The Baghdad Railway Club (18 page)

But the question of Randall was lost amid the applause for my talk, and the noisy arrival of Wallace King and his assistant. As this fellow struggled with a mass of equipment, King cut off the applause for my speech with a raised hand. ‘I am Wallace King,’ he said. (Somebody said, ‘We know.’) ‘I will tonight exhibit a film of the famous archaeologist Miss Bailey . . .’

She nodded her head graciously.

‘. . . on a visit to Babylon. Rest assured, there is footage of the railway. My assistant also took some still photographs of the visit, and these will be passed around.’

The assistant – he and Jarvis were wrestling with the tripod stand of the projection machine – was never named, I noticed.

‘My assistant and I’, King continued, ‘will attempt to set up our equipment with the minimum of fuss and inconvenience to yourselves, so please do carry on with the next business of the meeting. However, I must warn you all that both the film stock and the gas used by the projection machine are highly flammable, and there is a real danger of an explosion. Once the projection machine is started, I must insist that all cigarettes be extinguished – and all pipes,’ he added, with a glance at Captain Ferry.

The next business of the meeting was a talk by one of the Royal Engineers on the subject of Euston station in its early days. He was mainly concerned with the
sidings
of Euston station, and almost all of his talk went by the board anyhow, what with King, the assistant, Jarvis and Layth clattering about with the projection machine, testing the flow of gas from canisters in haversacks to the light box attached behind the projector, and the hanging of the picture sheet – an ordinary white bed sheet as far as I could see – on to the wall opposite.

The end of the talk on Euston coincided with the dramatic climax of the preparations, namely the hanging of black cloth over the stained-glass window (which left the hot air coloured a murky blue and gold), and the lighting of the lime in the light box. Miss Bailey put out her Woodbine. There was now a white light on the picture sheet, black scratches flying through that light, which suddenly gave way to words, ‘WALLACE KING BRINGS THE WORLD TO YOU’.

‘Just a bit of header left over from my theatrical presentations,’ said King. ‘In the picture houses back home, by the way, it would cost you one and six to see this film.’

He wasn’t joking either. The desert now appeared on the screen. Well, two palm trees against a pile of stones, perhaps with the river flowing behind – it would have been the Euphrates rather than the Tigris. The next minute we were looking at the sky, and many black scratches were flying through
it
too – but there was also a great black flying crow in the picture. It was immediately obvious to me that the projection machine was redoubling the already stifling heat of the room. I moved my fingertips across my forehead, and sweat ran freely down the back of my hand.

‘It was very hard to get this shot,’ Wallace King was saying, and I thought:
Who’s giving this talk? You or Harriet Bailey?
We were now looking at the bird from a different angle. ‘It’s just a bit of scene-setting,’ said Wallace King, ‘bit of atmosphere.’

Harriet Bailey smiled and rolled her eyes in the direction of Shepherd, who gave a boyish grin back.

‘This was a month ago,’ said King, ‘when Miss Bailey went to Babylon to look at the, er . . . antiquities. It was not Miss Bailey’s first visit, by the way. I believe she went there many times before the war. That right, Miss Bailey?’

Miss Bailey nodded.

‘She went to see what sort of mess the Germans have made of the place . . .’ said King.

‘It was ruined
before
, Mr King,’ said Harriet Bailey. ‘In fact, the German team there did some excellent work of preservation.’

‘Tommyrot,’ said one of the Royal Engineers.

Now the view had changed: there was a small tank engine on two-foot-gauge track, steam flowing away rapidly from it.

‘Ah,’ said Miss Bailey. ‘This is what you’ve all come to see – a train.’

‘It’s a
locomotive
actually,’ said Shepherd, grinning and colouring up.

In the film, Miss Bailey walked up to the engine, and faced the camera. She was smoking. Three Royal Engineers took up position beside her. After a while, all their smiles ran out, and with an effort they all renewed them. ‘It’s not exactly the Orient Express, is it?’ said Miss Bailey. ‘Perhaps Colonel Shepherd will put us in the picture.’

‘. . . A pannier tank of German manufacture . . . Note the low-set boiler and short chimney for maximum stability on the narrow, rough-laid track. The line is of two-foot gauge. It was put in by the Germans five years or so ago, and runs from the ruins at Babylon just a little way south to a spot called Hillah on the Euphrates. It
was
connected to Baghdad but the Turks blew that stretch up a couple of miles outside the town. We mean to restore the connection.’

