The Edge

by Dick Francis

  ‘I said I picked it out of the air.’ He watched me relax a shade and asked, ‘Where did you get it from?’

  ‘I knew of someone not long ago who did just that.’ Thirteen days ago … a lifetime.

  ‘Crazy.’

  ‘Mm.’ I paused. ‘Who asked you?’

  ‘Can’t remember.’ He thought. ‘It might have been Mr Young.’

  Indeed it might, I thought. Ezra Gideon had been his friend.

  It might have been Filmer. Ezra Gideon had been his victim.

  ‘Are you sure?’ I asked.

  He thought some more. ‘Yep, Mr Young. He was sitting with that sweet wife of his, and he got up and came across the room to ask.’

  I drank some wine and said conversationally, ‘Did anyone else react?’

  Zak’s attention, never far below the surface, came to an intuitive point.

  ‘Do I detect,’ he said, ‘a hint of Hamlet?’

  ‘How do you mean?’ I asked, although I knew exactly what he meant.

  ‘The play’s the thing, wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the King? Right? Is that what you were up to?’

  ‘In a mild way.’

  ‘And tomorrow?’

  ‘Tomorrow too,’ I agreed.

  He said broodingly, ‘You’re not going to get any of us into trouble, are you? Not sued for slander, or anything?’

  ‘I promise not.’

  ‘Perhaps I shouldn’t let you write tomorrow’s script.’

  ‘You must do what you think best.’ I picked the finished script off the table beside me and stretched forward to hand it to him. ‘Read it first, then decide.’

  ‘OK.’

  He put his glass down and began reading. He read to the end and finally raised a smiling face.

  ‘It’s great,’ he said. ‘All my original ideas with yours on top.’

  ‘Good.’ I was much relieved that he liked it, and thought him generous.

  ‘Where’s the Hamlet bit?’ he asked.

  ‘In loving not wisely but too well.’

  ‘That’s Othello.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  He thought it over. ‘It seems harmless enough to me, but …’

  ‘All I want to do,’ I said, ‘is open a few specific eyes. Warn a couple of people about the path they’re treading. I can’t, you see, just walk up to them and say it, can I? They wouldn’t take it from Tommy. They probably wouldn’t take it from anybody. But if they see something acted … they can learn from it.’

  ‘Like Hamlet’s mother.’

  ‘Yes.’

  He sipped his whisky. ‘Who do you want to warn about what?’ he said.

  ‘Better I don’t tell you, then nothing’s your fault.’

  ‘What are you really on the train for?’ he asked, frowning.

  ‘You know what. To keep everyone happy and foil the wicked.’

  ‘And this scene will help?’

  ‘I hope so.’

  ‘All right.’ He made up his mind. ‘I don’t object to foiling the wicked. We’ll give it our best shot.’ He grinned suddenly. ‘The others will love the Hamlet angle.’

  I was alarmed. ‘No … please don’t tell them.’

  ‘Why ever not?’

  ‘I want the passengers to think that any similarity of the plot to their own lives is purely coincidental. I don’t want the actors telling them afterwards that it was all deliberate.’

  He smiled twistedly. ‘Are we back to slander?’

  ‘No. There’s no risk of that. It’s just … I don’t want them identifying me as the one who knows so much about them. If anyone asks the actors where the plot came from, I’d far rather they said it was you.’

  ‘And dump me in the shit?’ He was good humoured, however.

  ‘No one could have suspicions about you.’ I smiled faintly. ‘Apart from foiling villainy, success for me means hiding in Tommy to the end and getting off the train unexposed.’

  ‘Are you some sort of spy?’

  ‘A security guard, that’s all.’

  ‘Can I put you in my next plot? In my next train mystery?’

  ‘Be my guest.’

  He laughed, yawned, put down his glass and stood up.

  ‘Well, pal, whoever you are,’ he said, ‘it’s been an education knowing you.’

  Nell telephoned to my room at seven in the morning. ‘Are you awake?’ she said.

  ‘Wide.’

  ‘It snowed again in the night. The mountains are white.’

  ‘I can see them,’ I said, ‘from my bed.’

