“That’s better. I . . . Oh! What’s that?” Agatha’s mouth fell open as a cloud of insects squeezed through the gap in the window.
Nancy jumped to her feet. “Oh! Look at their tails! I think they’re hornets!”
The women clung to each other as the insects zoomed round the carriage like fighter planes.
“Quick!” Agatha made a grab for the door, pulling Nancy out into the corridor before slamming it shut. Luckily, the next-door compartment was unoccupied. As they sank onto the seats, Agatha glanced at the tin of bug powder, still clutched in her left hand. “I think, on balance, fleas are the less dangerous option, don’t you?”
“I do,” Nancy giggled. “Death by hornets—sounds like the title of one of your novels, doesn’t it? Or how about The Sting of Death?”
“Are you sure you don’t want to come back to England with me?” Agatha smiled.
Half an hour into the journey, there was nothing much to be seen out of the window but featureless scrubland or sandy desert. As the sun sank below the horizon, a steward came with tea and a plate of hard, inedible biscuits. When Agatha explained that their luggage was in the hornet-infested compartment next door, he went retrieve it. Five minutes later he returned, apparently unharmed, to stow the cases and pull down the bed.
Nancy hadn’t realized there would be beds on the train. She thought they would be sleeping in their seats. She was worried about getting undressed in front of Agatha, having deliberately underestimated the length of her pregnancy. She wasn’t sure exactly how far along she was because her monthly cycles had never been very regular. The baby might have been conceived in the last few days of the holiday in Venice, or it might have been six weeks later, when he took her to a flat in Pimlico owned by an army friend who was serving abroad. So it could be seven months or eight. To tell Agatha this would have probably sent her into a panic. It would have upset all her plans, which wouldn’t be fair. Nancy had done her best to convince her friend that she could cope perfectly well on her own, that by the time the baby arrived, she would have everything sorted out.
Yesterday afternoon, when she had visited Delia’s grave in the blossom-filled churchyard, something almost like a miracle had occurred. While she was kneeling by the stone, wiping it clean of the red desert sand that clung to its surface, an elderly man had appeared from behind one of the almond trees. He had called her by name and introduced himself as a former colleague of Delia’s. They had walked around the churchyard together, and he had told her what he knew about her cousin’s death: that she was probably murdered by an assassin sent by one of the local tribal leaders she had been keeping under surveillance.
“Why did you come to find me?” Nancy asked as they returned to the grave.
“Because Delia left this for you.” He reached into his pocket and handed her an envelope. “Your cousin was a very brave woman. She always knew that what she was doing was dangerous. She didn’t trust the banks here, so she asked me to keep this for her. Don’t open it here—wait until you get home.”
The envelope contained three hundred pounds. Nancy and Agatha had stared at one another in wonder as the notes slid out onto her lap. They had spent the evening planning exactly how to spend the money. As soon as they got back from Ur, they would go to see Agatha’s landlord and renegotiate the lease on the house so that Nancy could stay on there. There would be enough left for her to employ help for the baby when it arrived and to live on for three or four months, by which time she would, hopefully, have found a job of some kind.
“Are you hungry, Nancy?” Agatha’s voice brought her back to the present. “We could have the eggs if you like—or would you rather save them for breakfast?”
“Could I have one egg? And some bread and jam?” Nancy felt hungry enough to devour everything in the basket there and then. Hopefully, there would be something more to eat when they arrived at the dig house in the morning.
“I’ll get myself ready for bed now, I think,” Agatha said when they had finished eating. “I’ll take the top bunk, shall I?”
“Would you mind?” Nancy shot her a grateful smile.
“Not a bit. I quite like the idea of climbing up a ladder to go to bed. It reminds me of when I was a child: my sister and brother and I had a den in the barn—we were allowed to sleep there sometimes.”
