Everyone on This Train Is a Suspect: A Novel

Prologue

From: ECunninghamWrites221@gmail.com

To: <REDACTED>@penguinrandomhouse.com.au

Subject: Prologue

Hi <REDACTED>,

It’s a hard no on the prologue, I’m afraid. I know it’s the done thing in crime novels, to hook the reader in and all that, but it just feels a bit cheap here.

I know how to do it, of course, the scene you want me to write. An omniscient eye would survey the cabin’s destruction, lingering on signs of a struggle: the strewn sheets, the upturned mattress, the bloodied handprint on the bathroom door. Add in fleeting glimpses of clues—three words hastily scrawled in blue ink on a manuscript, at odds with the crimson, dripping tip of the murder weapon—just enough to tantalize but nondescript enough not to spoil.

The final image would be of the body. Faceless, of course. You’ve got to keep the victim from the reader at the start. Maybe a sprinkle of some little detail, a personal item like a piece of clothing (the blue scarf, or something, I’m not sure) that the reader can watch for in the buildup.

That’s it: the book, the blood, the body. Carrots dangled. End of prologue.

It’s not like I don’t trust your editorial judgment. It just seems overly pointless to me to replay a scene from later in the book merely for the purpose of suspense. It’s like saying, “Hey, we know this book takes a while to get going, but it’ll get there.” Then the poor reader is just playing catch-up until we get to the murder.

Well, that scene is the second murder anyway, but you get my point.

I’m just wary of giving away too much. So, no prologue. Sound okay?

Best,

Ernest

P.S. After what’s happened, I think it’s fairly obvious I’ll need a new literary agent. I’ll be in touch about that separately.

P.P.S. Yes, we do have to include the festival program. I think there are important clues in it.

P.P.P.S. Grammar question—I’ve thought it funny that Murder on the Orient Express is titled as such, given that the murders take place in the train and not on it. Death on the Nile has it a bit more correct, I think, given the lack of drownings. Then again, of course you say you’re on a train or a plane. I’m laboring the point, but I guess my question is whether we use on or in for our title? Given, of course, most of the murders take place in the train, except of course what happens on the roof, which would be on. Except for the old fella’s partner and those who died alongside him, but that’s a flashback. Am I making sense?

Memoir

Chapter 1

So I’m writing again. Which is good news, I suppose, for those wanting a second book, but more unfortunate for the people who had to die so I could write it.

I’m starting this from my cabin on the train, as I want to get a few things down before I forget or exaggerate them. We’re parked, not at a station but just sitting on the tracks about an hour from Adelaide. The long red desert of the last four days has been replaced first by the golden wheat belt and then by the lush green paddocks of dairy farms, the previously flat horizon now a rolling grass ocean peppered with the slow, steady turn of dozens of wind turbines. We should have been in Adelaide by now, but we’ve had to stop so the authorities can clean up the bodies. I say clean up, but I think the delay is mainly that they’re having trouble finding them. Or at least all the pieces.

So here I am with a head start on my writing.

My publisher tells me sequels are tricky. There are certain rules to follow, like doling out backstory for both those who’ve read me before and those who’ve never heard of me. I’m told you don’t want to bore the returnees, but you don’t want to confuse the newbies by leaving too much out. I’m not sure which one you are, so let’s start with this:

My name’s Ernest Cunningham, and I’ve done this before. Written a book, that is. But, also, solved a series of murders.

At the time, it came quite naturally. The writing, not the deaths, of which the causes were the opposite of natural, of course. Of the survivors, I thought myself the most qualified to tell the story, as I had something that could generously be called a “career” in writing already. I used to write books about how to write books: the rules for writing mystery books, to be precise. And they were more pamphlets than books, if you insist on honesty. Self-published, a buck apiece online. It’s not every writer’s dream, but it was a living. Then when everything happened last year up in the snow and the media came knocking, I thought I might as well apply some of what I knew and have a crack at writing it all down. I had help, of course, in the guiding principles of Golden Age murder mysteries set out by writers like Agatha Christie, Arthur Conan Doyle and, in particular, a bloke named Ronald Knox, who wrote out the “Ten Commandments of Detective Fiction.” Knox isn’t the only one with a set of rules: various writers over the years have had a crack at breaking down a murder mystery into a schematic. Even Henry McTavish had a set.

