First Class Murder: A Murder Most Unladylike Mystery Read online

  ‘There isn’t going to be an investigation,’ I said.

  ‘That’s what you think,’ Daisy replied.

  6

  The next minute there was a clatter of footsteps outside. Daisy dropped the book (she had only been pretending to read it to annoy me, I knew) and rushed over to our window, standing up on the bottom bunk. She pulled at it and discovered, much to her annoyance, that the windows on the Orient Express only drop down a few inches. Still, she poked her nose out through the gap. I clambered up beside her (as usual she had taken the best view), pressed my face to the glass and stared as, out of the shouting and the clanging and the smoke, a gentleman appeared.

  He looked like someone who ought to come out of smoke, at night, with wolves howling. He had a huge black beard and a peaked nose – and even a cloak with a red lining, which swirled around him. He strode forward, a very determined look on his face, and there could be no doubt as to where he was bound – our coach.

  ‘It’s Count Dracula!’ I gasped.

  ‘Hah,’ said Daisy. ‘Very good. But it isn’t. It’s Il Mysterioso. Goodness, fancy him being on our train!’

  I must have looked confused, because she went on, ‘Don’t you read at all, Hazel? He’s in all the papers. He’s an escape artist. Daring tricks. Astonishing feats. You know the sort of thing – like Houdini, only Italian, not American. Don’t you remember hearing about him escaping from a packing crate at the bottom of the Danube three years ago?’

  I shook my head. News like that does not tend to reach Hong Kong.

  ‘Well, I suppose you wouldn’t,’ said Daisy. ‘But he’s really quite brilliant, although he hasn’t done anything spectacular for ages. He’s supposed to be planning his next trick at the moment. Everyone’s on tenterhooks to find out what he’ll do. Last time there were bears and a Tesla machine.’

  I still thought that Il Mysterioso looked rather a lot like a vampire, so it was with a thrill of excitement and fear that I realized he was climbing up the golden steps, his great black trunk lifted up behind him by the porters. Would he do a trick for us while we were on the train?

  But now more figures had appeared behind him, and they looked ready to board our sleeping car as well. They could not have been more different from Il Mysterioso, or each other. One was a lady, very short and squat. She was black-haired and thick-jawed and her dress was all drapes and folds and panels of silky black, beaded and fringed. A dark tasselled scarf was wrapped about her shoulders too, and she wore black lace gloves – in fact, there was not a spot of colour anywhere on her, apart from her lips, which were a deep heavy red.

  The other was a man, skinny and unkempt. His hat was clapped onto his fair hair at an odd angle, his coat rather the worse for wear and even his thin, aristocratic nose was slightly sideways. He and the lady both stepped forward at the same time, then stopped and glared at each other. He motioned her forward with a jabbing movement of his hand – as though he resented it – and the lady sniffed and went gliding forward without even acknowledging him.

  Up she climbed, making the steps rattle, and up the man climbed behind her. Then they were in the corridor.

  I heard Jocelyn greeting them all with great ceremony. Daisy jumped down from the window and motioned me across our tiny compartment (I marvelled again at how very pocket-sized everything was, like a grand hotel shrunk down almost to nothing), and we opened our door a little way and peered out again.

  ‘. . . and you will be in compartment six, Madame Melinda!’ Jocelyn was saying. ‘I do hope you will find everything to your taste. And, Mr Strange, you are alone in a two-berth compartment – number twelve – at the other end. Your sister, incidentally, is in compartment five, next to her husband, in four, and I’m sure—’

  ‘My sister?’ asked the thin man, Mr Strange. Strange! I thought. Hadn’t Daisy said that Mrs Daunt’s name used to be Strange? ‘But – I – what do you mean, my sister?’

  Jocelyn cleared his throat. ‘Is your sister not Mrs Daunt? She and her husband are on this train, booked into this sleeping car. I assumed, since you were here as well . . . Did you not know?’

  Mr Strange, looking quite ill, clutched at his small case. ‘I— No, I did not know! If you’ll excuse me, I need to go to my compartment – I must—’

  But at that moment, with a bellow of bull-like rage, Mr Daunt burst out of his compartment.

