The Edge

Chapter Fourteen

There was unfortunately a fair amount of dishwashing still to do when I returned to the kitchen so I lent a slightly guilty hand but kept walking out with glasses and cloths into the dining car so that I could see what was going on outside the windows.

Daffodil, attended by Nell and Rose and Cumber Young (he carrying her two suitcases), was helped down from the dome car by station staff and went off slowly into the main part of the station Daffodil's curls were piled as perkily high as usual but her shoulders drooped inside the chinchillas, and the glimpse I had of her face showed a forlorn lost-child expression rather than a virago bent on revenge. Nell was being helpful. Rose Young exuded comfort. Cumber Young looked grim.

'Are you drying glasses or are you not?' Cathy demanded. She was pretty, bright-eyed and quick, and also, at that moment, tired.

'Intermittently,' I said.

Her momentary ill-temper dissolved. 'Then get an intermittent move on or I won't be able to go over to the station before we leave.'

'Right,' I said, and dried and polished several glasses devotedly.

Cathy giggled. 'How long are you going to keep this up?'

'To the end, I guess.'

'But when is your scene?'

'Ah…' I said, 'that's the trouble. Right at the end. So I'll be drying dishes to Vancouver.'

'Are you the murderer?' she asked teasingly.

'Most definitely not.'

'The last time we had an actor pretending to be a waiter, he was the murderer.'

'The murderer,' I said, 'is that passenger you give the best portions to. That good-looking single man who's nice to everyone.'

Her eyes stretched wide. 'He's an owner,' she said.

'He's an actor. And don't give him away.'

'Of course I won't.' She looked slightly dreamy-eyed, though, as if I'd passed on good news. I didn't like to disillusion her about her or any girl's prospects with the gorgeous Giles; she would find out soon enough.

The dishes finally done, Cathy skipped away to the delights of the station and in her place I helped Emil and Oliver stow and lock up all the equipment, as when everyone disembarked at Lake Louise the train was again going to be standing cold and silent in sidings for two days before the last stretch westwards to the Pacific.

Some but not all of the passengers had gone ashore, so to speak, at Calgary, and those who had been in the station came wandering back in good time, including the Youngs. Of Filmer there was no sign, nor of the gaunt-faced man. The dining car half filled again with people who simply preferred sitting there, and from those I heard that the horse car had been safely detached from the train and had been towed away by the engine, leaving the rest of us temporarily stranded.

The regular Canadian, they told each other, which had arrived on time thirty-five minutes after us, was the train standing three tracks away, its passengers stretching their legs like our own. The Canadian, it seemed, had changed from threat to friend in the general perception, our Doppelganger and companion on the journey. The passengers from both had mingled and compared notes. The Conductors had met for a talk.

There was a jerk and a shudder through the train as the engine returned and reattached, and soon afterwards we were on our way again, with passengers crowding now towards the dome car's observation deck to enjoy the ascent into the mountains.

Filmer, slightly to my surprise, was among those going through the dining car, and right behind him came Nell who looked over Filmer's shoulder at me and said, 'I've got a message for you from George Burley '

'Excuse me, miss,' I said abruptly, standing well back between two tables to let Filmer go by, 'I'll be right with you.'

'What? ' She was puzzled, but paused and stepped sideways also to let others behind her walk on through the car. Filmer himself had gone on without stopping, without paying Nell or me the least attention, and when his back was way down the car and well out of earshot of a quiet conversation, I turned back to Nell with enquiry.

'It's a bit of a mix-up,' she said. She was standing on the far side of the table from me, and speaking across it. 'Apparently the telephone in George Burley's office was ringing when he got back on board, and it was a woman wanting to speak to a Mr Kelsey. George Burley consulted his lists and said there was no Mr Kelsey on board. So whoever it was asked him to give a message to me, which he did.'

It must have been Mrs Baudelaire phoning, I thought' no one else knew the number. Bill himself could never be mistaken for a woman. Not his secretary…? heaven forbid.

'What's the message?' I asked.

'I don't know if between us George Burley and I have got it right.' She was frowning. 'It's meaningless, but… zero forty-nine. That's the whole message, zero forty-nine.' She looked at my face. 'You look happy enough about it, anyway.'

I was also appalled, as a matter of fact, at how close Filmer had come to hearing it.

