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Add in the missing drapery cord found around Edith’s neck, the open window in her room, her father’s pin, and the fact that she had good reason to murder all of them, and it makes Anna look guilty as sin.
“Let’s say you’re right,” Reggie says. “Who do you think is doing it?”
“Lapsford,” Anna says. “Because it serves two purposes at once.It eliminates those who might implicate him while also making me look guilty, casting doubt on my mental state and the idea that my father was innocent.”
“Do you really think he’s capable of that?”
“He plotted worse before. There’s no reason to think he wouldn’t try it again.”
Reggie shakes his head. “I meant physically capable. Killing Judd and Edith, yes. He’s even capable of slitting Herb’s throat. But then climbing out the window onto the roof of the train? You think someone Jack Lapsford’s age and condition can do that?”
No, Anna doesn’t. When examining the window, she wasn’t even sure Lapsford could fit through it.
“Maybe there’s a different way out of the room. Something we missed. Or maybe itispossible to latch the dead bolt from the outside. Open my door and check.”
Reggie, who had closed the door after Seamus left, doesn’t budge. “Or maybe you should just stay in this room and not come out until we reach Chicago.”
Anna drops into the chair beside the window.
Reggie thinks she’s guilty.
He doesn’t outright say that. He doesn’t need to. She sees it in his eyes, on his face, in the coiled tightness of his body. He thinks she’s killed not just Herb, but Judd and Edith as well.
“You don’t believe me, do you?” she says. “You think I’m the killer.”
“I don’t,” Reggie says.
“Then why are you treating me like I am?”
“Because it’s what everyone else thinks. And I’m worried there’ll be a mutiny on our hands if I don’t defuse the situation.”
“By forcing me to stay in this room.”
Under normal circumstances, Anna wouldn’t mind that. She’s quite used to being alone, having spent years living in isolationwith her aunt. Home confinement born less out of choice than necessity. They were outcasts in a world that thought her father a man so cold-blooded he would slaughter his own son.killer spawnread one of the notes wrapped around the rocks that occasionally crashed through their front windows. Aunt Retta would burn the paper and use the rocks as a border in her garden.
Even after Seamus entered the picture, Anna spent more time than not by herself. So solitude should make her comfortable now. It doesn’t. Because now she knows the killer can move from room to roomoutsidethe train. Not that anywhere was safe. Judd Dodge, after all, was murdered in a room full of people. Which, now that she thinks about it, seems like more of an outlier than the other deaths.
“Something doesn’t add up,” she says. “Judd died right in front of us. But Edith and Herb were killed in isolated places where no one could see it happening. Why?”
Reggie eases himself onto the bed. “If your theory is correct, it’s to frame you.”
“But that wasn’t the case with Judd. I didn’t make the drinks. I wasn’t even near him.”
“Do you think there’s a reason for that?” Reggie says. “Judd Dodge was killed first. Was he worse than the others? Did he play a bigger role in what happened?”
“Yes,” Anna says. “Even though it’s impossible to rank the six of them from worst to least awful, some had more to do with what happened than others. And Judd Dodge, who built a locomotive designed to explode, is at the top of that list. But I don’t think any of the others actively hated him.”
“Did you?”
Anna turns, as if taken aback by the unnecessary question. “I hate all of them. Far too much to kill them.”
“And you’re certain Mr. Dodge didn’t kill himself?”
“Certain? No. But I doubt it. Then again, I have no idea how it happened in the first place. There was a lot going on at the time.”
She spends the next ten minutes relating all of it to Reggie, from her arrival in the lounge to everyone marching to the front of the train and back to Dante ending up behind the bar, mixing martinis.
“Do you think he could have poisoned Judd’s drink?” Reggie says.