The Secret of the Night Train

by Sylvia Bishop

  Voices in the room rose – Ester sounded by now as not-pleased as it was possible to be – and then Max made the important discovery that Istvan Marek’s office door opened outwards. She discovered this because Ester shoved it open without warning, and sent her flying.

  She landed with a thud, which was followed by two medium-sized thuds and a large one: Max knocked over the hatstand, Ester tripped over the heap of hatstand-and-Max, and Klaus tripped over the heap of Ester-and-hatstand-and-Max. Max didn’t know the word that Klaus rumbled in German, but she was pretty sure it wasn’t polite.

  By the sounds of things, Daniel Marek and Hanna Ruszy then joined Istvan in the hallway to see what all the thudding was. It occurred to Max, as she lay with her face squashed into Marek, Marek and Ruszy’s expensive green carpet, that this probably wasn’t the most secret a secret investigation had ever been.

  But it also occurred to her, as she listened to Ester clambering to her feet with an almighty roar, that with her face in the carpet and her hat over her hair and her body half covered by the contents of the hatstand, they probably didn’t recognize her. Yet. So she lay face down, and prayed that they would leave quickly.

  Thankfully, Ester was not someone who concerned herself with why other people might be lying around on carpets. As far as she was concerned, that was just the infuriating sort of thing that Other People did. She hurled a hurricane of outraged English at Marek, Marek and Ruszy, and the universe in general; then she stormed to the door dramatically, her walking stick click-click-clicking.

  Klaus was more of a problem. He crouched down at Max’s side. “OK?” he asked. “OK?”

  “Klaus,” bellowed Ester. And Klaus sighed, stood, and followed Ester to the door. The dramatic-storming-out was now slightly ruined, so Ester had to slam the door twice as hard to make the point.

  Above Max, the doorman was rapidly explaining something in Hungarian. Presumably, the something was the presence of a small bobble-hatted Ester-trap lying in the hall.

  Max had to get out of there before she lost Ester and Klaus, and was left stranded in some unknown corner of Budapest. She sat up. Three long, thin, silver-haired people peered down at her, swaying slightly, like riverside reeds perturbed by a strong wind. The doorman hovered anxiously behind them.

  “Istvan Marek,” Max explained, standing and shoving the letter at the man nearest Istvan’s office. She made for the front door. But one of the reed people – the woman, so it had to be Hanna Ruszy – clamped surprisingly strong hands on her shoulders. Max wriggled, but with no luck.

  The doorman must have told them she was French, because it was in French that the third of them – Daniel Marek – began to scold Max. Like Istvan, his voice was thin and breathy. The other two didn’t look like they were following the French, but they swayed about angrily in support of his general sentiment.

  “Do you have any idea,” Daniel breathed, “who that was?”

  “Sorry,” said Max, “but I’ve really got to—”

  “Ester Rosenkrantz! The most important client who is ever likely to call on us.” The others sighed a rippling sigh at Ester’s name.

  “Sorry,” Max repeated, “really. Could I just—”

  “Oh,” wheezed Daniel, his pale face reddening, “She’s sorry. She’s outraged the richest woman in Switzerland, the only child of the Karl Rosenkrantz, the heiress of his entire fortune, the most wanted client of jewel dealers around the world, who will probably now never cross our threshold again, but if she’s sorry—”

  Istvan murmured something soothing to Daniel in Hungarian, a hand on his arm. Daniel took a huge breath, and his red face began to return to a more normal colour. They all swayed gently. Clearly, Marek, Marek and Ruszy were not used to feeling this much emotion in one go.

  Hanna’s hands were still gripping on to Max’s shoulders.

  “Please,” said Max, “could I—”

  But she didn’t have to finish the sentence, because Istvan was looking at the contents of the parcel, and something that he said sharply to the other two made them both forget her for a moment. Hanna lifted her hands as she reached out for the letter.

  Cover blown: now they all knew that she hadn’t brought a proper parcel at all, just a letter in French and a postcard. They were going to want to know what she was doing there. Max would guess she had about three seconds before she was in really serious trouble.