  ‘Do you sleep with your curtains open?’

  ‘Always. Do you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Are you dressed?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, I am. What’s that to do with anything?’

  ‘With defences, even over the telephone.’

  ‘I hate you.’

  ‘One can’t have everything.’

  ‘Listen,’ she said severely, smothering a laugh. ‘Be sensible. I phoned to ask if you wanted to walk down again to the station this afternoon when we board the train, or go down on the crew bus?’

  I reflected. ‘On the bus, I should think.’

  ‘OK. That bus goes from outside the staff annexe at three-thirty-five. Take your bag with you.’

  ‘All right. Thanks.’

  ‘The whole train, with the horses and racegoers and everything, comes up from Banff to arrive at Lake Louise station at four-fifteen. That gives the passengers plenty of time to board and go to their bedrooms again and begin to unpack comfortably before we leave Lake Louise on the dot of four-thirty-five. The regular Canadian comes along behind us as before and leaves Lake Louise at ten past five, so we have to make sure everyone is boarded early so that our train can leave right on time.’

  ‘Understood.’

  ‘I’m going to tell all this to the passengers at breakfast, and also that at five-thirty we’re serving champagne and canapés to everyone in the dining car, and at six we’ll have the solution to the mystery, and after that cocktails for those who want them, and then the gala banquet. Then the actors return for photos and post-mortems over cognac. It all sounds like hell.’

  I laughed. ‘It will all work beautifully.’

  ‘I’m going into a nunnery after this.’

  ‘There are better places.’

  ‘Where, for instance?’

  ‘Hawaii?’

  There was a sudden silence on the line. Then she said, ‘I have to be back at my desk …’

  ‘We could take the desk too.’

  She giggled. ‘I’ll find out about shipment.’

  ‘Done, then?’

  ‘No … I don’t know … I’ll let you know in Vancouver.’

  ‘Vancouver,’ I said, ‘is tomorrow morning.’

  ‘After the race, then.’

  ‘And before the red-eye special.’

  ‘Do you ever give up?’

  ‘It depends,’ I said, ‘on the signals.’

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Filmer clung closely to his briefcase during the transit from Chateau to train at Lake Louise, although he had allowed his larger suitcase to be brought down with everyone else’s to be arranged side by side in a long line at the station, waiting to be lifted aboard by porters.

  From among the bunch of crew members, Emil, Oliver, Cathy, Angus, Simone, the barman and the sleeping car attendants, I watched Filmer and most of the passengers disembark from the bus and check that their bags were in the line-up. The Lorrimores, arriving separately with their chauffeur, brought their cases with them, the chauffeur stacking them in an aloof little group.

  A freight train clanked by, seemingly endless. A hundred and two grain cars, Cathy said, counting. A whole lot of bread.

  I thought about Mrs Baudelaire to whom I’d been talking just before leaving the Chateau.

  ‘Bill said to tell you,’ she said, ‘that Lenny Higgs did turn to jelly and is being safely taken care of, and a new groom has been engaged for Laurentide Ice
with the approval, by telephone, of his trainer. They told the trainer that Lenny Higgs had done a bunk. Bill has left Winnipeg and has come back to Toronto. He says he has been consulting with the Colonel as a matter of urgency, and they agree that Bill will see Mrs Daffodil Quentin as soon as possible. Does that all make sense?’

  ‘Indeed it does,’ I said fervently.

  ‘Good, then.’

  ‘Is Bill still going to Vancouver?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, yes, I think so. Monday evening, I believe, ready for the race on Tuesday. He said he would be back here again on Wednesday. All these time changes can’t be good for anybody.’

  ‘Canada is so huge.’

  ‘Five thousand five hundred and fourteen kilometres from side to side,’ she said primly.

  I laughed. ‘Try me in miles.’

  ‘You’ll have to do your own sums, young man.’

  I did them later, out of curiosity: three thousand four hundred and twenty-six miles, and a quarter.

  She asked if I had any more questions, but I couldn’t think of any, and I said I would talk to her again from Vancouver in the morning.

  ‘Sleep well,’ she said cheerfully.

  ‘You too.’

