Nancy swallowed hard. “I’m sorry: that’s simply not acceptable. There must be something more you can tell me. What about Delia’s personal effects? The things she had in her apartment—where are they?”
She saw the muscles in his jaw tighten. “There was a fire at Miss Grandfield’s apartment. There’s nothing left, I’m afraid.”
“A fire? Is that how she died? Was it an accident, then?”
“I really can’t go into that.” His eyes dropped to the piece of paper on the desk. “As I said, her death is subject to the Official Secrets Act. Now, if you’ll excuse me.” He stood up, clearly eager to get rid of her. As if by magic, a door opened behind her. The same man who had led her into the building escorted her back through the courtyard. Two minutes later she was out in the street.
As she walked back to the hotel, she cursed herself for not pressing him further. Perhaps if she had made a scene, started shouting or crying, he would have caved in. She felt like crying now, right here in the street, at the thought of Delia dying in that way. But the shock of hearing him come out with it had numbed her. It wasn’t until she was standing on the pavement with the gates closing behind her that the full significance of his words had hit her. There was a fire at Miss Grandfield’s apartment . . . If it had been an accident, surely he would have been able to say so. What had happened, then? A wave of nausea swept over Nancy. She pictured her cousin waking up in a smoke-filled room, terrified and unable to escape. Then another equally horrible possibility occurred to her: that someone had murdered Delia, then set fire to her apartment to cover their tracks.
She pushed her way through the knots of people on Banks Street, desperate to get back. She needed to talk to Agatha. Agatha, she felt sure, would know what to do. They had arranged to meet for lunch on the terrace overlooking the river. Nancy couldn’t face the thought of food. Not now. But she could sit and talk while Agatha ate.
By the time she reached the Tigris Palace, it was five past one. No time to go up to her room. Walking through the lobby, she spotted Agatha through the French doors. She was sitting at one of the tables, gazing out over the river.
“Hello.” Nancy pulled out a chair. “Have you already ordered?”
Agatha looked startled, as if she’d been in some far-off land of her imagination. Her face was paler than usual and her eyes were puffy and red-rimmed. It looked very much as if she’d been crying. As Nancy opened her mouth to ask what was the matter, she caught sight of one of the men from the wedding striding across the terrace toward them.
“Oh, it’s Max.” Agatha’s hand went to her hair, tucking a windblown wisp behind her ear.
He smiled as he reached them, resting his hands on the back of a chair. “Sorry to barge in, ladies—were you about to have lunch?”
“We were—but you’re welcome to join us,” Agatha replied.
“I’d love to, but I’m afraid I haven’t time: I’m setting off for Ur this afternoon. And I’m under strict instructions from Mrs. Woolley not to leave without setting a firm date for you both to visit.” He looked expectantly from Agatha to Nancy, waiting for one of them to speak. When neither did, he said: “Oh dear: you both look rather glum—has something happened?”
Nancy sensed that whatever had upset Agatha, she wasn’t likely to want to talk about it—not in front of Max, at least. She hadn’t intended to broadcast what had happened at the Consulate, but she launched into it as a way of protecting Agatha.
“That’s appalling.” Max blew out a breath. “But I’m afraid it’s typical of the way things work around here.”
“There must be something more we could find out?” Agatha had lost some of her pallor. She had a determined frown on her face. “What if we mounted a private investigation?”
“I wouldn’t advise it.” Max rubbed his chin. “What you have to realize is that this place is on a knife-edge at the moment. The British are in control—in theory—but there are constant plots to get us out.” He turned to Nancy then, meeting her eye for a fraction of a second before gazing out over the river. “To be in the job your cousin did was to live with danger. I met her once—only briefly—when she came to the dig. I was impressed by her strength of character and her resolve. But when I became aware of what she was doing, I have to admit that I was greatly concerned for her safety, knowing the strength of feeling against the British Mandate.”
“So you think we should just do nothing?” Agatha bristled.
