­Chapter Twenty-One

When she entered the sixteen-section sleeper, Jill counted curtains and found the upper berth where she’d seen Patty Demarest, fourth from the end. She tweaked the edge of the curtain and peered inside the lower berth. Was the occupant Lois, or her mother?

Her mother, as it turned out. Milly Demarest was asleep, lying on her side, with her mouth slightly open and one hand tucked near her face. She wore a high-necked flannel nightgown and her hair was sticking up from her head.

Jill touched Mrs. Demarest’s hand and whispered, hoping that she wouldn’t wake anyone else in the vicinity. “Mrs. Demarest. Please wake up.”

Mrs. Demarest’s eyes opened and she stared out at Jill. “What’s the matter? We can’t be to Winnemucca yet.”

“I’m sorry to wake you. I need to talk with your daughter Lois.”

Milly Demarest struggled to a sitting position and squinted at Jill. “Lois? What’s she done?”

“Could we please go into the ladies’ room? That way we won’t disturb anyone else.”

Mrs. Demarest swung her legs out from the bed, pushing the curtain aside as she stuck her feet into a pair of carpet slippers. She reached for the green flannel robe that had been bunched into a heap next to her pillow. Then she stood, putting on the robe and tying the belt around her waist. Once she was upright, she went to the lower berth to her right and opened the curtain.

“Get up, Lois. Into the ladies’ room. Now.”

Inside the berth, Lois sat up, wearing a shimmery red nightgown that revealed a lot of her bosom. She opened her mouth to argue, but her mother cut her off. “Not a word out of you. Get moving.”

Lois looked mulish, but she did as she was told. She put on her slippers and a robe that matched the nightgown, and got to her feet. Her face looked sulky and a grumbling noise escaped her pursed lips as she walked past her mother and stalked toward the ladies’ room at the end of the car. Mrs. Demarest followed.

Just then, Patty pulled aside the curtain in the berth above her mother’s. Then she too exited her bed, clambering down the ladder in her pajamas and socks. She scampered toward the ladies’ room, with Jill close behind.

“Now what is this about?” Mrs. Demarest said when they were all inside.

Jill turned to face the older daughter. “Lois, I need to ask whether you saw anything unusual this evening. You were in the buffet-lounge car when I did my walk-through, before we got to Salt Lake City. And you were seen later, in the Silver Falls, the next sleeper car.”

“Wait a minute.” Milly Demarest glared at Lois. “We went to bed right after the train left Provo, about a quarter after nine. I saw you get into that berth.”

Lois didn’t say anything. She refused to meet her mother’s angry gaze. Instead, she smoothed a hand through her dark hair, her lips clamped shut in an unrepentant pout, her arms folded over the front of her red robe.

“She wasn’t sleeping,” Patty said from the doorway. “As soon as Mama went to bed, Lois got up. I saw her. She had her robe on over her clothes. She took it off and sneaked out. She made the pillows look like she was still in the bed.”

“You little rat.” Lois raised her hand and directed a slap at Patty.

But her mother was quicker. Milly grabbed Lois’s hand with her own, shaking her daughter hard. Her words came out in an angry hiss. “I have just about had it with you, and your behavior. You have some explaining to do. Where did you go? Who were you with?”

Lois tilted up her chin, her voice defiant. “I was with Florian.”

“Who the hell is Florian?” her mother snapped.

“He’s a Frenchman,” Lois said, tossing her head. “Very sophisticated.”

“I’ll sophisticate you.” Mrs. Demarest shook Lois’s arm again. “What the hell were you thinking? Or were you thinking at all? Leave it to you to throw yourself at some French roué. You’re only sixteen, for God’s sake.”

Patty looked alarmed now, looking from her mother to the closed door of the women’s restroom. “Mama, be quiet. People will hear you.”

Jill said in her most placating voice, “To be fair, I wouldn’t call Monsieur Rapace a roué. He’s a graduate student at Northwestern. He seems to be a very nice young man, probably twenty-three, twenty-four at most.”

“I don’t care how nice he is. He’s still too old for her,” Mrs. Demarest said, her voice low and angry. “I swear, when we get home, I’m going to lock you up until you’re twenty-one. Then you can go catting around all you want. But not until then.”

Now Lois looked as though she was about to cry. “I wasn’t catting around. We sat and talked in the buffet-lounge car, and then we went up to the Vista-Dome in the Silver Chalet. To look at the stars. After that we went to his roomette.” She tilted her chin, unrepentant. “He kissed me, but other than that, he was a perfect gentleman.”

Milly Demarest looked as though she was about to explode. “A perfect gentleman does not entertain a sixteen-year-old girl in his roomette in the middle of the night.”

“It wasn’t the middle of the night. Besides, I told him I was eighteen.”