  She ran.

  They shouted huskily after her, but she was already slamming the door, pounding down the street the way she had come, praying that Ester and Klaus would be in sight. The bright sky and stinging cold were a shock after the warm, lamplit hallway.

  At the end of the road, she looked left. Cars and colourful curling buildings and trees and twisting black lampposts and crowds of people and pigeons and no sign of anyone she knew.

  She looked right. Cars and colourful curling buildings and trees and –

  – and very far off, but helpfully a foot above everyone else, the looming head of Klaus Grob. Max laughed out loud with relief, and sprinted after them, weaving in between the crowds. It was wonderful to be back outside, heart pumping, leaving those three long, silvery people to sway about by themselves in their silent hallway.

  As she closed in on her quarry, she slowed to a jog, and her heart began to calm down, and her thoughts began to fall into place. And as she dropped to a walk, following them past a park that had turned forlornly brown for the winter, she noticed that one of her thoughts felt particularly niggly. And then she realized why.

  This was what she realized:

  If Ester Rosenkrantz was the only child of this Karl Rosenkrantz person, then she didn’t have any brothers or sisters. And if she didn’t have any brothers or sisters, then she couldn’t have any nieces or nephews. And if she didn’t have any nieces or nephews, who was Klaus Grob?

  Ester and Klaus, whoever they were, marched onwards. Max followed. They kept up a fast pace, and it was hard work, but the pleasure of finding her first proper clue pushed her on. Surely, if these two were lying about Klaus, they must be up to no good.

  At the edge of the park they came to an enormous ice rink, speckled with figures in bright jackets who criss-crossed over it in sweeping arcs. A bridge over the ice led them to an old castle at the side of the rink, sprouting turrets with peaked red caps, and at its gate there was a cluster of wooden huts selling hot food and heady spiced wine. They stopped. Lunch.

  Max was starving: lunchtime had been and gone ages ago. She bought something doughy and warm and covered in cheese from one of the huts. Clutching her paper bag, she retreated to a picnic table that was right next to Ester and Klaus, but hidden behind a large tree. She could hear Ester loud and clear; above her, a squirrel was hiding under its own tail in alarm.

  Ester was complaining about something in German, and Max couldn’t follow at all. So she took the opportunity to update her notebook. On Ester’s page she wrote:

  Visiting Istvan Marek. Who? Why? What was she trying to sell?

  And on Klaus’s she wrote:

  Ester Rosenkrantz is an only child. Klaus claims to be her nephew. Who is he really? Why is he lying?

  She was lost in her thoughts for a while, until quite suddenly there was a frenzied croaking from the other side of the tree, and Ester went scuttling away at a startling speed across the grass. Max peered around the tree trunk to see what had happened, and saw Klaus trying to encourage an enormous spider on to his hands. The spider was not impressed. It hurried away across the table, looking quite a lot like Ester.

  Even when Klaus had managed to get rid of the spider, Ester refused to return to the table. She was shaking and croaking gently to herself. Sighing, Klaus returned to the table to pick up both their cases and Ester’s bag of pear drops, and went off to comfort her.

  Then they were off again, and Max had to scoop up her notebook and trot after them.

  It was only as she left that she noticed Celeste. She was sitting at another picnic table, a little
way off, staring into the distance. As usual. Max watched her, waiting for a sign of life. Why was she always just sitting around staring? That was something that people in films did, but not real people with brains to get bored and fingers to get cold. What was she up to?

  A moment later Rupert appeared, too, clutching two plastic beakers of something steaming hot, trying to wave at Celeste and splashing half of one beaker down his coat. Max glanced around for Marguerite, but her friend was well hidden.

  Strange, Max thought as she trotted after her quarry, that everyone was together on this unimportant patch of grass. If most of them were innocent bystanders, why were they all drawn to each other like that? She had the uneasy sensation that they were all being knotted together, in ways she couldn’t see. But she would see, in the end, she was sure. She slipped her detective’s notebook carefully back into her pocket.

