by Dick Francis
‘I’m afraid this is on a cash bar basis,’ I said, putting the glass on the table and preparing to open the can.
‘What does that mean?’
‘Things from the bar are extra. Not included in the fare.’
‘How ridiculous. And I haven’t any money.’
‘You could pay later, I’m sure.’
‘I think it’s stupid.’
I opened the can and poured the coke, and Mrs Young, who happened to be sitting alone at the next table, turned round and said to Xanthe sweetly that she, Mrs Young, would pay for the coke, and wouldn’t Xanthe come and join her?
Xanthe’s first instinct was clearly to refuse but, sulky or not, she was also lonely, and there was an undemanding grandmotherliness about Mrs Young that promised an uncritical listening ear. Xanthe moved herself and her coke and unburdened herself of her immediate thought.
‘That brother of mine,’ she said, ‘is an asshole.’
‘Perhaps he has his problems,’ Mrs Young said equably, digging around in her capacious and disorganised handbag for some money.
‘If he was anyone else’s kid, he’d be in jail.’
The words came out as if propelled irresistibly from a well of compressed emotion. Even Xanthe herself looked shocked at what she’d let out, and feebly tried to weaken the impact. ‘I didn’t mean literally, of course,’ she said. But she had.
Mrs Young, who had paused in her search, finally found her purse and gave me a dollar.
‘If there’s any change, keep it,’ she said.
‘Thank you, madam.’
I had no choice but to leave and I made for the kitchen carrying the dollar on the tray like a trophy anchored by a thumb. From there I looked back to see Xanthe begin to talk to Mrs Young, at first slowly, with brakes on, and then faster and faster, until all the unhappiness was pouring out like a flood. I could see Xanthe’s face and the back of Mrs Young’s head. Xanthe, it seemed to me, was perhaps sixteen, but probably younger: certainly not older. She still had the facial contours of childhood, with a round chin and big-pupilled eyes: also chestnut hair in abundance and a growing figure hidden within a bulky white top with a pink glittering pop-group slogan on the front, the badge of youth.
They were still talking when I continued on my way back to my roomette where I sat in comfortable privacy for a while reading the timetable and also reflecting that although I still had no answers to the old questions, I now had a whole crop of new ones, the most urgent being whether or not Filmer had already known the Youngs were friends of Ezra Gideon. Whether the Youngs were, in fact, a target of some kind. Yet Filmer hadn’t chosen to sit at their table; it had been the random fortuitous decision of Daffodil. Perhaps if it hadn’t happened so handily by chance, he would have engineered a meeting. Or was the fact of their friendship with Gideon just an unwelcome coincidence, as I had at first supposed. Time, perhaps, would tell.
Time told me more immediately that it was five-thirty, the hour of return to the dining room, and I returned to find every single seat already taken, the passengers having learned fast. Latecomers stood in the entrances, looking forlorn.
Filmer, I saw at once, was placed opposite Mercer Lorrimore. Daffodil beside him, was opposite Bambi who was being coolly gracious.
Xanthe was still sitting across from Mrs Young, now rejoined by her husband. Sheridan, as far as I could see, was absent. Giles-the-murderer was present, sitting with the Youngs and Xanthe, being nice.
Emil, Oliver, Cathy and I went round the tables pouring wine, tea or coffee into glasses or cups on small trays with small movements, and when that was done Zak bounded into the midst of things, vibrating with fresh energy, to get on with the mystery.
I didn’t listen in detail to it all, but it revolved round Pierre and Donna, and Raoul the racehorse trainer who wanted to marry her money. Zak had got round the pre-empted Pierre-hitting-Raoul-to-the-ground routine by having Donna slap Raoul’s face instead, which she did with a gusto that brought gasps from the audience. Donna was clearly established as the wittering Bricknells’ besotted daughter, with Raoul obviously Mavis’s favourite, and Pierre despised as a no-good compulsive gambler. Mother and daughter went into a sharp slanging match, with Walter fussing and trying to stop them. Mavis, in the end, started crying.
