Everyone on This Train Is a Suspect

Chapter 7

The Ghan rolled on. The Northern Territory whipped past our window.

Rocky outcrops with scraggly, crooked trees, no taller than Alan Royce, backs bent low as if shielding themselves from the bright sun, gave way to spinifex-pocked orange sand, made all the more vibrant by the unblemished blue sky above. The horizon was far, still and flat, and the expanse of the Australian desert, which we were yet to even hit the edge of, dawned on me. We may as well have been an ant making our way across a sandpit.

Three hours after we set off, we made our first stop, in Nitmiluk National Park, Katherine. I crunched down the portable steps onto gravel. There was no station here; we had simply stopped in the middle of the tracks, and the Ghan seemed somehow more impressive by how out of place it was, shiny steel among nothing but trees and sky and birdsong. I became very aware of the footprints I was leaving in the dirt, in this place where neither I nor a giant man-made metal snake really belonged.

Up near the head of the train, almost a kilometer away, waited a queue of buses. They would take the nonfestival tourists on their scheduled day trip sailing down the magnificent Katherine Gorge: high rock walls bordering pristine, crocodile-filled waters. In front of our carriages were forty or so black fold-out chairs set up in the red dirt for the festival attendees. Another six chairs faced the group, a wireless microphone on each and portable speakers either side. Behind these was an easel with a rectangular canvas mounted on it, hidden by a black felt covering.

Juliette kissed me on the cheek, which I took to be for luck, until I realized she was walking in the wrong direction and had meant farewell.

“You’re not staying?”

“Aaron said he’d sneak me onto the gorge tour.” She grimaced with the confession, but it was a cheeky guilt. Of course, the choice between one of Australia’s natural wonders and six writers having an ego-off wasn’t really a choice at all, but I didn’t do a very good job of hiding my disappointment. She overamped her enthusiasm. “You’ll be great! . . . Unless you want me to—”

The offer was half-hearted, her body already tilted toward the tour buses like a runner waiting for a starting pistol. Behind us, people had begun to mill about in the crowd, and the writers were choosing their seats. S. F. Majors was walking up and down, carrying a clipboard stacked with paper and notes; Henry McTavish was ambling, his back to us, clutching a cane with an ornate silver top that he ground into the dirt with each step and looked at risk of splintering; and Alan Royce lap-dogged behind while chewing his ear. Henry chose the furthest of the six seats, on the end next to an already seated Lisa Fulton, perhaps hoping to shake Royce. Royce was marooned for a second, looking around to see Wolfgang already seated dead center in the prime focal point, and then shamelessly trotted to the other end of the row, picked up the last chair, and relocated it to McTavish’s empty side. I couldn’t hear him from where I was, but his mouth remained flapping in conversation, as if he hadn’t broken his train of thought at all to consider that McTavish didn’t want to sit next to him. As soon as Royce sat down, though, Lisa stood up and moved herself to the opposite end—whether this was to rub in the wasted effort of Alan’s circus or her own disinterest in sitting next to McTavish, I wasn’t sure.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” I said to Juliette, forcing a smile onto my face. “Take lots of photos. Try not to get eaten.”

Juliette flicked a final look over at the impromptu staging, at the gathering writers. “You too.”

“Welcome to our first thrilling panel!”

S. F. Majors, it turned out, was on hosting duties. I knew she chaired the festival board, because she’d invited me, which I mention here because in murder mystery books like these it’s generally quite a key point who invited the cannon fodder to the specific location they become trapped in. You know the scene: a character turns, holding an invitation, and says to another, “You invited me here,” to which the other character holds up the same invitation and says, as lightning flashes against their face, “No, I didn’t—YOU invited ME here.” Cue calamity. So you have that answered now: she’s the one who brought us all together.

The reason I was invited may not be important to the plot. But it’s damn well important to someone. I just don’t know that yet.

Majors introduced the panel to a smattering of applause that, in the expanse of the open, sounded more pathetic than it had indoors. I caught a couple of craned necks lusting after the final departing tour bus. I’d ended up next to Lisa Fulton on the opposite end to Royce and McTavish. Wolfgang was next to me, and Majors had filled the space between him and McTavish. We’d all shuffled our chairs down a bit to compensate for Royce’s seat switching.

I tuned out of the introductions and took my first proper look at McTavish. The main thing that struck me was that he didn’t look how I’d expected. Of course, writers can look like anybody, and it was nothing physical—his stature slotted somewhere between the blocky Royce and the spindly Wolfgang, and his wispy hair was wild enough to be uncared for but not enough to be eccentric, which is all par for the authorial course—but writers do have a look. There are a couple of variations to it—S. F. Majors’s sternness is that of a writer by whom everything is analyzed as an opportunity, for example, and Royce’s eagerness for plaudits is ego plastered over a true lack of confidence—but it’s all in the eyes: the dead giveaway. A writer’s eyes are wide and curious, taking in the world and flipping it over, interrogating and interpreting it, regardless of whether it’s for vanity or creativity. I saw it beneath Wolfgang’s scowl, beneath Lisa’s shyness, even in Royce’s maligned notebook. But McTavish had none of that: his eyes were giving off the petulant clock-watching of a student waiting out a detention. It was jarring to see my favorite writer in this light. I knew his agreeing to attend this festival was quite the coup, but now I could see why he abstained from these kinds of things: it must have started to feel like serving time.

Noticeably, his left side, the one he’d propped up walking with the cane, was, for want of a better word, crumpled. His tweed jacket seemed to hang more loosely around a coat hanger of a shoulder, his trousers baggier around a bony knee, while his right side filled out the fabric much more naturally. He wasn’t disfigured, but he was unbalanced: he looked like a loaf of bread you’ve accidentally put the rest of the groceries on top of. A drunk driver had cleaned him up one night, sped off and left him twisted and broken in a gutter. This had, of course, been bundled into his publicity: he’d been told he’d never walk again, never write again. And look at him now. Back from the brink.

His cane was leaning on the seat next to him, and I could see now that the ornate topping was a gleaming silver falcon. He slugged from a similarly gleaming flask, produced from the inside chest pocket of his tweed jacket, often enough that I wondered why he bothered to screw the cap back on each time.

“Let’s start with you, Lisa.” Majors kicked off the interviews proper. “Your debut, the striking novel The Balance of Justice, was released twenty-one years ago. It was a worldwide phenomenon, breathing new life into the courtroom drama, and from a fresh female voice too. It’s still reprinting today! A lot of people, me included, have been clamoring for your next book. We’re set to finally get it this Christmas. Excuse my bluntness, but what took you so long?”

“Well, following up The Balance of Justice was a tricky thing.” Lisa spoke out to the crowd, and I noticed she’d put on a hint of fake radio-announcer voice. “Certain parts of that novel were maybe ahead of their time, and I think the world has finally caught up to the conversation I wanted to have about women and our rights.”

“Fascinating.” Majors had the air of someone reading ahead to the next question. “So it wasn’t the pressure of the follow-up? That didn’t contribute to the gap?”

“I get writer’s block like anybody,” Lisa said, but a little uncomfortably. “I wanted the right idea . . . but I can’t say that really influenced it. I wanted to be in the right space to publish again—writing a book is a soul-baring thing, as you’ll know. Besides, I think a good book is a good book, no matter how long it takes to write.”

“Kids didn’t derail you? I understand you’re a single mum, not long after your debut? A book baby and a real baby in the same year. Must have been tough.”

“I don’t think you’d ask a single dad that.” Lisa didn’t even bother painting on a smile. “I’d ask the other women here, but seems I’m the token guest on the panel. Shame, when we should be sticking together.”

Majors took the hint. “That’s a good opportunity to move on to our next guest. Ernest Cunningham, I guess you’re different from Lisa in a way: I don’t think anyone’s hanging out for your next book.”

This insult blindsided me, and I took a second to steady myself. “Um . . . well . . . I think people actually quite liked my first. I hope they might read another.”

Majors faked a droll laugh. “Of course, of course. I simply meant we’re all hoping you don’t have to write another book. Given what happened to you and, more importantly, those around you, the last time.”

“Oh, sorry,” I mumbled. There was a loud cough and I saw a plume of assumedly blueberry-scented smoke arise from the crowd. Beneath it, Simone tapped one hand under her chin and used the index finger on her other to trace a line across her cheek. She was telling me to look up, speak up and smile more. To an onlooker, however, it might have looked like she was slicing her finger across her neck. I forced some energy. “Absolutely, I wouldn’t wish to go through that again. Especially not for the same royalties!” Even Simone smiled at that. Relieved, I relaxed into the conversation. “I am writing though. I’m working on a novel.”

“Good luck,” Wolfgang said, in the not-quiet-enough way where his surprise that I’d heard him had to be completely faked.

“Tell me about it,” I agreed. “No one told me fiction would be this hard.”

“Harder for some,” Wolfgang said, and I realized his first comment had not been the self-deprecating alliance I’d taken it as.

“Excuse me?”

“Your book. Stranded on a mountain, a serial killer.” He wriggled his fingers as if describing a scary movie. “All very sensational. The kind of sordid stuff that sells a lot of books, I’m sure.”

“I wasn’t thinking about book sales at the time,” I said. “I was rather busy trying to stay alive.” This got a gentle laugh from the audience.

“Excellent deflection. Media training kicking in.”

“I’m sorry, are you accusing me of something?”

“Festivals welcome feisty conversation, but let’s keep things civil,” interjected our host.

“I mean no offense.” Wolfgang wasn’t even speaking to me. He was pandering to the crowd, like he was the narrator and I the hapless clown in a pantomime, righteousness puffing out of him with every word. “There’s obviously demand—that’s how a writer like you can sell a lot of books.”

“What exactly is a writer like me?” I fumed.

“A connoisseur in the fine art of pulp.” He leered. “I mean that as a compliment, of course. Different strokes for different folks.”

