‘You were travelling first class when the accident happened, I understand? We are interested in another first class passenger – an English girl called Alice Conyers – and we wondered whether you had any contact with her during the journey?’

‘Certainly,’ said Simpson. ‘I travelled in the same compartment as Alice and at the moment of the accident we were dining together in the dining car.’

Joe and Carter looked at each other, trying to play down their relief and excitement at this.

‘Can you tell us about the journey from the start?’

‘Paris. Gare de Lyon. A steward found my place and showed me to my carriage. I was wearing dark glasses and walking with a stick and rather enjoying the fact that people were falling over themselves to be of assistance to me. Everyone assumed I was completely blind, of course, with the stick as well. Not proud of it but it did give me a sort of awful advantage over people. They thought I couldn’t see but I actually could, and quite well. Not quite as good as being an invisible man but almost. Another advantage was that I could stare at pretty girls if I wanted to for as long as I liked and no one would think I was being rude. And in my compartment there were two girls worth staring at!’

‘Two?’

‘Yes. In some ways similar, in most very different. Not often you’re closeted for several hours with two such good-looking young things! You’d need to have been in hospital – as I was – for two years to imagine how much I appreciated it! There was Alice Conyers, English, on her way to India. I remember she was dowdily dressed even for an English girl and then later I understood she was in mourning for her parents who were not long dead of the flu. Quite a chatterbox but a real charmer, Alice, and obviously driving her companion, a Miss Benson, mad! Now she was counting the miles!’ Simpson shook his head sadly. ‘And she wasn’t to know it but there weren’t all that many left for her. She died in the crash.’

‘And the second young woman?’

‘Completely different in style! Older, though not by much I’ve since thought, French, expensively dressed – Worth or Chanel or somebody of that quality – woman of the world, you’d say. She spoke good English with a very attractive French accent – when Alice let her get a word in edgeways. She was on her way to stay with friends in Nice for the season. Isabelle de Neuville – that was her name.’

‘And you found yourselves lunching together?’

‘Yes, though the Benson female returned to her compartment. We were having a jolly, good lunch at the same table. It worked very well, surprisingly enough for three strangers. Alice was so alive, so full of excitement at the life she was going to lead no one could resist her. Madame de Neuville was treating her like a rather spoiled little sister – she was very kind and good-humoured, I remember. She herself seemed a little sad – wistful perhaps – and I think she was enjoying Alice’s artless prattle, her freshness, her optimism. Me, I was enjoying watching the pair of them!

‘And then the world came apart at the seams… Alice was still at the table and I had gone to smoke a cigar in the corridor. Madame de Neuville had just gone off to the ladies’ room when it happened. I assume you know the details?’

Joe and Carter nodded solemnly.

‘We’ve both read the accounts of the crash,’ said Joe. ‘But tell us what you remember of it.’

‘Yes, well, this is where I get confused,’ said Simpson. ‘A devastating bang – I mean truly deafening – like the end of the world! I guess that was the engine hitting the parapet. This was followed by a no less deafening series of crashes as the coaches were dragged off the viaduct and into the ravine below. There was a ruinous and continuous roar of noise. Broken glass flying. Everything turned upside down. Little Alice was screaming (and others were screaming).The dining car was split in two as it rolled down the rocky scree and most of the passengers spilled out into the ravine. My head was split open on a rock. I was unconscious and so badly injured I was taken for dead. They actually carted me off to the morgue! I’d been lying there at the scene for God knows how long when I came to. I tried to move my head and couldn’t. I thought I was paralysed. I learned after that my head had bled and the clotting blood had stuck it to the rock. They had to cut me free with a knife before they could get me on a stretcher. Anyway, I came to, couldn’t move, and started to call for help. There was no noise. No one crying or calling apart from me. Everything was silent except for the occasional creak of metal as another part of the wreck settled. There was a stench of burning all around me.

‘I called out again. Gave out a groan more like. And that was when I heard it.’ He leaned forward and paused to emphasize the importance of what he was about to say. Carter and Joe remained silent, looking at him with attentive encouragement.

‘Someone was walking about. Walking quietly – I thought at the time stealthily – stopping at each of the bodies and then moving on. I thought rescuers must have arrived and tried to shout again to let them know I was alive. But whoever it was stopped dead. I shouted again and the steps came on towards me, nearer and nearer but not hurrying. Not hurrying to help. Ridiculous, but I began to be afraid. Tales of battlefields – looters, mad old women who cut the throats of survivors and rob them – came to me and I didn’t shout again.

‘I just had to wait helpless, paralysed, while the steps got closer. And then someone came just into my field of vision.’

Simpson paused for a moment and touched his missing left eye. ‘This side was on top. I was lying on my right side. My spectacles were broken, lost, and all anyone looking down on me would have seen was this blind side. But I had a narrow arc of vision up to about three feet above the ground. Someone was standing beside me, looking at me but not approaching further. Standing back, you know. Not wanting to get involved, you’d say.’ Simpson fell silent and looked from one to the other defiantly. ‘It was the buttoned boots I saw first and the silk stockings and the dark red skirt with black fur bandings…’

Carter glanced at Joe in embarrassment. Simpson picked up the glance.

‘I warned you not to believe a word I said,’ he reminded them.

‘According to reports of the accident only three people survived – yourself, a baby and Alice Conyers who is alive and well and in Simla at this moment,’ said Carter.

‘I know. I know. And that’s obviously what you must believe.’ Simpson looked embarrassed but determined and he pressed on. ‘But at that time I was convinced that it was Isabelle de Neuville standing by my side. When I realized it was she and not some looter I actually called out to her for help.’

‘By name? Did you say her name?’

‘No, I think I just called out “Help!” Twice. And she just walked away. Just walked away without saying a word!’

‘Unusual behaviour!’

‘I was devastated. And later, I was so sure I’d seen Isabelle de Neuville walking about that I enquired after her. They had no clear idea of who was who for a long time of course and by then I’d been carted off to Lyons but when I described a first class passenger and what she was wearing they wrote it down and checked on it. They found her body in the morgue in Beaune. She’d died instantaneously of a broken back and head injuries. There was no way in the world Madame de Neuville could have been walking about that scene of disaster! I am left with two alternatives. I was either seeing her ghost or my mind was disturbed.’

Neither man hastened to deny this. ‘It could be either,’ said Carter pacifically.

‘I was pretty badly beaten up in the war,’ Simpson said almost apologetically. ‘In fact for some months after, I was, I have to say, out of it. Out of my mind. Neurasthenia’s the fancy label they put on it so, you see, you don’t need to place any weight on my testimony.’ His voice was self-deprecating. ‘No one else would dream of doing so. In fact, you’re the first people I’ve mentioned it to. I’m sorry. Just look on it as the ramblings of a man who’s had a double dose of cranial punishment.’