  They hadn’t gone far when Ester and Klaus arrived at a round building coated in butter-yellow paint, iced with looping white stone, like an enormous birthday cake. Max didn’t need any clever tricks to get inside this one. The double doors were wide open.

  Inside was a large entrance hall with a black-and-white marble floor. In here, Ester’s click-click-click was hugely magnified, and Klaus’s footsteps sounded more enormous than ever. Max hovered at the door as the two of them went over to a woman behind a glass screen and paid her some forints. Then they disappeared through another set of double doors.

  Max hurried over to the woman. A sign said Széchenyi, followed by a list of mysterious words and prices, but that didn’t really help. So Max just put down the largest forint note she had, and smiled hopefully. When smiling hopefully got no response, she tried holding up one finger. “Um,” she said, “one, please?”

  This did the trick. The woman pushed back a mountain of change, and a blue plastic wristband. “Úszóruha?” she asked – and pointed at a rack of swimming costumes to her right.

  This didn’t seem like a swimming pool. It was much too grand. But Max thought she had better have one, for whatever-it-was, if that was the done thing. She picked out one in strawberry red, remembered she was a secret detective, and changed it for a more forgettable navy. She pushed the change-mountain back to the woman again, who rolled her eyes, took a single coin off the top, and pushed it back. Then the woman handed Max a thick white towel, and waved her away at last. Max went through the double doors.

  She had thought that the building looked like a birthday cake, but now she saw that it was more like a doughnut. She was in a ring of corridor, and through windows she could see that the heart of the ring was outdoors. She peered out. It was full of people, but they were clouded by a thin mist that seemed to cling to the place. She realized that she was looking at a glittering blue pool; the air was so cold that where it met the water, the water was shocked into swirls of vapour, creating the mist.

  It was an outdoor pool, in December, in Budapest. Max shivered, and wished she had been given Rupert Nobes to follow. She was sure that he wasn’t doing anything this stupid.

  But there was nothing for it: she changed into her costume, crammed her things into a locker, thought warm thoughts, and dashed through the freezing air to the waiting mist and icy blue.

  To her surprise and delight, it was warm – gloriously warm – and full of unexpected bubbles. Every inch of her body sighed in relief. The pool wasn’t really a swimming pool: she could stand in it, and people were just lounging around enjoying the bubbles and chatting. It was more like one of those Roman baths she had studied at school. She cut through the water, trying to find Ester and Klaus in amongst the mist, pretending to be a submarine with just her eyes above the water.

  She found Ester sitting by herself. She was squatting at one wall of the baths, eyes closed, a blissful smile smeared across her enormous jaw. Max knew how she felt. She turned a somersault through the bubbles, and they rippled and swirled around her, and she didn’t think her body had ever felt this light and content.

  But where was Klaus?

  A small tidal wave answered her, knocking her sideways midway through her second somersault, and sweeping two elderly ladies away to the far side of the baths. Klaus had arrived. He was wearing bright orange trunks and a blissful smile, and he splooshed joyfully in the water.

  “Guten tag!” he cried.

  But Ester was not on board with guten tag. For reasons that Max couldn’t comprehend, she was furious with Klaus. Her angry torrent of German scared off everyone that hadn’t been washed away by his tidal wave, leaving an empty semicircle of fury around the two of them. Ester was turning a reddish purple, and surrounded by the swirling mist, she looked terrifying.

  Max bobbed at the edge of the semicircle, hidden by the mist. Why was Ester angry that Klaus was here? Did this hold any clues to who he really was?

  Klaus was trying to reason with Ester, but this was like trying to reason with a hurricane. She was heaving herself up and out of the baths, and once she was out she stamped and screamed, and screamed and stamped, pointing to the door. Trying to make Klaus leave.

  Klaus sank deeper into the bubbles and mist, looking almost sulky.