Majors had crumpled the top sheet on her clipboard with her anxious hands. She made a feeble attempt to regain our attention. “Okay, I think we might—”

“No, sorry. I’m curious.” I turned to Wolfgang. “What exactly makes my writing pulp and yours literature? You can’t come to a crime festival and sneer at our whole genre, when all you did was copy Capote.”

He shriveled a little at that.

“It’s all words on a page,” I continued. “I put as much of myself into my work as anyone here.”

“If you don’t know the difference between pulp and literature, that would be a serviceable definition of the problem.” He crossed his legs and leaned back, as if to imply that his response was of such inarguable caliber he would not indulge a retort.

“It’s nothing to be ashamed of. We all start somewhere,” Alan Royce chipped in, predictably.

“Sounds to me like the only difference is having a last name or not, Wolfgang.” This got me another laugh from the crowd, which incensed Wolfgang enough for him to sit up straight again.

“You write blood and guts for the sake of it, as if it’s entertainment. It’s distasteful. In fifty years, books like yours will be spat out of machines. And of course, your prose is amateurish. I’m not the only one here who thinks that.”

He looked over at McTavish, who glanced up from his flask somewhat confusedly, and I realized that we’d been wrong about Wolfgang being too lofty to read the online reviews. Apparently no amount of acclaim can bandage the cut from a stranger on the internet. I’d done panels before, when the book had first come out, and I was familiar with the occasional barbed question, sure. But the majority of writers are generous and warm. For a literary confrontation, this had struck me as particularly aggressive. Now I knew why. Wolfgang was incensed that McTavish had ranked him down low alongside me, and so was now trying to assert himself above our commonality. It still came down to ego.

“You want the difference between pulp and literature? Between a real writer and just a writer? I’ll tell you: adverbs.”

“Adverbs?”

“You use too many of them,” he said, derisively.

It seemed to me quite snobbish to say that real writers didn’t use an entire group of legitimate words in the English language, but here is where I confess that I was too flustered to articulate this. I shut up, embarrassed and enraged in equal measures.

“Leave the lad alone,” McTavish said, surprising me by both coming to my defense and revealing that he’d actually been paying attention. He used the microphone like a father of the bride: inexpertly, alternating between too far from his mouth so the words came patchily, and too close so the wincing ring of feedback echoed. “Nothing wrong with a bit of blood and guts. I’m sure it’s fine.”

And just like a flare of lit magnesium burning bright and short, we settled back into the usual panel rhythm, though not without a few whispers of excitement from the crowd, no longer regretting missing the gorge tour. The next set of questions went to Wolfgang, beginning with his In Cold Blood adaptation and then moving on to his future works. It turned out he wasn’t writing anything new at the moment, but was instead focused on an “interactive art installation” titled The Death of Literature. He started most of his sentences with Well, you see and As you know as he discussed influences almost entirely comprising obscure philosophers. I found it grating but kept my mouth shut.

“Nothing like a little bit of literary snobbery to get us started,” Lisa whispered in my ear. “Don’t let it get to you.”

“What’s an adverb?”

It took her a second to realize I wasn’t joking. I had a sinking feeling my only alliance was about to disintegrate. What had started as a grin melted off her face. Slowly.

Wolfgang’s pontification finally ended, and the questioning moved on to McTavish. Backs straightened in the crowd with interest; it was obvious, given it was one of his rare international outings, he was who people were here to see. To my surprise, now that the spotlight was on him, it was like a switch was flipped. No longer was he half slumped in his chair peering into the black hole of his flask. He came alive: impressing with tales of drizzly Scottish moors, of growing up poor and how hard he’d had to fight to not only get his books published, but then to be taken seriously as a writer (perhaps this was why he stuck up for me, I thought, though I was still struggling to forget that little red star), and how, recovering in the hospital after his accident, he feared he’d never write again. He finally finished on how much he hoped people enjoyed his most recent Detective Morbund novel: The Night Comes.

At this, a hand shot up immediately. It was the young woman I’d seen clutching a copy of Misery.

“There’ll be time for questions at the end,” Majors said.

“It’s just—” The girl jigged like she needed the bathroom. “I was hoping you’d talk more about The Dawn Rises, given it’s the newest. Henry, it’s incredible, by the way. I loved the way you—”

“Thank you, there’ll be time for questions at the end,” Majors said again with teacherly steel before turning to the wider crowd.

“The young lady is correct,” McTavish interrupted. “Though I do consider both books one half of a two-parter. Of course, The Dawn Rises won’t make any sense if you don’t read The Night Comes first, which is out in a new paperback this week. There are so many release dates and formats and countries to keep track of, it’s easy to get muddled. What I’m really saying is: just buy both.” McTavish mugged for the crowd and was rewarded with a laugh.

“I can’t imagine how complicated it is bringing a series of sixteen books together for a finale.” Majors got back on topic. “How did it feel to say goodbye to such a popular character?”

“Uh, well that’s a tough one.” McTavish faltered. A light slur nudged on the edges of his words and the previous sparkle had disappeared. He clearly had an alcoholic’s touch for delivering pre-rehearsed lines but little room for improv. He was scanning the crowd, and I noticed his eye line settled on Wyatt, but it wasn’t for reassurance, like why I’d hunted out Simone. His eyes blazed with annoyance. Wyatt shrank a little in his chair. Owner of the company or not, it was clear who was in charge. McTavish directed his answer at him. “Goodbye is such a strong word. I don’t want to spoil it for the people here who haven’t finished it yet, but no door is ever closed.”

“I feel like that’s as much of a scoop as we’re going to get from you,” Majors responded smoothly, reading McTavish’s deliberate aloofness. “One more question for the craftspeople in the audience, then. Is it true you write all your books by typewriter? I heard that you do it to protect against spoilers, by only having a single typed copy of every manuscript. That seems quite an extreme solution.”

“It’s not so extreme if you think about it. J. K. Rowling’s manuscripts used to be handcuffed to her publisher’s wrist, like the U.S. president’s nuclear codes. Dan Brown’s publishers required his translators to work out of a basement in Milan for a month: no internet, security guards if you wanted to use the bathroom. You can’t take it lightly. You should see some of the things people have threatened to do to me to get their hands on a manuscript. And with everything online these days, I just don’t trust my computer. Besides, I like the feel of the keys.”

“What if your house burns down?” I couldn’t resist asking. Admittedly, I was a little emboldened by the fact he’d taken my side earlier.

It was the first time I’d spoken directly to McTavish and he looked askance, as if he was trying to decide if he was offended. I wondered if he’d really been sticking up for me, or if he’d just wanted to disagree with Wolfgang. Eventually he said, “I would take that as a sign from the universe that I probably need another draft.” He unscrewed his flask again and took a long swig, in a clear sign to move on.

Royce looked like a dog ready to go outside, such was his enthusiasm to finally have a question of his own.

“And last—”

“But not least!” he chipped in.

“Yes. Of course.” I realized here that Majors said of course as a polite way of saying shut up. Whenever she was interrupted, in fact. I chalked her up as a woman who took great care with her words and didn’t wish to be either diverted from them or spoken for. “Alan Royce, author of the Dr. Jane Black series, whose novels take place on steel tables and in morgues. Very chilling reading!”

“I prefer to think that I write novels about society, depravity and humanity, and the crime itself is just the engine for a more . . .” Royce paused in the same deliberate spot as he had over breakfast, and I realized this was a man who took himself very seriously and wanted to advertise that he did everything with great effort. He was the type of person who picked up and carried a suitcase with wheels, just so he could complain about how heavy it was. “A more enlightened conversation around some real-world issues.”

“Of course.”

“I think that’s our job, really. To interrogate society. Which I think is what Wolfgang was saying, with regard to the French modernist move—”

“Plus you’ve got firsthand experience with all the gore and grisliness, right?” Majors was taking pleasure in reducing Royce to his most sensationalist identifiers. To her credit, the crowd did prefer to hear about morgues over Wolfgang’s tangent on French modernism. “You used to be a forensic pathologist yourself?”

“Oh yes, that’s what inspired me to write fiction.” Royce exaggerated the last word, lingering on the f sound by pulling his bottom lip under his front teeth and flinging it like a trebuchet. It looked like he was aiming the word at me for some reason, which didn’t make any sense, given that I was the only one there who hadn’t published any.

“Wonderful,” Majors said. “Let’s move on to audience questions.” Royce deflated a little at getting timed out, but she either didn’t notice or didn’t care, as she gestured toward the black-cloth-covered easel behind her. “And after that, we have a special treat for you. So. Questions?”

Misery-girl’s hand was up first. Majors made a show of looking around at the otherwise unmoving crowd, before selecting her with an obvious lack of enthusiasm. A wireless microphone was delivered into the audience by a staff member, and the young woman stood up.

“My question’s for Henry.” She bounced a little on her toes as she spoke. “My name’s Brooke and you might know me as the president of Morbund’s Mongrels!”

Morbund’s Mongrels were McTavish’s die-hard fans. McTavish showed little recognition of the mention of his fan club, nor did he noticeably clock the phrase on her T-shirt (A nod’s as guid as a wink tae a blind horse, which is a Scottish colloquialism for plain speaking and as close to a catchphrase as Morbund had, as he often delivered it during his monologuing solve). I’d suspected Brooke was his publicist when I’d first seen the T-shirt, but now that I knew she was Head Mongrel, it made sense that she was on the train specifically to fawn over Henry. The price of the trip still seemed excessive for her age (I still pegged her as early twenties, not least because I figured the passion to organize anything, let alone be the president of a global fan club, dissolves like sugar in water after you turn twenty-five) but I supposed she came from money. Either that or her adulation was such that it didn’t matter how hard she’d had to scrape, from how many shifts of bar work or mopping fast-food floors, to meet her idol. Henry’s words echoed—the things people have threatened to do to me to get their hands on a manuscript—and I wondered if there were any other Mongrels on the train, and if their obsession was another reason he no longer did events like these.

