Murder on the Orient Espresso(54)

I threw up my hands. ‘Hey, maybe it isn’t even a snake. Why don’t you just say a really big worm with teeth dwarfing a great white shark’s? Want me to go out and count them?’

‘Sarcasm rarely becomes you, Maggy.’ Pavlik was writing again.

‘I was going for “facetious.”’

‘Well, you missed the target.’ He still didn’t look up.

I sighed. ‘OK, I’m sorry. Obviously, this detecting is more complicated than I realized.’

‘The record-keeping is tedious and using the same terminology to identify something may seem repetitive, but believe me, it reduces ambiguity and makes the detecting, as you call it, easier and conviction much more likely.’ He raised his head and smiled. ‘Apology accepted.’

I cocked my head. ‘Aren’t you going to tell me what word I should use instead of “detecting”?’

Head down again. ‘I’m trying hard not to.’ A beat. ‘But “investigating” might be a good choice.’

Pavlik was just too cute and I laughed, genuinely. ‘“Investigating” it is, Sheriff. Now tell me what difference it makes to the investigation to say that both the snake and Laurence Potter’s body were on the east side of the flooded track, versus the snake was on the east side of the flooded track with Laurence Potter’s body inside it. Mostly.’

‘Happily.’ Sheriff Jake Pavlik, out of his jurisdiction or not, made steady eye contact. ‘The difference is how Potter got there.’





TWENTY-THREE





‘Are you saying Larry Potter didn’t necessarily exit the train as we passed this spot on our way west?’

‘Exactly,’ Pavlik said. ‘The—’

I interrupted. ‘Do you know if pythons eat … dead things?’

‘Carrion? If you’re asking whether they’re scavengers or consume only what they’ve killed themselves, I don’t have a clue.’

‘We’ll have to ask somebody.’ My kingdom for Google. ‘I’m sorry, I interrupted. You were saying?’

‘Just that the snake could have retrieved the body – or Potter, still alive, if that’s the way it went down – from another location.’

‘Retrieved?’ The word made the thing sound more like a loyal hunting dog than a repulsive, slithering man-eater. But then foxes probably weren’t so fond of hounds, either.

‘Yes. Retrieved the body and conveyed it to where we found them both on the east side of the flooded track. That means Potter needn’t have exited the train on the east side of the flooded track, but anywhere in the vicinity.’

‘And the time?’

‘According to the engineer, he didn’t see the snake – and Potter – until he’d brought the train, now eastbound, to a stop and climbed down to investigate,’ notes again, ‘“a mite before ten.”’

‘So, this “mite before ten” would be the latest Potter could have exited one of the cars, and the start of Zoe’s speech the earliest.’

‘Agreed.’ Pavlik wrote it down and gestured toward Grace’s tattered copy of Murder on the Orient Express. ‘Who’s next?’

‘“The secretary, MacQueen,”’ I read. ‘That would be Markus.’

‘Have Zoe send him in,’ Pavlik ordered. ‘But first, and I should have thought of this earlier, grab some bottled water and a rack of clean glasses.’ He hooked his finger to the club car behind us.

I stood up, too tired to question. ‘Will do, boss.’

‘Oh, and Maggy?’

I stopped and turned around. ‘Yes?’

‘Glass glasses, not plastic. And use a towel when you take them out of the rack.’

I got the glasses and, on Pavlik’s orders, poured the water into three of them. One for him, one for me and one prepared for our next witness. And that witness’s fingerprints. Then I went to the far-end door and slid it to access the vestibule.

The train was eerily still without the clatter of the tracks passing below. I pulled open the door of the passenger car, half-hoping the whole lot of them would be asleep. If so, Pavlik and I could follow suit. It had been a long day.

But alas, Zoe was still awake and seated in the front row, with Prudence now next to her. The latter looked up.

I stepped in. ‘Is Markus—’

‘Here,’ a voice said, and he stood up.

‘See?’ Grace popped up from the seat behind Prudence and Zoe. ‘I told you we’d be called in the same sequence as the characters in the book were.’

‘That means I’ll be very nearly last,’ Rosemary Darlington, aka Mary Debenham said. ‘Wouldn’t you rather go alphabetical? Perhaps start with “A” for Arbuthnot?’ She hooked a finger toward the young man seated next to her. Danny had finally snagged an audience with the great lady.