'Mr Filmer? He's in his room still, as far as I know. He was a bit short with me, told me to hurry up. And he's not usually like that. He was eating something, and he had a thermos too. But then we do get passengers like that sometimes. Can't get through the night without raiding the ice box, that sort of thing.'

I nodded noncommittally and went onwards, but I thought that if Filmer had brought food and a thermos on board for breakfast, he must have known in Winnipeg that he would need them, which meant that last night's quarrel had been planned and hadn't been caused by Daffodil.

George Burley was in his office, writing his records.

'Morning,' he said, beaming.

'How's the train?'

'The forward sleeping-car attendants are threatening to resign, eh?, over the vomit in the bathrooms.'

'Ugh.'

He chuckled. 'I brought extra disinfectants aboard in Winnipeg,' he said 'Train-sickness gets them, you know.'

I shook my head at his indulgence and pressed forward, looking as always for gaunt-face but chiefly aiming for the horses.

Leslie Brown, hollow-eyed from lack of sleep, regarded me with only half the usual belligerence. 'Come in,' she said, stepping back from her door. 'To be honest, I could do with some help.'

As I'd just passed several green-looking grooms being sorry for themselves in their section, I supposed at first she meant simply physical help in tending the horses, but it appeared that she didn't.

'Something's going on that I don't understand,' she said, locking the entrance door behind me and leading the way to the central space where her chair stood beside the innocent water tank.

'What sort of thing?’ I asked, following her.

She mutely pointed further forward up the car, and I walked on until I came to the final space between the stalls, and there, in a sort of nest made of hay bales, one of the grooms half lay, half sat, curled like an embryo and making small moaning noises.

I went back to Leslie Brown. 'What's the matter with him?' I said.

'I don't know. He was drunk last night, they all were, but this doesn't look like an ordinary hangover.'

'Did you ask the others?'

She signed. 'They don't remember much about last night. They don't care what's the matter with him.'

'Which horse is he with?'

'Laurentide Ice.'

I'd have been surprised, I supposed, if she'd said anything else.

'That's the horse, isn't it,' I asked, 'whose trainer sent separate numbered individual bags of food, because another of Mrs Quentin's horses had died because of eating the wrong things?'

She nodded. 'Yes.'

'And this boy was with the horse all the time in the barns at Winnipeg?'

'Yes, of course. They exercised the horses and looked after them, and they all came back to the train in horse vans yesterday after the races, while the train was still in the siding. I came with them. There's nothing wrong with any of the horses, I assure you.'

'That's good,' I said. 'Laurentide Ice as well?'

'See for yourself.'

I walked round looking at each horse but in truth they all appeared healthy and unaffected, even Upper Gumtree and Flokati who would have been excused seeming thin and fatigued after their exertions. Most of them had their heads out over the stall doors, sure sign of interest: a few were a pace or two back, semi-dreaming. Laurentide Ice watched me with a bright glacial eye, in far better mental health than his attendant.

I returned to Leslie Brown and asked her the groom's name.

'Lenny,' she said. She consulted a list. 'Leonard Higgs.'

'How old is he?'

'About twenty, I should think.'

'What's he like, usually?'

'Like the others. Full of foul language and dirty jokes.' She looked disapproving. 'Every other word beginning with f.'

'When did all this moaning and retreating start?'

'He was lying there all night. The other boys said it was his turn to be in here, but it wasn't really, only he was paralytic, and they just dumped him in the hay and went back to the party. He started the moaning about an hour ago and he won't answer me at all.' She was disturbed by him, and worried, I thought, that his behaviour might be held to be her responsibility.

Rather to her surprise, I took off my yellow waistcoat and striped tie and gave them to her to hold. If she would sit down for a while, I suggested, I would try to sort Lenny out.

Meekly for her, she agreed. I left her perching with my badges of office across her trousered knees and returned to the total collapse in the hay.

'Lenny,' I said, 'give it a rest.'

He went on with the moaning, oblivious.

I sat down beside him on one of the hay bales and put my mouth near his one visible ear.

'Shut up,' I said, very loudly.

He jumped and he gasped and after a short pause he went back to moaning, though artificially now, it seemed to me.

'If you're sick from beer,' I said forcefully, 'it's your own bloody fault, but I'll get you something to make you feel better.'

He curled into a still tighter ball, tucking his head down into his arms as if shielding it from a blow. It was a movement impossible to misconstrue: what he felt, besides alcohol sickness, was fear.

Fear followed Julius Apollo Filmer like a spoor, the residue of his passing. Lenny, frightened out of his wits, was a familiar sight indeed.

I undid the top buttons of my shirt, loosening the collar, and rolled up my cuffs, aiming for informality, and I slid down until I was sitting on the floor with my head on the same level as Lenny's.

'If you're shit scared,' I said distinctly, 'I can do something about that, too.'

Nothing much happened. He moaned a couple of times and fell silent and after a long while, I said, 'Do you want help, or don't you? This is a good offer. If you don't take it, whatever you're afraid of will probably happen.'

After a lengthy pause he rolled his head round, still wrapped in his arms, until I could see his face. He was red-eyed, bony, unshaven and dribbling, and what came out of his slack mouth wasn't a groan but a croak.

'Who the bleeding hell are you?' He had an English accent and a habitual pugnacity of speech altogether at odds with his present state.

'Your bit of good luck,' I said calmly.

'Piss off, 'he said.

'Right.' I got to my feet. 'Too bad,' I said. 'Go on feeling sorry for yourself, and see where it gets you.'

I walked away from him, out of his sight.

'Here,' he said, croaking, making it sound like an order.

I stayed where I was.

'Wait,' he said urgently.

I did wait, but I didn't go back to him. I heard the hay rustling and then a real groan as the hangover hit him, and finally he came staggering into view, keeping his balance with both hands on the green outside of Flokati's stall. He stopped when he saw me. Blinking, swaying, the Race Train T-shirt torn and filthy, he looked stupid, pathetic and spineless.

'Go back and sit down,' I said neutrally. 'I'll bring you something.'

He sagged against the green stall but finally turned round and shuffled back the way he'd come. I went down to Leslie Brown and asked if she had any aspirins.

'Not aspirins, but these,' she said, proffering a box from a canvas holdall. 'These might do.'

I thanked her, filled a polystyrene cup with water and went back to see how Lenny was faring: he was sitting on the hay with his head in his hands looking a picture of misery and a lot more normal.

'Drink,' I said, giving him the water. 'And swallow these.'

'You said you could help me.'

'Yes. Take the pills for a start.'

He was accustomed, on the whole, to doing what he was told, and he must have been reasonably good at his job, I supposed, to have been sent across Canada with Laurentide Ice. He swallowed the pills and drank the water and not surprisingly they made no immediate difference to his physical woes.