Everyone on This Train Is a Suspect

Dinner was at the Telegraph Station, one of the oldest outback homesteads in the country. Halfway along the spine of Australia, it had originally served as a relay post for Morse code messages between Adelaide and Darwin. We writers were traveling the same route as an electron of communication a hundred years ago. The train line may as well have been a telegraph line.

The station itself was a huddle of historic stone cottages converted into a museum with plexiglass blocking the rooms, which featured plastic food on colonial dinner settings. The cottages surrounded a dust bowl clearing that had been gussied up with white-clothed tables as if it were a wedding, tin bathtubs spiked with the necks of white wine and beer bottles so that they looked like sea mines, and a stage where a guitarist and a banjo player were crooning country tunes. The scent of searing meat wafted into nostrils as dinner was cooked on an open flame just far enough away from the guests to tantalize us with how rustic the cooking was, but not close enough to make us feel like we were in the kitchen. We’d been told before the trip to bring one formal outfit specifically for this dinner, so I had on a dinner jacket that thankfully covered up the crumpled shirt I’d neglected to hang. The sunset was almost offensively golden, photographically perfect. Tripods and binocular lenses clicked into place along the back fence like an army defending the line.

For all the beauty of the sunset, I couldn’t take my eyes off Douglas. I don’t know much about guns, but I do know the type he had binned—a little snub-nosed revolver, the one where you spin the chamber to play Russian roulette—was, like most guns, illegal in Australia. It’s not the sort of thing that one has a ready excuse for carrying around. I had no idea how he’d gotten it on the plane over from Texas, so assumed he’d picked it up in Darwin. Just because guns are illegal in Australia doesn’t mean they’re inaccessible, of course, and Darwin has a lot of farmland where legal firearms are used, but he’d have to be motivated to find one. And if he had gone to those lengths, why dispose of it without firing a bullet?

Douglas, in contrast to how stressed and furtive he’d appeared at the train station, now seemed relaxed and carefree, dancing with the book club ladies in front of the band. There was a definite air of celebration in him. This isn’t as accusatory as it sounds; there was very little grief in the air. Three-quarters of the train didn’t know what had happened, and of those of us who did, only a few thought it anything other than an unforeseen tragedy. What I mean is, people were determined to enjoy themselves.

Dinner was flame-grilled apostrophes of lamb chops, with chocolate damper, a bread cooked on a campfire, for dessert. We each had a designated seat; cards had been placed deliberately to separate us from our traveling party, to stoke conversation, so Juliette and I were split up. S. F. Majors, however, was at my table. After mains, when a few people had floated off to stand around the various fire pits or ice buckets depending on their desired temperature, I slid into the seat next to her.

“I don’t think we’ve properly talked,” I said, extending a hand. “Thanks for inviting me along to this whole shindig.”

Majors raised her eyebrows, looked like she was about to say something, and then gave a half chuckle and shook her head. “This whole ‘shindig’”—she rolled the word in annoyance and tossed it back to me—“is an absolute disaster.” She rubbed her temples. “If you see Wyatt coming, let me know. I’d prefer to avoid him.”

“What happened wasn’t your fault.”

“Tell that to Gemini’s lawyers. Even though Wyatt’s about to make his company a literal truckload of cash, they’ll want someone to blame. There goes my board seat for the festival too, if not the whole Mystery Writers’ Society. We killed Henry McTavish. I’m sure loads of writers will want to join now.”

“I thought it was a heart attack.” I played dumb.

She slugged back enough wine to endure me. “Sure you do. I’m a psychologist, Ernest, I can read you. Just ask me what you came here to ask me.”

She was terse enough that I figured I’d only get one question, so I refilled her wine until I decided on my angle. She didn’t seem won over by the gesture but sipped at it all the same. “What’s the psychological profile of an obsessive?” I asked. “Like a stalker?”