Free At Bertram's Hotel by Agatha Christie Page B

Hotel

Chapter 8
    The Irish Mail rushed through the night. Or, more correctly, through the darkness of the early morning hours.
    At intervals the diesel engine gave its weird banshee warning cry. It was travelling at well over eighty miles an hour. It was on time.
    Then, with some suddenness, the pace slackened as the brakes came on. The wheels screamed as they gripped the metals. Slower... slower... The guard put his head out of the window, noting the red signal ahead as the train came to a final halt. Some of the passengers woke up. Most did not.
    One elderly lady, alarmed by the suddenness of the deceleration, opened the door and looked out along the corridor. A little way along one of the doors to the line was open. An elderly cleric with a thatch of thick white hair was climbing up from the permanent way. She presumed he had previously climbed down to the line to investigate.
    The morning air was distinctly chilly. Someone at the end of the corridor said, “Only a signal.” The elderly lady withdrew into her compartment and tried to go to sleep again.
    Farther up the line, a man waving a lantern was running towards the train from a signal box. The fireman climbed down from the engine. The guard who had descended from the train came along to join him. The man with the lantern arrived, rather short of breath, and spoke in a series of gasps.
    “Bad crash ahead... freight train derailed...”
    The engine driver looked out of his cab, then climbed down also to join the others.
    At the rear of the train, six men who had just climbed up the embankment boarded the train through a door left open for them in the last coach. Six passengers from different coaches met them. With well-rehearsed speed, they proceeded to take charge of the mail car, isolating it from the rest of the train. Two men in Balaclava helmets at front and rear of the compartment stood on guard, coshes in hand.
    A man in railway uniform went forward along the corridor of the stationary train, uttering explanations to such as demanded them.
    “Block on the line ahead. Ten minutes' delay, maybe, not much more...” It sounded friendly and reassuring.
    By the engine, the driver and the fireman lay neatly gagged and trussed up. The man with the lantern called out: “Everything O.K. here.”
    The guard lay by the embankment, similarly gagged and tied.
    The expert cracksmen in the mail car had done their work. Two more neatly trussed bodies lay on the floor. The special mailbags sailed out to where other men on the embankment awaited them.
    In their compartments, passengers grumbled to each other that the railways were not what they used to be.
    Then, as they settled themselves to sleep again, there came through the darkness the roar of an exhaust.
    “Goodness,” murmured a woman. “Is that a jet plane?”
    “Racing car, I should say.”
    The roar died away...
    On the Bedhampton Motorway, nine miles away, a steady stream of night lorries was grinding its way north. A big white racing car flashed past them.
    Ten minutes later, it turned off the motorway.
    The garage on the corner of the B road bore the sign CLOSED. But the big doors swung open and the white car was driven straight in, the doors closing again behind it. Three men worked at lightning speed. A fresh set of license plates were attached. The driver changed his coat and cap. He had worn white sheepskin before. Now he wore black leather. He drove out again. Three minutes after his departure, an old Morris Oxford, driven by a clergyman, chugged out on to the road and proceeded to take a route through various turning and twisting country lanes.
    A station wagon, driven along a country road slowed up as it came upon an old Morris Oxford, parked by a hedge, with an elderly man standing over it.
    The driver of the station wagon put out a head. “Having trouble? Can I help?”
    “Very good of you. It's my lights.”
    The two drivers approached each other - listened. “All clear.”
    Various expensive