The Edge (20 page)

What
before Winnipeg? What had he done?

What indeed.

It couldn’t have been the Lorrimores’ car, I thought. Filmer had shown no interest and no tension; had been obviously uninvolved. But then he would have been calm, I supposed, if he hadn’t been expecting anything to happen except before Vancouver. He hadn’t been expecting the Lorrimores’ car to be uncoupled before either city, of that I was certain. He had instead been cultivating his acquaintanceship with Mercer, a game plan that would have come to an abrupt end if the Lorrimores had deserted the trip, which they would have done at once if the Canadian had ploughed into their home-from-home.

If not the Lorrimores’ car, what else had happened? What had happened before Winnipeg that Filmer had intended to happen before Vancouver? In what way had the gaunt man already earned his money?

Anyone’s guess, I thought.

He could have robbed someone, bribed a stable lad, nobbled a horse …

Nobbled a horse that was going to run at Winnipeg, instead of one running at Vancouver?

From the fury in their voices, the mistake had been devastating.

Only Flokati and Upper Gumtree were due to run at Winnipeg … Laurentide Ice was running at Vancouver against Voting Right and
Sparrowgrass.… Could Filmer have been so stupid as to get the horses’ names wrong in addition to the cities? No, he couldn’t.

Impasse. Yet … gaunt-face had done
something.

Sighing, I watched the Youngs walk past the window en route, I supposed, to the horse car. Soon after, the Unwins followed. I would have liked to have checked at once on the state of the horses, but I supposed if there were something wrong with any of them I would hear soon enough.

I wished I’d been able to take a photograph of gaunt-face, but I’d been more keen to listen.

If he’d done something to or around the horses, I thought, then he had to have travelled with us on the train. He hadn’t just met us in Thunder Bay. If he’d been on the train and had walked with the other racegoers towards the station, Filmer could have seen him through the window … and just the sight of him had caused the tensing of the neck muscles … and if Filmer hadn’t yet paid him for whatever … then he would come back to the train …

I left George’s office and went two doors along to my roomette to dig my telescopic-lens binoculars–camera out of Tommy’s holdall, and I sat and waited by the window for gaunt-face’s return.

What happened instead was that after a while Filmer and Daffodil appeared in my view, making a diagonal course towards the station buildings, and pretty soon afterwards, accompanied by a lot of bell-ringing and warning hooters, a huge bright yellow diesel engine came grinding and groaning past my window followed by long corrugated silver coaches as the whole of the regular Canadian rolled up the track next to the race train and stopped precisely alongside.

Instead of a nice clear photographic view of the station, I now faced the black uninformative window of someone else’s roomette.

Frustration and damnation, I thought. I tucked the binoculars into the holdall again and without any sensible plans wandered back towards the dining car. If I went on like this, I would fulfil the gloomiest fears of Bill Baudelaire, the Brigadier and, above all, John Millington. ‘I
told
you we should have sent an ex-policeman …’ I could hear his voice in my ear.

It occurred to me, when I reached Julius Apollo’s door, that the Canadian would be standing where it was for the whole of the twenty-five minutes of its daily scheduled stop. For twenty-five minutes … say twenty-two by now … Filmer would stay over in the station. He would not walk round either end of the lengthy Canadian to return to his room.

Would he?

No, he would not. Why should he? He had only just gone over there. I had twenty minutes to see what I could do about his combination locks.

If I’d paused for more thought I perhaps wouldn’t have had the nerve, but I simply opened his door, checked up and down the corridor for observers (none) and went inside, shutting myself in.

The black briefcase was still on the floor at the back of the hanging space, under the suits. I pulled it out, sat on one of the armchairs, and with a feeling of unreality started on the right-hand lock. If anyone should come in, I thought confusedly … if the sleeping car attendant for instance came in … whatever excuse could I possibly find?

None at all.

The right-hand combination wheels were set at one-three-seven. I methodically went on from there, one-three-eight, one-three-nine, one-four-zero, trying the latch after each number change.

My heart hammered and I felt breathless. I was used to long-distance safety in my work, and in the past to many physical dangers, but never to this sort of risk.

