“ ‘In the details,’ ” I said.

“She even tried to recruit me,” Finch said. “Wanted me to go back to the Blitz and look for the bishop’s bathtub.”

“Bird stump,” I corrected.

“That’s what I said,” he said, looking hard at me. “You’re having difficulty distinguishing sounds, aren’t you? The nurse said you were. And you’re obviously disoriented.” He shook his head. “You’re not going to be any use at all.”

“What does Mr. Dunworthy want to see me about?”

“There’s been an incident.”

“Incident” was the euphemism the AFS employed to mean a high-explosive bomb, houses reduced to rubble, bodies buried, fires everywhere. But surely Finch didn’t mean that sort of incident. Or perhaps I was still having Difficulty Distinguishing Sounds.

“An incident?” I said.

“Calamity, actually. One of his historians. Nineteenth Century. Pinched a rat.”

Oh, definitely Difficulty, although there had been rats in the Victorian era. But no one would have pinched one. It would pinch you back, or worse. “What did you say?” I asked cautiously.

“I said, ‘Here we are,’ ” Finch said, and we were. There was Balliol’s gate, though not the side one, the front gate and the porter’s lodge and the front quad.

I started through the quad and up the stairs to Mr. Dunworthy’s room, but I was apparently still disoriented because Finch took my arm again and led me across the garden quad to Beard.

“Mr. Dunworthy’s had to turn the Senior Common Room into an office. She has no respect at all for the sported oak or the notion of knocking, so Mr. Dunworthy’s had to devise an outer and inner office, though I personally think a moat would have been more effective.”