Mystery in White: A British Library Crime Classic by J Jefferson Farjeon

Strangers on a train headed home for Christmas find themselves snowbound.  It's snowing too much for the train to safely follow the tracks, so they're stuck.  But when they find out another station is only five or six miles away, they decide to walk.  Not all of them come along but off they go.  And then they get lost...

Poisoned Pen Press and Net Galley allowed me to read this book for review (thank you).  It will be published October 4th.

You have a girl and her brother, a chorus girl, a young man already running a fever, and an old man who fancies himself a paranormal investigator.  They walk and walk and almost despair before they find a house.  The lights are on but no one answers the door.  When they try the doorknob, it's not locked.  The fires are going, the tea kettle is on, and the table is laid out.  But for whom?  There's no one there.

There is someone there but they are hiding.  Another train stranger wanders in.  As they eat and drink tea, they talk about where they were going and what could have happened to the people who live here.  When another stranger arrives, he clashes with one of the men.  He eventually grabs a knife and takes off out a window.

From frantic antics in the snow to rescues right and left and the knowledge that someone on the train killed a man in another car, the story is suspenseful and has the flavor of an Agatha Christie novel.  The older man with the interest in paranormal is smart and eventually reasons out what must have happened.  

The story is just the right length and keeps your attention all the way through.  This was a good read of an old classic tale.