The Overnight Berth
- A case in 10 chapters
- Free to play
- Large print
- Read in order
How the case begins
The overnight express leaves the city at nine with a secret in compartment four: Miriam Voss, whose mysteries sell out of every station bookstall in the country, traveling under a plain name with one satchel and a manuscript she will not discuss. By breakfast the secret is worse. The berth is empty, made up as if never slept in, her spectacles folded on the pillow, pages on the fold-down desk, and the compartment locked from the corridor side. The train made every scheduled stop and no unscheduled ones. Almost. Her publisher is aboard, three cars back, with a contract in his case and a temper he is working hard to hide. A schoolteacher in the dining car recognized the famous face at supper and has been hugging the secret since. And conductor Amos Reed, thirty years on this line without losing so much as a hatbox, walks the corridors all night saying little, checking his watch against stations only he could name in the dark. Somewhere between nine and daybreak, the country's best-loved writer of disappearances wrote one of her own.
Each chapter is a short scene and a puzzle, and every puzzle leaves you one clue. Keep all nine. The finale needs them.
- 1Compartment Four
- 2The Spectacles
- 3The Satchel
- 4Two Short Blasts
- 5Four Minutes at Milepost Ninety
- 6The Publisher's Case
- 7The Pages on the Desk
- 8The Circled Timetable
- 9The Far End of the Train
- 10Marlow Bendbring your clues
The people of the case
- Miriam Voss. The novelist. Twenty books, every one a bestseller, and lately not a single new page anyone has seen.
- Amos Reed. The conductor. Thirty years on this line, knows every siding and water stop by heart, and answers questions at his own pace.
- Gilbert Sharp. Her publisher. Aboard with a contract for three more books and an advance already half spent, by him.
- Effie Larkin. A schoolteacher heading home, who recognized the famous face at supper and told nobody at all.
- Charlie Dunn. The sleeping-car porter. Made up berth four at seven and will swear to what he saw, which is nothing.
- Hazel Finch. The dining-car stewardess. Served compartment four its cocoa at ten, and remembers exactly who else was in the corridor.
Prefer pen and paper?
The whole case as one large-print booklet: every chapter and its puzzle, a clue ledger to fill in, and the ending sealed on the last page.