Everyone on This Train Is a Suspect

“You’d be surprised how easy it was,” Wolfgang said. “I just punched in what I needed to happen in each chapter. The algorithm spat it back out. It took me all of a single day. The writing wasn’t perfect, but Wyatt’s team cleaned it up in edits. He was so titillated by this debased concoction, his judgment so blurred by dollar signs, that he ignored all the red flags. He didn’t even care we didn’t meet. Voilà. That was the point of the whole thing. Commercial fiction is a recipe. True art can only be made”—he pointed at his forehead—“here.”

“If I understand correctly,” Hatch interrupted, now leaning forward like an overeager schoolchild, no longer objecting but fully invested, “this gives Wyatt motive to kill Wolfgang. Not the other way around.”

“Exactly,” Wolfgang said. “Not only that, but I wanted everyone to know. That’s why I invited my guests. It was going to be in the papers as soon as we hit Adelaide. I told Wyatt to his face. This was always a secret I intended to tell. I didn’t kill anybody”—that was, if you’re counting, the fifth of six times this phrase will be used—“to cover it up.”

“You’re right,” I said. “I did wonder if the money might have been enough to make you change your mind. Now that you’d enjoyed the financial success that had eluded your career so far, would you kill to keep it? But I don’t think you would. And you gave me the biggest clue of all to the real killer.”

“At your service,” Wolfgang said dryly.

“No joke. You actually liked someone’s writing.”

Wolfgang grunted, perhaps offended by the accusation of positivity.

“I’m talking about Life, Death and Whiskey. When you flicked through it in Wyatt’s cabin, you thought McTavish’s writing had improved. Right?”

“A little,” Wolfgang scoffed.

“Yes. Literally. You thought Life, Death and Whiskey had the smallest of improvements. You thought his first book, the only one you’ve read, was bloody awful. Littered with Oxford commas, you told me. You also told me writing is like a tattoo. No one can shake their little tics. An Oxford comma is one of McTavish’s habits. The answer’s been looking us straight in the face.”

Given we were down to discussing literary technique, most of the writers in the room had figured it out by now. Hatch still needed a little more explanation, so I went on.

“It’s in the bloody title! Life, Death and Whiskey omits the Oxford comma.”

I’d like to apologize quickly. I’m about to break one of the fundamental rules here. Turns out there are ghosts in this book after all.

“Henry McTavish wasn’t writing his own books anymore,” I said. “Jasper Murdoch was.”

Ghost

Chapter 35

A ghostwriter. It was as simple as that.

It should have been so obvious that McTavish wasn’t writing his own books anymore. The timeline of his publications alone told enough of the story. His first book was a worldwide bestseller and his second was a flunk, which had made his confidence plummet. Coupled with his painful recovery from his accident—I could tell the third was squeezing out of him like a kidney stone, Simone had said—this had meant he’d had to steal from S. F. Majors just to get the third one done. But that wasn’t a trick he could use twice. Brooke had summed it up perfectly in the Chairman’s Carriage: Maybe now I think he’s a man who likes pleasure but doesn’t want to have to work for it. He’d needed another way to write the books.

“I thought you’d bought the Erica Mathison story,” Jasper whispered.