On the screen, Miss Bailey now stood alongside a wooden hut. She was holding on to her straw hat in what appeared to be a sandstorm.

‘This shows the station,’ she said. ‘It’s gone now, I believe?’ she added.

‘A patrol reported it missing a fortnight ago,’ said Shepherd.

At this, Findlay spoke up rather timidly. ‘Missing? You can’t very well lose a railway station can you?’

‘It was stolen,’ said Shepherd. Findlay looked perplexed, and Shepherd blushed as he added, ‘We assume it was dismantled and taken by natives – for firewood.’

We now saw the station from side on, minus Harriet Bailey.

Brigadier General Barnes said to Shepherd, ‘You mean to replace it, I hope?’

‘A new one will be built . . . of bricks,’ said Shepherd.

‘Reminds me of the three pigs,’ said Harriet Bailey. ‘What are you going to call it? Babylon Junction? I’m not sure I approve.’

Somebody called out, ‘Change here for the Tower!’ It was Findlay, and there was some laughter.

There now appeared on the picture sheet a worn-down city amid grey sand.

‘Ah,’ said Miss Bailey, ‘the kingdom of Nebuchadnezzar.’

We’d seen the last of the railway, it appeared, and Harriet Bailey began explaining the ruins. It went over my head, and I had a pretty good notion it was going over the head of Wallace King as well, who sat by the projector, occasionally whispering to his assistant. I could tell he was itching to interrupt Harriet Bailey though, and as she said, ‘This is the east side of the palace,’ he stood and pointed to Captain Ferry. ‘That man,’ he said, ‘is your pipe out?’

‘It . . .’

The assistant continued to turn the projector handle; he seemed to be counting in his head.

‘. . . will be soon,’ Ferry concluded, and something about the long pause, and the steadiness of the stare he gave back intimidated King, who sat down without a further word. It was his assistant who then said, ‘End of the first reel of Babylon.’ Somebody pulled aside the black window cloth, and the hot light poured in. A window was opened, and I walked over to get a breath of what passed for air in Baghdad. Down in Quiet Square, an Arab paced. He was being quiet all right, but there was something funny about him.

At the table, King’s assistant was handing around the still photographs he’d taken.

The man in the square was treading the shadow of the telegraph wire, like a tightrope-walker. I had thought for a moment that he held a cane as he walked, for the Arabs often did. It wasn’t a cane‚ however, it was a rifle. At the table, somebody was making a joke, ‘By the waters of Babylon, we sat down and wept.’ The photographs evidently showed Miss Bailey and her party at the ruins.

The Arab bothered me; I meant to say something to the party at the table, where I saw Wallace King’s assistant giving a handful of photographs to Major Findlay. Findlay, evidently, was meant to look at the photographs and then to circulate them. He looked at the first of the pictures, gave a half smile and passed it to the Royal Engineer sitting next to him.

I looked down at the square: still the Arab paced.

At the table, Findlay inspected another photograph. And he suddenly froze. The look he then gave Harriet Bailey, and the look on the face of Jarvis – who stood behind Findlay while pouring champagne, and who could plainly see the photograph – made me move rapidly to where Jarvis stood. But Findlay placed the photograph face down, like a man folding his hand at poker. He glanced left and right, to see if anyone else had seen it. Jarvis, standing behind him, was left out of account: I believed that Findlay had not noticed him. All of the following happened in a moment. The steady ticking of the projection machine started up again. This was not the showing of the second reel but only preparatory to it, for the black cloth was not over the window. King was in conference with his assistant as the words ‘WALLACE KING BRINGS THE WORLD TO YOU’ appeared once again on the picture sheet, but this time paler, seeming more inconsequential, the room being light. More of the Babylonian ruins – also paler – appeared on the picture sheet. I made out the great statue of a lion as Major Findlay picked up the photograph that had caused such a reaction in both him and Jarvis, and began raising it towards his top tunic pocket.

The photograph did not get there however, for the stained-glass window burst; there was a splash of red on that tunic pocket of Findlay’s; the lion tilted and disappeared. The machine was over, hit by a bullet. Everybody was over. The projection machine was aflame in a confusion of shouts and sharp zinging sounds as further bullets flew into the room. Shepherd was at the window, shooting his revolver into the square. Every other man was down, although I didn’t believe anyone had taken a bullet. I had an image of Harriet Bailey, sitting on the floor, anxiously touching her beautiful curls. Findlay was moving towards her – explaining that the splash of red on his tunic was only red wine. The table was over, and the photograph had spilled to the floor . . .

