“Pardon me, sir and madam,” he said, in only lightly accented English. “I am afraid I must insist you show me all your tickets and passes. Including your reservations for dinner at this serving. If you cannot, you must explain yourselves immediately! I hope it will not be necessary for me to summon the security guards. They can be . . . most unpleasant.”
“Well, we wouldn’t want that, would we?” I said. “Molly dearest . . . ?”
“Of course, darling,” said Molly. She snapped her fingers imperiously, to draw the conductor’s attention, and then fixed his gaze with hers. His face went blank, and his jaw dropped, just a little. Molly held out an empty hand to him. “There. See? We have first-class tickets. And reservations. And everything else we need. So you don’t need to bother us ever again. Do you?”
The conductor started to say something, and then his mouth snapped shut as Molly frowned. The conductor looked at her empty hand, and then smiled meaninglessly at Molly and at me.
“Of course . . . madam and sir. Everything is in order. You will not be troubled again.”
“We’re not the diners you’re looking for,” I said.
“Quite so, sir . . .”
He turned abruptly away and marched off, looking completely convinced and terribly confused. He rubbed at his forehead with one hand, as though bothered by something he couldn’t quite place, or something in his head that shouldn’t be there. He glared at everyone he passed as he hurried back down the aisle, looking for someone to take out his unease on, but everyone had the good sense to keep their heads down and say nothing. Molly looked around for the nearest waiter and caught his eye, and the young man immediately snapped to attention and hurried forward to take our order.
In the end, Molly ordered one whole page of the menu, and not to be outdone, I ordered everything on the opposite page. Just to increase the odds of ending up with something worth having. The waiter actually lowered himself to look seriously impressed. The bill for that much food was probably more than he and his fellow waiters on the train earned in a week. I then raised myself even further in his estimation by blithely ordering him to bring us a bottle of the best Champagne the Trans-Siberian Express could offer. The waiter smiled and bowed quickly, several times, and then hurried off to place our order and tell his fellows all about it. Obviously anticipating a really good tip, because clearly money meant nothing to such wealthy patrons as us.
Molly and I threw aside the menus, sat back in our comfortable seats, and looked about us. It was all very calm, very civilised. Very peaceful. Not a hint of piped music. Though if they sent a gypsy violinist in to serenade us, I was fully prepared to punch him in the head repeatedly until he gave up and went away again.
“We should do this more often,” said Molly. “We never seem to find the time to just kick back and enjoy ourselves. Pamper the inner person . . . Though I have to ask, are you actually planning to pay for all this, or are we just going to have to break a window and jump for it? I mean, I never pay for anything on principle, on the unanswerable grounds that the world owes me. But I have to say, confusing a conductor is one thing, but confusing a credit card reader could prove problematic . . .”
“Not to worry,” I said. “I have a whole bunch of credit cards, courtesy of the Armourer. All part of an agent’s legend, once he’s out in the field. I was supposed to hand them back in, but after the way my family treated me, somehow it just slipped my mind . . .”
“Won’t they have shut those cards down, now you’re disowned?” Molly said carefully.
“They can’t,” I said cheerfully. “They’re not real cards. They’re good enough to fool any machine, anywhere in the world, but the best of luck to anyone actually trying to get money out of them . . .”
Molly looked at me accusingly. “Why haven’t I heard about these cards before?”
“Because you’d only have abused them,” I said.
“Of course!” said Molly. “That’s what credit cards are for!”
“It’s people like you that undermine economies,” I said. “Now then, I can only use each card once, and then they self-destruct so they can’t be traced. And since I can’t go back to the Armourer to ask for more, we’re going to have to make them last.” I stopped for a moment to consider the matter. “I still believe I can go home again, eventually. That I can put things right with them. When I explain about my parents, and the Voice, and the Lazarus Stone.”
“After everything your family has put you through, you still want to go back?” said Molly. “After all the terrible ways they’ve treated and mistreated you, you still think you have to explain yourself to them? You let your family walk all over you, Eddie.”
“Of course,” I said. “That’s what families are for.”
I looked out the window again. Snow. I looked up and down the restaurant car, studying the other passengers. They all seemed very prosperous, very comfortable, and happy enough with the food in front of them, if not necessarily with each other’s company. There was barely a murmur of conversation going on in the whole carriage. Most of the diners had the look of couples who’d been together for some time and had said everything to each other that was worth saying. So they sat, and ate, and didn’t look at each other. I hoped Molly and I would never get to that stage.
It also occurred to me that there was an awful lot of expensive and impressive jewellery on open display, because after all there couldn’t be any dangers in a place like this . . . I turned back to Molly and found she was also studying the jewellery, with the look of someone doing mental arithmetic. She caught me looking at her.
“Relax, Eddie. I’ll be discreet. They’ll never know what hit them. Yes, I know, we’re not supposed to draw attention to ourselves, but who would be looking for us here?”
“Who wouldn’t?” I said. “It feels like everyone in the world is after us. Very definitely including whoever is really responsible for the murder of all those people at Uncanny. We still don’t have a clue as to who that was. We’re the only ones who can find out, because we’re the only ones looking. Everyone else is convinced it was us. There are a lot of people out there who’d do anything to punish us for what they think we’ve done. The Regent of Shadows did a lot of good for people in his time. He still has a lot of friends out there. Then there are all the people who’d love to get their hands on a rogue Drood and his armour. And finally, people like the Detective Inspectre, who think they can use us to get to the Lazarus Stone.”
“I’m not sure there is anyone like Hadleigh Oblivion,” said Molly.
“You could be right there,” I said. “But you get the point.”
“How could I not, after you’ve explained it all so laboriously? I am keeping up with things, Eddie! Honestly, you’d think I’d never been on the run before . . . So, basically, we’re hiding from absolutely everybody?”
“Basically, yes,” I said. “Just like old times.”
We shared a smile, remembering how we first met. When my family denounced me for the first time, and tried to have me killed, and the only people I could turn to for help were those I’d previously considered my enemies. Molly and I had already tried to kill each other several times, earlier in our careers, so she was one of the first people I turned to. The only person who knows you as well as an old friend is an old enemy. Who knew the two of us would get on so well . . . ?
The waiter came hurrying forward, proudly bearing a bottle of Champagne in an ice bucket. He placed the bucket reverently on the table and then opened the bottle with practised ease. He poured me a glass, and presented it to me with a grand gesture. I think I impressed him, and perhaps even faintly scandalised him, by not even glancing at the label on the bottle. I took a good sip, and nodded nonchalantly. I gestured to the waiter to pour a glass for Molly. He did so quickly, and Molly took the glass and downed it in one. She smiled sweetly at the shocked waiter.