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falseroar · 2 months

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Murder on the Warfstache Express

Part 1: All Aboard, Full Steam Ahead

((So. That train story, right? Okay, but this is something I've been playing with the idea of writing ever since Wilford dropped that Murder on the Orient Express reference back in Wilford Motherlovin' Warfstache, and it really helped when AHWM and ISWM dropped and introduced us all to a wide cast of characters who don't all happen to look like Mark. Which is partially why this is a much different story than it would have been before ISWM. There's going to be a lot of familiar faces, some of them very out of place here, along with a couple of folks only referenced by name or as jokes. Also a murder, can't forget about that. Anyways, hope you enjoy it!))

Abe had never been a fan of confined spaces. Something about being caught with his back against the wall in one tight corner after another made it only natural to be on edge whenever he found himself confronted with a small room with only one way in or out.

A room very much like this train compartment he’d already lost track of time in, between the muted colors of the shoebox-like space that offered a seat just long enough to stretch out on and a window looking out at the unchanging landscape whiplashing by too quickly to really focus on anything in particular, and not much of anything else in the way of entertainment or stimulation. Abe had the riveting options of staring out at snow-covered hills and snow-covered trees and a dreary gray sky that promised, yes, even more snow that no one had asked for, or up at the jostling luggage rack overhead while he thought about the usual things.

Things like why the hell he was on this train in the first place.

He gave up on that pretty quickly and jumped up again, pacing the narrow space before deciding he really needed to stretch his legs. Besides, it couldn’t hurt to get a better idea of the layout of the train.

Just in case.

If he had noticed the conversation going on in low voices outside of his door, Abe would have stopped and held his ear to the door in the hope of hearing some of it. After all, he was a detective, which made eavesdropping practically his moral duty. That, and he was nosy as hell and bored to go with it.

If he had known a little more about the pair standing out in the hallway at the time, he would have loved nothing more than to have a regular door with which he could have “accidentally” hit one or both with as a possible alternative for some quick amusement.

Both options were only apparent in hindsight though, because in the moment Abe just turned toward the sliding door and opened it abruptly, startling the two men on the other side so badly they both jumped away from the opened door like it was a ticking timebomb.

One, the man with slicked-back black hair dressed in a suit that felt expensive to even look at, recovered first and gave Abe a withering look before remarking aloud as though addressing the air in general, “So much for this being luxury travel. It looks like they’ll let any low class, ill-mannered lout buy a ticket these days.”

Abe bristled, any apology he might have had instantly dying in response to that stuck-up, drawling voice. “And I thought you’d have something intelligent to say when you opened that pretty mouth of yours, so I guess we’ll all have to get used to being disappointed today.”

The rich man drew himself up, visibly swelling with indignation, but the other man cleared his throat and subtly moved between the two as he said, “Perhaps we could continue this conversation somewhere a little more private, sir?”

“Somewhere more private than the middle of the hall?” Abe asked. “Wow, wonder where you could find something like that around here.”

Choosing to ignore that comment, the second man slid open the door opposite Abe’s and stepped aside for the rich man with an, “After you, sir.”

The rich guy gave Abe one last sneer before going into the other compartment, which from the glimpse Abe got looked to be far more elegant and spacious than his own. The lackey added a disapproving stare of his own in Abe’s direction before sliding the door shut again with a sharp rap and promptly lowering the shade on the other side of the door’s round window.

Well, Abe could tell he was already off to a great start getting to know his fellow passengers. Although if the rest were anything like those two, he’d be better off staying in his own room for the rest of the trip.

A not very tempting thought, so instead Abe stepped out into the hallway and slid the door shut behind him, taking a moment to look both ways.

More rooms to either side, the doors slightly offset from their opposite so that any uncovered windows just looked out into the hallway and not directly into their neighbor’s room. To his right past a few more compartments was the door he used to step onto the train, and beyond that he’d caught a glimpse of the luggage car being filled by the station porters. Past the luggage car there was only the train’s engine, so nothing to see that way.

He turned left and paused not three steps away from his door, head unconsciously tilting while his brow furrowed in concentration. Over the rhythmic sound of the train’s wheels turning and the distant huff of the engine, Abe thought he heard something else.

Music?

It was faint at first, but the longer he listened the louder it seemed to get until the noise of the train died away, until the beat roared in his ears and drummed in his chest, the sound so tangible he was surprised the next door along and seeming source of the music wasn’t shaking in its casing. It was as much a mystery as why there was no complaint from the rich man next door, who had to be able to hear that noise through the connecting wall between the two rooms.

Abe slowed, staring at the covered window of the door like he could see through it if he tried hard enough. That thumping, upbeat music was familiar, familiar in a way that itched at the back of his mind and made his trigger finger twitch. Where had he heard this before?

Before he could make the connection, Abe heard the rattle of another door opening and quickly turned away from the offending door, eager not to be spotted staring into someone else’s room. A maneuver that put him directly in the path of the man stepping out of the room opposite, the two colliding so hard that the twin batches of swearing temporarily drowned out both the music and the train.

“…Sorry about that,” the new man muttered after a moment, rubbing his own shoulder. Fedora, oversized trench coat worn over a suit that looked a little too new, and a piercing stare that returned Abe’s once over with one of its own. If Abe wasn’t already suspicious enough, he’d felt something during that collision and was pretty sure it had nothing to do with the stranger being happy to see him.

There were only so many people who’d travel with a hidden weapon close to hand, after all.

A number that should have included Abe, except he had been forced to turn over his gun before boarding the train with the assurance that it would stay in a weapon safe during the duration of the trip. Flashing his badge hadn’t helped, the conductor no doubt calling his bluff because they were leaving his jurisdiction—or was it that they weren’t in it at the time?

Point was, if this guy had a gun on him, that meant he either found a way to sneak it onboard or he had the kind of authority to get a pass from the conductor.

All of this passed through Abe’s mind rapidly, but not fast enough that there weren’t several seconds of awkward silence before he asked, “In a hurry to get somewhere?”

“…No,” the other man said, proving he wasn’t much of a liar, at least. He stepped back into the still open doorway behind him and gestured for Abe to move on. “Please, you first. I’m sure your companion will be wondering where you’re at.”

Companion? Where’d he get that idea?

“No, I’m traveling alone. Same as you, I’m guessing?”

“Yes?” His eyes went past Abe to the room he’d just left, brow furrowing in confusion before he made a visible effort to relax it. “I mean, yes, it’s just me for now. Traveling for work.”

“Work? What kind of work is that?” Abe asked, trying to appear open and only as curious as a fellow traveler might be even as he glanced at the room behind the man, the quick glance enough to tell him that it was much smaller than his own (a fact he didn’t think possible until now), with no sign of any convenient personal belongings left out and about to give a hint as to their owner.

The man paused, clearly not having prepared for follow up questions, and finally said, “Oh, boring stuff. Like 99% of it’s just, you know, paperwork to make the home office happy. What about you, where are you headed?”

The question came quickly, Abe thinking less because the guy was interested and more because he didn’t want to leave an opening to ask what the other 1 percent was supposed to be.

“Oh just…to the next stop, same as everyone else on here I guess.”

The awkward silence lasted much longer this time, both men struggling to come up with any more small talk without the risk of having to answer their own questions. Abe broke it first with a clearing of his throat and said, “I, uh, was just going to get some fresh air. See you around, uh…”

“Apless,” the man answered immediately, showing the barest hint of a wince around the eyes before he continued, “Harold Apless.”

“My name’s Abe,” Abe answered, distracted by the realization that the previously overwhelming music seemed to have stopped at some point without his noticing it. “Nice to meet you, Happy.”

“My name’s not—”

The protest gave way to a defeated sigh behind Abe as he pulled open the car’s door and stopped in the small space between cars where the shaking and jolting was worse than ever. The enclosed space wasn’t made for people to stay here long, with doors to either side for boarding when the train wasn’t in motion providing enough gaps for the freezing cold outside to seep in. As different from that crowded room, too packed with dancers to even breathe, as he could get.

Dancers?

Abe winced and rubbed his eyes, dispelling that memory as quickly as he could. That’s why he was here, right? To get some distance between himself and…all of that.

Abe took a deep breath and exhaled, fogging up the glass of the nearby window, the welcome chill still enough to make him glad he hadn’t taken off his black leather jacket, and continued on through the next door and into what proved to be the lounge car.

Wooden paneling and low, flickering lamps set in intervals along the walls gave the lounge a warm, comfortable air, helped by plush armchairs seated in rows to either side around the windows and small, round tables. A thick, elegant carpet ran the length of the car and muffled the noise of the wheels underneath to the point it felt too quiet when Abe entered, not helped by how few people were seated or talking around the room.

