Harriet and Jasper took selfies like they were on their honeymoon. Wolfgang chose a high-up flat piece of rock and meditated on it. The book club ladies delighted in spotting wallabies. S. F. Majors skipped rocks across a pool of water halfway down the ravine, where Brooke, intrepid with youth, hopscotched rock to rock as far along the water’s edge as she could. Lisa hung back in the shade, telling Brooke to be careful, and, later, helping to apply aloe vera cream to Brooke’s one-armed burn. Royce was by the table of drinks the staff had set out, pounding beers. Cynthia kept an eye on us, occasionally yelling how long we had left.
I spotted Harriet and Jasper struggling to get a selfie that captured the whole ravine and walked over to them. “Take your photo?” I asked. “I assure you I’m a well-trained Instagram boyfriend—there’ll be plenty of backup shots. And even retakes without complaint.”
Harriet laughed and excitedly handed me the camera. The photos came out well, although I noticed their smiles were a little too tight. Lips fresh from argument. I could tell Harriet wanted me to try again, but Jasper wouldn’t let her.
I walked away slowly, just to eavesdrop.
“It’s a lot of money,” Jasper said. “I can’t just say no.”
“We don’t need it,” Harriet said.
“Did you pay for this trip? Trust me. We could use it.”
Harriet didn’t like that. She sulked off toward the bar. Jasper followed, chanting her name: “Harriet! Harriet?! Harriet?” It was a familiar trifecta to anyone in a long-term relationship, each inflection meaning something different: Come on; Seriously?; I’m sorry!
Wyatt hadn’t joined us on the trip. I’d last seen him on the platform yelling into his phone; I supposed there was some paperwork to do when an author died. Douglas had also elected to stay behind.
I didn’t think of the murder, or of Douglas, again until we pulled in, pink-cheeked and sun-drunk—except for Royce, who was drunk-drunk—and I spotted Douglas hurriedly walking along the platform. It was no coincidence for us to be there at the same time: we’d been told to be back at the train by five P.M. At first I assumed that Douglas was worried about being late. But then I noticed his head was swiveling, checking to see if he was being followed. I watched as he reached a trash can, spun his backpack around and, with one last head-check, moved an object from his bag into the bin. Almost in the same motion he was walking away.
I looked around the coach. People were chattering and jovial, buoyed by the excursion. Juliette was asleep on my shoulder. I was the only one who had seen it.
We disembarked and I made an excuse to divert toward the bin, faking blowing my nose into a tissue and hoping Juliette didn’t notice I’d skipped two closer receptacles. Inside the bin were the usual scattered food wrappers and empty water bottles, apple cores and banana peels, but in the middle was a folded newspaper. It seemed an odd object to dispose of so suspiciously. I leaned into the bin and unfolded it.
It surprised me to see a murder weapon.
Not the murder weapon, of course. But one that could have only been brought onto the train with murderous intent in mind.
Wrapped up in the middle of the paper was a gleaming silver revolver.
Psychological
Chapter 17
Dinner was at the Telegraph Station, one of the oldest outback homesteads in the country. Halfway along the spine of Australia, it had originally served as a relay post for Morse code messages between Adelaide and Darwin. We writers were traveling the same route as an electron of communication a hundred years ago. The train line may as well have been a telegraph line.
The station itself was a huddle of historic stone cottages converted into a museum with plexiglass blocking the rooms, which featured plastic food on colonial dinner settings. The cottages surrounded a dust bowl clearing that had been gussied up with white-clothed tables as if it were a wedding, tin bathtubs spiked with the necks of white wine and beer bottles so that they looked like sea mines, and a stage where a guitarist and a banjo player were crooning country tunes. The scent of searing meat wafted into nostrils as dinner was cooked on an open flame just far enough away from the guests to tantalize us with how rustic the cooking was, but not close enough to make us feel like we were in the kitchen. We’d been told before the trip to bring one formal outfit specifically for this dinner, so I had on a dinner jacket that thankfully covered up the crumpled shirt I’d neglected to hang. The sunset was almost offensively golden, photographically perfect. Tripods and binocular lenses clicked into place along the back fence like an army defending the line.
For all the beauty of the sunset, I couldn’t take my eyes off Douglas. I don’t know much about guns, but I do know the type he had binned—a little snub-nosed revolver, the one where you spin the chamber to play Russian roulette—was, like most guns, illegal in Australia. It’s not the sort of thing that one has a ready excuse for carrying around. I had no idea how he’d gotten it on the plane over from Texas, so assumed he’d picked it up in Darwin. Just because guns are illegal in Australia doesn’t mean they’re inaccessible, of course, and Darwin has a lot of farmland where legal firearms are used, but he’d have to be motivated to find one. And if he had gone to those lengths, why dispose of it without firing a bullet?
Douglas, in contrast to how stressed and furtive he’d appeared at the train station, now seemed relaxed and carefree, dancing with the book club ladies in front of the band. There was a definite air of celebration in him. This isn’t as accusatory as it sounds; there was very little grief in the air. Three-quarters of the train didn’t know what had happened, and of those of us who did, only a few thought it anything other than an unforeseen tragedy. What I mean is, people were determined to enjoy themselves.
Dinner was flame-grilled apostrophes of lamb chops, with chocolate damper, a bread cooked on a campfire, for dessert. We each had a designated seat; cards had been placed deliberately to separate us from our traveling party, to stoke conversation, so Juliette and I were split up. S. F. Majors, however, was at my table. After mains, when a few people had floated off to stand around the various fire pits or ice buckets depending on their desired temperature, I slid into the seat next to her.
“I don’t think we’ve properly talked,” I said, extending a hand. “Thanks for inviting me along to this whole shindig.”
Majors raised her eyebrows, looked like she was about to say something, and then gave a half chuckle and shook her head. “This whole ‘shindig’”—she rolled the word in annoyance and tossed it back to me—“is an absolute disaster.” She rubbed her temples. “If you see Wyatt coming, let me know. I’d prefer to avoid him.”
“What happened wasn’t your fault.”
“Tell that to Gemini’s lawyers. Even though Wyatt’s about to make his company a literal truckload of cash, they’ll want someone to blame. There goes my board seat for the festival too, if not the whole Mystery Writers’ Society. We killed Henry McTavish. I’m sure loads of writers will want to join now.”
“I thought it was a heart attack.” I played dumb.
She slugged back enough wine to endure me. “Sure you do. I’m a psychologist, Ernest, I can read you. Just ask me what you came here to ask me.”
She was terse enough that I figured I’d only get one question, so I refilled her wine until I decided on my angle. She didn’t seem won over by the gesture but sipped at it all the same. “What’s the psychological profile of an obsessive?” I asked. “Like a stalker?”