If you think you don’t already know the rules to writing a murder mystery, trust me, you do. It’s all intuitive. Let me give you an example. I’m writing this in first person. That means, in order to have sat down and physically written about it, I survive the events of the book. First person equals survival. Apologies in advance for the lack of suspense when I almost bite the dust in chapter 28.

The rules are simple: nothing supernatural; no surprise identical twins; the killer must be introduced early on (in fact, I’ve already done that and we’re not even through the first chapter yet, though I expect you may have skipped the prelims) and be a major enough character to impact the plot. That last one’s important. Gone are the days when the butler dunnit: in order to play fair, the killer must have a name, often used. To prove the point, I’ll tell you that I use the killer’s name, in all its forms, exactly 106 times from here. And, most important, the essence of every rule boils down to this: absolutely no concealing obvious truths from the reader.

That’s why I’m talking to you like this. I am, you may have realized, a bit chattier than your usual detective in these books. That’s because I’m not going to hide anything from you. This is a fair-play mystery, after all.

And so I promise to be that rarity in modern crime novels: a reliable narrator. You can count on me for the truth at every turn. No hoodwinking. I also promise to say the dreaded sentence “It was all a dream” only once, and even then I believe it’s permissible in context.

Alas, no writers cared to jot down any rules specifically for sequels (Conan Doyle famously delighted in killing off Sherlock Holmes, begrudgingly bringing him back just for the money), so I’m going it alone here. The only help I have is my publisher, whose advice seems to come via the marketing department.

Her first piece of advice was to avoid repetition. That makes good sense—nobody wants to read the same old plots rehashed again and again. But her second piece of advice was to not deliver a book completely unlike the first, as readers will expect more of the same. Just to reiterate: I don’t have any control over the events of the book. I’m just writing down what happened, so those are two difficult rules to follow. I will point out that one inadvertent mimicry is the curious coincidence that both cases are solved by a piece of punctuation. Last year it was a full stop. This time, a comma saves the day.

And what sort of mystery book would this be if we didn’t have at least one anagram, code or puzzle? So that’s in here as well.

My publisher also warned me to work in enough tantalizing references to the previous book that readers will want to buy that one also, but not to spoil the ending. She calls that “natural marketing.” Sequels, it seems, are about doing two things at once: being new and familiar at the same time.

I’m already breaking those rules I mentioned. Golden Age mystery novelist S.S. Van Dine recommends there only be one crime solver. This time, there are five wannabe detectives. But I guess that’s what happens when you put six crime writers in a room. I say six writers and five detectives, because one’s the murder victim. It’s not the one wearing the blue scarf; that’s the other one.

I’d say Van Dine would be rolling in his grave, though that would break one of the general rules about the supernatural. So he’d be lying very still but disappointed all the same.

If I may repeat myself, it’s not up to me which rules I break when I’m simply cataloging what happened. How I managed to stumble into another labyrinthine mystery is anyone’s guess, and the same people who accused me of profiteering from a serial killer picking off my extended family one by one in the last book (natural marketing, see?) will likely accuse me of the same here. I wish it hadn’t happened, not now, and not back then.

Besides, everyone hates sequels: they are so often accused of being a pale imitation of what’s come before. Being that the last murders happened on a snowy mountain and these ones happened in a desert, the joke’s on the naysayers: a pale imitation this won’t be, because at least I’ve got a tan.

