Free Murder on the Flying Scotsman by Carola Dunn Page A

about school and home in an evident effort to divert her thoughts from Albert McGowan’s death. She answered politely but
listlessly, not to be diverted until he said, ‘May I beg a favour? You beat me handily at draughts and I’d like my revenge.’
    She gave him a proper smile. ‘I only won because you let me. I’ll play another game if you promise not to.’
    ‘I promise,’ he said, laughing, and she went to sit beside him.
    As Belinda turned her serious attention to the game, Daisy silently blessed the kind young man.
    She moved over to the window, and to give the players more room, Weekes crossed to sit next to her. The small manservant sat stiffly upright, looking uncomfortable, his gaze fixed on a rather
wishy-washy sepia print of Durham Cathedral on the opposite wall. Daisy decided she could talk to him as long as they spoke in low voices and she kept an eye on Belinda to make sure she was
concentrating on the game.
    ‘Had you been with Mr. McGowan long?’ she enquired softly.
    ‘Ever since he came home from India, miss, and that’s going on twenty years. It’s not right, miss,’ he burst out. Daisy, expecting a peroration on the wickedness of doing
away with an aged gentleman, put her finger to her lips and glanced at Belinda. But he went on, ‘I know my place. I didn’t ought to be sitting here with my betters whatever that guard
said.’
    ‘Bosh, of course you ought,’ Daisy soothed him. ‘The police will want everyone associated in any way with Mr. McGowan to stay in this coach, I expect, so that the rest of the
train can proceed to Edinburgh. The suspects won’t want to do without their servants so we’ll all have to squeeze as best we can.’
    Weekes relaxed a bit, then looked nervously over his shoulder at the door to the corridor. ‘The suspects, miss – who d’you reckon they are?’
    Daisy pondered. Not Weekes, or he would not have drawn attention to the possibility of murder. Not Chandra Jagai, who stood to gain a great deal if Albert had survived Alistair. But all the
Gillespies, Smythe-Pikes, and Brettons had both motive and opportunity, and she rather thought even the women must be strong enough to overwhelm a feeble old man.
    ‘All his relatives, I should think,’ she said, ‘though it’s for the police to decide. Just how frail was he?’
    ‘There was nothing wrong with his heart, miss. Dr. Jagai wasn’t his doctor, so he wouldn’t know. Dr. Frost in Harley Street he went to. “The old ticker’s still
going strong,” he used to tell me when he came back from an appointment. Which isn’t to say he was uncommonly spry for his age, though he did walk to his club most days, with a cane and
slow, like. “Slow and steady” he used to say.’
    ‘What about his arms?’ Daisy asked. His arms would be more important than his legs in fighting off an attacker, she thought.
    ‘He had a touch of trouble with rheumatics in his hands, and a bit of a tremble recently. Couldn’t manage an umbrella anymore. That bothered him, but the worst was the dyspepsia.
Made him suffer something dreadful, it did. He wouldn’t have laid down flat on his back, miss, nor yet so he couldn’t reach his tablets.’
    ‘I believe you. You liked working for him, I take it, or you wouldn’t have stayed so long.’
    ‘Very particular he was. I won’t say he didn’t have a temper when things weren’t done quite to suit him, or if he was crossed. But he never took it out on you for things
that weren’t your fault – like a shirt gone missing at the laundry, as it might be. He knew what he wanted and he was willing to pay for it. You couldn’t ask for a more generous
master.’
    ‘Generous?’ said Daisy, taken aback.
    ‘Generous, and don’t you let them tell you otherwise. I’ll never find another position that pays as well,’ Weekes continued, with regret and a hint of disgruntlement.
‘Only he couldn’t abide his family, that ignored him all those years then came fawning