A small bar area at the opposite end gave Abe something to aim for as he walked the length of the car, checking faces and counting heads out of habit.

Not that there were many to keep track of.

There was a woman dressed in bright, flamboyant colors underneath a white jacket, a bandana holding her long, wavy hair out of the way as she studied the mass of papers and books covering every inch of the table in front of her. From what he saw as he passed by, said papers and books all looked like a bunch of plans and equations so dense that his brain refused to take any of it in out of self-defense.

She on the other hand was so utterly focused that her lips moved along with thoughts that she couldn’t seem to keep contained within herself, occasionally sparing a hand from the coffee cup she held in front of her for lack of anywhere else to put it to push her glasses back in place or retrieve the pencil behind her ear to make another note in the same handwriting that littered all of the papers. For her, Abe and the rest of the train may as well not have existed for all it mattered in the moment.

The other two passengers he passed next did notice him, but were so engrossed in their conversation over a game of chess that the older woman wearing a black burnoose and dress littered with silver stars and matching jewelry could only spare him a friendly smile. Across from her, a man dressed in khaki with a brown leather jacket not all that dissimilar to the one Abe was wearing tilted the brim of his brown hat in the detective’s direction without looking away from the board, his hand still resting on the knight as he considered the consequences of his move.

“Well, you can tell me more about the monkeys or avoid losing your rook, but I’m afraid you can’t do both, dear.”

“Funnily enough, I’m pretty sure one of those monkeys stole my traveling chess set. That or my assistant on that little adventure still had it on him when we realized the simians weren’t quite ready to give up their piece of the map.”

“A real shame, that,” the woman said, shaking her head. “To shreds, you say?”

Abe had several questions, but he kept walking toward the bar with the confidence that a good drink would be less likely to leave him with regret in the long run.

Or it would have, if he hadn’t reached the bar just as the bartender stopped what he was doing and looked up, his customer service smile disappearing with a flash of recognition.

He’d recognize that handsome face and look of distress and horror anywhere, especially since aside from the emblem of the train company on his lapel and a splash of dark red on his tie and handkerchief, his outfit really wasn’t all that different from the getup he wore back when he was Mark’s butler.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Abe asked and Benjamin shushed him with a glance at the other passengers.

“Language!” Benjamin hissed, his own voice lowered to just above a whisper. “Please do not disturb the other passengers.”

“That doesn’t answer my question, pal,” Abe said, obliging him with a low growl.

“I am not your pal,” Benjamin said, straightening his already ridiculously broad shoulders and trying to look prim and proper like Abe hadn’t seen him threaten a man with a feather duster once. “And I should think it’s rather obvious that I am working here. Would you like something to drink?”

“I think you and me already know the answer to that one,” Abe said, and Benjamin rolled his eyes before reaching under the bar for the strong stuff. “Now you’re talking.”

Abe sidled onto one of the stools, turned so that he could keep an eye on the butler turned bartender and the rest of the carriage.

“I had to make my way somehow after my last employer…” Benjamin paused, lip trembling, and with an effort he shook himself and poured Abe a healthy dose in a glass before pulling a second glass for himself. Pushing the glass toward Abe, he asked, “What brings you here, detective?”

Abe took the drink and took a long sip before setting it down with a sigh, because it was rude to leave a good drink waiting.

That, and he had to stall for an answer somehow, but the best he could come up with was to turn it around with another question as he asked, “Why do you think I’m here?”

Benjamin gulped down the contents of his glass, which admittedly was barely a splash of alcohol poured out before his conscience caught up with him, and swiftly put the glass out of sight before any of the others saw him drinking on the job.

“Still chasing leads then?”

Abe shrugged. “Maybe.”

Looking out over the rest of the lounge car in search of a change of subject, Abe suddenly said, “Not a lot of people here, huh? Guess they’re all hiding out in their rooms.”

“Mm, no, I think this is about half of the guests on this particular trip,” Benjamin answered, and it was his turn to shrug when Abe turned a disbelieving stare on him. “Look around, detective. This is hardly vacationing weather in country that I assure you is much more pleasant in the spring, and at this time of the year the only people crossing the country by train are those who have somewhere they need to be and no other way to get there.”

He gestured toward the back of the train behind him and continued, “There is so little interest that we only have the one passenger car for this leg of the journey. There is just the dining car behind this, and a mail car we are taking to the next station as a way to earn enough revenue to even justify running the train as scheduled. On the other hand, I believe the services we provide during the journey will more than make this a trip to remember for all of our esteemed passengers.”

“I’m not tipping you extra for that.”

Benjamin scowled and made a pretense of cleaning the other side of the already pristine surface of the bar to put some distance between him and the detective.

Fine by Abe, who removed himself from the bar stool and took a more comfortable seat in the corner of the car.

Somehow knowing that there were so few people on board made this trip feel more…not sad, although it was kind of sad in a pathetic sort of way. Gloomy, maybe, with the darkening sky outside and the white snow coming down sideways in the train’s wake? No, more than that. There was another word for the mood settling in around Abe’s shoulders.

“Perhaps loneliness,” Wilford suggested.

“More like ominous, like a premonition of things to come,” Abe answered before freezing in place, the narration that threatened to spill out of him hitting a hard pause on that thought, his eyes still on the dark windows where he could see the reflection of the man sitting opposite him, smile gleaming and eyes twinkling like he was waiting for the joke to sink in.

Abe held his breath and turned his head, as though expecting both man and reflection to disappear when he laid eyes on the real thing.

Instead, the colorful man in an extravagant yellow and pink confectionary of a suit crossed his legs and settled further back into his plush seat, looking around the train car with undisguised wonder. His drawling, unhinged voice stirred up the worst kind of memories in Abe as he said, “You sure do know how to travel in style, don’t you detective?”

Abe nearly spilled his drink reaching for a gun that wasn’t there, a thousand questions running through his mind although most of them could be summed up by the words that finally made their way out of his mouth after a bout of helpless sputtering:

“What the hell?!”

Wilford took a sip of hot chocolate from a vibrant pink mug and swished it around his mouth thoughtfully before answering. God, Abe hoped that was hot chocolate. Wilford hyped up on coffee was a nightmare waiting to happen, and he already felt like he was in a waking one of those.

“The suit’s a bit much, isn’t it? But unlike you, I happen to enjoy dressing to the occasion. That, and apparently trousers are ‘mandatory’ around these parts, for some reason.”

Of all the feelings Abe expected when he laid eyes on Wilford Warfstache again, “relief” wasn’t one of them, but then he’d also never considered the apparently non-zero chance of running into his greatest enemy pantsless either.

“Aw, you think I’m the greatest?” Wilford said, his brown eyes crinkling with a smile.

“My greatest enemy, and don’t do that,” Abe answered, and if anything, Wilford’s smile just grew wider. “It’s not a compliment! How did you even get here?!”

Abe realized it was a ridiculous question as soon as he asked it, but Wilford seriously considered it before shrugging.

“Same as you, I suppose. Say, where’s this train going, anyways?”

“Why would you get on a train without knowing where you’re going?” Abe asked.

Another shrug. “Something, something, ‘life is about the journey, not the destination,’ or whatever it is people put on the postcards. What do you think they do for fun around here?”

Wilford turned around in his chair again to look over his shoulder at the other passengers, the silence except for the background noise of the train positively deafening.

“Huh. Not much, by the look of things. Bet we can do something to liven things up around here, what do you say, you old—”

Wilford’s words stopped short on his lips when he turned back around and found the detective inches away, a finger dangerously close to his nose as Abe spoke in a low growl.

“You’re not doing a thing on this trip, Colonel. The second we get off, I’m going to put you down.” Abe paused, aware something hadn’t come out right there. “I mean, the next stop this train makes, you’re under arrest.”

“Huh, I think you’re the only one who still calls me that,” Wilford said, unbothered by the threat.

“In fact,” Abe continued, too angry to be deterred by Wilford’s calm, “You’re already under arrest, and if I catch even a whiff of you trying to escape or laying even a finger on anyone else on this train, I’ll…”

He let the threat hang in the air unspoken, mostly because he couldn’t think of a way to finish it. His gun was locked away, and he couldn’t be sure the same could be said for Wilford, not if that Happy guy was able to keep his own weapon. That, and he knew all too well what Wilford could be capable of when the mood took him.

Wilford looked down at Abe’s finger still pointing in his face and gave it a little kiss before saying, “Whatever you say, detective. I’ll be on my best behavior, promise.”

“…Why do I feel like that’s not a very high bar?”

Wilford winked and toasted Abe with his mug of hot chocolate before taking a sip. The gesture revealed the black block letters printed on the side of the mug to Abe for the first time: SPOILER ALERT!

