The Woman on the Orient Express

by Lindsay Jayne Ashford

  “Nonsense!” Katharine grunted a laugh. “I love the Arabs, but they can be very tiresome unless you know the ropes. Really, I insist: you must come to us. It would be an absolute pleasure for me. I’m surrounded by men for five months at a stretch, and one does crave a little female company.”

  There was something in the way she said it, something that defied contradiction while at the same time hinting at vulnerability, almost a fear of what she was going to. And yet she had said this was her fourth season at the dig.

  Agatha had a strange sense that for Katharine, this journey was the exact opposite of hers: that for all her talk of loving what she did for a living, something menacing awaited her in the desert.

  CHAPTER 4

  Milan to Venice

  As the train crossed the bridge over the Ticino River, Agatha began writing a letter to her daughter. She planned to compose it in stages, describing her impressions of each country they passed through on the way to Istanbul, where she would post it.

  The thought of not seeing Rosalind for almost three months was hard to bear. If she had not taken this holiday, she would have been able to visit her at school a couple of times during the autumn term. The girls were allowed to be taken out on Sunday afternoons—a maximum of four times per term. These rationed visits would, of course, have to be divided between herself and Archie.

  Her sister Madge, knowing how Agatha felt about the prospect of Archie’s forthcoming marriage, had kindly offered to visit Rosalind if she decided to go away. Rosalind loved Aunt Madge, but it didn’t make Agatha feel any less guilty about not being there for her daughter.

  The train stopped at Milan just before lunch, and a number of people, including Katharine and Agatha, disembarked to stretch their legs while the locomotive was changed.

  The frost and snow of the Alps was far behind them and they stepped out into sunshine. As they wandered up and down the platform, Agatha shaded her eyes with her hand, scanning the groups of passengers for the girl she had seen in the dining car. There was no sign of her. Perhaps she had left the train before Milan. It had stopped at two other stations since breakfast—Brig and Domodossola—places Agatha had never heard of. Had she gone after the man who got off in the mountains?

  As Katharine chattered away about the sights they would see when they reached Baghdad, Agatha told herself for the umpteenth time that the man she had seen in the window couldn’t possibly have been Archie.

  She made herself consider the matter as a lawyer might when interviewing a potential witness in a court case. Of her two sightings of the man, the first had been at night on a smoke-filled platform and the second a mere reflection on glass. No jury in the land, she told herself sternly, would convict on evidence like that.

  When they got back on the train, she stared at her own reflection in the window, silently berating herself for getting into such a state over something that was pure fantasy. She knew very well where Archie would be at this moment: at his desk at Austral Development Ltd. in London. A creature of habit, he would probably go for lunch at the Criterion in Piccadilly. Then, in the evening, he would return to the place he was renting in West Kensington.

  He was getting married in a few days’ time. There was no earthly reason why he should be traveling anywhere this week—let alone on the Orient Express. He hated trains. Couldn’t stand riding in anything unless he was in control. A plane or a car was fine—but not a train. Never a train.

  As they pulled out of the station, Katharine announced that she was too exhausted to contemplate lunch. “Those wretched bedbugs kept me awake all night,” she said. “I think I’ll just order a sandwich and then lie down for a while. You don’t mind, do you?” She flashed another of her dazzling smiles. Clearly, she wanted the compartment to herself for a couple of hours. Agatha was beginning to realize that Katharine was the kind of woman who was used to getting her own way.

  As she made her way to the dining car, she tried to imagine her fellow traveler on an archaeological dig site in the middle of the desert, the only woman in a team of men. With looks like hers, it was a situation likely to spell trouble. She guessed that Katharine’s combination of charm and steely determination was the armor she had developed for fending them off.

  Lunchtime on the train was much busier than breakfast had been. The headwaiter asked Agatha if she would mind sharing a table. He seated her opposite an elderly lady from Canada who said she was on her way to see her son, who worked for an oil company. She was very deaf, so the conversation was limited.

