It matched the list in Provost Howard’s account of the raid. “And not the bishop’s bird stump,” I said, surveying the rubble. “Which means it’s here somewhere.”

“No luck finding it?” Carruthers asked.

“No,” I said. “I don’t suppose there’s any chance anyone arrived earlier and has already found it?”

“Nobody of ours,” Carruthers said. “Davis and Peters couldn’t even get to the right year. It took me four tries to get this close. The first time I came through I landed on the nineteenth. The second time I ended up in the middle of December. The third time I ended up spot-on target, right month, right day, ten minutes before the raid started. And in the middle of a field of marshmallows halfway to Birmingham.”

“Marshmallows?” I said, thinking that I couldn’t have heard right. Marshmallows didn’t grow in fields, did they?

“Marrows,” Carruthers said, sounding irritated. “In a field of vegetable marrows. And it wasn’t anything to joke about. The farmer’s wife thought I was a German paratrooper and locked me in the barn. I had the devil of a time getting out.”

“What about the new recruit?” I said.

“He came through right before I did. I found him wandering about in the Warwick Road, no idea of where to go. If I hadn’t found him he’d have fallen in a bomb crater.”

Which might not have been a bad thing, considering. The new recruit had given up watching Mr. Spivens and was back trying to figure out how to switch on his pocket torch.

“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?”