I said, 'Yes, well… please don't tell anyone else about the message, and please forget it if you can.'

'I can't.'

'I was afraid not.' I hunted around if not for explanations at least for a reasonable meaning. 'It's to do,' I said, 'with the border between Canada and America, with the forty-ninth parallel.'

'Oh, sure.' She was unsure by the look of things, but willing to let it go.

I said, 'Someone will bring a letter to the Chateau some time this evening addressed to you. It will have a photo in it. It's for me, from Bill Baudelaire. Will you see that I get it?'

'Yes, OK.' She briefly glanced at her clipboard. 'I wanted to talk to you anyway about rooms.' A passenger or two walked past, and she waited until they had gone. 'The train crew are staying in the staff annexe at Chateau Lake Louise and the actors will be in the hotel itself. Which do you want? I have to write the list.'

'Our passengers will be in the hotel?'

'Ours, yes, but not the racegoers. They're all getting off in Banff. That's the town before Lake Louise. The owners are all staying in the Chateau. So am I. Which do you want?'

'To be with you,' I said.

'Seriously.'

I thought briefly. 'Is there anywhere else?'

'There's a sort of village near the station about a mile from the Chateau itself, but it's just a few shops, and they're closing now at this time of the year, ready for winter. A lot of places are closed by this time, in the mountains.' She paused. 'The Chateau stands by itself on the lake shore. It's beautiful there.'

'Is it big?' I asked.

'Huge.'

'OK. I'll stay there and risk it.'

'Risk what?'

'Being stripped of my waistcoat.'

'But you won't wear it there,' she assured me.

'No… metaphorically.'

She lowered the clipboard and clicked her pen for writing.

'Tommy Titmouse,' I said.

Her lips curved. T. Titmuss.' She spelled it out. 'That do?'

'Fine.'

'What are you really?'

'Wait and see,' I said.

She gave me a dry look but no answer because some passengers came by with questions, and I went forward into the dome car to see how firmly Julius Apollo would appear to be seated, wondering whether it would be safe to try to look inside his briefcase or whether I should most stringently obey the command not to risk being arrested. If he hadn't hoped I would look, the Brigadier wouldn't have relayed the number. But if I looked and got caught looking, it would blow the whole operation.

Filmer was nowhere to be seen.

From the top of the staircase, I searched again through the rows of backs of heads under the dome. No thick black well-brushed thatch with a scattering of grey hairs. Bald, blond, tangled and trimmed, but no Filmer.

He wasn't in the downstairs lounge, and he wasn't in the bar where the poker school was as usual in progress, oblivious to the scenery. That left only the Lorrimores' car… He had to be with Mercer, Bambi and Sheridan. Xanthe was with Rose and Cumber Young, watching the approach of the distant white peaks under a cloudless sky.

I walked irresolutely back towards Filmer's bedroom, wondering whether the disinclination I felt to enter it was merely prudence or otherwise plain fear, and being afraid it was the latter.

I would have to do it, I thought, because if I didn't I'd spend too much of my life regretting it. A permanent D minus in the balance sheet. By the time I left the dining room and started along the corridor past the kitchen, I was already feeling breathless, already conscious of my heart, and it was not in any way good for self-confidence. With a dry mouth I crossed the chilly shifting join between cars, opening and closing the doors, every step bringing me nearer to the risky commitment.

Filmer's was the first room in the sleeping car beyond the kitchen. I rounded the corner into the corridor with the utmost reluctance and was just about to put my hand to the door handle when the sleeping-car attendant, dressed exactly as I was, came out of his roomette at the other end of the car, saw me, waved and started walking towards me.

With craven relief I went slowly towards him, and he said, 'Hi,' and how was I doing.

He was the familiar one who'd told me about Filmer's private breakfast, who'd shown me how to fold and unfold the armchairs and bunks, the one who looked after both the car we were in and the three bedrooms, Daffodil's among them, in the dome car. He had all afternoon and nothing to do and was friendly and wanted to talk, and he made it impossible for me to shed him and get back to my nefarious business.

He talked about Daffodil and the mess she had made of her bedroom.

'Mess? '

'If you ask me,' he said, nodding, 'she'd had a bottle of vodka in her suitcase… There was broken glass all over the place. Broken vodka bottle. And the mirror over the washbasin. In splinters. All over the place. I'd guess she threw the vodka bottle at the mirror and they both broke.'

