The Edge (7 page)

‘What? Why do you ask? Yes, we do, as a matter of fact. What difference does it make?’

‘None, really. Will they have a representative on the train?’

‘To minimise negative incidents? No, not unless …’ he stopped and listened to what he’d said. ‘I’m using their jargon, damn it. I’ll watch that. So easy to repeat what they say.’

A knock on the door announced the drinks in charge of an ultra-polite slow-moving waiter who knew where to find ice and mixers in the room’s own refrigerator. The waiter took his deliberate time over uncorking the wine, and Bill Baudelaire, stifling impatience, said we would do the pouring ourselves. When the tortoise waiter had gone he gestured to me to help myself, and on his own account fixed a lengthy splash of vodka over a tumblerful of cubes.

He had suggested to the Brigadier that I should meet him first here in Ottawa, as he had business in that city which couldn’t be postponed. It would also, they both thought, be more securely private, as everyone going on the train in the normal way would be collecting in Toronto.

‘You and I,’ Bill Baudelaire said over his vodka, ‘will fly to Toronto tomorrow evening on separate planes, after you’ve spent the day absorbing all the material I’ve brought you and asking any questions that arise. I propose to drop by your sitting-room here again at two o’clock for a final briefing.’

‘Will I be able to get in touch with you fairly easily after tomorrow?’ I asked. ‘I’d like to be able to.’

‘Yes, indeed. I’m not going on the train myself, as of course you know, but I’ll be at Winnipeg for the races there, and at Vancouver. And at Toronto, of course. I’ve outlined everything. You’ll find it in the package. We can’t really discuss anything properly until you’ve read it.’

‘All right.’

‘There’s one unwelcome piece of news, however, that isn’t in there because I heard it too late to include. It seems Julius Filmer has bought a share in one of the horses travelling on the train. The partnership was registered today and I was told just now by telephone. The Ontario Racing Commission is deeply concerned, but we can’t do anything about it. No regulations have been broken. They won’t let people
who’ve been convicted of felonies such as arson, fraud or illegal gambling own horses, but Filmer hasn’t been convicted of anything.’

‘Which horse?’ I said.

‘Which horse? Laurentide Ice. Quite useful. You can read about it in there.’ He nodded to the package. ‘The problem is that we made a rule that only owners could go along to the horse car to see the horses. We couldn’t have everyone tramping about there, both for security reasons and for preventing the animals being upset. We thought the only comfort left to us about Filmer’s being on the train was that he wouldn’t have access to the horse car, and now he will.’

‘Awkward.’

‘Infuriating.’ He refilled his glass with the suppressed violence of his frustration. ‘Why for God’s sake couldn’t that goddam crook have kept his snotty nose out. He’s trouble. We all know it. He’s planning something. He’ll ruin the whole thing. He practically said as much.’ He looked me over and shook his head. ‘No offence to you, but how are you going to stop him?’

‘It depends what needs to be stopped.’

His face lightened suddenly to a smile as before. ‘Yes, all right, we’ll wait and see. Val said you don’t miss things. Let’s hope he’s right.’

He went away after a while and with a great deal of interest I opened the package and found it absolutely fascinating from start to finish.

‘The Great Transcontinental Mystery Race Train’, as emblazoned in red on the gold cover of the glossy prospectus, had indeed entailed an enormous amount of organisation. Briefly, the enterprise offered to the racehorse owners of the world a chance to race a horse in Toronto, to go by train to Winnipeg, and race a horse there, to stop for two nights at a hotel high in the Rockies, and to continue by train to Vancouver, where they might again race a horse. There was accommodation for eleven horses on the train, and for forty-eight human V.I.P. passengers.

At each of Toronto, Winnipeg and Vancouver there would be overnight stays in top-class hotels. Transport from train to hotels to races and back to the train was also included as required. The entire trip would last from lunch at Toronto races on the Saturday, to the end of the special race day at Vancouver ten days later.

On the train there would be special sleeping cars, a special dining car, two private chefs and a load of good wine. People who owned their own private rail cars could, as in the past, apply for them to be joined to the train.

Every possible extra luxury would be available if requested in advance, and in addition, for entertainment along the way, an intriguing mystery would be enacted on board and at the stop-overs, which passengers would be invited to solve.

