"Connie Willis - To Say Nothing of the Dog (txt)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Willis Connie)

“It took us two hours to get here,” Carruthers said. “How about you, Ned? How many tries before you got this close?”

“Just the one. I only just got pulled off jumble sales to try when you weren’t having any luck.”

“Jumble sales?”

“Lady Schrapnell got the idea the bishop’s bird stump might have been sold at one of the cathedral’s jumble sales,” I said. “You know, to raise money for the war effort. Or given to a scrap iron drive, so she sent me to every church and community function from September on. I say, you don’t know what a penwiper’s used for, do you?”

“I don’t even know what a penwiper is.”

“Neither do I,” I said. “I’ve bought seven. Two dahlias, a rose, a kitten, a hedgehog, and two Union Jacks. One’s got to buy something, and since I couldn’t bring anything I bought back through the net with me, it had to be something I could slip onto the fancy goods table without being caught, and penwipers are small. Except for the rose. It was nearly as big as a soccer ball, made out of layers and layers of bright fuchsia wool sewn together, and pinked round the edges. And what I can’t see is what on earth the use of something like that would be, except of course for people to buy at jumble sales. They all had them, the Evacuated Children Charity Fair, the ARP Gas Mask Fund Baked Goods Sale, the St. Anne’s Day Sale of Work—”

Carruthers was looking at me oddly. “Ned,” he said, “how many drops have you made in the past week?”

“Ten,” I said, trying to remember. “No, twelve. There was the Trinity Church Harvest Fкte, the Women’s Institute Victory Drive Sale of Work, the Spitfire Benefit Tea. Oh, and the bishops’ wives. Thirteen. No, twelve. Mrs. Bittner wasn’t a drop.”

“Mrs. Bittner?” Carruthers said. “The wife of the last bishop of Coventry?”

I nodded. “She’s still alive. And still living in Coventry. Lady Schrapnell sent me out to interview her.”

“What could she possibly know about the old cathedral? She wouldn’t even have been born when it burned.”

“Lady Schrapnell had the idea that if the bishop’s bird stump survived the fire, it might have been put in storage somewhere in the new cathedral, so she sent me to interview the bishops’ wives because, and I quote, ‘Men don’t know where anything’s kept.’”

Carruthers shook his head sadly. “And did the wives know?”

“They’d never evenheard of it except for Mrs. Bittner, and she said it wasn’t there when they packed up everything before they sold the new cathedral.”

“But that’s good, isn’t it?” he said. “If it isn’t here either, that means it wasn’t in the cathedral when the raid happened, and you can tell Lady Schrapnell she won’t need to have a reconstruction of it in the cathedral for the consecration.”

“You tell her,” I said.

“Perhaps it was removed for safekeeping,” he said, looking at the windows. “Like the east windows.”

“The bishop’s bird stump?” I said incredulously. “Are you joking?”

“You’re right,” he said. “It isn’t the sort of thing you’d want to keep from being blown up. Victorian art!” He shuddered.

“Besides,” I said, “I’ve already been to Lucy Hampton rectory—that’s where they took the windows—to check. It wasn’t there.”

“Oh,” Carruthers said. “Could it have been moved to somewhere else in the church?”

That was an idea. Perhaps one of the Altar Guild ladies, unable to stand the sight of it, had stuck it in a corner behind a pillar or something.

“Why is Lady Schrapnell so obsessed with this stump thing anyway?” Carruthers said.

“Why is she so obsessed with every detail of this project?” I said. “Before she assigned me to the bishop’s bird stump, it was monuments. She wanted a copy of every inscription on every monument in the cathedral, including the one on Captain Gervase Scrope’s tomb, which went on forever.”

Carruthers nodded sympathetically. “Organ pipes,” he said. “She’s had me all over the Middle Ages measuring organ pipes.”