Rosemary shook off Missy and me, grabbed her beret and replaced it on her head. Almost.
‘You know what happened to me, Larry? You did. Your criticism destroyed my confidence. I won’t ever let anyone – and especially you – do that to me again.’
And with that, Rosemary Darlington stalked alone, and unsteadily, toward the back of the train.
TEN
Missy Hudson, cheeks flaming, followed Darlington.
Zoe Scarlett cleared her throat. ‘Well, well. If you can let me out, Larry and Audra, I need to welcome our attendees and introduce the players.’
Whatever she was taking to stay so calm, I wanted some. I eyed my martini glass, which only served to remind me that it had been drained earlier by our female guest of honor in absentia.
Audra Edmonds stood up in the aisle, followed by Potter, who snagged the matchbook as he did so. Our hostess emerged and went to the front, where she slid open the vestibule door, amplifying the track noise, and appeared to push a button on the wall.
‘Hello, mystery writers!’ came through the sound system as I retook my seat and Audra Edmonds slid back in across from us. ‘I’m Zoe Scarlett and I am so pleased to welcome you all to the first event of our glorious weekend, “Murder on the Orient Espresso.”’
Applause, though sparse and, to my ear, jaded.
‘As those of you who are Floridians may already have noticed, we are not heading north to Palm Beach nor south to Miami, but west on the new excursion spur into the Everglades. So much spookier, don’t you think?’
As if the heavens had heard, there was a crack of thunder. Everyone applauded again, this time more enthusiastically, except for me. I shivered.
‘Of course, the extra bonus,’ Zoe continued, ‘is that we won’t be sharing our route with the Tri-Rail commuter train and Amtrak. No, no, we have these tracks all to ourselves. That’s important, you see, because we have a murder to solve.’
Cue dramatic music, literally. The guy in the checkered jacket who had been seated behind us in the bus piped up with the Dragnet ‘Bmmmm, bmp-bmp-bmp’ from the table next to Zoe.
‘Thank you for the accompaniment,’ she managed with a forced smile. ‘I’d like to introduce our featured players for the evening, which you’ll also find on your playbill.’ She held up Missy’s sepia-toned handout. ‘And do feel free to ask participants to sign them as a remembrance of tonight’s inaugural event.’
Heads nodded in approval of what I suspected was Missy’s good idea. I feared, though, that given the number of people attending and the players listed, there weren’t many fans/audience members on the train beyond the cast itself.
‘First,’ Zoe continued, ‘as Mary Debenham, our guest of honor, Rosemary Darlington.’
Genuine applause, even though Rosemary Darlington was nowhere to be seen. Wherever she was, though, I trusted she was snoring and drooling blissfully.
Zoe plunged on. And not a bad strategy, since people listening to her in the other cars would assume Rosemary was in ours and vice versa.
‘And, as Hercule Poirot, our second guest of honor, mystery reviewer and critic extraordinaire, Laurence … Potter.’
Applause, this time more tepid.
Not that it mattered. Potter/Poirot was nowhere to be seen, either.
‘This is going well,’ I whispered to Pavlik. I kept my voice down so Audra, the un-Mrs Potter across our booth, couldn’t hear. I probably didn’t need to worry, since Edmonds was pushing buttons on her phone and looking frustrated. I hoped she’d forgotten to charge it.
‘What do you expect?’ Pavlik asked in my ear. ‘This isn’t a “Maggy Thorsen” production.’
‘For which I’m very grateful, since this threatens to become a train wreck.’ Maybe I really had jinxed Missy’s event with my earlier thoughts on enjoying train wrecks. ‘Not literally, of course,’ I added, hoping to undo any psychic damage.
Pavlik gave my shoulder a squeeze. ‘Don’t lose hope. The evening’s young yet.’
At ‘yet,’ we hit a dip, sending me bouncing up off the banquette.
Zoe Scarlett droned on. ‘… our other players. As MacQueen, please welcome our Agatha Christie expert, Markus, um …’
A roar went up and Markus waved from the table next to us. Zoe went on to introduce, sans last names, Grace as Greta Ohlsson, the Swedish Lady, germaphobic literary agent Carson as Count Andrenyi, Prudence as Princess Dragomiroff, somebody named Big Fred as Foscarelli, and Harvey – the guy in the loud sports jacket – as Hardman.
I noticed that besides not knowing her longtime conference attendees’ last names without the aid of the badges she’d harangued Missy about, Zoe didn’t bother introducing the help: Boyce as Bouc, the director of the railroad, and Pete the bartender as Pierre Michel, the conductor depicted in Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express.