On the Blue Train by Kristel Thornell Page A

with features neater and finer. She was more attentive to the camera, too, though her demeanour was somewhat cold. They were both sombre, but the mother looked weary with it, and aware of looking weary. What a thin, deflated mouth. Eyes a little hooded. The long, strong nose verging on hooked. Roman? Next to her daughter, she was slumping morosely into middle age. He had to recognise it: into plainness. Was that what Teresa had run from? This diluted, defeated version of her face? He found that because half of her true name was her husband’s, he was disinclined to stop thinking of her as Teresa Neele.
    ‘Can I help you, sir?’
    Harry gave a start. The gentleman had lowered the screen of his newspaper. He was elderly and moustachioed, and Harry had the sense that they were taking part in some comical turn in a music hall performance. ‘Excuse me?’
    ‘Lost, are you? Wanting directions?’
    ‘Yes, thank you, yes. The Royal Baths. That’s what I’m after.’
    The gent grunted. ‘Right under your nose.’

    While lowering his body fatalistically into the frigid waters of the plunge bath, it came to him that not only were Teresa and Agatha likely one and the same, but the woman in question would do something desperate .
    He gasped. Stood bolt upright, the shocking water at his waist, his lungs astonished. He remembered his negligent banter about desirable methods of taking one’s life and the gentleness of her response. Her description of a lovely last day, of swimming off to meet the end. It hadn’t occurred to him to carefully consider the consequence of her words—to ask himself, indeed, whether she could have designated the Hydro as the last hotel at which she would ever be a guest. Had she tried to put him off the trail by declaring she’d only countenance for such purposes an exotic locale like Casablanca?
    ‘Excuse me,’ said a very handsome young man, not apologising but merely confirming his right to the spaceHarry had been occupying. He proceeded to plash and prance, undeterred by the iciness of the water, executing swimming strokes, then shaking water from himself like an unruly pup, laughing. Exuding health, athleticism and exuberance. ‘Aren’t you cold, standing still like that?’ he thought to ask.
    ‘I daresay I should be, but I’m quite resilient to the cold.’ Harry barely kept his teeth from knocking against one another. He turned away and exited the pool that he’d hoped would brace his mind.
    ‘Admirable—I mean, at your age,’ the younger man opined.
    He was possibly sincere. He didn’t look subtle enough for irony. But Harry wasn’t in a mood to take a generous view of the insolent Adonis. He secured a towel around his waist, his body wanting to quake from the cold. The boy was performing some lazy form of callisthenics that permitted him to show off an enviable musculature and sensuous grace. How many would lose their hearts to him? Poor silly dears.
    ‘Age isn’t my exclusive property,’ Harry said, confronting him. ‘Wait and more will come to you. You won’t need much patience. Provided, of course, you don’t meet with an accident before then, there’s nothing on which you can rely more.’
    And with this attempt at reinstating his honour he departed for the Caldarium, where he laid himself out on adeckchair like the sanatorium exhibit he was, one arm draped rather effetely over his eyes. He was chilled to the core.
    Yes, it followed that Teresa spoke so readily of self-harm because this was at the forefront of her thoughts. It wasn’t her earlier queer languid manner or maybe sadness that had tipped him off, nor even his discovery of the notoriety she was earning in her escape from her detestable husband (assuming she truly was Agatha), but her brightness that morning at breakfast. Her ebullience, her almost aggressive gaiety. It appeared to Harry that this had to be a mask. And possibly—was it plausible?—a decoy to distract observers not only from her identity