'The Unwins have come down into the hall and are heading towards me,' Nell said, looking away from me.

'Right.'

I stood up without haste, took the card she'd given me to the desk, and signed the register. Behind me, I could hear the Unwins' Australian voices telling her they were going for a stroll by the shore and it was the best trip they'd ever taken. When I turned round, holding my own key, they were letting themselves out through the glass doors to the garden.

I paused again beside Nell who was now standing up. 'Maybe I'll see you,' I said.

'Maybe.'

I smiled at her eyes. 'If anything odd happens…'

She nodded. 'You're in room six sixty-two.'

'After Vancouver,' I said, 'what then?'

'After the races I'm booked straight back to Toronto on the red-eye special.'

'What's the red-eye special?'

'The overnight flight.'

'So soon?'

'How was I to know I wouldn't want to?'

'That'll do fine,' I said, 'for now.'

'Don't get ideas,' Nell said sedately, 'above your lowly station.'

She moved away with a mischievous glint and I went contentedly up to the sixth floor in the wing where there were no owners, and found that the room allocated to me was near the end of the passage and next door to Zak's.

His door was wide open with Donna and Pierre standing half in, half out.

'Come on in,' Donna said, seeing me. 'We're just walking through tonight's scene.'

'And we've a hell of a crisis on our hands,' Pierre said. 'We need all the input we can get.'

'But Zak might not…' I began.

He came to the door himself. 'Zak is taking suggestions from chimpanzees,' he said.

'OK. I'll just take off my coat.' I pointed. 'I'm in the room next along.'

I went into my room which proved to have the same sweeping view of the mountains, the lake, the trees, and the glacier, and it was if anything more spectacular than in the lobby from being higher up I took off the raincoat and the uniform it had hidden, put on a tracksuit and trainers, and returned to Zak's fray.

The crisis was the absence of an actor who was supposed to have arrived but had sent apologies instead.

'Apologies!' Zak fumed. 'He broke his goddamn arm this morning and he's not coming. I ask you! Is a broken arm any sort of excuse?'

The others, the whole troupe, were inclined to think not.

'He was supposed to be Angelica's husband,' Zak said.

'What about Steve?' I asked.

'He was her lover, and her business partner. They were both killed by Giles because they had just found out he had embezzled all the capital and the bloodstock business was bankrupt. Now Angelica's husband comes on the scene to ask where her money is, as she hasn't changed her will and he inherits. He decided to investigate her death himself because he doesn't think either the Mounties or I have done a good enough job. And now he isn't even here.'

'Well,' I said, 'why don't you discover that it is Raoul who is really Angelica's husband and who stands to inherit, which gives him a lot of motive as he doesn't know yet that Giles has embezzled the money, does he? No one does. And Raoul is only free to marry Donna because Angelica is dead, which can give the Bricknells hysterics. And how about if Raoul says the Bricknells themselves have been doping their horses, not Raoul, but they deny it and are very pleased that he should be judged guilty of everything now they know he can't marry their daughter because he is probably a murderer and will go to jail. And how about if it was the Bricknells' horse that was really supposed to be kidnapped, but by Giles, as you can later discover, so that he could sell it and gain enough to skip the country once he got safely to Vancouver.'

They opened their mouths.

'I don't know that it actually makes sense,' Zak said eventually.

'Never mind, I don't suppose they'll notice.'

'You cynical son-of-a…'

'I don't see why not,' Donna said. 'And I can have a nice weepy scene with Pierre.'

'Why?' Zak said.

'I like doing them.'

They all fell about, and in a while walked through dramatic revelations (received by Zak from Outside Sources) of Raoul's marriage to Angelica five years earlier, which neither had acknowledged at Toronto station because, Raoul said unconvincingly, they were both shocked to find the other there, as he wanted to meld with Donna as she with Steve.

They all went away presently to get into their character clothes, and from Zak, very much later, I heard that the whole thing, played at the tops of their voices, had been a galvanic riot. He came to my door with a bottle in each hand, Scotch for him, red wine for me, and sank exhaustedly into an armchair with an air of having nobly borne the weight of the world on his shoulders and bravely survived.

'Did you have any dinner?' he said, yawning. 'Didn't see you.'

'I had some sent up.'

He looked at the television programme with which I'd passed the time.

'Rotten reception in these mountains,' he said. 'Look at that idiot.' He stared at the screen. 'Couldn't act his way out of a paper bag.'

We drank companionably and I asked if the party were all generally happy without Daffodil Quentin.

'The dear in the Mont Blanc curls?' he said. 'Oh, sure. They were all in a great mood. That man who used to be with her all the time was dripping charm all over Bambi Lorrimore and that nutter of a son of hers didn't open his mouth once. Those Australians are still in the clouds…'

He described the reactions of some of the others to the evening's scene and then said he would rely on me for another scintillating bit of scrambled plot for the next night. Not to mention, he added, a denouement and finale for the night after, our last on the train. The mystery had to be solved then before a Gala Dinner of epic proportions comprising five courses produced by Angus by sleight of hand.

'But I only said it all off the top of my head,' I said.

'The top of your head will do us all fine.' He yawned. 'Tell you the truth, we need a fresh mind.'

'Well… all right '

'So how much do I pay you?'

I was surprised. 'I don't want money.'

'Don't be silly.'

'Um,' I said. 'I do earn more than Tommy.'

He looked at me over his whisky glass. 'You don't really surprise me.'

'So thanks a lot,' I said, meaning it, 'but no thanks.'

He nodded and left it: the offer honourably made, realistically declined. Anything he would have paid me would have come directly out of his own pocket: impossible to accept.

'Oh!' he said, clearly hit by a shaft of memory, 'Nell asked me to give you this.' He dug into a pocket and produced a sealed envelope which he handed over. It said 'Nell Richmond' on the outside, and 'Photographs, do not bend.'

'Thanks,' I said, relieved. 'I was beginning to think it hadn't got here.'

I opened the envelope and found three identical prints inside, but no letter. The pictures were clear, sharp and in black and white owing to the fast high-definition film I habitually used in the binoculars-camera. The subject, taken from above, was looking upwards and to one side to a point somewhere below the lens, so that one couldn't see his eyes clearly; but the sharply jutting cheekbones, the narrow nose, the deep eye sockets, the angled jaw-bone and the hairline retreating from the temples, all were identifiable at a glance. I handed one of the prints to Zak, and he looked at it curiously.

'Who is it?' he said.

That's the point. Who is he? Have you seen him on the train?'

He looked again at the picture which showed, below the head, the shoulders and neck, with the sheepskin collar of the padded jacket over a sweater of some sort and a checked shirt unbuttoned at the top.

'A tough-looking man,' Zak said. 'Is he a militant union agitator?'

I was startled. 'Why do you say that?'