I winced a shade at that last piece of information: keeping eyes on Filmer would be hard enough anyhow without all sorts of imaginary mayhem going on around him. He himself was mystery enough.

Special races, I read, had been introduced into the regular programmes at Woodbine racecourse, Toronto, at Assiniboia Downs, Winnipeg and at Exhibition Park, Vancouver. The races had been framed to be ultra-attractive to the paying public, with magnificent prize money to please the owners. The owners of the horses and indeed all the train passengers would be given V.I.P. treatment at all the racecourses, including lunch with the presidents.

It wasn’t to be expected that owners would want to run the horses on the train three times in so short a span. Any owner was free to run a horse just once. Any owner (or any other passenger on the train) was free to bring any others of his horses to Toronto, Winnipeg or Vancouver by road or by air to run in the special races. The trip was to be a lighthearted junket for the visitors, a celebration of racing in Canada.

In smaller print after all that trumpeting came the information that accommodation was available also for one groom for each horse. If owners wanted space for extra attendants, would they please specify early. Grooms and other attendants would have their own dining and sleeping cars and their own separate entertainments.

Stabling had been reserved at Toronto, Winnipeg and Vancouver for the horses going by train, and they would be able to exercise normally at all three places. In addition, during the passengers’ visit to the mountains, the horses would be stabled and exercised in Calgary. The good care of the horses was of prime importance, and a veterinarian would be at once helicoptered to the train if his services should become necessary between scheduled stops.

Next in the package was a pencilled note from Bill Baudelaire:

All eleven horse places were sold out within two weeks of the first major announcement.

All forty-eight V.I.P. passenger places were sold within a month.

There are dozens of entries for the special races.

This is going to be a success!

After that came a list of the eleven horses, with past form, followed by a list of their owners, with nationalities. Three owners from England (including Filmer), one from Australia, three from the United States and five from Canada (including Filmer’s partner).

The owners, with husbands, wives, family and friends, had taken up twenty-seven of the forty-eight passenger places. Four of the remaining twenty-one places had also been taken by well-known Canadian owners (identified by a star against their names), and Bill Baudelaire, in a note pencilled at the bottom of this passenger list had put, ‘Splendid response from our appeal to our owners to support the project!’

There were no trainers mentioned on the passenger list, and in fact I later learned that the trainers were making their own way by air as usual to Winnipeg and Vancouver, presumably because the train trip was too time-consuming and expensive.

Next in the package came a bunch of hand-outs from the three racecourses, from the Canadian railway company and from the four hotels, all shiny pamphlets extolling their individual excellencies. Finally, a fat brochure with good colour plates put together by the travel organisers in charge of getting the show on the railroad, a job which seemed well within their powers since they apparently also arranged safaris to outer deserts, treks to the Poles and tours to anywhere anyone cared to go.

They also staged mysteries as entertainments; evenings, weekends, moving or stationary. They were experts from much practice.

For the Great Transcontinental Mystery Race Train, they said, they had arranged something extra-special. ‘A mystery that will grab you by the throat. A stunning experience. All around you the story will unfold. Clues will appear. BE ON YOUR GUARD.’

Oh great, I thought wryly. But they hadn’t finished. There was a parting shot.

‘BEWARE! MANY PEOPLE ARE NOT WHAT THEY SEEM.’

‘How can they stage a play on a train?’ I asked Bill Baudelaire the next day. ‘I wouldn’t have thought it would work.’

‘Mysteries are very popular in Canada. Very fashionable,’ he said, ‘and they don’t exactly stage a play. Some of the passengers will be actors and they will make the story evolve. I went to a dinner party … a mystery dinner party … not long ago, and some of the guests were actors, and before we knew where we were we were all caught up in a string of events, just as if it were real. Quite amazing. I went because my wife wanted to. I didn’t think I would enjoy it in the least, but I did.’

‘Some of the passengers …’ I repeated slowly. ‘Do you know which ones?’

‘No, I don’t,’ he said, more cheerfully than I liked. ‘That’s part of the fun for everyone, trying to spot the actors.’

I liked it less and less.

‘And of course the actors may be hiding among the other lot of passengers until their turn to appear comes.’

