The Edge

by Dick Francis

  The train had come in from the sidings and stood in the station, warm and pulsing, its engines reattached, the horses and grooms on board and fresh foods and ice loaded.

  It was like going back to an old friend, familiar and almost cosy. I changed into Tommy’s uniform in my roomette and went along to the dining car where Emil, Oliver and Cathy welcomed me casually as if I were an accepted part of the crew. We began immediately laying the pink cloths and putting fresh flowers in the vases, and Angus in his tall white hat, whistling Speed Bonny Boat amid clouds of steam, addressed his talents to wild rice and scallops in parmesan sauce while Simone rather grimly chopped lettuce.

  The passengers returned well before eight o’clock in very good spirits, Mercer bringing with him a porter wheeling a case of highly superior bubbles for toasting the Unwins’ success. The Unwins themselves – and it was impossible for anyone to grudge them their moment – said over and over that it was great, just great that one of the horses actually on the train had won one of the races, it made the whole thing worthwhile, and the whole party, drifting into the dining car in true party mood, agreed and applauded.

  Filmer, I was interested to see as I distributed glasses, was smiling pleasantly in all directions, when the last thing he probably wanted was the enormous smash-hit the train enterprise was proving.

  Daffodil had changed into a sparkling crimson dress and showed no pique over Pampering finishing fifth. She was being friendly as usual to Bambi, frostier in pale turquoise with pearls.

  Mercer came to Emil and worried that the wine wasn’t cold enough, but Emil assured him he had lodged all twelve bottles among the many plastic bags of ice cubes: by the time the train left the station, all would be well.

  The Youngs, whose Slipperclub had finished third, were embraced by the hyperjoyous Unwins and were invited to their table, leaving the poor Flokatis to seek solace with others whose hopes had died on the last bend. Sheridan Lorrimore was telling a long-suffering good-natured couple all about his prowess at ice hockey and Xanthe, pouting and put out at having been temporarily deserted by Mrs Young, had ended up next to Giles-the-murderer whose real-life preference, I’d gathered, was for boys.

  The train slid out of Winnipeg on time at eight-twenty and I put my energies and attention all into being an unexceptional and adequate waiter, even though always conscious of the ominous presence in the aisle seat, facing forwards, three tables back from the kitchen end. I never met his eyes and I don’t think he noticed me much, but we were all, Emil, Oliver, Cathy and I, becoming slowly and inevitably more recognisable to the passengers. Several of them enquired if we’d been to the races (we all had) and had backed the winner (no, we hadn’t). Fortunately Mercer himself had had this conversation with Emil, which meant he felt no need to ask me also, so I escaped having to speak too much in my English accent at his table.

  The party atmosphere went on all through dinner, prevailed through a short scene put on by Zak to explain that the Mountie had been left behind in Winnipeg for investigations on the ground and heated up thoroughly afterwards with more unsteady dancing and laughter in the dome car.

  Nell wandered about looking slightly less starchy in a fuller-cut black skirt with her tailored white silk blouse, telling me in passing that Cumber and Rose wanted to give a similar party at Chateau Lake Louise.

  ‘Who?’ I said.

  ‘Cumber and Rose. Mr and Mrs Young.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘I’ve spent most of the day with them.’ She smiled briefly and went on her way. No clipboard, I noticed.

  Cumber and Rose, I thought, collecting ashtrays. Well, well. Rose suited Mrs Young fine. Cumber was appropriate also, I supposed, though Mr Young wasn’t cumbersome; perhaps a shade heavy in personality, but not big, not awkward.

  Mercer and Bambi again invited Filmer and Daffodil into their private car, although it was Oliver, this time, who obliged them with a bowl of ice. Mercer came back after a while to collect the Unwins and the Youngs, and the general jollifications everywhere wore on without any alarms.

  After midnight Nell said she was going to bed, and I walked up the train with her to her roomette, almost opposite mine. She paused in the doorway.

  ‘It’s all going well, don’t you think?’ she said.

  ‘Terrific.’ I meant it. ‘You’ve worked very hard.’

  We looked at each other, she in executive black and white, I in my yellow waistcoat.

  ‘What are you really?’ she said.

  ‘Twenty-nine.’

  Her lips twitched. ‘One day I’ll crack your defences.’