((End of Part 1. Hope you enjoyed it! I'm going to try to space each part by a couple of days or so, just because they're all on the longer side. For the record, no, that's not Actor Mark, but he is a Mark ego. Sort of. You'll see. Genuinely curious how many people know/remember Harold Apless. As far as I know he was only ever referenced on the ISWM website, and we only got a Noirverse photo of him. Haven't fully committed to who I imagine as "playing" him, maybe Sean? But judging by the shows' history that means he would actually end up being played by MatPat, so...

Link to Part 2: An Easy Offer to Refuse.

Also a confession about the tag list: it's, uh, been so long since I've written anything I'm not sure if this is the most up-to-date version at all. I also ended up removing a lot of urls that no longer connected to a blog, so I may have accidentally deleted a few valid ones. If you'd like to be added or removed, please just let me know in a comment.

Said hopefully not too out of date taglist: @silver-owl413 @asteriuszenith @withjust-a-bite @blackaquokat @catgirlwarrior @neverisadork @luna1350 @oh-so-creepy @95fangirl @a-bit-dapper @randomartdudette @cactipresident @hotcocoachia @purple-star-eyes @shyinspiredartist @avispate @autumnrambles @authorracheljoy @liafoxyfox @hidinginmybochard

))

#markiplier #fanfiction #detective abe #wilford warfstache #big dick moneybags #agent harold apless #wkm butler #ahwm illinois #iswm dorene #may avoid tagging all the characters in the future #just to avoid cluttering the tags #we all know how this ends right?#but it's about the journey not the destination or whatever they put on the postcards

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falseroar · 1 month

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Murder on the Warfstache Express

Part 11: Spoiler Alert

((After discovering Wilford's not the only stowaway on this train, Abe decides it's time to gather everyone together and finally solve this murder, even if he doesn't like where it leads.

Just a warning beforehand: This is definitely the longest chapter in the series. Read more link, please don't fail me now.

Link to Part 10: A Ticket to Ride, and here's one to the masterlist for the series that I finally got around to making.))

“Who the hell are you?” Abe and the stranger pointing his own gun at him asked in almost perfect unison.

“Oooh, jinx! You both owe me a soda!” Wilford declared, and Abe spotted a flicker in the stowaway’s eyes before she focused on him again.

Maybe she’d been distracted by Wilford’s nonsense, which he was becoming worryingly used to, or maybe she was eyeing the doors on either side of him that led directly out into the darkness and snow, weighing her options for escape if she managed to get past the two men standing in the doorway of the mail car she’d been hiding out in.

Abe on the other hand was rather fixated on his gun, what with not being used to seeing it from this angle.

“I’m supposed to be on this train, which I’m going to go out on a limb and guess is more than you can say,” Abe said, his voice only a little bit strangled before he recovered from the initial shock. “I thought train bandits went out of style along with cowboys, but you’ve definitely updated the look, whoever the hell you are.”

“You don’t need to know who I am,” the bandit responded, after taking a moment to acknowledge the compliment. In the lanternlight, Abe had mistaken the black band around her eyes for the traditional bandit mask, but as she stepped closer he realized it was some kind of…makeup, maybe? Or a tattoo? Even what he first took to be an eyepatch appeared to be a strange device with an assortment of lenses, the purpose of which he suspected had something to do with how she got into the safe to steal his gun. Her whole getup in fact, the black and brown leather and cloth with straps everywhere, as much as she pulled the look off it felt…wrong.

Out of place.

Like a few other things Abe had seen tonight, now that he thought about it.

It was one of those things he had in mind when the bandit gestured with the gun, saying, “Move, now, stay where I can see you and maybe we’ll figure this out without anyone getting hurt, huh?”

“Anyone else,” Abe said, moving slowly with his hands up. She was directing them into the mail car, where he could see bags and boxes of mail piled up haphazardly around a snug nest she’d made for herself back here during the trip.

“What?” she asked, reaching for the door to the mail car behind Wilford as he shuffled in behind Abe. Once that door shut, how long would it take for the others to notice he was gone? Wilford wasn’t even supposed to be here, but surely someone would look over and realize Abe wasn’t in the dining car anymore and start searching for him, right?

But a lot could happen, in between now and then.

“You do know why the train stopped, don’t you?” Abe asked, watching her carefully. As much as she waved that gun around, her grip wasn’t quite right, her finger not even close to the trigger. He didn’t doubt she knew how to wield a weapon, but her inexperience with this particular one showed.

“Yeah, that idiot up there got distracted and ran us into a snowbank or something,” she said, once again training the gun on Abe. “What have you heard, how long until this thing gets moving again?”

Abe shrugged. “Hard to tell. Help probably won’t come until daylight, and with the murder…”

“Murder?” The surprise on her face looked genuine enough, especially when she shook her head and said, “Oh no, I know what you’re thinking, and whatever drama you people have going on has got nothing to do with me.”

“No, you’re just here to steal that rock of the professor’s, aren’t you?” Abe asked and the bandit shrugged.

“Maybe, maybe not. What do you know about it?”

“That it wasn’t worth killing Happy over,” Abe said quietly.

“…What?”

“Agent Apless,” Abe corrected himself, but if anything, the bandit looked even more puzzled.

“The USA agent?” she asked.

“I don’t know where he was from, but his ID wasn’t exactly from any American group I know of,” Abe said, glancing at Wilford who just shrugged.

“No…no,” the bandit said without listening to him, her brow crinkled as she tried to reconcile this new information. “No, he can’t be dead. Believe me, it takes a lot more than that to kill a guy like him.”

“A lot more than what?” Abe asked and she visibly hesitated.

It was just a second, but that’s all he needed. Abe’s hand moved faster than thought, trained by years of practice to reach for the weight in his pocket, and in that single moment of distraction the bandit found herself looking down the barrel of Happy’s gun.

A moment of silence passed as both stood there, “borrowed” guns trained on each other, until Wilford made a noise and patted down his own pockets before belatedly drawing his gun and waving it back and forth between the detective and the bandit.

“Didn’t feel right, being the only one here not pointing a weapon at somebody,” Wilford explained.

“Point it at her, not me!” Abe snapped before catching himself. “Actually, don’t point that thing at anybody!”

“Why don’t you both put your weapons down?” the bandit suggested, keeping Abe’s gun trained on the detective despite being visibly concerned when Wilford shrugged and began to lazily spin his gun around on his finger with a nonchalance that personally made Abe break out into a cold sweat. “No need to play games here, right?”

“This isn’t a game, and this thing isn’t a toy, even if it looks like one,” Abe answered, hoping that was true for this stupid-looking thing he’d found on the agent’s body. He had never actually got around to testing the thing, after all. “But you knew that already, didn’t you?”

She glanced down at the strange gun in his hand and he swore he saw a flicker of recognition there.

That is, until her lips twitched into a sneer and she asked, “Do you even know how to use that thing?”

A sneer that slipped when Abe shrugged and said, “Got a trigger, doesn’t it? Beyond that, I guess we could find out together if you don’t drop the piece, now.”

“…Piece?”

“The—your gun—my gun,” Abe corrected himself, pressing forward in his irritation until the barrel of the sci-fi looking blaster was pressed up against the underside of the bandit’s chin, his own gun pressed up against his chest in turn. “Drop it, or test me.”

The bandit’s eyes narrowed, searching his for any sign of a lie. “Do you even know what setting it’s on?”

Abe shrugged one shoulder up and down, keeping the blaster steady without looking down at the settings on the side. “Couldn’t even begin to tell you. Might be on whatever Happy had it set to last, might not be. Again, do you want for us to find out the hard way?”

An involuntary gulp on the bandit’s part tested Abe’s grip on the trigger, and she shuddered at the sound of the gun slipping out of her open fingers and hitting the metal floor of the train car.

“Okay, okay! I give, alright?” She raised her empty hands and stepped back, giving enough room for Abe to bend down and pick up his gun.

Which is what he would have done, if his hands weren’t full between the lantern and Happy’s blaster, neither of which he was particularly eager to put away or set down while she could take advantage of it.

Instead, Wilford dipped down and straightened up with the detective’s gun in his other hand, only to find Abe pressing the blaster against his chest now.

“What?” Wilford asked, all innocence.

“You know exactly the hell ‘what,’” Abe said. “Do you really think I’m going to let you walk around this train armed? With my gun?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Wilford said, gesturing with both occupied hands while he spoke. “I am nothing if not a responsible—”

The gun went off in his hand, Abe and the bandit both shrieking while Wilford himself jumped a little as though surprised by the noise or the new hole in one of the overstuffed mailbags on the floor near Abe’s foot.

Abe stared at the smoking gun in Wilford’s hand, extremely aware that it wasn’t his gun that just fired. “…What happened to that one being a toy?”

