The Edge (12 page)

The train crew were already collecting in the locker room when I made my way there and introduced myself as Tommy, the actor.

They smiled and were generous. They always enjoyed the mysteries, they said, and had worked with an actor among them before. It would all go well, I would see.

The head waiter, head steward, chief service attendant, whatever one called him, was a neat small Frenchman named Emil. Late thirties, perhaps, I thought, with dark bright eyes.

‘Do you speak French?’ he asked first, shaking my hand. ‘All VIA employees have to be able to speak French. It is a rule.’

‘I do a bit,’ I said.

‘That is good. The last actor, he couldn’t. This time the chef is from Montreal, and in the kitchen we may speak French.’

I nodded and didn’t tell him that, apart from my school days, my working French had been learned in stables, not kitchens, and was likely to be rusty in any case. But I’d half-learned several languages on my travels, and somehow they each floated familiarly back at the first step onto the matching soil. Everything in bilingual Canada was written in both English and French and I realised that since my arrival I’d been reading the French quite easily.

‘Have you ever worked in a restaurant?’ Emil asked.

‘No, I haven’t.’

He shrugged good humouredly. ‘I will show you how to set the places, and to begin with, this morning, perhaps you will serve only water. When you pour anything, when the train is moving, you pour in small amounts at a time, and you keep the cup or glass close to you. Do you understand? It is always necessary to control, to use small movements.’

‘I understand,’ I said, and indeed I did.

He put a copy of the timetable into my hands and said, ‘You will need to know where we stop. The passengers always ask.’

‘OK. Thanks.’

He nodded with good humour.

I changed into Tommy’s uniform and met some others of the crew; Oliver, who was a waiter in the special dining car, like myself, and several of the sleeping car attendants, one to each car the whole length of the train. There was a smiling Chinese gentleman who cooked in the small forward dining car where the grooms, among others, would be eating, and an unsmiling Canadian who would be cooking in the main central dining car for the bulk of the racegoers and the crew themselves. The French chef from Montreal was not there, I soon
discovered, because he was a she, and could only be found in the women’s changing room.

Everyone put on the whole uniform including the grey raincoat on top, and I put on my raincoat also; I packed Tommy’s spare garments and my own clothes into the holdall, and was ready.

Nell had said she would meet me this Sunday morning in the coffee shop in the Great Hall, and had told me that the crews often went there to wait for train time. Accordingly, accompanied by Emil and a few of the others, I carried my bags to the coffee shop where everyone immediately ordered huge carrot cakes, the speciality of the house, as if they were in fear of famine.

Nell wasn’t there, but Zak and some of the other actors were, sitting four to a table, drinking pale-looking orange juice and not eating carrot cake because of the calories.

Zak said Nell was along with the passengers in the reception area, and that he wanted to go and see how things were shaping.

‘She said something about you checking a suitcase through to Vancouver in the baggage car,’ he added, standing up.

‘Yes, this one.’

‘Right. She said to tell you to bring it along to where the passengers are. I’ll show you.’

I nodded, told Emil I’d be back, and followed Zak down the Great Hall and round a corner or two and came to a buzzing gathering of people in an area like an airport departure lounge.

An enormous banner across a latticed screen left no one in any doubt. Stretching for a good twelve feet it read in red on white THE GREAT TRANSCONTINENTAL MYSTERY RACE TRAIN, and in blue letters a good deal smaller underneath,
THE ONTARIO JOCKEY CLUB, MERRY & CO AND VIA RAIL PRESENT A CELEBRATION OF CANADIAN RACING
.

The forty or so passengers already gathered in happy anticipation wore name badges and carnations and held glasses of orange juice convivially.

‘There was supposed to be champagne in the orange juice,’ Zak said dryly. ‘There isn’t. Something to do with the Sunday drink law.’ He searched the throng with his eyes from where we stood a good twenty paces away out in the station. ‘There’s Ben doing his stuff, see? Asking Raoul to lend him money?’

I could indeed see. It looked incredibly real. People standing around them were looking shocked and embarrassed.

Zak was nodding his mop of curls beside me and had begun
snapping his fingers rather fast. I could sense the energy starting to flow in him now that his fiction was coming alive, and I could see that he had used make-up on himself; not greasepaint or anything heavy, more a matter of darkening and thickening his eyebrows and darkening his mouth, emphasising rather than disguising. An actor in the wings, I thought, gathering up his power.

