Shadows on the Train Read Online Free PDF Page A

settings for Alfred Hitchcock films…One thinks of The Lady Vanishes …”
    â€œAnd then one switches one’s mind away from it,” I said firmly. I wrenched a huge radish off one of the bunches she’d bought and bit into it for maximum kee-rrrunch effect.
    Mother was the bookish type, always lapsing into literary references. Since she’d started going out with Jon Horowitz, a play director, she’d added film references to her literary ones. Jon was mad for old movies. He and Mother went to repertory theaters to see old movies at least once a week.
    â€œOr of course Strangers on a Train ,” Mother added.
    â€œ Mother ,” Madge and I said crossly.
    She laughed. “I’m sure the train trip will be soothing and serene, not Hitchcockian at all.”
    â€œEr—yes.” Over by the vendor selling ostrich meat, as well as fluffy ostrich-feathered pens and key chains, I saw Talbot and his mom. Liesl Dubuque had just wriggled up to chat with him. How could he be so friendly with her, after the egg incident?
    With determination, I made myself look away. “So tell me,” I said to Mother, “do you find Mrs. Zanatta unsavory in any way?”
    â€œCertainly not,” Mother replied, astonished. “I’ve met her in the park a few times, and she seems very nice and quiet. Her little boy is very shy. A kindergartener, I believe. I wonder…”
    I cut Mother off before she could utter something do-goodish, like suggesting we invite the Zanattas over for tea. “But what do you actually know about this woman?”
    â€œWell…they haven’t lived here long.” Mother’s forehead crinkled into a suspicious frown. “You’re not involved in another mystery, are you, Dinah? Because you’re really too busy to be—”
    â€œGreat, cake!” I exclaimed hastily. Jack had just handed us pieces of sweet, sticky, matrimonial squares, a specialty at the Small Pleasures baking stall. I crammed in the crumbly, buttery, dates-and-golden-syrup-filled square all at once so I wouldn’t have to answer Mother.
    Jack and Madge, meanwhile, were—get this—feeding pieces of their cake to each other . Yech.
    â€œDinah, we leave in two days,” Talbot said. “I’m not sure this is the best time to be taking a jaunt down memory lane.”
    He, Pantelli and I were crouching in the low doorway to the Galloway attic. I put up a hand and nudged aside a wheel-sized cobweb. “Mother and Madge are out. This is our one chance to look in Dad’s effects for something worth eighty thousand smackeroos.”
    I let the cobweb fall on Talbot’s face. “Of course, if you have someone you’d rather be spending time with…”
    He shoved the cobweb aside and we glared at each other.
    Pantelli was gazing out the window at the top branches of our horse chestnut tree. “A rare, satisfying, top-down perspective of Aesculus hippocastanum ,” he observed and made his way to the window through an obstacle course of trunks and boxes.
    Talbot informed me coldly, “I’d like to have a rare, satisfying perspective of fairness from you, Dinah Galloway. The reason I was talking to Liesl at the market was to warn her. I said any more pranks—eggs-asperating or other—and she’d be booted off the Garden Park Softball Aces.”
    â€œOh,” I said. “Well, I may have been a bit hasty.”
    We grinned at each other and everything was all right again.
    Struggling with the window latch, Pantelli called back, “As aesculus comes from esca , or ‘food,’ there’s some thought that the name was given as a joke. Horse chestnuts are way too bitter to eat, unlike sweet chestnuts.” Cr-r-r-eak ! Pantelli flung the window open.
    â€œToxic and poisonous,” Pantelli said with satisfaction. “They contain aesculin, a bitter compound that breaks down blood proteins. As