  He slammed his door open, so hard that all of the crystal in the chandeliers clattered, and I actually felt his feet pounding across the carpet, rattling the floor even more than the starting engine. Her mouth an O of excitement, Daisy pushed our door open a little further. I craned through too, squashed under her arm, and ended up with a view of people crammed together in great confusion.

  ‘WHAT IS THIS?’ Mr Daunt was roaring. ‘YOU – BOTH OF YOU! I TOLD YOU TO LEAVE US ALONE!’ He bumped into the wall and growled, ‘Curse these tight corridors!’

  ‘Sir,’ said Jocelyn, and I heard a note of nervousness in his voice.

  ‘Good evening, Mr Daunt,’ said Madame Melinda – rather dramatically, I thought. She was speaking as though she knew him. ‘Yes, it is true. I will be travelling with you on this train.’

  ‘How – how DARE you? My wife and I are on HOLIDAY – can’t you get your claws out of our lives for TWO WEEKS?’

  ‘I received a communication from the spirit realm. They speak to me, and they told me that you would be here, and that it was most important that I accompany you. Georgiana is at a crucial stage in her progression. Under my guidance, she is beginning to truly communicate with her dear departed mother for the first time. Would you deny her the comfort she receives from our sessions together?’

  ‘Comfort!’ roared Mr Daunt. ‘You’re the one who’s making her uncomfortable – refusing to let her forget what happened!’

  Mrs Daunt’s face appeared at the door to her compartment, and there was a gasp. ‘Madame Melinda!’ she cried. ‘What are you doing here? You didn’t tell me you would be on the train! And – and Robert! But . . . why are you here as well? I don’t understand!’

  Mr Strange’s face had gone very pale, with two little red dots at the top of his cheeks. ‘I had no idea,’ he said. ‘None! I am here doing research for my next novel. If I had known – after what your husband said to me the last time we met – I wouldn’t knowingly come within a hundred miles of you.’

  ‘But that wasn’t my fault!’ wailed Mrs Daunt, sounding more spoiled than ever.

  ‘Stop trying to make Georgie give you her money,’ said Mr Daunt. ‘It’s too low of you. It isn’t our fault you don’t make enough from your awful pulp murder books!’

  ‘Ladies,’ said Jocelyn, his face pink with worry. ‘Gentlemen. Please – the other passengers!’

  ‘I want to go to my compartment at once,’ said Mr Strange, in a trembling voice. ‘I won’t be spoken to like this any more.’

  Jocelyn led him away, and with a growl of, ‘You haven’t heard the end of this!’ Mr Daunt thumped back into his compartment. The door slammed behind him, but not before I heard the rising wail of Mrs Daunt, exclaiming in distress.

  ‘That man has the most unpleasant aura,’ said Madame Melinda. ‘It’s no wonder he is not receptive to the spirits.’

  Il Mysterioso, who had been standing quite silently, taking everything in, made a vague noise in his throat. Then he said, in a dark and rumbling voice, ‘I believe we are slightly acquainted, madame. You are Mrs Fox, are you not? I recall your act, many years ago—’

  ‘I am Madame Melinda, thank you very much. I am a medium of some repute, and only work with private clients. You must surely be thinking of someone else.’ But Madame Melinda sounded flustered, and I saw her tremble uncomfortably. I wondered whether Il Mysterioso had been mistaken at all. What sort of act did he mean? My ears had pricked up at the word medium. I knew that this was a person who contacted spirits, and that made me tingle with nerves. I do sometimes privately worry about the number of dead people I have come across. I know tha
t ghosts are not real, but I am not sure whether they know that.

  Two attendants approached Madame Melinda and Il Mysterioso, and they were shown to their compartments, with quite a bit of grumbling and rustling – the corridor was really very narrow, and both Il Mysterioso and Madame Melinda were quite large, either upwards or sideways. At last there was quiet again.

  ‘Well!’ said Daisy, in a stage whisper. ‘You can’t say that there’s nothing mysterious going on now!’

  My head was whirling. Three more passengers in our sleeping car, and two of them knew the Daunts. Moreover, Mr Daunt seemed to hate them both. Mr Strange was a crime novelist, and Mrs Daunt’s brother. I thought about what I had just heard, and remembered what Daisy had said earlier: Mr Strange hadn’t been given any of their mother’s money when she died, and he had never forgiven Mrs Daunt for it. Had he really not known that Mrs Daunt would be on this train? Was it truly a coincidence? It seemed awfully unlikely.

