Page 8 of Death on a Scottish Train

“Before we go in, Mara, we’ll need a list of the guests. Give that to Henry, please.” He turned to his team. “It’s late, but first thing tomorrow we’ll work on narrowing down the suspects. That is, if Dr. Em says it is a suspicious death. We’ll look for connections between the victim and the other guests.”

I was fairly certain the victim hadn’t stuck himself in a broom closet, but Ewan worked with evidence and was never a fan of assuming anything.

“Henry, I need a full workup on the deceased tonight. Get his information from Mara.”

“Yes, sir,” Henry said.

After suiting up, Ewan followed Abigail and me into the small office area, made tinier by his enormous presence.

He understood the drill and handed Abigail evidence bags as I went about the initial examination.

“Temp tells me he died just before the train took off,” I said. “And rigor has begun settling in, which will make it difficult to move him in his current position.”

Some parts of the job were not very glamorous, including scooping up some of the sick for testing.

Thank goodness for mint-scented masks. I’d had Henry as well as Abigail order them not long after solving our first case.

I poked and I prodded.

“What are your initial thoughts?”

“From the outward signs, I’d say anaphylactic shock.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Blue tinge on the lips and the yellowing of the eyes,” Abigail said, as she closed one of the evidence bags.

I smiled, and Ewan looked from me to her.

My assistant’s eyes opened wide. “Sorry. I said that out loud, didn’t I?”

I chuckled. “You did. And you’re right.”

“So, it’s possible it could be he just ate or drank something he was allergic to, and this isn’t murder.”

“I seriously doubt he stuffed himself into the closet and then latched it from the outside. And I find it suspicious that he would get sick and not remove himself from it. Which means he may have been unconscious when that happened.”

“So,” Ewan said, “someone poisoned him, and he couldn’t move. Then they put him in a closet.”

I shrugged. “Until I can run toxicology, I can’t confirm any of that. All I can say right now is it does look like anaphylactic shock.”

“So, someone gave him peanuts or something?” he asked.

I glanced back at him. “Ewan, I have no idea what he was allergic to so I can’t say. The only thing I can tell you for certain is he’s been dead for at least three hours. Like I said, I can give you more specifics once we get everything back to the lab and tested.”

I found some fibers on his coat and put them into the small Petri dishes we used for evidence. I could feel Ewan’s frustration rolling off of him, but I tried to ignore it.

I wasn’t certain his frustration was from us finding a dead body. Where had he been before joining us? While he was always quite serious, tonight he had an edginess that I’d never seen before.

By the time I’d finished gathering evidence, I was stiff from bending down so much that Abigail helped me to stand.

“From the state of rigor, your officers will have trouble moving him out of that narrow closet,” I said.

“We’ll take care of it,” he said. “And we’ll have the body to you in less than an hour.”

I stifled a yawn. It had been a very long day. Unfortunately, it was about to be a long night as well. I never liked to leave a body before we’d gathered all the evidence. That was based on the experience of the first time I’d had to do my coroner’s job, and the killer had stolen the body out of the makeshift morgue at my practice.

“I can do the rest alone,” I told Abigail.