I looked at the passengers’ faces. Even though they knew this lot were all actors, they were transfixed. Soap opera had come to life within touching distance. Racing people, I’d always thought, were among the most cynical in the world, yet here some of the most experienced of them were moved and involved despite themselves.
Zak, keeping up the tension, said that at the last of our brief stops at minor stations he had been handed a telex about Angelica’s missing friend Steve. Was Angelica present? Everyone looked around, and no, she wasn’t. Never mind, Zak said, would someone please tell her that she must telephone Steve from Sudbury, as he had serious news for her.
A lot of people nodded. It was amazing.
Dressed in silk and ablaze with jewellery, apparently to prove that Donna’s inheritance was no myth, Mavis Bricknell stumbled off towards the toilet room at the dome car’s entrance saying she must repair the ravages to her face, and presently she came back, screaming loudly.
Angelica, it appeared, was lying on the lavatory floor, extremely dead. Zak naturally bustled to investigate, followed by a sizeable section of the audience. Some of them soon came back smiling weakly and looking unsettled.
‘She can’t really be dead,’ someone said solemnly. ‘But she certainly looks it.’
There was a lot of ‘blood’ all over the small compartment, it appeared, with Angelica’s battered head in shadow beyond the essential facility. Angelica’s eyes were just visible staring at the wall, unblinking. ‘How can she do that?’ several said.
Zak came back, looked around him, and beckoned to me.
‘Stand in front of that door, will you, and don’t let anyone go in?’
I nodded and went through the crowd towards the dome car. Zak himself was calling everyone back into the dining room, saying they should all stay together until we reached Sudbury, which would be soon. I could hear Nell’s voice announcing calmly that everyone had time for another drink. There would be an hour’s stop in Sudbury for everyone to stretch their legs if they wanted to, and dinner would be served as soon as the train started again.
I went across the clattering, windy linkage space between the dining and dome cars and stood outside the toilet room. I wasn’t actually pleased with Zak as I didn’t want to risk being identified as an actor, but that, I supposed, would be a great deal better than the truth.
It was boring in the passage but also, it proved, necessary, as one or two passengers came back for a look at the corpse. They were good humoured enough when turned away. Meanwhile the corpse, who must have had to blink in the end, could be heard flushing water within.
When we began to slow down I knocked on the door. ‘Message from Zak,’ I said.
The door opened a fraction. Angelica’s greasepaint make-up was a pale bluish grey, her hair a mass of tomato ketchup.
‘Lock the door,’ I said. ‘Zak will be along. When you hear his voice outside, unlock it.’
‘Right,’ she said, sounding cheerfully alive. ‘Have a nice trip.’
CHAPTER EIGHT
Angelica left the train on a stretcher in the dusk under bright station lights, her tomato head half covered by a blanket and one lifeless hand, with red fingernails and sparkling rings, artistically drooping out of concealment on the side where the train’s passengers were able to look on with fascination.
I watched the scene through the window of George Burley’s office while I talked to Bill Baudelaire’s mother on the telephone.
The conversation had been a surprise from the beginning, when a light young female voice had answered my call.
‘Could I speak to Mrs Baudelaire, please?’ I said.
‘Speaking.’
‘I mean … Mrs Baudelair
e senior.’
‘Any Mrs Baudelaire who is senior to me is in her grave,’ she announced. ‘Who are you?’
‘Tor Kelsey.’
‘Oh yes,’ she replied instantly. ‘The invisible man.’
I half laughed.
‘How do you do it?’ she asked. ‘I’m dying to know.’
‘Seriously?’
‘Of course, seriously.’
‘Well … say if someone serves you fairly often in a shop, you recognise them when you’re in the shop, but if you meet them somewhere quite different, like at the races, you can’t remember who they are.’
‘Quite right. It’s happened to me often.’
‘To be easily recognised,’ I said, ‘you have to be in your usual environment. So the trick about invisibility is not to have a usual environment.’
There was a pause, then she said, ‘Thank you. It must be lonely.’
I couldn’t think of an answer to that, but was astounded by her perception.
