Death in a Desert Land

by Andrew Wilson

  “Yes, I think that’s a very good idea,” I said.

  “What utter tosh, Eric!” exclaimed McRae. “I don’t think that’s going to make much difference. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but God is no longer with us, if he was ever with us at all.”

  “McRae, really, I think that’s taking things too far,” said Burrows.

  “Let’s all try and keep our heads here,” said Miller.

  “Yes, I’m sure there’s a perfectly good explanation for what happened,” said Cynthia. “Perhaps Tom was already ill or injured and Mrs. Woolley had to put him out of his misery.”

  “That sounds most unlikely,” said McRae, checking the pot on the table for coffee. “Where’s that servant boy? Why can’t he—” He stopped, as if something had just occurred to him. “Now I think of it, what was that story I heard? About Mrs. Woolley. Yes, it was something to do with her time during or shortly after the war. Now, who told me about it? I can’t remember now, but it may have some bearing on this.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Miller. “What story?”

  “Something to do with the death of her first husband,” said McRae with fire in his eyes. “Yes, that’s right, it was about a servant in Cairo. You see, the servant discovered something about Katharine—I don’t know what it was—and he threatened to tell her husband. What was the husband’s name?”

  “Keeling, I think,” said Cynthia.

  “Yes, that’s right, a Colonel Keeling. The next thing, Keeling is found dead at the base of the Cheops pyramid, apparently having shot himself. But it doesn’t take a genius to work out what really happened.”

  “What really happened?” I asked.

  “It’s obvious, isn’t it,” said McRae. “Katharine shot him and made it look like a suicide. And if she can do that once, it’s my opinion she can do it again. Wouldn’t you say that’s true, Mrs. Christie? What do they say in works of detective fiction? Murder is a habit?”

  “Well, I—”

  “That’s all hypothesis and conjecture,” said Miller. “I mean, do you know that for sure?”

  “That Colonel Keeling died?” said McRae, enjoying the attention. “That he shot himself? Of course. That’s a statement of fact.”

  “No—that other thing you said,” Miller clarified. “That Mrs. Woolley killed her own husband. You said it was a story, something someone told you.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “But nothing,” said Miller, walking up to McRae with an aggressive swagger. “I want to know who told you this.”

  “I don’t know. I can’t remember. But I’m sure it was someone—”

  “I thought better of you, McRae, I really did,” said Miller, stopping a couple of inches away from the architect’s face and looking at him with disgust. “Unless you’ve got concrete proof of Mrs. Woolley’s guilt in the matter, then—”

  His words were cut off by the entrance of Leonard Woolley into the room. “Mrs. Woolley’s guilt in what matter, Mr. Miller?” The room fell silent. “I’m sorry, I seem to have interrupted the flow of your conversation. Please carry on.”

  “We were just talking about Mrs. Woolley and Tom, the cat,” said Miller, thinking quickly. “Whether she was responsible for . . . for . . .”

  “For its death?” asked Woolley coolly.

  “Well, yes,” Miller replied.

  Woolley appraised the group, casting his eye over each of us in turn. Had he been standing at the door for long? What exactly had he heard?

  “Really, all this fuss over the death of a stray cat,” he said, laughing. “It’s really quite ridiculous.”

  “But if she did kill Tom, then how are we—” said McRae.

  Woolley cut him off quickly. “Let me stop the rumors and the speculation right now,” he announced. “My wife didn’t kill the cat. I did.”

  The confession sent ripples of confusion through the room. “If you’ll just let me explain,” he said, holding up his hand. “You see, Tom had not been quite himself for some time. I’m sure most of you had noticed it. He’d become increasingly bad-tempered. He wouldn’t let anybody pick him up or stroke him even at the best of times. But last night, when Katharine tried to stroke him, he went for her and injured her badly. You saw for yourself the marks on her arms. And so I did the kindest thing possible: I put him to sleep.”

  “I don’t understand . . . ,” said Cynthia, her face the color of ash. “Sorry, I—”

  “I think what Miss Jones is trying to say is: Why did you let Mrs. Woolley find him like that?” I asked. “Why didn’t you tell her what you’d done?”

