Death in a Desert Land

by Andrew Wilson

  We stepped out of my room to hear an almighty row coming from Mrs. Woolley’s quarters. Obviously, Leonard had broken the news to his wife of her proposed imprisonment within the confines of the shed.

  “I will not agree to it!” shouted Katharine. “I refuse to be treated like an animal!”

  “But Mr. Archer insists,” replied Leonard.

  “And why didn’t you stand up for me? It’s always the way with you.”

  “If we want the—”

  “You’re weak, Leonard. You’ve always been weak.”

  “But it’s only for one night, until the police arrive tomorrow. I’m sure they’ll be able to clear everything up, and once you’ve talked to them, you’ll be free to—”

  We heard the sound of something like a vase smashing against the wall, and I suggested to Harry Miller that we take a walk around the compound while we waited for the argument to finish. We continued to talk about what he had seen last night before Sarah Archer’s death. He told me once more of how he had accompanied Woolley down from the ziggurat and how they had lost sight of Sarah Archer’s torch. Did he remember which staircase he had used as he had made his descent? He said he thought that he and Woolley had used the one that ran down the left side of the ziggurat.

  “Would you mind showing me?” I asked.

  “Of course,” he said.

  We strode out of the compound and across the dry landscape towards the great ziggurat. The digging had been stopped for the day—the men had been told not to turn up for work because of what had happened to Sarah Archer—and instead of the queer low chanting of the Arabs, all I could hear was the sound of the wind as it passed across the desert sands. I recalled Mrs. Woolley’s fears about her first husband being alive. Here, in this vast open plain, there was nowhere for him to hide. And yet . . . what if Colonel Keeling had disguised himself as one of the Arabs? After all, no one in the household actually paid any attention to the workmen, apart from Hamoudi. I made a mental note to ask Woolley whether it would be possible to have an interview with the foreman to ask if he had noticed anything unusual among his men.

  “I can’t believe Mrs. Woolley would do such a thing, can you?” asked Harry Miller as we approached the ziggurat. “I know the two women didn’t exactly get along, but even so. To smash the girl’s head in with a rock seems unbelievable.”

  “Indeed, it does seem hard to comprehend,” I said. I was careful what I said next. I didn’t want to offend Mr. Miller the way I had offended Katharine Woolley. “May I ask you a . . . delicate question, Mr. Miller?”

  “Go right ahead. What do they say about Americans? ‘Nothing embarrasses us.’ ”

  “I think you were friendly with both Miss Archer and Mrs. Woolley.”

  “Yes, that’s right.” I did not say anything, and luckily Mr. Miller picked up my meaning exactly. “I see: you want to know whether anything serious was going on between us?” He broke into a smile, and at that moment he seemed more handsome than ever. “No, it was nothing like that. Sure, Miss Archer and I enjoyed a little flirtation here and there, but it was just a bit of friendly banter.”

  I gave him an inquisitive stare.

  “Nothing more, I promise!” he exclaimed. “What do you take me for? Some kind of gigolo?”

  The comment made me smile, but I tried not to show that he had amused me. Harry Miller was charm personified—and he knew it—but I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction that he had won over yet another woman.

  “And I suppose Mrs. Woolley did get a bit jealous—not that anything had ever happened between us. Lord, no!” he said. “I hope you don’t think that. Just that her nose was put out of joint by the fact that I was showing Sarah a little attention. Katharine—Mrs. Woolley—had been used to having me to herself.”

  “I see,” I said.

  “But you don’t think that’s why Mrs. Woolley—” He broke off, unable to finish the sentence. “I refuse to believe it.”

  “It does seem unlikely. Let’s go and have a look where it happened,” I suggested.

  As we walked, I ran through the list of possible killers in my mind. The question a detective would ask would be: Who benefits from the death? In this case I had to assume that the only people to be made substantially richer from Sarah Archer’s murder would be her parents. But surely neither Mr. nor Mrs. Archer would kill their own child so as to increase their wealth. Or would they? When Davison arrived—as I was sure he would when he had learnt of what had happened—I would ask him whether his department could check on the existence and contents of Miss Archer’s will.