Time to shore up my bona fides as a reliable narrator. The rap sheet for the crimes committed in this book amounts to murder, attempted murder, rape, stealing, trespassing, evidence tampering, conspiracy, blackmail, smoking on public transport, headbutting (I guess the technical term is assault), burglary (yes, this is different from stealing) and improper use of adverbs.

Here are some further truths. Seven writers board a train. At the end of the line, five will leave it alive. One will be in cuffs.

Body count: nine. Bit lower than last time.

And me? I don’t kill anybody this time around.

Let’s get started. Again.

Chapter 2

There was less dread instilled in witnessing the public murder (dare I say execution) of a fellow author than there was when my literary agent spotted me on the crowded train platform, elbowed her way through the throng, and asked me, “How’s the new book coming?”

Simone Morrison was the last person I expected to see at Berrimah Terminal, Darwin, given her agency was based four thousand kilometers away. She’d brought Melbourne with her, wearing a coat that was a ludicrous mix of trench and oversized puffer. Then again, she was better dressed than I was. I had on cargo shorts and a buttoned short-sleeved shirt, which had been sold to me in a fishing store as “breathable.” I’d always believed that was the minimum requirement for clothing, but I’d bought it anyway. The problem was that, while our journey had been duly advertised as a “sunrise start,” I’d incorrectly assumed that the baking heat of the Northern Territory’s tropical climate would apply at all hours, including dawn.

It hadn’t.

And though there was light now, we were on the west side of the train, a slinking steel snake that blocked off all the horizon, and so half-mast wasn’t going to do it for warmth; the sun had to really put some effort in. The only warm part of me was my right hand—which had been skinned during last year’s murders and was only partially rehealed, thanks to an ample donation from my left butt-cheek—where I wore a single, padded glove to protect the sensitive skin underneath. In all, I was dressed more suitably for Jurassic Park than a train journey, and I found myself both willing the sun to hurry up and quite jealous of the cozy blue woolen scarf Simone had around her neck.

I say Simone’s office is based in Melbourne, though I’ve never seen it: as far as I can tell, most of her business is conducted from a booth at an Italian restaurant in the city. She helped the chef there publish a cookbook once, which was successful enough to snag him a TV gig, and she’s been rewarded with both a permanent reservation and an alcohol addiction. Every time I slipped into the red vinyl seat across from her, Simone would hold up a finger as she finished an email on her laptop (manicured nails clacking furiously enough that I pitied the person on the other end), take a sip of her tar-dark spiked coffee (bright pink lipstick stain on the ceramic, though, in an unnerving clue to the dishwashing standards of the place, she always wears red), and then say, completely ignoring the fact that she’d often summoned me, “Please tell me you’ve got good news.” She’s a fan of shoulder pads, teeth whitening, heavy sighs and hoop earrings—not in that order.

That said, I can’t fault her ability. We first met after I’d signed the publisher contract for Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone, when she invited me to lunch and asked me to bring along the contract. I then sat in silence while she leafed through the agreement underlining things and muttering various incarnations of “Unbelievable” before remembering I was there too, flipping to the back and saying, “That’s your signature? No one, like, forged it or anything? You read and agreed”—she shook the pages, arched her eyebrows—“to this?”

I nodded.

“I’m surprised you can write books, because you certainly can’t read. I charge fifteen percent.”

I couldn’t tell if it was an offer or an insult. She turned her focus to her laptop, so I considered myself dismissed and squeaked out of the plastic seat, never expecting to hear from her again. A week later a document outlining interest from a German publisher and even some people wanting to make a TV show landed in my inbox. There was also an offer for another mystery book. Fiction, this time.

She hadn’t asked, and I hadn’t expressed any interest in writing a novel, nor did I have any idea what I’d write about. And the catch was I’d have to write it quickly. But I’ll admit I was blinded by the advance listed—it was far better than what I’d received previously—so I’d accepted. Besides, I’d reasoned at the time, it might be a nice change from writing about real people killing each other.

Obviously, that didn’t pan out.

