“Do you know,” Alleyn said, as if on an after-thought, “who lives in the Château de la Chèvre d’Argent?”

The attendant believed it was leased to an extremely wealthy gentleman, possibly an American, possibly an Englishman, who entertained very exclusively. He believed the ménage to be an excessively distinguished one.

Alleyn waited for a moment and then said, “I think there was a little trouble there tonight. One saw a scene through a lighted window when the train halted.”

The attendant’s shoulders suggested that all things are possible and that speculation is vain. His eyes were as blank as boot buttons in his pallid face. Should he not perhaps fetch the baggage of Monsieur and Madame and the little one, in readiness for their descent at Roqueville? He had his hand on the door of Alleyn’s compartment when from somewhere towards the rear of the carriage, a woman screamed twice.

They were short screams, ejaculatory in character, as if they had been wrenched out of her, and very shrill. The attendant wagged his head from side to side in exasperation, begged Alleyn to excuse him and went off down the corridor to the rear-most compartment. He tapped. Alleyn guessed at an agitated response. The attendant went in and Troy put her head out of her own door.

“What now, for pity’s sake?” she asked.

“Somebody having a nightmare or something. Are you ready?”

“Yes. But what a rum journey we’re having!”

The attendant came back at a jog-trot. Was Alleyn perhaps a doctor? An English lady had been taken ill. She was in great pain: the abdomen, the attendant elaborated, clutching his own in pantomime. It was evidently a formidable seizure. If Monsieur, by any chance—

Alleyn said he was not a doctor. Troy said, “I’ll go and see the poor thing, shall I? Perhaps there’s a doctor somewhere in the train. You get Ricky up, darling.”