Wilford studied the gun before shrugging and saying, “Must have forgot to put the safety on, my bad.”

“That doesn’t—” Abe struggled to find the words to explain how that didn’t explain how a gun could fire a flag one moment and actual bullets the next, and settled on, “As if you even know what a safety is!”

“…Fair enough, I just kind of made that up,” Wilford admitted, shoulders dropping when Abe stuffed Happy’s gun in his pocket and gestured toward him to hand over the gun.

“Both of them,” Abe insisted, holstering his gun and holding his hand out for the other.

“Aw, come on, I’ll be good,” Wilford said, pouting when the detective refused to budge but ultimately handing over his gun. “But I’m keeping the knives.”

“Knives? As in plural?”

“Well, of course, what kind of gentleman doesn’t have a selection at hand?” Wilford asked.

Meanwhile, the bandit rubbed her eye and muttered to herself, “This is so stupid…”

“Oh, the stupid’s just getting started,” Abe snapped. He gestured for her and Wilford to go through the door first, explaining as he did so, “We’ve still got to go back to the others and figure out what the hell’s been going on around here, after all.”

The bandit took her time walking out of the car, determined to hold on to some of her dignity even as she looked back over her shoulder at him and asked, “That was a bluff, right? It’s still set to stun, isn’t it?”

Even that much bravado slipped a little when the detective looked her in the eye and asked, “What kind of gun has a stun setting?”

---

Benjamin, Dorene, the chef, Mack, and Richard M. Bags all turned as the door to the lounge car burst open, letting the trio in from the freezing cold between the cars.

“We got the power back on!” Professor Beauregard announced with a beaming smile, matched by those of the conductor/engineer Peter and Illinois.

“Yeah, we kind of noticed,” the chef answered, gesturing at the lit lamps on the walls around them.

The professor deflated slightly and said, “Well, you don’t have to go and sound too excited…”

“Thank you very much, dear, this light really does make everything much more bearable,” Dorene said, smiling gently but turning a questioning eye on the engineer. “And does that mean we have a chance of getting moving again?”

“About that—” Peter started, only to be interrupted by the sound of the door sliding open again, only this time from the opposite end of the car.

“Oh, good, you’re all already together,” Abe said, ignoring the bandit’s weak protest as Wilford took her arm and led her toward the plush seats. Although the snort she made when Wilford whispered something in her ear on the way there was a bit harder to ignore, he forced himself to stay focused. “That makes this all a lot easier.”

“Who the hell is that?” Chef asked, those others who had been seated around the lounge also rising to stare, the bandit returning their stares with a sneering smile while Wilford beamed and waved.

“I don’t remember getting your tickets,” Peter said slowly, his confusion changing into recognition and outrage. “Hold on, you’re the one that threw those snowballs at me!”

“Only because you wouldn’t let me on the train,” Wilford protested. “And after I gave you a very good bribe, I might add.”

“All you needed was a ticket! I even pointed out where you could get one and everything,” Peter whined.

“Now hold on here,” Benjamin said slowly, staring at Wilford with a furrowed brow. “Is that man...?”

“The guy I told you was on this train from the beginning, and you didn't want to listen to me?” Abe asked. "I don't know, why don't you tell me?"

“Colonel, is that you?” Benjamin asked in a tone of disbelief, Chef's head whipping around at that name.

“Only my friends call me that,” Wilford said, the response so quick and natural that it must have been purely instinct. And then he titled his head, a faint smile playing around his lips. “Do I know you?”

“Do you—” Benjamin sputtered before pointing a gloved finger at the offending man. "You—you cad, you scoundrel! You...”

“Asshole!” Chef supplied.

“You don't remember us? From the manor?” Benjamin scoffed and said, “Well, that should hardly surprise me. After all, you couldn't even be bothered to attend the funeral of one of your oldest friends!”

“And that would be...?” Wilford prompted, fishing for some kind of hint.

“Master Mark, of course!”

“Mark had a funeral?” Abe asked. Did they ever even find a body to bury?

Chef shrugged and said, “Yeah, it was okay. Food was pretty decent, paparazzi hanging all over the place, Benjamin cried like a baby, about what you'd expect.”

“Right, right, of course,” Wilford said, before grimacing and giving the others in the room a look that clearly said he still had no clue who the two of them were.

Abe stared at the former butler and the chef, trying to make sense of this complete underreaction and failing. “Are you...are you telling me you're mad at Wilford because he skipped out on a funeral? That's it?”

“Well, there is that, and that time he shot Master's prized vase,” Benjamin answered.

“And he still owes me twenty bucks,” Chef added.

At those answers, Wilford's face lit up in recognition. “Oh, that's right! Good times, good times. I’m good for the money, I just have to fetch a bear first, you know how it is.”

“But...but he...” Abe stuttered, looking from them to Wilford as though he would actually help explain things. It's like they didn't even know, but how could they not know?

Except...except he'd kept his suspicions close to the chest, like the bullet that would replace them. Sure, he'd pointed his fingers, same as the rest, but when it came down to working out the details and piecing the evidence together, well, it didn't do to share too much until he could be sure who to trust.

And these two hadn't been there, when he confronted the Colonel, had they? When he laid it all out, when he told the Colonel he knew all about the affair, that he knew he was the one who killed Markiplier.

And the Colonel had returned the favor by shooting him and the only other witness.

“Detective, are you okay?”

Abe blinked, the room slowly pulling back into focus at the sound of Dorene's voice, and she wasn’t the only one looking at him with obvious concern.

“...No,” he muttered. But what did that matter, when there was still a murder to solve, right here and now?

“This is everyone on the train, all together in one place,” Abe said, looking around the room as though to confirm that fact for himself.

“Minus the agent,” Wilford corrected him.

“...Yeah, minus the dead man.” Abe had been from one end of this train to the other, he'd checked everywhere, which is why he felt confident enough to continue, “All of us, and one murder to explain. And I'm going to tell you all right now, no one is leaving this train car until we get that explanation.”

At his words, they all stared at him, and then at each other as the realization sank in.

The crew: Benjamin, Peter, and the chef whose name Abe still hadn’t managed to catch after all this time and for all he knew might actually just be named “Chef.”

The passengers: Richard M. Bags, his assistant Mack, Dorene Whitacre, Illinois, Professor Beauregard, and himself, minus one Happy.

And the stowaways: Wilford Warfstache and the Bandit.

“Well, I can’t speak for anyone else here,” the bandit said, although her look around the room before landing on Abe suggested she could certainly judge them all the same, “but whatever issues you people have going on, it’s got nothing to do with me. I’m just along for the ride, that’s all.”

“Eh.” Abe made a face at that and said, “I think Professor Beauregard would disagree, even if Happy can’t.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Beauregard asked with a confused chuckle. “I don’t know this person at all.”

“But she knows of you, or at least that rock you’re traveling with,” Abe said. “That’s why she snuck into the baggage car after we were all asleep to try and steal it.”

The looks on both women’s faces were enough of a reward to compel the detective to continue. “She went for the weapons safe first since it’s the only safe on the train, but turns out the only thing in there was my gun. Despite the many, many other weapons everyone else was allowed to bring on to this train.”

He pointed a glare at the conductor, but Peter just stared back at him owlishly and asked, “Like what?”

“Like these?” Abe said, drawing Happy’s gun from his pocket and gesturing with it before dropping it on the table, then following it with Wilford’s gun. His own he decided to keep in his holster, just because they had been apart for far too long. “Not to mention whatever the hell else Wilford’s got on him, or the blaster in the professor’s room, or Illinois’ whip, seriously, who travels around with a whip?”

Peter held up a hand and said, “Hold on now, it’s not exactly my place to go and judge what things a man might be into.”

“Very good of you,” Illinois said, struggling to keep a straight face as he continued, “But for the record it’s…it’s just a whip. It helps out a lot on my adventures.”

“I’m sure it does, buddy, I’m sure it does,” Peter said, giving Illinois a reassuring nod.

The detective sighed and decided to let it go for now. “The point is, she looked in the safe first and not the big, obvious crate covered in locks because she knew what she was looking for is only about…yay big, would fit in the palm of your hand maybe? That sound about right?”

The bandit stared at him and said, “You can’t make me admit to anything, and you have no proof I ever left the mail car.”

“Proof like how I found you holding my damn gun?” Abe asked. “Or how about the postcard that got stuck to your shoe until you lost it in the baggage car?”

He held out a hand without looking and Wilford, after a delayed second to realize this was a cue of some kind, passed him the postcard he’d found.

“One postcard, from a Herr Ring to a Norbert Moses, found in the baggage car with a shoe print on it,” Abe said, flourishing it for the others to see before glancing at the bandit. “I thought I’d stepped on it, but how much you want to bet the print matches your boots and not mine?”