  Madame Melinda, too, was fascinating – a medium, who seemed to have been helping Mrs Daunt contact her dead mother. It was clear that she and Mr Daunt despised each other – Mr Daunt seemed to have taken this holiday on the Orient Express in order to get Mrs Daunt away from Madame Melinda. It had not worked out very well.

  What would happen next? I wondered. How would everyone behave, confined in one train carriage, its corridor barely wide enough for two people to squeeze past each other, the little compartments only a few paces wide? The Orient Express was luxurious, but it was the very opposite of spacious, and it was warm in the summer heat. I imagined it as a pot, crammed full and ready to bubble over furiously.

  Then I realized that I was thinking like a detective – and that, next to me, Daisy was bouncing with glee.

  ‘Daisy!’ I said, to quiet her.

  ‘Oh, Hazel, you can’t deny that what we heard was interesting. Arguments! Lies! Money! Death!’

  ‘No it wasn’t!’ I said.

  ‘You’re just saying all this to stop yourself,’ said Daisy. ‘You’re just as curious about this train as I am.’

  I flushed. This, like so much of what Daisy says, was uncomfortably true. I had a horrid feeling that, like it or not, a new case was opening up in front of us.

  I looked at my wristwatch and saw that it was three minutes to ten. In three minutes the Orient Express would pull out of Calais station and set off on its journey.

  But then there was a flurry of movement outside on the platform. One more passenger was rushing towards the train, one hand clapped onto her wide-brimmed hat, under which glinted a sleek, short hairstyle. She wore the most beautiful pale pink travelling suit and coat set, and her silk stockings gleamed as she ran. Her face was perfectly made up, her heels were high and her slender waist was belted most fashionably.

  The last time I saw her she had looked quite different – nothing like the lovely, glamorous woman before me now. But all the same, I knew her at once – and so did Daisy.

  It was Miss Livedon.

  1

  I look back at what I have written so far, and see that all the important characters are there, lined up like actors at the beginning of the play. This is good, but Daisy is telling me to get on with it. I think she wants me to rush on to the murder – to the scream, and the locked door, and what we saw when it was broken down.

  And I will, but there are two things that I need to mention on the way: the knife and the spy.

  The spy came first.

  The train was shuddering to life beneath us now, the rattles shaking their way up my bones. I leaned against the door and clenched my teeth, though of course Daisy remained standing, perfectly poised. Miss Livedon had to hurry up or be left behind. I heard Jocelyn call out something to her through the window, and then there was a rattle and a thud as the door opened. With a peal of laughter, Miss Livedon was inside. It was odd, because I had never heard her laugh before. When I knew her, she was entirely serious. But when I knew her . . .

  I turned to look at Daisy. ‘It can’t really be her!’

  ‘It is,’ said Daisy. ‘We both knew it at once, didn’t we? A detective should always trust her instincts.’

  ‘You’re not . . . upset?’ You see, the last time we saw Miss Livedon was at Fallingford.

  ‘Of course I’m not upset,’ said Daisy, making a face as though I was an idiot – though I saw her hands clench against her skirt. ‘What would I have to be upset about? What I am is curious. What is Miss Livedon doing here? Does she know we are here? And does this have anything to do with . . .’

  We looked at each other, and Daisy did not need to finish her sentence. Did her being here have anything to do with Fallingford? And how had she escaped being part of The Trial?

  Footsteps were going past our compartment door. Daisy put her finger to her lips and we listened again.

  ‘Such a pleasure,’ Jocelyn was saying. ‘Such a pleasure, Mrs Vitellius. We had a letter from your husband entrusting you to our care – we hope you will enjoy your stay on the Orient Express. We have put you in compartment seven – I hope this will be to your liking?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Miss Livedon, ‘I am sure it will. My husband will be most pleased. I’m afraid he’s too busy to be with me – copper magnates, you know, never a moment to themselves . . .’

  The voices died away into the rattle and shake of the train, and we lost what else they said.

  ‘Why is Miss Livedon calling herself Mrs Vitellius?’ I asked Daisy. ‘Is she under cover again?’

