“Wait. Stop,” Mike said. “Pearl Harbor? The storming of the Bastille? I have no idea what either of you are talking about. Explain.”

Polly said, “After you and I talked about an increase in slippage possibly being the problem, it occurred to me that Mr. Dunworthy might have been putting all the assignments in chronological order.”

“Chronological? You’re right. He did put all mine in chronological order. That’s why you asked me about the order of my drops when you called.”

“Yes.” Polly explained about Eileen’s notes and her concluding that the increase might be much longer than a couple of months. “And I was frightened. Some of the worst raids of the Blitz will be after the first of the year, and we don’t even know when and where they are. And I’m not even certain our boardinghouses are safe from January on.” Which had the advantage of being true.

And let’s hope it convinces them, Polly thought.

“That isn’t the only reason,” Eileen said grimly. “Ask her why, if she was a typist in the War Office, she knows all about driving an ambulance. When I told her I had to learn to drive that day we talked to you in Oxford, Mike, she offered to teach me. On a Daimler, because that was what all the ambulances were.”

“I’d learned that from my prep for the Blitz,” Polly said. “I studied the Civil Defence—”

“And ask her why she turned and ran from a group of FANYs we saw on the platform in Holborn. She knew them from her assignment, that’s why. She never tried to avoid walking past Wrens.”

And all the time I was afraid she was fretting over Mike, she was actually playing detective like a character in one of her Agatha Christies, Polly thought. I underestimated her. But she can’t have figured it all out.

“And ask her where she went when she said she was going to St. Paul’s to meet the retrieval team.” She turned on Polly. “When I got to the National Gallery, it was pouring rain and the concert wasn’t till one, so I thought I’d come to St. Paul’s and meet you. But you weren’t there.”

“Yes, I was. We must just have missed each other. St. Paul’s is huge, and there are so many chapels and bays—”

“I saw you come in. I saw you buy that guidebook and spill pennies all over the floor. She was drenched,” Eileen said to Mike, “like she’d been out in the rain all morning. And don’t bother pretending you were up in the Whispering Gallery, Polly. It’s closed. And the sermon wasn’t ‘Seek and Ye Shall Find.’ It was ‘The Lost Sheep.’ You must have picked up an order of service for the early mass by mistake. Where were you?”

At least this was a question she could answer. “I was at Hampstead Heath. That was where my drop for VE-Day was.” She looked at Mike. “When you sent that message from Bletchley about older drops, I went to see if they might have opened mine to use for an emergency exit. And I couldn’t tell you, Eileen, because I didn’t want you to find out I’d been here before.”