“…Okay, fine, I snuck up front and picked the safe,” the bandit said, thankfully not calling Abe’s bluff on that one. “When that turned out to be a useless bust—”

“My gun is not useless!”

“I started picking the locks on the crate, but if you look you’ll see it’s still locked, the crystal’s still there,” the bandit said with a shrug. “What can I say? The train suddenly slammed on its brakes and I panicked and went back into hiding. For all I knew, the crystal wasn’t even in the big box.”

“How did you even know it was on the train in the first place?” Professor Beauregard asked. “The only ones who knew were me and—”

She stopped short, hand going to her mouth and so obviously not trying to look that Abe took pity on her and said, “You and the guy footing the bill to research the rock, Big Dick Moneybags over there. And Mack knew too, I’m guessing?”

Mack opened his mouth, but before he could start denying everything Richard shrugged and said, “Sounds about right. I’d trust Mack to keep a secret, and the professor’s under the strictest NDAs money and a team of lawyers can devise. The investors we’re showing it to in a couple of days have been properly teased, but I find it best that the less they know, the better.”

“No one else knew about the crystal except you three?” Abe pressed, catching the briefest of doubts in two sets of eyes. “Moneybags?”

“Well, okay, I did have a supplier,” Richard admitted. “Guy who passed me the crystal with a few recommendations to ‘look into what it can do,’ but he’d have to know it was traveling with us to tip someone else off. Besides, this guy isn’t exactly the kind to go around sharing secrets with just anyone.”

“Oh, really, and how could you tell that?” Abe asked.

“I am an excellent judge of character,” Richard said, completely failing to miss the general disbelief at that in the train car. “And the man struck me as a trustworthy, well-dressed gentleman.”

“What does being well-dressed have to do with anything?” Abe asked.

Wilford shrugged and said, “You may not know anything about that kind of thing, but a nice white suit can be very persuasive, believe you me.”

Abe wondered when Richard had mentioned the color of the suit, but instead asked, “And do ‘trustworthy’ people generally go around handing out rocks that blow up if they get hit?”

“It didn’t blow up,” the professor protested over the alarm of the other passengers. “It just got a little…excited when it absorbed a blast of kinetic energy and, uh…knocked out the train’s power system, that’s all.”

“You’re the reason we’re stuck in the snow?” Benjamin asked and the professor shook her head.

“No, no, I packed the crystal properly so it would be exposed to as little outside influence as possible, it’s not my fault someone went and shot at it! I told you it was potentially dangerous, but you wouldn’t listen to me—”

She directed the accusation at Richard, who shrugged and said, “If I stopped doing everything just because it could be ‘potentially’ harmful, I wouldn’t be the outrageously rich man that I am today.”

Once again, the rich man was painfully oblivious to the mutters and general atmosphere in the room around him.

“Which is why a responsible, sensible person might alert certain…authorities to a potential hazard,” Abe suggested slowly. Unlike Richard, he was well aware of the warning look the professor gave him at those words, but that didn’t stop him from deciding to screw it and say, “Which is how Agent Apless ended up on this train in the first place.”

“What?” Professor Beauregard shook her head, the nervous laughter back. “I don’t know where you’re getting that from. I mean, do we even know he was actually an agent?”

“Oh, I know,” the bandit said, at the same time Abe pulled Happy’s badge out of his pocket and showed it to the room before dropping it on a nearby table alongside the postcard. “He was with the USA, for sure.”

“You keep saying that,” Abe muttered even as he pulled out Happy’s letter. “If you know so much, can you tell what this says?”

The bandit took the sheet of paper and scanned it over. “It’s a mission brief from the agency, telling Agent Apless to keep an eye out for any…rogue elements, and to make sure the energy source reached waiting agents at the next station for retrieval without any mishaps. Also, there’s a reminder at the end to change his password for some reason. Don’t know what that’s about.”

“We’re just going to take her word on that paper says?” Mack asked.

“Not like we’ve got anything else to go on, unless you feel like deciphering it,” Abe suggested, a prospect that the assistant looked a little too interested in actually following up on. “Either way, we know Richard didn’t tell this agency about the rock. What about you, Mack?”

“Of course not!” Mack protested, and all eyes turned on the professor.

“…Okay, fine, I blew the whistle,” the professor admitted before laughing. “Wow, it’s actually a relief to get that out, do you know?”

“You traitor!” Richard said, managing to sound genuinely offended.

“Yeah, like I was going to let you have access to an unknown, potentially unlimited source of energy that from all of my study appears to have an undue influence on its surrounding environments or even on the nature of reality itself?” The professor rolled her eyes and looked at the others. “I mean, come on, really?”

She sobered up quickly and added, “But I had no idea that man was with them. I mean, all of the agents I saw were very ‘men in black,’ you know? And I was told Agents Wubba and Bubba would be waiting to pick up the crystal just before the investor showcase, not that they’d have somebody on the train or at the station.”

“Wubba and Bubba?” Benjamin asked in disbelief.

“Code names, maybe?” Beauregard suggested, although she didn’t seem too sure about that herself.

“Clearly the plan changed,” Abe said, gesturing at the letter. “Maybe because they suspected word had gotten out about the crystal?”

He pointed a look at the bandit, who didn’t dignify it with a response aside from dropping the letter on the table alongside the guns and Happy’s badge. Her hand skirted toward said guns, and after spending half the night with Wilford Abe didn’t even think twice about smacking her hand away.

“Happy was scoping out the train and its passengers all day, and he knew enough about your work to comment on it,” Abe continued while the bandit scowled and moved to lean against the bar instead. “He also knew the rock could be dangerous and a target, which is why he went to the luggage car in the middle of the night and caught our bandit here just before she could get through the last lock and found her armed with my gun. Cue the shootout.”

He gestured toward the agent’s toy-like gun on the table.

“That piece of his is set to ‘stun,’ apparently—just enough to knock someone out when it hit, but I’m guessing it’s not so kind to inanimate objects, which explains all the blast marks on the crate.” A glance at the bandit confirmed the statement and Abe said, “The agent shoots at the bandit, who’s hiding behind the box, and he accidentally hits the crystal, knocking the power out. Meanwhile, she managed to get her own shot in, but my gun doesn’t exactly fire blanks.”

“So she did kill him,” Mack said, his smirk fading before her scowl.

“I did not! Even if the bullet did hit him, it didn’t stop him from coming at me in the dark! He was still alive when I managed to get away from him!”

“And how did you get away from him?” Abe prompted, before turning on the engineer. “You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, would you?”

“I don’t know anything about anything, anyone could tell you that,” Peter said without a trace of shame, looking to Benjamin and the chef to back him up and getting confirming nods from both.

“Really? You didn’t hear the gunfire going on literally feet behind you? You didn’t pick up that giant wrench you’re holding right now and go into the baggage car when the lights out, or start swinging that wrench around when someone lunged at you in the dark? That wrench right there, which I might point out still has the man’s blood on it?”

Peter glanced down at the red stain on his wrench, obvious and hard to miss now that the power was back on, and tried, awkwardly, to hide it behind his legs. “…Okay, so see what happened was—”

He stopped in the face of Abe’s stare and sighed, sinking in on himself. “Yeah, that’s exactly what happened. Felt the thump and all, but then I realized the train was still going in the dark and ran up front, which is when I pulled the brakes. By the time I went back and looked, there was no one there, and it’d been so dark at the time I thought…”

Thought, or hoped, that he hadn’t actually hit someone with a piece of metal big and thick enough to easily split a skull.

Benjamin spoke up and asked, “So this man, shot and bludgeoned with quite a large wrench, managed to drag himself back to his room before expiring?”

“Eventually,” Abe said. “But he wouldn’t have had time to get back before we were all out in the hallway, or before you and I went up front to see what was going on. He was there in the luggage car when we walked through, hiding in the dark until the coast was clear before making his way back to his room.”

He’d felt it then, hadn’t he? The presence in the darkness, the sense of eyes watching him. He just had no clue it was the gaze of a dying man hiding for his life.

“Now, hold on.” Illinois, who’d been quietly nodding along with this explanation of events, spoke up at this. “I seem to recall you saying you saw our dead man walk into his room before that.”

“I thought it was him at the time,” Abe admitted. “I saw his door close, but that doesn’t mean he was the one to shut it. Our bandit here may have gone haring off as soon as the conductor accidentally whacked her assailant, but that doesn’t mean she would have had time to get through the passenger car before people started waking up. You should know that, Illinois, you bumped into her in the hallway.”

“…Pardon?” Illinois said, his usual calm faltering slightly.

