Everyone on This Train Is a Suspect

We ducked and weaved around photographers as we got to L—people were taking selfies up against the red camel, or panoramic vistas of the length of the train—and marveled at how so many of the travelers were equipped with almost comically large telescopic lenses, near unbalanced by the weight of them, looking like untruthful Pinocchios as they raised those whoppers to eye level. In terms of magnification, the Hubble telescope hasn’t got squat on a gray nomad’s luggage compartment.

By carriage N we had broken a sweat. Sunrise had finally cracked like an egg yolk over the top of the train, and our shadows stretched long across the platform. A whoosh of air buffeted us from behind, and a golf cart overtook us, Simone hanging out the side, blue scarf flapping in the wind, looking like a frat boy smashing letter boxes from his mate’s car. The cart came to a stop in front of us at the door to O and she hopped out, clearly catching my bemusement but shrugging it off by saying, “What? That’s what they’re there for. You’ve got to get used to the first-class travel perks, Ern.”

Another clipboard-wielding staffer had produced a miniature staircase and was helping people up it and into the carriage, as the platform was level with the tracks. Beside the doors on each carriage was a series of rungs, a ladder that led to the roof. I’d love to tell you I get through the book without ascending these, but we both know Chekhov’s gun applies to both mantelpieces and ladders.

We joined the queue. Wolfgang was ahead of us, given his shortcut, and I wondered if that was who Simone had been waiting for.

She must have sensed I was thinking about her, as she turned. “Just get it over with, whatever you’re about to ask.”

“I wasn’t . . . How do you . . .” I hesitated. I had been thinking of asking her something since she’d surprised me on the platform, but I was nowhere near committing to doing it.

“You’ve taken three sharp breaths in, as if you’re about to speak, and then fizzled out. You sound like a teenager trying to ask someone out on a date. So stop whistling in my ear like a kettle and just get on with it.”

“Well.” I cleared my throat, slightly annoyed because I’m supposed to do the Sherlockian deductions in these books—they are my books after all. “I wanted to ask you a favor.”

“You know you pay me, right? Favors are for friends.”

“It’s work,” I said. “But I’m stung you don’t think we’re friends.”

“BFFs. Just don’t ask me to help you move house. Out with it.”

“He’s hoping you can introduce him to Henry McTavish.” Juliette, as ever, came to my rescue with her directness. “You used to work for him, right?”

“You’ve done your research.” Simone seemed both impressed at Juliette’s knowledge and a little annoyed to have her mystique pulled back to something as simplistic as a CV. “I was his editor, way back. Somehow landed on his first book doing a year over in the UK with Gemini as some kind of publisher’s exchange program. He pinched me over to work for him directly. Real shit-kicker of a gig.” She chuckled, then turned back to me. “Fan of the Scot, are you?”

She sounded, or perhaps I was imagining it, slightly disappointed. I’m still learning about the book world and my place in it, but even I knew then that McTavish was the sourest-tasting word in publishing—popular. It’s the paradox of authorhood: apparently if you’re good enough to be popular, you’re too popular to be any good.

“A little,” I lied. McTavish was my favorite living writer. His fictional detective, Detective Morbund, is as close to a modern-day Holmes or Poirot as they come. He’s the type of character who solves the case in chapter 2 and hangs onto it until the end, only dragging it out to unspool everyone’s lies. He’d have solved this murder already, even though it hasn’t happened yet.

“You don’t need me for that. You’re on a panel together,” Simone said. “You’ll meet.”

“I was hoping you might have the inside track. For a blurb.”

The word blurb dropped out of my lips like a grenade. A blurb is an endorsement that a publisher can use for marketing, or even put on a cover. The more famous the person on your cover is, the better for marketing (and, let’s be honest, the ego). I’m grateful to an excellent mystery writer named Jane Harper for going on the cover of my first book, and I was hoping McTavish might come through for the second. Even though, granted, I hadn’t written it yet.

Simone snorted. “Henry doesn’t blurb.”

“I just thought—”

“Blurb. No. Go.” She put a hand on my shoulder and, surprisingly, softened. “Focus on something more productive. You don’t need to hunt blurbs for a book you haven’t written yet. You’ve got four days of sitting around—use them. Get some words down.”

“Soooo.” Juliette wrinkled her nose comically. “If we’re still doing favors, is now a bad time to ask you to help move that couch?”