The Edge

'She'll be back in a minute,' comforted the second desk along. 'Sit down if you like.'

There were chairs, presumably for clients, on the near sides of the desks. Comfortable chairs, clients for the pampering of, I thought vaguely, sitting in one.

The empty desk had a piece of engraved plastic on it announcing its absent owner's name: Nell. A quiet voice behind me said, 'Can I help you?' and I stood up politely and said, 'Yes, please.'

She had fair hair, grey eyes, a sort of clean look with a dust of freckles, but she was not as young, I thought, as her immediate impression, which was about eighteen.

'I came about the train,' I said.

'Yes. Could you possibly compress it into five minutes? There's such a lot still to arrange.' She walked round to the back of her desk and sat, looking down at an array of list upon list.

'My name is Tor Kelsey,' I began.

Her head lifted fast. 'Really? The Jockey Club told us your name this morning. Well, we've put you in because Bill Baudelaire said he'd cancel the whole production if we didn't.' The unemphatic grey eyes assessed me, not exactly showing that she didn't think the person she saw to be worth the fuss, but pretty near. 'It's the dining car that's the trouble,' she said. 'There are only forty-eight places. We have to have everyone seated at the same time because the mystery is acted before and after meals, and two or three of those places are taken by actors. Or are supposed to be, only now there isn't room for them either, as my boss sold too many tickets to late applicants, and you are actually number forty-nine.' She stopped briefly. 'I suppose that's our worry, not yours. We've given you a roomette for sleeping, and Bill Baudelaire says anything you ask for will we please let you have. We said what would you ask for and he didn't know. Maddeningly unhelpful. Do you yourself know what you want?'

'I'd like to know who the actors are, and the story they're going to enact.'

'No, we can't do that. It'll spoil it for you. We never tell the passengers anything.'

'Did Bill Baudelaire tell you,' I asked, 'why he so particularly wanted me on the train?'

'Not really.' She frowned slightly. 'I didn't give it much thought, I've so much else to see to. He simply insisted we take you, and since the Jockey Club are our clients, we do what the client asks.'

'Are you going on the train?' I asked.

'Yes, I am. There has to be someone from the company to sort out the crises.'

'And how good are you at secrets?'

'I keep half a dozen before breakfast every day.'

Her telephone rang quietly and she answered it in a quiet voice, adding her murmur to the hum of other murmurs all round the room. I realized that the quiet was a deliberate policy, as otherwise they would all have been shouting at the tops of their lungs and not hearing a word their callers said.

'Yes,' she was saying. 'Out at Mimico before ten. Four dozen, yes. Load them into the special dining car. Right. Good.' She put the phone down and without pause said to me, 'What secret do you want kept?'

'That I'm employed by the Jockey Club… to deal with crises.'

'Oh.' It was a long sound of understanding. 'All right, it's a secret.' She reflected briefly. 'The actors are holding a run-through right now, not far away. I've got to see them some time today, so it may as well be at once. What do you want me to tell them?'

'I'd like you to say that your company are putting me on the train as a trouble-spotter, because a whole train of racing people is a volatile mass looking for an excuse to explode. Say it's a form of insurance.'

'Which it is,' she said.

'Well, yes. And I also want to solve your problem of the forty-ninth seat. I want to go on the train as a waiter.'

She didn't blink but nodded. 'Yes, OK. Good idea. Quite often we put one of the actors in as a waiter, but not actually on this trip, luckily. The rail company are very helpful when we ask. I'll fix it. Come on, then, there's such a lot still to do.'

She moved quickly without seeming to, and presently we were skimming round corners in her small blue car, pulling up with a jerk outside the garage of a large house.

The rehearsal, if you could call it that, was actually going on in the garage itself, which held no car but a large trestle table, a lot of folding chairs, a portable gas heater and about ten men and women standing in groups.

Nell introduced me without mentioning my name. 'We're taking him on the train as company eyes and ears. Anything you think might turn into trouble, tell him or me. He's going as a service attendant, which will mean he can move everywhere through the train without questions. OK? Don't tell the paying passengers he's one of us.'

They shook their heads. Keeping the true facts from the passengers was their daily occupation.

'OK,' Nell said to me. 'I'll leave you here. Phone me later.' She put a large envelope she was carrying on to the table, waved to the actors and vanished, and one of them, a man of about my own age with a mop-head of tight, light brown curls came forward, shook my hand and said, 'She's the best in the business. My name's David Flynn, by the way, but call me Zak. That's my name in the mystery. From now on, we call each other by the mystery names, so as not to make mistakes in front of the passengers. You'd better have an acting name, too. How about… um… Tommy?'

'It's all right by me.'

'Right, everybody, this is Tommy, a waiter.'

They nodded, smiling, and I was introduced to them one by one by the names they would use on the train.

'Mavis and Walter Bricknell, racehorse owners.' They were middle-aged, dressed like the others in jeans and causal sweaters. 'They're married in real life too.'

David/Zak went briskly along the row, an enormously positive person, wasting no time. 'Ricky… a groom in the mystery, though he'll be travelling with the racegoers, not the grooms. His part in the mystery finishes at Winnipeg, and he'll be getting off there. This is Raoul, racehorse trainer for the Bricknells, their guest on the train. Ben, he's an old groom who has ridden a few races.' Ben grinned from a small, deeply-lined face, looking the part. 'This is Giles: don't be taken in by his good looks, he's our murderer. This is Angelica, who you won't see much of as she's the first victim. And Pierre, he's a compulsive gambler in love with the Bricknells' daughter, Donna, and this is Donna. And last, this is James Winterbourne, he's a big noise in the Ontario Jockey Club.'

I don't think I jumped. The big name in the Ontario Jockey Club wore a three-day beard and a red trilby hat, which he lifted to me ceremoniously. 'Alas,' he said, I'm not travelling. My part ends with giving the train an official blessing. Too bad.'

David/Zak said to me, 'We're walking through the first scene now. Everyone knows what to do. This is Union Station. This is the gathering point for the passengers. They're all here. Right, guys, off we go.'

Mavis and Walter said, 'We're chatting to other passengers about the trip.'

Pierre and Donna said, 'We're having a quiet row.'

Giles said, 'I'm being nice to the passengers.'

Angelica: 'I am looking for someone called Steve. I ask the passengers if they've seen him. He is supposed to be travelling, but he hasn't turned up.'

Raoul said, 'I put my two cents' worth into Pierre and Donna's quarrel as I want to break them up so I can marry her myself. For her father's money, of course.'

Pierre said, 'Which I furiously point out.'

Donna: 'Which I don't like, and am near to tears.'

Ben: 'I ask Raoul for a hand-out, which I don't get. I tell a lot of people he's stingy, after I worked for him all those years. The passengers are to find me a nuisance. I tell them I'm travelling on the racegoers' part of the train.'

James Winterbourne said, 'I ask for attention and tell everybody that we have horses, grooms, racegoers and all your owners and friends on the train. I hope everyone will have a great time on this historic reenactment, etc., etc., for the glory of Canadian racing.'