A Royal Engineer had flung the door wide, and the room emptied in a moment. There was almost laughter from some – what with all the excitement – as we clattered down the shaking iron staircase. Major Findlay seemed to run with his right arm around the shoulder of Miss Bailey. Well, she tolerated it, all right. I thought: She is the one white woman in Baghdad; she must be protected. But of course there was more to it than that.

Major Findlay had not brought away the photograph that had concerned both him and Jarvis. Immediately before quitting the room I had looked at it on the floor‚ and I had seen . . . not Miss Bailey and friends amid the ruins of Babylon, but Miss Bailey in Basrah (I recognised the waterway, the type of the square house with battered veranda behind), and not alone there either. My first thought had been that I was looking at a picture of myself kissing the lady, but I had never done any such thing, not even in my dream. It had been Captain Boyd that I saw. I recognised him from the floor of the
Salon de Thé
even though his face in the picture had been in profile. It had been not more than two inches away from Miss Bailey’s, who had looked very glad to have it so close.

As our party descended into the dark lobby of the building, with the double doors closed in front of us, it was evident that nobody knew what the next move ought to be, and since there were still gunshots from the square, our lives might depend upon it. But I was still thinking of the photograph, and cursing myself for having left it in the room.

When we all judged that the Arabs in the square had left off firing, or perhaps somewhat in advance of that moment, Lieutenant Colonel Shepherd opened one of the double doors. The light had begun to fall; one yellow pi-dog wandered through the square. The bells of the Church of the Saviour’s Mother set up a furious clattering – this by way of a belated alarm. The sound only served to point up the emptiness and quietness of Quiet Square.

We bolted into it in chaotic fashion nonetheless. Everybody took off down the different alleyways. I had my own eye on Harriet Bailey and Major Findlay, who both went together towards the narrowest alleyway, heads kept low.

Lieutenant Colonel Shepherd hesitated in the square, a few yards from me. Seconds before, Jarvis had been there with him. I glanced up at the veranda of the room we’d just quit: black smoke tumbled upwards from the shattered windows. Major Findlay whisked Miss Bailey off along the narrow alley, and I saw Shepherd, revolver still in hand, going the same way a moment later. How did things stand between those three? In the meetings of the club, Miss Bailey had seemed keener on Shepherd than Findlay, but that might only have meant that Findlay was really the favoured one, for that sort of game was always a deep one, with many a double bluff involved.

I meant to give chase, but the three had disappeared from the alley by the time I reached the entrance. They might have taken any one of a dozen passageways leading off, and the light was now fading fast. I returned to the middle of the square, where in my uncertainty I made one complete revolution before haring off along the alleyway opposite to the one just mentioned. The direction I’d decided on would take me back to Rose Court. I must put my hands on my own revolver; and I would find Jarvis and quiz him about the meaning of the photograph.

But Jarvis was not at Rose Court, neither was Ahmad, and neither was the Webley. I made a quick search of all rooms. I turned Jarvis’s pack upside down, and found nothing out of the way. There was a picture postcard in there, addressed to Jarvis. The view was of the harbour at Scarborough, and the writer had been mad on exclamation marks. ‘Stan! Billy is back from France! He has bought The Ship Inn with his Blighty Money! He says the loss of three fingers is nothing! He says The Ship will soon be back on an even keel! He says Arras will be the breakthrough on the Western Front! He says you will be wearing your nightshirt all day when you come back, like the Arabs! (But what does Billy know? And we would all now like to hear your own tales, since he is beginning to repeat his. You’ve knocked over the blooming Turks. What’s keeping you?)’

I doubled back rapidly into the labyrinth.

I was looking for Jarvis, Findlay, Shepherd, Miss Bailey – and I wanted to know what had become of the club building. As I ran, I came into a gaslit part of the labyrinth, and it seemed I was seeing things illuminated for a reason – to show me that time itself had gone wrong: a camel reversing down an alleyway, an Arab glimpsed in a doorway, sitting cross-legged on the floor writing with an ink pot balanced on his knee. He seemed to be recording slowly events that were happening fast. The sight of the man distracted me, and I took a wrong turn. I stood in a blank, black alleyway, listening hard, and sure enough I heard a shot. I didn’t know which way to move in order to go away from it or towards. I froze for a moment, then bolted towards an archway that framed a leaning palm. The palm, I saw when I came through the arch, stood alone in a gravelled square made up of three blank walls, and the front – the front
only
– of a dead-looking red-brick fortification behind which lay a mass of smashed bricks. A man lay along the bottom of this façade, so close up against it that I had not at first noticed him. It was Jarvis, and he was on his back, his face tilted towards the base of the wall, as though inspecting it. But he couldn’t have been inspecting anything, because there was a hole in the back of his head. In his right hand, which lay over his chest, he held the Webley. There was a discolouration on the upper part of his uniform that I turned away from, something thicker, whiter, worse than blood. I heard a footfall on the gravel, turned and Shepherd came pell-mell into the square, gun in hand.