Mrs. Demarest opened her mouth, ready to lob another salvo at her daughter, but Jill raised her hand. “This is something you’ll have to figure out for yourselves. I really need to ask Lois some questions.”

“Why?” Mrs. Demarest released Lois’s arm and now looked protective.

Jill started to answer, then stopped as the door of the women’s restroom opened. A passenger came in, a girl about Patty’s age, looking rumpled in her pajamas. She glanced their way, then went into one of the toilets. When she was finished, she flushed, came out and washed her hands. Then she left the restroom.

“There’s been an incident in one of the sleeper cars,” Jill said. “A crime. Lois, I need to know if you saw anyone or anything while you were walking through the train. Anything out of the ordinary.”

“What kind of crime?” Mrs. Demarest asked. “A robbery? Or worse?”

Lois looked at Jill, alarm on her face. “Is somebody dead?”

Jill nodded. “Yes. That’s why it’s important.”

“How did you know that?” her mother asked.

“That older lady,” Lois said. “The doctor. Ranleigh, that’s her name. I met her and her niece in the dome-observation car earlier this afternoon. Then later, I saw her walking toward the back of the train. She had her doctor’s bag with her. I wondered if one of the passengers was sick. But now you say someone’s dead.”

“A passenger was killed,” Jill said. “Murdered.”

“Murdered.” Mrs. Demarest ran her hand through her untidy hair. “Good God, a murder. What else did you see, Lois? Start from the beginning.”

Lois looked pleased with herself. She was enjoying being the center of attention instead of the object of her mother’s censure.

“Well,” she said, drawing out the word. “After dinner, Florian asked me to meet him in the buffet-lounge car later in the evening. I knew you wouldn’t let me go with him. So I had to figure out how to get away.” She glared at her younger sister. “Like Patty said, when we got ready for bed, I just kept my clothes on and put my robe on over them. As soon as Mom fell asleep, I got out of bed. I didn’t think anyone saw me. Except little tattletale Patty.”

“So you left this car and walked forward to the next car, the Silver Falls,” Jill said. “That’s where Florian is, in roomette ten.”

Lois nodded. “I didn’t stop at his roomette, though. He was already up in the lounge car, so I went there.”

“Did you see anyone in the passageway?” Jill asked.

“Not then,” Lois said. “We had some coffee in the lounge, then we went up to the Vista-Dome. But I did see someone later, when we left the dome and walked back to his roomette.”

“Before or after you saw the doctor in the hallway?”

“Before. We were walking back through the sleeper cars. When we got to Florian’s car, I saw a woman come out of one of the bedrooms. Then she went into another bedroom.”

“Do you remember which bedroom she came from?” Jill asked.

Lois thought about this, taking her time before answering. “We had just walked into the car, so we were at the very end, just about to walk down the aisle in front of the bedrooms. I think she came out of one of the rooms in the middle of the car, you know, down where the aisle jogs to the right and goes down between the roomettes. It was probably the first bedroom. Florian says that one is where Mr. Cleary stays. I’ve seen him in the lounge. The blond guy. He’s not bad-looking, for a man that’s middle-aged. I was surprised. I thought if anyone would be coming out of his bedroom, it would be that lady from Mississippi, Miss Larch. He’s been spending a lot of time with her.”

“After the woman left the bedroom, where did she go?”

“She started walking toward us,” Lois said. “So Florian and I backed up, toward the door we’d just come through, so she wouldn’t see us.”

Jill pictured the layout of the Silver Falls, and the area near the door leading into the car from the front of the train. The clean linen locker was immediately to the right. Lois and Florian would have turned to their left, heading into the aisle in front of the bedrooms, lined up on their right, with the windows to their left. When Lois and Florian backed up, they were out of sight of the person who’d exited the bedroom. And it appeared that person had been coming out of Doug’s berth, which was at the far end of the row.

“Did you see where this woman went?” Jill asked.

“I peeked around the corner,” Lois said. “She went into another room right away. So it must have been the one right next door, or the one next to that.”

A woman coming out of Doug’s room at the end of the row, Jill thought. The person next to Doug, in bedroom B, was Avis Margate, with Cora Grant in bedroom C. The next berth was occupied by Mrs. Warrick, and Jill doubted that the retired professor was poking around in Doug’s room, or that she had a reason to kill Victor Fontana. At the other end were berths occupied by the Olivers and old Mr. Poindexter.

“Did you recognize the person? Are you sure it was a woman?”

“Of course I’m sure it was a woman,” Lois said. “She was wearing a dress.”

“Can you describe her?”

“I wasn’t that close,” Lois protested.

“Young, old,” Jill prompted. “Tall, short.”

“She was old, like Mom.”

“Old.” Mrs. Demarest snorted. “I’m in my forties. That’s not old.”

