The 9 by Madalyn Morgan (tools of titans ebook .txt) 📕

think that is where the train came from.’ Ena paused and frowned. ‘But that didn’t make sense.’

The man sitting opposite leant forward, as if to hear more clearly what Ena was about to say. ‘The man was wearing a corduroy jacket, which at first I thought was odd in such bad weather. I noticed a heavy outdoor coat, camel in colour, on the rack above him, and his shoes were wet.’ Pleased with herself for being observant, Ena said, ‘If he had been sitting in that compartment all the way from Birmingham his shoes would have been dry, wouldn’t they? If not dry, there wouldn’t have been wet patches under them, and there were.’ The man made no comment. ‘Anyway, I went back along the corridor, looked in all the other compartments, asked everyone if they had seen a man fitting Mr Silcott’s description, but no one had.’

‘Where was the case containing your work while you were looking for your boss?’

‘With me. I would never leave it anywhere,’ Ena said, tersely. ‘That’s why I’m sure that the man sitting opposite me in the end compartment must have drugged me somehow and stolen it.’

Ena looked down and closed her eyes. Concentrating on events in the compartment of the train to Bletchley, she fought the throbbing pain in her head to get her thoughts in order. Tears threatened. She fought them too. The officer sitting across the table from her opened his mouth to speak, but Ena’s eyes snapped open and she put her hand up. ‘I’m sorry, but I needed to get the facts straight, and now I have.’

She looked at both men, and smiled for the first time since entering the room. ‘That’s it!’ she shouted, ‘That’s it! I get travel sick. I suck pear drops in cars, buses, trains – especially on long journeys, to stop feeling sick.’

The officer opposite pushed his chair away from the table, leant back, balancing on the chair’s back legs and blew out his cheeks. ‘Is this relevant?’

‘Yes it is relevant. It is very relevant!’ Ena said. ‘What I am about to tell you is the reason I went to sleep.’

‘Go on, Miss Dudley,’ the officer sitting next her said.

‘I offered the man a pear drop.’ Ena shook her head. ‘No. That isn’t right. Sorry!’ The officer opposite was staring at her, a look of bewilderment in his eyes. If he was trying to make her feel uncomfortable, he was succeeding. Ena began again, this time directing her answer to the officer on her right. ‘I didn’t offer him a pear drop, as such, he hinted that he’d like one. He said he remembered that my friend and I sucked pear drops when we travelled.’

‘So you knew him?’

‘No. He said he had been on a train that we were on once, and that he remembered me because of the pear drops.’ Ena felt her cheeks flush. The more she said, the more ridiculous the scenario on the train sounded.

‘Go on,’ the officer opposite said, finally showing some interest.

‘I took the pear drops out of my handbag and asked him if he would like one. He said yes, but instead of taking a pear drop from the packet, he took the packet out of my hands. He said they looked good, and joked about which he should choose, before taking one. Don’t you see? He held onto the sweets for… oh, I don’t know, but it was a good few seconds before giving them back to me.’

‘What did he do with the pear drop?’

‘Put it in his mouth, of course.’ Ena closed her eyes and took in a sharp breath. ‘Oh, my God.’ She looked earnestly from one man to the other. ‘Putting a pear drop in my mouth was the last thing I remember until I woke up with a blinding headache at Euston Station.’

‘Have you still got the pear drops?’

‘Yes. They’re in my handbag. I felt queasy on the way out of Euston and took them out, but I didn’t have one. And thank goodness I didn’t.’ The man sitting next to Ena who had taken her handbag from her earlier, left the table. He returned a minute later and handed it to her.

Ena thrust her hand into the handbag and produced the packet of pear drops. The officer sitting opposite reached over to take it. ‘No, wait. These are not the sweets I bought in Lowarth.’ Both men looked at her quizzically. ‘Firstly, there are eight pear drops in a quarter. My packet would have four sweets missing.’ She tipped the sweets into the table. ‘I had one as soon as I bought them, I had one in Mr Silcott’s car on the way to the station, I gave the man on the train one, and I had one myself on the train. ‘Look – there’s five left. If this were my packet, the one I bought in Lowarth, it would only have four pear drops in it.’

‘Perhaps the shopkeeper made a mistake, put an extra sweet in.’

‘Not possible, the bags aren’t big enough. She looked at the packet and smiled. ‘And it has been folded wrongly. The paper has been turned down at the top, you can see the ridge. It’s the way the confectioner folds it. I twist the top after I’ve had one, to stop the rest from falling into my handbag. Look,’ she said again, handing the packet to the man sitting opposite. ‘The top has been carefully folded over, like they do in the sweet shop, but if you look closely you’ll see the creases where I twisted the top after taking a sweet out in Mr Silcott’s car.

‘The man on the train couldn’t have known that when he folded the packet,’ Ena continued. ‘He must have bought pear drops, poisoned them with some sort of knockout drug, and after taking one of my pear drops,