The Woman on the Orient Express

by Lindsay Jayne Ashford

  Agatha nodded, but her stomach was in knots. She knew she should be pleased, but she couldn’t help feeling a tug of envy. “What will you do if someone from the British Consulate turns up asking questions? Hugh Carrington might come back: he knows about James.”

  “I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.” Katharine sounded more like her old, determined self now. “We’re unlikely to get another visit this season. But if anyone asks, I’ll tell them that James is ours.”

  CHAPTER 32

  Two days later, Agatha and Max boarded the train from Ur Junction to Baghdad. Katharine, Leonard, and the baby were there to see them off. As Leonard handed over the gold death mask Max was taking back to London, Agatha bent over to kiss James for the last time. He opened his eyes at the touch of her lips, bringing a lump to her throat.

  “You will come and visit when we’re back in London, won’t you?” Katharine hoisted him onto her shoulder, rocking him gently as she spoke. “We’d love to see you.”

  Agatha glanced at Leonard, who was talking to Max through the window of the train. “I should have given you something—for the expedition. Perhaps I could wire some money from London.”

  “That’s not necessary.” Katharine smiled. “You’ve given us both something far more precious.”

  The train gave an ear-splitting whistle, which made James cry out in terror.

  “You’d better get on!” Katharine planted a swift kiss on Agatha’s cheek.

  By the time Agatha was in her seat, the train had already begun to move. Katharine and Leonard were waving. James had stopped crying.

  “They look like a proper family, don’t they?” Max said.

  Agatha nodded. She didn’t trust herself to speak. Not yet.

  “You mustn’t worry.” He reached for her hand. “It’ll be all right.”

  They traveled overnight on the train, arriving in Baghdad in the early hours of the morning. Their plan was to go on to Damascus later that evening, which gave Agatha just hours to pack up everything in the house by the river.

  She couldn’t have faced the task of gathering up Nancy’s belongings without Max there to help her. In a drawer by the bed she found a photograph wrapped in a moth-eaten silk scarf with a pattern of peacock feathers. It was a holiday snap of a group of men and women. The image blurred as Agatha realized that one of the faces was Nancy’s.

  “What is it?” Max dropped the bundle of clothes in his arms. Agatha held the photograph out for him to see. He read out the words inked in the border. “Venice Lido—April 1928.”

  “It’s Nancy’s honeymoon.” Agatha fumbled in her pocket for a handkerchief.

  Max studied it for a minute, then pointed to the muscular man to Nancy’s right, who was clasping her hand while his other rested on the shoulder of a smiling woman in a kimono. “That must be Felix Nelson. Do you think that’s the woman he . . .”

  “Probably.”

  “Who are these others?”

  As Agatha looked at the photo properly, her eye was drawn to a man at the far end of the line, on the right. He was wearing a patterned toweling robe and buckled canvas bathing shoes. He wasn’t looking at the camera but back at the line of people. Tall enough to see over the heads of the others, he seemed to be staring at Nancy. His high, sculpted cheekbones and diamond-bright eyes made her stomach flip over. It was him: the man on the Orient Express.

  “What’s the matter?” She felt Max’s hand on her shoulder. “You’re trembling.”

  “I . . . It’s just . . .” Should she tell him? What would he do if she identified Nancy’s lover? Would he feel duty bound to find him? To tell him about James? She had made a promise to Nancy. She mustn’t break it now.

  “I sh . . . should send this to Katharine.” Her voice was on the verge of breaking. “Then she can tell James about his mother when he starts asking questions.”

  “Do you think she will tell him?” Max frowned. “I got the impression she and Leonard were planning to pass him off to the world as their own child.”

  Agatha folded the photograph up in its shroud of silk. “I suppose that’s their business. But if they have this, they have a choice, don’t they?”

  Max nodded. “Do you have an envelope? I’ll go and post it while you finish packing.”

