Everyone on This Train Is a Suspect

We’re about as close to real time as we can get, seeing as they won’t let me out of the hotel. I don’t know how long it will take to verify the facts in the case, but I do know that Hatch isn’t a detective worthy of writing books about. By this I mean he may well be precise, methodical and competent, but he doesn’t really have a grasp on pace, does he? Plus the drugs they’ve given me for my shoulder (which I still can’t move, by the way—should I be worried?) make my fingers fly. That’s how I’ve been able to get the story down so quickly.

Another upside is that I’ve had plenty of time to google things. Did you know Mathison is Alan Turing’s middle name? You know, the bloke who made the Enigma machine to do the Nazi code-cracking—he’s considered the father of machine learning. Or, as we now know it, AI. Ha. Classic Wolfgang.

And as to your complaints: yes, I did say seven writers would board the train. But McTavish hadn’t really been a writer for a long time, had he? Plus Juliette and Jasper, it all adds up. I said five would leave the train alive at the end of the line too. Again, without counting McTavish as a writer: Jasper dies in the fall—yes, I saw him go under the wheels (ick, that’s dead body number ten for me)—and Juliette departs halfway. Leave it in as a clue for the mathematicians, I reckon?

As for Aaron and Cynthia, no dark pasts to report there. But I can’t omit them from the book entirely. Someone has to work on the train, right? I can’t just ignore that they were there. If a reader wishes to consider them a red herring purely based on the fact that they exist and haven’t done anything to contribute to the plot, that’s on them for reading too many books with unfair twists. I said at the start it wasn’t a butler-dunnit.

Another thing I said was that in books like these, two cases always spin together. Andy’s business is, apparently, booming with calls after his poppy thief turned out to be a multiple murderer. I let him have his narrative. I even told him he can do all the media—and the festivals—this time.

So, back to the epilogue. I know you want the big-ticket item: the reunion between me and Juliette. The embrace and the tears and the one knee down (note to self: do Pilates). Obviously Juliette and I have talked, and I’ve apologized. But there’s only so much you can do on FaceTime. She should get here soon. It was hell getting out of the holding cell at Alice Springs, for starters, and then there were no flights because of the bushfires and the cops and the media. Now she’s got a rental car, but it’s like a fifteen-hour drive and it’s safer with a couple of stops.

I did joke that maybe she should catch the train. That was not well received.

My point is that the big reunion hasn’t happened yet. I know you’d love a bit of romance to cap off the book, but all I can tell you is what happened: which is, at the moment, nothing. An improvement on the last proposal, granted, but that’s not saying much.

Of course, I know how I’ll apologize. Writing it all out has made me think about that a lot. When I started, I thought this story was about legacies. That’s why writers write things down, after all. From Royce’s vanity, to Majors’s truth, to Wolfgang’s principles, to Lisa’s rage, to my memories. It’s to leave something behind. I thought that’s what a legacy was: putting your name on something.

But legacy isn’t a stamp left by the people with ink. It’s not about leaving your fingerprints, it’s about having fingerprints left on you. In the case of books, the legacy isn’t created by writing it, it’s created by the people who pick it up, who expand and enrich and enlighten your words with how they reinterpret, remember and relive them. It’s passion, it’s tears. It’s internet forums, it’s MongrelWrangler22. It’s Juliette secretly giving her invitation to me instead. Jasper Murdoch knew that his name was the least important thing about his work, and now I know that too. A book isn’t a book until it’s read.

I’m saying all of this because I’ve had time to understand what Juliette said to me. She asked me whose story this was.

Now I know the answer.

Best,

Ernest

P.S. Speak of the devil, someone’s knocking at my door. Maybe you’ll get your epilogue after all.

Co-Writer

Epilogue

This is not the place for gloating, but I did warn Ernest his stupid rules were going to get him killed.

How many times did I tell him his real life wasn’t going to play out like a mystery novel? But does he listen to his girlfriend? No. Here’s the proof: first person does not equal survival. Of course you can’t write about your own death, that would be impossible. But a book can finish before the story does. You could get hit by a bus dropping the manuscript off to the publisher. Or, as it just so happened to Ernest, attacked in your hotel room by a woman you’d seen fall off the side of a train four days ago.