  “Don’t feel you have to talk, my dear,” she said, brandishing a forkful of Wiener schnitzel. “The food is so marvelous, it really deserves one’s full attention.”

  Agatha ordered French onion soup, followed by rillettes of duck. This was served with a half bottle of claret, which she was going to send back because—to her disappointment—alcohol had never agreed with her. But her dining companion seized it before she could catch the waiter’s attention.

  “Don’t you want it, my dear? May I take it? So nice to have a little something in hand. I do hate disturbing the stewards late at night.”

  Agatha smiled to herself, picturing the woman pouring wine into the glass she probably kept her false teeth in.

  When the old lady got up to leave the table, she was quite unsteady, grasping the edge as she attempted to walk down the aisle. Agatha went to her aid and offered to walk her back to her compartment, but a steward appeared before they had taken more than half a dozen steps.

  As she made her way back to the table, Agatha caught sight of a familiar profile. It was the girl from breakfast. She was two tables back from hers, facing toward the engine. She was looking down at a book that lay open beside her plate. Even if she had looked up, she would not have seen Agatha without twisting her head at an uncomfortable angle. So she lingered over getting back into her seat, taking a good look at the girl. Her right hand was on the table, beside the book, but the left was out of sight. Agatha had not noticed, at breakfast, whether she wore a ring.

  Archie’s wedding was taking place on the Saturday after next. She knew the date because Rosalind had come out with it after a weekend visit. She wanted to be a bridesmaid, but her father had told her it wasn’t going to be that sort of wedding. For that, at least, Agatha was thankful. It would have been unimaginably cruel, sending Rosalind home with a request like that.

  She went back to her half-eaten plate of duck, took a mouthful, then pushed it away, no clearer in her mind about the girl’s identity. She was the right age, certainly. And there was something hauntingly familiar about her face. Agatha told herself she must be someone else she had met before. But not her. Not Nancy.

  Through the window she saw a flat expanse of water. A sign flashed by: “Lago di Garda.” Soon they would be in Venice. For some inexplicable reason, Hercule Poirot appeared in her mind’s eye as she gazed across the lake. What, she wondered, would her little Belgian detective do in a situation like this?

  The answer came back in a flash. You must use the little gray cells.

  Yes. Of course. But how, exactly?

  The irony of it didn’t escape her. There she was—sitting on a train that she had already decided would feature in one of her future novels—waiting for a figment of her imagination to tell her what to do. How is it, she thought, that one can create a character who is more intelligent, more observant, more perceptive than oneself?

  She had intended to take coffee in the saloon after lunch to while away the time Katharine needed for her nap. But she decided to stay put for the time being. She wanted to see which way the girl went when she left the dining car. That would narrow down the location of her compartment, which would be a start.

  She moved into the aisle seat and took out the compact she kept in her bag. By appearing to powder her nose, she was able to see the comings and goings behind her. She didn’t have long to wait. The girl stepped out from the table, then darted back to pick up her book, as if she had almost forgotten it. She h
ad her back to Agatha, heading for the same portion of the train that Agatha and Katharine occupied.

  There were only two wagon-lit carriages between the engine and the dining car: one was first class, the other second. Would Archie’s future bride be traveling first class? Agatha thought it unlikely. She had a strong suspicion that money—her money—was part of the reason he had stopped loving her in the way he once did: she had become a different person from the girl he had married—an independent woman with an income of her own.

  It was time to put the second part of her plan into action. She asked to speak to the headwaiter, telling him that she thought she’d recognized a fellow passenger but was reluctant to approach her in case of embarrassment if she was mistaken.

  “Which table was it, madame?” He spoke with a very slight accent, which might have been French or something else.

  She pointed it out, and he went to his station at the other end of the carriage to consult a list. She hovered in the aisle, feeling like a criminal as he came toward her.

