She searched it hastily, heart pounding at every noise from the corridor. If she heard them coming, she could shove the case back in place and make up an excuse for being there, but she had to be quick if she was going to find anything. And no Le Goffian half measures. She felt in every pocket, shook out every shoe, and peered at hairbrushes and hats for any unexpected bumps. She double-checked that all the pear drops really were pear drops. She unstopped a bottle of perfume that smelled overwhelmingly of Ester – a sugary sort of rose – and examined the elaborate stopper, looking for the red wink of a diamond. Nothing.

And at that moment the train gave a huge jolt, and a bag fell from the rack overhead, smashing into the bottle.

Glass shards rained on to the floor. Perfume sloshed all over Max, who instantly smelled of a whole garden of roses. A lot went on the spider as well, who waved his legs at her in reproach. In the world of spiders, rose perfume is very much not-flies.

But there was no time to worry about the spider, because just then Max heard someone coming up the corridor, with the footsteps of a man built like a small mountain. A man recruited by Die Eiserne Hand. A man who could very easily throw you off a train if he found you meddling where you shouldn’t meddle.

She shoved the suitcase back in place, but there was still the small matter of the glass all over the floor, and the shards that were clinging to her jumper, and the fact that she smelled like a hundred Esters all at once. The stopper of the bottle rolled pointedly across the floor. (It hit the spider, which was definitely not-flies; and it is a shame that spiders don’t understand the idea of bad luck, because this spider was certainly having some.)

From what Max could make out, Klaus had paused to coo at the crying baby that she had heard earlier. She had to think fast.

Above her there was a window showing a slice of sky, set into a square of metal in the ceiling. It looked a bit like her own skylight, except that under the window were the words SADECE ACIL DURUMLAR. Max didn’t speak Turkish, but the words were in the shade of red that always means emergency and danger, wherever you go.

Well, this was an emergency. And small slices of sky, you will remember, made Max feel like she could go anywhere and do anything.

Sometimes, this feeling was a bit misleading. Other times, like now, it was very stupid.

When Klaus’s footsteps resumed, Max was already on the seat, and undoing the catch on the emergency roof hatch. Half a second later, she was scrambling up on to the back of the seat, and poking out through the roof.