Death in a Desert Land

by Andrew Wilson

  “You’ll certainly get that here. Have you done much traveling before?”

  “A little. South Africa, New Zealand, Australia, Hawaii, and Canada. But that was back in 1922.”

  “Sounds wonderful. And you’re traveling alone?”

  Mr. Miller obviously wasn’t wasting much time. “Yes . . . yes, I am,” I said. “I did make one acquaintance on the train journey here, a Mrs. Clemence, who lives in Alwiyah. She keeps asking me to go and stay with her, but I am rather keen to get down to Ur.”

  “You’re going to Ur? That’s where I’m heading, too. I’ve been picking up some supplies in Baghdad but I work down there, on the archaeological site, as the photographer.”

  “How extraordinary,” I said. “Actually, would you like to come into the hotel for a drink after all?” There were a few questions I wanted to put to Mr. Miller.

  “I’d be delighted,” he said.

  A few minutes later we settled ourselves in the comfort of the library, Mr. Miller with his Scotch and me with a lime and soda water.

  “I really must thank you once again for what you did earlier, Mr. Miller,” I said.

  “It was nothing—only what any passing gentleman would do. And call me Harry, please. But I hope you won’t let this incident put you off Baghdad. It’s a wonderful city in many respects. Still has something of the mystique of the Arabian Nights about it, even after all the recent troubles.”

  “Yes, you’re right. I won’t let it warp my view.”

  “By the way, I’m intrigued,” he said. “What brings you to Ur?”

  “After reading about the site in the newspapers, I was so keen to see it for myself. All those beautiful objects dug up from the desert sands.”

  He leant a little closer to me. “How did you manage to secure an invitation to Ur? Mrs. Woolley usually turns down most requests for visits from other women.”

  “With the help of a mutual friend—and also the fact that I believe she is a fan of one of my books.”

  “You’re a writer?”

  “Yes.”

  “What kind of books?”

  “Detective fiction. Light thrillers. Short stories. Nothing serious, I’m afraid.”

  “Would I have heard of any?”

  I reeled off the titles, but Mr. Miller looked none the wiser.

  “Sorry, but I’m not a great fan of having my nose in a book,” he said, coloring slightly. “Never have, even as a boy. I’d always much rather look at the world through a camera lens. You probably think me very stupid.”

  “Not at all. If we were all the same, then the world would be a very dull place indeed,” I said, regretting the words as soon as they were out of my mouth. I was sounding like one of the old maids who used to congregate at my grandmother’s house. “Tell me, Mr. Miller”—I couldn’t bring myself to call him Harry; not yet, at least—“it must be fascinating to work as a photographer with the team at Ur. How long have you worked there?”

  “This will be my third season,” he said. “I keep telling myself that this year will be my last, but something keeps drawing me back.”

  “I can imagine: it must be quite magical to see those objects appear out of the sands, after thousands of years buried underground.” I recalled some of the photographs I had seen in the Illustrated London News.

  “Oh, yes, it is. And it’s just as extraordinary—I’m talking about the darkroom now—to see the images emerge out of nowhere and form themselves on photographic paper. Sometimes, in that darkroom, in the house in the middle of the desert, I feel I’ve had the equivalent of a religious experience. I know that may sound silly, but . . .”

  “It doesn’t sound silly in the least,” I said.

  “I said the same thing once to Father Burrows—he’s a Jesuit priest and the man in charge at Ur of reading and translating the cuneiform tablets—and he looked at me with the strangest expression on his face. Like he was hearing a phrase in a foreign language he couldn’t understand.”

  “Who else is there at Ur?”