“I wanted to ask, without spoiling anything”—she looked around with a guilty expression—“Morbund’s not, well . . . is he? I mean, in The Dawn Rises certain things happen and I just wanted to ask if he’s actually—”

There was a groan from the back row familiar to anyone who has a spoiler-defensive friend (this, for me, is Andy, who once berated me for spoiling the ending of, of all things, Titanic). I must admit I was a little cheesed at Brooke too, because although I’d known from the marketing that The Dawn Rises was Morbund’s supposed swan song (it was emblazoned on the cover, alongside a New York Times pull quote—“Unputdownable and unbeatable: McTavish is peerless”—that meant McTavish would never have to beg for blurbs), I hadn’t thought that McTavish would kill off his prized character. His books were, after all, in first person, and you already know that is a cardinal sin for fair-play mysteries in my eyes. How does a book get written down when the protagonist is dead?

Take me, for example. You know I’m not currently in the dirt, being bullied by writers under a burning sun. No: I am in a hospital room in Adelaide, finally off the train and in a plastic-sheeted bed but not yet allowed home, as the police are still gathering everyone’s statements and body parts. I’m typing this out while occasionally requesting more painkillers and scratching a thin sheet of skin from my peeling neck.

“Thank you, Brooke,” McTavish said, clearing his throat, the mere act of his remembering her name from fifteen seconds before almost making her spontaneously levitate. “I’ll keep the secret for the rest of the audience here, but I think it’s up to your own interpretation.”

It was a nothing answer, and Brooke wrinkled her nose. The Ghan staff member held their hand out for the microphone. Brooke clutched it like a toddler scared of losing a toy. She seemed to have forgotten she had four more days in which to harass McTavish, and to want to capitalize on this moment: to win him over.

“Okay, well, it’s just that the innkeeper, in the book—his name is Archibald Bench. Archie Bench.” She squinted expectantly and pronounced the innkeeper’s name in syllables, the way you gossip about an ex’s new partner (You’ll never believe who she’s dating . . . Arch-i-bald Bench), as if she and McTavish were in on the same secret.

I itched for her to get to the point. I could feel the back of my neck reddening, and I wished I’d put on sunscreen: I remember feeling certain my neck would blister and peel later.

“Am I right?”

McTavish glanced over to Wyatt, who shot him a boggled I don’t know grimace. I was pretty confused myself. I’d read all the Morbund books except the last and I’m normally pretty good at piecing things together, yet the name Archibald Bench meant nothing to me other than that an editor should have suggested swapping out the surname for something more realistic. Then again, just like I’d told Andy and like I’ve already told you, everything in a mystery is deliberate, and McTavish was up there with the best in trickery, puzzles and wordplay, and so I figured that if it was Archie Bench instead of Archie Bus-Stop or Archie Church-Pew, it must have had some significance.

“I think you’ve outsmarted me there, girl,” McTavish said at last. It was a general enough statement but, apparently, exactly what Brooke wanted to hear, as she pretty much clicked her heels with excitement and thrust the microphone back at the staff member, well satisfied that this moment, one she must have rehearsed over and over, had gone as she’d hoped.

Just quickly: I swear I didn’t conjure up that the book she was reading in the bar earlier was Misery, in which a psychopathic fan takes a writer hostage and forces him to write a dead character back to life (sorry, Andy, for the spoiler). That’s what she actually was reading. Until it got covered in vomit, at least. I assume she discarded it after that, but then again, seeing as it was McTavish’s vomit, I wouldn’t put it past her to souvenir it.

Majors offered a chance for further questions. Brooke must have been doing biceps curls in preparation for the number of times her hand shot up, and Majors did her best to pick around her but struggled with a lethargic crowd. Most of the questions were for Henry, which I didn’t mind one bit but had Royce practically wriggling out of his chair in the hope someone would target him. He almost imploded when the man with the speckled beard—I recalled the second glass of undrunk champagne in front of him—received a microphone and said, “My question’s for Ernest.”

I fumbled my own microphone to my lips and smiled to welcome the question.

“It’s a simple one,” the man said. I noticed he was on his own here, just as he had been at breakfast, on the end of a row, the seat beside him spare. “Did you kill him?”

As if on cue, a sudden surge of wind planted a stinging plume of red dust in all of our eyes. I scrambled to wipe the dust and collar my thoughts at the same time, and the best I could do was utter, “I beg your pardon?”

“Did you kill him?”

I’m sorry to rob you of the dialogue here, but my editor has censored the answer I gave, as it directly relates to the killings on the mountain last year. I can tell you that I answered simply by repeating what I wrote in the last book—the phrasing of which has been legaled enough to keep me safe. It seemed to go over well. Royce’s eyes were lava, on me the whole time.

A new hand rose. “I have a question for Henry.” It was the curly-haired wife from the couple I’d assumed to be fans: more Mongrels. She had a light Irish accent, the pitch riding up and down mountainsides. Her husband was sitting next to her, and he made a gentle grab at her elbow to pull her arm down, but she shook him off. “Where do you get your ideas?”

“Harriet.” Her husband tried to shush her and his cheeks flared with embarrassment. As a fan, he seemed the opposite of Brooke, in that McTavish’s turning their way seemed to panic him.

“I’m allowed to ask a question, Jasper,” Harriet said firmly.

McTavish headed off a lover’s tiff by leaning forward and spreading his arms. “What a fabulous question!” he said, before launching into a well-practiced answer.

If you’re wondering, writers fall into two categories: plotters, who outline their work before writing it; and pantsers, who sit down at their desk each day with no idea where the work will take them, thus flying by the seat of their pants. I suppose I am a bit of both, being that when I live the events of my books I have not much idea what is going to happen, but by the time I sit down to write, the killer has had the decency to plot most of it out for me (though I would stop short of calling the murderers I’ve encountered co-writers). McTavish revealed himself to be a pantser, stating that he started with an image, a feeling or even a color, and let that inspire where Morbund would wind up in each adventure.

It was a pedestrian answer to a pedestrian question, and I apologize that you’re having to suffer through this entire panel discussion as if you were there in both length and banal conversation, but I figure you deserve the proper feel of a literary convention. And, besides, there are too many clues in this chapter to skip over even the seemingly innocuous dialogue. Like what’s about to happen.

Archie Bench, it turns out, is rather important too.

“My favorite of yours is Off the Rails,” Majors said (this is, for those who don’t have an encyclopedic knowledge of McTavish’s work, his third Morbund novel).

Brooke nodded along. I dimly remembered the book, in which a couple staged a car accident with a commuter train to cover up the murder of their son. There was a particularly sordid scene involving the setup to the collision, in which the parents substituted two freshly dug-up corpses as their own in the front seats, designed to be pulverized beyond identification, but other than that I remembered little of the overarching plot.

“I recall a news story that was somewhat similar actually,” Majors added. “So, on top of colors and mood boards, you must find inspiration from”—she stole Royce’s trick of faking effort into word choice—“elsewhere.”

“Nae.” McTavish shook his head. His accent came out more heavily now, as his tongue tired and slipped around his consonants. “I don’t really take stock of much news. Of course the world around me sinks in every now and then, and I have to keep up with policing and technology, but if I paid too much attention to the news I’d never have an original idea for a book. You know what they say: truth is stranger than fiction.”

“There was a similar story though. In my hometown actually,” Majors said. “When I was a kid.”

Someone cleared their throat loudly in the audience. I looked over and saw Wyatt coughing into his hand. His focus was locked on to Majors, the expression on his face clear: Watch it. I saw Jasper roll his eyes at Harriet, as if the tension was her fault for asking a question.

“Was there?” McTavish asked, interested.

“You don’t remember? Lisa, you’d know the story. It was thirty-two years ago. Nineteen ninety-one.”

Lisa shrunk into her shoulder blades. “I don’t think I want to—”

“That’s a long time ago, lass,” McTavish cut in. “Where’d you grow up?”

“Out here,” Majors said. “We’ll cross right past it, actually. The train line, that is. About a hundred kays out of Alice Springs.”

“Aye. And the odds of me stumbling on an article from regional Australia, when I’m over in Scotland—well, it’s slim I’d say. I’m sorry if the book touched a nerve. If you knew someone who died or was hurt in a similar way as I imagined in my book, I imagine it would be painful to read about. But every one of us here”—he picked up his cane and scanned it across us all—“has killed an infinite number of people in an infinite number of ways. It’s inevitable that, somewhere, real life mimics it.”

“You don’t think—” Majors pressed.

McTavish laughed. “Thank God we’re just inventing it! If one of the six of us was to die right now, you’d have five suspects who all know how to get away with murder.”

Majors blanched. Her eyes flickered over to Lisa but found no hold. Lisa was busy tracing circles in the dirt with her toes.

“If each of your books is a color,” I said, trying to rescue the conversation, “what color is The Dawn Rises?”

“Red.” He delivered this with relish. “Blood red.”

This got a round of applause from Brooke, as it was clearly a reference to Detective Morbund’s fate. Even Wyatt smirked. How’s that for media training, I thought, looking over at Wolfgang. Maybe it was just being out of practice; I shouldn’t have doubted McTavish was anything but a pro.

Majors cut back in. “And, Henry, Off the Rails?”

If words could hammer nails, McTavish could have driven in a railway spike with his sharp reply. “Green.”

Majors made a great show of checking her watch and stood, creating a rustle of movement in the crowd, less of excitement and more in anticipation of a bathroom break. Bladders are the opposite of writers’ egos—finite—and many had been tested by our discussion. The morning champagnes hadn’t helped either. Thinking back, the alcohol had probably fueled the argumentative streak in us writers as well: normally literary talks aren’t so combative.

“It’s been a lively hour. To round out our morning’s program, we have a very special treat for you all.” Majors walked over to the easel on display. “We’ve had special permission from Penguin Random House to unveil to you, today, exclusively”—she gripped the corner of the black cloth draped over the easel—“the cover of Lisa Fulton’s new novel, The Fall of Justice, over two decades in the making.” She whipped the cloth off like a magician, revealing a large cardboard printout.

