Terror on the Orient Express

Lady De Montfort extends her silk gloved hand in gentle greeting,
 
I must continue with my tragic tale of humiliation. If you can stomach this disclosure of vicious abuse, please read on...

I resume.

Seeing how traumatised the staff of Pickman Publishing were by the immoderate antics of its beastly CFO, our noble employer Jurgen Horst whisked us away via Orient Express, for a weekend of relaxation and cleansing, in Baden-Baden.

A vengeful trap was laid...

An act of unrivaled generosity only a twisted Socialist could resent... well...as we shall see...

 

Geldhabe’s first act of aggression was to make us share the Ladies Car with his revolting ogre Sweetlocks. It was an act of violence against feminine dignity that would shock even a Chinaman; and that hirsute, deep voiced hag was to persecute us, with vicious insistence, from Paris to Strasbourg.

It was not enough that her verbal (and bodily) expulsions were in-ordinate in their frequency and pungency. She actually tried to board our cabin and ravish our dignity.

From embarkation at St Pancras, we insisted on keeping four cabins and a locked door between us and the temper and volume of her snore; and the potency of her odour.

Clap Clap! Our honour was surely secured you exclaim! Hah! So we innocently thought...

It was as the Express curved sharply through the mountains of the Swiss Cantons, that the sleeping troll was hurled violently from her bunk, through the door of her cabin, and into the corridor. 

Surprisingly this brutal treatment did not rouse the monster from her slumber... 

However, as the Express pulled higher through the Fifa Pass, her rotund figure began to roll, and gravity propelled the bloated horror head over heels towards our door...

And yet - unfeasibly- these acrobatics still waked not the beast. So, cringing on the far side of our locked cabin door, we trembled with relief.

Disaster on the Blatterhorn...

Then as the Express crested the Blatterhorn, it shrieked its steam whistle to ward off an imbecile goatherd, and so Disaster Struck. 

Rudely startled the Sweetlock reared up, its bizarre hair and visage smashing the glass of our cabin door. The foul-dressed witch rolled it's head in confusion before brazenly focusing it's piggish eyes upon my confederate.

And at last my Countess’s composure broke...

My sweet companion has a sensitive and easily disturbed temper, but in this instance I cannot fault her response. Her dark eyes wide with anger, she raised her claws and launched herself like Un Coq Sportif against the intruder.

It took two train guards and the Coal-shoveller to drag the Countess from the flayed bulk of Sweetlocks. My brave defender was still heaving with hatred, her exquisite mouth and manicured hands filled with the rude tart’s coarse hair.

Victory? Nay, the Geldhabe had one more foul trick to play...

...To be continued...