“Unfortunately, yes. As I said, these are dangerous times. We could be facing a political maelstrom, and I think it would be very unwise to get mixed up in it.” He paused, looking from one to the other. “Look, I’m sorry: I’m giving you a terrible impression of the place. It’s wonderful here as long as you don’t try to tread on anyone’s toes. It’s a country in transition, with all the uncertainties that brings. But it’s a country that you must see. So tell me, when will you come to us at Ur? We’ll take good care of you, I promise.”
Max left them with a railway timetable and a tin of foul-smelling yellow powder, which he said they would need to sprinkle all over the seats of the carriage on the train to Ur Junction as a precaution against fleas. If he had given this last gift before they’d settled on a date for their visit, they might have changed their minds. But Agatha had already promised to make the trip in early December. It was the place she most wanted to visit on her holiday in Mesopotamia and, as she told Max, she wanted to save the best until last.
Lunch arrived as soon as Max disappeared. Nancy had ordered a salad, and to her surprise Agatha asked for it, too.
“I thought you’d want the roast lamb,” Nancy said.
“Oh dear, you’re getting to know me too well.” Agatha reached for the vinaigrette dressing. “I do like my food, as a rule.”
“But not today?”
There was the slightest hesitation. “I . . . I’m not very hungry.”
Nancy saw Agatha’s eyes glisten, as if tears were not far away. She bent over her plate, jabbing her knife into a pat of butter, which she spread onto a roll with the concentration of an artist applying paint to canvas.
“I could see when I sat down that something was wrong,” Nancy began. “Would it help to talk about it?”
Agatha laid down the knife, staring at it as if it were about to leap up and stab her. “It’s nothing, honestly. Not compared to what you’ve been through, anyway.”
“It didn’t look like nothing.” Nancy reached across the table to take hold of her hand. “Something’s upset you enough to make you cry.”
Agatha nodded, bringing her napkin up to her face as a single tear slid down her cheek. “I’m sorry,” she mumbled. “It’s just that Archie—my husband—is getting married today.”
“Oh, Agatha! Why didn’t you tell me? No wonder you’re upset!”
“I thought I could cope with it. I thought that by coming here, thousands of miles away, it wouldn’t seem so bad. But it . . .” She trailed off with a sharp indrawn breath. “I came down to lunch early. I left my watch in the bedroom so I wouldn’t know the time, wouldn’t know the exact moment when they . . .” She pressed her lips into her teeth, turning their pinkness to white. “He’s marrying the girl he was with that night when I drove to the quarry. I wouldn’t have known—but my daughter told me. She wanted to be a bridesmaid.”
Nancy went cold inside. It was as if Agatha was telling her own story, from the other side. The intensity of her grief cast a harsh light on the letter Nancy had written to her lover, begging him to come with her, to leave his wife and daughter for a new life in Baghdad. She felt an overwhelming sense of shame: never for a moment had she put that other woman before herself, or thought about what her life would be like if her husband left her. She suddenly saw that being alone with a young child would be just as devastating as being alone and pregnant. How could she have imagined that her predicament entitled her to ruin another woman’s life?
CHAPTER 16
Baghdad—Five weeks later
&nb
sp; On the first day of December, Agatha was awake and dressed before sunrise. There was no sound from Nancy’s room as she tiptoed to the kitchen to make tea. While she waited for the kettle to boil, she spread apricot jam onto a flap of Arab bread. There was just time before the boat arrived to take her downriver to the ruined city of Seleucia.
In the weeks since her arrival in Baghdad, Agatha had experienced a surge of creativity. Up to the day of Archie’s marriage—the whole time she was traveling—she had been unable to write a thing. But that night at the Tigris Palace, once she knew that the wedding was over and done with, it was as if a dam had burst inside her head. Ideas suddenly flooded in. Things she had seen, fragments of conversation she had overheard, suddenly began to form patterns. And as she began taking day trips to the towns and cities beyond Baghdad, fresh ideas came to her. She had already filled three notebooks with material for Nancy to type up. The outlines of two novels were there: one set on the Orient Express and the other here in Baghdad.