‘The interesting thing is,’ I said, ‘that it’s quite different for the people who work in the shop. When they get to know their customers, they recognise them easily anywhere in the world. So the racing people I know, I recognise everywhere. They don’t know that I exist … and that’s invisibility.’
‘You are,’ she said, ‘an extraordinary young man.’
She stumped me again.
‘But Bill knew you existed,’ she said, ‘and he told me he didn’t recognise you face to face.’
‘He was looking for the environment he knew … straight hair, no sunglasses, a good grey suit, collar and tie.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘If I meet you, will I know you?’
‘I’ll tell you.’
‘Pact.’
This, I thought with relief and enjoyment, was some carrier pigeon.
‘Would you give Bill some messages?’ I asked.
‘Fire away. I’ll write them down.’
‘The train reaches Winnipeg tomorrow evening at about seven-thirty, and everyone disembarks to go to hotels. Please would you tell Bill I will not be staying at the same hotel as the owners, and that I will again not be going to the President’s lunch, but that I will be at the races, even if he doesn’t see me.’
I paused. She repeated what I’d said.
‘Great,’ I said. ‘And would you ask him some questions?’
‘Fire away.’
‘Ask him for general information on a Mr and Mrs Young who own a horse called Sparrowgrass.’
‘It’s on the train,’ she said.
‘Yes, that’s right.’ I was surprised, but she said Bill had given her a list to be a help with messages.
‘Ask him,’ I said, ‘if Sheridan Lorrimore has ever been in any trouble that he knows of, apart from assaulting an actor at Toronto, that should have resulted in Sheridan going to jail.’
‘Gracious me. The Lorrimores don’t go to jail.’
‘So I gathered,’ I said dryly, ‘and would you also ask which horses are running at Winnipeg and which at Vancouver, and which in Bill’s opinion is the really best horse on the train, not necessarily on form, and which has the best chance of winning either race.’
‘I don’t need to ask Bill the first question, I can answer that for you right away, it’s on this list. Nearly all the eleven horses, nine to be exact, are running at Vancouver. Only Upper Gumtree and Flokati run at Winnipeg. As for the second, in my own opinion neither Upper Gumtree nor Flokati will win at Winnipeg because Mercer Lorrimore is shipping his great horse Premiere by horse-van.’
‘Um …’ I said. ‘You follow racing quite a bit?’
‘My dear young man, didn’t Bill tell you? His father and I owned and ran the Ontario Raceworld magazine for years before we sold it to a conglomerate.’
‘I see,’ I said faintly.
‘And as for the Vancouver race,’ she went on blithely, ‘Laurentide Ice might as well melt right now, but Sparrowgrass and Voting Right are both in with a good chance. Sparrowgrass will probably start favourite as his form is consistently good, but as you ask, very likely the best horse, the one with most potential for the future, is Mercer Lorrimore’s Voting Right, and I would give that one the edge.’
‘Mrs Baudelaire,’ I said, ‘you are a gem.’
‘Beyond the price of rubies,’ she agreed. ‘Anything else?’
‘Nothing, except … I hope you are well.’
‘No, not very. You’re kind to ask. Goodbye, young man. I’m always here.’
She put the receiver down quickly as if to stop me from asking anything else about her illness, and it reminded me sharply of my Aunt Viv, bright, spirited and horse mad to the end.
I went back to the dining car to find Oliver and Cathy laying the tables for dinner, and I helped them automatically, although they said I needn’t. The job done, we repaired to the kitchen door to see literally what was cooking and to take the printed menus from Angus to put on the tables.
Blinis with caviar, we read, followed by rack of lamb or cold poached salmon, then chocolate mousse with cream.
‘There won’t be any over,’ Cathy sighed, and she was right as far as the blinis went, though we all ate lamb in the end.
With ovens and gas burners roaring away, it was wiltingly hot even at the dining room end of the kitchen. Down where the chef worked, a temperature gauge on the wall stood at 102° Fahrenheit, but tall willowy Angus, whose high hat nearly brushed the ceiling, looked cool and unperturbed.
‘Don’t you have air-conditioning?’ I asked.