  “There’s quite a crowd at the moment, which is unusual,” said Miller. “Of course, there are the people who work on the dig, Mr. and Mrs. Woolley. There is the epigraphist, Father Burrows; the secretary, Cynthia Jones; then there’s the architect, Lawrence McRae, and his nephew, a young boy, Cecil. One has to pity him, really: he’s not quite right in the head, if you get my meaning. Lost his parents in an accident, and so McRae took him under his wing. He’d be in some institution if it weren’t for his uncle’s kindness. And then there are the current visitors, the Archers: Hubert, a railway millionaire from the Midwest, and his wife, Ruth, and daughter, Sarah. The only reason Mrs. Woolley tolerates their presence, especially that of the wife and daughter, is the fact that they promise to invest in the dig to the tune of what could be thousands of dollars. Archer is thick with the directors of the Penn Museum in Philly and, in addition to the sponsorship of the dig, promised them even greater riches in the future. The guy’s one of those hangovers from the last century who believe in the word—the literal word—of the Bible.”

  “I see. So it’s the lure of the Old Testament that brought him to Ur.”

  “Yes, and Mr. Woolley is convinced that he will soon find evidence that Ur was indeed the birthplace of Abraham.”

  “It sounds like a fascinating group of people,” I said. I did not, of course, mention the fact that one of the party could be the murderer of Gertrude Bell. “And I hear Miss Bell did a great deal to help the preservation of the treasures here in Baghdad. I believe she drafted the antiquities law in Iraq and held an important position to that effect in this country.”

  Miller had fallen silent.

  “King Faisal must have thought very highly of her,” I continued. “And then there’s the archaeological museum here in Baghdad, which she set up and which I believe houses some objects discovered at Ur. It was so sad to hear the news of her death. I hear that she had been ill, but still, such a tragic loss.”

  Tears had formed in Miller’s dark eyes, and as he bit his top lip, he reached out for his glass and drained it of the whisky.

  “I’m sorry; I didn’t realize,” I said. “You must miss her a great deal.”

  He nodded and then coughed, choking back the emotion. “Yes, she was very dear to me,” he said, blinking. “Excuse me. You must think me a fool. I’m fine most of the time—I lose myself in my work, have a few drinks in the evening—but then it steals up on you when you least expect it and floors you. Grief, I mean.”

  “I know exactly what you mean,” I said, remembering my chaotic state of mind after the death of my mother and then the way I went to pieces after I had discovered the truth of Archie’s love affair. Losing him had been a kind of bereavement. At times I wished that he had died instead of finding happiness with that other woman, a thought which then made me feel wicked and full of shame.

  “I think it’s admirable you can talk about it,” I said. “So many of my fellow countrymen wouldn’t dream of talking about their feelings in this way, and it does them no good whatsoever.” I wasn’t totally in favor of men—or women, when it came to it—unburdening themselves of their emotions, but it was clear that Mr. Miller needed to hear something reassuring. “Was she a very close friend?”

  “I just don’t understand it,” he continued. “Her death, I mean. She had so much to live for. Not only her work here in Iraq, seeing the fruits of her labors, enjoying the friendship she had built up with the king, her delight at witnessing the museum come to life. But also she had her personal happiness, something she richly deserved.” He looked completely lost and broken. “Why would she throw that away? No, it doesn’t make sense.”

  “What are you saying, Mr. Miller?”

  Anger fired up his eyes now. “What I’m saying is that there is no way she would have committed . . .” He didn’t want to say the words. “There’s no way she could have died . . . in that way, like the doctor said.”

  “I thought she died of natural causes.”r />
  “That was just a story put out by her father and stepmother to stop unseemly speculation in the press,” he said. “The doctor who attended her, Dunlop, discovered a bottle of pills by her bed. Sedatives. I know she had problems sleeping—all of us do, sometimes—but there’s no way she would have taken an overdose. It just wasn’t in her nature.” He stared into his empty glass and fell silent for a few moments. “Anyway, there’s nothing that can be done now; it’s all in the past.” He caught the eye of the waiter and signaled for him to pour him an extra-large measure of Scotch.

  “Could there be another explanation?” I asked.

  “Yes, I suppose that must be it—an accidental overdose. She had lost a good deal of weight, I believe, in the last few years. Her system was weakened; she’d suffered an attack of bronchitis, and then pleurisy. Perhaps she took a couple of pills to sleep and forgot she’d taken them and so took a couple more. And that was too much for her . . .”

