Everyone on This Train Is a Suspect

Royce’s finger moved along his page. He sounded like a child reading in front of class. “You changed your mind about confronting him because a witness was there. That would be myself. You decided to use poison. You put it in his hip flask.”

“I thought you said where would the murderer put it. I was asking if you thought it was poison, not telling you it was.” I flung up my hands.

Royce flinched.

“Disregarding the fact that your theory has holes all over it—I don’t carry around bloody heroin, and if I did I wouldn’t just waltz in and confess to the first person who asked me any questions about it—I don’t have any motive. A bad review isn’t motive. I don’t care how mad I was, it’s not worth killing over.”

“It isn’t,” Royce said, and flipped back two pages. I couldn’t see the writing, but it was clearly a note he’d taken before our conversation. “But a hundred thousand dollars might be.”

“What?”

“You have an undelivered book to write,” Royce went on. “If you don’t deliver, you’ll have to hand the money back, and you’re suffering for inspiration because no one’s bitten the dust around you for a while.”

I faltered. One hundred thousand dollars was annoyingly correct. “Who told you—”

He cut me off. “You told your literary agent”—he flicked back even further, right to the inside cover—“that people, sort of, have to die in order for you to write a book. I was standing right behind you in the line to get on board. And I always knew there was something unsavory about your first book. Something that didn’t quite add up. So I knew you were planning something. I’ve been watching you this whole time, taking notes, making sure that I’d see what you were trying to do before you did it.”

My mouth flapped like a fish’s. Royce hadn’t been writing general notes: he’d been keeping track of me. The world’s worst amateur detective had invented an entire murder mystery out of one overheard sentence as I stepped on the train.

But Royce wasn’t done. “And now you’re here, telling me exactly what you did, because you’re going to kill me and pin me as the villain and then write another book about it.” He stood up, uncapped the pen and held it out like a sword. “Not today! Not with this writer.”

I took what I thought was a placating step toward him, but he jabbed the pen in the general air in front of me. “Keep away from me. I took a self-defense class while researching Dr. Jane Black, Book Six.”

“That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard,” I said.

“It taught me some valuable techniques.”

“Not the self-defense class, that you think I’m a murderer.” I reached forward and plucked the pen, quite easily as it happens, out of his grasp.

I am not one for reflexes but Royce’s required an archaeologist to find. He clutched the air where the pen used to be, then gave a little yelp and plopped back onto the bed, arms raised in front of his head in an X.

“I didn’t kill anybody,” I said. “And I’m not about to start with you.”

He lowered his hands slightly, peering at me from above his forearms. “You just wanted my . . . opinion?” Royce, who is a man so comfortable giving his opinion when it is not asked for that he assumedly found being asked for it quite the rarity, still seemed confused.

“I suspected there might be something in the flask. You’re the only one with forensic experience, so I thought if we put our heads together we might figure it out. And voilà: heroin. It wasn’t the conversation I thought we’d have, but we got there.”

Royce had settled back enough into his skin to choose petulance. “Can I have my pen back? It’s special.”

I held it up, noticing it had Gemini Publishing on the side. McTavish and Royce’s publisher, and Wyatt Lloyd’s company. “It’s nice.” I pressed my thumb into the tip. Watched it dimple the skin. “Sharp. A gift?”

“For my first book. A welcome-to-the-party kind of thing.” He held his hand out, begging for it back.

Fair enough, I thought, publishers liked giving welcome gifts. I’d gotten a mug and a bottle of champagne, which ironically reflected a writer’s hobbies somewhat more than a pen did.

“I’m not ruling you out as a suspect, you know,” Royce huffed. “Or . . . or . . . maybe someone’s trying to help you write. Provide you inspiration from afar.”

I’d already opened the door to leave.

“Where are you going?”

“I’m going to see if they’ll let me look at the body.” I tossed the pen at him. “You coming?”

Chapter 14

“Absolutely no way”—Aaron’s arms clamped shut so fast over his chest they could have been a bear trap—“am I letting you lot poke a corpse.”

He blockaded the walkway from the bar through to the restaurant. The sound of Cynthia scrubbing the spot where McTavish had vomited, a bucket of soapy water beside her, carried through the now empty carriage. The body had been cleared away, the wet stain the only evidence that someone had died there an hour ago. Without the hubbub of the guests, I could hear the glasses behind the bar tinkle and chime as the train rocked.