The Edge

Chapter Eleven

Leslie Brown told us adamantly that no one could possibly have tampered with either the fodder or the water.

'When did the grooms last fill the buckets?' I asked.

During the morning, she said. Each groom filled the bucket for his own horse, when he wanted to. All of them had been in there, seeing to their charges.

The horses' drinking-water tank had been topped up, she said, by a hosepipe from the city's water supply during the first twenty minutes of our stop in Thunder Bay, in a procedure that she herself had supervised.

George nodded and said the whole train had been re-watered at that point.

'Before Thunder Bay,' I said, 'could anyone have put anything in the water?'

'Certainly not. I've told you over and over again, I am here all the time.'

'And how would you rate all the grooms for trustworthiness?' I said.

She opened her mouth and closed it again and gave me a hard look.

'I am here to supervise them,' she said. 'I didn't know any of them before yesterday. I don't know if any of them could be bribed to poison the water. Is that what you want?'

'It's realistic,' I said with a smile.

She was unsoftened, unsoftenable

'My chair, as you see,' she said carefully, 'is next to the water tank. I sit there and watch. I do not think… I repeat, I do not believe, that anyone has tampered with the water.'

'Mm,' I said calmingly. 'But you could ask the grooms, couldn't you, if they've seen anything wrong.'

She began to shake her head automatically, but then stopped and shrugged. 'I'll ask them, but they won't have.'

'And just in case,' I said, 'in case the worst happens and the horses prove to have been interfered with, I think I'll take a sample of what's in the tank and also what's in their buckets at this moment You wouldn't object to that, Ms Brown, would you?'

She grudgingly said she wouldn't. George elected himself to go and see what could be done in the way of sample jars and presently returned with gifts from the Chinese cook in the dome car, in the shape of four rinsed-out plastic tomato-sauce bottles rescued from the rubbish bin.

George and Leslie Brown took a sample from the tank, draining it, at the dragon's good suggestion, from the tap lower down, where the buckets were filled. I visited Voting Right, Laurentide Ice and Upper Gumtree, who all graciously allowed me to dip into their drink With Leslie Brown's pen, we wrote the provenance of each sample on the sauce label and put all four containers into a plastic carrier bag which Leslie Brown happened to have handy.

Carrying the booty, I thanked her for her kindness in answering our questions, and helping, and George and I retreated.

'What do you think?' he said, as we started back through the train.

'I think she now isn't as sure as she says she is.'

He chuckled 'She'll be doubly careful from now on.'

'As long as it's not already too late '

He looked as if it were a huge joke 'We could get the tank emptied, scrubbed and refilled at Winnipeg,' he said.

'Too late If there's anything in it, it was there before Thunder Bay, and the horses will have drunk some of it.

Some horses drink a lot of water… but they're a bit fussy. They won't touch it if they don't like the smell If there's traces of soap in it, for instance, or oil. They'd only drink doped water if it smelled all right to them

'You know a lot about it,' George commented

'I've spent most of my life near horses, one way and another '

We reached his office where he said he had some paperwork to complete before we stopped fairly soon for ten minutes at Kenora. We would be there at five-twenty, he said. We were running thirty minutes behind the Canadian. There were places the race train didn't really need to stop, he said, except to keep pace with the Canadian. We needed always to stop where the trains were serviced for water, trash and fuel.

I had nowhere on our journey to and from the horse car seen the man with the gaunt face George had pointed someone out to me in the dayniter, but he was not the right person grey haired, but too ill-looking, too old The man I was looking for, I thought, was fifty-something, maybe less, still powerful; not in decline.

In a vague way, I thought, he had reminded me of Derry Welfram. Less bulky than the dead frightener, and not as smooth, but the same stamp of man. The sort Filmer seemed to seek out naturally.

I sat for an hour in my roomette looking out at the unvarying scenery and trying to imagine anything else that Filmer might have paid to have done. It was all the wrong way round, I thought' it was more usual to know the crime and seek the criminal, than to know the criminal and seek his crime.

