Here Cynthia burst into tears once more. “Sorry,” she said as she tried to compose herself. “But those words—you understand that they sent a chill straight through me. After everything that’s gone on here . . .”
“What did she say, Cynthia?” I asked.
She hesitated for a moment, looked across the room at Katharine and took another deep breath. “She said, ‘Watch out: tonight you’re going to die. Tonight . . . I’m going to kill you.’ ”
25
Woolley led Cynthia, who was now so distressed that she was shaking with shock, out of the room. But then, just as I had given Katharine a glass of water and was guiding her to her bed, I heard a loud cry. I made sure that she was sitting down and that she could do no harm to herself before I ran towards the source of the noise.
I arrived in the sitting room to see Mrs. Archer in a state of hysteria, surrounded by her husband, Lawrence McRae, and Father Burrows. After alerting us to what had occurred between Katharine and Cynthia, Burrows, who shrank from arguments, had retreated to the relative calm of the main room, only to be faced with yet more conflict.
“I told you it was her all along,” wailed Mrs. Archer. “If only you had all listened to me.”
“I don’t think that’s helpful, not in front of Miss Jones,” said Woolley, who stood in the corner of the room by Cynthia.
“Well, I’m afraid it’s the truth,” said Ruth.
Mrs. Archer must have only recently learnt that she could not leave the compound. This realization that she would be unable to take her daughter to Baghdad for burial was bad enough, but then she must have heard how Katharine Woolley had threatened to murder Cynthia. The combination had proved too much for the grieving woman.
“Woolley, you can’t make excuses for her anymore,” said Mr. Archer as he tried to comfort his wife. “You heard what Miss Jones just said: that your wife has got it into her head to kill her tonight.”
At this, Cynthia started crying again and left the room, presumably returning to her own quarters.
“Where’s Captain Forster?” demanded Mr. Archer. “We need to get him here to sort out this madness.” He turned to find a servant and clapped his hands, but none came running. “Burrows, would you go and fetch him. Tell him it’s an emergency.”
Father Burrows stood there and, like a well-trained dog, looked to his master, Woolley, for guidance. Woolley no longer tried to defend his wife; after all, he had heard the words directly from Cynthia’s mouth. “I think Captain Forster is with Hamoudi,” he said to Burrows. “He’s trying to make sure everything is secure before the sandstorm arrives.”
“I can’t believe we have to stay here,” said Ruth Archer, looking at the sitting room as if it were a prison. “Not after what happened. Not with her.”
“But you heard Cecil’s confession,” said Woolley. “All of us did.”
“But how do we know Katharine didn’t do it all along?” asked Lawrence McRae “She could have killed Sarah and then made Cecil take the blame for it. You know how suggestible he is and how forceful she can be.”
“I doubt that very much indeed,” said Woolley, trying to remain calm.
“And where is she now?” asked Mr. Archer. “Your wife, I mean.”
“Mrs. Woolley is in her room,” I said. “I left her resting.”
“You left her by herself?” asked Ruth Archer, looking at me as if I were mad.
“She was lying on the bed. She seemed—”
But before I could finish my sentence, Ruth Archer pushed past me, quickly followed by Mr. Archer and Lawrence McRae. There was a dangerous spirit in the air now, as if the threesome were unified by the unruly emotions of grief and anger. They hurried towards Katharine’s room.
“Really, I don’t think there’s any reason for you to behave like this,” said Woolley as he ran after them.
“I think there’s every reason,” said McRae.
“Look here!” cried Woolley. “You can’t go forcing your way into my wife’s bedroom. This is completely outrageous. Stop right there! Stop, I say!”
But his orders were ignored. Mrs. Archer used her round form to push open the door and a moment later the three of them, shortly followed by Woolley, were standing in the room. They gazed at the bed. Katharine Woolley was exactly where I had left her, asleep. She had her hands crossed on her chest and there was something saintlike about her pose. Perhaps it was this—and the sight of her looking so peaceful—that made them turn away in embarrassment and shame and then walk out of the room. Woolley himself said nothing but gave them a stern look as they filed past him.