“I heard you, telling someone to watch where they were going,” Abe said. “Same as I heard more than one set of footsteps running around, even though by the time I opened my door nearly everyone was still at or near their room. In the dark it would have been impossible to tell it was someone who shouldn’t have been there, just as she couldn’t have known that the very first unlocked and unoccupied room she came to just so happened to belong to Happy.”

“Okay, well that still settles it, doesn’t it?” Mack asked the room at large. “We know she shot him, and that guy hit him in the head—either one alone would have been enough to kill the man, so at least one of them has to be our murderer.”

Abe, Benjamin, and the chef all froze at his words, sharing a knowing look amongst themselves when the rumble of thunder failed to happen. Wilford, meanwhile, was the picture of ease, his feet kicked up on the chair opposite while he watched the reveal play out, as though all he were missing was a tub of popcorn to enjoy it with.

The detective shook himself and recovered enough to say, “It would, if Happy had just been shot and bludgeoned.”

“There was more?” Benjamin asked in disbelief. “What else could the man have been put through in the time it took to get back to his room?”

“Yeah, about that…” Abe sighed and rubbed his face. This was the part where things were going to get really complicated. “God, where do I even start?”

“How about we go back to what that man was doing running around in the hallway at the same time as our potential murderess?” Richard asked, gesturing at Illinois.

“Huh?” Abe stared at him for a second before answering, “Oh, he was just stealing something from your room, he didn’t have anything to do with what was going on with Happy over in the next car.”

“What?!” Richard looked from the detective to the adventurer, who for once looked visibly shocked by this turn of events. “You were in my room? You stole something, from me?!”

“You told me yourself you heard someone walking around,” Abe said. “And if any of us could have gotten around in the dark and found what he was looking for without a light, I think it’d be the guy who goes into strange caves or temples or whatever to take things for a living.”

“And sometimes to return things,” Illinois said, shrugging at the compliment. “But you searched my room, friend, and you didn’t see anything stolen then, did you?”

“No, but then I didn’t exactly get a chance to search that trunk of yours after you had to go and show me that…thing from Ohio,” Abe said, the professor barely able to repress a shudder at the memory. “And for someone who’s never been inside his room, you certainly had an opinion about the quality of Richard’s collection on display in there, didn’t you?”

Illinois cracked a faint smile at that and gave the detective the merest tilt of his head.

“I demand you return to me what you stole, now,” Richard said, stepping forward to poke the adventurer in the chest only to shrink back when Illinois fixed him with an unblinking stare.

“You mean what you paid to have stolen from its rightful owners?” Illinois asked.

“Acquired is the word you’re looking for, and do you have any idea how little that narrows it down?” Richard spun around to look at the detective for help. “Detective, Abe, tell this—this thief what will happen to him when we report him to the authorities!”

“We? Well, you can make a report at the next station, and I’m sure as long as you can provide proof of purchase and point them to the forgery Illinois replaced it with, they’ll have cause to search him and his belongings,” Abe said. “Shouldn’t be that hard, right?”

At his words, Illinois stifled a laugh, causing the rich man to turn on him again.

“Do you think that’s funny?” Richard asked. He snapped his fingers at Mack and said, “We have receipts for everything in that room, right?”

“Er…” Mack’s hesitation made Richard turn to stare at him, forcing him to explain, “Not…all of them are exactly…compelling.”

“They’re receipts, shipping manifests, whatever the hell, they’re not supposed to be compelling!”

“I mean that they wouldn’t stand up to close scrutiny. And might, in fact, uh…suggest some things you may not wish to have…uneducated law enforcement making assumptions about.”

“Uneducated in how certain art and antiquities buying and selling might look incredibly illegal to those not in the know?” Abe suggested and Mack nodded, so obviously glum and downtrodden that Abe almost wondered if it was his imagination, how tight the man’s lips were as though struggling not to smile.

“Oh, actually, don’t discourage the man from seeking help,” Dorene said with a wicked smile that she was definitely not trying to hide. “I would love to see how that played out.”

“I’m starting to feel like I’m being ganged up on, even though I’m the victim here,” Richard protested.

“No,” Abe said, his quiet voice still making all eyes turn on him. “The only victim here was Happy, although you’re right about everyone ganging up on you. After all, no one here meant to kill Agent Apless, but they all sure as hell wanted to kill you.”

“…What?” Richard asked, his mouth turned up in a disbelieving smile. “You’re joking, right?”

The stare the detective gave him more than answered that question.

“Why would any of these people want to kill me?” Richard protested.

Abe shrugged. “You said it yourself, you’ve made a lot of enemies on your way to the top. And funny thing, aside from our thief over there, literally everyone on this train either works for you or has been offered employment except for Dorene and Wilford. Hell, you just met me and Happy yesterday and you tried to hire us both to save you from a murderer.”

“I create jobs, it’s what I do,” Richard said, shrugging with palms up and looking around as if expecting everyone to agree with him. “That hardly seems like any reason to want to kill me. Quite the opposite, in fact.”

“…Wow. You really are clueless, aren’t you?” Abe asked over the murmuring of the others. “Okay, let’s start with Illinois: you’ve tried to hire him multiple times to ‘acquire’ something of value for you, right? Only he has what the rest of us like to call ‘standards’ or possibly even ‘morals,’ if you’d like to look those words up later, and he always turned you down. Cue him discovering you actually managed to get your mitts on a real artifact that rightfully belongs to someone else and performing his little heist.”

“Now, of course, Illinois could have been working on his own, but it’s risky and getting caught stealing would put his career in jeopardy, not to mention get people questioning all that stuff he’s donated to museums in the past. Sound about right, Illinois?”

“That it does, but it also sounds a bit like you’re working against yourself there, friend,” Illinois answered.

“Good thing you found an ally on the train then, isn’t it? A Ms. Dorene Whitacre who also prefers museums over private collections and who’s funded a few of his expeditions,” Abe continued. “And she happens to have employed a certain chef in the past, who like the other employees on this train isn’t happy with the new owner’s slash and burn way of making a profit out of the railway. That already starts looking like the right combination of people who’d like to pull one over on our rich idiot.”

Said chef snarled and said, “You better watch yourself there, detective,” while Benjamin said, “Hold on now, these accusations are rather baseless, are they not?”

Abe sighed. “Are you all really going to make me spell it out?”

He waited a beat, but then he was already on a roll here. Might as well finish the job.

“A plan gets made, to make sure Illinois doesn’t get interrupted while getting the artifact, yeah? A little something, just to make sure the mark stays asleep despite being paranoid that someone’s out to kill him, what with all of the threatening letters and murder attempts.” Abe pulled the empty bottle out of his pocket and placed it on the table, explaining as he did so, “Potent sleeping pills from the butler—sorry, bartender’s room, empty despite only being filled a few days ago. Put enough of those in someone’s drink and I’m sure they could sleep through anything. Add a few more, and they never need to worry about waking up again.”

“While I don’t need to explain my prescription medication to you, I’ll have you know I…accidentally spilled those pills the other day and had to toss them out,” Benjamin said, his hesitation not doing his bad lying any favors. Seeing the detective was less than convinced, he added, “And aside from that, while I may have served drinks at the bar and during dinner, the only time I gave Mr. Bags anything to drink was the wine from the same bottle I poured out for everyone else, yourself included, detective, and you didn’t seem to have any problems with it then.”

“I seem to recall you taking that wine from me,” Abe shot back.

“Because you preferred a whiskey, and I was trying to keep you from overindulging! Again!”

“Pardon me from interrupting this riveting argument, but what’s this about threatening letters and murder attempts?” Illinois asked.

“Oh, did Mack not tell you about that?” Abe asked. “Yeah, someone’s been trying to kill the rich guy over there for weeks now, and failing at it. Probably why he had to resort to working with you all.”

“What?” Mack chuckled in disbelief. “You honestly think I had a hand in any of this?”

“And like any of us would go along with anything that little snitch tried to talk us into,” Chef added. “He’s practically Big Dick Moneybags’s shadow, you seriously think he has the spine to do something like what you’re talking about?”

And if Abe hadn’t been sure before, the chef of all people vouching for Mack (admittedly by insulting him) confirmed it. It was all the detective could do not to laugh, even if none of it was particularly funny.

“Yeah, sure, maybe you all just happened to be on the same train as the mark and the stolen piece, and you just happened to have the sleeping pills on hand. This poison though, that requires a bit of planning ahead,” he said, pulling the bottle of poison out of his pocket and dropping it on the table, followed by the smaller bottle from Dorene’s room. “Same as the antidote to go with it.”

“Poison?” Benjamin said, his surprise genuine enough. “What does that have to do with any of this?”

“Same thing that the booby trap I found has to do with it,” Abe said, looking around before realizing that he left the spring-loaded knife trap back in the dining car.