  “I did,” said Woolley, looking taken aback that I had dared to question him in this way. “But I think Katharine didn’t want to face up to the truth. She adored that cat. But she knew that as soon as it attacked her, then it would have to be put down. I told her last night, before dinner, but she pretended not to hear or understand what I was saying.”

  This version of events did not correspond with what Woolley had told me only the night before, and I suspected this story to be a lie designed to protect his wife. “But to leave the cat there on the bed like that for Mrs. Woolley to find,” I asked. “Was that not terribly cruel?”

  “Again, Mrs. Christie, that’s not quite how it happened,” replied Woolley. “After the cat was dead, I covered it in some sackcloth and moved it into one of the storage rooms. I thought I would dispose of its body the next day. But Katharine must have found it and brought it back into her bedroom. She told me she couldn’t bear to live without it—even after what it had done to her.”

  Each of us stared at Woolley, none of us quite sure about what to say in response to his bizarre explanation. Finally it was Harry Miller who walked over to Woolley and shook his hand.

  “I wasn’t here to witness any of this, but by the sound of it, you handled a difficult situation well,” he said.

  “I wouldn’t say that exactly,” replied Woolley. “I really should have told you all about it last night, but Katharine was in such a state, I wasn’t sure how to deal with it. Anyway, I apologize for any upset I caused.”

  I had some questions that I still wanted to put to Mr. Woolley. Cynthia Jones too looked confused, while McRae seemed possessed by a mix of embarrassment and anger.

  “Now, do you think we can get on with some work,” said Woolley. It was not so much a question as a statement. “Burrows? What’s the latest on the inscription of that damaged cuneiform tablet that you’ve been studying? Can you read any fragments of it yet? McRae, I’d like to take a look over the latest batch of drawings, if you don’t mind. Miller, I’m interested in looking again at those photographs of the two sets of gold and lapis lazuli beads, if that’s not too much trouble. And, Miss Jones, I need to send a memo to the directors of the museum in Philadelphia.” It was clearly business as usual for Woolley, and soon the director of the expedition had restored, for the moment at least, a sense of order and confidence in his team.

  I slipped away and gently knocked on Katharine’s door.

  “Come in,” she said.

  I entered to find her sitting up in bed, the shutters to the windows still closed. When she saw me she smiled awkwardly; it was clear from her expression that she regretted the scene that she had caused the previous night.

  “How are you feeling?” I asked.

  “A little tired,” she said.

  “That’s only to be expected,” I said as I came to stand near the bed.

  “Agatha, I’m terribly sorry about what happened,” she said, gesturing for me to sit down next to her. “You must think me such a fool, and as for the rest of the team . . . I know how they view me, how I must come across. I can hardly bear to show my face today.”

  I needed to find out the truth about the cat. “Don’t distress yourself further,” I said. “It was obviously very upsetting for you. I think everyone understands what must have happened.”

  She looked blankly at me. “What do you mean?”

  “Leonard explained e
verything,” I said, giving her a kind smile. “About how he had put the cat down.”

  There was a long silence during which time I began to feel more and more unnerved.

  “Leonard didn’t kill Tom,” Katharine said finally.

  “But he just came in and told everyone how—”

  “Yes, about how Tom had turned on me and how he discovered me covered in scratches? That was just a story Leonard made up to try and protect me.”

  So I had been right. Automatically I shifted my position to sit a little farther away from her on the bed. Katharine noticed that and also the subtle change in my eyes. I tried not to look afraid, but the more I concentrated, certainly the more frightened I appeared.

  “It’s not what you think,” she whispered.

  “But if your husband didn’t kill the cat, then who did?”

  There was a pause before she asked, “Do you think I did it?” There was a coldness to her voice now. “Is that what you think I’m capable of?”

  “I’m just trying to make some sense of what happened,” I replied.

  She studied me as if I were an object, a lifeless piece of sculpture in a gallery or a mannequin in a shop window.

