The dishes finally done, Cathy skipped away to the delights of the station and in her place I helped Emil and Oliver stow and lock up all the equipment, as when everyone disembarked at Lake Louise the train was again going to be standing cold and silent in sidings for two days before the last stretch westwards to the Pacific.

Some but not all of the passengers had gone ashore, so to speak, at Calgary, and those who had been in the station came wandering back in good time, including the Youngs. Of Filmer there was no sign, nor of the gaunt-faced man. The dining car half filled again with people who simply preferred sitting there, and from those I heard that the horse car had been safely detached from the train and had been towed away by the engine, leaving the rest of us temporarily stranded.

The regular Canadian, they told each other, which had arrived on time thirty-five minutes after us, was the train standing three tracks away, its passengers stretching their legs like our own. The Canadian, it seemed, had changed from threat to friend in the general perception, our Doppelganger and companion on the journey. The passengers from both had mingled and compared notes. The Conductors had met for a talk.

There was a jerk and a shudder through the train as the engine returned and reattached, and soon afterwards we were on our way again, with passengers crowding now towards the dome car's observation deck to enjoy the ascent into the mountains.

Filmer, slightly to my surprise, was among those going through the dining car, and right behind him came Nell who looked over Filmer's shoulder at me and said, 'I've got a message for you from George Burley '

'Excuse me, miss,' I said abruptly, standing well back between two tables to let Filmer go by, 'I'll be right with you.'

'What? ' She was puzzled, but paused and stepped sideways also to let others behind her walk on through the car. Filmer himself had gone on without stopping, without paying Nell or me the least attention, and when his back was way down the car and well out of earshot of a quiet conversation, I turned back to Nell with enquiry.

'It's a bit of a mix-up,' she said. She was standing on the far side of the table from me, and speaking across it. 'Apparently the telephone in George Burley's office was ringing when he got back on board, and it was a woman wanting to speak to a Mr Kelsey. George Burley consulted his lists and said there was no Mr Kelsey on board. So whoever it was asked him to give a message to me, which he did.'

It must have been Mrs Baudelaire phoning, I thought' no one else knew the number. Bill himself could never be mistaken for a woman. Not his secretary…? heaven forbid.

'What's the message?' I asked.

'I don't know if between us George Burley and I have got it right.' She was frowning. 'It's meaningless, but… zero forty-nine. That's the whole message, zero forty-nine.' She looked at my face. 'You look happy enough about it, anyway.'

I was also appalled, as a matter of fact, at how close Filmer had come to hearing it.

I said, 'Yes, well… please don't tell anyone else about the message, and please forget it if you can.'

'I can't.'

'I was afraid not.' I hunted around if not for explanations at least for a reasonable meaning. 'It's to do,' I said, 'with the border between Canada and America, with the forty-ninth parallel.'

'Oh, sure.' She was unsure by the look of things, but willing to let it go.

I said, 'Someone will bring a letter to the Chateau some time this evening addressed to you. It will have a photo in it. It's for me, from Bill Baudelaire. Will you see that I get it?'

'Yes, OK.' She briefly glanced at her clipboard. 'I wanted to talk to you anyway about rooms.' A passenger or two walked past, and she waited until they had gone. 'The train crew are staying in the staff annexe at Chateau Lake Louise and the actors will be in the hotel itself. Which do you want? I have to write the list.'

'Our passengers will be in the hotel?'

'Ours, yes, but not the racegoers. They're all getting off in Banff. That's the town before Lake Louise. The owners are all staying in the Chateau. So am I. Which do you want?'

'To be with you,' I said.

'Seriously.'

I thought briefly. 'Is there anywhere else?'

'There's a sort of village near the station about a mile from the Chateau itself, but it's just a few shops, and they're closing now at this time of the year, ready for winter. A lot of places are closed by this time, in the mountains.' She paused. 'The Chateau stands by itself on the lake shore. It's beautiful there.'

'Is it big?' I asked.

'Huge.'

'OK. I'll stay there and risk it.'

'Risk what?'

'Being stripped of my waistcoat.'

'But you won't wear it there,' she assured me.

'No… metaphorically.'

She lowered the clipboard and clicked her pen for writing.

'Tommy Titmouse,' I said.

Her lips curved. T. Titmuss.' She spelled it out. 'That do?'

'Fine.'

'What are you really?'

'Wait and see,' I said.

She gave me a dry look but no answer because some passengers came by with questions, and I went forward into the dome car to see how firmly Julius Apollo would appear to be seated, wondering whether it would be safe to try to look inside his briefcase or whether I should most stringently obey the command not to risk being arrested. If he hadn't hoped I would look, the Brigadier wouldn't have relayed the number. But if I looked and got caught looking, it would blow the whole operation.

Filmer was nowhere to be seen.

From the top of the staircase, I searched again through the rows of backs of heads under the dome. No thick black well-brushed thatch with a scattering of grey hairs. Bald, blond, tangled and trimmed, but no Filmer.

He wasn't in the downstairs lounge, and he wasn't in the bar where the poker school was as usual in progress, oblivious to the scenery. That left only the Lorrimores' car… He had to be with Mercer, Bambi and Sheridan. Xanthe was with Rose and Cumber Young, watching the approach of the distant white peaks under a cloudless sky.

I walked irresolutely back towards Filmer's bedroom, wondering whether the disinclination I felt to enter it was merely prudence or otherwise plain fear, and being afraid it was the latter.

I would have to do it, I thought, because if I didn't I'd spend too much of my life regretting it. A permanent D minus in the balance sheet. By the time I left the dining room and started along the corridor past the kitchen, I was already feeling breathless, already conscious of my heart, and it was not in any way good for self-confidence. With a dry mouth I crossed the chilly shifting join between cars, opening and closing the doors, every step bringing me nearer to the risky commitment.

Filmer's was the first room in the sleeping car beyond the kitchen. I rounded the corner into the corridor with the utmost reluctance and was just about to put my hand to the door handle when the sleeping-car attendant, dressed exactly as I was, came out of his roomette at the other end of the car, saw me, waved and started walking towards me.

With craven relief I went slowly towards him, and he said, 'Hi,' and how was I doing.

He was the familiar one who'd told me about Filmer's private breakfast, who'd shown me how to fold and unfold the armchairs and bunks, the one who looked after both the car we were in and the three bedrooms, Daffodil's among them, in the dome car. He had all afternoon and nothing to do and was friendly and wanted to talk, and he made it impossible for me to shed him and get back to my nefarious business.

He talked about Daffodil and the mess she had made of her bedroom.

'Mess? '

'If you ask me,' he said, nodding, 'she'd had a bottle of vodka in her suitcase… There was broken glass all over the place. Broken vodka bottle. And the mirror over the washbasin. In splinters. All over the place. I'd guess she threw the vodka bottle at the mirror and they both broke.'