Or at least, he thought he had, but once again Wilford helpfully dropped it on the table amidst all of the other evidence, the clang of metal and the flash of the blade encouraging everyone in the room to take a healthy step back.

“What the hell is that?” Chef asked, but he wasn’t the one Abe was watching for a response.

He had to give it to Illinois, the man had one hell of a poker face.

“Murder weapon, same as the gun, the poison, the wrench, all of it,” Abe answered. “Agent Harold Apless was poisoned, shot, stabbed, and bludgeoned before he died. Knowing that, does anyone else want to step forward and confess to the other bits we haven’t gotten to yet?”

A silence filled the lounge car, broken only when Abe sighed.

“Fine then, how about I tell you all what happened, and we see how close to the mark I am?”

Easier said than done when he suspected most of it would be him filling in the gaps with his own guesses, but confidence could go a long way. And if there was one thing Abe was good at, it was plunging in blindly and confidently until he hit that rock bottom.

“Richard over there, as he’s told me many times since we met, has a talent for making enemies. Comes with being a rich asshole, nothing I haven’t seen before. He starts getting threatening notes, a couple near misses on his life, and decides to take the train to this big investor meeting because every other vehicle he gets in has a tendency to crash lately. Whose idea was it, to take the train?”

“I’m sure I came up with it,” Richard said, and Abe raised an eyebrow and looked at Mack.

“I might have suggested it, but it was Mr. Bags’s idea to follow through on that suggestion,” Mack said carefully. “We knew the train was going that way, as Professor Beauregard had already made plans to travel with the crystal via railway.”

“Mack and I talked it over, and it seemed the safest way at the time,” Beauregard chimed in. “But that was ages ago.”

“And any potential assassin might think twice about disabling an entire train just to get at one man, instead of another car,” Abe said, getting a confirming nod from Mack. And yet here they were, on a train stuck in a snowbank, but he held his tongue on that point. “At the same time making it a whole lot easier for any potential thief than trying to get into a high-class hotel, considering Bags has a habit of traveling in ‘style’ with the choicest bits of his collection even if it means making the rail staff completely overhaul an entire compartment just for him.”

“Three,” Benjamin muttered. “We had to combine three compartments just to fit his specifications.”

“And now that space is much more valuable to future riders, so you’re welcome,” Richard said.

“Unfortunately for Illinois, all of those death threats and murder attempts tend to leave even a guy with that kind of ego paranoid and suspicious,” Abe continued. “Not helped when he almost drinks a glass of poisoned wine while trying to hire me to protect his life.”

“Hang on,” Mack said when all eyes turned toward him again. “I know what you’re suggesting, detective, but I really had nothing to do with that! I just opened that bottle because it’d been left sitting out on the bar as a welcoming gift when we boarded, I had no idea there was something in it.”

Benjamin paled, one gloved hand going to his mouth, the small motion all Abe needed to zero in on him.

“Got something you want to say about that?” Abe pressed.

“This bottle…perhaps, did it have a yellow and pink bow on it?” Benjamin asked and Mack did a double take.

“Uh, yes? I thought it was a little odd, not matching the train colors, but I figured it was just the winery’s colors.”

“What do you know about it?” Abe asked.

“What—nothing! He gave it to me, ask him!” Benjamin said, pointing a finger at Peter like a little kid tattling.

Peter shrugged. “I don’t know anything about it, except it’s one of the things that guy tried to give me instead of a ticket. Didn’t know what else to do with it, and Benjamin’s the bartender so I figured he’d like it.”

All eyes traveled in turn to Wilford, who also shrugged. “It was just a joke?”

“You could have killed someone with that stuff!” Abe shouted, mostly remembering how he’d been given a glass of the wine.

“It wasn’t very good wine, was it?” Wilford admitted. “My bad, next time I’ll get something that will really put the hair on your chest.”

“…I think I’m good,” Peter said slowly.

“…Okay, that explains that. I guess,” Abe said, his mind struggling to shift gears after that little detour. “Longshot of it is, Moneybags doesn’t finish his glass of wine at dinner, and doesn’t get the full effects of the sleeping pills put in it. No full dose meant he woke up earlier than expected, while Illinois was still in the room. Meanwhile, I’m guessing the rest of you barely even sipped your wine over dinner, which is why none of you had any trouble getting up after the train suddenly stopped either.”

Certainly not compared to him, who’d fallen to the floor and could barely operate a door in the first few minutes after being jolted back into wakefulness.

“Did you drug my drink at the bar too?” Abe asked Benjamin.

“Don’t be ridiculous! Even if I had slipped some sleeping pills in the wine, which I’m not saying I did, I certainly wouldn’t give you a triple dose—”

“Triple—” Abe stopped, eyes closing as it sank in. “You put a double dose in my whiskey, didn’t you? That’s why you took away my wine.”

Benjamin wavered and looked at Illinois before breaking. “They were just sleeping pills, detective. No one was exposed to enough to cause any lasting harm, and to be frank I rather thought you could use something to help you relax.”

“And if I just happened to doze off in the lounge car and spent the whole night there, it would mean one less potential witness to spot Illinois entering Moneybags’s room using one of the staff copies of the keys,” Abe said, trying to ignore the sick feeling in the back of his throat at Benjamin’s words. “And maybe you and Illinois would have been fine leaving it at that—Illinois retrieves a stolen item he can return to wherever it belongs, while you have the satisfaction of knowing your terrible boss has had one pulled over on him. But that’s not enough for everyone.”

The chef bristled when Abe’s gaze turned on him. “Watch yourself, dick. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Really? So you don’t know anything about this poison?” Abe asked, picking up the bottle of poison on the table and glancing at the label. “Bit stronger than sleeping pills, that’s for sure.”

“What the hell, man?” Chef asked. “You think I go around putting poison in perfectly good food?”

“Not even to kill that guy?” Abe asked, gesturing toward an affronted Richard.

The chef hesitated and Abe said, “When we woke you up and told you someone had been murdered, you said, ‘that dick.’ Didn’t think anything of it at the time since you hate nearly everyone, but I never told you who was dead. You were surprised when you got to the lounge car and saw Big Dick Moneybags over there still alive, right?”

Chef bared his teeth and said, “Yeah, maybe when I heard you talking about someone getting offed I hoped another rich asshole was dead, but that don’t mean nothing. Benjamin can tell you, I don’t know which plate is going to which table, and you all got the same food but only one of you is dead. You’re not telling me you all didn’t eat that delicious dinner I provided, are you?”

“No, chef,” nearly everyone in the car answered when he looked around at them, Dorene and the professor in particular throwing in a couple of compliments about his cooking.

“Funny thing about this poison,” Abe said, shaking the bottle so that the viscous red liquid sloshed around. “It’s only lethal when ingested and takes a while to kick in, but if prepared correctly there’s hardly a taste at all. You wouldn’t even know you’re poisoned until the symptoms start kicking in.”

He set the bottle back down and traded it for the smaller antidote as he added, “All you have to do is make sure the antidote gets to everyone who ate the dinner except the person you want dead. Those cookies you made really were delicious, Dorene.”

She smiled and said, “There really is no problem a plate of cookies can’t solve, isn’t there?”

“Problems including rich assholes who won’t get their comeuppance just because one trinket goes missing, no matter how valuable,” Abe said, and her smile didn’t so much as waver. “I found the antidote in your room, but the poison, now that ended up in my bag. Of course, the chef could have easily planted it there after dinner while I was sleeping in the lounge, but what kind of sense would that make? If anyone on this train would know enough about this poison to guess how it was used when Moneybags turned up dead, it would be me.”

The chef shrugged. “Don’t know what to tell you. I don’t have those keys to get into the passengers’ rooms like Benjamin does, why would I need ‘em? And you got no proof I ever even used the poison in the first place, considering that dick over there is still alive, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

There it was again.

Abe sighed and put the bottle back down, his hand hovering over the trap but careful to stay well out of range. “And then there’s this. Illinois, what do you know about this thing?”

“You called it a booby trap,” Illinois answered. “Looks to me like a pressure-sensitive trap that attempts to stab anyone who activates it.”

“It looks to you?” Abe repeated. “This isn’t yours?”

“I don’t seem to recall you finding that in my room.”

“No, I didn’t. I found it in Mack’s, but he claims someone must have hid it in there after he went to stay with Moneybags after the power went out,” Abe said.

“It’s the only logical time it could have happened,” Mack said.

“Yeah, I guess logically you would be the one to know that,” Abe shot back. “Considering you were the one who hid it there in the first place, after retrieving it from the bed you’d hidden it in before then.”