  “I had higher hopes of you,” she said at last. “From reading your books, I thought you would be cleverer than this.”

  “I’m sorry, Katharine, I don’t understand what it is you’re trying to say.”

  She took a deep breath as if she were a teacher in the presence of a particularly stupid child.

  “So you’re saying Leonard didn’t kill Tom?” I asked.

  “Yes, that’s right. And I know I didn’t kill him either.”

  “You didn’t? But what about the scratches on your arms?”

  “I can’t explain those.”

  Was Katharine to be believed? Was this just a game she was playing?

  “Don’t you see someone else is behind all of this?”

  “Someone else? Who?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, looking around the room as if there might be someone hidden in one of the corners. “I’ve seen things. Heard things.” Was she in the grip of another horrible delusion? “I can’t explain.”

  “Perhaps you need another sedative,” I asked, but I was wary of giving her more. After all, she couldn’t spend her life on the drugs.

  “No, I need to keep my wits about me,” she said, panicking. “What if someone wants to kill me? Or they might try to murder Leonard.”

  “You’re scaring me now, Katharine,” I said. “Why would anyone want to do that?”

  “I don’t know; it’s just a feeling I’ve got,” she said. “I know you don’t believe me,” she snapped, looking at me with resentment in her eyes. “You may as well go.”

  “I’m not going to leave you until I understand what it is you are afraid of,” I replied. “Because I can see that you are frightened. Very frightened indeed. I know—let’s have some tea.”

  “It won’t have a sedative in it?” she asked, her voice rising. “Please, I told you: I can’t afford to go to sleep.”

  “No, I promise. Nothing but good English tea.”

  “Very well.” She nodded.

  I called the servant boy, and as we waited for the tea to come, we talked of other matters, such as the weather, the shifting nature of the desert sands, the social scene in Baghdad, and, finally, the things the Woolleys missed about England.

  “Do you have any family back at home?” I asked as I poured the tea. There was no response. “Someone mentioned to me that you were married before. Is that right?”

  “Who told you that?” she asked with an accusatory look.

  “I think it might have been your husband,” I said.

  “Why were you talking about that? What’s that got to do with you?”

  “I know it was quite presumptuous of me, but I was asking Mr. Woolley about you, the state of your health, your headaches and so on, and he must have mentioned it. I’m sorry if I’ve offended you in some way.”

  Katharine fell silent. “Yes, I was married,” she said finally. “It didn’t last long.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” I said, then told her a little of the breakdown of my own marriage and my recent divorce. I explained how my husband had left me for a younger woman. “You see, I’ve had rather a hellish time of late,” I concluded.

  Something akin to pity came into Katharine’s eyes, and she began to warm to me again. “That does sound most unpleasant,” she said. “What a beast of a man.”

  “No, not a beast,” I replied. “Just utterly, utterly selfish.”

  “At least with Bertie I never had to worry about that sort of thing,” she said.

  “Was that your first husband? Bertie?”

  “Yes, and he was devoted to me,” she said.

  I didn’t ask the next question that sprang to mind, but instead I let her tell me something of the history of their marriage.

  “He was always a very sensitive man, and I think he was left disturbed by the things he had seen in the war. Who wouldn’t be? He was in the Royal Engineers, and so terribly brave. He was wounded in France in 1916 and sent home, but then returned the following year. He was at the Somme and the Battle of Cambrai, and survived both.”

  “He sounds like an extraordinary man,” I said. I noticed she said nothing about the intelligence work Davison told me Keeling had done. Perhaps she had not known about that, or was she keeping something secret?

  “He was so very clever: he loved the stars, astronomy, and mapping and lots of technical things, triangulation and things like that. Did a lot of work in Egypt, which he loved. He’d just got this new job in Cairo when . . .” Her voice faltered. “When he fell ill and died.”

  “I’m so terribly sorry,” I said. “Did he require a lot of nursing at the end?”

  “No, his death was rather . . . sudden,” she said, taking a deep breath. “I suppose you may as well know: Bertie took his own life.”

  “Oh, my,” I said, pretending to be shocked.