The four sample bottles of water stood in their plastic carrier on my roomette floor. To have introduced something noxious into that tank, gaunt-face would certainly have to have bribed a groom. He wasn't one of the grooms himself, though perhaps he had been one, somewhere, some time. The grooms on the train were all younger, thinner and from what I'd seen of them in their uniform T-shirts less positive. I couldn't imagine any of them having the nerve to stand up to Filmer and demand their money.

I spent the brief stop at the small town of Kenora hanging out of the open doorway past George's office, watching him, on the station side of the train, walk a good way up and down outside while he checked that all looked well. The Lorrimores' car, it appeared, was still firmly tacked on. Up behind the engine, two baggage handlers were loading a small pile of boxes. I hung out of the door on the other side of the train for a while, but no one was moving out there at all.

George climbed back on board and closed the doors, and presently we set off again our last stop before Winnipeg.

I wished intensely that I had the power to see into Filmer's mind. I ached to foresee what he was planning. I felt blind, and longed for second sight. Failing such superhuman qualities, however, there was only as usual ordinary observation and patience, and they both seemed inadequate and tame.

I went along to the dining car where I found that Zak had already positioned some of the actors at the tables for the cocktail-hour double-length scene. He and Nell were agreeing that after the scene the actors would leave again (all except Giles-the-murderer), even though they didn't like being banished all the time and were complaining about it.

Emil, laying tablecloths, said that wine alone was included in the fare, all other cocktails having to be paid for, and perhaps I'd better just serve the wine; he and Oliver and Cathy would do the rest. Fine by me, I said, distributing ashtrays and bud vases. I could set the wine glasses also, Emil said. Glasses for red wine and for white at each place.

The passengers drifted in from their rooms and the dome car and fell into by now predictable patterns of seating. Even though to my mind Bambi Lorrimore and Daffodil Quentin were as compatible as salt and strawberries, the two women were again positioned opposite each other, bound there by the attraction between their men. When I put the wine glasses on their table, Mercer and Filmer were discussing world-wide breeding in terms of exchange rates.

Daffodil told Bambi there was a darling little jewellery store in Winnipeg.

Xanthe was still clinging to Mrs Young. Mr Young looked exceedingly bored.

Sheridan had struck up an acquaintanceship with the actor-murderer Giles, a slightly bizarre eventuality which might have odd consequences.

The Upper Gumtree Unwins and the Flokati couple seemed locked in common interest: whether the instant friendship would wither after their mutual race would be Wednesday evening's news.

Most of the other passengers I knew only vaguely, by face more than by name. I'd learned their names only to the extent that they owned horses in the horse car or had touched bases with Filmer, which came to only about half. They were all in general pleasant enough, although one of the men sent nearly everything back to the kitchen to be reheated, and one of the women pushed the exceptional food backwards and forwards across her plate with flicking movements of her fork, sternly remarking that plain fare was all anyone needed for godliness. What she was doing among the racing fraternity, I never found out.

Zak's long scene began with impressive fireworks as soon as everyone in the dining car had been served with a drink.

A tall man dressed in the full scarlet traditional uniform of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police strode into the dining car and in a conversation-stopping voice said he had some serious information for us. He had come aboard at Kenora, he said, because the body of a groom from this train called Ricky had been found lying beside the railway lines near Thunder Bay. He had been wearing his Race Train T-shirt, and he had identification in his pocket.

The passengers looked horrified. The Mountie's impressive presence dominated the whole place and he sounded undoubtedly authentic. He understood, he said, that the groom had been attacked earlier, in Toronto, when he foiled the kidnapping of a horse, but he had insisted on making the journey nevertheless, having been bandaged by a Miss Richmond. Was that correct?

Nell demurely said that it was.

Among the actual owners of the horses, disbelief had set in the quickest Mercer Lorrimore enjoyed the joke Mounties, when investigating, didn't nowadays go around dressed for parades

'But we are in Manitoba,' Mercer could be heard saying in a lull, 'they've got that right. We passed the boundary with Ontario a moment ago. The Mounted Police's territory starts right there '

'You seem to know all about it,' our Mountie said. 'What do you know about this dead groom?'