  Four days later, on the twenty-first of December, the Orient Express was gliding through the snow-covered meadows of the Swiss Alps. Dawn came late on the shortest day of the year. Agatha and Max were already eating breakfast when the sky lit up with the promise of sunrise.

  “Our final morning,” Max said, raising his coffee cup and chinking it against hers. “I know the last few days haven’t been easy, but I do hope you’ve been able to enjoy some of it.”

  “Oh yes.” Agatha gave a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “Istanbul was fascinating—and it was a treat to go back to Venice.” She bent her head over her plate, buttering a piece of toast to conceal feelings that she couldn’t express. There was so much going through her head. Tomorrow she would be back in London, picking up the pieces of her old life. She was desperate to see Rosalind but dreading the moment when Christmas was over and her daughter was back at school. Max would be returning to Mesopotamia. They’d had a wonderful few days together, but there had been no talk about the future. Would she ever see him again? And then there was James. She missed him terribly and wondered how Katharine was coping. Would she get tired of the sleepless nights and the endless round of feeding and changing? What would happen to James if the novelty of having a baby began to wear off?

  “You’re looking awfully serious.” Max put his hand over hers as she laid down the knife.

  “I can’t help worrying about James.” She could admit to that, at least.

  “You were very good with him. I can imagine how hard it must have been to say good-bye.”

  “I did think about offering to take him. That day we rode out to the church, I spent the whole time you were at Mass working out whether it would be possible.” She glanced out of the window at the snowy peak of a mountain turned gold by the rising sun. “It wouldn’t have been, of course. I don’t think a divorcée would be allowed to adopt a child.”

  “I thought about it, too,” Max said.

  “You did?”

  “I thought perhaps if we were married . . .”

  He was still holding her hand. She looked up, astounded, and saw that he was blushing.

  “But then I started thinking that if we were married, we . . .” He stared at the tablecloth. “I thought we might be able to have one of our own.”

  “Max—are you proposing to me?”

  “Yes.” He looked up, a wry smile on his face. “Sorry I’m making a bit of a hash of it. I should go down on one knee, shouldn’t I? But I might trip up the waiter.” He took a deep breath. “Will you marry me, Agatha?”

  EPILOGUE

  August 1963

  The path from the camellia garden to the house is narrow and winding. My young visitor offers to take my arm. I’m perfectly capable of walking unaided—the stick is just for helping me get up from the bench—but I take his arm when he holds it out, overcome by a sudden, powerful urge to have him close to me again. This was the baby I delivered in the desert, the child I kept alive with goat’s milk on a scrap of muslin, the little boy I would have adopted if the circumstances had been different. What a fine young man he has grown into, with his mane of dark hair and those sparkling blue eyes.

  I wish that Max was here to see him. But he’s in London, delivering a lecture at the British Museum. At this moment he is probably regaling his audience with some anecdote from the time we spent living in Iraq and Syria.

  What adventures. Max in charge of his own expeditions, and me at his side as khatun. I learned how to photograph the finds and develop the pictures, and when I wasn’t doing that, I was typing away in a mud-brick study Max built for me. They hung a sign above the door, written in Arabic. “Beit Agatha.” Agatha’s house. It was the first proper writing room
I’d ever had. I don’t think ideas have ever come to me as quickly or easily as they did in that little hut in the desert.

  We lost touch with the Woolleys over the years. While Max branched out with new digs in the Middle East, Leonard’s work took him to America. The last time we all met, in London in the autumn of 1930, James was nearly two. He didn’t remember me, of course, and cried when Katharine tried to sit him on my lap. It would have upset me if I hadn’t had a secret reason to be especially happy that day. I was pregnant with Max’s baby. For a whole magical month we had been planning a future as parents to a child of our own.

  The day after that meeting with Katharine and James, we set off for Syria, stopping for a holiday on the island of Rhodes. I remember going into a little whitewashed church on the island to pray for a son. But I was forty years old. The pregnancy lasted just three months.