‘What other lot of passengers?’ I said blankly.

‘The racegoers.’ He looked at my face. ‘Doesn’t it say anything about them in the package?’

‘No, it doesn’t.’

‘Ah.’ He reflected briefly. ‘Well, in order to make the trip economically viable, the rail company said we should add our own party onto the regular train which sets off every day from Toronto to Vancouver, which is called the Canadian. We didn’t want to do that because it would have meant we couldn’t stop the train for two nights in Winnipeg and again for the mountains, and although the carriages could be unhitched and left in a siding, we’d be faced with security problems. But our own special train was proving extremely, almost impossibly, expensive. So we advertised a separate excursion … a racegoing trip … and now we have our own train. But it has been expanded, with three or four more sleeping cars, another dining car, and a dayniter or
two according to how many tickets they sell in the end. We had an enormous response from people who didn’t want to pay what the owners are paying but would like to go to the races across Canada on vacation. They are buying their tickets for the train at the normal fare and making their own arrangements at the stops … and we call these passengers the racegoers, for convenience.’

I sighed. I supposed it made sense. ‘What’s a dayniter?’ I said.

‘A car with reclining seats, not bedrooms.’

‘And how many people altogether will be travelling?’

‘Difficult to say. Start with forty-eight owners … we call them owners to distinguish them from the racegoers … and the grooms. Then the actors and the people from the travel company. Then the train crew and stewards, waiters, chefs and so on. With all the racegoers … well, perhaps about two hundred people altogether. We won’t know until we start. Probably not then, unless we actually count.’

I could get lost among two hundred more easily than among forty-eight, I thought. Perhaps it might not be too bad. Yet the owners would be looking for actors … for people who weren’t what they seemed.

‘You asked about contact,’ Bill Baudelaire said.

‘Yes.’

‘I’ve discussed it with some of our Jockey Club, and we think you’ll simply have to telephone us from the stops.’

I said with some alarm, ‘How many of your Jockey Club know I’m going on the train?’

He looked surprised. ‘I suppose everyone in the executive office knows we’ll have a man in place. They don’t know exactly who. Not by name. Not yet. Not until I’d met you and approved. They don’t and won’t know what you look like.’

‘Would you please not tell them my name,’ I said.

He was half bewildered, half affronted. ‘But our Jockey Club are sensible men. Discreet.’

‘Information leaks,’ I said.

He looked at me broodingly, vodka and ice cubes tinkling in a fresh glass. ‘Are you serious?’ he said.

‘Yes, indeed.’

His brow wrinkled. ‘I’m afraid I may have mentioned your name to one or two. But I will impress on them not to repeat it.’

It was too late, I supposed, for much else. Perhaps I was getting too obsessed with secrecy. Still …

‘I’d rather not telephone direct to the Jockey Club,’ I said.

‘Couldn’t I leave messages where only you will get them? Like your own home?’

His face melted into an almost boyish grin. ‘I have three teenage daughters and a busy wife. The receiver is almost never in the cradle.’ He thought briefly, then wrote a number on a sheet of a small notepad and gave it to me.

‘Use this one,’ he said. ‘It’s my mother’s number. She’s always there. She’s not well and spends a good deal of time in bed. But her brains are intact. She’s quick-witted. And because she’s ill, if she calls me at the office she gets put straight through to me or else she gets told where to find me. If you give her a message, it will reach me personally with minimum delay. Will that do?’

‘Yes, fine,’ I said, and kept my doubts hidden. Carrier pigeons, I thought, might be better.

‘Anything else?’ he asked.

‘Yes … do you think you could ask Laurentide Ice’s owner why he sold a half-share to Filmer?’

‘It’s a she. I’ll enquire.’ He seemed to have hesitations in his mind but he didn’t explain them. ‘Is that all?’ he said.

‘My ticket?’

‘Oh yes. The travel company, Merry & Co, they’ll have it. They’re still sorting out who’s to sleep where, since we’ve added you in. We’ll have to tell
them
your name, of course, but all we’ve said so far is that we absolutely have to have another ticket and even if it looked impossible it would have to be done. They’ll bring your ticket to Union Station in Toronto on Sunday morning and you can pick it up there. All the owners are picking theirs up then.’