“You know what I mean,” the girl protested. “Older than me. Not as old as Grandma. Anyway, she looked like she was tall. The dress, it was nothing special. Dark. She had her purse with her. A great big purse. I didn’t recognize her. But maybe Florian did. He’s traveling in that car.”

“Yes, maybe he did.” Jill consulted her watch. Nearly one in the morning. Should she knock on Florian’s door?

The door to the ladies’ room opened and an older woman in a bathrobe entered. She swept past them toward the toilets. When she had closed the door, Jill said, “Thank you for answering my questions, Lois. You’ve been very helpful.” With that, she excused herself and left the restroom.

She headed forward, toward the Silver Falls. The door to the porter’s tiny compartment was closed and Jill guessed that Frank Nathan had gone back to bed. She walked up the aisle between the roomettes and stopped at roomette ten, Florian Rapace’s berth. She tapped on the door, but the Frenchman was evidently a heavy sleeper. He didn’t respond.

Had it been Avis Margate who went into Doug’s bedroom? Or Cora Grant? Both women were tall. Miss Margate had been wearing a cranberry red dress, while Miss Grant’s dress was brown. In the dim light of the train corridor, both dresses would have looked dark. Both women carried large handbags, large enough to conceal a gun. Avis Margate had told Jill she’d gone to bed and hadn’t awakened till Jill and Sean appeared at Doug’s door. Was she lying? Or was it Cora Grant who had paid a visit to Doug’s bedroom?

Jill turned from the roomette and walked forward, going around the corner to the corridor in front of the bedrooms. She stopped at the door to bedroom C. All she wanted to do was ask a question. She raised her hand, then hesitated. Then she knocked. No answer. Well, it was late, after all. Jill’s weariness tugged at her.

Just as she turned to leave, the door opened. Miss Grant was wrapped in a sky-blue terrycloth robe, with matching slippers on her feet. Her brown hair was loose on her shoulders and she wasn’t wearing the harlequin glasses. She looked younger without the glasses and the tightly wrapped hairstyle.

“What is it, Miss McLeod?”

“I want to ask a question,” Jill said.

Miss Grant frowned. “At this hour? It must be after midnight. Well, come in.” She held the door wider and Jill entered the bedroom. It was configured the same way as Doug’s bedroom, with the bed on the wall opposite the door. Miss Grant’s large handbag sat on the floor next to the bed, along with a big carpetbag, its beige fabric decorated with a cabbage rose pattern. Both the purse and the carpetbag were open.

Miss Grant remained standing, her hands stuck into the pockets of the robe. “Has something happened?”

“Yes. One of the passengers is dead.”

“Really? Who?”

“Mr. Fontana. He was traveling in the drawing room in the Silver Crescent. Someone shot him.” Jill looked at Miss Grant, checking to see if her face revealed anything.

But Miss Grant’s expression remained closed and wary, as it had during most of the journey. She shrugged, a tiny movement of her shoulders. “I don’t recall having met him. But then I keep to myself. Any idea who shot him?”

“Not yet,” Jill said. “But I have some ideas. A gun was found earlier in bedroom A.”

“That’s Mr. Cleary’s room,” the other woman said, tilting her chin downward. “I understand he had an altercation with someone earlier. One of the other passengers mentioned it. So did Mr. Cleary shoot Mr. Fontana?”

“I don’t know. It’s possible the gun was planted in Mr. Cleary’s room. You see, someone saw a woman coming out of Mr. Cleary’s room earlier this evening. A tall woman in a dark dress.”

Miss Grant allowed herself a tight smile. “There are lots of tall women on the train, and certainly lots of dark dresses.”

“True enough,” Jill said. “However, the person who saw the woman coming out of bedroom A saw the same woman enter another bedroom just a few doors down. So that makes me think the woman was Avis Margate. Or you.”

“Or me?” Miss Grant frowned. “What possible reason would I have to plant a gun in Mr. Cleary’s bedroom?”

“It could have something to do with what he said when he met you earlier today,” Jill said. “He was sure he’d seen you ­before, in Chicago in nineteen forty-one. He told me he thought you were a woman named Belle La Tour, who performed in a nightclub called the Bell Tower. And I think you heard him say that. The porter said you were listening to us.”

“I’m a librarian from Aurora, Illinois,” Miss Grant said, with a tight little smile that didn’t extend to her eyes.

“A librarian who doesn’t know where the main library in ­Aurora is located,” Jill said. “You seemed a bit confused about that during lunch, when Avis Margate was talking about growing up in Aurora.”

“I was distracted,” Miss Grant said.

“All the same, I think I’ll tell the conductor,” Jill said. “He’ll want to ask you some questions.”

Jill turned. She reached for the door handle. From the corner of her eye she saw Miss Grant’s hands come out of her robe pockets. One hand was empty, but the other held something. She grabbed Jill’s arm. Suddenly Jill felt a prick at her throat. She realized it was a knife.