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 on to the matching soil. Everything in bilingual Canada was written in both English and French and I realized 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 amp; 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 this 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, emphasizing 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 melee 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 energized 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 realized 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
