“I know how you feel, trust me,” I said. “I came here to do the same thing. But let’s not embarrass ourselves tonight. Why don’t we sleep on it, shower, and see how we feel in the morning.”

  Royce scowled back at the door like it had insulted him. “They’re in there.”

  “They?”

  “I heard them talking. A woman’s voice. He owes me, and he’s in there with her.” Royce turned and yelled, “I heard you talking!”

  I put a hand gingerly on his shoulder. “You don’t want to do anything you’ll regret in the morning.”

  “Come out and talk to me!” He stepped back to the door but I moved in quickly, deftly hooking under his armpit and spinning him around. He blinked widely, unsure of why he was suddenly pointing in the wrong direction, but accepted his new path without complaint.

  “Why her?” he drooled in my ear. “Why did he choose her?”

  “It’s just a blurb, mate,” I said, talking to myself more than him.

  Royce half-walked, and I half-dragged him, through the restaurant and the bar and into our set of cabins. My shoulder was wet by now and I assumed it was saliva, but then I realized he was crying into my neck.

  He hiccupped. “It’s just a few words. He doesn’t even have to read the damn thing. Wyatt used to care. He said he’d help me when I needed it, and he never did. But sales . . .” He burped. “It’s not like it used to be.”

  “Hey.” I felt a surprising amount of empathy for Royce in this moment. “You told me yourself you got through four rejections for your first book. You’ve gotten over bigger hurdles. Chin up.”

  “I begged. This time, please. Don’t ask Henry to blurb it, make him. Wyatt said he’d do what he could. He knew it could change my life.” He arrived at a door. “This one.”

  We stopped in front of his room, and he spent a moment patting his coat for a key before remembering the door didn’t have a lock and staggering in. My kindness for Royce stopped short of stripping him down and tucking him in, so I stood in the doorway while he faceplanted onto the bottom bunk.

  “Tell me,” he said into his pillow, and it was more a groan than words. “It didn’t happen, did it? All that stuff up on the mountain? You faked it, right? For the publicity.”

  “It happened. I don’t wish it on anyone.” Then, because I figured he wouldn’t remember it, “Not even you.”

  Royce made a cat-meowing sound, then laughed, hiccupped and belched all at the same time. It was impressive auditorily, but also quite pungent. “So you’re just lucky then, huh? That you somehow fell into those murders.”

  “Yeah, mate. Lucky.”

  “Of course, there’s another option.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “If you didn’t make it up, I mean. Maybe you just did it all yourself.” His words strung out of his teeth like chewing gum, his sentences a single monotonous drone. “That’s one way to write a book.”

  “You’re drunk.”

  “And you’re lying,” he teased. “It’s not a bad idea. Automatic publicity. Easier than research.”

  “Good night, Royce.”

  “Henry better be careful,” Royce said, just as I went to close the door. I thought he was murmuring to himself, but I looked back and saw one blood-red eye staring straight up at me. “The things I’ve done for that man. He shouldn’t be so . . . so . . . caviar . . . with my friendship.”

  “Cavalier?”

  “Huh?”

  “Did you mean cavalier?”

  “Mmmm.”

  “What have you done for McTavish?”

  Royce blinked then, and it was as if a stupor was lifted. “Cunningham? What are you doing here?”

  “I’m helping you to bed, mate. Few too many.”

  “Be honest. It didn’t happen, did it?”

  We’d come full circle: he’d completely forgotten everything he’d told me up to now, and surely he’d forget the rest by morning. It’s not far-fetched that Royce would accuse me of fakery: the great literary hoax is a grand tradition. Drug addicts’ harrowing stories of trauma despite never touching a single substance; Hiroshima survivors writing from the comfort of their imagination; a fifteen-year-old’s diary concocted by a fifty-four-year-old woman. In one memoir a woman claimed to have escaped Nazi persecution and been raised in the snow by a family of wolves, and the whole world believed it. Her story was even made into a successful film before the accusations flowed, leaving behind a red-faced publisher. Royce wasn’t the first to disparage me by any means—I’ve been on morning television and I have Twitter.

  “It happened,” I said again.

  “Then I guess you’re just the unluckiest bastard I’ve ever crossed. And if bad luck follows you, maybe something’s going to happen here.”

  “Careful what you wish for.”

  He blew a raspberry at me. “I do wish it. We’ll wake up tomorrow and one of us will be dead.”

  “Don’t say that.”

  “You’re just scared.”

  “Of what?”

  “That I’m right. And if I’m not, I’d love to see how you’d react to a real murder.”

  “Good night, Royce.”

  I closed the door, and I could hear his thunderous snoring within seconds. Juliette was fast asleep, dead still, by the time I got back to our cabin. She’d taken the top bunk. One arm, pale in the moonlight, hung limp over the side. I changed as quietly as I could into my pajamas and lay down in the bottom bunk, where I shut my eyes and tried to sleep.

