But something had changed. Senn sat across from her with his notebook closed. Not consulting anything. Just looking at her with an expression she couldn't read.

  "Ms. Quinn," he said. "I've been conducting background inquiries. On all the passengers." A pause. "Yours was... interesting."

  She waited.

  "Interesting how?"

  "You've worked at the same library for twenty-three years. You live alone. No children⁠—“

  “I have a cat,” Iris interrupted, having no idea why she said that.

  He continued. “You have a modest salary. Very modest. Libraries aren't known for generous compensation."

  "They're not."

  "Which is why I found it curious that three weeks ago, you withdrew forty-eight thousand dollars from your savings account." He let that number sit between them. "And then you boarded this train. The most expensive journey in Europe."

  "The ticket cost what it cost."

  "Yes. Almost exactly what you had." His head tilted. "That's quite a coincidence."

  "It's not a coincidence. It's arithmetic."

  His mouth moved. Not quite a smile.

  "Ms. Quinn, do you know what Victoria Halberstam did for a living?"

  The shift caught her off guard.

  "No."

  Senn leaned back. "Victoria Halberstam was a professional. She targeted wealthy older men. Charmed them. Extracted significant sums. Various names, various cities. At least a decade of this, possibly longer."

  A con artist. Of course. Femme fatale, Iris had written in her journal. She'd meant it as a type. Turned out it was a profession.

  "I didn't know that."

  "No?" Senn's voice stayed mild. "Your journal suggests you notice quite a lot. Very detailed observations. Almost as if you were taking notes for someone."

  "For myself."

  "For yourself." He repeated it without inflection. "Con artists often work in pairs, Ms. Quinn. One to charm. One to gather information. One to be seen...” He paused. “And one to remain invisible."

  The implication landed like a slap.

  "You think I was working with her."

  "I think it's a possibility I have to consider." He spread his hands, a gesture of reasonableness that felt anything but. "A woman empties her savings. Boards a train full of wealthy passengers. A con artist is murdered. The woman's handkerchief is found outside the victim's door. The woman keeps detailed notes on everyone she meets." He paused. "What would you conclude?"

  Iris stared at him.

  So in Senn's version, Victoria was the honey trap and Iris was—what? The secretary. She could be charming. She could be a honey trap if she wanted. Probably.

  "The handkerchief," she said. "I wiped champagne off my hand. Six in the morning. On my way to the library car."

  "So you've said."

  "Because that’s what happened."

  Senn waited.

  "I write things down because—” She stopped. Because why? Because it made her feel like she was participating in her own life instead of just watching it? Because the journal was the only place she'd ever been honest about what she saw?

  "Because I've always been better at observing than participating," she said. "It's not a skill. It's a limitation."

  Something shifted in Senn's expression. She couldn't tell if it was belief or just interest.

  "And the savings?"

  "I turned fifty." She heard how that sounded. Not like an explanation. Like an excuse. "I had a closet full of things I'd bought for someone I never became. Italian flashcards I never used. A pasta maker still in the box. Twenty-six years of saving for someday, and someday never came." She looked at her hands. "So I spent it. All of it. On something I'd wanted since I was seventeen."

  Most people don't liquidate their savings for a train ticket,” Senn said.

  "Most people probably have something better to spend it on.”

  The compartment was quiet.

  "I'm not a criminal," Iris said. "I'm just someone who finally did something impractical. Probably too late. Definitely too expensive." She met his eyes. "That's all I am."

  Senn studied her for a long moment.

  "Everyone on this train is a suspect, Ms. Quinn," he said finally. "That includes you." He stood. "You're free to go. For now."

  For now.

  She stayed after he left. Her hands weren't shaking. She was surprised by that. She'd expected to feel worse. Accused, cornered, undone. Instead she just felt tired. And oddly clear, the way you felt after crying, or confessing, or finally saying something you'd been holding too long.

  A honey trap. At fifty. Robin would laugh herself sick.

  But the absurdity didn't make it less real. Her name was in that notebook, with its own question mark. Every observation she'd written down could be read another way now. Not as habit. As reconnaissance.

  She had to find out what had actually happened on this train. Not for Victoria.

  For herself.

  Back in her cabin, Iris picked up her phone. No signal. The fog had swallowed that too.

  She typed the message anyway.

  Senn thinks I was working with Victoria. I’m officially a suspect. This is going great.

  It sat there, unsent. Robin would have something to say about this. Probably something practical. Possibly something beginning with I warned you and ending with get home.

  Iris set the phone down and reached for her journal.

  I am a suspect.

  She looked at the words for a long moment.

  In the books, the wrongly accused person usually had something compelling about them. A secret history. A dramatic motive. A reason that made narrative sense.

  She had a handkerchief and unfortunate timing.

  She flipped back a few pages.

  Victoria was a con artist. Professional. Richard fit the profile—older, wealthy, alone. But Victoria had been working Edmund, not Richard. Why?

  Unless Edmund had been a diversion.

  Unless she already had Richard.

  Iris paused. Crossed out the line. The thought wasn’t wrong, exactly. Just too tidy.

  She turned the page.

  The inventory from the midnight search was there, written in her small, precise hand.