'A bore for you to have to clear that up,' I said.

He seemed surprised. 'I didn't clear it. It's still like that. George can take a look at it.' He shrugged. 'I don't know if the company will charge for her for it. Shouldn't be surprised.'

He looked over my shoulder at someone coming into the car from the dining car.

'Afternoon, sir,' he said.

There was no reply from behind me. I turned my head and saw Filmer's backview going into his bedroom.

Dear God, I thought in horror: I would have been in there with his briefcase open, reading his papers. I felt almost sick.

I sensed more than saw Filmer come out of his bedroom again and walk towards us.

'Can I help you, sir?' the sleeping-car attendant said, going past me, towards him.

'Yes. What do we do about our bags at Lake Louise?'

'Leave it to me, sir. We're collecting everyone's cases and transporting them to the Chateau. They'll be delivered to your room in the Chateau, sir.'

'Good,' Filmer said, and went back into his lair, closing the door. Beyond the merest flicker of a glance at about waist level, he hadn't looked at me at all.

'We did the same with the bags at Winnipeg,' the sleeping-car attendant said to me resignedly. 'You'd think they'd learn.'

'Perhaps they will by Vancouver.'

'Yeah.'

I left him after a while and went and sat in my own roomette and did some deep breathing and thanked every guardian angel in the firmament for my deliverance, and in particular the angel in the sleeping-car attendant's yellow waistcoat.

Outside the window, the promise of the mountains became an embrace, rocky hillsides covered with tall narrow pines crowding down to the railway line winding through the valley of the Bow River. There were thick untidy collections of twigs sitting like Ascot hats on the top of a good many telegraph poles, which looked quite extraordinary; one of the passengers had said the hats were osprey nests, and that the poles were made with platforms on especially to accommodate them. Brave birds, I thought, laying their eggs near to the roaring trains. Hair-raising entertainment for the hatchlings.

Our speed had slowed from the brisk prairie rattle to a grunting uphill slither, the train taking two hours to cover the seventy miles from Calgary to Banff. When it stopped there, in the broad part of the valley, the snow-topped peaks were suddenly revealed as standing around in a towering, glistening, uneven ring, the quintessential mountains rising in bare majestic rocky grandeur from the thronging forested courtier foothills. I felt then, as most people do, the strong lure of high mysterious frozen places and, Filmer or not, I found myself smiling with pleasure, lighthearted to the bone.

It had been noticeably warm in Calgary, owing, it was said, to the north winds blowing down from the mountains, but in Banff it was suitably cold. The engine huffed and puffed about and split the train in two, taking the racegoers and all the front part off to a siding and coming back to pick up just the owners' quarters; the three sleeping cars, the dining car, the dome car and the Lorrimores. Abbreviated and much lighter, these remains of the train climbed at good speed for another three-quarters of an hour and triumphantly drew up beside the log-cabin station of Lake Louise.

With great cheerfulness the passengers disembarked, shivering even in their coats after the warmth of the cars, but full of expectation, Daffodil forgotten. They filed on to a waiting bus, while their suitcases were loaded into a separate truck. I clung to a fraction of hope that Filmer would leave his briefcase to be ferried in that fashion, but when he emerged from the train the case went with him, clutched firmly in his fist.

I told Nell I would walk up the mile or so from the station so as not to arrive until everyone had booked in and cleared the lobby. She said I could travel up anyway with the crew in their own bus, but I entrusted my bag to her keeping and in my grey regulation raincoat, buttoned to the neck, I enjoyed the fresh cold air and the deepening harvest gold of the late afternoon sunlight. When I reached the lobby of the grand Chateau, it was awash with polite young Japanese couples on honeymoon, not the Unwins, the Youngs and the Flokatis.

Nell was sprawled in a lobby armchair as if she would never be able to summon the energy to rise again, and I went and sat beside her before she'd realized I was there.

'Is everyone settled?' I asked.

She sighed deeply and made no attempt at moving. 'The suite I had reserved for the Lorrimores had been given to someone else half an hour before we got here The people are not budging, the management are not apologizing, and Bambi is not pleased.'

'I can imagine.'

'On the other hand, we are sitting with our backs to one of the greatest views on earth.'

