Dick Francis - The Edge

A real shame, most of the passengers complained to Nell, that the train went through the best scenery in Canada in the dark. Someone in a newspaper, they were saying as I distributed the champagne glasses, had said that it was as if the French kept the lights off in the Louvre, in Paris. Nell said she was really sorry, she didn't write the timetables, and she hoped everyone had been able to see a mountain or two at Lake Louise, which everyone had, of course. Most had gone up one, Sulphur Mountain, to the windy summit, in four-seater glass containers on wires. Others had said no way, and stayed at the bottom. Filmer, sitting this time with the ultra-rich owners of Redi-Hot, was saying pleasantly that no, he hadn't been on the bus tour, he'd been content to take his exercise in the gym at Lake Louise.

Filmer had come into the dining room from the dome-car end, not from his bedroom, and he arrived wearing a private smirk which sent uncomfortable shivers along my nerves. Any time Julius Apollo looked as pleased with himself as that, it was sure to mean trouble.

The Lorrimores arrived in a group and sat together at one table, the offspring both looking mutinous and the parents glum. Xanthe, it was clear, hadn't yet made Mercer laugh. Rose and Cumber Young were with the Upper Gumtree Unwins and the Flokati people were with the owners of Wordmaster. It was interesting, I thought, that the owners of the horses tended to be attracted to each other, much as if they belonged to a brotherhood which clung naturally together.

Perhaps Filmer had understood that. Perhaps it was why he had made such efforts to go on the train as an owner: because being an owner of one of the horses gave him standing, gave him credibility, gave him a power base. If that was what he intended, he had achieved it. Everyone on the train knew Mr Julius Filmer.

Emil popped the champagne corks. Angus whizzed his succulent hot appetizers from oven to serving trays, seeming to summon from nowhere the now peeled and sliced eggs topped with caviar and lemonskin twists on melba toast circles. We set off from the kitchen in a small procession, Emil and I pouring the bubbles, Oliver and Cathy doing the skilful stuff with silver serving tongs, giving everyone little platefuls of the hors-d'oeuvre they preferred.

Nell was laughing at me silently. Well, she would. I kept a totally straight face while filling her glass and also that of Giles who was sitting beside her in the aisle seat, ready for action.

'Thank you,' Giles said in a bored voice when his glass was full.

'My pleasure, sir,' I said.

He nodded. Nell smothered her laughing mouth against her glass and the people sitting opposite her noticed nothing at all.

When I reached the Lorrimores, Xanthe was perceptibly anxious. I poured into Bambi's glass and said to Xanthe, 'For you, miss?'

She gave me a flicker of a glance. 'Can I have Coke? '

'Certainly, miss.'

I poured champagne for Mercer and for Sheridan, and went back to the kitchen for the Coke.

'You have to pay for it,' Xanthe said jerkily to her father when I returned.

'How much?' Mercer asked. I told him, and he paid. 'Thank you,' he said.

'A pleasure, sir.'

He looked abstracted, not his usual placatory self. Xanthe risked another semi-frightened glance at me and seemed to be greatly reassured when I didn't refer in any way to our encounter above the lake. The most I gave her was the faintest of deferential smiles, which even her mother couldn't have disapproved of, if she had seen it: but she, like Mercer, seemed more than usually preoccupied.

I went on to the next table and hoped that Filmer's smirk and Mercer's gloom were not connected, although I was afraid that they might be. The smirk had been followed into the dining room by the gloom.

When Angus's canapes had been devoured to the last melting morsel and the champagne glasses refilled, Zak arrived with a flourish for the long wrap-up scene. First of all, he said, he had to announce that a thorough search of the rooms in the Chateau had produced no sign of Mavis Bricknell's jewels.

Commiserations were expressed for Mavis, the passengers entering into the fantasy with zest. Mavis accepted them gratefully.

Raoul came bursting into the dining car, furious with Walter Bricknell who was looking upset enough already.

It was too much, Raoul loudly said. It was bad enough Walter firing him as his trainer when he had done nothing to deserve it, but now he had found out that Walter had sent a letter from the Chateau to the racing authorities saying his horse, Calculator, wouldn't be running in his, Walter's, name at Vancouver, and that Raoul wouldn't be credited as trainer.

'It's unfair,' he shouted. 'I've trained the horse to the minute for that race. I've won five races with him for you. You're cheating me. You're damned ungrateful. I'm going to complain to the Jockey Club.'

Walter looked stony. Raoul had another go. Walter said he would do what he liked, Calculator was his. If he wanted to sell it… or give it away… that was entirely his own business and nobody else's.

'You said yesterday,' Raoul yelled, 'that if you didn't have horses, if you couldn't go racing, you'd kill yourself. So kill yourself. Is that what you're going to do?'

Everyone looked at Walter in shocked disbelief.

Zak invited Walter to explain. Walter said it was none of Zak's business. Everything on the train was his business, Zak said. 'Could we all please know,' he asked Walter, 'who the new owner of Calculator is going to be?'

No, no one could ask. Mavis, bewildered, did ask. Walter was rude to her, which no one liked. Walter realized that no one liked it, but said he couldn't help it, he was getting rid of Calculator, and since the horse was in his name only, not Mavis's, she couldn't do anything about it. Mavis began to cry.

Donna went to her mother's defence and verbally attacked her father.

'You be quiet,' he said angrily. 'You've done enough harm.'

Pierre put his arm round Donna's shoulders and told Walter not to talk to his daughter that way. He, Pierre, would borrow some money to pay his gambling debts, he said, and really work this time and save until it was paid off, and he would never let Donna take a penny from her father, and when he was out of debt he and Donna would get married and there was nothing Walter could do to stop them.

'Oh, Pierre,' Donna wailed, and hid her face against his chest. Pierre, in snow-white shirt-sleeves, put both arms round her, stroked her hair and looked very manly, handsome and protective. The audience approved of him with applause.

'Oh, goody,' Cathy said from beside me. 'Isn't he cute?'

'He sure is.'

We were standing in the little lobby, watching from the shadows and, by a malign quirk of fate, all the faces I was most interested in were sitting with their backs to me. Filmer's neck, not far off, was rigid with tension, and Cumber Young, one table further along, had got compulsively to his feet when Raoul had told Walter to kill himself, and only slowly subsided, with Rose talking to him urgently. Mercer, just over midway along, sitting against the far right-hand side wall, had his head bowed, not watching the action. He couldn't help but hear, however. The actors were all courting laryngitis, making sure that those in the furthest corners weren't left out.

Mavis had a go at Walter, first angry, then pleading, then saying she might as well leave him, she obviously didn't count with him any more. She prepared to go. Walter, stung beyond bearing, muttered something to her that stopped her dead.

'What?' she said.

Walter muttered again.

'He says he's being blackmailed,' Mavis said in a high voice. 'How can anyone blackmail someone into getting rid of a horse?'

Filmer, pinned against the left-hand wall by the Unwins in the aisle seats, sat as if with a rod up his backbone. Mercer turned his head to stare at Walter. Mercer had his back towards Filmer, and I wondered whether he'd sat that way round on purpose so as not to see his recent friend. He was sitting beside Sheridan and opposite Bambi. Xanthe sat opposite her brother, both in aisle seats. I could see both of the female faces, where I wanted to see the male. I would have done better, I supposed, to have watched from the far end, but on the other hand they might have seen me watching: watching them instead of the action.