One-four-one, one-four-two, one-four-three.… I tried the latch over and over and looked at my watch. Only two minutes had gone. It felt like a lifetime. One-four-four, one-four-five.… There were a thousand possible combinations … one-four-six, one-four-seven … in twenty minutes I could perhaps try a hundred and fifty numbers.… I had done this process before, once, but not under pressure, when Aunt Viv had set a combination on a new suitcase and then forgotten it … one-four-eight, one-four-nine … my face was sweating, my fingers slipping on the tiny wheels from haste … one-five-zero, one-five-one …

With a snap the latch flew open.

It was incredible. I could hardly believe it. I had barely started. All I needed now was double the luck.

The left-hand combination numbers stood at seven-three-eight. I tried the latch. Nothing.

With just a hope that both locks opened to the same sesame, I turned the wheels to one-five-one and tried it. Nothing. Not so easy. I tried reversing it to five-one-five. Nothing. I tried comparable numbers, one-two-one, two-one-two, one-three-one, three-one-three, one-four-one, four-one-four … six … seven … eight … nine … three zeros.

Zilch.

My nerve deserted me. I rolled the left-hand wheels back to seven-three-eight
and with the latch closed again set the right-hand lock to one-three-seven. I polished the latches a bit with my shirtsleeve, then I put the briefcase back exactly as I’d found it and took my leaf-trembling self along to the dining car, already regretting, before I got there, that I hadn’t stayed until the Canadian left, knowing that I’d wasted some of the best and perhaps the only chance I would get of seeing what Filmer had brought with him on the train.

Perhaps if I’d tried one-one-five, or five-five-one … or five-one-one, or five-five-five …

Nell was sitting alone at a table in the dining car working on her interminable lists (those usually clipped to the clipboard) and I sat down opposite her feeling ashamed of myself.

She glanced up. ‘Hello,’ she said.

‘Hi.’

She considered me. ‘You look hot. Been running?’

I’d been indulging in good heart exercise while sitting still. I didn’t think I would confess.

‘Sort of,’ I said. ‘How’s things?’

She glanced sideways with disgust at the Canadian.

‘I was just about to go over to the station when
that
arrived.’

That, as if taking the hint, began quietly to roll, and within twenty seconds we again had a clear view of the station. Most of the train’s passengers, including Filmer and Daffodil, immediately started across the tracks to reboard. Among them, aiming for the racegoers’ carriages, was gaunt-face.

God in heaven, I thought. I forgot about him. I forgot about photographing him. My wits were scattered.

‘What’s the matter?’ Nell said, watching my face.

‘I’ve earned a D minus. A double D minus.’

‘You probably expect too much of yourself,’ she said dispassionately. ‘No one’s perfect.’

‘There are degrees of imperfection.’

‘How big is the catastrophe?’

I thought it over more coolly. Gaunt-face was on the train, and I might have another opportunity. I could undo one of the latches of Filmer’s briefcase and, given time, I might do the other. Correction: given nerve, I might do the other.

‘OK,’ I said, ‘let’s say C minus, could do better. Still not good.’ Millington would have done better.

Zak and Emil arrived together at that point, Emil ready to set the tables for lunch, Zak in theatrical exasperation demanding to know if
the actors were to put on the next scene before the meal, as originally planned, and if not, when?

Nell looked at her watch and briefly thought. ‘Couldn’t you postpone it until cocktail time this evening?’

‘We’re supposed to do the following scene then,’ he objected.

‘Well … couldn’t you run them both together?’

He rather grumpily agreed and went away saying they would have ro rehearse. Nell smiled sweetly at his departing back and asked if I’d ever noticed how
important
everything was to actors? Everything except the real world, of course.

‘Pussycat,’ I said.

‘But I have such tiny, indulgent claws.’

Oliver and Cathy arrived and with Emil began spreading tablecloths and setting places. I got to my feet and helped them, and Nell with teasing amusement watched me fold pink napkins into water lilies and said, ‘Well, well, hidden depths,’ and I answered, ‘You should see my dishwashing,’ which were the sort of infantile surface remarks of something we both guessed might suddenly become serious. The surface meanwhile was safe and shimmering and funny, and would stay that way until we were ready for change.

As usual, the passengers came early into the dining car, and I faded into the scenery in my uniform and avoided Nell’s eyes.

