Night Train to Memphis

All I was supposed to do. Maybe the flowerpot had been an unfortunate accident. Maybe John didn’t have a confederate on board. Even if both those comfortable assumptions were wrong, there was no reason to suppose I would recognize any of his henchmen.

I had met more crooks than I would have liked, but one is more than I would have liked. I made a list.

Some of the names on that list were out of the picture – dead, or in jail. The people in Rome who had been happily selling fake jewellery until I so rudely interrupted them were neither of the above. They had pinned the blame for that caper on John and were still leading la dolce vita, which just goes to prove that crime often does pay and that justice frequently doesn’t triumph. However, that had been a purely local operation, run by amateurs; it was most unlikely that they had extended their activities abroad.

The group I’d encountered in Sweden were another kettle of fish. They were all professionals and cold- blooded as sharks: big stupid Hans, who wasn’t really bad, just awfully good at obeying orders; Rudi, who was built like a ferret and had the same mind-set (kill things, kill lots of things); Max, who cut silhouettes as a relaxing hobby after a day of bumping people off; and their boss, Leif, the man who had been slashing at me with a long sharp knife before John removed him forcibly from my vicinity. No doubt about Leif’s death; I had identified the body.

I had a couple of Max’s silhouettes – souvenirs, presented to me by the artist himself. Mine had been fashioned of the traditional black paper, and very fine likenesses they were. Occasionally Max used red paper – for ‘a particular collection.’ He was a soft-spoken, harmless-looking little man, and he’d always been very pleasant to me up to and including the moment when I waved bye-bye to him just before they carted him off to the prison. He had even . . . Well, he hadn’t actually thanked me for helping to get rid of his boss, not in so many words, but he had implied that Leif’s death opened up new and interesting possibilities of advancement for him ‘If I can ever do you a favour, Dr Bliss,’ he had said . . .

I had never met anybody who scared me more than Max. I hoped and believed he was still in prison. But in any case, Max wouldn’t have collaborated with John if John had been the only other crook on earth. The antipathy was personal as well as professional. Max had absolutely no sense of humour and John drove him up the wall even when John wasn’t trying to, and he often was trying to.

The Trojan gold affair . . . I could forget about that one. All the villains were dead. Very, very unmistakably dead, including the head villain, who had fallen fifty feet onto a pile of rocks. John had been indirectly responsible for his demise, which had occurred in the course of one of John’s nerve-racking, impromptu rescues.

For the first time I found myself wondering how John had felt about killing those two men. Neither had been deliberate, premeditated murders; he could reasonably claim self-defence or maybe justifiable homicide. But he had always insisted he disliked violence, even when it wasn’t directed at him. Did he ever have bad dreams?

I shifted uncomfortably and then tore the list into a heap of unreadable scraps.

John’s confederate couldn’t be anyone I knew, so it must be someone I didn’t know. (Brilliant deduction, Vicky.) I turned my attention to the passenger list.

I could now attach faces and personalities to most of the names. There were only thirty names in all – twenty-nine, now that Jen had left. I started to cross her name out and then stopped myself. She might not be on the boat, but she was not out of the picture. Difficult as it was to imagine her as a criminal mastermind, I couldn’t dismiss the odd coincidence that had left her on the loose in Cairo.

After considerable thought I eliminated sixteen people. I wasn’t credulous or prejudiced enough to think that old age put a person above, or below, suspicion, but a minimal degree of physical agility is one necessary qualification for a master thief – at least I’d have insisted on it if I had been hiring one – and a round dozen of the passengers had to be in their seventies or older. I also eliminated Louisa. Her name was a permanent fixture on the best-seller lists, so she didn’t have to turn to crime to make a living, and she was unquestionably the real Louisa Ferncliffe. The picture that adorned all her book jackets had been retouched but it was recognizable.

