She did not hear the sigh of relief from the three remaining at the table. She did hear the conversation resume at once and with increased animation. Three glasses of wine appeared to have loosened the captain’s tongue to a point where he could boast of leopards and tigers, of shikari, of romance and danger to be found in the foothills of the Himalayas.

At the end of the meal, Colin Simpson excused himself and went to smoke a cigar in the corridor. Draining her glass of brandy, Isabelle de Neuville rose to her feet and with a gracious smile made towards the ladies’ compartment at the end of the carriage. As she moved carefully along the dining car, it lurched suddenly and she had to steady herself on the arm of a waiter. Thanking him prettily, she turned, laughing, to Alice and called, ‘There I told you! Sixteen-year-old train driver!’

Alice laughed back and settled to wait for Isabelle to return.

Whether it was the two unaccustomed glasses of wine taken over lunch on top of the mysterious Campari-soda which was causing the train to sway or whether there really was a sixteen-year-old engine driver at the controls, Alice couldn’t decide but the condition was getting worse. Noises were getting louder as the train approached a bend before the viaduct crossing of a deep valley. Swaying and staggering and hardly able to keep her balance, Maud Benson emerged blear-eyed from the carriage.

‘What on earth’s going on? These French railways!’

Alice passionately wished that Isabelle would return and she took a few paces towards the ladies’ cloakroom at the end of the carriage but a sudden lurch threw her on to her knees.

It was clear that something was seriously wrong. The train was bumping and banging against the parapet of the viaduct. It was worse than that. The train had smashed the parapet from which masonry blocks were, one by one, in a percussive series of deafening machine-gun explosions detached to fall many feet below into the ravine.

‘Isabelle!’ Alice called desperately but the floor came up and hit her. Broken glass shattered round her. A jagged splinter gashed her cheek. The ceiling of the carriage was beneath her and this was the last thing she saw before she lost consciousness.

She was spared the sickening plunge as the Blue Train – the pride of the SNCF – tumbled three hundred feet into the ravine. With an explosion of sound, the engine, pistons still racing, crashed, for a moment to be suspended between the sides of the ravine. But only for a moment. One by one the falling carriages, with a long roll of murderous noise, piled on top and as further sections of the parapet gave way further carriages fell. A despairing shriek from the train whistle continued to mark the death of the Blue Train.

In her carriage, Maud Benson struggled to regain her seat, wondering, as Alice had done, why the walls of the carriage were beneath her, becoming vaguely aware that the luggage rack opposite had buckled but never aware that it was sections of this, snapping with catapult force, that had hit her under the chin, almost severing her head.

Luggage compartments burst open, trunks and cases were spewed on to the ground. The first and second class carriages at the head of the train were little more now than an unidentifiable tangle of wrecked steel. Seat cushions, light fittings, dining-car tables and tablecloths, wine bottles even from the pantry, soon to disappear in a sheet of flame as the galley exploded. The third class carriages at the rear of the train were at first seemingly undamaged until these too were finally pulled by their own weight from the track, through the parapet and into the ravine.

As the flames died and the clanking carcass settled, the deathly silence was broken only by the hysterical crying of a baby.

It was an hour and a half before the rescue train creaked its way cautiously from St Vincent through the Burgundy hills and came to a stop a careful hundred yards down the line from the collapsed viaduct. The employees of the SNCF, the fire brigade, the doctors and stretcher bearers hastily assembled on the train stood for a moment aghast, looking down on the disaster in the remote wooded ravine below. The Blue Train lay crushed and mangled under the weight of the iron girders and masonry which spilled under, around and above it.

Pierre Bernard, casualty officer, aged sixty-five and overdue for retirement, spoke for all. ‘Maintenance! No bloody maintenance! Been going on for years! I warned them! Bloody war!’

The men stared in horror at the smouldering remains of the burnt-out carriages and crossed themselves, unable to speak. They had come prepared to save lives and tend the injured but the deep silence below was warning enough that their task was to be of a more sinister character.

An urgent message was sent back down the line for heavy lifting gear (none nearer than Lyons) and with silent determination they collected picks, spades and stretchers and set off to climb down into the ravine.

After an hour of toil, one baby still alive and unhurt had been recovered along with eighty bodies only from a death toll estimated variously at two hundred and four hundred, and the search for survivors still went on. Coming at last to wreckage which had fallen further than the rest and was untouched by the fire, the searchers caught sight of a lisle-stocking-clad leg sticking out from under a first class carriage. With picks they forced the metal seams apart and extracted the body of a middle-aged woman. Thoughtfully they pulled down her tweed skirt, put her bag and her crochet work beside her on the stretcher and covered her up. The bearers set off to make another slow trek back up to the railway line.

The next body was that of a soldier in British khaki uniform. ‘Le pauvre con!’ muttered Pierre Bernard. He looked with distress at the war medals still attached to his chest. ‘He survives the war to die like this! Head stove in. Take him up.’

A glimpse of red fabric behind a boulder caught his eye. ‘Over here!’ he called and the men followed. They stood looking with a sorrow not diminished by the number of corpses they had already handled at the woman lying like a rag doll at their feet. Her back was broken, her head smashed open by the rock next to which it still lay, the red woollen jacket and black fur trimmings sticky with congealed blood. ‘Take her up,’ said Pierre.

A small sound caught his attention. ‘Chut! Chut! Listen! What’s that?’

Again he heard the faint cry. ‘Help! Help me!’

They hurried towards the sound. A girl in a torn grey dress was struggling to rise to her knees. For a moment Pierre thought, distractedly, that she was kneeling to pick the spring flowers, primroses and cowslips, which studded the grass around her. This fancy vanished the moment she turned towards them. With a gasp of pity and horror he took in the blood-sodden dress, the mad blue eyes staring, unseeing, in a white face rendered the more startling by the stream of bright red blood which still flowed from a gash on the side of her face.

‘Maud?’ she said as they gathered round her. ‘I’m so sorry! Maud! Oh, where’s Maud?’

Chapter Two

«^»

Northern India, Spring 1922

Joe Sandilands felt the judder of the train as the brakes were applied. Eager to put the tedious journey behind him, he thankfully rose to his feet to take his hand luggage from the rack. His sudden movement triggered a fluttering response amongst the other passengers in the carriage. The two army wives roused their four children, hot and cross, who stirred about, stretching and yawning and quarrelling sleepily amongst themselves.

Joe helped them to lift down and sort out picnic hampers, toys and crayons and travelling sleeping bags, and his smiling good humour and easy ways with the children were rewarded by effusive thanks and inviting smiles from their mothers. He replied politely to suggestions of attending picnics, dinner parties, fund-raising events and theatrical performances in Simla.