I spotted Mavis and Walter Bricknell being fussy and anxious as intended, and saw and heard Angelica asking if anyone had seen Steve.

‘Who’s Steve?’ I asked Zak. ‘I forget.’

‘Her lover. He misses the train.’

Pierre and Donna began to have their row which made a different bunch of passengers uncomfortable. Zak laughed. ‘Good,’ he said, ‘that’s great.’

Giles-the-murderer, who had been in the coffee shop, strolled along into the mêlée and started being frightfully nice to old ladies. Zak snapped his fingers even faster and started humming.

The crowd parted and shifted a little and through the gap I saw Julius Apollo Filmer, another murderer, being frightfully nice to a not-so-old lady, Daffodil Quentin.

I took a deep breath, almost of awe, almost on a tremble. Now that it was really beginning, now that I was going to be near him, I felt as strung up and as energised as Zak, and no doubt suffered the same compelling anxiety that things shouldn’t go wrong.

Daffodil was playfully patting Filmer’s hand.

Yuk, I thought.

Ben the actor appeared beside them and started his piece, and I saw Filmer turn a bland face towards him and watched his mouth shape the unmistakable words, ‘Go away.’

Ben backed off. Very wise, I thought. The crowd came together again and hid Filmer and his flower and I felt the tension in my muscles subside, and realised I hadn’t known I had tensed them. Have to watch that, I thought.

The Lorrimores had arrived, each wearing yesterday’s expression: pleasant, aloof, supercilious, sulky. Mercer was entering into the spirit of things, Bambi also but more coolly. Sheridan looked as if he thought he was slumming. The young daughter, Xanthe, could have been quite pretty if she’d smiled.

James Winterbourne, actor, had discarded his red felt trilby and had shaved off the stubble and was drifting around being welcoming in his role as a member of the Jockey Club. And the real Jockey Club was there, I saw, in the person of Bill Baudelaire, who was known to one
or two of the owners with whom he was chatting. I wondered how much he would fret if he didn’t see me among the passengers, and I hoped not much.

Nell emerged from the noise of the crowd and came across towards us, a clipboard clasped to her chest, her eyes shining. She wore another severe suit, grey this time over a white blouse, but perhaps in honour of the occasion had added a long twisted rope of coral, pearls and crystal.

‘It’s all happening,’ she said. ‘I can hardly believe it, after all these months. I won’t kiss you both, I’m not supposed to know you yet, but consider yourselves kissed. It’s all going very well. Pierre and Donna are having a humdinger of a row. How does she manage to cry whenever she wants to? Is that the suitcase for Vancouver? Put it over there with those others which are being checked right through. Mercer Lorrimore is sweet, I’m so relieved. We haven’t had any disasters yet, but there must be one on the way. I’m as high as a kite and there’s no champagne in the orange juice.’

She stopped for breath and a laugh and I said, ‘Nell, if Bill Baudelaire asks you if I’m here, just say yes, don’t say where.’

She was puzzled but too short of time to argue. ‘Well … OK.’

‘Thanks.’

She nodded and turned to go and take care of the passengers, and the James Winterbourne character came out to meet her and also to talk to Zak.

‘It’s too much,’ he complained, ‘the real goddam Chairman of the Ontario Jockey Club has turned up to do the “bon voyage” bit himself. I’m out of a job.’

‘We did ask him first,’ Nell said. ‘We suggested it right at the beginning, before it all grew so big. He’s obviously decided he should be here after all.’

‘Yes, but … what about my fee?’

‘You’ll get it,’ Zak said resignedly. ‘Just go back and jolly things along and tell everyone what a great trip they’re going to have.’

‘I’ve been doing that,’ he grumbled, but returned obediently to his task.

‘As a matter of fact,’ Nell said, her brow wrinkling, ‘I suppose I did get a message days ago to say the Chairman was coming, but I didn’t know it meant him. I didn’t know who it meant. It was a message left for me while I was out. “The Colonel is coming.” I didn’t know any colonels. Is the Chairman a colonel?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘Oh well, no harm done. I’d better go and see if he needs anything.’ She hurried off, unperturbed.

