Death in the Clouds

Beside him Dr Bryant, caressing his flute with nervous hands, thought, ‘I can’t decide. I simply cannot decide. This is the turning point of my career…’

Nervously he drew out his flute from its case, caressingly, lovingly… Music… In music there was an escape from all your cares. Half smiling he raised the flute to his lips, then put it down again. The little man with the moustaches beside him was fast asleep. There had been a moment, when the plane had bumped a little, when he had looked distinctly green. Dr Bryant was glad that he himself was neither train-sick nor sea-sick nor air-sick…

M. Dupont père turned excitedly in his seat and shouted at M. Dupont fils sitting beside him.

‘There is no doubt about it. They are all wrong—the Germans, the Americans, the English! They date the prehistoric pottery all wrong. Take the Samarra ware—’

Jean Dupont, tall, fair, with a false air of indolence, said:

‘You must take the evidences from all sources. There is Tall Halaf, and Sakje Geuze—’

They prolonged the discussion.

Armand Dupont wrenched open a battered attaché case.

‘Take these Kurdish pipes, such as they make today. The decoration on them is almost exactly similar to that on the pottery of 5000 BC.’

An eloquent gesture almost swept away the plate that a steward was placing in front of him.

Mr Clancy, writer of detective stories, rose from his seat behind Norman Gale and padded to the end of the car, extracted a continental Bradshaw from his raincoat pocket and returned with it to work out a complicated alibi for professional purposes.

Mr Ryder, in the seat behind him, thought, ‘I’ll have to keep my end up, but it’s not going to be easy. I don’t see how I’m going to raise the dibs for the next dividend… If we pass the dividend the fat’s in the fire… Oh, hell!’

Norman Gale rose and went to the toilet. As soon as he had gone Jane drew out a mirror and surveyed her face anxiously. She also applied powder and lipstick.

A steward placed coffee in front of her.

Jane looked out of the window. The Channel showed blue and shining below.

A wasp buzzed round Mr Clancy’s head just as he was dealing with 19.55 at Tzaribrod, and he struck at it absently. The wasp flew off to investigate the Duponts’ coffee cups.

Jean Dupont slew it neatly.

Peace settled down on the car. Conversation ceased, but thoughts pursued their way.

Right at the end of the car, in seat No. 2, Madame Giselle’s head lolled forward a little. One might have taken her to be asleep. But she was not asleep. She neither spoke nor thought.

Madame Giselle was dead…

CHAPTER 2 (#u14277668-ffc9-5411-b8b8-4656af130604)

Discovery (#u14277668-ffc9-5411-b8b8-4656af130604)

Henry Mitchell, the senior of the two stewards, passed swiftly from table to table depositing bills. In half an hour’s time they would be at Croydon. He gathered up notes and silver, bowed, said, ‘Thank you, sir. Thank you, Madam.’ At the table where the two Frenchmen sat he had to wait a minute or two, they were so busy discussing and gesticulating. And there wouldn’t be much of a tip anyway from them, he thought gloomily. Two of the passengers were asleep—the little man with the moustaches, and the old woman down at the end. She was a good tipper, though—he remembered her crossing several times. He refrained therefore from awaking her.

The little man with the moustaches woke up and paid for the bottle of soda water and the thin captain biscuits, which was all he had had.

Mitchell left the other passenger as long as possible. About five minutes before they reached Croydon he stood by her side and leant over her.

‘Pardon, Madam, your bill.’

He laid a deferential hand on her shoulder. She did not wake. He increased the pressure, shaking her gently, but the only result was an unexpected slumping of the body down in the seat. Mitchell bent over her, then straightened up with a white face.

Albert Davis, second steward, said:

‘Coo! You don’t mean it!’

‘I tell you it’s true.’

Mitchell was white and shaking.

‘You sure, Henry?’

‘Dead sure. At least—well, I suppose it might be a fit.’

‘We’ll be at Croydon in a few minutes.’

‘If she’s just taken bad—’

They remained a minute or two undecided—then arranged their course of action. Mitchell returned to the rear car. He went from table to table, bending his head and murmuring confidentially:

‘Excuse me, sir, you don’t happen to be a doctor—?’

Norman Gale said, ‘I’m a dentist. But if there’s anything I can do—?’ He half rose from his seat.

‘I’m a doctor,’ said Dr Bryant. ‘What’s the matter?’

‘There’s a lady at the end there—I don’t like the look of her.’

Bryant rose to his feet and accompanied the steward. Unnoticed, the little man with the moustaches followed them.

Dr Bryant bent over the huddled figure in seat No. 2, the figure of a stoutish middle-aged woman dressed in heavy black.

The doctor’s examination was brief.

He said: ‘She’s dead.’

Mitchell said, ‘What do you think it was—kind of fit?’

‘That I can’t possibly say without a detailed examination. When did you last see her—alive, I mean?’

Mitchell reflected.

‘She was all right when I brought her coffee along.’

‘When was that?’

‘Well, it might have been three-quarters of an hour ago—about that. Then, when I brought the bill along, I thought she was asleep…’