  Edmund: cocaine. Claimed it was planted.

  Theo: cocaine, pills, other things. Admitted immediately.

  Margaret: enough sleeping pills to sedate a boarding school.

  Richard: heart medication, organized by day.

  Danny: nothing.

  Elena: Victoria’s bracelet and scarf.

  She underlined Danny’s name. Then, after a moment, Elena’s.

  Con artists accumulated enemies. That alone didn’t narrow things down.

  Iris closed the journal and stared at the wall.

  For twenty-three years, people had come to her with questions like riddles. I need a book about a girl in a blue coat. It might have been winter. The title started with T. Or maybe M.

  They never gave you the right details. They gave you the ones that felt important to them. You learned to listen past that.

  She opened the journal again.

  Victoria had been poisoned. The poison had been in the glass before the toast. The glasses had moved. Hands everywhere. No one watching closely enough.

  And she—she had been watching faces.

  That was the mistake.

  She let her eyes move over the pages, not reading so much as noticing: where her pen had pressed harder, where she’d circled things instead of underlining them.

  Something here didn’t fit. Not a missing fact. A misread one.

  She didn’t know whose. Or how. Or what it meant yet.

  But she knew that feeling. The one you got when a book was on the right shelf and still in the wrong place.

  She stood and smoothed her cardigan. The woman in the mirror looked back at her—tired, thoughtful, very likely about to make things worse.

  “Well,” Iris said quietly.

  She’d done that before too.

  14

  "The secret," Danny said, "is that most people use boiling water. You shouldn’t. It burns the leaves."

  Iris wasn't entirely sure how she'd ended up here. The observation car, Danny Morrison explaining tea as if tea were the thing that mattered right now. Her cabin had started to close in on her—all that velvet, all that silence—and the dining car meant people. This had seemed like a reasonable third option.

  "You want it just off the boil," Danny continued, pouring water into the pot. Steam rose between them. "And then you wait. Ninety seconds. Most people rush."

  "I'm not really a tea person," Iris said. She'd been trying to become one for years. All those rituals, the beautiful china, the civilized appeal of it. It had never taken.

  "That's because no one's taught you properly." He reached into his jacket pocket and produced a small jar. Honey, golden and thick. He'd brought his own. Of course he had.

  "This is from a farm in the Cotswolds," he said, unscrewing the lid. "The bees only forage on wildflowers. You can taste the difference." He added a spoonful to her cup, stirring carefully. "The honey helps. Smooths the edges."

  Iris didn't have the heart to tell him her favorite honey came in a plastic bear from the grocery store. She'd been squeezing it onto toast for decades without once considering what the bees had been foraging on.

  She took a sip. It was good. Actually good. Not the bitter, watery disappointment of her usual attempts.

  It still wasn't coffee. But she didn't say that.

  "Well?" Danny asked.

  "I'm not converted. But it's good."

  He smiled like that was exactly the answer he'd expected.

  For a moment, neither of them spoke. The train creaked around them. Settling sounds, the kind old buildings made.

  Danny looked tired, she realized. Not the dramatic exhaustion of Edmund, who wore his suffering like a costume. This was quieter. The kind of tired that came from taking care of someone else for a long time.

  "You've been looking after Richard for a while," she said. It wasn't quite a question.

  "Since his diagnosis. Three years now." Danny turned his cup again. "He didn't want anyone fussing over him. Said he'd managed over seventy years without a nursemaid and wasn't about to start. But someone had to make sure he took his medications. Ate properly.”

  "How's he doing with all of this?”

  Danny looked down at his cup. "Tired. More tired than he wants to admit."

  "The search rattled him."

  "The search. The questioning. All of it." Danny paused. "He feels responsible, somehow. Even though it has nothing to do with him."

  "Why would he feel responsible?"

  "That's Richard. He takes things on. Other people's troubles." Danny's voice had softened, the way it did when he talked about his uncle. "He's been like that since I was a boy. Always trying to fix things. Even things that aren't his to fix. Or aren’t fixable.”

  Iris thought about Richard at dinner that first night. The way he'd listened to Mrs. Winslow's stories about Herbert. The way he'd included Iris without making her feel like charity. Some people had that gift, making space for others without seeming to try.

  "Senn questioned him for a long time yesterday," Danny said. "Longer than anyone else, I think."

  "Why?"

  Danny was quiet for a moment. When he spoke again, his voice was careful.

  "Apparently they'd crossed paths before. Richard and Victoria. Some event in London, a year ago. Donors and patrons—you know how those things are."

  Iris didn't, actually. But she nodded.

  "Richard barely remembered her. One conversation at a crowded party—he meets hundreds of people at those things. But Senn wanted every detail. Every word exchanged."

  Danny shook his head.

  "As if anyone could recall a five-minute conversation from a year ago."

  "Could he? Recall it?"

  "Some of it. She'd asked about his work. Investment opportunities." Danny looked at his tea. "At the time, he thought she was just making conversation. Now, of course⁠—"

  He didn't finish. He didn't need to.

  Victoria had been working. Even then. Identifying marks, gathering information, filing wealthy men away for future use. And Richard had been on her list.

