Everyone on This Train Is a Suspect

Ernie drinks a beer to steady his nerves. Jasper and Harriet introduce themselves, and Jasper makes an astute comment about the jealousy among writers. Ernie learns that Jasper is a writer who came to the festival to speak with Wyatt. Jasper and Harriet leave, and Douglas Parsons sits down. He tells Ernie that he has been thinking about this trip for a long time and that it’s strange to finally be here. Remembering the second glass of champagne in front of Douglas that morning, Ernie is puzzled when Douglas claims that he’s on the trip by himself. Douglas keeps bringing up Ernie’s responsibility for a death. He’s fixated on the idea that the person in question caused Ernie great harm and wonders what it felt like to get revenge. Ernie notes, hypothetically, that it would have made him feel sad because revenge feels like a loss of power and control.

After dinner, Ernie and Juliette overhear Wyatt and Wolfgang arguing. Wyatt says, “You can’t do that,” and begins to say that “[i]t’ll ruin” something but breaks off (91), suddenly aware of everyone’s attention. Ernie notices Wyatt trying to write Wolfgang a check, but Wolfgang is apparently refusing whatever Wyatt has in mind. When Ernie mentions to Juliette that he hopes to run into Simone later, Juliette realizes that she left Simone’s scarf on her chair at breakfast and asks Ernie not to tell Simone about this. Ernie is delighted at this evidence that Juliette, too, fears Simone. Ernie finds Simone and tries to convince her to intervene in the matter of McTavish’s bad review, but she tells him to let it go. Ernie notices the three older women who were being so boisterous during the train’s departure; they’re drinking together, again, and each has a copy of a viral Erica Mathison book that Ernie considers close to pornographic. One of the women shows off her autographed copy, and Ernie notices that Gemini is Mathison’s publisher. As McTavish, very tipsy, prepares to leave the bar car, Jasper approaches him and introduces himself. Although Jasper doesn’t ask for it, McTavish signs a coaster and hands it to him. Simone hisses at Ernie that she’s trying to woo McTavish as a client and that Ernie better not mess up her opportunity. She reveals that the woman with the signed copy of the Mathison book is Veronica Blythe, a well-known book critic.

Ernie drinks until he’s the last one in the bar car. He decides to confront McTavish in his carriage and encounters Royce, inebriated, pounding on McTavish’s door. Royce insists that McTavish is inside talking to Fulton. He feels betrayed and desperate because he needs McTavish to blurb his book to bolster sales. Ernie helps him back to his room. Royce accuses Ernie of having faked the events at Sky Lodge Mountain Retreat or possibly being the real killer of everyone who died there. When Ernie assures him that it all really happened just as he wrote, Royce says that maybe something will happen on this train, too—in fact, he wishes it would so that he could see how Ernie reacts to a real murder.

Near midnight, Ernie wakes, feeling sick from the alcohol and the motion of the train. On his way back from vomiting in the communal bathroom, he sees flower petals on the corridor carpet and hears Wyatt and McTavish arguing in one of the rooms: Wyatt is angry because the new manuscript doesn’t resurrect Morbund, as promised. He mentions that the inclusion of the “Archie Bench” character is “[r]eal fucking cute” (106). When the train lurches, Ernie hits his head and makes a noise. He quickly moves to the tea alcove to pretend to be making some tea but finds that the kettle has been thrown into the trash.

The next morning’s panel features just Majors and McTavish. When Wyatt and McTavish appear, Ernie notes that they seem jovial with one another but that McTavish has a bump on his nose that is turning into a bruise. Ernie hears McTavish whisper to Brooke, “It’s a mighty fine drop to drink alone” (110). The conversation between Majors and McTavish begins; despite Majors’s efforts to speak more in depth with McTavish, he openly drinks from his flask and recycles the same ideas that he shared during the previous day’s panel. Suddenly, McTavish vomits, goes white, and begins to shiver. He manages to get to his feet but then collapses, dead, on the floor.

Ernie addresses readers directly, offering a suspect list along with what he alleges will be readers’ reasoning at this point in the mystery: They’ll consider Fulton the main suspect because she has been nice to Ernie and was absent from the bar car. Royce will be last as a suspect because he’s “the kind of reprehensible cockroach who normally winds up the victim in these books, and you consider him too obvious as a murderer” (112). Wyatt and the other writers are in the middle of the pack: They clearly have secrets. The festival guests are also suspects, but only Douglas has behaved suspiciously so far. Ernie notes that readers likely don’t suspect Juliette because her character would need to have changed significantly from the previous book for her to become a killer. He adds that in any case, “only an idiot would accuse Juliette of murder” (113). Ernie provides a tally of occurrences of each suspect’s name in the book so far. He considers his readers and himself part of a team, working together to solve the mystery, but admits that readers may still not completely trust him.