  It was obvious he had not thought of the possibility of murder—or, if he had, he was keeping that to himself. Had he heard about the existence of the two unsent letters, and the sinister drawing, that had been discovered in Miss Bell’s house in Baghdad? Davison had told me that the servant who had come across them had been sworn to secrecy on the issue—the man would be severely punished and his family would suffer if he so much as breathed a word of what he had unearthed—but often these things leaked out. I decided it would be wise to keep the contents of the letters to myself, at least for the time being.

  “And when are you traveling down to Ur, Mr. Miller?” I said, changing the subject.

  “In a couple of days’ time,” he said, grateful that we had left the death of Miss Bell behind for now. “I’m just waiting for some chemicals to arrive and some supplies for the team, and then it’s back to work. From what Woolley tells me, we should be in for an interesting season.”

  He looked at me as if seeing me for the first time, his eyes assessing my hair, my skin, my clothes, and as his gaze finally came to rest on my figure, I felt myself blushing. “And it sure will be fascinating to see what Mrs. Woolley makes of you.” He nodded his head as if to confirm a thought he chose not to articulate before he added, “Yep, there could be fireworks there. Mark my words. Fireworks.”

  3

  This was certainly no Orient Express, I said to myself as I sat in the stifling heat of a shabby compartment in the rackety train that would take me from Baghdad to Ur Junction. I fanned myself with a newspaper, but I still felt as though I couldn’t breathe. The train hauled its way out of the station, passed through the ugly outskirts of Baghdad, and began its slow journey across the desert. I had a compartment to myself—perhaps I was the only person stupid enough to travel like this?—so fortunately no one had to see my reddened neck and face and the sheen of perspiration that was quickly spreading across my skin.

  In order to try and cool myself, I closed my eyes and pictured the grandeur and elegance of the train that I had boarded at Calais. Saying the name Simplon–Orient Express silently to myself was enough to transport me back. The glass and silverware, sparkling so brightly it hurt one’s eyes. The soft touch of the mahogany in the dining car. The soothing voices of the uniformed men, so attentive that they seemed blessed with second sight. I recalled the deep sense of pleasure I enjoyed, sitting in the wagon-lit, opening up my brochure from Cook’s (a document I had gazed on more than a dozen times already) and seeing the planned route ahead: Calais, Paris, Lausanne, the Simplon Pass, Milan, Venice, Zagreb, Belgrade, Sofia, Stamboul. I was sure nothing in life would give me more pleasure than the anticipation I felt when I first stepped onto the train. I didn’t even mind the fact that I was due to travel second class; Davison’s office, which had arranged the tickets, had informed me that all seats in first had been taken. Yet my heart did sink when I entered my compartment to find that I had to share with a talkative and somewhat overfamiliar woman.

  “Hello,” she had said, standing up and stretching out a plump hand. “I’m Elizabeth Clemence, but you can call me Betty. Everyone does.”

  As soon as I introduced myself, she seized on the fact that I was an author. Was I that writer who had caused a stink a couple of years back by disappearing? I had to admit that, yes, that had been me. Had it been true that my husband had been suspected of my murder? Nothing more than the speculation of a sensational press, I told her. So why had I disappeared? Could I really not remember anything of those ten or eleven days? My doctors had warned me not to dwell on the issue, I said—to do so could only bring about another episode—so I brought that line of inquiry to a close.

  After a few minutes’ silence, Betty Clemence started up again by asking me where I was traveling to. Was I going to Italy? No, I replied, a little farther than that. But where exactly? Well, I told her, I was going to Baghdad. At this she simply exploded. What a coincidence! She couldn’t believe it! Oh, she couldn’t wait to tell her husband! Why, she lived there, and I had to stay with her. It would be simply criminal if I were to pay for a hotel. But what was I doing in Baghdad? I could not, of course, tell her the real reason—that I was traveling to Iraq at the request of the British Secret Intelligence Service to investigate the suspicious death of Miss Gertrude Bell—and so I related the story about meeting a naval officer who had recommended Baghdad to me. And, she asked, what was his name? I could not remember, I said. Was it Rogers? Fletcher? Aylesbury-Eyreton? The name had escaped me, I said. Surely, if he has passed through Baghdad—and he sounded like a person of some importance—then he would have made himself known to her or her husband, Geoffrey. And what were my plans once in Iraq? I reeled off a list of things I had read about in my guidebook before Betty Clemence started to inform me of the delights of the city: the tennis and lunch parties, the gardens, the wonderful people (all of whom were English, of course, many of them having retired from the higher ranks of the military or diplomatic service). I got the distinct impression that, to her, Baghdad was nothing more than a slightly more exotic Bournemouth.