“Now why would he do that?” Illinois asked, slow and calm as ever. “So far all these plans you’ve been cooking up were laid against Richard here, but I don’t see how Mack would be able to get a trap out of the man’s bed without him noticing.”

“Because it wasn’t in Moneybag’s bed,” Abe answered. “Mack hid it at the same time he planted the bottle of poison in my bag, right after dinner when most of us were still here in the lounge. My guess is Dorene took the bottle from the kitchen and passed it to Mack during dinner at the same time she was handing out those cookies, knowing he would have the easiest time getting rid of the evidence as soon as possible.”

“Like I said, you’re assuming a lot, detective,” Mack said. “Even if I had any reason to hide evidence to a murder—one that I told you before would only hurt me—why would I plant a trap in your room, only to remove it later, knowing it had failed to kill you?”

“You also think I’d trust that guy with evidence that I’d killed someone?” Chef asked. “What, do I look crazy to you? Not to mention you’re accusing Ms. Whitacre of being involved in this!”

Murmurs of agreement went around at that last point at least, even though so far Abe was sure Dorene was the only who hadn’t denied being involved in the plot to kill Richard.

“Mack, wasn’t it you that suggested a double blind before? Something about complicated knots and simple solutions?” Abe asked. “Because I think the simple solution here is that one day, you reached your breaking point. Maybe it was realizing how dangerous that rock the professor is working on in Richard’s hands, or maybe you saw the agents she’d tipped off following you one day. Or maybe you just know all of those investigations Happy mentioned back at dinner are going to turn up something. You said it yourself, you’re Mr. Bags’s right-hand man, as wrapped up in all his dirty business as he is, except when the hammer comes down, you know he’s not the one who’s going to suffer for it.

“So you hatch a plan, find some like-minded people, and contrive events to make sure they’re all on the same train as you and Big Dick Moneybags. And like I said, some of ‘em are fine with the idea of just taking the artifact back, maybe even playing the game so that he gets caught on insurance fraud or starting an investigation into just how he got the thing in the first place. Something good that’ll make his wallet and maybe even his pride hurt a bit.

“But Chef’s got experience working with a rich asshole, enough to know it takes more than that to really drive the knife in, and I’m guessing Dorene’s been around enough of the same type to know the tricks he’d pull to slip through any real trouble and end up right back where he started. So you three decide to take it on yourselves to take a more permanent option, figuring the shared meal would provide enough of a cover and alibi.”

After Abe finished his spiel, Mack smirked and said, “Clever, if a bit too simple. You forgot the booby trap, remember? Where does that fit into all of this?”

Abe shrugged. “Maybe you just wanted me dead after I immediately fingered you as a suspect?”

Mack laughed and rolled his eyes. “Please, like I would resort to something as crude and unreliable as…whatever that thing is.”

“It doesn’t exactly have the highest success rate,” Illinois admitted.

True, that answer didn’t exactly sit right with Abe even as he’d said it.

Double blind, he’d said.

“Or maybe you expected me to find the trap after Richard was dead,” Abe said slowly, sounding the idea out. “You talked to Benjamin at dinner, maybe you knew he was planning to give me a larger dose of the sleeping pills and expected me to pass out before I ever made it back to my room. Trap like that would be easier to spot in the morning, in the light of day, especially if I’m on high alert with a dead body on the train.”

“Again, what would be the point, detective?” Mack asked, the tone of his voice annoying Abe into thinking harder.

“To get me pointing fingers at Illinois, like you tried to do when I showed you the trap earlier. Would make sense, since it came out of his room, except then you’d be pointing the finger at one of your accomplices…” Abe trailed off, remembering that wasn’t the only thing Mack had planted in his room. “At the same time, everyone would be ‘looking’ for the poisoner, and lo and behold the poison’s in my bag. So I’m pointing the finger at Illinois, while I’m guessing Dorene and maybe even the prof over there would be ready and willing to vouch that they saw him return to his room and never left it last night to cover for the theft, while Happy, knowing that I’d turned down the job to protect Moneybags, would be suspecting me. A few more false leads and you could have us all accusing each other with not enough real evidence to convict anyone by the time we reached the next station and the authorities there have to sort it out.”

Richard surprised Abe and everyone else in the train car by suddenly breaking out into laughter, a high, nervous laughter that suggested someone very close to the edge of losing it.

“Oh, bravo, detective! That is quite the theory, but there’s one key problem with it: Mack would never do something like that. I’d trust that man with my life, he depends on me for everything, he’s simply not capable of throwing all that away just to, what, kill me? What good would that do?”

“Yeah, I seem to recall him saying as much when I questioned him earlier,” Abe admitted, but he was watching Mack closely as he continued. “He’s well-paid, he’s put all of his money and investments into your companies, and all of that will tank if something happens to you. All the financial motives in the world to keep you alive and well. What more reason could a man need?”

“Exactly!” Richard answered, tone deaf as usual.

Abe looked Mack in the eye and asked, “And how much of that would you give, to make sure Richard M. Bags paid for everything he’s done?”

“…All of it,” Mack answered, wiping that smile off of Richard’s face with just three words. “Even if you saw through all of it, even if I had to take the fall, it would have been worth it.”

“…Mack?” Richard said, all trace of color washed out of his face as he stared with wide, disbelieving eyes.

But Mack didn’t even look at him as he shrugged and said, sounding a little too-cheerful about it, “But I guess we failed, huh? All those plans, and nothing to show for it.”

“I wouldn’t say nothing,” Abe said. He looked around the room, trying to tell who had pieced it together yet and who hadn’t, but no luck.

He sighed again, feeling the weight in his chest more strongly than ever.

“Agent Harold Apless was on this train because he was sent here to protect that blasted crystal, thanks to the professor’s warning. Over dinner, he asked me to switch rooms with him, saying he needed a double—I’m guessing now because he thought he might need the extra space to restrain and hide the person after the crystal without alerting the other passengers,” Abe said, tilting his head toward the bandit. “That’s also when he drank nearly two glasses of wine, his own plus Richard’s since Moneybags was still freaked out from nearly drinking Wilford’s poisoned wine. On top of that, I offered him my whiskey after only a few sips since something about it tasted off.”

“My heavens,” Benjamin breathed quietly, adding up how many sleeping pills that would be. “That much would have surely…”

Abe nodded. “He ate the same food as the rest of us, only he felt sorry enough for the sadsack over there to give him his cookie when Dorene ‘accidentally’ missed him when she was passing them out.”

For the first time, Dorene looked visibly shaken as she and the chef shared a look of horror and guilt.

“After dinner, he hangs out around the bar for a bit before heading to the compartments, where he switches our belongings but not the trap Mack planted in the bed no one was supposed to use. Maybe he tried to sleep then, maybe the sleeping pills and poison had numbed him to the point he didn’t even realize he’d been stabbed by the trap. But he still has enough in him to go to the luggage car when he hears someone moving around in the hallway, to get shot by the bandit trying to steal the crystal and bludgeoned by the engineer who thought he was fending off an attacker. While Benjamin and I go up front to talk with Peter and check out the damage outside, Happy returns to his room—to my room,” Abe said, faltering a little.

If he hadn’t given him his whiskey, if he hadn’t agreed to changing rooms…

Abe plunged his hands into his pockets as if hoping to find another piece of evidence hidden away there, something to help it all make sense, but all he found was his light, a pack of cigarettes, and a couple slips of paper which he pulled out to have something to look at besides all the faces around him.

It was his ticket to ride the train. His ticket, and…

Abe looked at Wilford, feeling the hopelessness sink in as he finally said the words that had been lurking in the back of his mind all this time.

“We all did it.”

“Every one of us is the reason Agent Harold Apless is dead, in one way or another,” he said, and there wasn’t a single objection in the room. He took a deep, sucking breath, and then asked the world at large the question he still hadn’t found an answer to, after years of trying. “Now what?”

((End of Part 11. Thank you for reading!

Thanks to Wilford (and the original story), we all knew where this was going, but hopefully this mystery's still been fun even with the built-in spoilers? Meant to post this one a lot sooner, but wound up doing a lot of rewriting. Final chapter coming soon, I promise.

Tag list: @silver-owl413 @asteriuszenith @withjust-a-bite @blackaquokat @catgirlwarrior @neverisadork @luna1350 @oh-so-creepy @95fangirl @a-bit-dapper @randomartdudette @cactipresident @hotcocoachia @purple-star-eyes @shyinspiredartist @avispate @autumnrambles @authorracheljoy @liafoxyfox @hidinginmybochard))

#markiplier #fanfiction #wkm abe #wilford warfstache #iswm bandit #wkm butler #wkm chef #big dick moneybags #iswm mack #agent harold apless #dorene whitacre #ahwm illinois #the reveal we all expected

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