I twisted round and looked over the back of the chair, and saw, between thronging Japanese, black and white mountains, a turquoise blue lake, green pines and an advancing glacier, all looking like painted stage scenery, awesomely close and framed by the windows.

'Wow,' I said, impressed.

'It won't go away,' Nell said, after a while. 'It'll all still be there tomorrow.'

I flopped back into the chair. 'It's amazing.'

'It's why people have been coming here to stare for generations.'

'I expected altogether more snow,' I said.

'It'll be knee-deep by Christmas.'

'Do you have any time off here?' I asked.

She looked at me sideways. 'Five seconds now and then, but almost no privacy.'

I sighed lightly, having expected nothing else. She was the focus, the centre round which the tour revolved: the most visible person, her behaviour vivisected.

'Your room is in one of the wings.' she said, handing me a card with a number on it. 'You just have to sign in at the desk and they'll give you the key. Your bag should be up there already. Most of the actors are in that wing. None of the owners.'

'Are you?'

'No.'

She didn't say where her room was, and I didn't ask. 'Where will you eat?' she said doubtfully. 'I mean… will you sit with the actors in the dining room?'

I shook my head.

'But not with the owners…'

'It's a lonely old life,' I said.

She looked at me with sudden sharp attention, and I thought ruefully that I'd told her a good deal too much.

'Do you mean,' she asked slowly, 'that you do this all the time? Play a part? Not just on the train?'

'No,' I smiled. 'I work alone. That's all I meant.'

She almost shivered. 'Are you ever yourself?'

'Sundays and Mondays.'

'Alone?'

'Well… yes.'

Her eyes, steady and grey, looked only moderately troubled. 'You don't seem unhappy,' she observed, 'being lonely.'

'Of course not. I choose it, mostly. But not when there's an alluring alternative hiding behind a clipboard.'

The armour lay on her lap at that moment, off duty. She smoothed a hand over it, trying not to laugh.

'Tomorrow,' she said, retreating into common sense, 'I'm escorting a bus load of passengers to a glacier, then to lunch in Banff, then up a mountain in cable cars.'

'And may it keep fine for you.'

'The Lorrimores have a separate chauffeur-driven car.'

'Has anyone else?'

'Not since Mrs Quentin's left.'

'Poor old Daffodil, 'I said.

'Poor?' Nell exclaimed. 'Did you know she smashed the mirror in her room?'

'Yes, I heard. Is Mr Filmer going on the bus trip?'

'I don't know yet. He wanted to know if there's an exercise gym because he likes lifting weights. The bus is simply available for anyone who wants to go. I won't know everyone who'll be on it until we set off.'

I would have to watch the departure, I thought, and that could be difficult as I would be half familiar to all of them by now and could hardly stand around invisibly for very long.

'The Unwins have come down into the hall and are heading towards me,' Nell said, looking away from me.

'Right.'

I stood up without haste, took the card she'd given me to the desk, and signed the register. Behind me, I could hear the Unwins' Australian voices telling her they were going for a stroll by the shore and it was the best trip they'd ever taken. When I turned round, holding my own key, they were letting themselves out through the glass doors to the garden.

I paused again beside Nell who was now standing up. 'Maybe I'll see you,' I said.

'Maybe.'

I smiled at her eyes. 'If anything odd happens…'

She nodded. 'You're in room six sixty-two.'

'After Vancouver,' I said, 'what then?'

'After the races I'm booked straight back to Toronto on the red-eye special.'

'What's the red-eye special?'

'The overnight flight.'

'So soon?'

'How was I to know I wouldn't want to?'

'That'll do fine,' I said, 'for now.'

'Don't get ideas,' Nell said sedately, 'above your lowly station.'

She moved away with a mischievous glint and I went contentedly up to the sixth floor in the wing where there were no owners, and found that the room allocated to me was near the end of the passage and next door to Zak's.

His door was wide open with Donna and Pierre standing half in, half out.

'Come on in,' Donna said, seeing me. 'We're just walking through tonight's scene.'

'And we've a hell of a crisis on our hands,' Pierre said. 'We need all the input we can get.'

'But Zak might not…' I began.

He came to the door himself. 'Zak is taking suggestions from chimpanzees,' he said.

'OK. I'll just take off my coat.' I pointed. 'I'm in the room next along.'

