“How have I never heard about this? I’m not a Mongrel, sure, but I’m enough of a fan to have twigged if any accusations hit the press. How the hell do you know about it?”
“Majors has to be very careful about what she says,” Brooke said. “Wyatt Lloyd has been . . . I don’t want to say ‘threatening,’ but I could say . . . aggressively litigious. Besides, if I told you tomorrow I was going to write a novel about Henry the Eighth, I don’t dibs that story for myself. It’s public, it’s out there, so me writing about it doesn’t rule out anyone else from having a crack. Come to think of it”—she held up a finger in mock thought—“I reckon someone’s been murdered on a train before.”
Something McTavish said rang in my mind. If you knew someone who died or was hurt in a similar way . . .
“Different question, then. Who’s Archibald Bench?”
She burst out laughing. “You’re better off barking up the Annie Wilkes stuff.”
“What?”
“Archie Bench is the reason I wouldn’t have killed him. Try harder.”
“Okay.” I tried again. “Did Majors know the people involved in the real story behind Off the Rails?”
Brooke gave a noncommittal head shake. More of a How should I know than an I don’t know.
I turned back to the article. “You kept this, which means you thought it was important. You had your loyalty, of course, to his books. So you’re predisposed to believe that he hadn’t nicked the idea, I’m guessing. But you believed the rumor all the same?”
Brooke sighed. “Obviously I kept it for a reason. I mean, it’s an important biographical incident, regardless of who you believe. Like any good rumor, it’s not really public knowledge, but it’s not exactly hidden. Most Mongrels know about it, at least. Occasionally it pops up on a podcast. But it’s not, like, news or anything.” This seemed an overexplanation: I’d never heard these accusations before. “And McTavish has always denied it. I always believed him. But . . . you’re right, I did keep the article. And now that I’ve met him . . .” She put a hand on my arm. “You read people’s books, and you think you know them. They’re having a conversation with you for hundreds of pages, and there’s an intimacy there that you develop on your own. I really loved Henry McTavish. And then I got here, and the drinking, the excess, the look in his eyes as he handed me the key . . . Maybe now I think my picture of him was wrong. Maybe now I think he’s a man who likes pleasure but doesn’t want to have to work for it. And maybe that means I wonder if I should have believed her all along.”
I digested that. It seemed a pretty good summation of McTavish—a man who wanted his pleasures gifted to him. Or taken.
“What about Lisa? She hasn’t backed up these claims, has she?” I asked. I recalled Majors almost expecting Lisa to stick up for her at the panel, the disappointment when she hadn’t, and the friction when Lisa’s cover revealed she’d been blurbed by McTavish. That could easily be seen as Lisa choosing a side. Maybe it was even what McTavish had offered her for her silence.
Brooke shook her head, but her eyes looked to the floor.
Royce’s words echoed in my mind—there’s more than one way to get a blurb—until I realized it was too whiny and annoying to be a memory and was actually the real-life Royce, who’d finished searching the other rooms and was leaning against the television casing. He had a smugness to him, like someone who’s cheated on the test and knows all the answers. “You talking about Henry and Lisa? They. Got. It. On,” he sneered. “Henry said she was a real firecracker of a lay.”
Brooke retched at his description.
“Find anything?” I painted on a smile. “Decorum, perhaps?”
“Wouldn’t you love to know. And what’s going on here, interviewing suspects without me?”
“She’s not a very likely suspect,” I said.
“That makes her very likely indeed.” He waggled a finger at me. “You should know this, Ernest: it’s never the least likely, that’s too obvious. It’s got to be the next along.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” I said.
“Besides, you probably didn’t notice, but I’m quite sharp. She’s been reading a bloody copy of Misery on the trip.” He postured like it was the most genius observation in the world, then turned back to the hallway. “What’s taking this bloke so long?” A toilet flushed, answering his own question, but he called anyway, “Aaron?”
Brooke turned to me. “Misery’s not about obsession. Not if you look at it from Annie Wilkes’s perspective. It’s got a much simpler theme.” She stood up and, even though Royce wasn’t technically blocking her way to the door, managed to get a shoulder into him as she passed. She held up the Chairman’s Carriage key and said as she placed it on the table, “Never meet your heroes.”
Aaron emerged, patting wet hands on the front of his vest, as the Ghan jolted to a stop. We all swayed in unison with the change of velocity.
“Right,” Aaron said, slapping Royce on the shoulder. “Guess that’s your investigation over. Thank God for the professionals. Welcome to Alice Springs.”
Chapter 16
They made us stay on the train while they unloaded the body. I’d returned to the cabin sheepishly, where Juliette had appraised me, looked at her watch (You’ve been gone awhile) and said, “Had your fill?”
I’d nodded, patted her leg. Path of least resistance.
She might have even believed me had I been able to take my eyes off the paramedics, grunting as they carried McTavish’s rag doll body, zipped into plastic, down the steps and onto the platform. It was so mundane, so practical, no more the handling of a celebrity corpse than it was hauling a washing machine up a flight of stairs. I’ve always thought I write things down to help remember them. But there is a part of me that writes to be remembered. Watching them wrestle with the body, I realized that it doesn’t matter how many names on how many spines of how many books you have, sometimes your legacy boils down to meat in a black plastic bag.
I was about as determined to enjoy myself in Alice Springs as Juliette was determined to distract me from thinking about McTavish. The writers’ panels were mercifully canceled for the day, which meant that we had our choice of the activities provided to the regular guests or could simply wander the township on our own. Juliette and I elected to do the latter (Majors told me where to get the best vanilla slice), and then Juliette insisted on joining the bus for a bushwalk to Simpsons Gap, a natural marvel where steep red-rock cliffs had been cleft by weather and time to leave a ravine. I had hoped to bail up Simone with a couple of questions, but I overestimated her proclivity for sightseeing; she’d elected to stay on the train (the bar, we were told, had reopened). In any case, I was quickly taken by the towering view and deep ochre of the rock against the crisp blue of the sky, and promptly forgot all ideas I had about questioning anyone.
I sat in the sand at a point where the ravine was half in sun and half shaded by the ridge, and Juliette put her head on my shoulder, her face half in light and half in shadow. The rocks in front of us had existed for millions of lifetimes. They would be here when our bones were dust and our books were mulch. We were blips. But two blips are bigger than one blip. I think you know you’re onto a good thing when you can apologize without talking.
It was nice enough that I only kept half an eye on what everyone else was doing.