The Mystery Megapack Read Free Page B

Dinner” at the Duchess, though Edward would personally have preferred the revival of “An Inspector Calls.” They had been pressed for time before the show and had stopped at The American Grille—their only lapse from more local cuisine—because it was quick and Caroline had felt a sudden taste for a cheeseburger. Edward regretted eating his with his hands when Caroline told him that an English couple two tables away had snickered at them and eaten theirs with a fork and knife. Except for that and the fact that they had missed the exhibition of royal wedding gowns at Kensington Palace by fifteen minutes, Edward had taken their time in London as a personal success.
    But today was another matter: the centerpiece of their honeymoon, the highpoint of their trip. So far, it had gone only half and half, the channel crossing all but completely erasing the excitement of the Pullman earlier in the afternoon.
    In the cabin, Edward hung up their evening clothes and settled onto the seat with its brocade of light green and black while Caroline opened the washbasin cabinet to refresh herself. He pulled out their copy of Murder on the Orient Express —not the first printing, which a bookseller friend had tried in vain to find, but a small 1955 Crime Club edition still well-suited to their purpose; he didn’t want to forget to take it to dinner or to have the cabin steward sign it. A unique souvenir, he thought, and Caroline had been engrossed in reading it on the plane over. He placed it on the seat beside him. A packet of stationery and a trio of postcards lay on the mahogany table before him and he flipped through them while he waited.
    “Do you wish that we were going all the way to Venice?” he asked, looking over a postcard of Canaletto’s Regatta on the Grand Canal .
    “We’ve never been to Paris together.”
    “But if we could come back to Paris?” He was thinking of midnight in the bar car, breakfast in their cabin, the brochure of the Hotel Cipriani that the two of them had admired. “We could leave the curtains open when we went to bed tonight and gaze out at the Alps.”
    She turned and smiled, a little of the rosiness returning to her cheeks, a little of the sprite back in her blue eyes. “We would be sleeping on bunk beds,” she said and came over to hug him. “And there’s no shower. I couldn’t leave the cabin without a shower.”
    “Who says we would need to leave the cabin?” He smiled and winked. He was thinking of her trousseau and each of the evenings in London, pleasantly surprised by a side of her that he had never seen. He would have taken her again right there except for the steward just outside the door and the fact that someone else would be coming into the cabin in Paris. He worried that they would know.
    * * * *
    The train bucked from side to side as they made their way down the hallways toward the bar car. The continental train was speeding along much faster than the British train and Edward was afraid that the movement would upset Caroline’s system again. She held her hands up as she walked, bracing herself between the window and the wall, and when they reached the passways between cars, he stepped ahead to open the doors while she held on to the siderail.
    He moved up again when they reached the bar car and found himself looking at Brutus, the Boxer, through the small window, the vulgar man sitting with his leg stretched out in front of the door. Edward was so unnerved by the obstruction that he found himself fumbling to turn the handle properly.
    Brutus opened it for him. “Ey, mate,” he laughed. “Havin’ trouble with the door?” Felicia, sitting beside him, laughed as well and Edward felt himself blushing and unable to speak as he let Caroline step through before him. Boxer, he thought. Extra. The man had carried the word “door” out to what seemed like a full three syllables and didn’t even pull his feet in when they walked past. As Edward stepped over the ill-mannered