Murder on the Lamplight Express (The Lamplight Murder Mysteries Book 2) by Morgan Stang

Author:Morgan Stang [Stang, Morgan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-08-02T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 21

The Lynchpin

They raced out the lounge car and through the dining car, then through the cramped kitchen and all the way to the very front of the car. The crowd bunched up, each of them vying to get a look out the window to the locomotive engine up ahead. The fuel car blocked most of their view. It sat between the dining car and the locomotive, and consisted of a big metal container holding a massive heap of coal exposed to the open air, along with reserves of water hidden in storage underneath. The coal would be burned and combined with the water to create the steam that powered the engine.

“How do we get there?” asked Magnifico.

“We don't, unless you have a death wish,” said Mr Curtain. He grabbed what looked like a ship megaphone attached to a cord that ran out the wall and along the fuel car to the locomotive. “We can call him with this.” He cleared his throat and licked his lips and placed his mouth close to the big end instead of the little end and shouted: “Hello there! Mr Lynch!”

He waited a moment, and then a garbled voice came through the device, difficult to understand amidst the noise of the train and storm.

“Oy, boss!” called the engineer. “Yeah, I'm here. A bit busy though.”

"Well I'll be a belly-up beaver," said Jane. "How's that work?" She touched the device.

"Stop that." Mr Curtain slapped her hand away. "It's just a tube, basically. Voices travel down the tube." He turned back to the device. "Are there any issues we should be aware of, Mr Lynch? We had a bit of a scare on that last turn back there.”

“Right we did,” said the engineer. “It's these bloody brakes, it is. You can't pull them hard enough, you can't. This storm ain't helping things much either. We should have had someone manning the brake car on this trip.”

Evie gave Isabeau a knowing look. She recalled their boarding of the Lamplight Express, and how they had arrived in an empty brake car at the rear of the train. Isabeau had said trains with smaller loads didn't require a rear brake car attendant.

It's not as if I'm a train expert, she thought, then shrugged.

“Bad enough I've got no stoker,” continued the voice. “Now you got me on these shoddy brakes by myself too.”

Mr Curtain smiled lamely. “Thank you, Mr Lynch, that's quite all right. Yes, please do your best, thank you very much. Please pull harder on the breaks, thank you.” He hung up the megaphone device.

“He has no stoker?” asked Isabeau.

“What's a stoker?” asked Evie.

“Go ahead,” said Isabeau. “Answer her question, Mr Curtain.”

“A stoker,” said Mr Curtain, “as in a fire stoker. It's a job. Sometimes locomotive engines are manned by two people. The engineer who drives the train, and his assistant who shovels coal into the engine and keeps the fires going at the appropriate level.”

“Not sometimes,” said Isabeau, “but almost always. Yet I see our Mr Lynch is doing double duty.

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