She sounded, or perhaps I was imagining it, slightly disappointed. I’m still learning about the book world and my place in it, but even I knew then that McTavish was the sourest-tasting word in publishing—popular. It’s the paradox of authorhood: apparently if you’re good enough to be popular, you’re too popular to be any good.
“A little,” I lied. McTavish was my favorite living writer. His fictional detective, Detective Morbund, is as close to a modern-day Holmes or Poirot as they come. He’s the type of character who solves the case in chapter 2 and hangs onto it until the end, only dragging it out to unspool everyone’s lies. He’d have solved this murder already, even though it hasn’t happened yet.
“You don’t need me for that. You’re on a panel together,” Simone said. “You’ll meet.”
“I was hoping you might have the inside track. For a blurb.”
The word blurb dropped out of my lips like a grenade. A blurb is an endorsement that a publisher can use for marketing, or even put on a cover. The more famous the person on your cover is, the better for marketing (and, let’s be honest, the ego). I’m grateful to an excellent mystery writer named Jane Harper for going on the cover of my first book, and I was hoping McTavish might come through for the second. Even though, granted, I hadn’t written it yet.
Simone snorted. “Henry doesn’t blurb.”
“I just thought—”
“Blurb. No. Go.” She put a hand on my shoulder and, surprisingly, softened. “Focus on something more productive. You don’t need to hunt blurbs for a book you haven’t written yet. You’ve got four days of sitting around—use them. Get some words down.”
“Soooo.” Juliette wrinkled her nose comically. “If we’re still doing favors, is now a bad time to ask you to help move that couch?”
I was grateful to Juliette for knowing exactly what the situation called for, and the laugh headed off the inevitable awkwardness. My hand subconsciously went to my pocket and found comfort in a small felt box I had in there.
There you go: the missing quarter. My motivations for this luxurious, creative and hopefully romantic getaway are all added up now.
More people joined the queue behind us. The fledgling sun passed behind a cloud, and the sweat we’d worked up from the walk settled icily on our necks. Juliette shivered. Simone noticed, uncurled her scarf and held it out. “Here you are, love.”
Juliette took it and started wrapping it around her neck, mouthing a quick thanks just as Simone was called to the front of the queue.
At the top of the stairs, she turned back as if she’d just had a thought. “Try five thousand words by the end of the trip. That’s just a thousand and spare change a day.”
“It’s more than just the words. It’s the whole . . . fiction thing,” I complained weakly. “I don’t just make these things up. People, sort of, have to die.”
Juliette, behind me, said, “I’ll keep him to schedule.”
“Blue suits you,” Simone said, appraising Juliette’s wearing of her scarf, then to me, “I guess I’ll just cross my fingers and hope for a murder, shall I?”
Then she disappeared into the belly of the train.
Chapter 3
I should introduce you to Juliette Henderson.
We didn’t have the most romantic of starts, dead bodies aside. Our meet cute was me, a woefully underprepared city driver trying to get to a ski resort, and her, pulling over to help in the slush and mud. It turns out that she owned that very resort, and, even though I wound up having a hand in destroying it, we managed to get on quite well through the media frenzy that followed. Most people who read my first book are surprised we’re dating. “I was so sure she was the killer!” they say. I think she’s quite proud of that.
Juliette’s a head taller than I am, with legs that belong on skis, knees that have paid the price for it (at only forty-one, she clicks like the Wheel of Fortune), and the freckled, often sunburned cheeks of a life enjoyed outdoors. She wound up selling the resort’s land for a whopping sum of money and used her newfound time to write her own book about the events there. She’s comfortable enough to never have to work again, but she insists she’s not retired, she’s just waiting for her next adventure. That’s what she says when I ask her if she misses the mountain, anyway.
It’s hard to say whether surviving a book tour or surviving a serial killer is the more arduous task, but given we’d gotten through both together over the last fifteen months, we’d fallen quite hard for one another. From the moment she first helped me affix tire chains to my slippery wheels, she’s kept me on track. It’s a pretty good result, seeing as we didn’t exchange names until after the first murder.
And yes, I am proud of those lines, even if they are a bit cheesy. I’d written them down in advance, not for any book, but so I could memorize them to use alongside that little felt box in my pocket.
Inside carriage O, we funneled single file down a corridor that was tighter than I’d expected. Two-way traffic wasn’t an option, and I’d learn that, should anyone be coming the other way, it was best to duck into the little kitchenette (which stocked not only tea, coffee and a kettle, but also an axe in a fire emergency glass case, and a handle that said To Stop Train Pull Handle Down) and wait for them to cross. The corridor had fake wooden paneling atop an emerald-green carpet. The cabin doors, five in our carriage, were to one side and there were wide, hip-to-ceiling-height windows to the other. I’d learn that the rooms alternated sides between carriages, which I’m mentioning here because it’s kind of important. The cabins in the “O Zone,” in which most of the authors were staying, were on the west side of the train.
The cabin itself was tight but comfortable. A large plush seat, lime colored and about the size of a three-person couch, filled one half of the room. This would be converted into a bed at the appropriate hour, and I could see the handles on the wall behind the seat where I assumed the top bunk came out. The bunks were singles and squeezed close enough together that sitting up quickly or a little friskiness would be rewarded with a bumped head. Not a lot of space for romance.
“No locks on any of the doors,” Juliette said, wriggling the handle, perhaps thinking the same as I was. “Must be a safety feature.”
With the benefit of hindsight, I can tell you that there aren’t locks on many doors in the whole of the Ghan, except for the toilets (there was one public toilet in our section), the Chairman’s Carriage and, assumedly, the driver’s compartment. If you’re hoping for a locked-room mystery, this isn’t it. Everyone’s room was open for anyone to come and go as they pleased.
Our cabin also had a small closet, inside which was a mini-safe and a vanity mirror, as well as a small nook at floor level for our bags (we’d only been permitted hand luggage in the cabins). Even with minimal baggage, navigating the remaining floor space did require a bit of a tango with two adults. The bathroom reminded me of an airplane’s toilet, everything measured perfectly enough that the toilet seat lid lifted within one millimeter of the sink, and the door brushed both as it opened. Unlike a plane, however, there was no need for a screen or a television in the main cabin: a large window, showcasing the country we were crossing, would be our entertainment.