The cover showed a regal building, assumedly a courthouse, lit by the blood-red of a setting sun, the silhouette of a city behind it. Lisa’s name was in bright gold letters, lanky and stretched, bigger than the title itself. But most noticeable of all, in stark white type against the blacksmith’s forge of a sky, were four words.

Everyone reacted differently to these four words. Lisa’s hand went to her mouth. I could see her jaw quivering, eyes wet. She would have had approval over the cover design, but she clearly hadn’t seen the final version and was duly overwhelmed. Royce’s hands curled into fists and clawed up his knees. His mouth was set in such a thin line he’d probably cracked a tooth. Wolfgang hadn’t even bothered to turn around. Majors had her eyes set on Lisa, an expression in them I couldn’t figure out. It wasn’t quite jealousy but lacked the warmth of Happy for you.

McTavish was the easiest of all to read: he had a well-fed belly-slapping smugness to him.

Of course he did. Of the four words, two of them were his.

“A firecracker.” Henry McTavish

An endorsement from the man who never blurbed. And from where it sat on the cover, unmissable in size and brightness, it would definitely sell books. Lisa’s cheeks bunched like she was about to cry, and clearly afraid of doing so in front of everyone, she stood up and hurried back toward the train.

People in the crowd followed her cue and started to stand and break off. Wyatt stood up and came over to McTavish, wrapping one hand around McTavish’s good shoulder. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but I saw McTavish laugh in response to something Wyatt said. I headed quickly for the train, as I’d seen Simone start to rise. I did want to talk to her, but I didn’t have the energy just then to be properly mad at her and wanted to do it right.

I hurried back into the bar, where I ordered a Stella, served in a tall bulbous glass with the foam sliced off the top with a knife, and sat by the window, taking a miniature booth all to myself, waiting for the plume of dust to signal the returning buses. I was looking forward to complaining to Juliette—all-inclusive drink in hand, plush seat beneath me, as our first-class train continued on its world-famous journey—about how hard done by I was.

My position turned out to be fortuitous, because otherwise I might not have seen Alan Royce, dawdling behind the other guests, guiltily looking around until he was sure he was alone. I swear he looked right at me, but the glare of the sun on the window must have made me invisible.

Which meant he didn’t know I saw him glance around one last time, and then punch a fist straight through Lisa Fulton’s cover.

Chapter 8

The first beer didn’t touch the sides, but the buzz of alcohol helped my hands stop shaking. Writers are, universally, far more polite than what I’d just experienced. But there was something about this festival in particular that had us all at each other’s throats. Was it the isolation, the locked-off feeling of the train—no live-streaming, no journalists—implying we were on our own and therefore our actions might not follow us back to the real world in some kind of bizarre Lord of the Flies satire? Or was it simpler: S. F. Majors had clearly selected a combustible cocktail of writers. They all had their links, their grievances and their arguments, which, adding ego and cooking under the desert sun, baked into nothing less than a resentful quiche. Except for me. This was my first time meeting every one of these writers. So why was I here?

I told myself I was overthinking it and got up to get a refill, but when I came back the husband-and-wife team, Jasper and Harriet, had commandeered my table by the window. I looked around. The bar was filling up. The boisterous flock of older women had a spare seat at their table but I didn’t think I could handle them. McTavish had a stool at the bar, elbows keeping him upright, where he could mainline fluids, and though there were spare stools beside him, I didn’t think that was a much better option. No one else I knew was in the carriage, as many had retreated to their rooms. I must have hovered long enough that Jasper noticed.

“Sorry, mate. Did we pinch your spot?” He slid over, and I sat down. “Jasper Murdoch, good to meet you.”

His blackberry-dark hair contrasted with the Gatsby-lantern green of his eyes. He was wearing a T-shirt belted into a pair of jeans. I shook his hand, which bore the hardened fingertip calluses of a tradesman, and turned to his wife. “And Harriet, right?” This caught her off guard; she brushed a tendril of hair behind an ear. “I heard you talking during the panel. I’m not a stalker or anything. Ernest.”

“The adverb guy,” Harriet said. It was a warm insult, an alliance in thinking Wolfgang had been a bit harsh.

“That was all quite lively, wasn’t it?” Jasper said.

“That’s one word for it.” I sipped my beer, looking out the window at a staff member picking up the collapsed easel from the dirt, scratching their head at the lack of wind to knock it over. “I don’t think I realized what I was getting myself into.” I laughed. “But you’re the guests. Money’s worth for you, at least?”

“Don’t take it personally,” Jasper said. Harriet nodded.

“Like all good advice, that’s easy to say and tough to follow.”

“Think about it this way—to Royce and Wolfgang, fresh meat like you is a scary thought, because there’re only so many spaces on a shelf. And you’re standing there, ready to jump in their graves. So to speak.” Jasper shrugged. “That’s how they see it, I reckon.”

It was too astute a summary to not be lived experience. I hazarded a guess. “Which publisher do you work for? Gemini?”

“He’s a writer, actually,” Harriet said.

“Part of the festival?” I asked.

Jasper physically waved my question away. “I have business with Wyatt Lloyd. This seemed as good a place as any to chase him down and do it. Not often you get the chance to go all the way up and down Australia.” In the air, he traced a finger in a line up and a line down. I remembered the Ghan went both ways. “Especially for the Irish.” He whispered it almost conspiratorially, nodding at Harriet.

She playfully punched his arm and said to me, “Don’t listen to him. My parents are Irish, but I was born in Melbourne.” That explained why her accent was so light.

“So you caught the train up from Adelaide just to catch it down?”

“We rented a car. Drive up, train down,” Jasper said.

“Long drive.” I thought of the seasickness tablets that he’d mistakenly handed Wyatt. They seemed unnecessary for a desert road trip; he must have been the queasy carsick type.

“If you’ve never done it, I recommend it. Beautiful country. Nothing better than open roads, dingy motels and clear air to finish some projects.”

“Okay then, writer to writer. Am I being fragile, or was everyone picking on me?”

“I think you crave their validation too much. Who cares!” He shrugged. “It’s the stories themselves, not the covers and the shelf space or the festival invites, that outlive us.” This struck me as poignant, but it sounded just a little rehearsed. It seemed to me in particular that he’d convinced himself a festival invite wasn’t important, partially in defense of never having had one. His mention of shelf space, and specifically how little it mattered, twigged a better understanding.

“You self-publish?” I guessed. An online success trying to make the jump into print made sense: it was a reason to tail Wyatt on the trip. There’s always at least one guest at every writers’ festival clutching a manuscript, waiting to shove it into an unsuspecting publisher’s hands. “Ebooks? I used to do that.”

“Ah—”

“He’s very good,” Harriet bragged. “Sold just as many books as McTavish.”

“Thanks, Harry, that’s enough.” He clearly disliked her speaking on his behalf, like a child bemoaning a proud mother. He turned back to me. “I do okay.”

It wasn’t quite humility. He was suddenly a little more shy, protective, and I wondered if it was a glimmer of the same kind of imposter syndrome I felt. Of course, Harriet may have been inflating his ego, but the truth was simple: even if Jasper had great sales for his self-published work, he’d still had to come chasing a publisher on this train.

I turned to Harriet to change the topic. “And you’re a fan of McTavish, I assume?” She had, after all, been the one to ask him a question.

Harriet smiled. “I’m a big fan of his books.”

“What about you?” Jasper cut in. He seemed to me a gentle guy, but one with the uncomfortable habit of interrupting his wife when she was talking, as he had during the panel, which was a little too possessive for my tastes.

“Yeah. I’m not, like, a Mongrel or anything. But a fan. Well,” I half-laughed, “I’m deciding if I still am, to be honest.”

“If it’s any consolation,” Jasper said, “I heard that lady—she’s your agent, right?—arguing with Wyatt about taking those reviews down.”

“You’ve seen it too?”

“Word gets around. Everyone gets a bad review sometimes. Don’t let it bother you. Hey”—he held up his empty glass—“we might freshen up before dinner, right, Harry?”

Harriet nodded. “It was nice meeting you, Ernest.”

They stood up to go, and like I was at a speed-dating table, the man who’d asked me the question at the panel—gold-rimmed glasses and graying, red-flecked beard—sat right down. He had a leathered face and black-diamond moguls for furrows on his brow, and he wore an Akubra that was too clean to have been purchased anywhere other than the Berrimah gift shop. He was holding two beers, and just as I wondered if his mystery companion was joining him, he slid one over to me. This was too many drinks for my constitution—I still had a third of my second beer to go—but I hooked the glass with my finger out of politeness and nodded my thanks.

“Douglas Parsons.” He extended a hand and we shook. I didn’t feel the need to give my name, considering he’d read my book and had addressed me at the panel, but then I felt self-conscious that I was being arrogant in assuming he knew who I was, and so spluttered out Ernest after far too long a pause.

“Yeah. I was in the audience before.” He spoke in a light Texan accent.

“Oh.” Now that I’d indebted myself to the charade of pretending I didn’t know who he was, I had no choice but to continue with it. “The sun was in my eyes a bit. Thanks for sitting through it.”

“I asked you a question during the Q and A. I’m sorry if I was a bit . . . well . . . direct.”

“Don’t worry about it. Are you enjoying the trip?”

“It’s fine enough. It’s strange actually being here. I’ve thought about this trip for a long time.” His voice faded and his eyes looked past mine, like he was hypnotized by the rolling countryside, then he refocused with a sip of his beer. “Free booze. Can’t complain.”

“Are you here with someone?” I asked.

He shook his head a little. “Just me.”

It felt overly nosy asking about his second glass of champagne that morning. So I let the conversation fizzle and we sat in silence for a moment.

“My question, though. It’s just—” he started.