I went into my room which proved to have the same sweeping view of the mountains, the lake, the trees, and the glacier, and it was if anything more spectacular than in the lobby from being higher up I took off the raincoat and the uniform it had hidden, put on a tracksuit and trainers, and returned to Zak's fray.

The crisis was the absence of an actor who was supposed to have arrived but had sent apologies instead.

'Apologies!' Zak fumed. 'He broke his goddamn arm this morning and he's not coming. I ask you! Is a broken arm any sort of excuse?'

The others, the whole troupe, were inclined to think not.

'He was supposed to be Angelica's husband,' Zak said.

'What about Steve?' I asked.

'He was her lover, and her business partner. They were both killed by Giles because they had just found out he had embezzled all the capital and the bloodstock business was bankrupt. Now Angelica's husband comes on the scene to ask where her money is, as she hasn't changed her will and he inherits. He decided to investigate her death himself because he doesn't think either the Mounties or I have done a good enough job. And now he isn't even here.'

'Well,' I said, 'why don't you discover that it is Raoul who is really Angelica's husband and who stands to inherit, which gives him a lot of motive as he doesn't know yet that Giles has embezzled the money, does he? No one does. And Raoul is only free to marry Donna because Angelica is dead, which can give the Bricknells hysterics. And how about if Raoul says the Bricknells themselves have been doping their horses, not Raoul, but they deny it and are very pleased that he should be judged guilty of everything now they know he can't marry their daughter because he is probably a murderer and will go to jail. And how about if it was the Bricknells' horse that was really supposed to be kidnapped, but by Giles, as you can later discover, so that he could sell it and gain enough to skip the country once he got safely to Vancouver.'

They opened their mouths.

'I don't know that it actually makes sense,' Zak said eventually.

'Never mind, I don't suppose they'll notice.'

'You cynical son-of-a…'

'I don't see why not,' Donna said. 'And I can have a nice weepy scene with Pierre.'

'Why?' Zak said.

'I like doing them.'

They all fell about, and in a while walked through dramatic revelations (received by Zak from Outside Sources) of Raoul's marriage to Angelica five years earlier, which neither had acknowledged at Toronto station because, Raoul said unconvincingly, they were both shocked to find the other there, as he wanted to meld with Donna as she with Steve.

They all went away presently to get into their character clothes, and from Zak, very much later, I heard that the whole thing, played at the tops of their voices, had been a galvanic riot. He came to my door with a bottle in each hand, Scotch for him, red wine for me, and sank exhaustedly into an armchair with an air of having nobly borne the weight of the world on his shoulders and bravely survived.

'Did you have any dinner?' he said, yawning. 'Didn't see you.'

'I had some sent up.'

He looked at the television programme with which I'd passed the time.

'Rotten reception in these mountains,' he said. 'Look at that idiot.' He stared at the screen. 'Couldn't act his way out of a paper bag.'

We drank companionably and I asked if the party were all generally happy without Daffodil Quentin.

'The dear in the Mont Blanc curls?' he said. 'Oh, sure. They were all in a great mood. That man who used to be with her all the time was dripping charm all over Bambi Lorrimore and that nutter of a son of hers didn't open his mouth once. Those Australians are still in the clouds…'

He described the reactions of some of the others to the evening's scene and then said he would rely on me for another scintillating bit of scrambled plot for the next night. Not to mention, he added, a denouement and finale for the night after, our last on the train. The mystery had to be solved then before a Gala Dinner of epic proportions comprising five courses produced by Angus by sleight of hand.

'But I only said it all off the top of my head,' I said.

'The top of your head will do us all fine.' He yawned. 'Tell you the truth, we need a fresh mind.'

'Well… all right '

'So how much do I pay you?'

I was surprised. 'I don't want money.'

'Don't be silly.'

'Um,' I said. 'I do earn more than Tommy.'

He looked at me over his whisky glass. 'You don't really surprise me.'

'So thanks a lot,' I said, meaning it, 'but no thanks.'

He nodded and left it: the offer honourably made, realistically declined. Anything he would have paid me would have come directly out of his own pocket: impossible to accept.

'Oh!' he said, clearly hit by a shaft of memory, 'Nell asked me to give you this.' He dug into a pocket and produced a sealed envelope which he handed over. It said 'Nell Richmond' on the outside, and 'Photographs, do not bend.'

'Thanks,' I said, relieved. 'I was beginning to think it hadn't got here.'

