'Crime Ingredients' by Lucienne Cummings

‘The English are nothing more than a nation of professional butchers,’ declaims the blue-suited Frenchman across from me, triumphantly. I know he has the smallest wagon-lit on the train, and so do not deign to answer. As the dining car enters a tunnel I see myself reflected in the window glass – pink silk blouse and immaculate Chanel scarf, dagger barely visible in the waistband of my woollen trousers. The professional assassin in me knows that my smallest movements will be noted and regurgitated later by the plain clothes detective with the moustache two tables down. But still the author of this novel insists I should kill my employer, Count Orlov, before the end of the chapter.

By the end of the book I will also be dead.