“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.”