I opened the envelope and found three identical prints inside, but no letter. The pictures were clear, sharp and in black and white owing to the fast high-definition film I habitually used in the binoculars-camera. The subject, taken from above, was looking upwards and to one side to a point somewhere below the lens, so that one couldn't see his eyes clearly; but the sharply jutting cheekbones, the narrow nose, the deep eye sockets, the angled jaw-bone and the hairline retreating from the temples, all were identifiable at a glance. I handed one of the prints to Zak, and he looked at it curiously.

'Who is it?' he said.

That's the point. Who is he? Have you seen him on the train?'

He looked again at the picture which showed, below the head, the shoulders and neck, with the sheepskin collar of the padded jacket over a sweater of some sort and a checked shirt unbuttoned at the top.

'A tough-looking man,' Zak said. 'Is he a militant union agitator?'

I was startled. 'Why do you say that?'

'Don't know. He has the look. All intensity and aggression. That's what I'd cast him as.'

'And is that how you'd also act a union agitator?'

'Sure.' He grinned. 'If he was described in the script as a trouble maker.' He shook his head. 'I haven't seen him on the train or anywhere else that I know of. Is he one of the racegoers, then?’

'I don't know for sure, but he was at Thunder Bay station and also at Winnipeg races.'

'The sleeping-car attendants will know.'

I nodded. 'I'll ask them.'

'What do you want him for?'

'Making trouble.'

He handed back the photograph with a smile. 'Type cast,' he said, nodding.

He ambled off to bed, and early the next morning I telephoned Mrs Baudelaire who sounded as if she rose with the lark.

I asked her to tell Bill the photos had arrived safely.

'Oh, good,' she said blithely. 'Did you get my message with the numbers?'

'Yes, I did, thank you very much.'

Val called with them from London, sounding very pleased. He said he wasn't having so much success with whatever it was that Sheridan Lorrimore did at Cambridge. No one's talking. He thinks the gag is cash for the new library being built at Sheridan's old college. How immoral can academics get? And Bill said to tell you that they went round to the Winnipeg barns with that photo, but no one knew who the man was, except that he did go there asking for Lenny Higgs. Bill says they will ask all the Ontario racing people they can reach and maybe print it in the racing papers coast to coast.'

'Great.'

'Bill wants to know what name you're using on the train.'

I hesitated, which she picked up at once with audible hurt. 'Don't you trust us?'

'Of course I do. But I don't trust everyone in the train.'

'Oh, I see.'

'You were right to send the message to Nell.'

'Good, then.'

'Are you well?' I asked.

The line said, 'Have a nice day, young man,' and went dead.

I listened to her silence with regret. I should have known better. I did know better, but it seemed discourteous never to ask.

With her much in mind I dressed for outdoors, hopped down the fire stairs and found an inconspicuous way out so as not to come face to face with any passengers who were en route to breakfast. In my woolly hat, well pulled down, and my navy zipped jacket, I found a good vantage point for watching the front door, then wandered round a bit and returned to the watching point a little before bus-boarding time for the joy-trip to Banff. Under the jacket I had slung the binoculars, just in case I 'could get nowhere near, but in fact, from leaning against the boot of an empty, parked, locked car where I hoped I looked as if I was waiting for the driver to return, I had a close enough view not to need them.

A large ultra-modern bus with tinted windows rolled in and stationed itself obligingly so that I could see who walked from the hotel to board it, and very soon after, when the driver had been into the hotel to report his arrival, Nell appeared in a warm jacket, trousers and boots and shepherded her flock with smiles into its depths. Most of the passengers were going sightseeing, it seemed, but not all.

Filmer didn't come out. I willed him to: to appear without his briefcase and roll away for hours: to give me a chance of thinking of some way to get into his room in safety. Willing didn't work. Julius Apollo didn't seem to want to walk on a glacier or dangle in a cable car, and stayed resolutely indoors.

Mercer, Bambi and Sheridan came out of the hotel together, hardly looking a lighthearted little family, and inserted themselves into a large waiting chauffeur-driven car which carried them off immediately.

No Xanthe. No Xanthe on the bus either. Rose and Chamber Young had boarded without her. Xanthe, I surmised, was back in the sulks.

Nell, making a note on her clipboard and looking at her watch, decided there were no more customers for the bus. She stepped inside it and closed the door and I watched it roll away.