I knew Simone took her job seriously, perhaps too seriously, but I’ve always figured that if the publishers are half as scared of her as I am, I should be grateful she’s on my side. And, sure, I’d been dodging her calls and texts for an update on the novel for a couple of months. But following me to Darwin seemed excessive. In any case, asking a writer how their book’s coming along is like spotting lipstick on their collar. There’s really no point asking: no one ever answers truthfully.

“Pretty good,” I said.

“That bad, huh?” Simone replied.

Juliette, my girlfriend, standing beside me, squeezed my arm in sympathy.

“Fiction is . . . harder than I thought it would be.”

“You took their money. We took their money.” Simone fossicked around in her handbag, pulled out an electronic cigarette, and puffed. “I don’t refund commission, you know.”

I didn’t, in fact, know that. “You’ve come all this way to hassle me then?”

“Not everything’s about you, Ern.” She exhaled a plume of blueberry scent. “Opportunity knocks, I answer.”

“And what better place than in the middle of the desert to circle some carcasses,” Juliette chipped in.

Simone barked a laugh, seeming charmed rather than offended. She liked to be challenged, I just lacked the confidence to do it. But Juliette had always given her the combative banter she enjoyed. Simone leaned forward and gave Juliette one of those hugs where you keep the person at arm’s length, as if holding a urinating child, and an air kiss on both cheeks. “Always liked you, dear. You wound me, though, with truth. I take it you’re still not convinced you need an agent?”

“Keep circling. I’m happy on my own.”

“You have my number.” This must have been a lie, because even I didn’t have her number. She called me on private, not the other way around.

“I don’t have a ticket for you,” I cut in. “Juliette’s my plus-one. How’d they even let you on the shuttle bus? I’m sorry you’ve come all this way—”

“I don’t do shuttle buses. And I’ve got more clients than just you, Ern,” Simone scoffed. “Wyatt sorted me out.” She craned her head around the platform. “Where are the others?”

I didn’t know who Wyatt was, though her tone implied that was my own shortcoming. The name didn’t register as one of the other authors I’d seen in the program. Then again, I’d only flicked through it and hadn’t read many of the books; they were stacked guiltily on my bedside table. If an author’s biggest lie is that their writing is going well, their second biggest is that they’re halfway through their peer’s new book.

I did recall that there were five other writers on the program for the Australian Mystery Writers’ Festival. Handpicked by the festival to cover, as the website touted, “every facet of modern crime writing,” they included three popular crime writers, whose novels covered the genres of forensic procedural, psychological thriller and legal drama, as well as a literary heavyweight, who’d been short-listed for the Commonwealth Book Prize, and the major drawcard, Scottish phenomenon and writer of the Detective Morbund series Henry McTavish, whom even I knew by name. Then there was me, doing some heavy lifting in the dual categories of debut and nonfiction, because my first book was labeled as a true-crime memoir. Juliette, former owner of the mountain resort where last year’s murders took place, had also written a book on the events, but she was here as my guest. Her book had sold better than mine, and she is, I’ll admit, a much better writer than I am. But she’s also not related to a serial killer, and you can’t buy that kind of publicity, so the invites for things like this do tend to fall my way.

If it strikes you as odd that we were milling about at a train station, when literary festivals usually take place in libraries, school auditoriums or whichever room at the local community center happens to be empty enough to accommodate an Oh shit we totally forgot we had an author talk today, you’d be right. But this year, in celebration of its fiftieth anniversary, the festival was to take place on the Ghan: the famous train route that bisects the immense desert of Australia almost exactly down the middle. Originally a freight route, the name comes from a shortening of “Afghan Express”: a tribute to the camel-riding explorers of Australia’s past, who traversed the red desert long before steel tracks and steam engines. To drill the point home, the sides of several carriages had been emblazoned with a red silhouette of a man in a turban atop a camel.