  ‘Undoubtedly,’ she said. ‘And undoubtedly that husband of hers is entirely made up. She must be on another top-secret mission. Oh, isn’t her life glamorous? Under the circumstances, I would say that there is only one thing we can do.’

  I looked expectantly at her, thinking how odd and difficult it would be to ignore Miss Livedon for the whole three-day train journey. If she was pretending to be someone called Mrs Vitellius, she could not possibly acknowledge us. I suddenly wondered how we were to explain that to Hetty. She would recognize Miss Livedon too, of course, but she didn’t know the truth about who she really was, and couldn’t be told. Would she understand how important it was that we kept mum? Once again, I realized, intrigue was following us, plunging us into the most awkward situations.

  ‘We must go to Miss Livedon’s compartment immediately and confront her,’ said Daisy. ‘After all, we are practically colleagues. We’ve got detective badges, haven’t we?’

  We had – from Inspector Priestley, to thank us for our part in what happened at Fallingford. Daisy, I knew, had her badge in her neat little bag. Mine was still buried at the bottom of my tuck box, on a dusty shelf back at school. If you want to understand the difference between us, that is the perfect shorthand for it.

  ‘We can’t, Daisy,’ I said, horrified.

  ‘Of course we can,’ said Daisy. ‘Come on, Watson, don’t behave like a silly scared shrimp.’ And she marched out of the door.

  The corridor swayed and rumbled as we moved along it. The train was really moving in earnest now, and out of the right-hand windows along the corridor I saw flashes of lights on stone buildings and cobbled streets.

  I reminded myself that I must not detect – and the train, rocking beneath us, seemed to be chanting back at me, must not, must not, must not. It was so difficult to balance in time with the rocking of the train that I could barely concentrate on what was going on outside. Several times I had to steady myself against the marquetry flowers on the walls, and each time I felt guilty, pressing my hands against such lovely work. The crystal lights glowed above us, and at the other end of the corridor, past a row of closed compartment doors, sat Jocelyn, back at his post next to the compartment of Il Mysterioso, and the dining car; he was perched on a little chair with that day’s Paris-Soir next to him. He nodded to us as we approached, and I suddenly felt uncomfortable – and not just because the train was wobbling my insides. Although it had been wonderfully easy to listen in to the other passengers’ conversations, we were always
running into someone on this train as well. How could Daisy hope to creep about without attracting notice?

  But Daisy, as always, rose to the occasion.

  ‘Bonjour, Jocelyn,’ she said, in a very pretty accent. ‘Excusez-moi, but our tap appears to be leaking.’

  ‘Oh dear!’ he said, jumping up. ‘I shall look at once.’

  As soon as he had gone through our door, Daisy pounced. She leaped forward, placed both hands on the door of compartment seven and pushed hard. It swung open, and Miss Livedon was revealed, frozen in the act of stowing a hat box in the luggage rack above her bunk. Daisy was inside before I could stop her – so of course I had to dart in afterwards, leaving the door gaping open.

  For a moment it was very still and claustrophobic inside the compartment. Miss Livedon was gazing at us in utter astonishment.

  ‘Don’t say anything,’ hissed Daisy. ‘You heard us in the corridor and you opened your door and we came in to admire your things, all right? Oh, what a lovely hat, Mrs Vitellius! How simply spiffing!’ She said that last part loudly, for the benefit of anyone outside.

  Miss Livedon, to her great credit, did not even hesitate. She was an even better actress than I had thought.

  ‘Oh yes,’ she said, just as loudly. ‘The latest Paris fashion. My husband does like to see me dressed up-to-the-minute. What on earth are you doing here, girls?’

  ‘We’re on holiday,’ said Daisy accusingly. ‘Hazel’s father brought us. Didn’t you know? What are you doing here, anyway? Why aren’t you . . . in London? And why are you lying about your name again? Golly, I wish I could have things like this. Oh, and what gorgeous scent!’

  Daisy could not bring herself to say, Why aren’t you at The Trial? – but of course Miss Livedon understood.

  ‘Isn’t it? Chanel No. 5. That, girls, is none of your business. As my name is Helen Vitellius and I have a very rich husband waiting for me in Istanbul, I have no reason to be anywhere else but here, and I’ll thank you to remember that for the rest of the journey. I’m sure I have never met either of you before.’