  The train rocketed along in darkness.

  Chapter 10

  It’s a staple of mystery novels that, just before the murder happens, certain conversations are overheard in the deep of night. This is to be the case here.

  I didn’t sleep easily. I’d expected the gentle rocking of the train to be quite restful and meditative, and it may well have been had I not forgotten to account for the washing-machine sloshing of two martinis and two beers in me. Each pair would have been fine on its own but as a foursome they were having a keys-in-the-bowl swingers party in my stomach. I awoke to a gurgling shortly after I lay down, and not wanting to inflict carnage on our squeezed living space, this was how I found myself in the corridor, headed for the communal toilet.

  There was just one public toilet in our section: it replaced the tea and coffee station past the restaurant. Now, it’s my duty as a fair-play detective to disclose to you everything I see, but I’ll spare you the details of what happened in the bathroom except to tell you it was far grislier than any murder that’s about to take place on the train. Wiping my mouth on the walk back to my room, I checked my phone and learned two things: it had just gone midnight, and we were officially out of reception. My phone would be useless until Alice Springs. I spotted some flower petals in a trail on the carpet, pink and dainty, that hinted at someone’s lavish attempt at romance. That explained Wyatt’s hay fever, or, I thought to myself, perhaps it was more likely he was allergic to affection.

  That was when I heard Wyatt’s voice.

  “I don’t care what you want,” he was saying inside his room. His voice was raised, but not loud enough to wake anyone. “It’s in your contract. More Morbund. It’s simple. Why change it after all this time?”

  I paused but didn’t catch McTavish’s quiet reply, muffled through the door.

  “That was just for publicity. Everyone’s going to read it if they think it’s the last one, and then everyone’s going to get excited when it’s not.”

  There were footsteps as one of them paced.

  “You promised me you’d bring him back. Not that you’d write . . . this.”

  Another muffled answer. I leaned into the door to hear better. I recalled McTavish’s discomfort over the question of Morbund’s finale, his glare toward Wyatt. This argument must have been a follow-up to that.

  “I know, I know. Archie Bench. Real fucking cute.”

  A pause.

  “Don’t threaten me.”

  Suddenly the train hit a curve. I smacked my head loudly against the door and, to my horror, the voices stopped. I bolted down the hall, slipping into the tea alcove just as I heard the door click open. I pretended to make a cup of tea, just in case Wyatt or McTavish came out to investigate, but my charade was hobbled by the fact that the kettle had been tossed, assumedly broken, into the nearby bin.

  It didn’t matter; I heard the door click shut and, after a minute, edged my way back through the corridor. Wyatt had lowered his voice or the argument had subsided naturally; either way, I couldn’t hear anything this time, so I hurried back to my bed.

  I still couldn’t sleep. Juliette was dozing so contentedly above me, one arm still hanging over the side of the top bunk, that I couldn’t even hear the small whistle of her breathing over the train. How did she do it? Ignore everything around her, be at peace, so successfully? I’d thought that praise and acclaim were what was missing from my career, what would make me a real writer, but hearing that argument with Wyatt had made me realize McTavish felt just as trapped as I did. Was there any light at the end of this tunnel? Or did it not matter who you were or how well you’d done: someone always owned you. Someone always asked for more, more, more.

  The whole day had left a sour taste in my mouth that wasn’t just from the regurgitated martinis. I had a feeling that tomorrow was only going to get worse.

  I had no idea.

  Chapter 11

  This may be a surprise, but everyone survives the night.

  I know that’s not how things usually go in a mystery. There’s the night before, in which halves of conversations are overheard (check) and the complex motives and backstories of everyone are introduced (check), then everyone retreats, as if Broadway choreographed, to their rooms, doors clicking in unison, only for dawn to rise on a tussle in the night, a bloodstained cabin and a victim. Alas, not here. Not yet.

  The sunrise was, however, as impressive as advertised: a furnace of gold that bled over the sand and turned it into shimmering lava. As we approached the center of Australia, the land had become indescribably flat. It may strike you, as it has my editor, as lackluster that I can’t describe flat. But there’s flat, sure, and then there’s endless, barren levelness the likes of which an explorer, atop a camel perhaps, must have looked out across and thought was the end of the world. That’s flat. That’s the middle of Australia.

  Juliette and I watched the sunrise from the corridor in our pajamas. Then we showered and dressed, navigating our confined cabin tango, and made our way to the bar for the morning’s panel. It was a congregation familiar to anyone as the first morning of a holiday—a mix of the overeager and the ravaged who’d hit it too hard the night before—and no corpses to speak of. The book club ladies (not dead) who’d been reading erotica bore the pale-faced regret of overindulgence. Brooke (not dead) was in the too-keen camp, staking out a seat right down the front, her copy of Misery on the floor and a large scrapbook in her hand, edges overflowing with jagged, hastily glued-in leaflets. Today’s was to be a smaller panel, just S. F. Majors (not dead), who was flicking through notes, and McTavish (not yet arrived), and so two fold-out chairs had been placed at the end of the carriage, and the audience seating was whatever we could snag from the bar.

