Brooke snatched the paper from me. “Perhaps.”
“The manuscript’s not here,” I said. “Which is what you were really looking for.”
“I was not.” She sold it with the fake indignance of an unfaithful spouse, but curiosity overwhelmed her. “How’d you know that?”
“I heard McTavish deliver it to Wyatt Lloyd last night. It’ll be in his cabin.”
“So what? I was looking for a novel. Is that so bad?”
“Depends. I was sorry to see your book got ruined. Misery, right? Want me to tell you how it ends?”
Brooke put on the shocked air of a courtesan who had just been propositioned. “I would never.”
“I don’t know if you’re far enough in to know much about Annie Wilkes—”
“You are drawing a long-ass bow.”
This stalled my questioning. I now had three possible theories that involved Brooke. One: she’d been so mad at McTavish for killing her favorite hero that she’d lashed out. Two: she’d been so repulsed, so crushed, by his proposition to her that she’d taught him a lesson. Three: she’d figured out something about Archibald Bench, jotted it in her notepad, and told McTavish what she knew about it that morning at the panel in code. His invite to his cabin might not have been sexual after all, if he thought she knew something she shouldn’t. He might have wanted to talk to her about Archibald Bench. Maybe even try to silence her.
Two of those confrontations may have plausibly ended in self-defense. A broken nose and a bin full of bloodied tissues. I wasn’t sure whether any of them added up to murder.
The second theory held the most water, given what Royce had in his pocket. But of course I didn’t know what that was yet, so neither can you.
“Okay, now it’s my turn,” Brooke said. “Heart attack, huh?”
“I think it’s fairly obvious I suspect otherwise.”
“And so far, am I your only suspect?”
“Well, you’re the only one inside the crime scene, so by that virtue, sure.”
Brooke picked up her scrapbook and leafed through it. It was a collection of articles and photographs, shoddily glued in. Henry McTavish accepting an award. A certificate that had the words Morbund’s Mongrels on it. She stopped flipping on a yellowed newspaper article and slid the scrapbook over to me.
The first thing I logged was the date: August 2003. Brooke looked in her late teens, early twenties. “Surely you didn’t collect this when you were a child?”
“Wasn’t even born, mate. You suspect me of being a big enough fan to murder someone but not to photocopy the occasional newspaper from the library? Jesus. You need all the help you can get. Read the damn thing.”
STARS OF THE FUTURE
Oliver Wright, 19 August 2003, Edinburgh
A YEAR AFTER THE PUBLICATION OF HIS DEBUT GLOBAL BESTSELLER, HENRY MCTAVISH HAS RETURNED WITH ANOTHER IMPOSSIBLE MURDER THAT CAN ONLY BE SOLVED BY HIS RECLUSIVE SCOTTISH GENIUS.
The next half of the piece was a review of McTavish’s second book, Knee-Deep in Trouble, in which the reviewer’s tone, after the initial hook, became much more critical. It was clear he was a big enough fan of the first book to not trash the second, but that was about the only thing holding him back from outright savagery. The review concluded that McTavish’s sophomore effort was, in all, a disappointment, and the piece ended with a quick review of two other debut novels, whose authors had appeared on a panel with McTavish at the Edinburgh International Book Festival . . .
I turned to Brooke. “You’re joking?”
She tapped the article in response. I looked back down. A small photograph, just an inch square, was squeezed into the column width between the final two paragraphs. In it were three people, merry at a bar. I recognized all of them.
The caption read: Bestselling crime author Henry McTavish catches up with up-and-coming debut novelists Lisa Fulton (left) and S. F. Majors (right) at the Edinburgh International Book Festival.
The photo had been taken in a badly lit booth of a badly lit pub—which I mean literally, as according to my research the owner tried to burn it down for insurance purposes in 2015 and failed—but it was unmistakable. McTavish had his arm around Lisa’s shoulder, they were both laughing, and S. F. Majors was looking dead straight at the camera. All three had foaming pints of beer in front of them and vibrant, unforced smiles. It didn’t seem like they were posing for a newspaper; it had the sense of camaraderie you find in high school yearbooks that makes you wistful for youth.
The three of them, all at the same festival. Twenty years ago. There’s that phrase again. And now all on a train together. I knew not to take it lightly.
“Why are you showing me this?” I asked.
“Because if the best you’ve got is a couple of theories about why I’m capable of murder, I thought you’d want to know who actually had motive to kill him. This”—she stabbed a finger at the page—“was taken right after Henry published Knee-Deep in Trouble, the second Morbund novel, which tanked. And a year before he published . . .” She unspooled it for me.
“Off the Rails,” I finished. The third Morbund novel. What Brooke was trying to tell me clicked in slowly. “That’s the book that Majors brought up at the introductory panel. The one she said was based on real events.”
“Precisely! You see, she has claimed in the past that she first mentioned that story”—with each word, she plugged her finger right on Majors’s toothy grin—“at. This. Exact. Festival.”
I tried to make the picture flicker to life in my imagination. The clinking of glasses, the whispered gossip, the commiseration over reviews, the bashfulness around better-than-expected sales. A room of people who get it. Writing is a dream job, but it is a job, and sometimes it’s nice to be around people who share your opinion that the stakes of paper and ink are life and death. Writing is such a solitary act that a room full of communal misery is a tonic that many won’t admit is quite rejuvenating. Provided they’re not killing each other, of course.
A bunch of writers in a room requires a collective noun that the English language doesn’t have. A condolence, perhaps. A sympathy. It’s a war hospital for the written word.
I thought back to what I’d originally hoped this trip would be, my dream of hitting it off with McTavish. Now I pictured Lisa, McTavish and Majors huddled together, sharing their dreams and inspirations . . . and ideas.
What had Majors said at the panel? What color was Off the Rails? And what had been Henry’s answer, complete with gloating smile? Green.
Jealousy.
“Majors thinks McTavish took her idea for Off the Rails?”
“Bingo,” Brooke said. “She’s never let it go. Says they got to drinking and sharing, and the conversation was fairly casual, a bit creative. You know how it goes—a bit of Who are you reading?, a bit of What are you working on? Then a year and a bit later she sees Henry’s new book hit the shelves.” She mimed a little explosion with her hands.