  “And did you ever meet Miss Gertrude Bell?” I asked when she finally paused for breath.

  “Oh, yes, an awful woman,” she said, puffing out her cheeks. “So rude. Some of the things that came out of her mouth. Do you know she once had the audacity to suggest that my life out in Baghdad was superficial? That I was wasting my time flitting from lunch party to tennis party without a thought in my head. I had half a mind to tell her what I thought of her—some of the circles she would mix in you would not believe, my dear—but propriety and good manners prevented me. She was obviously unbalanced—unhinged, yes, that’s the word. Sad, of course, what happened at the end, but I can’t say I was surprised.”

  “You weren’t?”

  “No. She had no husband, no children. What had she made of her life? What had she to show? Nothing but a few dusty artifacts clustered together in a museum.”

  “But what of Iraq? Surely she did something there to—”

  “Better if she’d never bothered—that’s what my Geoffrey says. She should have left well alone. And I have to say I agree. Who knows what all this meddling will do? It’s like opening a can of worms. Better to let the British take charge, just as we do in India. After all, these people have no idea how to govern themselves. Don’t you agree?”

  Before I could answer, she had launched into yet another line of inquiry. She wanted me to tell her my exact route to Baghdad. Was I not getting off the train at Trieste and then taking a boat to Beirut? That was her preferred itinerary; it was, of course, the best method, tried and tested. When I told her I was taking the Orient Express as far as Stamboul, from where I would get another train via Damascus, she informed me that that would be a disaster. Surely I could change my ticket and accompany her on her journey? When I told her that I could not, she went on to outline the exact and innumerable ways in which my journey could and would go wrong.

  “I expect it will be awful, but never mind; it’s too late now,” I said. “But I am lookin
g forward to my travels, particularly Ur. Have you been there?”

  Her eyes, fat currants set within her generously proportioned face, lit up at the mention of the name, and she proceeded to tell me all about it. How she believed Mr. Woolley’s discoveries would change the world of archaeology forever. How there was every possibility that Leonard would find evidence that Ur had indeed been the birthplace of Abraham. And how thrilling—and also quite disturbing—it must have been to uncover those bodies. “Just think how lovely it must have been for the king and queen to believe that their servants were going to accompany them after death. Their every need catered for, even in the afterlife. Woolley told me that there were no signs of struggle, suggestive of the idea that the servants went to their deaths willingly. So wonderfully romantic.”

  There was nothing romantic about death, I wanted to tell her, but held my tongue.

  “And what of Mr. Woolley himself?” I asked.

  She outlined some facts I already knew: how Leonard Woolley had been born in London, the son of a vicar; how he had worked with T. E. Lawrence at Carchemish, the archaeological site that lay about sixty or so miles north of Aleppo; and about how he had been imprisoned by the Turks during the war. She had heard him give a couple of lectures in Baghdad and, yes, she had been greatly impressed by the vitality with which he talked, his ability to conjure up the past as if it were something real and concrete.

  “What is his wife like?” I asked.

  Betty raised her eyes in unspoken disapproval. “The less said about Katharine Woolley, the better,” she sniffed.

  “What do you mean?”

  “She’s an odd woman. Strange.”

  “In what way—or ways?”

  “You’ll see for yourself when you arrive at Ur,” said Betty. “Like Geoffrey always says, no good ever comes from being a so-called independent woman.” I could have taken offense at this; after all, now that Archie had abandoned me and I was forced to support myself, this was the category I fell into. “Look at what happened with poor Miss Bell.”