  McTavish (not dead) showed soon after, in a vest and a red tie, with Wyatt (not dead). They were both in jovial spirits, seemingly having moved past their midnight argument—though McTavish did have a slight bump on the bridge of his nose, a redness that looked like the prologue to a bruise. Had it been getting physical before I interrupted them? Brooke tried to shove her journal, pen extended, at McTavish as he passed her on the way to his seat, but Wyatt squeezed between them and reminded her there’d be a signing after the panel.

  Simone (not dead) gave me a shoulder squeeze as she moved by me to sit down next to Douglas (not dead), who was carrying a single coffee this morning, perhaps out of awareness I’d been counting his drinks. Wolfgang (not dead), his back to the speakers, was reading a scuffed hardback titled The Price of Intelligence, which looked—from its plainness and size—like a science textbook, but I figured there was an equal chance it was an incredibly self-indulgent poetry collection. Jasper and Harriet (not dead) were unsurprisingly there, having proved to be autograph-hunting Mongrels themselves. Cynthia (not dead) was working the coffee machine again, under the supervision of our host, Aaron (not dead). Royce (not dead, but he looked halfway there) stumbled in just as Majors cleared her throat, seemingly about to start the panel; the scruffiness of a hangover still blurred his edges, and he dropped into a seat like he’d been shot in the knee. The only person truly absent was Lisa Fulton (liveliness to be determined).

  As unslit throats were cleared with light coughs, hangovers were massaged from unshot foreheads, glasses of water were poured from unpoisoned jugs, and the remainder of the guests assembled and caffeinated themselves, McTavish leaned forward and whispered to Brooke, “It’s a mighty fine drop to drink alone.”

  Before he could say anything more, the shrill feedback of a microphone indicated the start of the event. For her part, Majors had worked hard to make sure that this morning’s panel sought a closer examination of McTavish and his works. Despite her efforts, McTavish took those familiar swigs from his flask as he launched into the same anecdotes as yesterday. My attention drifted out the window. There hadn’t been much wildlife beside the train—the land was too barren even for kangaroos—but a circling bird, clawing talons extended, floated beside us.

  Far on the horizon, thick black smoke blemished the blue in several spots. A helicopter dotted the horizon with a full vessel of water suspended underneath. It made me think there was probably more concern about the bushfire-lighting kite bird than Aaron had let on. Natural ecosystem, circle-of-life stuff it might be, but all that destruction for one’s own benefit didn’t seem all that natural to me. Burn a whole forest for one measly breakfast. It seemed, well, human.

  Then I heard Majors say, “Are you okay?” and everything changed.

  I turned to see McTavish with a hand over his mouth, shoulders heaving. He half-burped, half-hiccupped, and a stream of vomit gushed into his hand, spraying between the gaps in his fingers and over the front row, where the seated attendees squealed and scrambled backward. McTavish doubled over, dropping his flask to the floor, and gave up covering his mouth, spewing onto the carpet and coating Brooke’s copy of Misery.

  I stood up, along with everyone else in the room, hovering, unsure how to help. Aaron was pushing his way to the front of the car, first-aid kit in hand. McTavish’s face was stark white now but had a tinge of blue to it, and he’d started to shiver. He gripped his cane and levered himself up to a standing position. His breath was coming in short sharp bursts.

  McTavish seemed to have regained his composure, though he still leaned unsteadily on his cane. His skin was pale and clammy, his pupils pinpricks. The flask glugged in slow heaves, soaking alcohol into the carpet. He looked at us all, wiped his mouth and said, “I don’t seem to be feeling all that well.”

  And then he died.

  I mean that literally. He was looking right at me, and it was like someone switched his brain off. There was no slow eyes rolling back into his head, no gradual closing of his eyelids. He was looking at me one second, and then his circuits fried, his eyeballs snapped to different directions (one up and to the left, one completely sideways), and everything in them was gone. He stayed upright for a second after this, by virtue of his cane, and then his body slackened and he crumpled to the floor.

  Unmoving. Dead.

  No one budged. It was too absurd, too unexpected and too violent for anyone to even think to scream. No one made a sound: just a single, horrified silence.

  Except, of course, for the scratching of Alan Royce’s pencil, scribbling in his notebook.

  Chapter 11.5

  Here’s what you’re thinking:

  Lisa Fulton is your current primary suspect, by virtue of her being the only person who’s been remotely nice to me so far on this trip. Her lack of incrimination is, ironically, incriminating. She was also the only person not in the room during McTavish’s death.

  Alan Royce is currently lowest on your list of suspects, given that he is the kind of reprehensible cockroach who normally winds up the victim in these books, and you consider him too obvious as a murderer.

  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.

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26