I’d had a feeling this was coming, and I cut him off like I was stealing his parking space. “You’ll understand I can’t talk about it. Legally.”

“I know. I know. It’s just, well, it’s funny that you’re here. Is all.”

I frowned. “Is it?”

“Because I was just reading your book on the flight over. One of those coincidences that aren’t really allowed in mystery novels, right?”

“Right. Well, you had to fly to Australia for this and I assume they sell my book at the airport. It’s not the wildest coincidence.”

He pushed his glasses up his nose. “For me it is.”

“That’s a long way to come. Favorite author? McTavish?” I assumed, given he rarely toured, that McTavish never traveled stateside. It seemed quite extreme to fly to Australia just to see one person, but, then again, it was coupled with an internationally renowned holiday. Maybe McTavish was simply the cherry and not the cake.

“It’s a rare opportunity.”

I half stood, knees bent but not quite risen, which was the most apologetic body language I could come up with to escape the conversation. The condensation from my undrunk beer pooled accusingly under the glass.

“I know you can’t talk about it.”

I was stuck, thighs burning, in my hovering stance. “I really can’t.”

“Hypothetically.”

“Not even hyp—”

“That person took a lot from you. Loved ones. Friends. They caused you pain. If you did—”

“I didn’t.”

“Hypothetically.”

“Fine.” I decided to indulge him.

“What would it have felt like? Revenge on this person.”

“There was no revenge. It was just survival.” This was true, but I paused for a second. Perhaps the two beers helped me forget the cautions of my legal team, perhaps I was just so sick of the posturing surrounding me, or perhaps it was Douglas’s beard, shaking like a bird had just taken flight from a treetop, hiding a quivering lip. Whatever it was, I added some truth: “It would have made me feel sad.”

“Sad?”

“Powerless instead of powerful. Which is what you might assume you’d feel before something like that happens. Hands around someone’s neck is control, right? No. Revenge has no power or control in it. Think of all the things that would lead you to that moment, all the things that had to go right, all the things that had to go wrong. I imagine it would feel like being a victim all over again.” I spotted the buses lumbering up the side of the track and stood up fully. “Hypothetically.”

As I left the bar, I glanced back and saw Douglas staring thoughtfully into his glass. Then he clinked it against my full one, in a solitary cheers.

I had an uneasy rumbling in my stomach as I made my way back to my room. It wasn’t so much the nature of the questions—we live in a world where people listen to the grisliest crime podcasts you can imagine while cooking dinner—it was the tone. It almost felt like he’d been asking for, well, permission. I hoped my answer had been suitably glum so that it couldn’t be taken as an endorsement.

Admittedly, that’s quite an analysis to give someone I’d only shared a third of a beer with. And I normally would have accused myself of overthinking it if, of course, he hadn’t just lied to me.

He’d definitely had two glasses of champagne at Berrimah Terminal.

So why had he said he was traveling alone?

And who was he traveling with?

Chapter 9

Juliette had the decency to lie about how good a time she’d had exploring the gorge. It was particularly artificial when she attempted to describe the forty-thousand-year-old rock paintings as so-so, but I appreciated the effort all the same.

By the time the last bus had disembarked and we’d both showered (the Ghan started moving in the middle of my shower, with a jolt that almost made me slip and break my neck) and dressed for dinner in the Queen Adelaide carriage, night had crept up and the flickering film reel outside our window had turned a deep navy blue, the shrubbery now only shadows as it passed. Neither of us was sure how formal dinner was expected to be: Juliette wore an orange-and-brown checked dress that she said felt “desert-y” and I’d brought a dinner jacket. We needn’t have worried, as there was a mix of suits and shorts in the restaurant. My theory is that the less wealthy you are, the better you tend to dress for expensive events—meals, the theater—as your effort in dressing matches your effort in expenditure. A week’s wage: better pop on a tie. One billable six-minute increment: I’ll wear boardies to the opera, no worries.

We both had crocodile dumplings for appetizers, which tasted like chicken, and kangaroo fillet for mains, which tasted like beef, and shared a table with a retired book-loving couple from rural Queensland who had taken the trip to celebrate their fiftieth wedding anniversary. They’d been saving up for quite some time, which they didn’t tell me, but she was wearing a vibrant floral dress, and he, believe it or not, a tuxedo. I won’t describe what they looked like, because they’re not important to the murders. There are plenty of guests on board who are simply that—guests—and I worry if I give them too much descriptive detail it may start you thinking that they are more relevant to the plot than they are. Just like there are many more staff than I’ve named, but I’ve got a tally to consider here. Imagine your grandparents: our dinner companions looked like them.

Dining was in three sessions; we were the second. Lisa Fulton was also there, eating with Jasper and Harriet Murdoch. Douglas, the Texan, sat across from S. F. Majors and Alan Royce, though it seemed a designated seating as Douglas and Majors were urgently whispering to each other, not including Royce. Wyatt and Wolfgang were at a different table, with Wolfgang doing the talking and Wyatt listening intently, a pointer finger on each temple. I didn’t want to make too much of it, but it looked like he was receiving very bad news indeed. McTavish and Simone were absent, though a waiter with a silver cloche returned from the engine-side rooms a couple of times, which meant someone was getting room service.

Your grandparents decided to retire, and Juliette and I stayed for a nightcap of red wine, for which we were joined by two women who worked as museum curators, one in London and one in Tasmania, and who had skipped dinner but come for dessert. The navy blue outside had disappeared, and while I had anticipated some kind of beautiful twilight desert-scape, it was instead, with no cities near or lights on the outside of the train, completely black.

“So you haven’t even mentioned the panel . . .” Juliette waded in.

“Not much to say.” I shrugged. “Wolfgang adamantly thinks I’m a bad writer. The only person who seems to be on my side is bloody one-star McTavish.”

“Hey.” She grabbed my uninjured hand and stroked it with her thumb. “Everyone’s just on edge. Traveling yesterday, early start today. Plus the heat and the grog—that’d make anyone a bit snappy.”

I sighed. “You’re right. It wasn’t just me anyway. Majors and McTavish had a tiff. Oh, and get this, you should have seen Royce’s face when they revealed that McTavish had blurbed Lisa’s new book: it could have boiled a kettle.”

“McTavish blurbed Lisa?” She frowned thoughtfully. “That’s awfully generous. It could really broaden her audience.”

“They set it up as a surprise: she was shocked. On the verge of tears.”

“I can imagine. Well,” Juliette said, swirling her wine in an evil pantomime, “also no harm in sticking one up to Royce. See? Everyone’s at each other’s throats.”

We turned at the sound of a bang and the clatter of cutlery. Wyatt had smacked the table, causing the spoons to bounce. He was half out of his seat. “You can’t do that,” he was hissing over the table at Wolfgang, who was cradling his red wine, a smug and stained smile on his lips. “It’ll ruin—” Wyatt realized everyone was watching and course-corrected. “Sorry,” he yelled overenthusiastically, the way a kidnapper talks at a random police stop, body in the trunk. “Sorry! Got caught up in the excitement.” He pointed at Wolfgang. “New book. Sounds amazing.” He lowered himself back into his chair, still flapping his hand apologetically at the rest of the carriage.

“I didn’t think Gemini published Wolfgang.” Juliette frowned.

I pulled my hand from Juliette’s and rubbed my eyes. “I just can’t help feeling I don’t . . .” The words I’d found difficult to say before ran up against my teeth and rattled them, begging to get out. This time I let them. “I don’t deserve to be here.”

“You do. No one here’s any better than you are. You’re a good writer. You deserve to be here just as much as—”

“No. Jules. It’s not just here. I’m saying it feels like I don’t deserve any of this. Anywhere.”

She blinked in confusion and leaned forward. I had no choice but to keep talking, but I couldn’t look at her, so instead I stared out into the ink dark.

“Everyone who died . . . They didn’t do anything wrong. And I didn’t do anything special. So why am I here and they aren’t? I don’t deserve it over them. To sit on this train, to cash the royalty checks . . . I don’t deserve even—even this ridiculously expensive wine. It shouldn’t be me. Why is it me?”

“Oh, Ern.” Juliette didn’t say anything more, just sat in understanding, for which I was grateful, as I’d run out of words.

Writing it out now, I know why I felt so personally attacked by the other writers. We all have imposter syndrome sometimes, it’s not unique to novelists. No one is immune from trying to prove something to themselves. But here at the festival were five people who were trying to prove their worth creatively. And though it may seem like I was motivated by the same vanity, I was trying to prove something else: that when fate had decided that some in my family should die while I should live it hadn’t gotten it wrong.

My therapist gave me a name for it: survivor’s guilt. You don’t really see it that much in Golden Age mystery novels. The protagonists finish one book and then live in stasis before it all just starts again on page one of the next. There’s no cumulative impact of the sheer volume of death and violence they see; every crime doesn’t embed in their psyche, eat away at them at night. For all my wishes to be like those famous fictional detectives, I am haunted in a way they aren’t, asleep between when their authors pick up a pen. Miss Marple doesn’t have nightmares, is what I’m trying to say.

Having finally told Juliette, I felt a little better. The gentle rocking of the train helped lull me further, and our silence was comfortable. Most people had filtered out of the carriage, though Wyatt and Wolfgang were still there. Wyatt had what looked like a checkbook on the table and was tapping a pen on it. I couldn’t hear what they were talking about, but judging by Wyatt’s other hand curling the tablecloth and the pen not moving to create many zeroes, Wolfgang was not to be bought.

At last Juliette yawned. “I think I might pack it in. I want to get up early and catch the sunrise—Aaron says it’s once-in-a-lifetime stuff.” She nodded down the carriage. “Shall we?”

“I wish.” I grimaced. “I was hoping to bump into Simone in the bar. It’ll be quick.”