'Nothing,' Mercer said cheerfully.

I glanced briefly at Filmer. His face was hard, his neck rigid, his eyes narrow, and I though in a flash of Paul Shacklebury, the lad dead in his ditch. Stable lads in England… grooms in Canada same job. What had Paul Shacklebury known about Filmer… same old unanswerable question.

'And why was he killed?' the Mountie asked. 'What did he know?''

I risked a glance, looked away, Filmer's mouth was a tight line. The answer to the question had to be in his tautly-held head at that moment and it was as inaccessible to me as Alpha Centauri.

Zak suggested that Ricky had identified one of the hijackers. Perhaps, he said, the hijackers had come on the train. Perhaps they were among the racegoers, waiting another chance to kidnap their quarry.

Filmer's neck muscles slowly relaxed, and I realized that for a moment he must have suspected that the scene had been specifically aimed at him. Perhaps he spent a lot of his time reacting in that way to the most innocent of remarks.

Mavis and Walter Bricknell demanded that the Mountie should keep their own precious horse safe.

The Mountie brushed them aside. He was taking over the enquiry into the death of Angelica Standish, he said. Two deaths connected to the same train could be no coincidence. What was the connection between Angelica and Ricky?

Zak said that he was in charge of the Angelica investigation

No longer, said the Mountie. We were now in the province of Manitoba, not Ontario. His territory, exclusively.

Zak's intended scene of investigation into Angelica's murder had been upstaged by the reality of the Lornmores' car and then aborted by the long stop at Thunder Bay. Passing the questioning to the Mountie bridged the void neatly, and the Mountie told us that the reason that Steve, Angelica's business manager, also her lover, had not turned up at Toronto station was because he too was dead, struck down in his apartment by blows to the head with a mallet.

The audience received the news of still more carnage with round eyes. The said Steven, the Mountie went on, seemed to have been in bed asleep at the time of his murder, and the Ontario police were wanting to interview Angelica Standish as a suspect

'But she's dead!' Mavis Bricknell said.

After a pause, Donna said she and Angelica had talked for maybe two hours between Toronto and Sudbury, and Donna was sure Angelica couldn't have murdered Steve, she was lost without him.

Maybe, the Mountie said, but if she was as upset as all that, why had she come on the train at all? Couldn't it have been to escape from having to realize that she's killed her lover?

Giles-the-murderer calmly enquired whether any murder weapon had been found after Angelica had been killed.

Also, Pierre asked, wouldn't Angelica's murderer have been covered with blood? The whole toilet compartment had been splashed.

Zak and the Mountie exchanged glances. The Mountie said grudgingly that a blood-covered rolled-up sheet of plastic had been found on the track near the area where Angelica must have been battered, and it could have been used as a poncho, and it was being investigated for blood type and fingerprints.

Donna said couldn't Steve and Angelica both have been killed by a mallet? That would make her innocent, wouldn't it? She couldn't believe that anyone as nice as Angelica could have been mixed up in an insurance swindle.

What? What insurance swindle?

I glance involuntarily at Daffodil, but if there had been a flicker of her eyelids, I had missed it.

Donna in confusion said she didn't know what insurance swindle. Angelica had just mentioned that Steve was mixed up in an insurance swindle, and she was afraid that was why he had missed the train. Donna hadn't liked to probe any further.

Sheridan Lorrimore, saying loudly that Angelica had been a bitch, made a lunging grab at the pistol sitting prominently in a holster on the Mountie's hip. The Mountie, feeling the tug, turned fast and put his hand down on Sheridan 's wrist. It was a movement in a way as dextrous as John Millington on a good day, speaking of razor-sharp reactions, more like an athlete than an actor.

'That gun's mine, sir,' he said, lifting Sheridan 's wrist six inches sideways and releasing it. 'And, everybody, it's not loaded.'