  “The name is Ann Nelson, madame.” He smiled at Agatha inquiringly. She wondered if he could hear her heart thumping in her chest. Ann. That was not good enough. Because an Ann could still be a Nancy, couldn’t she? Agatha had nursed alongside a woman called Nancy in Torquay, and the letters she received had always borne the first initial A. It was one of those peculiar English habits, to christen a girl Ann and call her Nancy, just as all the boys called Jack were really Johns.

  “Ah . . . er . . . Nelson . . . ,” she mumbled. “That must be her . . . er . . . her married name.” It was not the name of Archie’s lover, but it was very similar. She was a Miss Neele—or so he’d told her. Could she be traveling under an alias? It seemed unlikely.

  But you’re doing it. This time the voice in her head was her own.

  “Would you like me to send her a message?” The headwaiter was positively beaming at her now. “A happy coincidence, is it not?”

  “Oh . . . no . . . thank you. I’m . . . er . . . I’d like to surprise her.” She gave him her brightest smile. “If you could just give me the number of her compartment . . .” She was trading shamelessly on the fact that people never suspect middle-class women the wrong side of forty to be engaged in anything underhanded. And although she was not yet that old, Agatha was sure she looked it in those spectacles.

  “But of course, madame.” He summoned one of the waiters, addressing him in French. The compartment number was duly scribbled on the pad that hung from the waiter’s belt.

  She had been right about the location: it was in the second-class carriage, not the first. She was at the far end, nearest to the engine, while Agatha was in the middle.

  She made her way to the saloon, clutching the scrap of paper, her mind racing. If she went to the compartment and knocked on the door, what would she say? She could hardly ask the girl outright if she was her husband’s mistress. Neither could Agatha demand to know if she was traveling under an assumed name.

  She decided that a direct approach was likely to create a good deal of embarrassment and would probably get her nowhere. She was going to have to be more subtle about it, await an opportunity to engage the girl in seemingly casual conversation. Off her guard, she was far more likely to reveal something that would give Agatha her answer.

  A steward seated her at the only unoccupied table in the saloon and brought coffee and petit fours. She bit into a heart-shaped morsel of chocolate-covered cake. Raspberry sauce oozed from the middle onto her tongue. It was a most comforting sensation. At the other end of the room, a pianist struck up the opening bars of Chopin’s Fantaisie. Through the window she spotted a town on top of a hill, terra-cotta rooftops clustered round an ancient bell tower. She glanced at her watch. Less than an hour, now, until Venice. The Orient Express would not leave until nine o’clock that evening, so there was plenty of time for sightseeing. She had been looking forward to exploring the place; she must not let this . . . what? This possibility ruin it.

  The man at Cook’s had tried to persuade her to book a place on a guided tour, but she had come on this journey to avoid that kind of thing. She much preferred the idea of seeing the city from one of the water buses used by local people to get around. She had a Baedeker’s guide and thought she would do pretty well by herself.

  It suddenly occurred to Agatha that she might engineer a conversation with the mystery girl by following her when she got off. By positioning herself near the girl’s compartment as they pulled into the station, she could watch her disembark, then follow at a discreet distance.

  You’re obsessed. Why can’t you leave it alone?

  Archie’s voice, low and menacing. It reminded Agatha of the night he’d left the house at Sunningdale for the very last time, furious with her for refusing to divorce him. She would never forget the look in his eyes. It was as if a stranger had taken over the person she thought she knew.

  He was demanding a divorce, but he flatly refused to allow Nancy’s name to be mentioned in the proceedings. Instead, he wanted to fake some sordid encounter in a hotel in Brighton as grounds for ending their marriage.

  Agatha felt that if he’d been honest about it, if he and Nancy had had the guts to admit to what was going on between them, she would have caved in earlier than she did. It seemed doubly unfair, having to appear in court herself while Nancy remained untouched by scandal. And when she had to break the news to Rosalind that her father wouldn’t be living with them anymore, her little girl had turned away, saying, “Daddy likes me, doesn’t he? It’s you he doesn’t like.”

