“It happened,” I said again.
“Then I guess you’re just the unluckiest bastard I’ve ever crossed. And if bad luck follows you, maybe something’s going to happen here.”
“Careful what you wish for.”
He blew a raspberry at me. “I do wish it. We’ll wake up tomorrow and one of us will be dead.”
“Don’t say that.”
“You’re just scared.”
“Of what?”
“That I’m right. And if I’m not, I’d love to see how you’d react to a real murder.”
“Good night, Royce.”
I closed the door, and I could hear his thunderous snoring within seconds. Juliette was fast asleep, dead still, by the time I got back to our cabin. She’d taken the top bunk. One arm, pale in the moonlight, hung limp over the side. I changed as quietly as I could into my pajamas and lay down in the bottom bunk, where I shut my eyes and tried to sleep.
The train rocketed along in darkness.
Chapter 10
It’s a staple of mystery novels that, just before the murder happens, certain conversations are overheard in the deep of night. This is to be the case here.
I didn’t sleep easily. I’d expected the gentle rocking of the train to be quite restful and meditative, and it may well have been had I not forgotten to account for the washing-machine sloshing of two martinis and two beers in me. Each pair would have been fine on its own but as a foursome they were having a keys-in-the-bowl swingers party in my stomach. I awoke to a gurgling shortly after I lay down, and not wanting to inflict carnage on our squeezed living space, this was how I found myself in the corridor, headed for the communal toilet.
There was just one public toilet in our section: it replaced the tea and coffee station past the restaurant. Now, it’s my duty as a fair-play detective to disclose to you everything I see, but I’ll spare you the details of what happened in the bathroom except to tell you it was far grislier than any murder that’s about to take place on the train. Wiping my mouth on the walk back to my room, I checked my phone and learned two things: it had just gone midnight, and we were officially out of reception. My phone would be useless until Alice Springs. I spotted some flower petals in a trail on the carpet, pink and dainty, that hinted at someone’s lavish attempt at romance. That explained Wyatt’s hay fever, or, I thought to myself, perhaps it was more likely he was allergic to affection.
That was when I heard Wyatt’s voice.
“I don’t care what you want,” he was saying inside his room. His voice was raised, but not loud enough to wake anyone. “It’s in your contract. More Morbund. It’s simple. Why change it after all this time?”
I paused but didn’t catch McTavish’s quiet reply, muffled through the door.
“That was just for publicity. Everyone’s going to read it if they think it’s the last one, and then everyone’s going to get excited when it’s not.”
There were footsteps as one of them paced.
“You promised me you’d bring him back. Not that you’d write . . . this.”
Another muffled answer. I leaned into the door to hear better. I recalled McTavish’s discomfort over the question of Morbund’s finale, his glare toward Wyatt. This argument must have been a follow-up to that.
“I know, I know. Archie Bench. Real fucking cute.”
A pause.
“Don’t threaten me.”
Suddenly the train hit a curve. I smacked my head loudly against the door and, to my horror, the voices stopped. I bolted down the hall, slipping into the tea alcove just as I heard the door click open. I pretended to make a cup of tea, just in case Wyatt or McTavish came out to investigate, but my charade was hobbled by the fact that the kettle had been tossed, assumedly broken, into the nearby bin.
It didn’t matter; I heard the door click shut and, after a minute, edged my way back through the corridor. Wyatt had lowered his voice or the argument had subsided naturally; either way, I couldn’t hear anything this time, so I hurried back to my bed.
I still couldn’t sleep. Juliette was dozing so contentedly above me, one arm still hanging over the side of the top bunk, that I couldn’t even hear the small whistle of her breathing over the train. How did she do it? Ignore everything around her, be at peace, so successfully? I’d thought that praise and acclaim were what was missing from my career, what would make me a real writer, but hearing that argument with Wyatt had made me realize McTavish felt just as trapped as I did. Was there any light at the end of this tunnel? Or did it not matter who you were or how well you’d done: someone always owned you. Someone always asked for more, more, more.
The whole day had left a sour taste in my mouth that wasn’t just from the regurgitated martinis. I had a feeling that tomorrow was only going to get worse.
I had no idea.
Chapter 11
This may be a surprise, but everyone survives the night.
I know that’s not how things usually go in a mystery. There’s the night before, in which halves of conversations are overheard (check) and the complex motives and backstories of everyone are introduced (check), then everyone retreats, as if Broadway choreographed, to their rooms, doors clicking in unison, only for dawn to rise on a tussle in the night, a bloodstained cabin and a victim. Alas, not here. Not yet.
The sunrise was, however, as impressive as advertised: a furnace of gold that bled over the sand and turned it into shimmering lava. As we approached the center of Australia, the land had become indescribably flat. It may strike you, as it has my editor, as lackluster that I can’t describe flat. But there’s flat, sure, and then there’s endless, barren levelness the likes of which an explorer, atop a camel perhaps, must have looked out across and thought was the end of the world. That’s flat. That’s the middle of Australia.
Juliette and I watched the sunrise from the corridor in our pajamas. Then we showered and dressed, navigating our confined cabin tango, and made our way to the bar for the morning’s panel. It was a congregation familiar to anyone as the first morning of a holiday—a mix of the overeager and the ravaged who’d hit it too hard the night before—and no corpses to speak of. The book club ladies (not dead) who’d been reading erotica bore the pale-faced regret of overindulgence. Brooke (not dead) was in the too-keen camp, staking out a seat right down the front, her copy of Misery on the floor and a large scrapbook in her hand, edges overflowing with jagged, hastily glued-in leaflets. Today’s was to be a smaller panel, just S. F. Majors (not dead), who was flicking through notes, and McTavish (not yet arrived), and so two fold-out chairs had been placed at the end of the carriage, and the audience seating was whatever we could snag from the bar.