We left Katharine sleeping and returned to join the group in the sitting room. Mr. Archer was the first to speak.
“I’m sorry things got a little out of hand there,” he said. “But, Woolley, you must understand why we feel as we do. Being unable to leave here, our poor daughter in that pantry, lying there like . . . like some slab of meat.”
“Hubert, no. Please don’t say that,” said Ruth Archer, her face creasing with grief.
“I’m sorry, dear, but some plain talking is what’s needed here,” he said, reddening slightly in the face. He looked at us each in turn. “Don’t you all realize that we’re living under the same roof as her killer?”
“Yes, but he’s under lock and key,” said Woolley. “Cecil is not going anywhere. I can assure you that you’re safe.”
At this point the door opened and Father Burrows returned with Captain Forster, together with Davison and Conway, all of them looking distinctly weather-beaten. Their faces and heads were covered in a fine dust, and Forster asked for a glass of water to clear his throat.
“It’s getting quite lively out there,” he said, wiping some sand from the corner of his lips. “Nearly everything has been moved to safety. The last of the men, including Hamoudi, have gone and we won’t see them now until the storm’s passed. Now, what’s this I hear about an emergency?”
Forster listened patiently as Mr. Archer explained the situation. As he outlined what had happened—how Katharine had threatened to kill Cynthia Jones later that night—he did not gloss over the fact that he had stormed into Mrs. Woolley’s room, accompanied by his wife and Lawrence McRae. None of them came out well from the story, but Forster made no judgment on their behavior.
“Yes, I can see that you are worried,” said the captain. “Especially since we are all going to be cooped up here in the compound tonight. But what we cannot allow to happen—what must be prevented at all costs—is any kind of descent into mindless savagery.”
Various murmurs of encouragement and agreement came from Woolley, Burrows, Davison, and Conway, the man everyone still knew as Miller.
“So what I suggest is this,” Forster continued. “In order for everyone to feel safe, I recommend that Cecil McRae and Mrs. Woolley remain under lock and key tonight.”
At this, Mr. and Mrs. Archer and Lawrence McRae started to voice their objections, but Forster succeeded in shouting them down. “And then, in addition, a man—who will be armed—is going to be stationed outside each of the rooms. Now, who among the men here knows how to handle a gun?”
Woolley, Davison, and McRae raised their hands. “Thank you for volunteering, but I’m afraid we will have to discount Mr. Woolley and Mr. McRae, as they have what are clearly personal interests in the case,” said Forster. “So, Davison, would you mind sitting outside Mrs. Woolley’s room? And I will station myself outside Cecil McRae’s. Of course, although the courtyard is protected to a certain extent, it’s still open to the elements and we’ll have to take certain precautions. Best to wrap ourselves up in blankets like Arabs, don’t you think?”
Although it was clear Mr. and Mrs. Archer would much rather force both Katharine Woolley and Cecil McRae out of the house so that they could die in the desert storm, they had no choice but to accept Forster’s decision.
“For those of you who haven’t experienced one of these sandstorms before, I would just say this,” Forster continued. �
�You should be safe enough crossing the courtyard, but please on no account step outside. Yes, the house may shake and you may think it’s about to fall down around you, but it will pass. I suggest that you try to take your mind off it. If you can’t sleep, then read, play bridge or patience, or catch up on your correspondence.”
When Forster had finished his little speech, the group dispersed into cliques: Mr. and Mrs. Archer continued to whisper about Mrs. Woolley’s instability of mind; Lawrence McRae still protested the innocence of his nephew to the man he addressed as Miller; Davison started talking to Forster about their forthcoming duties as sentry guards; Father Burrows questioned Woolley about the safety of the cuneiform tablets and the treasures of the antika room; and I, unnoticed, slipped away to go and check on Katharine.
