Death in Berlin by M. M. Kaye Read Free Book Online Page B

surely the basin had been on the opposite side of the carriage? Miranda took another cautious step and found herself touching a smooth wooden surface. Her berth seemed to have vanished.
    And then suddenly she realized what had happened. She was in the wrong compartment!
    The sleeping compartments on the Berlin train were in pairs, with a communicating door between each pair which could be opened if parents and children were travelling in adjoining cornpartments. The positions of berths and basins and light switches were reversed in each compartment, and Miranda, suppressing a strong desire to giggle, realized that she had invaded the bachelor sanctum of Brigadier Brindley.
    Thank heaven for.those sleeping tablets! thought Miranda fervently. At least she had not awakened him.
    The door into the corridor was still ajar, and her eyes becoming accustomed to the darkness she could make out the Brigadier, lying imposingly upon his back with one arm hanging over the edge of the bunk and sleeping like the proverbial log. Miranda tiptoed to the door, and once in the corridor, closed it cautiously behind her.
    A moment later she was back in her own compartment, sitting on the edge of her berth with the lights turned on and giggling helplessly.
    What an idiotic thing to have done! How could she have been so stupid? How Stella would laugh!
    All at once, and for the first time that night, Miranda felt relaxed and sleepy. She yawned largely and untied the sashpf her dressinggown. There was a wet smear on the velvet folds; she must have
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    splashed some water on it from the basin in the next cabin. What a bore! thought Miranda, frowning. It was a new dressinggown and its purchase had been an unwarrantable extravagance on her part. She brushed her hand over it. But it was not water…
    Miranda sat very still, staring down at the stain on her palm.
    The carriage rocked and swayed in time to the clattering cadence of the wheels, and the harsh light of the ceiling bulbs threw a black, swaying shadow across the lower berth.
    ‘It’s the dye,’ said a voice in Miranda’s brain. ‘It’s only the dye from the velvet.’
    But no dye was so richly red. So sticky …
    There was blood on the ruby-red folds of the dressinggown. A wet, red patch of blood just above the level of her knee. Her stunned gaze moved slowly downwards towards the floor and her eyes widened incredulously, for there were marks upon the carriage floor that had not been there before. The dark, neat, damp prints of a shoe.
    Miranda reached down with unsteady hands and pulling off her slippers sat staring at them in horrified unbelief. Both narrow leather soles were as wet and red as though they had walked through a pool of blood
    She dropped them onto the floor and stood up. There was only one possible explanation. The blood must have come from the Brigadier’s compartment, and that meant the Brigadier had had a haemorrhage or broken a blood vessel. He might be bleeding to death! She must go to his help at once - surely there must be a doctor on the train?
    Miranda jerked open the door of her compartment and stood once more in the cold, empty corridor. There were more marks on the floor of the corridor. The dark prints of her slippers, leading out of the door of the Brigadier’s compartment.
    This time she knew where to feel for the electric light switch, and it clicked under her hasty fingers.
    The light seemed unnaturally bright and the clatter of the train wheels no more than a muted murmur like the sound of a sea shell
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    held to the ear. The whole scene seemed to have taken on something of the detailed, lunatic quality of a Dali painting.
    The train rocked and jolted and Miranda caught at the edge of the door to steady herself; staring, not at the silent figure on the narrow berth, but at the bright pool of blood upon the floor and the evilly stained knife that lay beyond it, half in and half out of the swaying shadow of Brigadier Brindley’s overcoat.
    She