  A man’s voice—real, not imagined—brought Agatha back to reality.

  “Would you mind if I joined you?” Brown eyes smiled from a young, tanned face with a neatly clipped mustache. “Forgive me for the intrusion, but I’m afraid there are no other seats available.”

  “Oh, yes—please do sit down.”

  He looked about the same age as her nephew, Jack. Although nearly thirty, Jack—she was sure—would have been mortified at the idea of having to make polite conversation with an unknown, older woman, but this young man seemed totally at ease. He told her how much he was looking forward to seeing Venice and asked if it was her first visit. Soon they were comparing guidebooks and discussing the relative merits of vaporetti and gondolas.

  The pianist finished the Chopin piece and stood up with a little bow.

  “Oh,” Agatha said, “what a shame.”

  Her companion nodded. “Do you play?”

  “I used to. I don’t have as much time these days.”

  “There’s a recital in Saint Mark’s cathedral this evening: Do you like Wagner?”

  Agatha’s eyes lit up. “What is it?”

  “The Siegfried Idyll.”

  “Did you have to book in advance?”

  “It’s free,” he said, “but I would get there early if you want a seat.”

  She found herself telling him how, as a girl, she had been introduced to Wagner by her sister Madge, who took her to Covent Garden. It had sparked a teenage dream of becoming Isolde, of making a career as an opera singer. “I think it was the death scene that did it.” She smiled, shaking her head. “When they’re both lying there and it’s her spirit singing. I could actually see the wings—the colors in them . . .” She broke off, embarrassed at having disclosed something that sounded so fanciful.

  “I know exactly what you mean.” He nodded. “I get that sometimes with music. It liberates the mind, doesn’t it? Like blowing on a dandelion.”

  She nodded back at him. This wasn’t like talking to Jack—not at all. She wondered what sort of life he had led, to be so perceptive. Then he told her that his grandmother had been an opera singer in Brussels and sang as Salomé in the first performance of Massenet’s Hérodiade. So music was in his blood. As she listened to him, Agatha couldn’t help smiling at the thought of finding herself in conversation with a mustachioed man of Belgian descent when Hercule Poirot had been on her mind just half an hour earlier.
/>   When the steward came to advise them that they would be disembarking in five minutes’ time, she peered at her watch, surprised.

  “I do hope you have a pleasant evening.” As he rose from the seat, her companion’s hand went to his head to doff a nonexistent hat. Realizing his mistake, he blushed and made a hurried exit.

  It was only when he’d gone that she realized he hadn’t told her his name or where he was going. She wondered if she would see him again after Venice.

  As the train slowed to a crawl, Nancy pulled down the blind. She didn’t know if the Lido would be visible from the train. Just catching a glimpse of it would be bad enough. But robbing herself of the view only served to stoke the embers left by her other senses. The scent of wet sand. The sound of music and laughter seeping through the wooden walls of the beach hut. The taste of sea-drenched, sun-warmed skin. And the touch of his fingers. Hard to believe that it was more than six months ago.

  She had been so utterly miserable at the start of her honeymoon in Venice, but he had come to her rescue. Saved her from a marriage that was doomed from the start.

  It had been her husband’s idea, to join a house party at an Italian villa a couple of weeks after the wedding. He had made it sound like such fun. But it was a setup: an elaborate plan to betray her in the worst-possible way. Looking back, she couldn’t believe how naïve she had been. Felix had been too drunk to make love to her on their wedding night. He had come to her the next evening, but had insisted on going back to sleep in his own room afterward and had failed to appear at breakfast the following morning. A fortnight into her marriage, she had felt humiliated and bewildered by his casual disregard for her feelings. It was only when they arrived in Venice that she discovered what was really going on.

  On the second night, when he insisted on staying up late to play cards, she had lain awake. She had decided to surprise him, creeping along the corridor to his room when she thought he was in bed. He was in bed. But not alone.