  Iris thought about what Senn had told her. Con artist. Professional. Targeted wealthy older men.

  Richard was wealthy. Richard was older. Richard was exactly her type.

  She tried to imagine it. Victoria at some glittering charity event, champagne in hand, scanning the room the way a librarian scanned the stacks. Looking for what she needed, assessing what was available. And there was Richard, kind and wealthy and recently widowed. Still learning how to be alone.

  He would have been easy. That was the terrible thing. The very qualities that made Richard good—his openness, his willingness to listen, his instinct to help—were exactly what made him vulnerable.

  "Does Senn think Richard was involved?" she asked.

  "Senn thinks everyone was involved. That's his job." Danny's voice had gone flat. "But Richard couldn't have done this. Our cabins share a wall. I would have heard him leave. I didn't."

  Iris wrapped her hands around her teacup.

  She thought about the night Victoria died. The chaos in the corridor. Margaret screaming at Howard. Edmund pounding on doors. The whole train awake and stumbling over each other in the dark.

  And Richard's voice, cutting through all of it: For the love of God, would everyone please just shut up and go to bed?

  That had been around two-thirty. She'd heard him clearly. Which meant she'd heard him in the corridor. Not in his cabin. In the corridor, same as the rest of them.

  She didn't say anything. Just turned her cup in her hands.

  "I keep thinking about Theo," Danny said.

  The shift surprised her. "Theo?"

  "The way he watched everyone that first night. Victoria especially."

  Danny leaned back.

  "I don't know. Something about him bothers me. All those drawings, all that watching. But you never learn anything about him in return."

  Iris thought about Theo. The fox pajamas. The cocaine. The wink in the corridor.

  "He's private," she said.

  "Private." Danny nodded slowly. "That's one word for it."

  "You think he's hiding something?"

  "I don't know. Maybe I'm just tired and looking for someone to blame." He rubbed his eyes. "Forget I said anything." He stood, brushing something invisible from his sleeve. "I should check on Richard. He doesn't like to be alone too long these days."

  "Thank you. For the tea."

  "Any time." He paused at the door. "Iris. Be careful, will you? Until this is all sorted out."

  "Careful of what?"

  "Everyone." A small smile. "We're all just strangers here."

  Then he was gone and the observation car was quiet.

  Outside, the afternoon light had gone flat and gray. She wasn't sure what time it was anymore. The days had started to blur together. Meals and interrogations and conversations that felt like interrogations even when they weren't.

  Iris sat with her cup. The honey sweetness lingered on her tongue.

  Danny had been kind. He was always kind. Helping Richard, helping Elena, helping her now with tea she hadn't asked for. Some people were like that. They couldn't stop themselves.

  But Richard had been in the corridor that night. At two-thirty, yelling at everyone to shut up. She'd heard him clearly. And Danny had just said he never left his cabin.

  Maybe Danny had been asleep. Maybe he'd misspoken. Maybe it was nothing.

  And Victoria had known Richard. Had met him before, at some party neither of them had mentioned until Senn started asking questions. One conversation, Danny said. Five minutes. Barely worth remembering.

  But Victoria had remembered. Victoria, who made a living reading wealthy men and deciding which ones were worth her time.

  Richard had been worth remembering.

  Iris set down her cup.

  Three days ago, she'd boarded this train thinking the hardest part was over. She'd made the decision. Spent the money. Shown up. All that was left was to enjoy it—the scenery, the champagne, the feeling of finally doing something she'd dreamed about for thirty-three years.

  Now a woman was dead. Iris was a suspect. And the people she'd started to think of as friends were turning into question marks, one by one.

  She thought about Robin, unreachable on the other side of all that fog. Robin would tell her to trust her instincts.

  But Iris wasn't sure her instincts could be trusted. She'd read Victoria as a femme fatale, which was true, but she'd missed the con artist underneath. She'd read Richard as kind, which was also true, but kindness didn't mean innocence. She'd read Danny as devoted, and maybe he was, but devoted people did terrible things sometimes. To protect the people they loved.

  The list in her head kept growing. Small things. Inconsistencies. The kind of details that might mean nothing or might mean everything. She couldn't stop collecting them, couldn't stop arranging them into patterns that refused to resolve.

  Like a shelf of books that didn't quite fit. You couldn't always say why it bothered you. You just knew it did.

  The windows showed nothing. The train sat motionless, waiting for something that hadn't come yet.

  She was waiting too. She just wasn't sure for what.

  15

  She couldn't sleep.

  She'd brought A Room with a View for the journey. It had seemed right when she packed it. A woman traveling, seeing new things, waking up to her own life. She'd read it six times over the years. The paperback was soft as cloth, the margins full of pencil notes from her twenties, her thirties, her forties. A record of who she'd been each time.

  But tonight the words wouldn't settle. Lucy Honeychurch was in Florence, standing at a window, waiting for something to happen. Iris kept reading the same paragraph over and over. The pension. The view. The old ladies arguing about rooms.

  She set the book on her chest and stared at the ceiling, began counting the brass rivets on the ceiling trim. Thirty-seven. She counted them again to be sure.