  ‘Yours are half down.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  I made a hugging movement across my own chest. ‘No clipboard,’ I said.

  ‘Oh … well … I didn’t need it this evening.’

  She wasn’t exactly confused. Her eyes were laughing.

  ‘You can’t,’ she said.

  ‘Can’t what?’

  ‘Kiss me.’

  I’d wanted to. She’d seen it unerringly.

  ‘If you come into my parlour, I can,’ I said.

  She shook her head, smiling. ‘I am not going to lose my credibility on this train by being caught coming out of the help’s bedroom.’

  ‘Talking in the corridor is almost as bad.’

  ‘Yes, it is,’ she said, nodding. ‘So goodnight.’

  I said with regret, ‘Goodnight,’ and she went abruptly into her own domain and closed the door.

  With a sigh I went on a few steps further to George’s office and found him as I’d expected, fully dressed, lightly napping, with worked-on forms pushed to one side beside an empty coffee cup.

  ‘Come in,’ he said, fully alert in an instant. ‘Sit down. How’s it going?’

  ‘So far, so good.’

  I sat on the facilities, and told him that the water samples from the horse car had been pure and simple H2O.

  ‘That’ll please the dragon-lady, eh?’ he said.

  ‘Did you go to the races?’ I asked.

  ‘No, I’ve got family in Winnipeg, I went visiting. And I slept most of today, as I’ll be up all night, with the stops.’ He knew, however, that Upper Gumtree had won. ‘You should see the party going on in the forward dome car. All the grooms are drunk. The dragon-lady’s in a sober tizzy, eh, because they tried to give a bucket of beer to the horse. They’re singing gold-rush songs at the tops of their voices in the dayniter and it’s a wonder they haven’t all rocked the train right off the rails, with the noise and the booze.’

  ‘I guess it wouldn’t be easy to rock the train off the rails,’ I said thoughtfully.

  ‘Easy?’ George said. ‘Of course it is. Go too fast round the curves.’

  ‘Well … suppose it was one of the passengers who wanted to stop the train getting happily to Vancouver, what could he do?’

  He looked at me with bright eyes, unperplexed. ‘Besides doping the horses’ water? Do what they’re doing in the mystery, I’d say. Throw a body off the train, eh? That would stop the parties pretty quick.’ He chuckled. ‘You could throw someone off the Stoney Creek bridge – that’s a high curved bridge over Roger’s Pass. It’s a long way down into the gulch. Three hundred feet and a bit more. If the fall didn’t kill them, the bears would.’

  ‘Bears!’ I exclaimed.

  He beamed. ‘Grizzly bears, eh? The Rocky Mountains aren’t anyone’s tame backyard. They’re raw nature. So are the bears. They kill people, no trouble.’ He put his head on one side. ‘Or you could throw someone out into the Connaught Tunnel. That tunnel’s five miles long with no lights. There’s a species of blind mice that live in there, eating the grain that falls from the grain trains.’

  ‘Jolly,’ I said.

  ‘There’s a wine storage space under the floor of your dining car,’ he said with growing relish. ‘They decided not to use it on this trip because opening it might disrupt the passengers. It’s big enough to hide a body in.’

  His imagination, I saw, was
of a scarier dimension than my own.

  ‘Hiding a body in the wine store,’ I said politely, ‘might indeed disrupt the passengers.’

  He laughed. ‘Or how about someone alive and tied up in there, writhing in agony?’

  ‘Shouting his head off?’

  ‘Gagged.’

  ‘If we miss anyone,’ I promised, ‘that’s where we’ll look.’ I stood up and prepared to go. ‘Where exactly is the Stoney Creek bridge,’ I asked, pausing in the doorway, ‘over Roger’s Pass?’

  His eyes gleamed, the lower lids pouching with enjoyment. ‘About a hundred miles further on from Lake Louise. High up in the mountains. But don’t you worry, eh?, you’ll be going across it in the dark.’

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Everyone survived the night, although there were a few obvious hangovers at breakfast. Outside the windows, the seemingly endless rock, lakes and conifer scenery had dramatically given way to the wide sweeping rolling prairies, not yellow with the grain that had already been harvested, but greenish grey, resting before winter.

