Page 27 of Death on a Scottish Train

“When was the last time you saw one of them?” I asked.

“Thursday evening,” she said. “I remember because the assistant went inside. Usually, she’d hand him the files at the door. She went in though, on Thursday. She didn’t come back out for an hour or so.”

As I suspected, Mrs. Culbert kept a sharp eye on things. I wondered why the assistant had taken so long. Were they having some sort of affair?

In the interview, she didn’t seem as though she liked her boss much. Though she could have been trying to hide something. We’d need to question her again.

“Have you seen anyone suspicious hanging around here?”

She shook her head. “I would have reported them if I had. That’s my job.”

“Thank you for your diligence,” Ewan said. “We need to search his home.” With that he went inside.

“We appreciate your help,” I said. “I need to assist the ACC with his investigation.”

“He’s a handsome one,” she said. “Seems to have his eye on you. He watched you the whole time I spoke to him.”

I’m sure my cheeks turned bright pink. The heat on them burned. “I—uh—he’s a good officer,” I said, quickly stepping inside.

Why was it people tried to make more of my relationship with Ewan than was there? Mara and Abigail were always giving me a hard time because Ewan seemed to find excuses to come over these days. Sometimes, it was questions about a case, other times it was to discuss things about the town. We were colleagues talking business and that was it.

Did he sometimes make me feel strange and warm? Yes. And did his compliments make me blush? Always. Did he stay after our chats and watch whatever mystery show I’d planned on watching? Every time. But that was just because we enjoyed the genre.

We’d always been awkward with one another, but over the past year a friendship of sorts had developed. I could admit that much. That, and we had an appreciation of each other’s talents. I’d learned a great deal from him about investigating cases.

And he’d reluctantly grown to trust my instincts when it came to the medical side of things.

If I were honest with myself, I might have even admitted I enjoyed his company as we sat at my kitchen table drinking coffee and going over cases. But that was the extent of it.

After my past experiences, trusting men was still a problem for me. My late husband hadn’t been a bad man, but he was duplicitous. And I’d been clueless to the very end.

I shook my head, as if wiping that cobweb of memory away. Inside, the air was a bit musty. To the left, in what might have been a parlor or dining room was a huge train set up. I couldn’t believe I’d missed that before.

The pocket doors must have been closed. I moved into the room.

Our little town of Sea Isle had been brought to life in miniature. Even my church home was represented. “Wow,” I said. “It is so life-like and so tiny at the same time.”

“Aye. He put some work into this,” Ewan said.

We walked around the table taking in the seaside shops and pubs, and then over the small hill in the middle was the part of the town that sat up in the mountains. The buildings and settings had been carefully crafted to match nearly exactly.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” I said. “Look at that, he’s already recreated the Storyteller’s Train.” The locomotive was parked at the station, and both were exact replicas.

“Mara said he was a part of the restoration work,” I said. “We should talk to the team of volunteers who were involved with the project. Maybe one of them saw something. Or, perhaps, he said something to them.”

“Aye,” Ewan said. “Henry spoke with them last night and earlier today.”

“What kinds of things did they say?”

He shrugged. “I only glanced over the report. Most of those interviewed said the victim was quite enthusiastic about working on the train, as in that was all he talked about. He had been excited about being a storyteller part-time. He took it all quite seriously.”

“Did any of them notice anything strange over the last week? I keep wondering if his lip balms had been treated, if perhaps he’d had milder reactions.”

“I promise you Henry was quite thorough, and the reports are in the files you have access to. But to answer your question, I don’tremember them saying anything like that. I only skimmed them a few hours ago. When Jacks wasn’t talking about trains, he kept himself to himself.”

“OK, good to know.” Still, I would take a look at it later. It never hurt to have another set of eyes.

“So, he kept to himself and was a train enthusiast. Since he’d been looking forward to it, it’s sad that he never had a chance to perform his stories.”