Everyone on This Train Is a Suspect

“You did. You were blind drunk at the time. I caught you going to visit him to give him a piece of your mind. Maybe you gave him a piece of something else instead.”

“Can everyone just shut up for one—” Royce took a breath. “This isn’t how it goes. Okay? I go around the room, I deconstruct your alibis and then I reveal the killer. There’s not normally this much heckling in a denouement.”

“De-noo-moh,” Wolfgang and I said in unison.

If the Ghan were a steam train, Royce’s ears could have powered it. “There’s only one person with real motive. That’s where the clues point. Someone who visited Henry in his room, who was close enough to him to spike his hip flask. Someone who was upset by the amount of money they were about to lose on Henry’s next book. Someone who offered Henry a check for twenty-five large to retcon the series ending. Henry turned down the offer—he burned that check in front of our killer. Bet you didn’t know I had that clue, did ya, Ernest?” He patted his pockets, looking for the burned check to show off, which he, of course, couldn’t find.

I hid a smile.

“They fought, which gave Henry a bloodied nose. This person realized Henry’s next book would be twice as marketable if he was dead than if he was alive. That someone was . . .”

Just quickly, if it helps see who’s close to 106, I’ll interject with a name tally:

– Henry McTavish: 286

– Alan Royce: 220

– Simone Morrison: 96

– Wyatt Lloyd: 90

– S. F. Majors: 86

– Lisa Fulton: 83

– Wolfgang: 77

– Aaron: 59

– Brooke: 56

– Jasper Murdoch: 55

– Harriet Murdoch: 50

– Douglas Parsons: 35

– Book Club/Veronica Blythe/Beehive: 26

– Cynthia: 25

– Archibald Bench: 24

– Erica Mathison: 11

– MongrelWrangler22: 6

– Troy Firth: 3

– Juliette: EXEMPT

– Noah Witrock: EXEMPT (by virtue of being introduced past halfway, too late to be a killer in a fair-play mystery)

Majors has really come around the outside here to bump up the ranks, and there’s a bit of a move from the back of the pack in Aaron, Jasper, Harriet and Brooke, all climbing up a notch or two to pretty much dead even. Royce has tipped into the category of “too obvious,” and besides, why stage this grand reveal if he was really the killer? A few look primed to overjuice the tally, but consider that Wolfgang’s only put on a meager thirty-seven since the last count and anything can happen. And remember to add multiple identities together.

Okay, interlude done. I’ll let Royce finish his sentence . . .

“. . . Wyatt Lloyd!”

There was a silence as we all digested it. Though there was more head-scratching than gasping. On pure statistics, having now used his name ninety-two times, Wyatt’s (ninety-three) definitely in the mix.

“Does that work?” Brooke asked skeptically, breaking the silence.

I was running through the clues in my head. Wyatt definitely had motive; Royce was right about the financials. But I’d heard them arguing in Wyatt’s cabin, not McTavish’s, though Royce didn’t know that. So the burning of the check would have happened there. I was also certain Lisa had given McTavish the bloodied nose.

“Of course it bloody works,” Royce snarled.

Simone had a hand up now. “I don’t know if it does. Where’d you find the check?”

“Twenty-five’s not really going to move Henry’s needle—his advances must be in the six figures,” Wolfgang said.

“Did Wyatt have bruised knuckles?” Majors asked. “I didn’t notice them.”

“LISTEN!” Royce bellowed. “I am telling you exactly what happened. Henry McTavish was murdered, and Wyatt Lloyd is—without a skerrick of doubt in my mind—definitely the killer.”

Not even a millisecond after he’d finished speaking, there was a scream from the tail carriages. No one spoke or moved for the next few seconds. Then Jasper burst into the room, gasping, and said:

“Wyatt Lloyd’s been killed.”

Legal

Chapter 26

The book. The blood. The body.

Wyatt’s room was carnage. The mattress of the bottom bunk was flipped out of place, the sheets ragged, the pillow knocked to the floor. A bloodied handprint was smeared on the bathroom door. On the table under the window lay a fist-thick stack of paper. Underneath, between the table and the bathroom door, sat Wyatt Lloyd.

Wyatt was propped between the corner of the wall and the bathroom, his head slumped. Blood had flowed from his neck down his shirtfront, forming a morbid red napkin, and pooled on the floor between his legs. He was wearing blue satin boxer shorts and a formerly plain white T-shirt: it seemed he’d been in bed before he was attacked. More so than the gore and the death, the fact that he was in his pajamas seemed the most undignified. A blood-soaked piece of fabric was wrapped around one hand: Simone’s blue scarf.