There was a general laugh Sheridan, universally unpopular and having made a boorish fool of himself yet again, looked predictably furious. His mother, I noticed, had turned her head away. Mercer was shaking his.

The Mountie, unperturbed, said he would be proceeding vigorously with the enquiries into both Angelica's and Ricky's deaths and perhaps he would have news for everyone in Winnipeg. He and Zak went away together, and Donna drifted around from table to table for a while telling everyone that poor Angelica had really been very sweet, not a murderess, and she, Donna, was dreadfully upset at the suggestion. She wrung out a real tear or two. She was undoubtedly an effective actress.

'What do you care?' Sheridan asked her rudely. 'You only met her yesterday morning and she was dead before dinner.'

Donna looked at him uncertainly. He'd sounded as if he really believed in Angelica's death

'Er…' she said, 'some people you know at once.' She moved on gently and presently disappeared with disconsolate-looking shoulders down the corridor beside the kitchen. Sheridan muttered under his breath several times, making the people he was sitting with uncomfortable.

Emil and his crew, including me, immediately began setting the tables round the passengers for dinner, and were soon serving warm goat's cheese and radicchio salads followed by circles of rare Chateaubriand with snow peas and matchstick carrots and finally rich orange sorbets smothered in fluffy whipped cream and nuts. Most of the passengers persevered to the end and looked as though it were no torture.

My suggestion to Angus, while we were dishwashing after the battle, that maybe his food could have been injected somehow with a substance that even now could be working away to the detriment of everyone's health was received by him with frosty amusement. Absolutely impossible, he assured me. I had surely noticed that nearly all the ingredients had come on to the train fresh. He was cooking this food, not bringing it in pre-frozen packs.

I assured him truthfully that I had been impressed by his skill and speed, and I thought his results marvellous.

'You actors,' he said more indulgently, 'will think of any impossible thing for a plot.'

Everyone got off the train at Winnipeg, one thousand, four hundred and thirteen miles along the rails from Toronto.

Two large motor horse-boxes were waiting for the horses, which were unloaded down and loaded up ramps. The grooms and Leslie Brown led the horses across from train to van and saw them installed and then, carrying holdalls, themselves trouped on to a bus which followed the horse-boxes away towards the racetrack.

A row of buses waited outside the station to take the racegoers away to a variety of outlying motels, and a long new coach with darkly tinted windows was set aside for the owners. A few of the owners, like the Lorrimores and Daffodil and Filmer, had arranged their own transport separately in the shape of chauffeur-driven limousines, their chauffeurs coming over to the train to carry their bags.

The crew, after everyone else had left, tidied away, into secure lockers every movable piece of equipment and goods, and then joined the actors in the last waiting bus. The Mountie, I was interested to see, was among us, tall and imposing even with his scarlet and brass buttons tucked away in his bag.

George came last, carrying an attache case of papers and looking over his shoulder at the train as if wondering if he'd forgotten anything. He sat in the seat across the aisle from me and said the cars would be backed into a siding for two days, the engine would be removed and used elsewhere, and there would be a security guard on duty. In the siding, the carriages would be unheated and unlit and would come to life again only about an hour before we left on the day after tomorrow. We'd been able to keep the same crew from coast to coast, he said, only because of the two rest breaks along the way.

The owners and some of the actors were staying in the Westin Hotel which had, Nell had told everyone during dinner, a ballroom and comfort and an indoor pool on the roof. There was a breakfast room set aside for the train party where a piece of the mystery would unravel each morning. Apart from that, everyone was on their own: there were good shops, good restaurants and good racing. Transport had been arranged to and from the racecourse. We would all come back to reboard the train after the Jockey Club Race Train Stakes on Wednesday, and cocktails and dinner would be served as soon as we'd rolled out of the station. The party, in good humour, applauded.

I had decided not to stay in the same hotel as any of the groups of owners, actors, racegoers or crew, and asked Nell if she knew of anywhere else. A tall order, it seemed.