I found her still sleeping, her arms still crossed. I walked over to her dressing table and selected two jars of cosmetics, as well as the pot of hand cream that she had been using earlier. I placed them carefully into my handbag and shut the door as quietly as I could. I returned to the sitting room, where people were discussing how they were going to spend the night.
“You can count us out; we’re in no mood for frivolities,” said Mr. Archer. “I trust all will be in order, Captain Forster.”
“Indeed it will,” he said. “I can guarantee that you’ve got nothing to worry about.”
“Are you sure you don’t want anything to eat before you go to bed?” asked Father Burrows, who, now that the servants had been dismissed, had been given the task of preparing a simple supper.
“No, we’re not hungry,” said Mrs. Archer. The couple said a plaintive good night and retired for the evening.
“Mrs. Christie, would you care to join us at cards? Bridge, perhaps?” asked Woolley, who seemed to be in remarkably good spirits, considering what he had witnessed at the camp.
“I would enjoy that, but perhaps a little later,” I replied. “Mr. Miller has been promising to show me the basics of film development in the darkroom, and I rather think now might be as good a time as any.”
“Oh, yes, of course,” said Conway, acting on his cue. “There’s really nothing to it, once you’ve got the mix of chemicals right.”
A few eyebrows were raised, as the group must surely have picked up on the friendly, even at times flirtatious nature of our relationship. Perhaps they thought we were going into the darkroom to get to know each other a little better. Let them think that if they wanted. No, what we had planned was much more interesting. We were going to find out whether someone was being poisoned.
26
“Is there a light we can use in here?” I asked as we stepped into the pocket of darkness.
“Sure, just give me a minute,” said Conway.
I felt him brush past me, and although I knew he was both a liar and a criminal, I still felt the leap of my heart and the quickening of my breath. Thank goodness the darkness hid my blushes.
“We can use an oil lamp,” he said as he took out a flashlight to search for a box of matches. He drew out a match and lit one, and a moment later the lamp cast its gentle glow across the small room. “Now, tell me what you need.” His tone was matter-of-fact, and although he was not rude, there was none of that easy charm that I had come to know and in some ways enjoy. Surely he was embarrassed by his recent exposure and humiliated by the way he had deceived me, but there was something in his manner which made me think I had behaved quite shabbily, too. I would never forget that look of disappointment in his eyes when he realized that I had been trying to delay his return to his room.
“So this is where you did . . . all your work?” I asked.
“Yes, that’s right, so we probably have everything you could want for your experiment,” he said, indicating a set of shelves on which stood various jars of salts and chemicals, a Bunsen burner, a number of trays, a set of pipettes, glass jars, funnels, bottles of water, and rubber pipes. Although Conway had kept the room locked, if a stranger had chanced to walk into it, then he would assume everything here had something to do with the process of developing camera film rather than the expert copying of ancient treasures.
“When we’ve got more time, I’d like you to show me how you went about it,” I said. “But I suppose we’d better get down to the business in hand. Let’s see. Yes, that Bunsen burner: if you could set that up . . . Firstly, I need to make some fuming nitric oxide.” Fortunately, when I had been doing my nursing training, and in the dispensary in Torquay, I had always rather enjoyed the study of chemistry. All those lovely formulae, the way the elements could be combined to make something new; then there was the beautiful order of the periodic table. “I need some potassium nitrate and a little sulfuric acid; you have those? And a couple of flasks.”
Conway scanned the shelves and placed everything on the table in front of me. I got to work mixing the various chemicals until the ghostly form of the gas rose up from the beaker.
“Now I need some potassium hydroxide, a three percent solution in methanol,” I said.
Perhaps my knowledge of the wonders of the scientific world astounded Conway, because as I busied myself about the makeshift laboratory, working with the various chemicals and flasks, he looked at me as if he were seeing me in a new light. I was no longer the helpless woman he had rescued from the backstreets of Baghdad—a lady grateful for a gentleman’s attention—but someone with a surprising skill. Little did he know of the true extent of my mastery of poisons, and I decided that it would be best to keep this to myself for the present time.
