Lovelace had caused a few Events in her time — or as she preferred to describe it, she had been present when Monterey caused Events. The trick to survival was to get out ahead of the catastrophe.
They had to drag Cressida somewhere quiet — at least somewhere less busy than a main hall of a stately home crawling with film crew. Hopefully Quant and Khan would have sorted out whatever disaster occurred on their way through, so Lovelace and Fenella could hop Cressida home before the rest of the Cramberleigh cast and crew returned from the pub.
Unfortunately, Fenella was basically four twigs in a jumpsuit. Her older sister was a solid piece, and inconveniently unconscious. Lovelace was a cat. Minimal lifting ability.
“You get her arms,” Lovelace advised. “And also her legs. I’m here for moral support. Do you think we might find some sort of transport dolly?”
A door slammed somewhere in the enormous house.
“Cupboard under the stairs!” hissed Lovelace. “Quickly.”
Fenella half-dragged Cressida across the floor. Her sister chose this moment to moan as if about to wake up.
“Goodness,” said a voice from behind them, so effortlessly posh that it probably had its own Hampstead postcode. “What do we have here?”
Fenella dropped Cressida with a squeak. “Lovelace!” she hissed.
“I know,” Lovelace gasped back. “I know.”
Neither of them could move, too busy staring wildly at the newcomer.
Lovelace had met all manner of historical celebrities over the last decade. Catherine De Medici. Rasputin. Andy Warhol. Sting. She had been present at the execution of Marie Antoinette, and two of Henry VIII’s weddings. She was one of the tiny number of travellers who would ever meet Cleopatra (and wasn’t Monterey disgruntled he had missed his chance).
This was different. Right now, staring across the hallway at a tiny, elegant woman in an Edwardian tea gown and giant Chanel sunglasses, Lovelace the time travelling Abyssinian cat was utterly captivated. Starstruck.
This was Fleur fucking Shropshire.
They should probably curtsey.
1 7F - A Mysterious Affair At Cramberleigh featured the surprise appearance of Agatha Christie as a house guest and family friend of Lady Cradoc. Agatha was played by Purr Templeton, who went on to great success as the romantic lead in the Whoops Britannia series of comedy films about life on board an English holiday cruise ship. This version of Agatha Christie was a young woman at the very beginning of her writing career, with a deep and morbid interest in poisons. Templeton was never available to reprise her role, despite being asked back every year. Eventually during the ‘Seventies Spy’ era of the show in 1976, a script was approved to bring a now-elderly Agatha Christie back to Cramberleigh in the episode 12F - M is For Mousetrap. The real Agatha Christie’s lawyers got wind of it and issued a Cease and Desist. The episode was eventually filmed featuring a different famous lady crime author named Tabitha Gristie. Played by Margaret Sims-Justice, the elderly Gristie was revealed to be a sinister mob boss using Russian espionage connections to fund theatrical adaptations of her popular whodunnit novels.
2 The ability of cats to communicate directly with humans was a comparatively recent twenty-fourth century social development, coinciding with the invention of time travel. Someone should probably look into that. Seems like it might be a significant detail.
3 The enduring professional relationship between Monterey and Lovelace was a matter of wide speculation among the residents of Chronos College. How were they still such an effective team given their mutually strong personalities? The secret was out-and-out bribery. Monterey had access to family funds, and exquisite taste in historical reproduction furnishings. He regularly indulged in extravagant gifts for his partner whenever he had annoyed her beyond the bounds of all reason. Lovelace’s apartment on campus was furnished with, to name but a few items: a Louis XIV chair, a Victorian hat rack, a grand piano and a mosaic bath.
Twenty-Three
Fleur Shropshire
Fleur fucking Shropshire.
If you weren’t there, you had no idea.
Fleur Shropshire was the girl next door, the wide-eyed ingenue, the cheeky Britminx of the Swinging Sixties.
No one understood why her agent kept signing new contracts for the same boring old TV costume drama when she was so sought-after, but Shropshire served four years as the trapped, bewildered and slightly Gothic heroine Lady Ann Wildegreen on Cramberleigh, in between big budget film projects where she kissed, cried, giggled and swooned her way across global cinema screens.
When she did finally leave, Shropshire insisted Lady Ann die on the Titanic, so she couldn’t be dragged back to the show ever again. “Drown the poor thing and put her out of her misery” was the quote famously printed in the Radio Times that year. The actress laughed when she repeated that story in interviews, so compelling and kooky and genuine that even devoted Cramberleigh fans couldn’t hold it against her.
Freed from the small screen at last, Fleur Shropshire transitioned from sweet romantic roles to sultry seductive ones just as the trends in cinema changed with her. She was London’s It Girl for nearly two decades.
The most famous photograph of Fleur Shropshire is that magazine cover with the crocheted bikini. Yes, that one. The one with a lot less crochet yarn than you might expect.
She was technically a Bond Girl, though only for five minutes before she was fired from the set for pranking the lead actor. Infamously, she raided the costume trailer on her way out, then turned up at the BAFTAS the following year wearing a certain deconstructed tuxedo as a mini-dress.
Fleur Shropshire kissed every leading man who was anyone in 1969. Yes, him. And him. All at the same party.
In 1974 she married a millionaire and retired to the country to “raise ducklings and babies in my Wellies.” In one of her many interviews, Shropshire smiled her glorious smile at the cameras and said: “I’ve done everything, darling. I’ve made every film I wanted to, and none that I didn’t. I’ve kissed so many lovely men along the way, and I’ve worn the best clothes in the business. I’ve played Juliet, Cleopatra and Queen Victoria. I even died on the bloody Titanic. Quit while you’re ahead, that’s what I say!”
Within eighteen months she was back in London, divorced and pretending her rich ex-husband never existed, all hemp blouses and golden mascara: modelling for Vivienne Westwood and partying with the Sex Pistols. She returned to TV in three glorious Technicolour episodes of Silver Sails, a glam sci-fi drama in the US in which she played Farrah X, an android woman looking for love.
In another timeline, Fleur Shropshire would have aged like a good whiskey. She would have shifted from movies to glamour soaps in the 80s, fitted in a sitcom or two in the 90s, turned up on panel shows for decades. She would have finished out her career as some lovely posh old lady detective in a long-running cozy crime series, or the naughty grandmother in a quirky small town comedy-drama.
Maybe she would have reinvented herself in her later years, as a judge on a TV show about ballroom dancing, or as the presenter of Most Stylish Canal Journeys of the Cotswolds.
None of that happened because in 1978, two days before her 40th birthday, Fleur Shropshire was killed during an accident on set. The entertainment world was thrown into shock and grief by her horrifying, unforeseen death during a film shoot for what would have been her most iconic movie yet.
She drowned on a replica of the Titanic.
Twenty-Four
Ruthven is Well and Truly Over 912
Ruthven wanted to scream and swear. He wanted to go back in time and remove every single lecture on bloody Time Mechanics he’d ever attended under Professor Boswell. Clearly the cat had no respect for anything to do with time travel.
Rule 1: don’t separate from your partner.
Ruthven spun around, searching the street, but all he saw were Vikings. And a mead stall.
