Station To Station

STATION TO STATION
MURDER ON THE BADLEY RYTTEN EXPRESS

It was a dark and stormy night - no, really, Dear Reader, it was – when we boarded the train at Badley Rytten. It was September 15th 2015. There were twenty of us, not including the organisers and the train staff - all crime writers or wannabes, gathering together for a night-time workshop to celebrate the 125th anniversary of the birth of our heroine, Agatha Christie.

Rendell Beaton-Collins, the host of our twilight trip, and author of a shelf-full of cosy murder mysteries starring her female detective, Susan Sultana, and also hogging another shelf with her police stories starring the brilliant Bobby Copper, waited until all the brolly shaking and removal of wet coats was over before re-adjusting her hearing aid and taking up the microphone to address us. Her co-organiser, the brilliant Kathy Rankin-Reichs, stood at her side.

‘Welcome everyone. As you know, we are here tonight to celebrate the birth, one hundred and twenty five years ago, of the woman who inspired us all, Dame Agatha Christie, who also wrote under the pseudonym of Mary Westmacott. We’re not concerned with her alias here; romance is not the name of the game tonight. Crime is our aim, or rather the solving of it. This lovely old steam train will be taking us on an approximately four-hour-long trip between the villages of Badley Rytten and Well Rytten.’

A titter ran round the crowd. No, really, it did! It was only when we heard her say the names out loud that we realised the pun. Being writers, you’d have thought we’d have got it before, wouldn’t you?

‘Settle down now,’ said Rendell, pushing her spectacles further up onto her nose and peering at the paper she held at arm’s length. ‘We have a lot to get through before we get from one place to the other. The train will spend thirty minutes here at Badley Rytten where you will be given a situation to solve and then write about. Clues have already been planted in this carriage and the other two behind it. The aim is to write a story of 200 words exactly, not including the title. No computers, tablets or anything connected to the internet allowed. Notebooks, paper and pen or pencil only, all of which have been provided. Coffee and cake to fuel you is available in the buffet car up front behind the engine.’

‘Oh heck,’ I whispered to my best friend and fellow writer, Petra. ‘I hate writing on the hoof like this and flash fiction is the worst.’

‘You always say things like that, Dawn,’ she retorted, ‘but you always come up trumps.’

Rendell continued, after Kathy had nudged her and given us a schoolmarm-ish glance.

'For those of you new to crime writing, we are privileged to have some prestigious authors in our midst who, I’m sure, will give you a tip or two if you need them.’

Pointing at Petra and myself, she went on,

‘We are honoured to have with us, Petra Slaughter, author of the very successful “Doubly Dead” series of novels and Dawn Dagger, author of the Detective Adam Dashing novels, many of which have been adapted for television.’

Everyone looked at us and there was a small round of applause.

We smiled and waved feebly.

‘Damn!’ said Petra under her breath. ‘I was hoping to remain incognito tonight.’

‘You and me, both,’ I whispered.

Rendell glared at us again, after another nudge from Kathy,

‘If I could have your full attention, please. As I was saying, the Baddley Rytten Express will spend thirty minutes at each station and the word count you are allowed will go up by one hundred words each time. We will be stopping at Ghost Rytten, Half Rytten, Nether Rytten and Hand Rytten before arriving at our final destination, Well Rytten. Oh, and one little tip before we begin, the mystery might not always be what you first think it is.’

‘Hardly an express, is it, if it’s going to keep stopping all the time,’ I hissed at Jill. ‘Are these real places or have they just made them up for the trip?’

‘Yea, they’re all real, Taunton Girl,’ Jill laughed.

Well, how would I know, dear reader? I’ve come up here from Devon. I don’t know the names of little places in Warwickshire. Why would I?

‘So, we go from Badley Rytten to Well Rytten?’ I said.

‘That’s the intention!’ she replied.

We joined the rush to the buffet car to fuel ourselves for the quick thinking ahead.

***
‘So!’ said Stuart Umberto Dennis D’eath, wannabe author, after introducing himself at length and telling us all about his detective who, surprise, surprise, was named after himself and solved murders in the old Wild West. ‘Let’s get this party started.’

I really didn’t like the way he undressed me with his eyes as he said it. What a creep!

‘Stop nattering, you boring little man,’ I thought. Thirty minutes, that’s all we have… just thirty minutes.’