Today she was going to visit the last ancient capital of Babylonia, built by Alexander the Great, and on the way back she planned to observe Baghdad’s expatriate community without actually having to set foot in the district where they lived. By taking a boat, she would pass right through Alwiyah—past the gardens and tennis courts—close enough to watch without anyone realizing what she was doing.
Finishing her breakfast, she grabbed her bag and a shawl to cover her head. Then, very quietly, she opened the door onto the veranda. It was not fully light yet, and she took care as she climbed down the steps that led straight to the water’s edge. The steps stopped abruptly—and if you weren’t paying attention, you would end up falling into the river.
She didn’t have long to wait. Within a couple of minutes she spotted the gufa coming toward her. It wasn’t exactly going to be a luxury cruise: she was sharing the boat with a consignment of fruit boxes and a tethered goat, which had already marked out its territory with a peppering of droppings. Stepping sideways as she climbed aboard, she just managed to avoid getting any of it on her shoes.
“Please—you sit!” The wizened-looking Arab in charge of the boat gestured to a rug on top of what looked like a sack of grain.
Agatha settled herself down, smiling. This was what she wanted. To be part of the life of the river, blending in as inconspicuously as possible. As the boat pulled away, she looked across to the east bank of the Tigris, where the sky was turning coral with the sunrise. It felt good to be out on the water early with a day of new discoveries awaiting her. These past few weeks she had been happier than she had been for years. The thought of going back to London stirred up mixed feelings. She was longing to see Rosalind, but she knew how miserable she would feel when her daughter went back to school and the flat in Chelsea was empty. Agatha told herself she must not think about it. Not today. She still had three weeks left—and in a few days’ time, the excitement of traveling to Ur.
She turned her mind to what Katharine would be doing at this moment. Her letters described how everyone at the dig was up and working by dawn. She was out each day with the men, digging alongside them and drawing the finds in the evenings. She wrote that Leonard rarely went to bed before two or three in the morning. He seemed to be able to function on just a couple of hours’ sleep a night. Not exactly a recipe for a happy married life, Agatha thought when she read it.
She wondered what it was like in the evenings for Katharine, sitting down to dinner with Leonard and four other men. She could imagine what might be going through their heads as they watched her go off to bed alone, knowing that her husband was holed up in his office, oblivious of everything but the fragments of long-dead lives that surrounded him. And Katharine—lovely Katharine—what would she be thinking as she undressed, brushed her hair, and climbed into an empty bed?
Agatha couldn’t help imagining the worst: that Max, for all his apparent straightforwardness and devotion to the Catholic faith, was madly in love with his boss’s new wife. What other explanation could there be for his caginess on the train? If Katharine had been grumpy, irritable, or offensive in some way, his attitude might have been understandable. But she had been a wonderful traveling companion—a little too dominating at times, perhaps, but not unbearably so.
Why are you even thinking about him?
This time it was not Hercule Poirot’s voice but her mother’s. Her mother had always had an unerring instinct when it came to men. She hadn’t liked Archie, although she’d made a good job of hiding it when she realized the relationship was heading toward marriage. Agatha could still remember her remarks after Archie’s first visit. He’s not very considerate, is he? He seems quite ruthless. How right she had been about that.
She pushed thoughts of Archie out of her mind by pulling her notebook from her bag and jotting down a description of what she could see: the way the water was changing color with the sunrise, the milky wreaths of mist clinging to the banks, the group of women walking through the palm groves with bundles of washing balanced on their heads.
As she looked up from her writing, it occurred to her that, had she still been married to Archie, she would not have seen any of this. He said that flying during the war had put him off traveling abroad. He was far happier to be in London or driving down for a weekend in the country at Sunningdale. The thought of a day trip to an ancient ruin in Mesopotamia would not have excited him in the least. He would probably have spent the whole time thinking about the golf he could have been playing back home in England.