  If money was not the motive behind the murder, then what else could it be? Desire? Certainly, there were a number of men at the site who were infatuated by the girl. There was Cecil McRae, whom I had overheard saying that if he couldn’t have her, then he would make sure no one else could. And what about Lawrence McRae and even Harry Miller? They were men with appetites. What if Sarah had led them on and then had withdrawn her attention? Would they have felt so angry and full of frustration that they would have been prepared to kill her? Yet Harry Miller had come down from the top of the ziggurat with Leonard Woolley, and the two men could each verify the other’s movements. Could they be working in tandem? But what motive could they possibly have for wanting Sarah Archer dead? Or could Harry have murdered Miss Archer on Leonard Woolley’s behalf? Could the archaeologist have a reason to be blackmailing the handsome photographer?

  When we arrived at the spot where Miss Archer’s body had been found, we bowed our heads in a moment of silent respect. Then, when I opened my eyes, I knelt down and examined the ground, a patch of earth still reddish-brown from Sarah’s blood. I saw something glinting in the sunlight. Using my handkerchief, I eased away the sand. It was Mrs. Woolley’s gold watch, its face cracked and smeared with blood. Perhaps, just as Katharine had said, she had tripped over the body and in doing so had fallen over, smashing her watch in the process. But the other, darker possibility seemed more likely: she had indeed murdered Miss Archer and the watch had slipped off and been damaged in the process.

  “What’s that you’ve found?” asked Harry.

  “It’s a watch—one that I think belongs to Mrs. Woolley.”

  His face looked grave. “What should we do with it? Do you think you should leave it there for the police to look at when they arrive tomorrow?”

  “Yes, I suppose we should,” I said, letting the watch drop back into the sand.

  Next I turned my attention to the rock that appeared to have been used to kill Sarah Archer. It was a large piece of pink sandstone, so substantial that one would need two hands to lift it. Half of it was still covered in Miss Archer’s dried blood, and on one of its jagged edges I could make out a small clump of blond hair attached to a bloodied patch of skin. Although I had seen some true horrors during the war when I was working as a VAD nurse, the sight of the bloody rock turned my stomach. As I tried to stand I felt myself feeling faint, and for a moment I thought I might pass out.

  “Are you all right?” said Harry. “Oh, my, no, you’ve gone pale. Here, let me help.” He took hold of my arm and led me away from the spot where Miss Archer had been killed. Gently and protectively, he helped me lower myself onto a boulder. His touch lingered a little longer than necessary, and I could feel myself blushing at the way he made me feel.

  “Thank you,” I managed to say. “It must be the heat.”

  “And the sight of all that . . . mess,” he replied. “I should never have allowed you to come up here. I thought you wanted to see the layout of the ziggurat, not the actual spot where it happened.”

  “I’m feeling much better now,” I said. “Really I am. Sorry for being such a nuisance.” Using my hat as a protection against the sun, I looked up towards the ziggurat. Then I took a deep breath, raised myself to my feet, and walked back to the spot where Miss Archer had died. I strained my neck as I tried to work out where the rock could have fallen from, if indeed it had been an accident—something which s
eemed increasingly unlikely.

  “Let’s walk up there,” I said.

  “What is it you want to see?” asked Harry as he took my arm. The lightness of his touch thrilled me. After all, I had been without physical contact of this sort for years now. Of course, I had felt my daughter Rosalind’s soft skin against mine and enjoyed the occasional kiss on the cheek from my sister, but nothing—no, nothing—like this.

  “Just in case it was an accident, there might be a trace,” I said, coughing, pretending I had a frog in my throat, but of course this was just a ruse to mask my real feelings.

  While Harry guided me up the ziggurat’s staircase, I concentrated on counting the steps in front of me, studying each stone and brick before me as a way to distract myself from his attentions. The heat stimulated my imagination, and I had to blink away the inappropriate images that floated through my mind: his mustache set against his rather full and fleshy lips; his sturdy shoulders that looked as though they were strong enough to carry half a ton of stones; his large and powerful hands, one of which now rested on my arm—hands capable of taking hold of a woman and lifting her towards him.