“Shit!” Juliette started patting herself down, despite the fact that what she was looking for would hardly fit in her pockets. “Her scarf! I left it behind at breakfast, completely forgot to give it back to her. Oh, damn. I’ll check if they have a lost and found in the morning, or maybe someone picked it up. Would you mind not mentioning it when you see her? Say I’m still using it. Not that I’ve lost it.”

I did mention Juliette’s forgetfulness would be a plot point. Here it is: a blue scarf changing hands. This grim pass-the-parcel ends in a corpse.

“So you are scared of her,” I gloated. She shot me a look that said, If you’re not going to help . . . , so I backpedaled. “At least it’s not going to go far. I won’t mention it. And I’ll try to be quick.”

“Not too late.” She kissed me. “And for what it’s worth, I’m glad you’re here. Right here. With me.”

The froth from an espresso martini sailed off Simone’s top lip and onto my cheek as she spoke. “It’s not that big a deal, Ernie. Let it go.”

“It is to me.”

“What do you want me to do? If you had a problem with it, you shouldn’t have accepted Wyatt’s apology.”

“I didn’t know what it was for!”

“Then why’d you accept it?”

I huffed. “I was being polite.”

“And the polite thing to do now is to drop this whole thing before you embarrass yourself.”

I exhaled heavily through my nose, counted three breaths in and out. Simone was like cobblestones: I very rarely put my foot down firmly around her. But it had been a hard day and espresso martinis aren’t known for their defusing properties. If we served them at political summits, there’d be a world war every three months.

I straightened my posture and cleared my throat. “All right. I’m your client. I hired you. And I am asking you to act on my behalf on an issue that I believe will have a negative effect on my career. Okay?”

Simone took a second to weigh up the seriousness in my expression, then snorted. “If I’d known you had a backbone, Ernest, our friendship might have blossomed earlier.” She put a flat hand on my chest and gave it a condescending pat. “I’m not going to talk to Wyatt about it, no way, but I am proud of you.”

“But you did talk to him—a guest heard you arguing. So what you’re saying is not that you wouldn’t do it, but that it’s too hard and you’re giving up?”

“Okay, fine. I raised it with him, like your pal heard. Trust me on this, though, Ern: no author wants to hear every conversation their team has about them. I tell you what you need to know.”

I deflated. “Do you even care about my career?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Well, you seemed awfully chummy with McTavish and Wyatt this morning. After the review went up.”

Simone finished her drink and looked around the bar. Given the dawn start and the blackness outside, it was easy to think it was later than it was. Harriet and Jasper were having a drink in a booth opposite us. The president of the Mongrels, Brooke, was reading in the far corner. The only part of McTavish that had changed in the last hour was, repeatedly, the angle of his elbow. The three older women, two of whom had shared dessert with Juliette and me, were acting like it was a bachelorette party, sloshing drinks. Each had a copy of the same book out on the table, as if it were a book club, although the title wasn’t by any of the festival guests: The Eleven Orgasms of Deborah Winstock by Erica Mathison.

I knew that book. It had been a viral phenomenon. Too much sex to be mainstream, not enough to be considered outright pornographic, tittered about in enough salons and high teas to have sold well into the millions. If the established writers hated me, they’d surely despise Erica Mathison. The book had taken off on TikTok, which was both a social media app and the sound people like Royce must hear when new writers find new audiences in new mediums. The one I hadn’t met, hair twisted up in a silver beehive, was showing off her signed copy (To V!) with gold-bangles-jangling glee. It had the logo for Gemini Publishing on the spine and a sticker on the front from a Darwin bookshop—I knew the logo because I’d gone in there to shuffle my books to the front of the shelves, only to find none.

McTavish drew my attention with a thump of his cane. He slid off the seat and propped himself into a standing position. “Right! Off ter bed with this one.” He thumbed at his own chest as he called across the bar to Cynthia. A guest took the opportunity to dart up and cut him off, a copy of The Night Comes folded open, pen at the ready. I thought Brooke might follow suit, but Jasper was next to join the mini-queue. He didn’t have a book on him, so when it was his turn he stuck out a hand too early and then had to walk several steps with it out like a ship’s rudder until it landed awkwardly in front of McTavish’s belt.

“Jasper,” Jasper said.

McTavish gave him a murmured hello, but Jasper’s hand remained unshook.

Jasper coughed lightly. “Jasper Murdoch.”

“Yeah. All right. Hang on,” McTavish said. He fished a pen from his coat pocket and then took a cardboard beer coaster from the bar, scribbled on it and handed it to Jasper. “There you go.”

Jasper stood there a second, flipping the coaster over in his hand, then made his way back to his table and handed the coaster to his wife as he took a seat and a long sip of his drink. He looked like someone who’s just crossed the schoolyard to ask out a crush and depleted all their reserves of shame and energy simultaneously.

“To Jasper Murdoch,” Harriet read out from the coaster, then put it in her handbag. “Wow. That’s a keeper.”

McTavish ambled down the corridor toward the restaurant and his cabin further up the train, the heavy thump of his cane carrying through the thin floor with each step.

“Okay,” Simone said, after McTavish was out of sight and the rhythmic clunk of his cane was fading away. She spoke firmly, with a hiss, but in more of an I’m going to tell you something you need to hear tone than an admonishment. “Just so you know, we’re a partnership. You don’t get to tell me what to do. We’re supposed to trust each other.”

“I was just—”

She held up a finger. “I’m not finished. I know you’re upset. I get it. But I don’t need you involving yourself with McTavish, okay? I heard there’s a bit of tension between Wyatt and Henry. They’ve been in business directly for a long time—Wyatt snapped him up before any agent even got a sniff, and he still doesn’t have one. So friction between a certain author and a certain publisher might lead to opportunities for someone like me to work with someone like our Scottish friend. No offense, but I don’t come on a trip like this to watch the panels. If I get Henry on board, it increases the profile of my business. It increases your profile, by virtue of being a part of my business, like it does all my authors. And that’s when backs get scratched, and how someone like you might wind up with a blurb.”

“You’re trying to sign McTavish?” I thought aloud. “And of course Wyatt would hate that, because he’s probably got the Morbund books tied to a shit deal for McTavish. Or you could threaten to take him somewhere else, I suppose.”

She shushed me, scanning the bar to see if anyone had heard. “Could you be a bit more discreet about it? Jesus.”

“So you don’t want to make a scene about McTavish’s reviews because, what, it will ruin your chances of signing him if it gets back around? And I’m supposed to think that’s you doing me a favor?”

“No. I’m doing it for me. Of course I’m doing it for me. Ever heard of capitalism?” She looked at me like I was a moron. “But I’m saying it might benefit you as well. Long term.”

“Jeez, does everybody just steal everyone else these days?”

“Not from me they don’t. Don’t get any ideas.”

A thought struck me. “Who publishes Wolfgang?”

“Ah.” She ran through her mental Rolodex. “Brett Davis. At HarperCollins. Why?”

“Wyatt’s trying to buy him.”

“Really?” She snorted. “Didn’t think that was his style. Humph. Trying to add a bit of class to his list, I suppose. Balance out that crap.” She nodded to the book club table behind us, whose occupants were discussing Erica Mathison’s book with unbridled glee. I raised my voice to speak over them.

“Another thing: you said McTavish didn’t blurb.” I put a defensive hand out. “This bit isn’t about me, I swear. It’s just interesting.”

“He doesn’t,” Simone said. “I was just as surprised by that as you were. Either Lisa or her publisher has got some serious dirt on him, or he did it just for the look on Royce’s face.”

“Worth it,” I said cruelly. This was rewarded with a wry smile from Simone, which I took as a standing ovation.

The discussion of the soft-porn book had started to bleed over to our chairs.

“It’s . . . honestly, it’s . . . genius!” Silver Beehive said.

“There are so many layers,” her friend agreed. “Just true vision.”

The third kissed her fingers. “It’s a revelation!”

“Excuse me.” Simone leaned over the back of her chair to interrupt. “You’re not talking about that book, are you? The Erica Mathison?”

“Perhaps.” Beehive wriggled her neck, preening and offended. “Have you read it?”

“I haven’t,” Simone said, in a way that meant I wouldn’t.

“Well, it’s people like you who could learn a lot from this book,” Beehive said, to a chorus of sniggering from her friends.

Simone gave a tight smile. “Thanks for the recommendation.”

“Come on, ladies, I think we should finish our drinks on the smoking deck,” Beehive said, deliberately loud enough for Simone to hear. She stood and the rest followed suit, clutching their precious books. It was less of a dramatic exit than planned, given they had to gather their bags, books and beverages, but Silver Beehive still made the pretense of striding out of the carriage.

“Gee, the word genius is worn to threadbare these days,” Simone said when they were gone. “Veronica should know better.”

“Veronica? You know that woman? Is she another publisher?”

Simone gave me one of those I don’t know why I bother looks. “Blythe? Chief books critic for the Herald?”

I stared back blankly.

“She wouldn’t have reviewed you. Up a level—or so I thought. I wonder who she was with just now. Not critics.”

“They work in museums,” I said. “I met them earlier.”

“No wonder they need the raunchy stuff.” Simone slapped her knees. “Right. I’m off. Early start and all.”

“One more quick thing. Promise I’m done complaining.”

“Don’t make promises you can’t keep, Ernest.”

“Archibald Bench? Mean anything to you?”

She shook her head, sucking her teeth in a clueless fashion. “I mean, I assume it’s some kind of puzzle. That’s how you have to talk to Henry. To get his attention, to impress him, you have to use his own tricks. He loves codes and riddles and wordplay and all that Golden Age stuff. That girl seemed pretty desperate . . .” She spun a finger in the air, hunting a name.

“Brooke.”

“Brooke! The superfan. She seemed pretty desperate to impress, so she’d come ready to play his own game. It’ll be some kind of in-joke. A clue in the book or something. But I have no idea what it is. Now”—she stood up—“I’m off to bed. I hear the sunrise is to die for.”