‘Yes, let’s, get going,’ said a large, bespectacled woman at his side. ‘I can’t wait.’ She pumped mine and Petra’s hands with the grip of a milkmaid in full milking mode.
‘Ursula Rhonda Anne Payne, just call me Rhonda. I’m about to write my second crime novel. Self-published the first on Amazon, you know. Not easy to get an agent these days. I’m hoping to be inspired tonight.’

She smiled and pumped our hands again. ‘I’m so pleased to meet you both.’

Heaving her massive handbag back into place over her shoulder, she whacked the table behind, knocking the two cups of coffee over. We all stared as it soaked into the plates of cake and the notebooks Stuart had neatly laid out for both of them, then slowly dripped down the side of the table, making a putt, putt sound like blood dripping from a strung-up corpse.

‘Rhonda, you are such an oaf!’ Stuart screamed. But none of us was listening because we’d all started writing.

The first mystery wasn’t hard to solve and it was exactly what we all thought it was. It was to do with papers missing and the sinking of the ship, The Lusitania. One of the wannabes found the paper and it didn’t take much writing up.

After handing our work in, a bit like school, the train huffed and puffed, and then moved on.

We pulled into Ghost Rytten station. Another plot was given and the clues reset, and we all went off to investigate.

Suddenly there was a scream. It came from the second carriage and Rhonda toddled in, looking dishevelled.
‘Who left that bucket in the middle of the floor? Stuart’s tripped over it and I think he’s dead.’

We all rushed in and, given the angle his neck was at it didn’t take us very long to conclude that it was broken.
Now we’d got the plot, we all rushed off to write our 300 words. Rhonda’s screaming put us off a bit, but we realised it was planned that way. Stuart and Rhonda were obviously murder mystery actors, hired to make things more realistic.

Half Rytten came next and Kathy rushed in,
‘Help! Help! Rendell’s just fallen out of the window.’
We all went to the place she indicated but could see nothing. How could we have done? It was pitch black out there.

We piled out of the train door en masse. Sure enough, we could see Rendell’s body lying by the side of the railway line.

We climbed back in and wrote our next lot of words – 400 this time.

Kathy kept on screaming but we didn’t let her put us off.

At Nether Rytten Rhonda pulled out a gun. Shouting, ‘BANG!’ and ‘WILL YOU SHUT UP?’ she shot Kathy in the head, and Kathy fell convincingly to the floor.

We all put our heads down and scribbled our 500 words.

When the train pulled in at Hand Rytten Stuart had miraculously come back to life and was looking for his fiancee, who he eventually found, apparently dead drunk, in the arms of an author called Francis Dick.

We furiously scribbled our 600 words.

‘We’re getting married next week, announced Stuart as we finished, ‘and going on honeymoon in a wigwam. Champagne’s on us!’

‘It’s a yurt, darling!’ said Rhonda, reappearing and throwing her arm around him, nearly knocking him over with her outsized bag. ‘I do wish you’d get things correct.’

We all piled into the buffet car again - this time to get champagne.

‘Dunno about you,’ said Petra. ‘But I certainly need a proper drink.’

‘I’ll drink to that,’ I said.

The train steamed on to Well Rytten where Rhonda got back on, helped in by a re-animated Kathy. See? I was right! All those murder scenes were just a blind.

‘Hello again, everyone,’ she said. ‘It’s time to write your final words now - 700 to finish. You’re all doing really well, so far.’

It was at that point that there was a scream from one of the carriages. Well, not from the carriage itself, you understand, that would be silly. The scream came from someone inside it. A wild-eyed wannabe rushed in yelling incoherently – something about Stuart being the apple of her eye.

We all ran into the carriage to be met by the sight of Stuart’s corpse. He was lying flat on his back, clutching a copy of “How to Kill Your Darlings”. There was a pencil jammed into his right eye. He appeared to be very dead.

‘I don’t think that’s the kind of tip he wanted,’ I wryly remarked, as Kathy bent to examine him.

Chaos ensued when we realised that this scene was for real. One woman was sick, the original woman was still screaming and Rhonda fainted. She hit the floor like a felled oak, her bag falling open to disgorge its contents. Among the scattered tissues, the array of pencils, the tubes of lipstick and other gubbins, were three books: “Hidden Herbal Poisons”, “Killer Blows” and a self-help title, “Partners who Cheat and How to Deal with Them”.

‘Oh, heckitty flip!’ said Petra. ‘I wonder who dunnit?’

‘No idea, ‘I said. ‘But I think I’ve got the makings of a decent story, at last.’

END