“That sounds like fun.” Nancy glanced at her stomach. Would her baby ever have a brother or a sister? She didn’t want it to grow up an only child, as she had done. Her thoughts drifted back to London as she lay down on the bed. What time would it be there now? What would he be doing? It was Saturday afternoon there. He might be Christmas shopping with his daughter or taking her to the park. And then he would go home, perhaps read the little girl a story after supper. And then . . . She hated the thought of him climbing into bed with his wife. Now, when she imagined this woman, she could only see Agatha’s face.
The train arrived at Ur Junction a little after dawn. Agatha and Nancy were woken by the steward knocking on the door. Agatha put one foot on the ladder and eased herself down. Nancy was lying on her side, on top of the sheets, with her back toward the ladder. Poor thing, Agatha thought, she must have been too tired to get undressed.
“What . . . what time is it?” Nancy mumbled, pulling her shawl over her eyes.
“Ten past six.” Agatha peered out of the window. “Oh, there’s a little church—right next to the station.” This must be the place where Max went to Mass.
As she watched, the door of the church opened and two nuns in black tunics and billowing white veils emerged. They were young, small in stature and dark-skinned. Their features were more Indian than Arabian. She had seen Indian Christians going into the Anglican church in Baghdad and had recognized some of them as shopkeepers whose stores she had visited in the area around the coppersmiths’ souk. But she hadn’t expected to find an Indian community in a place as remote as this.
She tried to imagine Max among them, arriving hot and dusty after trekking across the desert. She remembered the peaceful, almost beatific expression that had come over him at the Yezidi shrine. Yes, she thought, he would be at home here, among people whose spirituality had a flavor of the East.
“Are we there?” Nancy was sitting up now, rubbing her eyes. “I’m terribly thirsty. Do you think they’ll bring more tea?”
“I doubt it.” Agatha smiled. “But hopefully someone will be here to meet us. You won’t have long to wait.”
Sure enough, transport was waiting for them when they made their way out of the station. It looked like a railway carriage, cut in half and mounted on rubber tires. It had been painted an attractive shade of lavender blue but was full of dents and scratches and covered in dust. The man who jumped out to greet them was Michael Cruft-Deacon, the draftsman at the dig, who had walked Katharine up the aisle at the wedding.
“Good morning, ladies!” He grinned broadly as he swung their bags into the back. “Sorry about the transport—I think the chap Leonard bought her from picked her up in a ditch sometime after the First World War and set her in motion for the princely sum of about a tenner. We had to get the chassis raised to cope with the rough ground: makes her look rather majestic, don’t you think?” He opened the door, ushering them in with a sweep of his hands. “It’s rather impertinent, but we call her Queen Mary.”
Although only a short distance in miles, the road to the dig was rutted and uneven. “You’re lucky,” Michael said as the truck bounced over yet another pothole. “It rained here at the end of last month and the wadi flooded. We couldn’t get out for a week.”
“What did you do?” Agatha had to raise her voice to be heard above the noise of the engine. “About food, I mean.”
“Oh, we just about survived on the supplies we had. We were getting a bit fed up of eating beans and rice every night, but then the local sheikh came to the rescue with a couple of goats.”
Agatha and Nancy exchanged glances.
“The cook we have at the dig this season isn’t ba
d,” Michael went on. “His puddings aren’t up to much, but he makes the most marvelous stews and curries. I expect he’ll have breakfast waiting for you. You’ll have the place to yourselves because the others are all out on the mound. Once you’ve settled in, I’ll get someone to bring you up to where we’re working and you’ll get the guided tour.”
As the car rounded a bend, Agatha caught sight of a distant building surrounded by a high barbed-wire fence.
“There’s the expedition house.” Michael jerked his head toward the open window. “It’s called Sahra’ Alqamar—Desert Moon in Arabic. Doesn’t look very inviting, I’m afraid, from this angle. The fence is to protect us from marauders. We’ve dug up so much gold, we’re running out of places to store it: we’re literally stuffing it under our beds.” He changed gear as they took another bend. “You can see the mound now—over there. The Arabs call it a tell.”