  When I reached the top of the staircase, I paused for a few moments to recover my breath.

  “Are you sure this is a good idea?” asked Harry. “Why don’t we go back to the house and have a glass of water?”

  “No, I’ll be all right,” I said. As I looked across the desert, the heat beat down onto the plain. I stepped forwards along the edge of the precipice to the point which was, by my estimation, situated directly above the spot where Sarah Archer’s body had been found. I kicked the ground around me to see if the action would dislodge any rocks, but nothing more than a couple of handfuls of sand cascaded down. Just as I peered over the edge of the ziggurat I felt the periphery of my vision begin to darken. My legs started to sink from beneath me. Was this how I was going to die? Death from a broken neck or a terrible head injury, my body twisted and broken after falling off the edge of the ziggurat? What was it Woolley had said to me about the etymology of the name? “Etemennigur . . . Or ‘Temple Whose Foundation Creates Horror’ ”?

  I tried to step back, but my balance had deserted me. I had begun to fall now and I couldn’t stop myself. I closed my eyes, hoping that the impact wouldn’t be too painful, that my death would be quick. But then, just as I collapsed, just as I saw the ground disappear from beneath me, I felt the strong hands of Harry Miller around my waist.

  “What the—” he said before pulling me back from the edge. “It’s my fault: I knew we shouldn’t have come up here. Don’t worry, I’ve got you now.” I felt something soft and cool across my forehead. I opened my eyes to see him fanning his hat across my face. “Does that feel better, Agatha?”

  For a moment I couldn’t speak. I stretched out my hands and my fingers felt the sharp ridge of a rock and then the softness of the sand. I took in Harry’s face, really the most pleasing face imaginable, and I was conscious of the fact that I was smiling. He had saved me: yet again he had been there when I had been at my most vulnerable. Without him . . . well, I knew what my fate would have been. “Thank you,” I said.

  “You must have fainted,” he said. “Let’s get you back to the house.” His powerful hands raised me upwards and he led me slowly and gently down the staircase. “That’s right: just one step at a time. You’re doing great.”

  Even though my body was weak, my mind was still working. I was certain now that Sarah Archer’s death was not an accident. There were no loose rocks on the ridge of the ziggurat that lay directly above where her body had been found. I had seen traces of blood and strands of hair on the rock by the place where she had died. Miss Archer had been murdered. Yet there was something that still troubled me.

  What if the intended victim had not been Sarah Archer but Mrs. Woolley herself? Could the murderer have mistaken the light from Sarah’s torch for Katharine’s? Certainly, Mrs. Woolley had seemed terrified of something or someone. What if her “delusions”—the voices she claimed to have heard, the horrific faces at her bedroom window that she said she had seen—were real?

  I was about to share my thoughts with Harry Miller, but as we passed the scene of the crime, I thought better of it. I still had quite a few things to work out, and I was not certain whether I would be able to express myself clearly.

  “You must have had a shock up there,” said Harry as he led me into the compound.

  “Yes, I did,” I replied. “Thank goodness you were there. I don’t know what would have happened otherwise.”

  “We don’t need to dwell on that. Look. They don’t hang around, do they?” he said, pointing towards the shed, which was being cleared out by two servants. “I suppose they’ll have Mrs. Woolley locked in there by sundown.”

  I walked up to the store and inspected the door, which, as described, had a padlock attached. “Do you know who holds a key to this?” I asked Harry.

  “Woolley has one for sure, and I think McRae, and I’ve got one too, as at one point I stored some chemicals here,” he said. “To be honest, I’m not exactly sure how many keys there are. It’s only been used for holding tools and supplies, nothing valuable. There’s never been any need to worry about that before.”