Like all good mistakes, which are often made quickly and in volume, I careered through my next three before I’d even recognized I’d made the first. These came in the order of: ruminating in the bar until I was the last one there; having another martini while I did so; and deciding to confront McTavish.

I hadn’t quite decided on the last mistake until I’d stood up to leave the bar and gone in the complete wrong direction, finding myself in the empty restaurant carriage. That was enough of an omen that I decided my feet knew more than my head and continued into the next batch of accommodation, across the rattling gap where the carriages latched together, and through a door marked Platinum. The first set of cabins was on the opposite side of the train to mine, so the passenger windows would get the sunrise. The second was marked Staff with a small sign, and suffered the inferior western view, like my own. I could hear a loud banging sound, which I assumed came from the tracks or the restaurant’s kitchen, accompanying my steps. I soon came to another set of double doors and crossed the gap into the final carriage of our section. But instead of another hallway, I found myself in front of a closed door with the sign Chairman’s Carriage. It was the end of the line.

I wasn’t surprised that McTavish had the stateliest cabin, as close to the penthouse suite as you could get on a train, I suppose.

But I was surprised that I wasn’t the only one there.

Royce had his back to me. He was leaning into the door with his shoulder and banging a raised fist repeatedly against the wood. He looked like an unfaithful husband begging to be let back inside the family home. The smell of stale breath and beer wafted over me as I stepped between the carriages. The clatter of the tracks was louder at these joining points, where the floor was only gently overlaid and not sealed. A blur of gray stony earth was visible through the gaps, lit up every few seconds by the sparks from the wheels on the tracks.

“Henry!” Royce yelled, not noticing me. Thump-thump-thump. “Henry!”

The thumping was the sound I’d heard through the last car. I put my hand on Royce’s shoulder, and something like an electric shock passed through him. He whipped around and scowled. His eyes were bloodshot. He had a red mark above one eye, where he’d been leaning on the door.

“Pissssss off,” he said, spending S’s like he’d robbed a bank of them.

He lumbered at me, and I took a step back in case he took a swing, but he just stood there, swaying. He looked dejected, pitiful. Was that how I seemed to Simone? Grasping at dignity? This pathetic vision knocked some sense into me. I vowed to be more professional tomorrow.

“I know how you feel, trust me,” I said. “I came here to do the same thing. But let’s not embarrass ourselves tonight. Why don’t we sleep on it, shower, and see how we feel in the morning.”

Royce scowled back at the door like it had insulted him. “They’re in there.”

“They?”

“I heard them talking. A woman’s voice. He owes me, and he’s in there with her.” Royce turned and yelled, “I heard you talking!”

I put a hand gingerly on his shoulder. “You don’t want to do anything you’ll regret in the morning.”

“Come out and talk to me!” He stepped back to the door but I moved in quickly, deftly hooking under his armpit and spinning him around. He blinked widely, unsure of why he was suddenly pointing in the wrong direction, but accepted his new path without complaint.

“Why her?” he drooled in my ear. “Why did he choose her?”

“It’s just a blurb, mate,” I said, talking to myself more than him.

Royce half-walked, and I half-dragged him, through the restaurant and the bar and into our set of cabins. My shoulder was wet by now and I assumed it was saliva, but then I realized he was crying into my neck.

He hiccupped. “It’s just a few words. He doesn’t even have to read the damn thing. Wyatt used to care. He said he’d help me when I needed it, and he never did. But sales . . .” He burped. “It’s not like it used to be.”

“Hey.” I felt a surprising amount of empathy for Royce in this moment. “You told me yourself you got through four rejections for your first book. You’ve gotten over bigger hurdles. Chin up.”

“I begged. This time, please. Don’t ask Henry to blurb it, make him. Wyatt said he’d do what he could. He knew it could change my life.” He arrived at a door. “This one.”

We stopped in front of his room, and he spent a moment patting his coat for a key before remembering the door didn’t have a lock and staggering in. My kindness for Royce stopped short of stripping him down and tucking him in, so I stood in the doorway while he faceplanted onto the bottom bunk.

“Tell me,” he said into his pillow, and it was more a groan than words. “It didn’t happen, did it? All that stuff up on the mountain? You faked it, right? For the publicity.”

“It happened. I don’t wish it on anyone.” Then, because I figured he wouldn’t remember it, “Not even you.”

Royce made a cat-meowing sound, then laughed, hiccupped and belched all at the same time. It was impressive auditorily, but also quite pungent. “So you’re just lucky then, huh? That you somehow fell into those murders.”

“Yeah, mate. Lucky.”

“Of course, there’s another option.”

“Oh yeah?”

“If you didn’t make it up, I mean. Maybe you just did it all yourself.” His words strung out of his teeth like chewing gum, his sentences a single monotonous drone. “That’s one way to write a book.”

“You’re drunk.”

“And you’re lying,” he teased. “It’s not a bad idea. Automatic publicity. Easier than research.”

“Good night, Royce.”

“Henry better be careful,” Royce said, just as I went to close the door. I thought he was murmuring to himself, but I looked back and saw one blood-red eye staring straight up at me. “The things I’ve done for that man. He shouldn’t be so . . . so . . . caviar . . . with my friendship.”

“Cavalier?”

“Huh?”

“Did you mean cavalier?”

“Mmmm.”

“What have you done for McTavish?”

Royce blinked then, and it was as if a stupor was lifted. “Cunningham? What are you doing here?”

“I’m helping you to bed, mate. Few too many.”

“Be honest. It didn’t happen, did it?”

We’d come full circle: he’d completely forgotten everything he’d told me up to now, and surely he’d forget the rest by morning. It’s not far-fetched that Royce would accuse me of fakery: the great literary hoax is a grand tradition. Drug addicts’ harrowing stories of trauma despite never touching a single substance; Hiroshima survivors writing from the comfort of their imagination; a fifteen-year-old’s diary concocted by a fifty-four-year-old woman. In one memoir a woman claimed to have escaped Nazi persecution and been raised in the snow by a family of wolves, and the whole world believed it. Her story was even made into a successful film before the accusations flowed, leaving behind a red-faced publisher. Royce wasn’t the first to disparage me by any means—I’ve been on morning television and I have Twitter.

“It happened,” I said again.

“Then I guess you’re just the unluckiest bastard I’ve ever crossed. And if bad luck follows you, maybe something’s going to happen here.”

“Careful what you wish for.”

He blew a raspberry at me. “I do wish it. We’ll wake up tomorrow and one of us will be dead.”

“Don’t say that.”

“You’re just scared.”

“Of what?”

“That I’m right. And if I’m not, I’d love to see how you’d react to a real murder.”

“Good night, Royce.”

I closed the door, and I could hear his thunderous snoring within seconds. Juliette was fast asleep, dead still, by the time I got back to our cabin. She’d taken the top bunk. One arm, pale in the moonlight, hung limp over the side. I changed as quietly as I could into my pajamas and lay down in the bottom bunk, where I shut my eyes and tried to sleep.

The train rocketed along in darkness.

Chapter 10

It’s a staple of mystery novels that, just before the murder happens, certain conversations are overheard in the deep of night. This is to be the case here.

I didn’t sleep easily. I’d expected the gentle rocking of the train to be quite restful and meditative, and it may well have been had I not forgotten to account for the washing-machine sloshing of two martinis and two beers in me. Each pair would have been fine on its own but as a foursome they were having a keys-in-the-bowl swingers party in my stomach. I awoke to a gurgling shortly after I lay down, and not wanting to inflict carnage on our squeezed living space, this was how I found myself in the corridor, headed for the communal toilet.

There was just one public toilet in our section: it replaced the tea and coffee station past the restaurant. Now, it’s my duty as a fair-play detective to disclose to you everything I see, but I’ll spare you the details of what happened in the bathroom except to tell you it was far grislier than any murder that’s about to take place on the train. Wiping my mouth on the walk back to my room, I checked my phone and learned two things: it had just gone midnight, and we were officially out of reception. My phone would be useless until Alice Springs. I spotted some flower petals in a trail on the carpet, pink and dainty, that hinted at someone’s lavish attempt at romance. That explained Wyatt’s hay fever, or, I thought to myself, perhaps it was more likely he was allergic to affection.

That was when I heard Wyatt’s voice.

“I don’t care what you want,” he was saying inside his room. His voice was raised, but not loud enough to wake anyone. “It’s in your contract. More Morbund. It’s simple. Why change it after all this time?”

I paused but didn’t catch McTavish’s quiet reply, muffled through the door.

“That was just for publicity. Everyone’s going to read it if they think it’s the last one, and then everyone’s going to get excited when it’s not.”

There were footsteps as one of them paced.

“You promised me you’d bring him back. Not that you’d write . . . this.”

Another muffled answer. I leaned into the door to hear better. I recalled McTavish’s discomfort over the question of Morbund’s finale, his glare toward Wyatt. This argument must have been a follow-up to that.

“I know, I know. Archie Bench. Real fucking cute.”

A pause.

“Don’t threaten me.”

Suddenly the train hit a curve. I smacked my head loudly against the door and, to my horror, the voices stopped. I bolted down the hall, slipping into the tea alcove just as I heard the door click open. I pretended to make a cup of tea, just in case Wyatt or McTavish came out to investigate, but my charade was hobbled by the fact that the kettle had been tossed, assumedly broken, into the nearby bin.

It didn’t matter; I heard the door click shut and, after a minute, edged my way back through the corridor. Wyatt had lowered his voice or the argument had subsided naturally; either way, I couldn’t hear anything this time, so I hurried back to my bed.

I still couldn’t sleep. Juliette was dozing so contentedly above me, one arm still hanging over the side of the top bunk, that I couldn’t even hear the small whistle of her breathing over the train. How did she do it? Ignore everything around her, be at peace, so successfully? I’d thought that praise and acclaim were what was missing from my career, what would make me a real writer, but hearing that argument with Wyatt had made me realize McTavish felt just as trapped as I did. Was there any light at the end of this tunnel? Or did it not matter who you were or how well you’d done: someone always owned you. Someone always asked for more, more, more.

