Case file
The Northern Express
The premise
The night express from Paris to Budapest, October 1927. In compartment 7 travels the Aurora — the Stradivari violin on which the Lwów virtuoso Taras Kovalchuk opens the competition there in two days' time.
At 23:40 the train stopped in a tunnel — a clang, darkness, four minutes. When Kovalchuk came back from the dining car the violin case was empty.
There is no getting off in a tunnel and no luggage has left the train: the thief and the violin are both still aboard. The police board at Budapest — you have three rounds.
Who is at the table
Everyone introduces themselves with one public line before a word is said. Nothing below is a clue — this is only what the whole table already knows.
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Irène Walewska
The violinist who lost the last competition to Kovalchuk. The jury split — over the instrument, they say, not the playing.
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Josef
The sleeping-car attendant. He knows this train by heart: who sleeps where, who turns in when, which door squeaks.
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Margot Delfort
A silent-film star: her face is known in every town along this line, her voice in none of them.
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Samuel Goldberg
An impresario: twenty years of making names, and Kovalchuk is the best of them.
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Henri Ducrot
A dealer in rarities: he carries around Europe the things you cannot buy in a shop, and knows the price of everything on this train.
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Taras Kovalchuk
A virtuoso on his way to the competition that decides everything. He keeps the Aurora with him — people who do not care for the violin come to hear that instrument.
Where you are
Five carriages, an emergency cord in every vestibule. The third: Margot's compartment and Henri's. The fourth: the dining car. The fifth: Kovalchuk's compartment 7, Irène's next door with a connecting door between them, and at the end the attendant's service compartment with the keys on a hook. The windows will not open in a tunnel and nobody carried out any luggage. The violin is still on this train.
Everyone at the table gets a character, three cards and one rule: you may hide things, you may not invent them. Between the acts a dossier appears on every phone with a new fact about somebody in the room — and it never clears anyone.
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