Agatha and Nancy looked to the left, where he was pointing. Silhouetted against the pale-yellow morning sky was something like a small volcano—a cone-shaped pile of earth protruding from the flat scrubland surrounding it. There was something moving over its surface. Men, who from this distance looked no bigger than ants.
“How many people do you have working on the dig?” Nancy asked.
“We employ around a hundred men most of the time,” he replied. “It varies from one week to the next. They come from the villages round about. Sometimes, when you pay them, they disappear for a while. Then, when the money runs out, they’re back again. Max is in charge of all that side of things because he speaks such good Arabic. It’s not an easy task, keeping them all in order. A bit like being a headmaster, really.”
He slowed down as they approached the entrance to the compound. A pair of tall Arab guards with rifles and bandoliers of cartridges slung over their shoulders leapt up at the sound of the car. Michael waved at them as he drove into the walled courtyard. As he cut the engine, they heard barking. “Guard dogs,” he explained. “They won’t bother you once they get used to your smell.”
Another Arab—a young boy in a white robe who looked no more than twelve or thirteen—emerged from inside the building with a mongrel puppy chasing behind him. “That’s Saleem. He’ll take your bags and unpack for you. I’ll show you round, and then you can have a bite to eat.”
He led them through a veranda into the main building, which, he explained, was constructed of mud bricks gathered from the surface of the mound they were excavating. “The youngest brick is twenty-five centuries old, but they’re incredibly sturdy.”
Agatha was surprised by how attractive it was inside. The rough walls were painted a pale terra-cotta color and the floor was covered in rush matting. The living room—although minimally furnished—had a welcoming feel to it.
“This is my office.” Michael swept his hand toward a cubicle off the living room that was just big enough for a desk and chair. “And down the hall is the Antiquities Room. We keep it locked during the day, but I’m sure Katharine will give you a proper look this evening.”
He led them to an annex across the courtyard. “The Woolleys’ bedrooms are back in the main building,” he said. “The rest of us are in here.”
Agatha glanced over her shoulder at a pair of small curtained windows. Katharine hadn’t said anything in her letters about sleeping in separate rooms. Perhaps it was because her husband worked such long hours, didn’t want to disturb her when he came to bed. Not for the first time, Agatha found herself wondering how a newly married couple would fare in a situation like that.
“These are your rooms.” Michael ushered them to the end of a passageway, where the young boy who had taken their bags was taking towels from a linen cupboard. “There’s only the one bathroom, I’m afraid, but Saleem will bring you jugs of hot water morning and evening.”
The bedrooms were small and basic but had a rustic charm, with iron-framed single beds, goatskin rugs on the floor, and ceramic jars of what looked like wild tulips on the windowsills. Michael left them then, and when they had freshened themselves up, they went to find out what was for breakfast.
As they entered the main building, they could smell something frying. It turned out to be goat’s cheese and tomato omelets, which Ibrahim, the cook, served with a great flourish, giving each of them a courtly bow as he set their plates in front of them. This was followed by toast, neatly sliced into triangles and arranged in a wire rack. Butter and marmalade were already laid out on the table.
“Goodness,” Nancy laughed. “Not exactly roughing it, are we?”
“It’s much nicer than I expected,” Agatha agreed. “I thought we’d be eating round a campfire and sleeping on the floor.”
“I thought Katharine might be here to greet us, though, didn’t you?”
“I suppose she has to start work when the others do. Perhaps she thought the train might be late and didn’t want to waste time hanging around the house.”
Nancy nodded. “Are you ready for the guided tour?”
“Are you?” Agatha wondered if it was wise for Nancy to be climbing the mound. It was only half past seven, but the temperature was rising rapidly.
“I’ll be fine.” Nancy smiled. Leaning across the table, she whispered: “I’m only pregnant—not ill!”
