“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?”
“Yeah, that’s what’s so funny about it. It’s absurd.” I felt like a comedian trying desperately to save a crowd, the only choice being to double down on the joke and make something funny by sheer force of will. This was funny, right? “He must have thought I was someone else. I have no idea what he was apologizing for.”
Juliette scratched her forehead and sucked air through her teeth. “You haven’t seen it, have you?”
“Seen what?”
“I’m sorry, Ern, I just didn’t think you were in the right headspace—”
“Right headspace for what?”
A loud clap of hands interrupted us. The staff member who had been defusing McTavish now commanded the attention of the cabin. A stockman’s Akubra hat was snug on his head, hair hanging underneath like vines. His shirtsleeves were rolled up to reveal sinewy muscled forearms, the type that could hold down either a sheep for shearing or a disgruntled alcoholic Scotsman. He waited for the room to settle—the table of rebellious seniors took the longest—and then spread his arms widely.
“Guests,” he began, and I recognized his voice from the intercom, “on behalf of me and my team, I’d like to welcome you to the start of our historic journey aboard the Ghan. I invite you to reflect on the traditional owners of the many lands we will travel through on our journey, including my people, the Arrernte people, whose lands you may know as Alice Springs, and the Larrakia people, on whose land we begin our expedition today.” He paused to a round of applause. “My name’s Aaron and I am your journey director. I hope we’ll get to know each other well over the next four days. I’m here if you need anything, as is Cynthia”—he pointed behind the bar—“who will keep you both caffeinated and intoxicated. So out of the two of us, she’s the one to keep on your side.”
This was met with the half chuckle that meets the basic expectation of a pause and a smile in a formal speech.
“And now for the exciting part. Our end of the train has the special privilege of hosting the Australian Mystery Writers’ Festival’s fiftieth anniversary”—a clap—“for a trip filled with scintillating insights into the minds of some of the country’s best writers.” Clap. “We will be departing momentarily, and the first session, a meet-and-greet panel with all the guest authors, will be held at midday.” He paused again, but the clapping had run out of stamina, and this was welcomed only by the plodding slap of a couple of hands. “But before we start the fun stuff, we will be serving breakfast.” This rejuvenated the applause, with perhaps the most enthusiastic response yet.
“This Writers’ Festival has the run of eight carriages, including this bar, the Queen Adelaide Restaurant and the Chairman’s Carriage, which we have specially borrowed for this trip from our friends at the Indian Pacific. The Ghan today has two locomotives hauling thirty-five carriages, at a length of seven hundred and eighty meters and with a total weight of one thousand four hundred and fifteen tons.”
I expected people to be disappointed by the replacement of breakfast with statistics, so was surprised to hear a murmur through the crowd, one of both interest and opinion, as if several people were scratching their chins and agreeing Yes, I was thinking that was an appropriate weight for the journey, which taught me a lesson about hobbyists I should have already known: everyone’s an expert.
Aaron continued to list off figures, and I quickly realized, from the bent backs and leaned-forward concentration of the guests, that Andy’s fellow ferroequinologists found this dull tirade of data frothingly exciting. “Across our two-thousand-nine-hundred-and-seventy-nine-kilometer journey, we expect to use seventy-five kilograms of barramundi, sixty-two kilograms of cheese, over a thousand bottles of wine”—this got a small cheer from the rambunctious retirees—“and approximately forty thousand liters of fuel.” This was again met with a murmur of definitely educated opinions on the fuel required for the trip, this time with a line of dissent (easy to identify—it’s a semitone lower in a murmur): I would suggest that they could do it in thirty-nine if they optimized the engines.
“I hope they’ve got a coupon,” Juliette whispered, leaning forward.
I snorted, which turned Aaron’s attention, and therefore that of the rest of the room, on us.
“Did we have a question?” He meant it genuinely, but it was impossible to not feel spotlighted.
Juliette’s cheeks flamed. “Oh, sorry. Just a joke.” When Aaron continued smiling gently at us, Juliette added, “I just thought you might need a coupon . . . for the fuel . . . Four cents a liter on forty thousand liters . . . it’s a solid discount.”
Nothing kills a joke’s momentum like overexplanation. Juliette did get a couple of laughs, but I caught one passenger looking aghast at us, as if horrified we dared joke about something so crucial as fuel quantities.
Juliette was saved from any further humiliation by a jolt of the carriage, just violent enough that those standing rocked and gripped the chair backs nearest to them. This was accompanied by the metallic groan of one thousand four hundred tons waking up. The scenery started to roll horizontally past the windows.
“That’s my cue to wrap it up, I suppose. Just one caution—you’re likely to see a bit of smoke occasionally. It might be in the distance, but it might be closer than you’d like. Don’t panic. These bushfires are natural, though, to be fair, deliberately lit.” This drew a little gasp, which he’d clearly hoped for, and he grinned. “Believe it or not, our little arsonist is a bird. A kite bird, to be precise. They hunt down bushfires and pick up flaming sticks, which they fly over and drop in dry patches of grass. Once the area is aflame, they catch the fleeing rodents. So if you see fire, unless it’s on board, nothing to worry about!” Aaron gestured toward the restaurant carriage. “Breakfast is served, at your convenience.”