  It was devastating, knowing that this was probably my last chance. As if to underline our painful loss, Archie’s new wife gave birth to a little boy that same year.

  Max was stoical, but I knew how much he would have loved to have a baby. It made it even harder to contemplate visiting the Woolleys when we returned to London the following spring—and it was something of a relief when I learned of their move to America.

  Thinking back, I can hardly believe how long ago that was. James must be . . . I work it out in my head: thirty-five next birthday. As we walk toward the house, my shoe catches a stone lying on the path and I almost lose my footing. I feel the pressure of his hand under my arm, steadying me.

  Yes, I longed for a son.

  It became an obsession as I reached my midforties. But as the years ebbed away, I had to accept the bitter truth: that however successful I might be in other areas of my life, this was something I had failed at.

  And then something lovely and quite unexpected had happened. Rosalind—at just twenty years old—met and married a soldier in a whirlwind wartime romance. Their son, Mathew, was born in the autumn of 1942. And when I held him in my arms, the ache in my heart simply melted away.

  Mathew is a grown man now. I wonder what he would make of this stranger holding his granny’s arm. We round a bend in the path. The house appears majestic through the boughs of the magnolias fringing the lawn, its white columns tinged orange by the sinking sun.

  “What an amazing place.” James stops to take it in. “You can’t really see it from the river—I didn’t realize it was Georgian.”

  “We bought it in 1938,” I reply. “It was occupied by American troops during the war. They left some artwork behind—you’ll see it in a moment.”

  When we reach the house, I take him through to the library and ring for tea. I show him the mural painted all along the walls, beneath the cornice: a series of illustrations depicting the worldwide exploits of a US landing craft.

  “It’s the legacy of a homesick lieutenant from New York. I couldn’t bring myself to erase it when the house was redecorated—I like to think of it as modern archaeology.”

  I watch James as he circles the room, studying each stage of the mural. He pauses, pulling at the lobe of his ear—a brief gesture that betrays the fact he is on tenterhooks. He is wondering when I am going to get to the point, whether I really do have the missing pieces he is so desperately seeking.

  “I’m sorry I lost touch with your parents,” I begin. “We were so busy carving out our lives in different parts of the world. I have a great deal to thank them for: if it wasn’t for them, I would never have met Max, my husband.”

  “Mum often talked about you. She had all of your books.”

  “It was a shock when I heard about her death. We’d been very close. It must have been terribly hard for you, losing her so young.”

  “Yes, it was. I was at school here, and they were in America. She’d been ill for a while. The doctors weren’t sure what was wrong. It was awful to see her just wasting away, and of course, she hated it. She’d always been so full of life.”

  He comes over to the chair next to mine, resting his hands on the back of it, as if he needs something to hold on to. “Dad told me that she had a premonition. She sat him down and said, ‘Len, I’m going to die this night—and you must promise me that when I do, you’ll go on as you always have.’ And the next morning she was gone.”

  I feel a pang of recognition. This sounds so like the Katharine I knew.

  “Dad was never very good at expressing his feelings. When Mum passed away, he never seemed to want to talk about their life together. I had no idea they had kept anything from me until he died. When the house was sold, I was going through boxes in the attic and I found those photographs and a letter.” His eyes go back to the mural. I can hear him breathing: a soft sigh as he exhales. “It was written by Mum to her sister in March 1929. Apparently, they were planning to stay with her when they finished the season at the dig. The letter said that they’d adopted a baby boy.”

  The silence in the room is palpable. I can feel my heart beating and a sickening sense of guilt. Will he blame me if I tell him? For what I didn’t do all those years ago? For failing to save his mother? And how can I tell him anything without breaking my promise to Nancy?

  “There was no clue in the letter about the identity of my parents, other than to say that I was European, not Arab, and had been named after Mum’s father. The photographs were tucked inside the envelope.” He takes them out of his bag again and lays them on the table between us, his eyes searching my face. “You were there, in Ur, the month I was born. Did she tell you anything?”