CHAPTER 19
Ur
Climbing the tell was not as strenuous as Agatha had feared. The sun was pleasantly warm—not unbearably hot as it had been the first few weeks in Baghdad—and a proper path had been hewn into the side of the mound. They found Katharine halfway up, squatting on the dusty ground, deep in conversation with a man in an Arab kaffiyeh and a striped robe. She was dressed in a khaki shirt and skirt, brown brogue shoes, and a broad-brimmed hat. Despite the fact that she was clearly hard at work in the middle of the desert, she still managed to look effortlessly stylish.
When Agatha called her name, she jumped up.
“Oh! You’re here!” She kissed each of them on both cheeks, French-style, her lips barely grazing the skin. “You both look very well: Baghdad obviously agrees with you. And you look like a Bedouin woman, Nancy, with that tan and those clothes!”
She inclined her head toward the man she had been talking to, whose headdress had fallen back as he stood upright to reveal a very handsome face. “This is Hamoudi,” she said. “He’s the one who made the ivory talisman I showed you on the train. He’s our site foreman.” She said something in Arabic to him and he smiled, stepping forward with his right hand extended.
“He doesn’t have many words of English,” she explained as they shook hands. “He and Max are great friends: Max is the best Arabic speaker of any of us.”
“Where is Max?” Agatha asked.
“Digging with Leonard on the other side,” Katharine replied. “We’ll go and find them.”
Nancy and Agatha attracted curious glances from the men and boys who were sorting through the piles of rubble being excavated from the mound. “They don’t often see Western women,” Katharine said. “They probably think you’re here as wives to one of the men in the dig team.” Seeing her friends’ faces, she added: “Don’t worry—Max will put them right!”
The path wound round up and around the tell, and as they veered toward the other side, Agatha caught sight of a huge, stepped building of a rich red color off to the left. She stopped short. “Oh! Is that a ziggurat?”
Katharine nodded. “We excavated it last season. It was built as a temple to the moon god. Can you see the tower at the top? That was the shrine, where all kinds of mysterious ceremonies took place.”
“Like what?” Agatha shaded her eyes against the sun.
“Well, there was a couch inside that the king would lie on to impersonate the god. There was a fertility rite in which he had to have sexual congress with a woman representing the goddess: usually his daughter or his sister. And afterwards they would sing hymns in praise of the woman’s private parts.” She glanced from Agatha to Nancy. “Sorry—I hope I haven’t shocked you.”
�
�I did read something about it in the papers,” Agatha replied. “I didn’t know about the incest, though—or the vulgar songs. Not very pleasant but rather fascinating, all the same.”
“I’m sure I read something about human sacrifice,” Nancy said.
Katharine nodded. “That happened over there.” She pointed to a line of columns to the right of the ziggurat. “It’s the royal cemetery. Whenever the ruler died, all his wives, concubines, and servants would die with him. Animals were slaughtered, too, and all manner of precious objects were buried at the same time. The idea was that the king would have everything he needed in the afterlife. It was terribly wasteful, of course—especially of female lives—and eventually they abandoned it.”
“So all that treasure—the things you’ve been digging up—came from the cemetery, did it?” Nancy asked.
“Mostly, yes. I have to say, though, the rumors of what we’ve found far exceed the truth. Someone put it about that we’d unearthed a solid gold sphinx, which is absolute rubbish. We do have gold objects, but nothing on that scale. It makes us very nervous when stories like that go around. You can imagine what might happen. That’s why we have to have armed guards at the expedition house.”
“Hello!”
The shout came from somewhere above their heads. They looked up to see Max scrambling down the mound, setting off little trickles of grit and sand.
“What are you doing up there?” Katharine shouted back. “Found anything?”
“A statue,” he yelled back. “Looks like Ningal.”
“The moon goddess,” Katharine said over her shoulder.
Max was almost level with them now. His shorts were muddy round the edges, and his black hair had gone a rusty shade of red from the dust. His face—what Agatha could see of it—was even more suntanned than before.
“Good to see you both.” He looked at his hands. “Sorry I can’t give you a proper greeting—it’s a mucky business, as you can see!”
The Woman on the Orient Express Page 18
