No wonder Jasper didn’t write crime anymore. But I remembered the look in his eyes as he’d watched Harriet dance. If this review had led them to cross paths (I imagined him plucking up the courage to write this reviewer an email, perhaps offering a coffee so he could explain what he was trying to do with the novel, or maybe downing half a bottle of white wine and cavalcading in with a thesaurus’s worth of inventive and invented curse words), he probably didn’t mind it one bit. I reread it through the lens of Jasper’s hippie zen-ness and it didn’t sound so cruel. On scrolling, I also saw Harriet was the writer of McTavish’s oft-used NYT blurb—“unputdownable and unbeatable: McTavish is peerless”—pulled from a review of his fifth novel in 2006.
I sent another text to Juliette and was momentarily excited by the immediate ding in return, until I realized it was a red exclamation mark claiming the message could not be sent.
I put the phone away and shut my eyes. But Jasper’s voice stayed inside my head. Except now he was saying something else: especially if Wyatt keeps doubling my advance. I remembered Wyatt on the phone at the station. Trying to authorize a deal term, perhaps?
It had glanced off my notice at first; I’d assumed Jasper’s new deal was for an Erica Mathison book. But if this review held weight, if Jasper’s writing really was Dollar Store McTavish, then his own fiction would always be just an imitation. Even the success of The Eleven Orgasms of Deborah Winstock wouldn’t have papered over that feeling, that he was a wannabe relegated to a permanent second place behind a better author. One way to beat the comparison, perhaps, was to remove it entirely.
I fell asleep thinking two things:
Henry McTavish hadn’t wanted to keep writing the Detective Morbund books.
And perhaps, to Wyatt Lloyd, McTavish-lite was better than no McTavish at all.
Chapter 25
I had no idea how long I’d been asleep, but I knew from the bashing on the door whose inelegant fist the knock belonged to, so I wasn’t all that surprised to see Royce standing in the corridor. What did surprise me was the line of people behind him.
“Come on,” was all he said, shuffling off to assault the next door before I’d had a chance to wipe the sleep from my eyes. He kept moving along the line, like a prison warden waking inmates.
I slid into the conga line between Simone and Wolfgang. Everyone was in pajamas: I was decent in a faded band T-shirt and tracksuit pants; Simone wore a matching purple silk shirt and trousers, SM embroidered on the breast pocket; and Wolfgang, most surprisingly, was in full-length blue-and-white-striped flannel pajamas. I’d assumed he slept in a three-piece suit. S. F. Majors was behind Wolfgang, still in the finery she’d worn to dinner, which meant she had either taken the time to get dressed or not yet gone to bed. We shuffled along to the next door. I checked the time: three A.M.
I tapped Simone on the shoulder. “What’s going on?”
“Royce has solved it,” she whispered. “Wants us all in the bar carriage.”
“What?” If I’d had a drink, I would have spat it out. “Royce?”
“It’s not like you didn’t have enough chances. Damn it, Ernest, you were supposed to get there first.”
“Well, what’s all this then?”
“Don’t be bitter. You know you’ve got to get all the suspects together to do the grand reveal. That’s what you’d do, isn’t it?”
“I know how a denouement works,” I said, sulking.
“De-noo-moh,” Wolfgang said from behind me, ladling the French over my mispronunciation like syrup. “Not dee-now-ment.”
“Merci,” I growled, refusing to turn and face him. Up ahead, Lisa slid out of her room, closing the door quickly behind her lest anyone see inside, and joined the line.
A heavy hand clapped me on the shoulder. Wolfgang again. I couldn’t see his face, but I could feel his grin burning into the back of my neck.
“Looks like he beat you to it, old chap. Your book will be second fiddle now.”
Royce’s audience was both sleepier and smaller than he’d anticipated. We slumped over the chairs and couches while Royce stood by the bar, pulling on his suspenders and doing a head count. The writers were all there, though not many others—only Harriet, who must have been roused by the procession past their room (I imagined a scissors-paper-rock between Harriet and Jasper on who’d go check out the commotion), and Simone. Jasper, Douglas and Wyatt were absent, as was the cult of Erica Mathison. Aaron’s and Cynthia’s rooms were on the opposite side of the restaurant, and it appeared Royce hadn’t woken them up: he mustn’t have thought they were important.
Royce seemed hesitant to start; his finger kept tapping the air as he added us all up again. Wolfgang eventually stood to leave, which made Royce cut his losses and clear his throat loudly.
“I’m sure you’re wondering why I’ve gathered you here, especially at this late hour,” he said. It seemed rehearsed.
There was a general murmur of disagreement, as we all knew exactly why we were here. That did little to deter Royce from his script.
“This may surprise some of you, but Henry McTavish was murdered. And somebody in this room”—he faltered—“on this train, sorry, is the murderer.”
It was a revealing stumble. Royce hadn’t wanted to start speechifying because someone important to his theory was not in the room. That included Jasper, the book club ladies, Wyatt, Aaron, Cynthia, Douglas and, I suppose, Juliette. Royce may not have known she had gotten off the train. It would also have included Brooke, but she walked in just as I had this thought, squinting tired eyes at the group as she tried to figure out what was going on. She sat down next to Lisa, who seemed annoyed to have a seating buddy and tilted away from her.
“Get on with it,” Simone said.
This only rattled Royce further.
“You want some pointers?” I couldn’t resist heckling. “I’ve done this before.”
“Would you just—” He squeezed his fists by his sides and took a breath. “Thank you, Ernest. I’ll be fine on my own from here.” He rummaged in his pocket and, in a small defeat, pulled out his notebook, from which he unclipped his Gemini pen and used it to trace his position in his speech. “Many of us here had reasons to dislike Henry McTavish. Several are probably glad he’s dead. But there is only one . . . oh, yes, just one”—this was definitely written alongside the phrase “dramatic pause”—“person who would actually go through with it.”
Simone yawned loudly. Red was crawling up from under Royce’s collar.
“Let’s look around. We have the fellow novelist who thinks Henry stole one of her ideas. We have the literary agent who wanted a piece of McTavish’s earnings and was left at the metaphorical altar.” He wriggled the pen at his accused, both of whom scowled. To be fair, so far Royce’s theories were reasonable; I’d considered both of them. “We have the literary writer who hates commercial fiction.”
“That’s seriously the motive you’ve got for me?” Wolfgang snorted. “I didn’t kill him.”
Royce paused, thought a moment, then moved his pen across the notebook in a clear horizontal line. It seemed as easy as disagreeing with him to be crossed off Royce’s suspect list.
“Then we’ve got the struggling writer.” His pen landed on me. “Desperate for a new scenario for his second book. Maybe he’s created it for himself. There’s a bit of money at stake, too. Maybe someone else wants him to succeed, someone close to him, like—” Royce’s head swiveled, clearly looking for Juliette.