He lay down on the bed and turned down the lamp. It was not possible to clear one’s mind of all troubling thoughts. No matter how many miles a man travelled he brought such thoughts with him.

There was smoke in his eyes and though the lamp emitted a faint glow he could not see.

He was awoken by a jolt that almost threw him from his bunk and onto the floor. It was only by flinging out an arm to the wall that he saved himself from this indignity.

The carriage juddered and shook, a second jolt followed the first, and his trunk slid from the luggage rack and crashed to the floor. The train had come to a dead halt and Alasdair heard a rush of steam and the screech and grind of metal on metal, then silence.

He lay quite still in the bunk and his heart thudded so loudly it filled his head and his chest ached and strained.

‘It is a great log laid across the tracks,’ cried Greensmith, bursting into the compartment—

But Greensmith did not burst into the compartment. No one did. There was no sound, no voices, no panicked shouting up or down the train. And a moment later the couplings strained and went taut, the wheels engaged and the train moved off once more.

Alasdair found himself standing up, though he had no memory of leaving his bunk. He stood for a moment before dropping back down onto the bed. The train had braked suddenly and that was all, a kangaroo or a steer on the line. There was no log on the line, the train was not wrecked. But his body was damp with perspiration.

The compartment had a small sink in one corner and beside it a little cupboard containing a jug of water. He got up and lurched across the small space and got the jug and drank down a quantity of the water and splashed the remainder on his face. He stood for a time breathing slowly. The Premier’s snores continued from the neighbouring compartment. It was doubtful the man had even woken. Alasdair opened the window again and stood letting the cold air calm him. He dimly made out a flurry of movement in the darkness. A mob of kangaroos startled by the train. In a second they were gone.

But his hands shook.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE: INDISPOSED

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

INDISPOSED

‘We heard you were indisposed, Eleanor. Are you unwell?’

Cecily Pyke had called and she had brought her eldest daughter, a tall girl called Marguerite who was of the age where girls wished to emulate their mothers and also despised them. They had arranged themselves, mother and daughter, on the settee and Alice had been dispatched to the kitchen.

Was Eleanor indisposed?