The whole day had left a sour taste in my mouth that wasn’t just from the regurgitated martinis. I had a feeling that tomorrow was only going to get worse.

I had no idea.

Chapter 11

This may be a surprise, but everyone survives the night.

I know that’s not how things usually go in a mystery. There’s the night before, in which halves of conversations are overheard (check) and the complex motives and backstories of everyone are introduced (check), then everyone retreats, as if Broadway choreographed, to their rooms, doors clicking in unison, only for dawn to rise on a tussle in the night, a bloodstained cabin and a victim. Alas, not here. Not yet.

The sunrise was, however, as impressive as advertised: a furnace of gold that bled over the sand and turned it into shimmering lava. As we approached the center of Australia, the land had become indescribably flat. It may strike you, as it has my editor, as lackluster that I can’t describe flat. But there’s flat, sure, and then there’s endless, barren levelness the likes of which an explorer, atop a camel perhaps, must have looked out across and thought was the end of the world. That’s flat. That’s the middle of Australia.

Juliette and I watched the sunrise from the corridor in our pajamas. Then we showered and dressed, navigating our confined cabin tango, and made our way to the bar for the morning’s panel. It was a congregation familiar to anyone as the first morning of a holiday—a mix of the overeager and the ravaged who’d hit it too hard the night before—and no corpses to speak of. The book club ladies (not dead) who’d been reading erotica bore the pale-faced regret of overindulgence. Brooke (not dead) was in the too-keen camp, staking out a seat right down the front, her copy of Misery on the floor and a large scrapbook in her hand, edges overflowing with jagged, hastily glued-in leaflets. Today’s was to be a smaller panel, just S. F. Majors (not dead), who was flicking through notes, and McTavish (not yet arrived), and so two fold-out chairs had been placed at the end of the carriage, and the audience seating was whatever we could snag from the bar.

McTavish (not dead) showed soon after, in a vest and a red tie, with Wyatt (not dead). They were both in jovial spirits, seemingly having moved past their midnight argument—though McTavish did have a slight bump on the bridge of his nose, a redness that looked like the prologue to a bruise. Had it been getting physical before I interrupted them? Brooke tried to shove her journal, pen extended, at McTavish as he passed her on the way to his seat, but Wyatt squeezed between them and reminded her there’d be a signing after the panel.

Simone (not dead) gave me a shoulder squeeze as she moved by me to sit down next to Douglas (not dead), who was carrying a single coffee this morning, perhaps out of awareness I’d been counting his drinks. Wolfgang (not dead), his back to the speakers, was reading a scuffed hardback titled The Price of Intelligence, which looked—from its plainness and size—like a science textbook, but I figured there was an equal chance it was an incredibly self-indulgent poetry collection. Jasper and Harriet (not dead) were unsurprisingly there, having proved to be autograph-hunting Mongrels themselves. Cynthia (not dead) was working the coffee machine again, under the supervision of our host, Aaron (not dead). Royce (not dead, but he looked halfway there) stumbled in just as Majors cleared her throat, seemingly about to start the panel; the scruffiness of a hangover still blurred his edges, and he dropped into a seat like he’d been shot in the knee. The only person truly absent was Lisa Fulton (liveliness to be determined).

As unslit throats were cleared with light coughs, hangovers were massaged from unshot foreheads, glasses of water were poured from unpoisoned jugs, and the remainder of the guests assembled and caffeinated themselves, McTavish leaned forward and whispered to Brooke, “It’s a mighty fine drop to drink alone.”

Before he could say anything more, the shrill feedback of a microphone indicated the start of the event. For her part, Majors had worked hard to make sure that this morning’s panel sought a closer examination of McTavish and his works. Despite her efforts, McTavish took those familiar swigs from his flask as he launched into the same anecdotes as yesterday. My attention drifted out the window. There hadn’t been much wildlife beside the train—the land was too barren even for kangaroos—but a circling bird, clawing talons extended, floated beside us.

Far on the horizon, thick black smoke blemished the blue in several spots. A helicopter dotted the horizon with a full vessel of water suspended underneath. It made me think there was probably more concern about the bushfire-lighting kite bird than Aaron had let on. Natural ecosystem, circle-of-life stuff it might be, but all that destruction for one’s own benefit didn’t seem all that natural to me. Burn a whole forest for one measly breakfast. It seemed, well, human.

Then I heard Majors say, “Are you okay?” and everything changed.

I turned to see McTavish with a hand over his mouth, shoulders heaving. He half-burped, half-hiccupped, and a stream of vomit gushed into his hand, spraying between the gaps in his fingers and over the front row, where the seated attendees squealed and scrambled backward. McTavish doubled over, dropping his flask to the floor, and gave up covering his mouth, spewing onto the carpet and coating Brooke’s copy of Misery.

I stood up, along with everyone else in the room, hovering, unsure how to help. Aaron was pushing his way to the front of the car, first-aid kit in hand. McTavish’s face was stark white now but had a tinge of blue to it, and he’d started to shiver. He gripped his cane and levered himself up to a standing position. His breath was coming in short sharp bursts.

McTavish seemed to have regained his composure, though he still leaned unsteadily on his cane. His skin was pale and clammy, his pupils pinpricks. The flask glugged in slow heaves, soaking alcohol into the carpet. He looked at us all, wiped his mouth and said, “I don’t seem to be feeling all that well.”

And then he died.

I mean that literally. He was looking right at me, and it was like someone switched his brain off. There was no slow eyes rolling back into his head, no gradual closing of his eyelids. He was looking at me one second, and then his circuits fried, his eyeballs snapped to different directions (one up and to the left, one completely sideways), and everything in them was gone. He stayed upright for a second after this, by virtue of his cane, and then his body slackened and he crumpled to the floor.

Unmoving. Dead.

No one budged. It was too absurd, too unexpected and too violent for anyone to even think to scream. No one made a sound: just a single, horrified silence.

Except, of course, for the scratching of Alan Royce’s pencil, scribbling in his notebook.

Chapter 11.5

Here’s what you’re thinking:

Lisa Fulton is your current primary suspect, by virtue of her being the only person who’s been remotely nice to me so far on this trip. Her lack of incrimination is, ironically, incriminating. She was also the only person not in the room during McTavish’s death.

Alan Royce is currently lowest on your list of suspects, given that he is the kind of reprehensible cockroach who normally winds up the victim in these books, and you consider him too obvious as a murderer.

S. F. Majors and Wolfgang are on equal footing, somewhere around the middle, as are Simone and Wyatt. They’re all clearly hiding something, but it’s not clear whose secrets are worth killing for. Wyatt seems to be in the middle of a lot of webs, given he has relationships with most, if not all, on board due to his position at Gemini Publishing. You’re keeping an eye on all four.

You have also considered that the killer may not be one of the writers but could be one of the guests, in which pool you have Brooke, Jasper and Harriet Murdoch, the erotic book club ladies and Douglas. You’re not convinced that any of them have reason enough to qualify as a murderer—but out of the lot of them, Douglas’s “mysterious stranger” act has perhaps drawn the most attention.

You haven’t ruled out the staff: Cynthia, the bartender, and Aaron, the journey director, because Aaron and Cynthia are the only staff members I’ve given a name to. Of course, Aaron and Cynthia may be on your mind because you know there is also a second murder to come, and you may have considered this reason enough for Aaron and Cynthia to be named.

Juliette has thus far avoided your scrutiny, because a returning character doesn’t tend to commit the murders in the sequel unless their character changes completely, and such an inconsistency wouldn’t be considered fair. Sure, you might suspect a little bit of jealousy given that we both wrote a book on the same topic and I’m the one with the invitation to the festival. But to be clear: only an idiot would accuse Juliette of murder.

So now we know where we sit with regard to suspicions. You also find yourself wondering about the following plot points:

Is Henry McTavish really dead? Because people sometimes come back in these kinds of books. I’ll tell you now that you can as much wink at a blind horse as you can at a dead Scottish author: he’s stone-cold deceased.

You think the plot of Off the Rails may be significant.

It has occurred to you that not everyone in these books is who they say they are. You wonder if someone whose real name is Archibald Bench is on the train under a different identity.

I also promised you I’d use the killer’s name, in all its forms, 106 times. To be fair, if there are multiple identities at play, I will consider the cumulative total of both. The running tally is:

– Henry McTavish: 136

– Alan Royce: 70

– Simone Morrison: 56

– Wyatt Lloyd: 51

– S. F. Majors: 46

– Lisa Fulton: 40

– Wolfgang: 40

– Jasper Murdoch: 27

– Harriet Murdoch: 21

– Brooke: 20

– Aaron: 14

– Book Club/Veronica Blythe/Beehive: 14

– Archibald Bench: 10

– Cynthia: 9

– Douglas Parsons: 8

– Erica Mathison: 4

– Juliette: EXEMPT

This may feel unusually candid for a narrator in a detective story. Maybe. I say all this because, believe it or not, mystery novels are a team sport. Some authors, the bad ones, work against the reader. But we are a team, and in order to play fair, you need to see what I see. I want you to succeed in figuring it out, just as I have.

Of course, you still don’t trust me. You can’t help but think I’m feeding you a batch of misdirecting red herrings to keep the truth hidden. That when I tell you someone is the most likely suspect they are the least likely, and vice versa. Of course, if you’re thinking that, you’re also thinking that maybe I want you to think that, and so I’m telling you the most likely suspect in order to make you think you are outsmarting me by thinking they are the least likely, when in fact, they really are the most likely. And so on forever. A key part of mysteries is working with not only a reader’s beliefs but their disbeliefs as well. So you’re thinking the very list is the red herring.

All I can tell you is what I’ve been telling you so far: the truth. After all, I told you Henry McTavish would be poisoned, didn’t I?

Well, not in those words, I suppose. But I did say the inspiration for this book would come from a drink with him.