  I watched her closely as she related the sad story to me: how she had said goodbye to her husband one morning as he left their home in Cairo for his position as the director-general of the survey of Egypt. The next thing she knew was that an official arrived bearing the bad news that her husband had died. It seemed that the colonel had shot himself. She did not appear to be lying. In fact, it seemed as though her emotions were genuine. However, I knew that people who worked in intelligence, like some murderers, possessed that frightening ability to lie so convincingly that even trained observers were taken in. Perhaps Mrs. Woolley was both things: a spy and a killer.

  “But why did he do it? Were there any signs?”

  “Not that I could see,” she said, blinking. There was something incomplete about her answer, as if she was holding something back.

  “I’m sorry I have to ask you this, Katharine,” I said gently, “but did you see his body?”

  “But why do you ask that?” She looked at me with deep suspicion. “I don’t understand. What do you suspect me of? What have you heard?”

  “I wondered whether you had actually identified him?”

  “No. The head of the police in Cairo told me that it would be too distressing for me,” she said, with tears in her eyes. “Even though I didn’t see him, I could just imagine the scene . . . the blood, the—”

  “Let’s not think of that,” I said. “It’s my fault for asking. I’m terribly sorry.”

  She got out of bed, opened a shutter of one of the windows, and looked out. “I’ve seen things out of this window,” she said, straining her neck, patterned by red blotches, and peering upwards. “Faces. Horrible faces.”

  “Please calm down,” I said. “I didn’t want to upset you.”

  “Why did you ask about Bertie?” she asked, turning away from the window and walking towards me. “What do you know? And why did you ask all those questions about his body?” She blinked, and the expression on her face changed, as if she ha
d just realized some awful truth. “Oh, no, please God, no.”

  “Katharine—what is it? You’ve thought of something, haven’t you? What’s occurred to you?”

  “No, it couldn’t be—it can’t be true.”

  “Tell me. What can’t be true?”

  She was shaking now. “What . . . what if Bertie isn’t dead?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You asked whether I had seen his body. I hadn’t. I believed the police who told me that Bertie had died—that he had shot himself.”

  “But surely there was a death certificate. You had that?”

  “Yes, but Bertie could have substituted a body to try and fake his own death.”

  This was like something I might dream up for a plot in one of my own books. “That couldn’t be possible, could it?”

  “All he needed to do was find a victim, shoot the poor man in the face so he was unrecognizable, dress him in his clothes, substitute his identity papers for the victim’s, and then disappear.”

  “But why would your husband do that?”

  She stared at me with eyes full of terror. “A week or so before he died, we had an argument. A terrible row. Awful things were said on both sides, and I confess I expressed certain sentiments I now regret. But during that brutal argument he said something to me. He said, with a cold tone of voice I’ll always remember, ‘I could kill you. You know, one day I may just do that.’ ”

  10

  The next few days passed without incident. Katharine locked herself in her room, convinced that her first husband was still alive and that he might want to kill her. Woolley told the rest of the group that his wife was suffering from one of her headaches, and although it seemed that most people believed his story about the cat, an air of suspicion still hung over Katharine. Lawrence McRae continued to feel a certain level of antipathy towards her and, while Woolley wasn’t looking, did everything in his power to turn others against her.

  I wrote to Davison in Baghdad asking him to find out more about Colonel Keeling’s past and who had identified his body. I also wanted him to dig out reports of other deaths of men of a similar age in September 1919. I kept Davison up to date about the events at Ur—adding a number of character sketches—and voiced some of my own suspicions. Was Keeling still alive? Could that really be possible? Had he taken over the identity of the man he had killed and dressed in his own clothes? Even if that was true—and it sounded so unlikely—that did not explain what had happened to Gertrude Bell. I had to remember that I was here to find out who had killed her, and so far I was no nearer the truth. Had Katharine sent those letters to Miss Bell? But if she had, why would she go to the trouble of telling Gertrude Bell that her future murderer was based at Ur? Or had Colonel Keeling sent the letters in order to cast suspicion on his wife?