Sweet and Bright were two of the good guys. So who was left? Blenkiron was too rich and too famous to be a suspect, but I hadn’t eliminated his bodyguard or his secretary. I’d have to find out how long they had been in his employ. That. was the sort of set-up John specialized in, forging impressive credentials to gain access to a person or a place. Suzi? She was a little too good to be true. I was unacquainted with the social elite of Memphis, Tennessee; she could be a ringer. The unsociable German was another possibility. Somehow I’d have to get to know him better.

Mary and John made twenty-one. That left eight people I hadn’t spoken with except to exchange names and casual good-mornings. I was inclined to eliminate them too; they were all members of an amateur archaeology organization from Dallas, and they were travelling together. They were also rich and not exactly spring chickens.

How about the staff? Alice and Perry were who they claimed to be. They knew one another and they were known to others, including Blenkiron. Could either be corrupted? In theory, yes. In theory Feisal was also corruptible. Or he could be in league with one of the fundamentalist groups who wanted to rid Egypt of foreign influence. Promoting a scheme that would arouse public indignation, riot, and insurrection was the sort of thing fanatics might do.

I seemed to be long on hypothetical motives and very, very short on actual clues, and all too well supplied with possible suspects. John’s ally (or allies) might be one of the housekeeping staff or one of the crew. There was no way I could question them.

The hell with it. I got dressed and went up to the lounge to hear the lecture on birds. It would be a pleasure to hear about pretty, harmless things like birds. Bugs, that was what birds ate. Nothing wrong with killing bugs.

I had forgotten about owls. They eat a lot of things, including cute little mice and an occasional unwary kitten. There was an unexpected bonus, though; the lecturer turned out to be the unsociable German gent and he certainly knew a lot about birds. If he wasn’t a genuine enthusiast, he gave a good imitation of one; he talked about the creatures the way another man might talk about his mistress. Long slim legs were mentioned, and delicate flushes of pink. Some birds, he was sorry to report, were rather secretive in their habits. He’d even brought a collection of slides, all two hundred of which he showed us. Oh, well, maybe it wasn’t two hundred. It seemed like more.

A passion for birding would account for his presence on board. However, it did occur to me that it’s easier to bone up on Egyptian ornithology than Egyptology or – as I knew to my sorrow – Islamic art. A clever man could learn enough about it in a few weeks to convince nonexperts that he was one.

When questions were invited, I asked a lot. They were all stupid questions, the only kind I was capable of asking about that subject. He answered glibly and with assurance – if that proved anything. Unfortunately he decided my interest was so intense and my ignorance so abysmal that I deserved special coaching, and I didn’t manage to shake him off until after lunch, by which time I knew more about the nesting habits of wigeons than I wanted to know – and I still wasn’t sure whether he was on the level or not.

The sound of music struck my ears when I got off the elevator. Someone was playing the piano, and playing quite well. It was a stormy, violent piece of music – Chopin’s ‘Revolutionary Etude.’

He had his back to me and the music covered the sound of my footsteps. I couldn’t resist. I moved close and spoke.

‘How nice. You’re playing our song.’

His hands came down on the keyboard with a crash and he bent his head. I couldn’t see his face, but his ear was bright crimson. After a moment he said under his breath, ‘Don’t do that!’

‘Where’s your dear little wife?’ I inquired.

He looked directly at me. His face was still flushed and his expression was so savage I stepped back. ‘Drop it, Vicky. Leave me alone.’

There were a number of other people in the saloon, including an elderly German couple from Hamburg, Suzi Umphenour, and Sweet and Bright, their heads bent over a chessboard.

Recovering, I said softly, ‘You don’t have to be so rude. Or do you?’

Several heads turned in our direction. John’s hands went back to the keyboard, covering his next words with a series of emphatic but rather ragged arpeggios. ‘Apparently I must. Subtle hints are wasted on you. Excuse me.’

He stopped playing and rose. I took the hint. As I walked away I heard a spatter of applause and the Frau from Hamburg called out in English, ‘Beautiful! Will you be performing for us at the cabaret?’