“Oh, thank goodness,” Eileen said, and Polly saw that she had been crying. “Mr. Dunworthy and I have been so worried … When you didn’t come home last night … The warden told us there’d been bombs all over the West End, and then when I rang the theater and the stage manager said you’d run out during the performance into the middle of a raid and hadn’t come back, I …”

Eileen broke off, blew her nose, and attempted to smile. “The matron said they found you inside the Phoenix Theatre. What on earth were you doing there?”

“Saving Sir Godfrey’s life,” Polly said. “Eileen, how ill was Binnie?”

“How ill? What—?”

“With the measles. Would she have died if you hadn’t been there?”

“I don’t know. Her fever was dreadfully high. But you’re not going to die, Polly. The nurse said you’d be fine—”

“What happened to the firewatcher?”

“The fire—”

“The one who was injured, who John Bartholomew took to St. Bart’s? Did Mr. Bartholomew save his life?”

“Polly, you’re not making any sense. The doctor said you breathed in a good deal of gas. I think you may still—”

“On the last day of your assignment, why didn’t you go back to Oxford?”

“I told you, the quarantine.”

“No, I need to know exactly what happened,” Polly said, clutching Eileen’s hand. “Please. It’s important.”

Eileen looked at her as if trying to decide whether to call the nurse, and then said, “I was leaving to go to the drop when some new evacuees arrived. Theodore was one of them.”

Theodore, who had prevented them from going straight to St. Paul’s to find John Bartholomew. They had had to take him home to Stepney, and by the time they reached St. Paul’s, the sirens had gone and the ARP warden—

“I had to get the new evacuees settled,” Eileen was saying, “and then as I was leaving, the vicar asked me to help him get out of giving Una, Lady Caroline’s kitchen maid, her driving lesson, and when I drove round the curve, Alf and Binnie were standing in the middle of the lane.”

Blocking the way. Delaying her. As they had delayed her on the twenty-ninth, as the troop trains had delayed Polly reaching Backbury and the manor till after Captain Chase had left for London, as the slippage had delayed Mike till after the bus had left for Dover, as she was almost certain the Hodbins had delayed—

“Are Alf and Binnie here at the hospital?” Polly asked.

“Yes, downstairs in the waiting room. Children aren’t allowed in the wards.”

“Is Mr. Dunworthy here?”

“No, I thought it best not to tell him what had happened till I found out for certain—”

That’s what I’m trying to do, Polly thought. Find out for certain.

“Go and ask Alf and Binnie—” she said, and then stopped. They wouldn’t tell Eileen the truth. If they even remembered the incident. Alf and Binnie had clearly thought they knew Mr. Dunworthy from somewhere that night she brought him home from St. Paul’s—they’d asked her if he was a truant officer—but they hadn’t been able to place him. And if Eileen asked them, they’d assume the guard—or the authorities—were involved.