The night, thankfully, passed with no further chaos, and the characters awoke from their slumbers without too much difficulty. Although all three of the Starshines had experience of sleeping on moving trains, it was still a rather strange experience to open the curtains and discover you had awoken in a different location to the one you had fallen asleep in.

Once through the shower and fully dressed again, the three set off back to their assigned table. The sun was well risen in the sky, shining its glorious beams down upon the windows and bathing the interior of the coach in light. It was also nicely highlighting the terrain around it, which was always a bonus as the south coast of England was certainly quite stunning.

Unfortunately, the theft of the cake had rather put a damper on proceedings, and as such the breakfast was eaten in a somewhat subdued manner.

Sunny leaned in. "It's oddly quiet," she said. "I can hear the rumbling of the pony truck from here."

"Pony truck?" Argyle asked. "I can't see a pony pulling a truck."

"Presumably that's the same as leading wheels," Goldie said. "Excuse me." She quickly turned her head and sneezed, before starting to fish about in her handbag. "I know I left a kleenex in here somewhere."

"Freight cars!" Argyle added.

Sunny looked confused. "What's going on?" she asked. "Why are we all using US terms all of a sudden?"

"I'm not sure, actually," Goldie said, having finished blowing her nose. "I know I still sometimes use American vocabulary from time to time, but not in this amount."

"That's reasonable, given that you were born and grew up in the States," Argyle replied. "But I have think I know why it's happening here."

"Why?" Sunny asked.

"Somebody has accidentally put the US dub on by mistake. So, we just need to switch back to the UK dub and we should be fine!"

And then everything went blurry.

The night, thankfully, passed with no further chaos, and the characters awoke from their slumbers without too much difficulty. Although all three of the Starshines had experience of sleeping on moving trains, it was still a rather strange experience to open the curtains and discover you had awoken in a different location to the one you had fallen asleep in.

Once through the shower and fully dressed again, the three set off back to their assigned table. The sun was well risen in the sky, shining its glorious beams down upon the windows and bathing the interior of the coach in light. It was also nicely highlighting the terrain around it, which was always a bonus as the south coast of England was certainly quite stunning.

Unfortunately, the theft of the cake had rather put a damper on proceedings, and as such the breakfast was eaten in a somewhat subdued manner.

Sunny leaned in. "It's oddly quiet," she said. "I can hear the rumbling of the leading wheels from here."

Argyle shrugged. "That's probably the sound of the carriage bogies."

As breakfast landed on plates, which in turn was placed before them, Goldie addressed her husband and daughter. "Let's get down to business," she said. She looked at Argyle. "And no, please don't make the obvious joke."

"Noted," Argyle replied. "I think we've done it once before anyway."

"Anyway, we need to find out who took this cake. I have every reason to suspect the cake and the cake thief are still onboard the train, as they would have had no opportunity to get off without risking serious injuries."

"Presumably because we haven't stopped?" Sunny said.

"Precisely." Goldie nodded. "And that means we have a chance to interview potential suspects. I can safely rule out anybody who was in the coach at the same time as us because if they had a cake on them we would have seen them moving it." She flipped open a menu and showed a photo. "You'd struggle to carry that without anybody noticing."

"So, we need to talk to the people who were closest to the cake at the time it vanished," Sunny said. "And that's how we find out whodunnit!"

"Who did it," Argyle gently corrected. "Whodunnit is only used when talking about the genre."

Goldie rubbed her hands. "Once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be a lead that you can chase up. OK, I know that's not what Conan Doyle wrote, but it works far better for my method. Once we are done with breakfast, we have a few interviews to conduct."

Once breakfast was done, sleuthing could begin. Goldie had decided to use a part of the seating area as an interview zone, and right now the man she was speaking to was the head chef.

"So, what did you see that night?" she asked.

The head chef thought for a moment. "It was around nine in the evening. Myself and two of the other chefs had picked up the cake from where we had assembled it. Every aspect of the food on the train is prepared to order, as would be expected with an experience like this, so we had been getting it ready for an hour or two whilst the hot meals were going out."

