Dick Francis - The Edge

I walked along to the car where my roomette was, dumped my bag there and took 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 dram 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 dram 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 more 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 Torento, 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 remember 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 car 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.

I picked up a cloth and began polishing. The other three smiled.

In the hissing heat of the kitchen, Angus and Simone were arguing, Angus having asked Simone to shell a bowlful of hard-boiled eggs which she refused to do, saying he must do it himself.

Emil raised amused eyebrows. 'She is getting crosser as time goes by. Angus is a genius and she doesn't like it.'

Angus, as usual seeming to have six hands all busy at once, proved to be making dozens of fresh canapes on baking trays ready for ten minutes in a scorching oven. Crab and brie together in thin layers of pastry, he said of one batch, and chicken and tarragon in another, cheese and bacon in a third. Simone stood with her hands on her hips, a hoity-toity tilt to her chin. Angus had begun ignoring her completely, which was making things worse.

The passengers as usual came to the dining car well before the appointed hour, but seemed perfectly happy just to sit and wait. The theatrical entertainment outside the windows anyway claimed all eyes and tongues until the shadows grew long in the valleys and only the peaks were lit with slowly fading intensity, until they too were extinguished into darkness. Evening came swift and early in the mountains, twilight being a matter of a lingering lightness in the sky, night growing upwards from the earth.