Chapter Two

Secret Adversary

The Doctor sat down a bit away from everyone else, and Ace took the seat beside him. He pulled a newspaper casually out from his pocket and pretended to read while he thought. At least, that was what Ace hoped he was doing. It would be pretty irresponsible of him to sit there reading the news while a killer was on the train with them. Ace pictured him doing that for a moment, just to amuse herself. Ace, would you mind not bleeding to death all over the comics? I wanted to read the sports section.

She almost laughed, and then caught herself.

Having no reading material to distract herself with, she took to examining the passengers, and nearly swore out loud. All three of them had beige coats. The tall one with black hair, the one holding onto one of the handles running above the seats, had a light brown-ish coat (that could be easily seen as beige) looped over his left arm. A pair of reading glasses were sticking out of his back pocket. The second man had his tan jacket tied around his waist, and his hair was soaked through. He had a mobile phone in his other hand and was reading the screen with obvious interest. The last bloke had his left arm in a sling, and his coat was lying in a sopping wet puddle on the ground next to him. It appeared to have been soaking wet from the rain.

"You said that the girl was pushed with his right hand," the Doctor said under his breath, still looking at the newspaper. It took a second for Ace to register he was talking to her.

"I think so," she said. "I'm not certain."

He lowered the paper ever so slightly, and winked at her. "I trust your observational abilities. So, three possible people?"

Suddenly, Ace wasn't sure any more. "Couldn't they have just walked out of the station?"

He shook his head. "I don't think so. The victim was standing at a news stand. There weren't any people on the platform behind it. And I didn't see anyone at the exit. So..."

"So everyone on the platform got on this train," Ace said, completing the thought. "They could be in another compartment, though."

"This whole thing happened near the edge of the platform. They wouldn't have had time."

Ace closed her eyes for a moment, and thought. "Right, then." She opened them, and checked the time. There was 13 minutes until the train pulled into the next stop. Thirteen minutes to find a murderer out of three people. She stood up suddenly. "Listen up, you lot!"

Everyone looked at her, including the Doctor.

"Be careful, Ace," he hissed under his breath.

"I said," she barked firmly. "Listen up! That girl back at the station who 'fell off the platform'. She was murdered. Do any of you care?"

One of the women sitting down covered her mouth with a hand and gasped a bit. Apart from that, everyone seemed impassive. Maybe they thought she was a loony or something. She forged on anyway. "I saw the exact moment she was killed! And I know that the person who did it was male-" she looked directly at the three men. "-and had a dominant right hand! And, he escaped onto this train." She paused weakly for a moment, and then added, "do any of you know anything?" for good measure. No one spoke.

"Ace," said the Doctor, at her elbow. "If anyone had seen it, they would have said something by now."

She blushed scarlet, and sat heavily down. "Damn. I just wrecked it all, didn't I?"

"Yes," he said heavily. "I'm rather afraid you did."

The man holding onto the handle above the seat shrugged. "I'm not a suspect, am I? I'm a left-hander."

The bloke with soaking hair sighed. "I'm right handed. Are you going to arrest me or something because of the way I write?"

They looked at the third person Ace accused, who raised his eyebrows. "Well, I'm left handed as well, but it's not as if I can use it or anything." He raised his sling pointedly. "Any more questions?"

"No," said Ace, slightly abashed. "Sorry."

Everyone returned to what they had been doing previously.

"I'm a right idiot," sighed Ace despondently. "I should have asked you before I did anything."

The Doctor smiled secretively. "'In every failure lies the seeds of success'," he quoted cheerily. "Why don't we try the process of deduction, hmm? It's very likely- probable, I might say- that one of these gentlemen is lying."

Ace thought about that for a moment. "So, what you're saying is the person who's lying is the bloke who's just shoved a girl onto the train tracks."

"Quite. Now, I don't think our friend with the broken arm would have been lying-"

"-why not?" interrupted Ace. "He's got a sling, which gives him an easy alibi-"

"-but," the Doctor swiftly cut her off, holding up a remonstrating finger. "It's on his left arm. He would have used his right arm whatever the situation."

"Oh," Ace said. She seemed to be messing up rather a lot today. "It could have been a red herring," she said. The Doctor grimaced a bit.

"Duly noted, but that's more the stuffing of a Sherlock Holmes novel than any real life situation."

Ace smiled. "Are you saying that we're Sherlock and Watson?"

He hummed a bit. "If that's so, which of us is which?"

"You'd be Watson, right?" she said. "Because you're the one who's a Doctor."

On the other side of the compartment, people were getting slightly restless. "You just accused us of murder," called the man with his arm in a sling. "Aren't you going to follow up on that? Or was it just some high school prank?"

Ace bristled a bit, but the Doctor simply raised his hat in greeting. "Good afternoon. My friend and I were just discussing how it would be impossible that you'd be the one to commit murder, sir."

The sling-man looked confused. "Oh. Well- uh, that's all right, then."

"What about us?" The bloke holding onto the roof handle indicated himself and the person with the mobile phone. "Are you saying that one of us did it?"

The Doctor stared coolly back at him. "Yes, I am. Miss Holmes?" He glanced over at Ace. "Would you be so kind to deduce who it was?"

To be continued...