  ‘Yes.’ There was reservation in her voice, and I realised that she probably never slept well herself.

  ‘Sweet dreams, then,’ I said.

  ‘Much easier. Goodnight.’

  She gave me no time, as usual, to answer.

  The train hooted in the distance: one of the most haunting of seductive sounds to a wanderer. That, and the hollow breathy boom of departing ships. If I had any addiction, it was to the setting off, not the arrival.

  Headlights bright in the ripening afternoon sunlight, the huge yellow-fronted engine slowed into the station with muted thunder, one of the engineers, as he passed us, looking down from his open window. The engineers were the only crew that hadn’t come the whole way from Toronto, each stretch of track having its own specialists.

  There being no sidings at Lake Louise, the abbreviated train that had brought us there had been returned to Banff for the two mountain days, with George Burley going with it, in charge. He returned now with the whole train, his cheerful round figure climbing down in the station and greeting the passengers like long-lost friends.

  With a visible lifting of spirits and freshening enjoyment, the whole party returned upwards to their familiar quarters; the Lorrimores, a glum quartet stepping onto their private railed platform entrance at the very rear of everything, being the only sad note. Nell went along to speak to them, to try to cheer them up. Mercer stopped, answered, smiled: the others simply went on inside. Why bother with them, I thought. One would get no thanks. Yet one would always bother, somehow, for Mercer, the blind saint.

  Filmer boarded through the open door at the end of his sleeping car and through his window I saw him moving about in his room. Hanging up jackets. Washing his hands. Ordinary things. What made one man good, I wondered, and another man bad: one man to seek to build, the other to frighten and destroy. The acid irony was that the bad might feel more satisfied and fulfilled than the good.

  I walked along to the car where my roomette was, dumped my bag there and took off my raincoat to reveal the familiar livery beneath. Only one more night of Tommy. One dinner, one breakfast. Pity, I thought; I’d been getting quite fond of him.

  George came swinging aboard as the train moved off in its quiet way, and he greeted me with a pleased chuckle.

  ‘We’re lucky to have heat on this train, eh?’ he said.

  ‘Why?’ I asked. ‘It’s very warm.’

  ‘They couldn’t start the boiler.’ He seemed to think it a great joke. ‘You know why?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘No fuel.’

  I looked blank. ‘Well … they could surely fill up?’

  ‘You bet your life,’ he said. ‘Only the tank had been filled two days ago, eh?, when we went down to Banff. Or was supposed to have been. So we had a look, and there were a few drips trickling from the bottom drain which is only opened for sluicing through the tank, which isn’t done often, eh?’ He looked at me expectantly, his eyes bright.

  ‘Someone stole the fuel?’

  He chuckled. ‘Either stole it from the tank, or never loaded it in the first place, and opened the drain to be misleading.’

  ‘Was there a lot of oil on the ground?’ I asked.

  ‘Not a bad detective, are you? Yes, there was.’

  ‘What do you think, then?’

  ‘I think they never loaded the right amount, probably just enough to get us a fair way out of Lake Louise, then they opened the drain a bit to persuade us the fuel had run away by accident along the track, eh? Only they got it wrong. Opened the drain too much.’ The laugh vibrated in his throat. ‘What a fuss, eh? if the train went cold in the mountains! The horses would freeze. What a panic!’

  ‘You don’t seem too worried.’

  ‘It didn’t happen, did it.’

  ‘No, I guess it didn’t.’

  ‘We would have filled the tank again at Revelstoke, anyway,’ he said. ‘It would have ruined this gala banquet of yours, eh? But no one would have died. Doubt if they’d even have got frostbite, not like they might in January. The air temperature up here will fall below zero after sunset, soon, but the track goes through the valleys, not up the peaks, eh? And there’d be no wind chill factor, inside the cars.’

  ‘Very uncomfortable, though.’

  ‘Very.’ His eyes gleamed. ‘I left them all buzzing around like a wasp’s nest in Banff, trying to find out who did it.’

  I wasn’t as insouciant as he was. I said, ‘Is there anything else that can go wrong with this train? Is there for instance any water in the boiler?’

