Everyone on This Train Is a Suspect

“I’m really sorry, but”—I pointed to my chest—“I’m Ernest Cunningham, and my list of beefs is rather small. So unless you’re the guy who backed into my car two weeks ago, for which following me here would seem excessive for an apology, I think we’re probably square.” I noticed Juliette had been caught in conversation with Majors, and wished she’d hurry up and rescue me.

“Course. I should introduce myself.” He straightened his tie, sniffed again. His eyes were slightly bloodshot. If I’m honest, he looked like he was coming down off something, and not just a high horse. Finally he took my hand and shook it. “Wyatt Lloyd. I own Gemini Publishing. I publish—”

Suddenly there was a commotion from the bar. “It’s all-inclusive, isn’t it?” a man shouted in a vaguely Scottish accent. “If I want the bottle, just give me the bottle.”

I could only see the tweed-shouldered, heavyset back of the speaker, but the tone of the command, of someone quite used to asking people if they knew who he was, gave me an idea: here was the festival’s biggest draw, Henry McTavish.

“—I publish that,” Wyatt said, turning to the ruckus and raising his eyebrows. “You don’t have any antihistamines on you, do you?” He fossicked a small white packet from his pocket. “Jasper gave me these, but they’re rubbish.”

I looked at the branding. “Well, that’s because those are for seasickness, not hay fever.”

“Damn.” He sneezed again, then cocked his head back to the argument at the bar. “I better go sort it out. Glad we could smooth this over. And if you see Simone”—his head was on a swivel—“tell her I’m looking for her.”

Still having no idea what we’d smoothed over, I settled on smiling sagely, while feeling, admittedly, quite wrinkled. I felt more out of place than ever, because if I really belonged here, I should have known—as Simone had clearly expected—who Wyatt was. I did know Gemini Publishing was a big deal, based in the UK but with an Australian outfit. They’d pretty much built their business publishing McTavish. Their other authors—Royce, for one—had been dragged into prominence by association. And I now know that Wyatt, who’d discovered McTavish, had risen to co-own the company off the back of it. He had taken the time to come over and talk to me, and I’d responded by cracking jokes? By shrugging him off? I replayed the conversation in my head, feeling (irrationally, because I had my own publisher already) like I’d blown it somehow. I was clearly still figuring out how to play the social politics of being an author.

Wyatt strode off toward the hubbub, where McTavish had just slapped away the hand that a man in a red-camel-emblazoned vest had calmingly placed on his shoulder. I was left with a carriage full of writers and a now completed roll call. Suspects: check. Victims: check. Killer(s?): check.

Chapter 5

Juliette slid into her seat and sucked at her flat white with the relief and thirst of a traveler who’d just crossed the desert. “God,” she said. “I just had to lie to S. F. Majors. Said I’d almost finished her book.” She looked behind her to make sure nobody was close enough to hear. “And that I was enjoying it.”

“Aren’t you?”

“I’ve got no idea. I’ve read like three pages. The writing’s fine, I guess. But I have a sinking feeling it’s got one of those twists where the first-person narrator has been dead the whole time.”

I looked at her, amused. That went against one of the most obvious rules of fair-play mysteries. “No ghosts.”

“I know, right? No bloody ghosts. Psychological thrillers these days don’t have to follow any rules. I shouldn’t have said anything at all, but I was trying to fill the dead air. Now I’m going to have to give her a bloody blurb.” She necked half her coffee in a gulp and closed her eyes for a second. “This place is chaos—McTavish wants an IV of whiskey and that poor girl up the front looks like it’s her first time using a coffee machine. And she is not happy that he is treating her like his personal butler. Sorry I took so long. How was it down here?”

“I met Wyatt Lloyd.” I nodded over at him, in case Juliette didn’t know who he was, but she seemed to understand without needing to look. “McTavish’s publisher.”

“Yeah, I wondered about that when Simone mentioned him before. Four days at a festival seems a bit beneath the pay grade of a bigwig: authors come to him, he doesn’t come to authors.” She shrugged. “Maybe he’s got business with McTavish. What did you talk about?”

“It was so strange, actually.” I grinned. “He apologized.”

“Oh.” Juliette paused, like someone who didn’t get a joke that’s just been told, her cheeks a little tighter than they should have been. Then she read my face and relaxed. “You’re taking it well, then. Very noble of you. That’s a relief.”

“Taking what well?”

Juliette’s cup stopped halfway to her mouth. “Didn’t you just say he apologized?”