Zak sighed. ‘I could have saved myself that fee.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Oh, Merry & Co pay me a lump sum to stage the mystery. I engage the actors and pay them, and whatever is left at the end is mine. Not much, sometimes.’

Voices were suddenly raised over in the crowd and people began scattering to the edges of the area, clearing the centre and falling silent. Zak and I instinctively went nearer, he in front, I in his shadow.

On the floor, sprawling, lay the actor Raoul, with Donna and Pierre bending down to help him up. Raoul dabbed at his nose with the back of his hand, and everyone could see the resulting scarlet streak.

Mavis Bricknell began saying loudly and indignantly, ‘He hit him. He hit him. That young man hit our trainer in the face. He had no right to knock him down.’

She was pointing at Sheridan Lorrimore, who had turned his back on the scene.

I glanced at Zak for enlightenment.

‘That,’ he said blankly, ‘wasn’t in the script.’

Nell smoothed it over.

Sheridan Lorrimore could be heard saying furiously and fortissimo to his father, ‘How the hell could I know they were acting? The fellow was being a bore. I just bopped him one. He deserved it. The girl was crying. And he was crowding me, pushing against me. I didn’t like it.’

His father murmured something.

‘Apologise?’ Sheridan said in a high voice. ‘Apol—oh, all right. I apologise. Will that do?’

Mercer drew him away to a corner, and slowly, haltingly, the general good humour resurfaced. Ironic compliments were paid to Pierre, Donna and Raoul for the potency and effect of their acting and Raoul played for sympathy and looked nobly forgiving, holding a handkerchief to his nose and peering at it for blood, of which there seemed to be not much.

Zak cursed and said that Pierre had in fact been going to knock Raoul to the ground at a slightly later time, and now that would have to be changed. I left him to his problems because it was coming up to the time when Emil had said the crew should board the train, and I was due back in the coffee shop.

The carrot cakes had been reduced to crumbs and the coffee cups were empty. The bussed consignment of grooms had arrived and were sitting in a group wearing Race Train T-shirts above their jeans. Emil looked at his watch and another crew member arrived and said the computer in the crews’ room downstairs was showing that the special train had just pulled into the station, Gate 6, Track 7, as expected.

‘Bon,’
Emil said, smiling. ‘Then, Tommy, your duties begin.’

Everyone picked up their travelling bags and in a straggle more than a group walked back towards the passengers’ assembly area. As we approached we could hear the real Chairman of the Ontario Jockey Club welcoming everyone to the adventure and we could see Zak and the other actors waiting for him to finish so that they could get on with the mystery.

Jimmy the actor was dressed in a maroon VIA Rail station uniform, Zak was intent, and Ricky, due on in gory glory at any moment, was checking in a small handmirror that ‘blood’ was cascading satisfactorily from a gash on his head.

Zak flashed a glance at the crew, saw me and gave me a thumbs-up sign. The Chairman wound up to applause. Zak tapped Ricky, who had put the mirror in his pocket, and Ricky went into the ‘I’ve been attacked’ routine most convincingly.

Emil, the crew and I wasted no time watching. We went on past and came to Gate 6, which was basically a staircase leading to ground level, where the rails were. Even though it was high morning, the light was dim and artificial outside as acres of arched roof far above kept out the Canadian weather.

The great train was standing there, faintly hissing, silver, immensely heavy, stretching away in both directions for as far as one could see in the gloom. In the Merry & Co office, I’d learned that each carriage (built of strong unpainted corrugated aluminium with the corrugations lying horizontally) was eighty-five feet long; and there were fifteen carriages in all, counting the horses, the baggage and the Lorrimores. With the engines as well, this train covered more than a quarter of a mile standing still.

Two furlongs, I thought frivolously, to put it suitably. Three times round the train more than equalled the Derby.

There was another long banner, duplication of the one in the station, fastened to the side of the train, telling all the passengers what they were going on, if they were still in any doubt. The crew divided to right and left according to where their jobs were and, following Emil, I
found myself climbing up not into the dining car but into one of the sleeping cars.

Emil briefly consulted a notebook, stowed his travel bag on a rack in a small bedroom and directed me to put my bag in the one next door. He said I should remove my raincoat and my jacket and hang them on the hangers provided. That done, he closed both doors and we descended again to the ground.