Please Stop Committing Elaborate Murders on My Old-Timey Train

All aboard! Next stop: Vienna! Please find your seats, have your passports and tickets ready when the attendant passes through the car, and also, for the love of God, please stop murdering people on my old-timey train.

I’m serious. You have to stop.

I can’t take it anymore. When it was one murder, it was a tragedy. We mourned. “Poor Mrs. Llewelyn, stabbed before her time.” But twenty-seven?! Twenty-seven murders, and each one more elaborate than the last?! It’s gone too far!

I am a simple train conductor. I punch tickets and supervise the train crew. I do not “gather evidence” or “assemble timelines.” Sure, we could have spent our time together on the train getting to know each other over a game of Tiddlywinks or Hoop-and-Stick. But, no! Instead, we must dig into each other’s personal lives to see who has ready access to cyanide.

Listen. I know it’s tempting. You’re alone, presumably with a person that you hate; you’re in the uninhabited countryside of Yugoslavia; you have a great big knife. Believe me, I understand the impulse!

But I am tired of cleaning up after you. Who do you think disposes of your weird cousin’s body? Who do you think reupholsters the settee where he decomposed for several days? Who do you think mops up the blood…