Everyone on This Train Is a Suspect

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.

Forensic

Chapter 12

We were all swiftly banished to our cabins while the staff organized the cleanup. It sounds heartless to put it like that, but no matter how dramatic a dead body may be, there is always a moment where it just comes down to someone getting out a bucket and mop.

Besides, the Ghan was populated with twilight-years tourists: it can’t have been the first dead body the staff had faced. And a hirsute man who punished his organs with lashings from a silver flask wasn’t an unlikely candidate for an early demise. As such, while the guests oscillated between shivering shock and tear-streaked panic (the former being Majors, the latter being Brooke), the staff were remarkably calm. No one even mentioned stopping the train as an option. Of course, we were also in the middle of nowhere, and there was nowhere to stop. That’s the thing about trains: they rattle on.