  There was a brief stop during breakfast at the town of Medicine Hat which lay in a valley and looked a great deal more ordinary than its name. The passengers dutifully put back their watches when Nell told them we were now in Mountain Time, but where, they asked, were the mountains.

  ‘This afternoon,’ she answered, and handed out the day’s printed programme which promised Dreadful Developments in The Mystery at eleven-thirty a.m., followed by an early lunch. We would reach Calgary at twelve-forty, where the horse car would be detached, and leave at one-thirty, heading up into the Rockies to Banff and Lake Louise. At Lake Louise, the owners would disembark and be ferried by bus to the Chateau, the huge hotel sitting on the Lake’s shore, amid Snowy Scenes of Breathtaking Beauty. Cocktails and Startling Discoveries would be offered at six-thirty in a private conference room in the hotel. Have a nice day.

  Several people asked if we were now in front or behind the regular Canadian.

  ‘We’re in front,’ I said.

  ‘If we break down,’ Mr Unwin said facetiously, ‘it will be along to help us out.’

  Xanthe, sitting next to him, didn’t laugh. ‘I wish we were behind it,’ she said. ‘I’d feel safer.’

  ‘Behind the Canadian there are freight trains,’ Mr Unwin said reasonably, ‘and ahead of us there are freight trains. And coming the other way there are freight trains. We’re not all alone on these rails.’

  ‘No, I suppose not.’ She seemed doubtful still and said she had slept much better again that past night in her upper bunk than she would have done in her family’s own quarters.

  I brought her the French toast and sausages she ordered from the menu and filled her coffee cup, and Mr Unwin, holding out his own cup for a refill, asked if I had backed his horse to win at Winnipeg.

  ‘I’m afraid not, sir,’ I said regretfully. I put his cup on the tray and poured with small movements. ‘But congratulations, sir.’

  ‘Did you go to the races?’ Xanthe asked me without too much interest.

  ‘Yes, miss,’ I said.

  I finished pouring Mr Unwin’s coffee and put it by his place, then took my tray and coffee pot along to the next table where the conversation seemed to be about Zak’s mystery rather than directly about horses.

  ‘I think the trainer killed Angelica. And the groom too.’

  ‘Why ever should he?’

  ‘He wants to marry Donna for her money. Angelica knew something that would make the marriage impossible, so he killed her.’

  ‘Knew what?’

  ‘Maybe that he’s already married.’

  ‘To Angelica?’

  ‘Well … why not?’

  ‘But where does the dead groom come in?’

  ‘He saw the murderer getting rid of the blood-spattered plastic.’

  They laughed. I filled their cups and moved on and poured for Daffodil, who had an empty place on her far side. Daffodil, smoking with deep sucking lungfuls, sat with the Flokatis, and nobody else.

  No Filmer.

  I glanced back along the whole dining car, but couldn’t see him anywhere. He hadn’t come in while I was serving others, and he hadn’t been at the kitchen end when I’d started.

  Daffodil said to me, ‘Can you bring me some vodka? Ice and lemon.’

  ‘I’ll ask, madam,’ I said, and asked Emil, and it was he who civilly explained to her that the barman wouldn’t be back on duty until eleven, and meanwhile everything was locked up.

  Daffodil received the bad news without speaking but jabbed the fire out of her cigarette with some violent stabs and a long final grind. The Flokatis looked at her uncertainly and asked if they could help.

  She shook her head. She seemed angry and near tears, but determinedly in control.

  ‘Give me some coffee,’ she said to me, and to the Flokatis she said, ‘I think I’ll get off the train at Calgary. I think I’ll go home.’

  Small movements saved the day, as I would have spilled the brown liquid all over her hand.

  ‘Oh no!’ exclaimed the Flokatis, instantly distressed. ‘Oh, don’t do that. Your horse ran splendidly yesterday, even if it was only fifth. Ours was nearly last … and we are going on. You can’t give up. And you have Laurentide Ice, besides, for Vancouver.’

  Daffodil looked at them as if bemused. ‘It’s not because of yesterday,’ she said.

  ‘But why, then?’

  Daffodil didn’t tell them. Maybe wouldn’t; maybe couldn’t. She merely pursed her lips tight, shook her curly head, and dug out another cigarette.

