Murder on the Orient Express

I have been only once, as a journalist, on the Orient Express, by which time it was in its revamped format aimed at the transportation of honeymooners, people sedately celebrating wedding anniversaries, along with supposedly lucky newspapermen between London and Venice or, in my case, between Verona and London. Invited, with the witty John Amis of the BBC, the well-informed freelance Martin Hoyle, and a prim Belfast journalist who shunned gourmet food, to write about the experience,.

I met my colleagues at Gatwick for our charter flight to Italy. In Verona we lunched in a goodish restaurant full of Roman relics in  glass cases - John, humming Beethoven’s Ruins of Athens, was delighted when I identified  the musical reference - followed by a trip round town with a dapper guide in a linen suit and Panama hat whom I nicknamed Fitzcarraldo in tribute to the Dublin-born adventurer who, in Werner Herzog’s film, wanted to build an opera house in the Andes.

We were then driven to a Valpolicella vineyard for a wine tasting and salami selection. At night came Aida at the Arena, amid flashing Japanese cameras - Martin furiously scolded but failed to deter members of the audience sitting near him - and the distant flash of lightning over the Dolomites. Our hotel was at the northern end of the lake, chosen in preparation for the next day’s perilous mountain hike, which John, wearing one of his gaudy waistcoats, handled with aplomb but which, on a high ledge, brought tears of misery to Martin’s eyes.

The  climax, however,  was still to come.  It was reached with the boarding of the famous train at a wayside station. We had been forewarned, to our horror,  that we would have to share sleeping compartments, but this was a deception on the part of our prankish escorts.  In fact each of us had his own separate, beautifully renovated compartment, complete with a polished-wood art deco  washing cabinet. Later, in the bar, I offered John a drink, and I handed the bartender  the equivalent of a £20 note for our glasses of Campari.  “I’ll need two of these,” he replied. Drinks on the new Orient Express did not come cheaply, but dinner, at least, had already been paid for.

While our colleague from Ulster ate scrambled eggs, the rest of us were given sea bass - the proper Italian fish dish, sliced from something as large as a salmon,  and not just one of the fiddly sprats served in Britain.  At the piano, barely audible as the train swept through Alpine tunnels, was Jan Latham Koenig, a rising young conductor - he had appeared at the Edinburgh Festival - deeply embarrassed to find music critics in his midst. Meanwhile, on a sofa beside  the bar, lay a woman beneath a blanket.  Before falling asleep she had  told us that  her husband had locked her out of their compartment. So much for the Orient Express as a place in which to celebrate your wedding anniversary.

At the Gare de l’Est in Paris next morning, crates of lobsters were loaded on to the train in preparation for lunch en route to Boulogne. The Ulster journalist had more scrambled eggs, but no doubt they were cooked to gourmet standards.  On board the boat the slumbering woman was reunited with her husband and were briefly seen embracing.

Finally, on the British leg of the journey, a dainty afternoon tea was served in antique British coaches. It had been, on its own touristic terms,  a good trip. But would I do it again? Remembering the brutal cost of that Campari, I rather think not.

Here is the opera house in Peru mentioned in the blog. John Duffus sent this to me. He and my friend, Thomson Smillie are in the photo. Thank you, John.


23 February 2015