I rounded the corner of the Passenger Car’s upper hall to find Mrs. Stanton dabbing at the floor in front of Room 4 with a white handkerchief. 

 

“Oh, well hello there, Mrs. Stanton. Is something the matter?”

 

“Detective! Oh..” she said, stumbling over her words. Rising to her feet, she slipped a handkerchief inside her pocket and continued, “No, I’m fine. Thank you…How are you?”

 

I walked to stand next to her. She was a woman of forty, with a mop of tight blonde curls that fell down the sides of her face. Tonight, her usually meticulous makeup had started to run, revealing deep hollows beneath her eyes.

 

We traded cautious smiles as I answered, “I’m alright, thank you. What were you doing there, Mrs. Stanton?”

 

She hesitated, “Oh, just wiping up a spill that I had noticed earlier, Detective…is there something wrong with that?”

 

“Not by the letter of the law, I suppose. What was spilled?”

 

“Wine, I think.”

 

I stepped toward her with my hand out, gesturing for her to show me the handkerchief that I knew to still be in her pocket. But her small feet shuffled backwards, maintaining the space between us.

 

“Come now, Mrs. Stanton. Show me the handkerchief.”

 

“Detective, you must be crazy.”

 

She kept one hand jammed in her pocket as she edged past me in the narrow hall. When her jacket brushed against mine, her hand pulled partially free. I caught a glimpse of white fabric–the handkerchief, stained with dark red. Two keys tumbled from the same pocket and clattered to the floor.

 

I bent quickly, retrieving them before she could stop me. Turning them in my hands, one read “4”, the number embossed on the largest face of the key; the other read “5”.

 

Clearly agitated, she tried to move past me down the hall, but I stepped in her way, saying, “I have some additional questions for you, Mrs. Stanton. Please don’t go anywhere.”

 

“I must be on my way, Detective. Let me through.”

 

I didn’t budge, asking instead, “Where were you last night?”

 

“I spent the night in my room. Where else would I have been?”

 

“What about when you heard the shots?” 

 

Before I had finished the sentence, she had slipped beyond my reach with a sudden shuffle.

 

Now free of me, she turned and replied while continuing down the hall, “I never left my room. Robert left me there all alone. I was scared.”

 

It was getting difficult to hear her as she continued to walk away.

 

“No one else saw you tonight? Just Robert?”

 

“That’s right, Detective. I was sick and didn’t leave.” 

 

Raising my voice to reach her halfway down the hall, “What was the cause of your illness, Mrs. Stanton?”

 

Just before rounding the corner, she spat, “Robert.”