  I have that ringing in my ears from my blood pressure rising. But there is something else as well. I can hear the voice of Hercule Poirot.

  Trust the train, mademoiselle, for it is le bon dieu who drives it . . .

  Trust the train. My own words, written all those years ago, when I thought my life was over. For the train, like life, must go on until it reaches its destination. You might not always like what you see out of the window, but if you pull down the blind, you will miss the beauty as well as the ugliness.

  My finger trembles as it hovers over Nancy’s face. “This is your mother.”

  “Oh . . .” His eyes widen, filming with tears. “She . . . she’s beautiful. Who is she?”

  “Her name was Nancy. And she wanted you very much. But she . . .” My voice breaks as I try to tell him. We are both crying by the time Jean, my housekeeper, brings in the tray of tea.

  We recover ourselves a little as I pour it. Then he listens, sipping mechanically from his cup as I tell the story of how I met his mother.

  “She took this photograph.” I pick up the shot of Katharine and myself draped in towels. “You were born right there, under that tree, less than an hour later.”

  He takes the image from me, staring in wonder as I tell him how it happened.

  “What about my father?” He picks up the other photograph, the one taken in Venice. “Is this him?” He is pointing to the man standing next to Nancy.

  “No—that’s Nancy’s husband, Felix Nelson. He wasn’t your father: she was very clear about that.”

  “So who was?” I hesitate before replying, mindful of my promise. “Your mother never told me his name. All she said was that he was an actor who lived in London, and that he was there in Venice, at the house party.”

  James runs his finger across the photograph, desperate to know which of the half a dozen men could be the one.

  He must use the little gray cells.

  Hercule, as always, has the solution: give James the clues to work it out for himself. No need to break my promise.

  I leave him pacing the room while I go upstairs. It doesn’t take me long to find the photograph. It’s in a drawer alongside the bundle of love letters Archie sent me before we were married—something else I could never quite bring myself to destroy.

  When I pull out the snapshot of the dashing young pilot, his eyes make crystals of ice bloom in my blood. I had the very same sensation during the last war, sitting in a cinema i
n London. Max was stationed in Egypt, so I went on my own to watch an adaptation of one of Daphne du Maurier’s novels. A few minutes in, I caught my breath at the sight of one of the supporting actors—because he looked exactly like Archie.

  When the film ended, I waited for the credits to roll, certain that the mystery of the face I had seen reflected in the window of the Orient Express had finally been solved. I wished I could see the photo I found in Nancy’s drawer to prove to myself that I was right—but of course, I had sent it to Katharine.

  I take the picture of Archie downstairs and tell James about the man I saw his mother wave at on the train. “I can’t be certain, you see,” I say as hope flares in his eyes. “It was only a reflection. But he was the double of my first husband. That’s why I remember it so clearly.”

  James nods slowly, holding Archie’s image next to the group shot. “This is him: it has to be!” He points to the man in the patterned toweling robe at the end of the line. “He’s an actor, isn’t he? I recognize him, I think. Do you know his name?”

  I go to the bookcase and pull out one of Daphne du Maurier’s books, an edition published to coincide with the film. I hand it to James. His father’s face is on the cover. He gasps and turns the book over. The blurb on the back tells him what he is so desperate to know.

  “Is he still alive?”

  I hesitate. When I look at him, I can’t help seeing Rosalind. They have the same dark hair, the same bright-blue eyes. James could almost be her younger brother. The thought makes me shrivel inside. Because Rosalind has a younger brother: Archie’s son from his second marriage. But they were complete strangers until last year, when they met for the first time at Archie’s funeral.

  That was my fault. I didn’t forbid her to see her father’s new family, but I made it perfectly clear how hurt I would be if she did. And so she saw Archie on his own in London, never with his wife and son. And by the time she finally got to meet her half brother, he was thirty-two years old. I know how hard she has found it to forgive me for those wasted years.