While the name and logo might have attested to an adventurous spirit, the days of sweat and grit were long gone. The train had been overhauled with comfort, luxury and arthritis in mind—it was now a world-renowned tourist destination, an opulent hotel on rails. Over the course of four days and three nights, we were to travel from Darwin to Adelaide, with off-train excursions in the pristine wilderness of Nitmiluk National Park, the underground township of Coober Pedy, and the red center of Australia, Alice Springs. It was both a unique and an extravagant setting for a literary festival, and half the reason I’d agreed to come was that I’d never be able to afford the trip on my own: tickets didn’t just run into the thousands of dollars, they sprinted.

If that was half the reason, another quarter was the hope that four days immersed in literary conversations might spark something in me. That the muse might leap out from behind the bar just as I was clinking glasses with Henry McTavish himself, who never did public events anymore, and my new novel would crack wide open. I’d gush the idea at Henry, because we’d be on a first-name basis by then, of course, and he’d raise his glass and say, “Aye, I wish I’d thought of that one, laddie.”

Writing out my preposterous hopes for the journey here gives me the same shameful chill as seeing old social media photos—Did I really post that?—not least because of the horrifically cliché Scottish brogue I’d superimposed onto McTavish before I’d even met him. I think it’s obvious that McTavish and I would not wind up on a first-name basis. Though my inspiration would still come from a drink with him, in a way, so maybe I’m clairvoyant after all.

Also, I’m aware that my motivation only adds up to three quarters—half financial, a quarter creative—as my sharp-eyed editor has duly mentioned. She’s similarly pointed out that my number of writers doesn’t match those on the train—I said seven will board—but that’s, like, a whole thing. Juliette’s a writer too, remember. I promise I can add. I’ve always found fractions a little more difficult, but trust me, we’ll get to the other quarter.

Simone was still surveying the crowd for her other client. Around a hundred people were milling about on the platform, but I couldn’t tell which were the writers, or, given the festival was only using a few of the carriages, even the difference between the festival punters and the regular tourists. The staff, who were all wearing red-and-white striped shirts and camel-emblazoned polar-fleece vests, had started shepherding different groups of people to different areas of the platform. A young woman, shy enough of twenty to not look it in the eye, was panting and running her palms down her front as if they were steam irons, in the midst of apologizing to a man I assumed was her supervisor by the way he looked at his watch. I couldn’t hear the apology, but groveling has a universal sign language.

A hostess with a clipboard approached us.

“Cunningham,” I said, watching her pen trawl the list of names.

Simone gave hers over my shoulder, but then added, “It might be under Gemini’s rooms, though.”

“Cabin O-three,” Clipboard said to me. “Easy to remember: it’s oxygen!”

“Ozone,” I offered instead, given that oxygen was actually O2.

“Correct, you are in the O zone!” Clipboard chirped.

Behind me, Juliette disguised a laugh as a sneeze. Clipboard either didn’t notice or didn’t care; she pointed her pen at Simone and said, “P-one. But enter through O. I’ll warn you though, it’s a bit of a leg,” before scurrying off to the next group.

“I’ll see you later.” Simone waved us away, her head still on a swivel.

“I think the warning about the distance was for the older clientele,” I suggested as Juliette and I strode over to the nearest carriage. We were among the youngest there by a couple of decades. “We can handle walking the length of a train.”

I was quickly humbled. The carriage in front of us was marked A. To our right, the iconic red engine cars, two huge locomotives. To our left, the train bent away so I couldn’t even see the end. I put it down, incorrectly, to curvature over distance: I was about to learn that the train ran to nearly a kilometer. So our walk was one of slowly creeping dejection, as we passed seven more carriages—including luggage, crew, restaurant and bars—and weren’t even a vowel ahead.

