Everyone on This Train Is a Suspect

Ernie explains that after the poor reception of his second novel and his accident, McTavish resorted to stealing a plot for his third novel. Out of ideas after this, he enlisted a ghostwriter to write his subsequent novels. Frustrated by Harriet’s review that compared him unfavorably to McTavish, Jasper wrote to her and told her that he was actually the author of McTavish’s recent books; he then had to meet with her to beg her for her silence, and this is when they fell in love. Ernie explains how carefully crafted Harriet’s statements have been, telling the strict truth while still being misleading enough to hide Jasper’s identity as McTavish’s ghostwriter. He adds that Jasper being McTavish’s ghostwriter explains why no typewriter was in McTavish’s room and McTavish’s confusion during the author panels. The argument that Ernie assumed was between McTavish and Wyatt was actually between Wyatt and Jasper: Wyatt was trying to appease McTavish by reneging on his deal with Jasper to stop the Morbund series and publish Jasper’s literary novel, Life, Death and Whiskey. “Archie Bench” is an anagram of Reichenbach, the name of the falls where Sherlock Holmes apparently fell to his death before being resurrected in a later novel: The anagram functioned as a promise to Wyatt that Morbund would be similarly resurrected.