“Yes, that’s working very nicely,” I said. “All this is in preparation for the real test, of course. Have you heard of the Vitali color reaction?”
I was met by a blank stare. “Oh, a very interesting experiment, and so very pleasing when it works,” I said. I stood back and checked that everything I needed was laid out before me. It was, in a way, a little like cooking. When one was making a roast dinner, there was little point in leaving everything—the roast potatoes, the joint, the bread sauce, the horseradish—to the last minute; the secret, as every good housewife knew, was in the preparation. So too with chemical experiments. Yes, everything was in order: the boiling water, various flasks containing the key ingredients, and all the equipment I would need. I took out Katharine’s cosmetics from my handbag and spooned some of the pale cream into a flask. I then treated this with the fuming nitric acid, which was evaporated to dryness on the water bath. To this residue I added a small amount of the potassium hydroxide in methanol solution. As I did so, the color of the cream changed from white to bright purple and then red before fading to colorlessness.
“Yes, very interesting,” I said as I watched the colors change.
“What’s happening?” asked Conway.
“It’s a positive result, just as I expected,” I said.
“Of what?”
“Of hyoscyamine.”
“Hyo . . . ?”
“It’s a tropane alkaloid,” I said. “Also known as daturine, found in the plants of the Solanaceae family.”
“Sorry, I don’t understand.”
“Plants such as henbane, mandrake, jimsonweed, and deadly nightshade. Of course, it has its uses, but it is also very dangerous. Hyoscyamine can cause a dry mouth, blurred vision and eye pain, dilated pupils, dizziness, restlessness, nausea, headaches, euphoria, short-term memory loss, and, not least, hallucinations.”
It took a moment or two before Conway began to understand the implications of my little experiment. “So you think that—”
“I don’t think anything,” I said. “Now I have proof—proof that Katharine Woolley is not mad. Her headaches were far from psychosomatic, as some people in the compound believe. Her visions were not those of someone who was deranged or mentally ill. Mrs. Woolley has been suffering in the most awful way possible. She was being poisoned.”
“But how? Who by?”
“I cannot for certain answer your second question, but I do have an answer to your first one,” I said as I spo
oned out a dollop of mixture from another of Katharine’s jars so as to repeat the test. “Katharine Woolley was being poisoned by means of her face and hand creams. Each day, each night, she would anoint herself in the belief that the creams would help moisturize her skin in this dry climate, the potions going some way to help keep her looking fresh and youthful. But, unknown to her, the creams were driving her to the point of madness. More importantly, the poison that slowly seeped into her system affected her behavior in such a way as to give rise to the generally accepted notion that she was mad.”
“You mean someone deliberately put this substance into her night cream?” asked Conway. “Into her hand cream?”
“Yes, and very effective it was, too,” I said. “Someone wanted her to appear as though she were insane.”
“So that’s why she said that thing about threatening to kill Miss Jones,” said Conway. “It was a hallucination brought on by that poison. But who would do that? Who would want to put poison in Katharine’s face cream?”
I left the question unanswered and instead concentrated on the experiment. As I went through the steps of the procedure again—adding the fuming nitric acid to the cream, then the potassium hydroxide in methanol—I saw the mixture change its hue. For a brief moment it turned bright red, a shade that reminded me of the color of freshly spilt blood.
27
We returned to the sitting room to find Cynthia Jones setting the table for dinner. It was going to be rather a makeshift affair, she said; Father Burrows had told her that he was going to reheat some leftovers from lunch, together with a selection of cold dishes. She informed us that Davison and Forster had been given cups of tea before they had taken their respective positions outside the doors of Katharine Woolley and Cecil McRae.
“They were both adamant that they didn’t want anything more than that,” she said. “But I’ll make sure to take them a little something else later, at least a little bread and cheese. It’s going to be a long night for them.”
Death in a Desert Land Page 25