  His answer made me worry a good deal, however. Miller told the servants to make themselves scarce for a moment and we stepped inside the shed. The shifting of the tools to the outside had disturbed a great amount of dust, and within seconds both of us started to cough. There were no windows that could be opened, and the floor was nothing but bare earth.

  “Do you think this is a fit place for Mrs. Woolley?” I asked, placing a handkerchief over my mouth.

  “Clearly not, but it’s what the Archers want,” Harry replied. “Since they arrived I’ve learnt that the will of that couple rule. Anyway, you can’t worry about that now. We need to get you inside, into your room, where you can lie down.”

  “But what if—”

  “What if you don’t go and lie down as I say? Well, I couldn’t be responsible for my actions,” he said, with a mischievous twinkle in his eye. “No, seriously, Agatha, you really do need to rest.”

  “I’m just worried about the keys. You see, if—”

  “I know: Why don’t we make a deal? Why don’t I go around and ask for everyone’s key to the store? I’ll track all of them down, and then we can decide on the safest place to keep them. How does that sound?”

  “That would be something,” I said as we entered the courtyard. “And could you go and fetch your camera? We need to think about developing the film—just in case any of the photographs give us a clue to what happened.”

  “I’ll go and get my trusty Leica now,” Harry said as he accompanied me to my room. “Once that is done, you must take to your bed. I wouldn’t be surprised if you had a touch of heatstroke.”

  “Very well,” I replied, and we parted.

  Inside my room I still felt light-headed—not so much from my fainting spell as from the feel of Harry Miller’s arms around my body. I poured myself a glass of water. As I passed the looking glass on the wall, I caught a glimpse of myself. What a sight! Even though I had been wearing a hat, my hair had become loose and was hanging around my head, making me look like a disheveled fishwife. My dress was dirty, my skin looked all red and blotchy, and fine lines of perspiration had formed under my arms and around my neck and breasts. What a fool I had been to think that Mr. Miller could be interested in me! A divorced woman with a child, a middle-aged woman who was on her way to becoming an old maid. I had made the mistake once before with Archie, forming an attachment with a man who was too handsome for me. What a disaster that had been. No, I couldn’t—I wouldn’t—let it happen again. Not that Mr. Miller had any intentions in that direction. He was probably just being kind to me. Yes, he had taken pity on me; that was it. I blushed as I thought of my girlish behavior.

  A moment later there was a furious knocking at my door. “Agatha—Agatha!” It was Harry Miller. “Let me
in.”

  In that instant everything I had just told myself slipped from memory, my resolve melting as I felt my heart race.

  “What’s wrong?” I said as I flung open the door.

  Harry Miller stood there with a pale face and open hands. It took me a while to work out what lay in his palms: a mass of broken, shattered metal, together with a spool of spoilt film.

  “It’s my Leica,” he said, his voice flat. “Someone’s destroyed my camera and everything that was on it.”

  15

  “Who could have done such a thing?” I asked as Harry Miller stood dumbfounded before me. He continued to gaze down at the fragments of what had been his camera with a look of sadness so profound, it almost broke my heart. “When did you last see your camera?”

  “It was j-just before we heard that argument between Mr. and Mrs. Woolley,” he said, blinking. “I put it on my desk in my room and left it there. How long had we been gone? An hour at most?”

  “Someone must have gone into your room and smashed it to pieces while we were at the ziggurat.”

  “I guess so,” he said. “But why would anyone want to do that?”

  “I can think of one very good reason,” I said. “The person who did this must have believed that you had captured something on your camera that could have implicated them in some way. It seems very likely that the man—or woman—who did this is the very same person who was responsible for the death of Sarah Archer.”

  He turned away from me, walked over to my desk, and dropped the pieces onto the surface. He took the crumpled reel of film and lifted it towards the light, then flung it across the room, swearing under his breath as he did so.

  “Is there really nothing that can be done?” I asked.

  “No. They’re all ruined,” he said.

  “Do you remember what photographs you took? Besides those of Sarah?”

  “There were some photos of the various artifacts here: pots, earrings, cuneiform tablets. And I took some of the grave pits, too.”