Page 4 of Death on a Scottish Train

Chapter Two

OK, a man being thrown off a train was a bit of a reach, but he hadn’t just disappeared. I trusted my friend. If Mara had marked him off her list, he had been around at some point.

“Do you think we should call Ewan?” I asked.

Mara bit her lip. “Let’s don’t bother him yet,” she said. “I want to check the station first. I did try to text Donald, but he didn’t answer.”

“Maybe, he had stage fright. I would,” Abigail said. “And he might be embarrassed by it.”

“If he’s run off, I’ll have his head,” Mara snarled. “I had every moment of this trip planned, and he’s gone and ruined everything.”

I put a hand on her shoulder. “Look through the window,” I said. We were in the covered space between the train cars. “Everything is just fine.”

From the faces of his audience, her grandfather had their attention.

“Well, I suppose you are right,” she said. “Grandad has always been able to tell a great story. Still, the missing man was one of the ones we hired on a part-time basis. I can tell you he no longer has a job with us.

“It’s strange because he helped so much with getting the train ready. He was a peculiar man, but had good ideas on how to recreate what had once been. Maybe, a bit hard-headed at times, but I cannot believe he would do this.” She bristled.

Mara was so easygoing, nothing much phased her, but she was more than annoyed. I didn’t blame her. Still, that churning in my gut meantsomething wasn’t right. I’d long ago learned to trust that feeling. Especially, after I had solved a few murders.

There was a bit of maneuvering with the train when we arrived in Edinburgh, and they moved the engine to the front of the train once again.

While that commenced, small bites and desserts were served in the dining car. No one seemed to have noticed that one of the storytellers might be missing, which pleased Mara.

“Why does my granddaughter look like she wants to throw someone off the train?” her grandfather asked.

“One of the storytellers went missing, and that’s why you had to cover.”

“Ah. I wondered what had happened when they asked me to tell some stories.”

“Abigail thinks the man was nervous and maybe ducked out.”

“Could be,” Mara’s grandad said before moving on.

Jasper glanced down at me. “And what do you think? You have that look in your eyes.”

“What do you mean?”

“The one that says there is a mystery you need to solve.”

I laughed. “I had no idea I was so easy to read.”

“Only to your friends. Do you think something bad happened?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know about bad, but odd for sure. At the very least, he could have made an excuse that he wasn’t feeling well before leaving.”

“Maybe, it came on quickly,” Jasper said.

Jasper made a good point.

On the way back to Sea Isle, Mara was notably fidgety. I could tell she was pretending not to worry, but she wasn’t very good at hiding it.

I didn’t blame her. People didn’t just go missing. I hoped that the man had a bad case of nerves, and he was safe and sound at home.

On the way back, the stories all focused on Highland fairy lore, which Scotland was known for, along with its rich oral history.

While I didn’t believe in fairies, people in Scotland talked about them like they were among us. It was part of the charm of living here and made for some wonderful tales. They had fairy stories for just about every moral lesson.