lila by the arm and moving her to the end of the platform, “and Lord Brocklehurst, you’re seated here in front of her on the sand.”
Polly took advantage of his repositioning the cast to ask Miss Laburnum, “When I was missing, did the rector send my name to the newspaper for the casualties list?”
Miss Laburnum shook her head. “Mrs. Wyvern thought it was our duty to send in a death notice,” she whispered, “but Sir Godfrey wouldn’t hear of it. He—”
“Mary!” Sir Godfrey thundered. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to rehearse this scene before the end of the war.”
“Sorry.”
They started through the scene. Polly forced herself to concentrate on saying her lines and getting through her blocking without incurring Sir Godfrey’s wrath again, but as soon as rehearsal was over, she took the tube to Holborn’s lending library to look at its old newspapers. Mrs. Wyvern might not have notified officials of her death, but that didn’t mean the incident officer—or one of the ARP wardens—hadn’t. Or she might have been mentioned in the account of the church’s destruction. And if the retrieval team had seen “Polly Sebastian, died suddenly of enemy attack” in the Times—”
But the oldest paper the library had was three days old. “You haven’t any from farther back?” she asked the librarian.
“No,” she said apologetically. “Some children came round several days ago collecting for the scrap paper drive.”
She’d have to go to the Times office herself. But when? The newspaper morgue wasn’t open Sundays, her only day off, and her lunch break wasn’t long enough for her to go all the way to Fleet Street and back. And Polly didn’t dare phone in again and say she was ill. Miss Snelgrove was convinced anyone who asked for time off was decamping like Marjorie.
But she had to see those casualties lists, so after rehearsal the next night she borrowed Sir Godfrey’s Times to find a death notice she could use, borrowed a handkerchief from Miss Laburnum, and waited for Friday night when the raids over Clerkenwell would hopefully prevent Miss Snelgrove from getting to work on time the next morning.
They did. Polly grabbed the handkerchief and ran upstairs to Personnel to ask Mr. Witherill if she could be gone for the morning. “To attend my aunt’s funeral.”