Everyone on This Train Is a Suspect

“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.”