The Mystery of the Blue Train - Agatha Christie [26]
She hoped that she would not be given the same place at dinner. She reflected, not without humour, that it might be awkward for both of them. Leaning back with her head against a cushion she felt tired and vaguely depressed. They had reached Paris, and the slow journey round the ceinture, with its interminable stops and waits, was very wearisome. When they arrived at the Gare de Lyon she was glad to get out and walk up and down the platform. The keen cold air was refreshing after the steam-heated train. She observed with a smile that her friend of the mink coat was solving the possible awkwardness of the dinner problem in her own way. A dinner basket was being handed up and received through the window by the maid.
When the train started once more, and dinner was announced by a violent ringing of bells, Katherine went along to it much relieved in mind. Her vis-à-vis tonight was of an entirely different kind—a small man, distinctly foreign in appearance, with a rigidly waxed moustache and an egg-shaped head which he carried rather on one side. Katherine had taken in a book to dinner with her. She found the little man’s eyes fixed upon it with a kind of twinkling amusement.
“I see, Madame, that you have a roman policier. You are fond of such things?”
“They amuse me,” Katherine admitted.
The little man nodded with the air of complete understanding.
“They have a good sale always, so I am told. Now why is that, eh, Mademoiselle? I ask you as a student of human nature—why should that be?”
Katherine felt more and more amused.
“Perhaps they give one the illusion of living an exciting life,” she suggested.
He nodded gravely.
“Yes; there is something in that.”
“Of course, one knows that such things don’t really happen,” Katherine was continuing, but he interrupted her sharply.
“Sometimes, Mademoiselle! Sometimes! I who speak to you—they have happened to me.”
She threw him a quick, interested glance.
“Some day, who knows, you might be in the thick of things,” he went on. “It is all chance.”
“I don’t think it is likely,” said Katherine. “Nothing of that kind ever happens to me.”
He leaned forward.
“Would you like it to?”
The question startled her, and she drew in her breath sharply.
“It is my fancy, perhaps,” said the little man, as he dexterously polished one of the forks, “but I think that you have a yearning in you for interesting happenings. Eh bien, Mademoiselle, all through my life I have observed one thing—‘All one wants one gets!’ Who knows?” His face screwed itself up comically. “You may get more than you bargain for.”
“Is that a prophecy?” asked Katherine, smiling as she rose from the table.
The little man shook his head.
“I never prophesy,” he declared pompously. “It is true that I have the habit of being always right—but I do not boast of it. Goodnight, Mademoiselle and may you sleep well.”
Katherine went back along the train amused and entertained by her little neighbour. She passed the open door of her friend’s compartment and saw the conductor making up the bed. The lady in the mink coat was standing looking out of the window. The second compartment, as Katherine saw through the communicating door, was empty, with rugs and bags heaped up on the seat. The maid was not there.
Katherine found her own bed prepared, and since she was tired, she went to bed and switched off her light about half past nine.
She woke with a sudden start; how much time had passed she did not know. Glancing at her watch, she found that it had stopped. A feeling of intense uneasiness pervaded her and grew stronger moment by moment. At last she got up, threw her dressing-gown round her shoulders, and stepped out into the corridor. The whole train seemed wrapped in slumber. Katherine let the window down and sat by it for some