Goldie nodded and penned this down. "Thank you. Did you see anything after that?"

"I'm not sure," the head chef admitted. "I stepped out of the coach for a second to help one of my colleagues, who was having a bit of trouble moving a trolley back to the main part of the coach. It was awfully stiff, and it took us several minutes to finish moving it. But by the time myself and he were back in the coach the cake was gone! It had vanished!"

"Did anybody else see the cake being moved?" Goldie enquired.

"I didn't. But I'm certain that my staff at least had one person on standby in the room, so somebody must have seen something happen, even if it was just in the corner of their eye."

Goldie nodded, and closed her notebook up. "I think I'll be speaking with them next."

Goldie found that moving about in her formal gown was easier than she had thought over long periods of time, suggesting she was just very, very used to wearing it by now. Whilst she wouldn't admit it very often she wasn't opposed to dressing up nicely. It was simply that she had a less is more attitude when it came to aesthetics, and as such a lot of formal wear simply didn't appeal to her.

Her investigation of the rest of the catering staff also drew a blank, so she retreated back to the table and sat down, sighing.

"Everything OK?" Argyle asked.

"No," Goldie said. "Watertight alibis, the lot of them. None were in the coach at the time the cake went missing, and passengers can vouch for them being in other coaches at the time. Whomever did this timed their moment to strike extremely well."

"I couldn't find any clues either," Sunny replied. "The CCTV system was down in that coach, meaning we can't see what was going on at the time."

Goldie sighed. "It's all quite frustrating." She opened her handbag and dropped her notepad and pen back into it before closing it again. "This is one of those moments where I could do with pockets for storing things."

Argyle nodded, but gently took her hand. "No problem is ever solved overnight," he said. "Often it just needs a new approach to figure out how to get there. If we'd given up on having kids at the first hurdle, we'd never have met Sunny. And I think our lives would be the poorer for it if we hadn't."

Goldie smiled, glancing over to Sunny. "That is true. And above all we mustn't give up. We need to clear our heads and figure out a new approach. After all, we've only searched one coach. It may come up somewhere else, and we still have a lot of other people to interview."

Suddenly, the buzzer went overhead. "Ladies and Gentlemen, we will shortly be starting to serve lunch. Please take your seats and ensure your seat number is clearly visible. Thank you."

Sunny nodded. "Well, at least we can mull things over whilst we eat."

As things began to move about, Goldie couldn't help but feel she was inside a mystery novel. Vanishing cakes, a train full of exotic people, mystery and intruigue, and questions to answer.

At least their hadn't been a murder, which is always a positive thing, but something was nagging at her mind. The fact that nobody had seen the cake move seemed weirdly contrived.

Had nobody really been there when the cake was taken?

It all seemed rather implausible. Unless, of course, it was. Once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.

And, no matter what, Goldie was determined to find the truth. It may just need a bit of lateral thinking.

Author's Note

Hello, and welcome back to another chapter! The mystery deepens as we delve deeper into the cake theft.

The opening is based on an infamous Thomas VHS released in the UK that had the US dubbing tracks (I think it had a blue box). Safe to say, this tape thoroughly confused me as a young child. Having said that, it at least introduced me to how Thomas and Friends was released in overseas markets. The usage of railway terms can also be a giveaway for an author's nationality. A notable example occurs in the fanfiction Sodor Fallout, where the narrator (Charlie Sands) make a brief reference to Edward's pony truck derailing. The story's author, Tidmouth Thunderbolt, is Canadian, where the term 'pony truck' is used. The only issue is Sodor Fallout takes place in the UK and Sands is British, where the term 'leading wheels' is used.

Argyle correcting Sunny is based on a similar error Pinkie makes in Mystery on the Friendship Express. At one point in the dialogue, Pinkie states they need to find 'who dun it'. Whilst 'whodunnit' is a real word, it is only used to refer to a genre; in the context of establishing guilt the correct phrase would be 'who did it'. Twilight Sparkle tries to point this out, but it only causes Pinkie to get worse.

Next time; interviews after lunch!