'We've put people almost everywhere,' she said doubtfully, 'but only a few actors will be at the Holiday Inn… why don't you try there? Although actually… there is one place we haven't booked anyone into, and that's the Sheraton. But it's like the Westin-expensive.'

'Never mind, I'll find somewhere,' I said, and when the crew bus, after a short drive, stopped and disgorged its passengers, I took my grip and vanished on foot and, after asking directions, made a homing line to where no one else was staying.

In my buttoned-up grey VIA raincoat, I was unexceptional to the receptionists of the Sheraton: the only problem, they said, was that they were full. It was late in the evening. The whole city was full.

'An annexe?' I suggested.

Two of them shook their heads and consulted with each other in low voices. Although they had no single rooms left, they said finally, they had had a late cancellation of a suite. They looked doubtful. I wouldn't be interested in that, they supposed.

'Yes, I would,' I said and gave them my American Express card with alacrity. So Tommy the waiter carefully hung up his yellow waistcoat with its white lining and ordered some wine from room service and in a while after a long easing shower slept for eight solid hours and didn't dream about Filmer.

In the morning, I telephoned Mrs Baudelaire and listened again to the almost girlish voice on the wire.

'Messages for the invisible man,' she said cheerfully. 'Er… are you still invisible?'

'Mostly, yes, I think.'

'Bill says Val Catto would like to know if you are still invisible to the quarry. Does that make sense to you?'

'It makes sense, and the answer is yes.'

'They're both anxious.'

'And not alone,' I said. 'Will you tell them the quarry has an ally on the train, travelling I think with the racegoers. I've seen him once and will try to photograph him.'

'Goodness!'

'Also will you ask them whether certain numbers, which I'll tell you, have any significance in the quarry's life.'

'Intriguing,' she said. 'Fire away.'

'Well… three numbers I don't know. Three question marks, say. Then one-five-one. ''Three question marks, then one-five-one. Right?'

'Right. I know it's not his car's number plate, or not the car he usually travels in, but ask if it fits his birthday in any way, or his phone number, or anything at all they can think of. I want to know what the first three digits are.'

'I'll ask Bill right away, when I've finished talking to you. He gave me some answers to give you about your questions yesterday evening.'

'Great.'

'The answers are that Mr and Mrs Young who own Sparrowgrass are frequent and welcome visitors to England and are entertained by the Jockey Club at many race meetings. They were friends of Ezra Gideon. Val Catto doesn't know if they know that Ezra Gideon sold two horses to Mr J. A. Filmer. Does that make sense?'

'Yes,' I said.

'I'm glad you understand what I'm talking about. How about this one, then?' She paused for breath. 'Sheridan Lorrimore was sent down-expelled-from Cambridge University last May, amid some sort of hushed-up scandal. Mercer Lorrimore was over in England at that time, and stayed and went racing at Newmarket in July, but the Jockey Club found him grimmer than his usual self and understood it was something to do with his son, although he didn't say what. Val Catto is seeing what he can find out from Cambridge.'

'That's fine,' I said.

'Sheridan Lorrimore!' she said, sounding shocked. 'I hope it's not true.'

'Brace yourself,' I said dryly.

'Oh dear.'

'How well do you know him?' I asked.

'Hardly at all. But it does no good, does it, for one of our golden families to hit the tabloids.'

I loved the expression, and remembered she'd owned a magazine.

'It demeans the whole country,' she went one. 'I just hope whatever it was will stay hushed up.'

'Whatever it was?'

'Yes,' she said firmly. 'For his family's sake. For his mother's sake. I know Bambi Lorrimore. She's a proud woman. She doesn't deserve to be disgraced by her son.'

I wasn't so sure about that: didn't know to what extent she was responsible for his behaviour. But perhaps not much. Perhaps no one deserved a son like Sheridan. Perhaps people like Sheridan were born that way, as if without arms.

'Are you still there?' Mrs Baudelaire asked.

'I sure am.'