  ‘Never you mind,’ he said comfortingly. ‘We checked the water. The top tap ran. That tank’s full, just as it should be. The boiler won’t blow up.’

  ‘What about the engine?’

  ‘We checked every inch of everything, eh? But it was just some greedy ordinary crook stealing that oil.’

  ‘Like the ordinary crook who unhitched the Lorrimores’ car?’

  He thought it over sceptically. ‘I’ll grant you that this particular train might attract psychos, as the publicity would be that much greater, and more pleasing to them, but there is no visible connection between the two things.’ He chuckled. ‘People will steal anything, not just oil. Someone stole eight of those blue leather chairs in the dining car, once. Drove up to the dining car while it was standing unused in the sidings at Mimico in Toronto, drove up in a van saying Furniture Repairs on the side, and simply loaded up eight good chairs, eh? Last that was ever seen of them.’

  He turned away towards the paperwork spread out on his table, and I left him to go along to the dining car, but I’d taken only two paces when I remembered gaunt-face, and I fetched his photograph and went back to George.

  ‘Who is he?’ he asked, frowning slightly. ‘Yes, I’d say he might be on the train. He was down in Banff, in the sidings …’ He thought, trying to remember. ‘This afternoon, eh?’ he exclaimed suddenly. ‘That’s it. While they were joining up the train. See, the horses had come up from Calgary this morning as the first car of a freight train. They dropped the horse car in the sidings. Then our engine picked up the horse car and then the racegoers’ cars …’ He concentrated. ‘This man, he was down on the ground, rapping on the horse car door with a stick, and when the dragon-lady came to the door and asked what he wanted, he said he had a message for the groom looking after the grey horse, so the dragon-lady told him to wait and she came back with a groom, only he said it wasn’t the right groom, and he, the groom, eh? said the other groom had left in Calgary and he had taken over, and then your man in the photo walked off. I didn’t see where he went to. I mean, it wasn’t important.’

  I sighed. ‘Did the man look angry, or anything?’

  ‘I didn’t notice. I was there to ask Ms Brown if everything was in order in the horse c
ar before we set off, and she said it was. She said all the grooms were in the horse car with their horses, looking after them, as they had been all day, and they would stay there until after we left. She looks after the horses well, eh?, and the grooms, too. Can’t fault her, eh?’

  ‘No.’

  He held out the photograph for me to take back, but I told him to keep it, and asked diffidently if he would check with the racegoers’ sleeping car attendants, if he had time, to find out for sure whether or not gaunt-face had come all the way from Toronto among the passengers.

  ‘What’s he done? Anything yet?’

  ‘Frightened a groom into leaving.’

  He stared. ‘Not much of a crime, eh?’ His eyes laughed. ‘He won’t do much jail time for that.’

  I had to agree with him. I left him to his enjoyment of human failures and went towards the dining car, passing as I did so the friendly sleeping car attendant who was again resting himself in the corridor, watching the changing perspectives of the snowy giants.

  ‘I don’t see this usually,’ he said in greeting. ‘I don’t usually come further west than Winnipeg. Grand, isn’t it?’

  I agreed. Indeed it was.

  ‘What time do you bring the beds down?’ I asked.

  ‘Any time after the passengers have all gone along to the dining car. Half of them are in their rooms here, now, changing. I’ve just taken extra towels to two of them.’

  ‘I’ll give you a hand with the beds later, if you like.’

  ‘Really?’ He was surprised and pleased. ‘That would be great.’

  ‘If you do your dome car rooms first,’ I said, ‘then when you come back through the dining car, I’ll follow you and we can do these.’

  ‘You don’t have to, you know.’

  ‘Makes a nice change from waiting at table.’

  ‘And your scene,’ he said, smiling in understanding, ‘what about that?’

  ‘That comes later,’ I promised him.

  ‘All right, then. Thanks very much.’

  ‘Pleasure,’ I said, and swung along past Filmer’s closed door, through the heavy doors of the cold and draughty join, into the heat of the corridor beside the kitchen, and finally to the little lobby between kitchen door and tables where Emil, Oliver and Cathy were busy unboxing the champagne flutes.