  The Flokatis having declined more coffee, I couldn’t stay to listen any further. I moved across the aisle and stretched my ears, but the Flokatis seemed to get nothing extra from Daffodil except a repeated and stronger decision to go home.

  Nell in her straight grey skirt, clipboard in attendance, was still talking to passengers up by the kitchen end. I took my nearly empty coffee pot up there and made a small gesture onwards to the lobby, to where presently she came with enquiring eyebrows.

  ‘Daffodil Quentin,’ I said, peering into the coffee pot, ‘is upset to the point of leaving the train. She told the Flokatis, not me … so you don’t know, OK?’

  ‘Upset about what?’ Nell was alarmed.

  ‘She wouldn’t tell them.’

  ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’

  Smoothing ruffled feelings, keeping smiles in place; all in her day’s work. She started casually on her way through the dining car and I went into the kitchen to complete my mission. By the time I was out again with a full pot, Nell had reached Daffodil and was standing by her, listening. Nell appealed to the Youngs and the Unwins at adjacent tables for help, and presently Daffodil was out of sight in a bunch of people trying to persuade her to change her mind.

  I had to wait quite a while to hear what was happening, but finally the whole little crowd, Daffodil among them, went out at the far end into the dome car and Nell returned to the lobby, relaying the news to me in snatches as I paused beside her on to and fro journeys to clear away the breakfast debris.

  ‘Cumber and Rose …’ The Youngs, I thought. ‘Cumber and Rose and also the Unwins say there was nothing wrong last night, they all had a splendid time in the Lorrimores’ car. Daffodil finally said she’d had a disagreement with Mr Filmer after the party had broken up. She said she had hardly slept and wasn’t sure what to do, but there was no fun left in taking Laurentide Ice to Vancouver, and she couldn’t face the rest of the journey. The Youngs have persuaded her to go up into the dome with them to think things over, but I honestly think she’s serious. She’s very upset.’

  ‘Mm.’ I put the last of the debris into the kitchen and excused myself apologetically from washing the dishes.

  ‘How can Mr Filmer have upset Daffodil so much?’ Nell exclaimed. ‘She’s obviously been enjoying herself, and he’s such a nice man. They were getting on together so well, everyone thought.’ She paused. ‘Mr Unwin believ
es it’s a lovers’ quarrel.’

  ‘Does he?’ I pondered. ‘I think I’ll make a recce up the train. See if anything else is happening.’

  Maybe Daffodil had made advances and been too roughly repulsed, I thought. And maybe not.

  ‘Mr Filmer hasn’t been in to breakfast,’ Nell said. ‘It’s all very worrying. And last night everyone was so happy.’

  If Daffodil’s leaving the train was the worst thing that happened, I thought, we would have got off lightly. I left Nell and set off up the corridor, coming pretty soon to Filmer’s bedroom door, which was uninformatively closed.

  I checked with the sleeping car attendant further along the car who was in the midst of folding up the bunks for the day and unfolding the armchairs.

  ‘Mr Filmer? He’s in his room still, as far as I know. He was a bit short with me, told me to hurry up. And he’s not usually like that. He was eating something, and he had a thermos too. But then we do get passengers like that sometimes. Can’t get through the night without raiding the ice box, that sort of thing.’

  I nodded noncommittally and went onwards, but I thought that if Filmer had brought food and a thermos on board for breakfast, he must have known in Winnipeg that he would need them, which meant that last night’s quarrel had been planned and hadn’t been caused by Daffodil.

  George Burley was in his office, writing his records.

  ‘Morning,’ he said, beaming.

  ‘How’s the train?’

  ‘The forward sleeping car attendants are threatening to resign, eh?, over the vomit in the bathrooms.’

  ‘Ugh.’

  He chuckled. ‘I brought extra disinfectants aboard in Winnipeg,’ he said. ‘Train-sickness gets them, you know.’

  I shook my head at his indulgence and pressed forward, looking as always for gaunt-face but chiefly aiming for the horses.

  Leslie Brown, hollow-eyed from lack of sleep, regarded me with only half the usual belligerence.

  ‘Come in,’ she said, stepping back from her door. ‘To be honest, I could do with some help.’

  As I’d just passed several green-looking grooms being sorry for themselves in their sections, I supposed at first she meant simply physical help in tending the horses, but it appeared that she didn’t.