“Hello there, Max,” Rupert said, as she paused outside his car. “All right? Are you doing more of your exploring?” He had a middle berth too, and he had to curl his legs up to fit in it. He had taken his glasses off to read a battered old paperback, which made him look all vague and blinky again, and his hair was a bit tousled from the pillow.

“Just brushing my teeth,” said Max.

“Good, excellent. Rather fun on here, isn’t it? Like a sleepover!” he said, sitting up without thinking and banging his head on the berth above. “Bother,” he said, and then added, “Oh, ow. Bother.”

Next to Rupert’s name, Max wrote, Not sure he has it in him. She decided to downgrade him from Suspect Number One, even if he had missed the inspection.

Back in her berth, she lay on her front with her notebook, and gave them each a page of their own: ESTER. KLAUS GROB. RUPERT NOBES. ? – RED-HAIRED WOMAN. Maybe they were just four innocent travellers. But looking at those four pages, her heart beat a little faster. After all, somebody had believed that the thief was travelling by train – believed it enough to tell the police – and if they were, then it had to be one of these four. That really wasn’t too many suspects, and her half-game now didn’t seem like a game at all. What if one of them really was the thief?

Everyone in her car was quiet. The only sounds were the click of knitting needles from Klaus’s berth, and the steady thrum of the train.

A minute later the guard came to take their tickets, and their orders of orange juice or apple juice for the morning. Then he turned out the light, and slid shut the door on their car, so that Max could no longer see the city flashing past. The click of the knitting needles was gone now. The Kálmán Imre was settling down to sleep.

Max tossed and turned and turned and tossed, and her berth tilted with the movements of the train, and her thoughts wriggled about, and two hours later she was still awake. And thirsty, too. She had a water bottle in her case below. She didn’t want to emerge from her blankets, but in the end she had to admit that she’d need a drink of water to get back to sleep. She tiptoed down the ladder.

Ester’s suitcase was in the way of her own. She gave it a tug.

It was much heavier than she expected. She gave it another tug. She put both hands to it. She heaved. It shuffled begrudgingly forward.

She forgot all about the water, because her heart was beating fast again. Why was Ester’s case so heavy? From her berth nearby, the old lady snored. Max listened: everyone else seemed to be asleep too.