Around G, a throaty growl thrummed in the air, and for a second the fear that the train was leaving kicked us into a jog. Then I saw a green Jaguar cut across the car park and over the curb, parking directly alongside the train, gouging thick rivets in the grass. Given the indulgence, I expected Henry McTavish to step out, but instead a spindly-limbed man emerged. He had hair that was impossibly both wild and balding, fairy floss in a hurricane, and a long, thin frame that made his movements angular and jerky, like he belonged in one of those old-fashioned clay stop-motion films. I decided he looked like the type of character who owns a gas station and tells the nubile young holiday-goers that there’s a shortcut through the desert, imminent cannibals and various other nasty murdering sorts be damned, and said as much to Juliette.

“That’s Wolfgang, actually. And I think he’s going more for eccentric genius than lecherous imp,” she said.

That did twig some recognition. Wolfgang—singular, like Madonna, Prince or even Elmo—was the prestige writer of the group, the one who’d been short-listed for the Commonwealth Book Prize. Pedigree aside, I’d been surprised he was appearing at the festival as his books didn’t generally sit in the crime genre. I supposed his rhyming verse novel retelling of Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood was his qualification.

“Clearly his books do all right,” Juliette added, raising an eyebrow as the Jaguar grumbled back off to the road. “Better than ours, anyway.”

I agreed; my royalties were more around the hatchback level. Secondhand.

We ducked and weaved around photographers as we got to L—people were taking selfies up against the red camel, or panoramic vistas of the length of the train—and marveled at how so many of the travelers were equipped with almost comically large telescopic lenses, near unbalanced by the weight of them, looking like untruthful Pinocchios as they raised those whoppers to eye level. In terms of magnification, the Hubble telescope hasn’t got squat on a gray nomad’s luggage compartment.

By carriage N we had broken a sweat. Sunrise had finally cracked like an egg yolk over the top of the train, and our shadows stretched long across the platform. A whoosh of air buffeted us from behind, and a golf cart overtook us, Simone hanging out the side, blue scarf flapping in the wind, looking like a frat boy smashing letter boxes from his mate’s car. The cart came to a stop in front of us at the door to O and she hopped out, clearly catching my bemusement but shrugging it off by saying, “What? That’s what they’re there for. You’ve got to get used to the first-class travel perks, Ern.”

Another clipboard-wielding staffer had produced a miniature staircase and was helping people up it and into the carriage, as the platform was level with the tracks. Beside the doors on each carriage was a series of rungs, a ladder that led to the roof. I’d love to tell you I get through the book without ascending these, but we both know Chekhov’s gun applies to both mantelpieces and ladders.

We joined the queue. Wolfgang was ahead of us, given his shortcut, and I wondered if that was who Simone had been waiting for.

She must have sensed I was thinking about her, as she turned. “Just get it over with, whatever you’re about to ask.”

“I wasn’t . . . How do you . . .” I hesitated. I had been thinking of asking her something since she’d surprised me on the platform, but I was nowhere near committing to doing it.

“You’ve taken three sharp breaths in, as if you’re about to speak, and then fizzled out. You sound like a teenager trying to ask someone out on a date. So stop whistling in my ear like a kettle and just get on with it.”

“Well.” I cleared my throat, slightly annoyed because I’m supposed to do the Sherlockian deductions in these books—they are my books after all. “I wanted to ask you a favor.”

“You know you pay me, right? Favors are for friends.”

“It’s work,” I said. “But I’m stung you don’t think we’re friends.”

“BFFs. Just don’t ask me to help you move house. Out with it.”

“He’s hoping you can introduce him to Henry McTavish.” Juliette, as ever, came to my rescue with her directness. “You used to work for him, right?”

“You’ve done your research.” Simone seemed both impressed at Juliette’s knowledge and a little annoyed to have her mystique pulled back to something as simplistic as a CV. “I was his editor, way back. Somehow landed on his first book doing a year over in the UK with Gemini as some kind of publisher’s exchange program. He pinched me over to work for him directly. Real shit-kicker of a gig.” She chuckled, then turned back to me. “Fan of the Scot, are you?”

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.