The passengers hadn’t over-enjoyed their sojourn in the station, it appeared, as they had been fallen upon by the flock of pressmen who had taken Xanthe back again to the brink of hysteria, and had asked Mercer whether it wasn’t unwise to flaunt the privilege of wealth in his private car, and hadn’t he invited trouble by adding it to the train. Indignation on his behalf was thick in the air. Everyone knew he was public spiritedly on the trip For the Sake of Canadian Racing.

The Lorrimores, all four of them, arrived together to murmurs of sympathy, but the two young ones split off immediately from their parents and from each other, all of them gravitating to their various havens: the parents went to join Filmer and Daffodil of their own free will, Xanthe made a straight piteous line to Mrs Young, and Sheridan grabbed hold of Nell, who was by this time standing, saying that he needed her to sit with him, she was the only decent human being on the whole damn train.

Nell, unsure of the worth of his compliment, nevertheless sat down opposite him, even if temporarily. Keeping Sheridan on a straight or even a wavy line definitely came into the category of crisis control.

Sheridan had the looks which went with Julius’s name, Apollo: he was tall, handsome, nearly blond, a child of the sun. The ice, the arrogance, the lack of common sense and of control, these were the darkside tragedy. A mini psychopath, I thought, and maybe not so mini, at that, if Xanthe thought he should be in jail.

The Australian Unwins, sitting with the rival owners of Flokati, were concerned about a lifelessness they had detected in Upper Gumtree due to the fact that on the train their horse had been fed a restricted diet of compressed food nuts and high grade hay, and the Flokati people were cheerfully saying that on so long a stretch without exercise, good hay was best. Hay was calming. ‘We don’t want them climbing the walls,’ Mr Flokati said. Upper Gumtree had looked asleep, Mrs Unwin remarked with disapproval. The Flokati people beamed while trying to look sympathetic. If Upper Gumtree proved listless, so much the better for Flokati’s chances.

It seemed that all of the owners had taken the opportunity of visiting the horses while the train was standing still, and listen though I might I could hear no one else reporting trouble.

Upper Gumtree, it seemed to me, might revive spectacularly on the morrow, given oats, fresh air and exercise. His race was still more than forty-eight hours away. If gaunt-face had in fact given Upper Gumtree something tranquillising, the effects would wear off long before then.

On reflection, I thought it less and less probable that he had done any such thing: he would have to have by-passed the dragon-lady, Leslie Brown, for a start. Yet presumably at times she left her post … to eat and sleep.

‘I said,’ Daffodil said to me distinctly, ‘would you bring me a clean knife? I’ve dropped mine on the floor.’

‘Certainly, madam,’ I said, coming back abruptly to the matter in hand and realising with a shock that she had already asked me once. I fetched her a knife fast. She nodded merely, her attention again on Filmer, and he, I was mightily relieved to see, had taken no notice of the small matter. But how could I, I thought ruefully, how could I have possibly stopped concentrating when I was so close to him. Only one day ago the proximity had had my pulse racing.

The train had made its imperceptible departure and was rolling along again past the uninhabited infinity of rocks and lakes and conifers that seemed to march on to the end of the world. We finished serving lunch and coffee and cleared up, and as soon as I decently could I left the kitchen and set off forward up the train.

George, whom I looked for first, was in his office eating a fat ragged beef sandwich and drinking diet coke.

‘How did it go,’ I asked, ‘in Thunder Bay?’

He scowled, but halfheartedly. ‘They found out nothing I hadn’t told them. There was nothing to see. They’re thinking now that whoever uncoupled the private car was on it when the train left Car-tier.’

‘On the private car?’ I said in surprise.

‘That’s right. The steam tube could have been disconnected in the station, eh? Then the train leaves Cartier with the saboteur in the Lorrimores’ car. Then less than a mile out of Cartier, eh?, our saboteur pulls up the rod that undoes the coupling. Then the private car rolls to a stop, and he gets off and walks back to Cartier.’

‘But why should anyone do that?’

‘Grow up, sonny. There are people in this world who cause trouble because it makes them feel important. They’re ineffective, eh?, in their lives. So they burn things … and smash things … paint slogans on walls … leave their mark on something, eh? And wreck trains. Put slabs of concrete on the rails. I’ve seen it done. Power over others, that’s what it’s about. A grudge against the Lorrimores, most like. Power over them, over their possessions. That’s what those investigators think.’