I take it back: hurdles still clanked around his ankles.
“I’ve solved it then,” I said bluntly.
He lit up. “Really?”
“No, Andy. Suspects and evidence. Ask some questions. Call me back when you know, for a start, the victim’s actual name. Then I’ll try and help.”
As I hung up, the seat beneath me jolted and a long slow groan came up through the floor as the wheels ground to life for a few inches. A voice crackled through an intercom, which I realized was embedded in the roof. Juliette looked up from her book.
“Ladies and gentlemen, welcome aboard the Ghan. We’ll be departing Berrimah in fifteen minutes. Please join us in the lounge for a welcome, the chance to meet your hosts, and for tea and coffee at your leisure. And may we extend a very special welcome to the Australian Mystery Writers’ Festival, joining us on board for their fiftieth anniversary. Let’s keep the murders to a minimum, please.”
“Good title,” Juliette said, pulling on a sweater and picking up Simone’s blue scarf. “Keep the Murders to a Minimum.”
“Speaking of minimums—I wrote a few words. Break?” I said, knowing I hadn’t earned one.
Juliette had the good sense not to ask just how honest I was being with my definition of few. She nodded and I stood up, but she blocked me from the door. She put both hands on my shoulders, leaned forward and kissed me on the cheek.
“I know you’re stressed. First of all, I think you need to stop worrying about McTavish. Don’t worry about some stupid blurb. Think about that after you’ve written the book. Speaking of—trust me, it’ll come.”
I was surprised to find my face warming, neck flushed. Staring at a blank page can make you feel alone; I wasn’t prepared for how affecting it was simply to have someone tell me I wasn’t. I nodded.
She shook me gently. “And if it doesn’t, that’s okay too. You can spend these four days staring out the window if you like. Or you can spend them writing. But we’re spending them together. So keep the moping to a minimum, huh?”
I nodded, managing to croak out, “Thanks for the pep talk.”
“Purely selfish.” She smiled. “If you’re going to be a melancholy sod the whole trip, it’s going to be a long four days. Because once this hunk of metal starts moving, we’re trapped on it.”
Chapter 4
We joined a throng of people moving slowly through the single-file corridor, which felt more like a queue for a post office than the start of a holiday. In the next carriage along, the bloke in front of us patted his pockets and looked forlornly back at his cabin door, only meters away, before accepting that the current was against him. I recognized it as the same look Juliette gives me every time we reverse out of the driveway at home. That’s not sexist, by the way; I refuse to be the male protagonist who makes snide remarks about his girlfriend’s forgetfulness. I mention it because it’s a plot point.
After two more accommodation carriages, the corridor opened up to the bar. It was the most spacious carriage so far: hip-height maroon and brown booths ringed the walls, alongside select pairs of swivel chairs and, further toward the end, bar stools, all bolted in place to suit the train’s motion. The bar itself looked like one you’d find in a speakeasy, a wood-paneled front, racks of spirits behind and hanging glasses above. Juliette, anticipating the popularity of the seats, snagged us two chairs by the east-facing window, a slash of sunlight and a tiny table no bigger than a paperback between us. Everything was three-quarter size in keeping with the train’s space-saving design—the seat edge sat beneath my thighs instead of my knees, which wasn’t to say it was uncomfortable, but it did make me feel like I was visiting a hobbit.
As the carriage continued to fill, I was glad of our seats. The air was thick with voices: the lulling murmur of general conversation mixed with the slightly higher-pitched tone of overenthusiastic introductions: So nice to meet you! Over it all, a coffee machine behind the bar whined with a rickety tiredness that sounded like it had not properly anticipated servicing a carriage full of writers for half a week. On the liquor shelf, I spied a three-quarters-empty bottle of vodka that was similarly underprepared.
Juliette draped the blue scarf over the back of her chair and headed to the bar to snag us coffees. There was quite a line, and the girl serving—the one who’d been self-ironing with her palms on the platform—seemed quite overwhelmed.
I looked around at the rest of the clientele. I figured our O carriage was the middle of three between the bar and the back of the train (as P was further to the back and we’d walked through N), which would fit about thirty people, though I also noticed people entering the carriage from the bar end, which implied there were cabins toward the engines and maybe doubled the attendance. Subtracting the six festival writers and their guests didn’t leave much of an audience. That it was the festival’s fiftieth anniversary was probably an excuse for the excess, as this was clearly not a traditional event that relied on ticket sales. Perhaps that was also how the festival had gotten away with setting up in such an expensive location: attendees had been promised an intimacy not usually catered for at events. Meals, drinks and socializing with the writers: the chance for everyone to let their hair down together. This would wind up being true—if you counted both being murdered and murdering as letting one’s hair down—so at least everyone would get their money’s worth.
I tried to weigh up the attendees, to better gauge how the rest of my long weekend was likely to play out, or, more specifically, which wannabe—embittered by years of rejection from publishers, clutching a coffee-stained handwritten manuscript and ready to spring it on you at any time—was best avoided. The carriage had a celebratory air to it, the pre-disembarkment holiday excitement that accompanies the phrase It’s five o’clock somewhere and a glass of champagne that you don’t really want but got anyway because it feels like an adequate signpost that you’re up for a good time. It was still before breakfast, but that didn’t matter to most. Holidays are, after all, mostly extravagant charades with which to justify an addiction. A group of three silver-haired women who’d staked out a booth clinked glasses amid cheering and laughter that seemed to prove my theory.
According to my structural cheat sheet, in order to play fair I’m running out of words left to introduce victim(s), killer(s) and suspects, and I fear I’m coming up short on at least two categories. So I’ll take the opportunity to whip around the carriage now.
Given I didn’t recognize all the writers yet, the only linking characteristic I could find was people’s choice of beverage: caffeine or champagne. So I’ll start there.
Champagne:
A man, older but not elder, seated in a two-seater across from me—gold-rimmed glasses and beard flecked with equal parts orange and gray—had one glass of bubbles in hand, another full flute in front of the vacant seat across from him.
S. F. Majors, whom I recognized from her photograph in Juliette’s advance copy, was dressed in a light gray pantsuit, with black hair pulled tightly back into a ponytail—looking better dressed for court than a holiday, and far too serious for the undrunk bubbles in her hand.
A woman with a brunette bob and a blouse adorned with native flowers was playing on her phone, squeezed onto the end seat in the booth of the ribald senior ladies and doing her best to ignore them. From the effort she was making to keep to herself, I pegged her as a writer: Lisa Fulton, by process of elimination.