Except for Xanthe, Mercer was the only Lorrimore to surface for breakfast, and he came not to eat but to ask Emil to send trays through to his own private dining room. Emil himself and Oliver delivered the necessary, although Emil on his return said he hoped this wasn't going to happen at lunch and dinner also, because it took too much time. Room service was strictly not available, yet one didn't disoblige the Lorrimores if one could help it.
Daffodil arrived after everyone else with each bright curl in place and pleasantly sat across the aisle from the Filmer/Young table, asking for news of Xanthe's night. The only people not bothering to ask, it seemed, were the near-victim's own family. Xanthe chattered and could be heard telling Daffodil she felt snug and safe behind her curtain. The next time I went slowly past their table, refill coffee pot at the ready, the conversation was back to the journey, with Xanthe this time saying she basically thought horseracing boring and she wouldn't have come on this trip if her father hadn't made her.
'How did he make you?' Filmer said interestedly.
'Oh!' She sounded suddenly flustered and evaded an answer. 'He made Sheridan come, too.'
'But why, if you both didn't want to?’ That was Daffodil's voice, behind my back.
'He likes us where he can see us, he says.' There was a note of grudge and bitterness but also, it seemed to me, a realistic acknowledgement that father knew best: and judging from Sheridan 's behaviour to date, under his father's long-suffering eye was certainly the son's safest place.
The conversation faded into the distance and I paused to refill the Unwins' cups, where the talk was about Upper Gumtree having the edge over Mercer's Premiere that was coming to Winnipeg by road.
George Burley presently came into the dining car and spoke for a while to Nell, who subsequently went from table to table, clipboard in place, repeating what he'd said.
'We're stopping at Thunder Bay for longer than scheduled, as there'll be an investigation there about the Lorrimores' car being uncoupled. We'll be there about an hour and a half, as we're not going on until after the regular Canadian has gone through. The Canadian will be ahead of us then all the way to Winnipeg.'
'What about lunch?' Mr Young asked. Mr Young, though thinnish, had a habit of eating half his wife's food as well as his own.
'We'll leave Thunder Bay at about a quarter to one,' Nell said, 'so we'll have lunch soon after. And a more leisurely dinner before we get to Winnipeg, instead of having to crowd it in early. It will all fit in quite well.' She was smiling, reassuring, keeping the party from unravelling. 'You'll be glad to stretch your legs for a bit longer in Thunder Bay, and some of you might visit your horses.'
The owner of Redi-Hot, who seemed to spend most of his time reading a guide book, told Mr and Mrs Wordmaster, who looked suitably impressed, that Thunder Bay, one of Canada's largest ports, was at the far west end of the St Lawrence-Great Lakes seaway and should really be called what the locals called it, The Lakehead. Grain from the prairies was shipped from there to throughout the world, he said.
'Fancy that,' said Mrs Wordmaster, who was English.
I retreated from this scintillating conversation and helped Oliver and Cathy clear up in the kitchen, and shortly before eleven we slid to a halt in the port that was halfway across Canada on some rails parallel with but a little removed from the station buildings.
Immediately a waiting double posse of determined-looking men advanced from the station across two intervening tracks, one lot sprouting press cameras, the other notebooks. George stepped down from the train to meet the notebook people, and the others fanned out and began clicking. One of the notebook crowd climbed aboard and came into the dining car, inviting anyone who had seen anyone or anything suspicious the previous evening to please unbutton, but of course no one had, or no one was saying, because otherwise the whole train would have known about it by now.
The investigator said he would try his luck with the scenery-watchers in the dome-car, with apparently the same result, and from there he presumably went in to see the Lorrimores, who apart from Xanthe were still in seclusion. He then reappeared in the dining car with an interested crowd of people following him and asked to speak to Xanthe, who up until then had kept palely quiet.
He identified her easily because everyone looked her way. Filmer was still beside her: the passengers tended all the time to linger at the tables, talking, after the meals had been cleared, rather than return to the solitude of their bedrooms. Nearly everyone, I would have guessed, had been either in the dining room or the dome car all morning.
Mrs Young squeezed Xanthe's hand encouragingly from across the table while the half-child half-young-woman shivered her way through the dangerous memory.
'No,' she said, with everyone quiet and attentively listening, 'no one suggested I went to our car… I just wanted to go to the bathroom. And I could… I… could have been killed.'
'Yes… 'The investigator, middle-aged and sharp-eyed, was sympathetic but calming, speaking in a distinct voice that carried easily through the dining car, now that we weren't moving. 'Was there anyone in the dome car lounge when you went through?'
'Lots of people.' Xanthe's voice was much quieter than his.
'Did you know them?'
'No. I mean, they were on this trip. Everyone there was.' She was beginning to speak more loudly, so that all could hear.
A few heads nodded.
'No one you now know was a stranger?'
'No.'
Mrs Young, intelligent besides comforting, asked, 'Do you mean it's possible to uncouple a car while you're actually on the train? You don't have to be on the ground to do it?'
The investigator gave her his attention and everyone leaned forward slightly to hear the answer.
'It's possible. It can be done also while the train is moving, which is why we want to know if there was anyone in the dome car who was unknown to you all. Unknown to any of you, I should say.'
There was a long, respectful, understanding silence.
Nell said, 'I suppose I know most of our passengers by sight by now. I identified them all at Toronto station when I was allocating their sleeping quarters. I didn't see anyone yesterday evening who puzzled me.'
'You don't think,' Mrs Young said, putting her finger unerringly on the implication, 'that the car was unhitched by someone in our party'?'
'We're investigating all possibilities,' the investigator said without pompousness. He looked around at the ranks of worried faces and his slightly severe expression softened. 'The private car was deliberately uncoupled,' he said, 'but we're of the preliminary opinion that it was an act of mischief committed by someone in Carder, the last place you stopped before Miss Lorrimore found the car was missing. But we do have to ask if the saboteur could have been on the train, just in case any of you noticed anything wrong.'
A man at the back of the crowd said, 'I was sitting in the dome car lounge when Xanthe came through, and I can tell you that no one had come the other way. I mean, we all knew that only the Lorrimores' car was behind the dome car. If anyone except the Lorrimores had gone that way and come back again… well… we would have noticed.'
Another nodding of heads. People noticed everything to do with the Lorrimores.