Everyone on This Train Is a Suspect

Our cabin also had a small closet, inside which was a mini-safe and a vanity mirror, as well as a small nook at floor level for our bags (we’d only been permitted hand luggage in the cabins). Even with minimal baggage, navigating the remaining floor space did require a bit of a tango with two adults. The bathroom reminded me of an airplane’s toilet, everything measured perfectly enough that the toilet seat lid lifted within one millimeter of the sink, and the door brushed both as it opened. Unlike a plane, however, there was no need for a screen or a television in the main cabin: a large window, showcasing the country we were crossing, would be our entertainment.

On the seat was a pamphlet, which I picked up. It was the program for the festival, all the guests listed on one side and the schedule of activities on the other. I was aghast to realize that for festival guests the regular off-train excursions—the crystal waters of Katherine Gorge, the red-dirt hiking of Alice Springs—had been replaced by “conversations” on board. Though it looked like we still got to explore the subterranean opal-mining city of Coober Pedy, which was a relief.

I scanned the names and tried to absorb them. I’d already encountered Wolfgang, whose bio was of too high a literary pedigree to include the phrase “he lives in the Blue Mountains with his partner and two dogs” and contained a list of awards so dense they’d had to shrink the font just to squeeze his entry in. I knew Henry McTavish’s work. The other three were Lisa Fulton, who wrote legal thrillers; Alan Royce, who wrote forensics-based crime; and S. F. Majors, who wrote psychological thrillers and lived in the Blue Mountains with her partner and two dogs.

“You can have the view,” Juliette said. She fumbled underneath the window until she found a latch and flicked up a small table that had been folded to the wall. She gestured to it with a magician’s flourish: “Ta-da! Those thousand words don’t stand a chance.”

Even her good spirits couldn’t lift my funk, but I appreciated her attempt enough to put on the performance of taking out my laptop and notebook and setting them up by the window. Juliette took a seat by the door and started flipping through an advance copy of S. F. Majors’s new psychological thriller, which she’d been asked to blurb. It seemed a deliberate attempt to block me from conversation, and so I took the hint and opened my notebook.

To tell you the truth, the notes I did have were scant. While I’d studied all the rules of successful mystery fiction, I had no shape of plot or character on which to apply them. Last time I’d just written down what happened. Now I had to come up with it all from, God forbid, my own brain. The only thing I’d written in my notebook was a list of structural notes: what needed to happen in each section of the book, and at which stage of the word count these events should happen.

My list was:

10,000 words: Introduce characters, victims and suspects

20,000 words: Explore motives (note: 90% of clues to solve the crime already present)

30,000 words: MURDER

40,000 words: Suspects identified, investigated, interviews

50,000 words: Red herrings + character development (romance?)

60,000 words: A second murder

70,000 words: Action scene? (must include: ALL IS LOST moment)

80,000 words: Mystery solved

I’d broken it down like that in the hope that it might not seem so intimidating in smaller pieces. The last time Simone had checked in on my progress, I’d actually been confident enough to email it off to her, and she’d emailed back Great idea, back to basics, which seemed at the time more like an endorsement and less like the put-down that it probably was. But now, my list only reminded me of the volume of words ahead. Eighty thousand of the pesky things. I’d need to catch a hundred trains.

I took a deep breath, turned to a new page and wrote: Setting: Train.

Then beneath it, I wrote: Been done before. Obviously.

If you’re wondering, we’re a smidge over six thousand words thus far, which leaves me three and a half to ensure you’ve met everyone you need to: victims, killers and suspects. But instead I’m wasting time, writing about how I’m staring at a blank page, worried about wasting time. Nothing for it but to get started. No distractions.

My phone rang.