Page 54 of With a Vengeance

Anna had all but forgotten Herb cracking open the door to his room and watching as she passed. She wishes she’d remembered, for it now makes her look more suspicious than she already does.

“Yes, I stayed here,” she says. “There’s no reason to lie about it because, one, Mr. Pulaski saw me and, two, I have nothing to hide.”

“Was Edith here with you?” Sal asks.

Again, Herb plays the part of tattletale. “She was. I heard them arguing.”

“We weren’t arguing,” Anna says, knowing it’s just a matter ofsemantics. She thinks of it as a confrontation, which is different from an argument, though not by much.

“It sounded like one to me,” Herb says. “ ‘You should be afraid of what’s coming.’ That’s what she said. I heard it with my own ears.”

“That doesn’t mean I killed her.”

“What did it mean?” Sal says.

“That she—and all of you—should fear what’s going to happen once we reach Chicago.”

Sal honks out a derisive snort. “Like you plan on letting us get there.”

“Getting you there is my only plan,” Anna says.

Exhaustion settles over her as she wonders just how that plan has gone so awry. Yes, she assumed there’d be hiccups, but nothing she and Seamus hadn’t prepared for. Never did Anna think she’d be forced to plead her innocence to the likes of Sally Lawrence, Jack Lapsford, and Herb Pulaski. They’re the guilty ones. Not her.

“Did you see anyone else go by?” she asks Herb.

“Only you,” he says.

Anna’s heart sinks into the pit of her stomach. She was hoping Herb had seen the man she glimpsed roaming the train, ideally as he snuck back into the observation car after she’d passed.

“Didyousee someone?” Seamus says.

Yes,Anna thinks.My brother.

“No,” she says, because it’s safer that way. Not to mention more logical than what she’s thinking. Tommy is gone. No part of him exists. “But Edith was still alive when I left. I didn’t strangle her.”

“She wasn’t strangled.”

This comes from Reggie Davis, who had slipped into the observation car unnoticed while the rest of them cast accusations. Through the open door between the cars, Anna sees him kneeling next to Edith’s body, looking but not touching.

“How do you know that?”

Anna drifts closer, rapt, as Reggie points to Edith’s neck, where unblemished skin is visible beneath the drapery cord. “There aren’t any ligature marks. If she had been strangled with this cord, we’d see abrasions on her skin.”

By then, Seamus has joined them. Standing on the other side of Edith’s body, he says, “Then how did she die?”

“I’m thinking suffocation. See how her lipstick is smeared?”

Reggie sidles next to Anna and points to a pale pink smudge on the edge of Edith’s mouth. Anna knows the color well. It was Edith’s preferred shade.

“Was it like that when the two of you were in here?” Reggie asks.

“No,” Anna says.

“My guess is she was smothered. It would have to be something within easy reach yet also unobtrusive.”

Anna looks around, settling her gaze on one of the swiveled chairs facing the windows. “Like a cushion?”

“Exactly,” Reggie says as he begins moving from chair to chair, removing their cushions and flipping them over. He makes it almost completely around the car before stopping and exclaiming, “Found it!”

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