'Bill says the Lorrimores' private car got detached from the train on Sunday evening. Is that really true? There's a great fuss going on, isn't there? It's been on the television news and it's all over the papers this morning. Bill says it was apparently done by some lunatic for reasons unknown, but he wants to know if you have any information about it that he doesn't have.'

I told her what had happened: how Xanthe had casually nearly walked off into space.

'Tell Bill the quarry sat relaxed and unconcerned throughout both the incident and the enquiry held at Thunder Bay yesterday morning, and I'm certain he didn't plan the uncoupling. I think he did plan something though, with his ally on the train, and I think Bill should see that they guard the train's horses very carefully out at the track.'

'I'll tell him.'

'Tell him there's a slight possibility that the horses' drinking water was tampered with on the train, before it got to Thunder Bay. But I think that if it had been, the horses should have been showing distress by last night, which they weren't. I can't check them this morning. I supposed if there's anything wrong with them, Bill will know pretty soon. Anyway, I took four samples of the drinking water which I will take to the races this evening.'

'Good heavens.'

'Tell Bill I'll get them to him somehow. They'll be in a package with his name on it.'

'Let me write some of this down. Don't go away.'

There was a quiet period while she put down the receiver and wrote her notes. Then she came back on the line and faithfully repeated everything I'd told her, and everything I'd asked.

'Is that right?' she demanded, at the end.

'Perfect,' I said fervently. 'When in general is it a good time for me to phone you? I don't like to disturb you at bad moments.'

'Phone any time. I'll be here. Have a good day. Stay invisible.'

I laughed, and she'd gone off the line before I could ask her about her health.

A complimentary copy of a Winnipeg newspaper had been slipped under my sitting-room door. I picked it up and checked on what news it gave of the train. The story wasn't exactly all over the front page, but it started there with photographs of Mercer and Bambi and continued inside, with a glamorous back-lit formal shot of Xanthe, which made her look a lot older than her published age, fifteen.

I suspected ironically that the extra publicity given to the Great Transcontinental Mystery Race Train hadn't hurt the enterprise in the least. Blame hadn't been fastened on anyone except some unknown nutter back in the wilds of Ontario. Winnipeg was full of racegoing visitors who were contributing handsomely to the local economy. Winnipeg was pleased to welcome them. Don't forget, the paper prominently said, that the first of the two Celebration of Canadian Racing meetings would be held this evening with the regular post time of 7 p. m., while the second meeting, including the running of the Jockey Club Race Train Stakes would be tomorrow afternoon, post time 1. 30. The afternoon had been declared a local holiday, as everyone knew, and it would be a fitting finale to the year's thoroughbred racing programme at Assiniboia Downs. (Harness racing, it said in brackets, would hold the first meeting of its winter season the following Sunday.)

I spent most of the day mooching around Winnipeg, seeing a couple of owners once in a shop selling Eskimo sculptures, but never coming face to face with anyone who might know me. I didn't waste much time trying to see what Filmer did or where he went, because I'd quickly discovered that the Westin Hotel was sitting over an entrance to a subterranean shopping mall that stretched like a rabbit warren in all directions. Shopping, in Canada, had largely gone underground to defeat the climate. Filmer could go in and out of the Westin without a sniff of fresh air, and probably had.

There were racetrack express buses, I found, going from the city to the Downs, so I went on one at about six o'clock and strolled around at ground level looking for some way of conveying to Bill Baudelaire the water samples which were now individually wrapped inside the nondescript plastic carrier.

It was made easy for me. A girl of about Xanthe's age bounced up to my side as I walked slowly along in front of the grandstand, and said, 'Hi! I'm Nancy. If that's for Clarrie Baudelaire, I'll take it up if you like.'

'Where is she?' I asked.

'Dining with her dad up there by a window in the Clubhouse.' She pointed to a part of the grandstand. 'He said you were bringing her some thirst quenchers, and he asked me to run down and collect them. Is that right?'

'Spot on,' I said appreciatively.

