Everyone on This Train Is a Suspect

I was grateful to Juliette for knowing exactly what the situation called for, and the laugh headed off the inevitable awkwardness. My hand subconsciously went to my pocket and found comfort in a small felt box I had in there.

There you go: the missing quarter. My motivations for this luxurious, creative and hopefully romantic getaway are all added up now.

More people joined the queue behind us. The fledgling sun passed behind a cloud, and the sweat we’d worked up from the walk settled icily on our necks. Juliette shivered. Simone noticed, uncurled her scarf and held it out. “Here you are, love.”

Juliette took it and started wrapping it around her neck, mouthing a quick thanks just as Simone was called to the front of the queue.

At the top of the stairs, she turned back as if she’d just had a thought. “Try five thousand words by the end of the trip. That’s just a thousand and spare change a day.”

“It’s more than just the words. It’s the whole . . . fiction thing,” I complained weakly. “I don’t just make these things up. People, sort of, have to die.”

Juliette, behind me, said, “I’ll keep him to schedule.”

“Blue suits you,” Simone said, appraising Juliette’s wearing of her scarf, then to me, “I guess I’ll just cross my fingers and hope for a murder, shall I?”

Then she disappeared into the belly of the train.

Chapter 3

I should introduce you to Juliette Henderson.

We didn’t have the most romantic of starts, dead bodies aside. Our meet cute was me, a woefully underprepared city driver trying to get to a ski resort, and her, pulling over to help in the slush and mud. It turns out that she owned that very resort, and, even though I wound up having a hand in destroying it, we managed to get on quite well through the media frenzy that followed. Most people who read my first book are surprised we’re dating. “I was so sure she was the killer!” they say. I think she’s quite proud of that.

Juliette’s a head taller than I am, with legs that belong on skis, knees that have paid the price for it (at only forty-one, she clicks like the Wheel of Fortune), and the freckled, often sunburned cheeks of a life enjoyed outdoors. She wound up selling the resort’s land for a whopping sum of money and used her newfound time to write her own book about the events there. She’s comfortable enough to never have to work again, but she insists she’s not retired, she’s just waiting for her next adventure. That’s what she says when I ask her if she misses the mountain, anyway.

It’s hard to say whether surviving a book tour or surviving a serial killer is the more arduous task, but given we’d gotten through both together over the last fifteen months, we’d fallen quite hard for one another. From the moment she first helped me affix tire chains to my slippery wheels, she’s kept me on track. It’s a pretty good result, seeing as we didn’t exchange names until after the first murder.

And yes, I am proud of those lines, even if they are a bit cheesy. I’d written them down in advance, not for any book, but so I could memorize them to use alongside that little felt box in my pocket.

Inside carriage O, we funneled single file down a corridor that was tighter than I’d expected. Two-way traffic wasn’t an option, and I’d learn that, should anyone be coming the other way, it was best to duck into the little kitchenette (which stocked not only tea, coffee and a kettle, but also an axe in a fire emergency glass case, and a handle that said To Stop Train Pull Handle Down) and wait for them to cross. The corridor had fake wooden paneling atop an emerald-green carpet. The cabin doors, five in our carriage, were to one side and there were wide, hip-to-ceiling-height windows to the other. I’d learn that the rooms alternated sides between carriages, which I’m mentioning here because it’s kind of important. The cabins in the “O Zone,” in which most of the authors were staying, were on the west side of the train.

The cabin itself was tight but comfortable. A large plush seat, lime colored and about the size of a three-person couch, filled one half of the room. This would be converted into a bed at the appropriate hour, and I could see the handles on the wall behind the seat where I assumed the top bunk came out. The bunks were singles and squeezed close enough together that sitting up quickly or a little friskiness would be rewarded with a bumped head. Not a lot of space for romance.

“No locks on any of the doors,” Juliette said, wriggling the handle, perhaps thinking the same as I was. “Must be a safety feature.”

With the benefit of hindsight, I can tell you that there aren’t locks on many doors in the whole of the Ghan, except for the toilets (there was one public toilet in our section), the Chairman’s Carriage and, assumedly, the driver’s compartment. If you’re hoping for a locked-room mystery, this isn’t it. Everyone’s room was open for anyone to come and go as they pleased.