  Ester was attracting attention. A worried lifeguard tried to plead with her to calm down, but she snapped at him so viciously that he whimpered and hurried back inside, skidding on the wet floor as he ran. He returned a minute later looking smug and much less whimpery, with a large man in black behind him: security. When Klaus saw this, his sulky expression hardened into something more menacing, and he heaved his body out of the bubbles to go and stand by Ester.

  As his shoulders rose out of the mist, Max noticed a tattoo: a line of arrowheads, black then red, then black then red, snaking angrily across his left shoulder. It wasn’t a pretty tattoo. Somehow, it made her feel uneasy. She sank back deeper into the comforting bubbles.

  The security man was large, but Klaus was larger. A lot larger.

  If Klaus alarmed the security man, he didn’t let it show. He said lots of calm and sensible Hungarian, with lots of calm and sensible nodding of his head. Ester blared over him in German. He raised his voice. Ester blared over him some more. He went to put a heavy hand on Ester’s shoulder.

  Quick as lightning, Klaus’s hand was on his wrist, restraining him. The security man opened his mouth to object. Then he saw what the twist of Klaus’s arm had revealed: the tattoo on his shoulder.

  He turned very pale. He apologized and lowered his arm. He murmured some more soft apologies, shuffling his feet. And, just like that, he left.

  Max wallowed about uncertainly in the water. What did that mean? Was it something to do with the tattoo? If not, what else could have changed his mind?

  That was the end of the argument, and the end of Max’s blissful time in the bubbles, because Ester and Klaus stamped off together to the changing rooms. Max sighed, and decided to allow herself three more somersaults before she got out. She could change faster than them anyway. All right, five more somersaults.

  Maybe six.

  Twelve somersaults later she pushed herself out into the cold air, found her locker, changed hastily, and hurried to wait outside the front doors, tucked out of sight behind a tree. She waited. She waited. She shivered as the cold air clung about her wet hair. She waited.

  She did some more waiting, while she wondered about who Klaus Grob really was, and why the security guard had been so afraid of him.

  The sky was starting to darken. Max checked her watch. It was really time to be getting back to the train station.

  For the first time since she had set out into the bright Budapest day, the knot in her stomach started to retie itself. This wasn’t Paris. The streets were strange and unfamiliar, and there was no one who would understand her if she asked for directions, and she didn’t know where you could go to find out information or get a map. If Ester and Klaus had left before her, what was she going to do?

  Five minutes later, they still hadn’t appeared, and hot tears were pricking at Max’s eyes. She chec
ked her watch again, even though she knew what time it was: late. Almost too late. They must have already left. She tried to ask a passing woman where the train station was, but the woman couldn’t understand her, and when Max started miming a train, complete with desperate chugging noises, she hurried off in alarm.

  “What are you doing?” said a voice behind Max – in sweet, glorious French. Max spun round to find Celeste watching her, eyebrows raised.

  “Oh!” cried Max, breathless with relief. “Hi! I’m lost. You’re going to the train station, right? Can I come with you?”

  Celeste didn’t answer, but she began walking down the path, and seemed to expect Max to follow. So Max hurried after her.

  “What are you doing here?” Celeste asked, without looking round.

  Once again, Max seemed to have angered her, although she couldn’t think why. “Um. Swimming.”

  “Without your guardian? And without knowing how to get back to the station?”

  “Um,” said Max, “I thought I knew. But I got confused.” “You seem to be quite careless,” said Celeste. She made it sound as if Max’s carelessness was a crime against her personally. Or, maybe, as if she didn’t believe it was carelessness.

  “Sorry,” said Max.

  There was silence all the way to the edge of the park.

  “I’m Max,” said Max.

  “OK,” said Celeste. She did not offer her name, so Max had to go on pretending not to know it.

  “I’m going to Istanbul,” Max added, “to visit my great-aunt.” (Which was true enough, but seemed like a very distant idea now – Max couldn’t imagine arriving at the other end, and being polite and making small talk over dinner and so on.)

  Celeste didn’t even bother with an “OK” to that, so Max gave in. She was too tired to worry much about investigating Celeste. She was their least likely suspect anyway, Marguerite had said; and Max’s head was as full as she could manage already.