The Evacuation Committee’s files had been destroyed by the same pinpoint bomb which had vaporized St. Paul’s, and all he’d learned from local records was that the evacuees hadn’t been so much assigned to a particular family or house as dumped on them. A committee head he’d interviewed in 1960 had only been able to name three of the thirty children who’d been at Denewell Manor, and the only reason she’d remembered two of them was that they’d been such hellions.

“Alf and Binnie Hodbin were dreadful children. Lady Denewell was an absolute saint to have them there,” she’d told him. “They stole things, tormented livestock, damaged people’s property. And then they’d stand there and tell you the most outrageous lies.” And when he’d asked her if she’d had any contact with them since the war, she’d said, “No, thank heavens. I shouldn’t be surprised if they were in prison.”

She had known where the third evacuee—Edwina Barry, née Driscoll—was, but Mrs. Barry had been sent to another home before Eileen had left the manor, and she hadn’t known what had happened to the Hodbins either, though she knew they were from Whitechapel. He’d spent the next six months scouring prison rosters and Whitechapel’s housing records. He’d found out their address, but their tenement had been destroyed in February of 1941. Their names hadn’t been on the casualty list for the bombing, but a list of casualties for the entire Blitz had confirmed that their mother had been killed, which meant they probably had been, too.

He wrote down the opening date of the children’s evacuation exhibit and perused the rest of the brochure for any other possibly useful exhibitions, then glanced up.

Someone was coming. It was only a pair of tourists. They were in their fifties and, from the look of it, American. They both wore white plimsolls and had large cameras round their necks. The wife was wearing sunglasses even though it looked like it might rain at any moment, and the husband was grumbling, “I told you it wouldn’t be open yet.”

“It’s better to be too early than too late,” the wife said, and started up the steps. “Is the museum open?”

“If it was open,” the man growled, “he wouldn’t be sitting out here.”

“I’m Brenda,” she said, “and this is my husband, Bob.”

He stood up and shook her hand. “I’m Calvin Knight.”

“Oh, I just love English accents!”

There was no good answer to that, so he asked, “Are you here for the opening of the ‘Living Through the Blitz’ exhibition?”

“No, is that what’s on? We didn’t know anything about it. Bob just wanted to come because he’s interested in World War Two. We’ve already been to the RAF Museum and the Cabinet War Rooms. Did you hear that, honey?” she called down to her husband. “Calvin says they’re opening a thing here on the Blitz today.”

I hope, he thought. Bob and Brenda didn’t know about it, and there was no one here yet. Could he have the wrong day? There hadn’t been any slippage. This was definitely May seventh, but the article he’d read in the Times might have got the date of the opening wrong.