“Nothing like a little bit of literary snobbery to get us started,” Lisa whispered in my ear. “Don’t let it get to you.”
“What’s an adverb?”
It took her a second to realize I wasn’t joking. I had a sinking feeling my only alliance was about to disintegrate. What had started as a grin melted off her face. Slowly.
Wolfgang’s pontification finally ended, and the questioning moved on to McTavish. Backs straightened in the crowd with interest; it was obvious, given it was one of his rare international outings, he was who people were here to see. To my surprise, now that the spotlight was on him, it was like a switch was flipped. No longer was he half slumped in his chair peering into the black hole of his flask. He came alive: impressing with tales of drizzly Scottish moors, of growing up poor and how hard he’d had to fight to not only get his books published, but then to be taken seriously as a writer (perhaps this was why he stuck up for me, I thought, though I was still struggling to forget that little red star), and how, recovering in the hospital after his accident, he feared he’d never write again. He finally finished on how much he hoped people enjoyed his most recent Detective Morbund noveclass="underline" The Night Comes.
At this, a hand shot up immediately. It was the young woman I’d seen clutching a copy of Misery.
“There’ll be time for questions at the end,” Majors said.
“It’s just—” The girl jigged like she needed the bathroom. “I was hoping you’d talk more about The Dawn Rises, given it’s the newest. Henry, it’s incredible, by the way. I loved the way you—”
“Thank you, there’ll be time for questions at the end,” Majors said again with teacherly steel before turning to the wider crowd.
“The young lady is correct,” McTavish interrupted. “Though I do consider both books one half of a two-parter. Of course, The Dawn Rises won’t make any sense if you don’t read The Night Comes first, which is out in a new paperback this week. There are so many release dates and formats and countries to keep track of, it’s easy to get muddled. What I’m really saying is: just buy both.” McTavish mugged for the crowd and was rewarded with a laugh.
“I can’t imagine how complicated it is bringing a series of sixteen books together for a finale.” Majors got back on topic. “How did it feel to say goodbye to such a popular character?”
“Uh, well that’s a tough one.” McTavish faltered. A light slur nudged on the edges of his words and the previous sparkle had disappeared. He clearly had an alcoholic’s touch for delivering pre-rehearsed lines but little room for improv. He was scanning the crowd, and I noticed his eye line settled on Wyatt, but it wasn’t for reassurance, like why I’d hunted out Simone. His eyes blazed with annoyance. Wyatt shrank a little in his chair. Owner of the company or not, it was clear who was in charge. McTavish directed his answer at him. “Goodbye is such a strong word. I don’t want to spoil it for the people here who haven’t finished it yet, but no door is ever closed.”
“I feel like that’s as much of a scoop as we’re going to get from you,” Majors responded smoothly, reading McTavish’s deliberate aloofness. “One more question for the craftspeople in the audience, then. Is it true you write all your books by typewriter? I heard that you do it to protect against spoilers, by only having a single typed copy of every manuscript. That seems quite an extreme solution.”
“It’s not so extreme if you think about it. J. K. Rowling’s manuscripts used to be handcuffed to her publisher’s wrist, like the U.S. president’s nuclear codes. Dan Brown’s publishers required his translators to work out of a basement in Milan for a month: no internet, security guards if you wanted to use the bathroom. You can’t take it lightly. You should see some of the things people have threatened to do to me to get their hands on a manuscript. And with everything online these days, I just don’t trust my computer. Besides, I like the feel of the keys.”
“What if your house burns down?” I couldn’t resist asking. Admittedly, I was a little emboldened by the fact he’d taken my side earlier.
It was the first time I’d spoken directly to McTavish and he looked askance, as if he was trying to decide if he was offended. I wondered if he’d really been sticking up for me, or if he’d just wanted to disagree with Wolfgang. Eventually he said, “I would take that as a sign from the universe that I probably need another draft.” He unscrewed his flask again and took a long swig, in a clear sign to move on.
Royce looked like a dog ready to go outside, such was his enthusiasm to finally have a question of his own.
“And last—”
“But not least!” he chipped in.
“Yes. Of course.” I realized here that Majors said of course as a polite way of saying shut up. Whenever she was interrupted, in fact. I chalked her up as a woman who took great care with her words and didn’t wish to be either diverted from them or spoken for. “Alan Royce, author of the Dr. Jane Black series, whose novels take place on steel tables and in morgues. Very chilling reading!”
“I prefer to think that I write novels about society, depravity and humanity, and the crime itself is just the engine for a more . . .” Royce paused in the same deliberate spot as he had over breakfast, and I realized this was a man who took himself very seriously and wanted to advertise that he did everything with great effort. He was the type of person who picked up and carried a suitcase with wheels, just so he could complain about how heavy it was. “A more enlightened conversation around some real-world issues.”
“Of course.”
“I think that’s our job, really. To interrogate society. Which I think is what Wolfgang was saying, with regard to the French modernist move—”
“Plus you’ve got firsthand experience with all the gore and grisliness, right?” Majors was taking pleasure in reducing Royce to his most sensationalist identifiers. To her credit, the crowd did prefer to hear about morgues over Wolfgang’s tangent on French modernism. “You used to be a forensic pathologist yourself?”
“Oh yes, that’s what inspired me to write fiction.” Royce exaggerated the last word, lingering on the f sound by pulling his bottom lip under his front teeth and flinging it like a trebuchet. It looked like he was aiming the word at me for some reason, which didn’t make any sense, given that I was the only one there who hadn’t published any.
“Wonderful,” Majors said. “Let’s move on to audience questions.” Royce deflated a little at getting timed out, but she either didn’t notice or didn’t care, as she gestured toward the black-cloth-covered easel behind her. “And after that, we have a special treat for you. So. Questions?”
Misery-girl’s hand was up first. Majors made a show of looking around at the otherwise unmoving crowd, before selecting her with an obvious lack of enthusiasm. A wireless microphone was delivered into the audience by a staff member, and the young woman stood up.
“My question’s for Henry.” She bounced a little on her toes as she spoke. “My name’s Brooke and you might know me as the president of Morbund’s Mongrels!”
Morbund’s Mongrels were McTavish’s die-hard fans. McTavish showed little recognition of the mention of his fan club, nor did he noticeably clock the phrase on her T-shirt (A nod’s as guid as a wink tae a blind horse, which is a Scottish colloquialism for plain speaking and as close to a catchphrase as Morbund had, as he often delivered it during his monologuing solve). I’d suspected Brooke was his publicist when I’d first seen the T-shirt, but now that I knew she was Head Mongrel, it made sense that she was on the train specifically to fawn over Henry. The price of the trip still seemed excessive for her age (I still pegged her as early twenties, not least because I figured the passion to organize anything, let alone be the president of a global fan club, dissolves like sugar in water after you turn twenty-five) but I supposed she came from money. Either that or her adulation was such that it didn’t matter how hard she’d had to scrape, from how many shifts of bar work or mopping fast-food floors, to meet her idol. Henry’s words echoed—the things people have threatened to do to me to get their hands on a manuscript—and I wondered if there were any other Mongrels on the train, and if their obsession was another reason he no longer did events like these.