Murder On The Highland Sleeper

That stopped her for half a second. Through the carriage wall came the steady iron rhythm of the wheels, fast and hard beneath them. The sleeper was threading north through a country where a careless stop could leave a train stranded on a curve, its doors opening onto ravines, water, and miles of snow-covered track.

“Then we don’t stop,” Mairi said. “We get the door open here.”

They reached the sleeping-car corridor. Its narrow carpet bucked beneath their feet, and the ceiling lamps trembled in their brass fittings. Doors stood shut on either side, each marked by a small enamel number. Behind them, passengers stirred. A woman in a dressing gown opened her door a crack.

“What’s happened?” she called.

“Stay inside,” Mairi said.

At the far end, compartment thirteen showed no sign of movement. The attendant’s master key rattled uselessly in the lock.

Mairi pressed her ear to the panel.

Nothing.

No footstep. No breath. No settling of luggage. Only the train’s long metallic groan and, beneath it, a faint tapping that might have been the window blind striking the wall.

“Mr Vane,” she called. “This is Mairi Fraser, railway investigator. Can you hear me?”

No answer.

The woman from compartment twelve appeared behind them. She was perhaps fifty, with silver hair pinned loosely at the nape of her neck and a woollen shawl drawn tight around her shoulders.

“I heard a crash,” she said. “Like a chair being thrown against the wall. Then the bolt went across.”

Mairi looked at her. “You saw the bolt move?”

“No. I heard it.”

“From inside?”

The woman’s eyes flicked towards the door. “There was a scrape. Metal on metal.”

The attendant tried the key again. “The bolt’s not the only problem. The inner latch is down.”

Mairi crouched, examining the narrow gap beneath the door. A thread of cold air touched her fingers. The carpet inside was dark, but she could see no feet, no fallen object, no movement at all.

“Mr Vane,” she called again, louder. “If you are injured, make a sound.”

The train swung sharply. Somewhere forward, crockery crashed. Mairi braced herself against the wall and felt the old instinctive calculation settle into place: distance to the next station, speed, points, gradients, the strength of the door. Routine vigilance had become a problem with a human life inside it.

“Fetch the emergency bar,” she said.

The attendant stared. “The guard has it.”

“Then fetch the guard.”

“He’s not coming through until the driver clears the warning.”

“Go.”

The young man hesitated, caught between orders and fear.

Mairi drew the short railway baton from her case. “If he’s alive, every second matters.”

That sent him running.

The woman in the shawl remained. “You think he’s hurt?”

“I think we don’t yet know.”

“You know who he is?”

“Alistair Vane. First-class passenger. Edinburgh to Inverness.”

“He was not a pleasant man.”

Mairi glanced towards her. “That is not a medical observation.”

“No.” The woman’s mouth tightened. “But it may matter.”

A violent shudder passed through the coach. The lamps dimmed, then steadied. Mairi placed her palm against the compartment door. The wood was warm from the carriage, but the brass handle felt cold enough to sting.

She tried the key herself. It entered cleanly. The lock refused to turn.

“Stand back,” she said.

The woman retreated to her own doorway. Mairi slid the baton between the jamb and the frame, searching for the inner latch. The train rocked beneath her, making the narrow gap jump against the metal. Twice the baton slipped. On the third attempt she caught something and pushed.

A dull crack sounded inside.

The latch gave, but the bolt remained firmly drawn.

Mairi leaned her shoulder into the door. The frame groaned. The attendant returned, breathless, with the guard behind him.

“Fraser,” said the guard. “What’s the situation?”

“Passenger possibly injured. Door bolted from within. We need to force it.”

“Driver says we can’t stop before Fort William.”

“We may not have a passenger by then.”

The guard looked at the door, then at Mairi. “There’s a service hatch beside the linen cupboard. We could get a saw.”

“Too slow.”

He handed her a heavy coupling tool.

Mairi wrapped both hands around it. “Clear the corridor.”

The guard began shouting at the passengers. Doors closed. Locks clicked. The woman from twelve remained in sight for one moment longer, her face pale and unreadable, before she withdrew.

Mairi positioned the tool against the jamb.

“On three,” she said.

The guard took hold of the handle beside her. The attendant stood back, white-knuckled.

“One.”

The carriage dipped.

“Two.”

The wheels struck a joint in the rail with a report like a rifle shot.

“Three.”

They drove the tool forward. Wood splintered. The bolt held.

Again.

The second blow jarred Mairi’s shoulder. Pain ran down her arm, but she kept her grip. The train was climbing now, the engine labouring somewhere beyond the sleeping cars. The corridor tilted and swayed, and every impact seemed to loosen the whole world by a fraction.

“Again,” she said.

The guard struck beside her. The frame cracked around the lock.

A voice came from behind the closed doors.

“Fraser.”

Mairi turned.

The guard had not spoken. The attendant was staring at the compartment. The voice had come from inside.

It was low, male, and very near.

“Mr Vane?” Mairi called.

No answer followed.

The attendant whispered, “He’s alive.”

Mairi felt the certainty enter the corridor and alter it. The passengers behind their doors would hear it too. A living man had spoken from behind a door that no one could open.

“Mr Vane,” she said, keeping her voice level. “Tell me where you are.”

The train plunged into a tunnel.

Darkness swallowed the corridor. For several seconds there was only the shriek of wheels and the pounding of the carriage against the rock. Mairi held the tool ready, listening.

A soft knock came from the other side of the door.

Then another.

Three measured taps.

The emergency lights flickered red along the ceiling.

“Now,” Mairi said.

She and the guard struck together. The jamb split. The door sprang inward by an inch, checked by the bolt. Mairi dropped the tool, reached into the gap, and found the bolt’s steel bar.

It was cold.

She felt along it until her fingers met the mounting plate. The screws were loose. Not broken. Loosened.

“Hold the door,” she said.

The guard wedged his shoulder against it. Mairi drew her baton and drove it beneath the plate. With a hard twist, she tore the screws from the wood.

The bolt fell with a heavy clang.

The door opened.

Alistair Vane sat in the compartment’s narrow armchair, his head bent at an impossible angle. One hand rested on the table beside an untouched glass of whisky. The other hung towards the floor, fingers curled as though still holding something that had been taken away.

Mairi stepped inside.

The air was colder than the corridor. The window was shut, its catch undisturbed. Snow raced across the black glass. The bed had not been slept in. A leather case lay open beside it, papers scattered neatly rather than thrown. There was blood at Vane’s collar, dark against the white linen.

Behind her, the guard made a strangled sound.

Mairi lifted two fingers without looking back. “Don’t touch anything.”

“He’s dead?”

“Yes.”

The word seemed to vanish into the moving train.

She approached the body, careful not to step on the scattered papers. Vane’s skin had already begun to lose its colour. A narrow wound marked the side of his throat, clean and precise. No weapon lay on the carpet. No broken glass. No sign of a struggle beyond the loosened door plate.

Mairi bent over the table.

The whisky glass was full. A second glass stood beside it, empty, its rim marked by a faint crescent of moisture.

She looked towards the window. The catch was still fastened. The door, before they had forced it, had been bolted from inside.

The guard’s voice came quietly behind her. “How did anyone get in?”

Mairi straightened.

Outside, the train burst from the tunnel into the open night. The corridor lights returned to gold. On the glass, her reflection stood beside the dead man’s, both of them pale and wavering with the motion of the train.

“I don’t know,” she said.

Then she looked down at the bolt lying on the floor.

“But no one got in through that door.”

End of chapter one. 4 more chapters and about 10,134 words in the full book.