Angus said, ‘In summer, I dare say. October is however officially winter, even though it’s been warm this year. The air-conditioning needs freon gas which has all leaked away, and it won’t be topped up again until spring. So Simone tells me.’
Simone, a good foot shorter and with sweat trickling down her temples, mutely nodded.
The passengers came straggling back shedding overcoats and saying it was cold outside, and again the dining car filled up. The Lorrimores this time were all sitting together. The Youngs were with the Unwins from Australia and Filmer and Daffodil shared a table with a pair Nell later identified to me as the American owners of the horse called Flokati.
Filmer, extremely smooth in a dark suit and grey silk tie, solicitously removed Daffodil’s chinchillas and hung them over the back of her chair. She shimmered in a figure-hugging black dress, diamonds sparkling whenever she moved, easily outstripping the rest of the company (even Mavis Bricknell) in conspicuous expenditure.
The train made its smooth inconspicuous departure and I did my stuff with water and breadsticks.
Bambi Lorrimore put her hand arrestingly on my arm as I passed. She was wearing a mink jacket and struggling to get out of it.
‘Take this back into our private car, will you?’ she said. ‘It’s too hot in here. Put it in the saloon, not the bedroom.’
‘Certainly, madam,’ I agreed, helping her with alacrity. ‘I’d be glad to.’
Mercer produced a key and gave it to me, explaining that I would come to a locked door.
‘Lock it again when you come back.’
‘Yes, sir.’
He nodded and, carrying the coat away over my arm, I went back through the dome car and with a great deal of interest into the private quarters of the Lorrimores.
There were lights on everywhere. I came first to a small unoccupied sleeping space, then a galley, cold and lifeless. Provision for private food and private crew, but no food, no crew. Beyond that was the locked door, and beyond that a small handsome dining room to seat eight. Through there, down a corridor, there were three bedrooms, two with the doors open. I took a quick peek inside: bed, drawers, small bathroom with shower. One was clearly Xanthe’s, the other by inference Sheridan’s. I didn’t go into the parents’ room but went on beyond it to find myself in the rear part of the carriage, at the very end of the train.
It was a comfortable drawing room with a television set and abundant upholstered armchairs in pastel bl
ues and greens. I went over to the rear door and looked out, seeing a little open boarding platform with a polished brass-topped balustrade and, beyond, the Canadian Pacific’s single pair of rails streaming away into darkness. The railroad across Canada, I’d learned, was single track for most of the way. Only in towns and at a few other places could trains going in opposite directions pass.
I put the mink coat on a chair and retraced my journey, locking the door again and eventually returning the key to Mercer who nodded without speech and put it in his pocket.
Emil was pouring wine. The passengers were scoffing the blinis. I eased into the general picture again and became as unidentifiable as possible. Few people, I discovered, looked directly at a waiter’s eyes, even when they were talking to him.
About an hour after we’d left Sudbury we stopped briefly for under five minutes at a place called Cartier and then went on again. The passengers, replete with the lamb and chocolate mousse, lingered over coffee, and began to drift away to the dome car’s bar and lounge. Xanthe Lorrimore got up from the table after a while and went that way, and presently came back screaming.
This time, the real thing. She came stumbling back into the dining car followed by a commotion of people yelling behind her.
She reached her parents who were bewildered as well as worried.
‘I was nearly killed,’ she said frantically. ‘I nearly stepped off into space. I mean, I was nearly killed.’
‘Darling,’ Mercer said calmingly, ‘what has exactly happened?’
‘You don’t understand.’ She was screaming, trembling, hysterical. ‘I nearly stepped into space because our private car isn’t there.’
It brought both of the Lorrimores to their feet in an incredulous rush, but they had only to look at the faces crowding behind her to know it was true.
‘And they say, all those people say …’ she was gasping, half unable to get the words out, terribly frightened ‘… they say the other train, the regular Canadian, is only half an hour behind us, and will smash into … will smash into … don’t you see?’
The Lorrimores, followed by everyone still in the dining room, went dashing off into the dome car, but Emil and I looked at each other, and I said, ‘How do we warn that train?’