She was pretty, with freckles, wearing a bright blue tracksuit with a white and gold studded belt. I gave her the carrier and watched her jaunty backview disappear with it into the crowds, and I was more and more sure that what she was carrying was harmless. Bill Baudelaire wouldn't be calmly eating dinner with his daughter if there were a multi-horse crisis going on over in the racecourse stables.

The Clubhouse, from where diners could watch the sport, took up one whole floor of the grandstand, glassed in along its whole length to preserve summer indoors. I decided not to go in there on the grounds that Tommy would not, and Tommy off duty in Tommy's off-duty clothes was what I most definitely wanted to be at that moment. I made some Tommy-sized bets and ate very well in the (literally) below-stairs bar, and in general walked around, race-card in hand, binoculars around neck, exactly as usual.

The daylight faded almost imperceptibly into night, electricity taking over the sun's job smoothly. By seven, when the first race was run, it was under floodlighting, the jockeys' colours brilliant against the backdrop of night.

There were a lot of half-familiar faces in the crowds; the enthusiastic racegoers from the train. The only one of them that I was interested in, though, was either extremely elusive, or not there. All the techniques I knew of finding people were to no avail: the man with his gaunt face, grey hair and fur-collared Parka was more invisible than myself.

I did see Nell.

In her plain blue suit she came down from the Clubhouse with two of the owners who seemed to want to be near the horses at ground level. I drifted after the three of them to watch the runners come out for the third race and wasn't far behind them when they walked right down to the rails to see the contest from the closest possible quarters. When it was over, the owners turned towards the stands talking animatedly about the result, and I contrived to be where Nell would see me, with any luck, making a small waving motion with my race-card.

She noticed the card, noticed me with widening eyes, and in a short while detached herself from the owners and stood and waited. When without haste I reached her side, she gave me a sideways grin.

'Aren't you one of the waiters from the train?' she said.

'I sure am.'

'Did you find somewhere to sleep?'

'Yes, thank you. How's the Westin?'

She was staying with the owners; their shepherd, their smoother-of-the-way, their information booth.

'The hotel's all right, but someone should strangle that rich… that arrogant… that insufferable Sheridan.' Disgust vibrated in her voice as she suddenly let go of some clearly banked-up and held-back emotion. 'He's unbearable. He's spoiling it for others. They all paid a fortune to come on this trip and they're entitled not to be upset.'

'Did something happen?' I asked.

'Yes, at breakfast.' The memory displeased her. 'Zak put on the next scene of the mystery and Sheridan shouted him down three times. I went over to Sheridan to ask him to be quiet and he grabbed my wrist and tried to pull me on to his lap, and I overbalanced and fell and hit the table hard where he was sitting, and I caught the cloth somehow and pulled it with me and everything on it landed on the floor. So you can imagine the fuss. I was on my knees, there was orange juice and broken plates and food and coffee everywhere and Sheridan was saying loudly it was my fault for being clumsy.'

'And I can imagine,' I said, seeing resignation more than indignation now in her face, 'that Bambi Lorrimore took no notice, that Mercer hurried to help you up and apologize, and Mrs Young enquired if you were hurt.'

She looked at me in amazement. 'You were there!'

'No. It just figures.'

'Well… that's exactly what happened. A waiter came to deal with the mess, and while he was kneeling there Sheridan said loudly that the waiter was sneering at him and he would get him fired.' She paused. 'And I suppose you can tell me again what happened next?'

She was teasing, but I answered, 'I'd guess Mercer assured the waiter he wouldn't be fired and took him aside and gave him twenty dollars.'

Her mouth opened. 'You were there.'

I shook my head. 'He gave me twenty dollars when Sheridan shoved me the other evening.'

'But that's awful.'

'Mercer's a nice man caught in an endless dilemma. Bambi's closed her mind to it. Xanthe seeks comfort somewhere else.'

Nell thought it over and delivered her judgement, which was much like my own.

'One day, beastly Sheridan will do something his father can't pay for.'

'He's a very rich man,' I said.