Yes, she thought, tucking her notebook back into her bag, there was something to be said for being single.
As the first rays of sun penetrated the slatted blinds at her bedroom window, Nancy was woken by a sharp kick under her ribs. She had become used to her unborn baby’s gymnastics, but they usually came after a meal, not while she was still asleep. She eased herself out of bed, pulling on the dressing gown she had made from the leftover silk bought at the souk in Damascus. It was a simple pattern—shaped like a kimono and baggy enough to conceal her expanding waistline. She had made three dresses as well—all in the Arab style—which did the same job during the day.
If Agatha wondered why she had adopted this mode of dress, she didn’t comment on it. She herself had taken to wearing long, loose clothes and covering her head when she went shopping or sightseeing. Nancy suspected that it was partly about not wanting to be recognized. If the cocktail party set got wind of the fact that a famous British author was in town, the invitations would no doubt come flooding through the letter box. But Agatha had chosen to rent a house away from the garden suburb where most of the expatriates lived.
It was in the heart of the city, just off Al Rasheed Street, right on the banks of the Tigris. A perfect place to watch the comings and goings on the river. On most evenings the two women would sit out on the veranda in companionable silence, reading or sewing, looking up if a boat chugged past or stopping to wave at children splashing about on the opposite bank.
The sight of the children always had an unsettling effect on Nancy. At times she could almost forget what lay ahead, pretend that she could go on living in this bubble of tranquillity. But the shouts and laughter of the Arab boys and girls brought her sharply back to reality. Agatha was leaving Baghdad the week before Christmas. What would happen to her then? She had tried in vain to find a secretarial job in the city, but the only place with vacancies for an English typist with no Arabic was the British Consulate, where she was apparently on some sort of blacklist after the confrontation over her cousin’s death. The feeling of panic, never far beneath the surface, threatened to overwhelm her again.
With trembling hands, she opened the blinds and peered outside. There was a thin blanket of mist over the water. On the far bank she could see the masts of sailing boats sticking up like needles in a white velvet pincushion. She thought about Delia, who would have had a view very much like this one, a mile or so downriver. She wondered if her cousin had had any inkling when she looked out over the T
igris that she would never see England again.
It was hard to think about Delia, hard to get over the feeling that she had failed her. She had visited her grave half a dozen times in the past few weeks, talked to her as if she were standing nearby, just out of sight. The graveyard was a beautiful place, with almond trees in blossom. But the peace she sought never came to her there. All she felt was anger and frustration.
Nancy made herself go to the kitchen to make breakfast. Anything to pull herself out of this whirlpool of fear and tension. Agatha had hired a cook to prepare their evening meal, but they saw to themselves the rest of the time. Before coming to Baghdad, Nancy had never cooked anything in her life—not even a boiled egg—but within a week or so, Agatha had taught her how to make all manner of things.
This morning she would make a cheese omelet. Something that required concentration. And if she was still hungry afterward, she would have bread and jam. This baby was going to be a whopper.
After breakfast, she settled down in the room they were using as an office and spent the morning typing up Agatha’s notes. She was fascinated by the account of her visit to the Yezidi shrine and the way she had taken the statue of the Peacock Angel as the starting point for the plot of a novel. Agatha had simply written the word Lucifer at the top of the page and jotted down a whole series of ideas based on this word being part of a coded message uttered by a dying man who has stumbled into the bedroom of a young English woman newly arrived in Baghdad. She smiled as she typed it out, wondering if the heroine would in any way resemble her.
At one o’clock she warmed up some keema, a stew of minced meat, tomatoes, and chickpeas left over from the night before. She ate it on the veranda, then returned to the typewriter. She needed to write a letter, and she wanted to type it rather than write it by hand. It was a letter to him, to make him think she had secured a job in an office.
The Woman on the Orient Express Page 16