But he could not have killed Jarvis. I had entered the square only seconds after hearing the gunshot, and Shepherd hadn’t been there then‚ as far as I had seen. As he spoke to me – which he did while kneeling next to Jarvis – I looked all around the square. There were three alleyways leading off. For Shepherd to have shot Jarvis from some way along any one of these . . . his bullet would have had to go around a corner.

Shepherd was saying, ‘I believe it’s your piece.’

He took it gently from Jarvis, and handed me back the revolver. He seemed to think nothing of doing so.

‘He’d been cleaning it,’ I said.

Shepherd was carefully moving Jarvis’s right arm.

‘I’m going to look in his pockets,’ he said. He was cool as usual.

‘Why?’ I said.

‘He went back into the club to fetch something.’

‘A photograph?’ I said.

Shepherd eyed me, and for the first time in our acquaintance, it was a sharp look that he gave me.

‘You saw it?’ he said.

I said, ‘It showed Boyd with Harriet Bailey.’

Shepherd resumed his inspection of Jarvis’s shirt pockets.

‘Hold on a minute,’ I said, ‘the place was on fire.’

Having searched through the first of Jarvis’s pockets, Shepherd had now started on the second. He was shaking his head: ‘Just a lot of smoke,’ he said.

‘Did
you
see the photograph, sir?’

He hadn’t had sight of it in the clubhouse, as far as I could recall.

He said, ‘No, but I knew there was something queer about it from the way Findlay reacted to it. I quizzed Jarvis after we came out of the building, and we agreed it could have a bearing on the murder of Boyd. I kept them talking while he went back. They would have gone straight in themselves after it otherwise.’

By ‘them’, he meant Major Findlay and Harriet Bailey.

‘It’s not there,’ he said, and he sat back on the gravel, holding Jarvis’s paybook and pocket book. He sat with ankles crossed, knees upraised, arms around knees – like a boy. He had reholstered his Colt revolver. He said, ‘I know Jarvis told you all about Captain Boyd. He was found stabbed to death at the station. We believed it might
not
have been Arabs that killed him.’

‘You think Findlay killed Boyd over Miss Bailey?’

He nodded.

‘Jarvis believed there was an attachment between the lady and Captain Boyd. He had reason to believe Boyd had been wiring her from here when she was in Basrah – before she came up.’

Was Jarvis also acquainted with the amenable Private Lennon at the Residency? Had he had sight of the same telegram forms as me?

‘In the photograph’, I said, ‘they’re practically kissing.’

Shepherd nodded. ‘Which is why Findlay would have wanted to get hold of it as well.’

‘Did he also do for Jarvis?’ I said, turning again to the body. ‘Surely Jarvis made away with
himself
 ?’

‘I’d say it’s a certainty,’ said Shepherd. And he could see that I wanted to know
why
that was the case. ‘There’s no sign of a struggle, and he wasn’t shot from a distance.’ With a tilt of the head, he indicated Jarvis, and I looked the same way. ‘He shot himself through the mouth – powder marks all round the lips.’

I knew he was right.

‘Why would he shoot himself?’

‘I got to know him a little bit,’ said Shepherd. ‘It was obvious enough he didn’t care for this place.’

He looked all around the empty square: what was horrible about it was that it didn’t look as though it belonged to Baghdad. It was just an all-purpose nightmare setting. ‘He was what I believe is called depressive,’ said Shepherd.

‘He told me
Boyd
was that.’

‘Boyd was a machine-gunner,’ said Shepherd, a trace of the sharpness returning. ‘They’re not usually very reflective types. Jarvis was describing himself.’

‘Then do you mean Findlay has come by, discovered the body, and taken the photograph?’ I answered my own question. ‘No, because I got here pretty sharpish after hearing the shot. I mean, there was no time, was there?’

Shepherd gave a half shrug‚ saying, ‘I believe Findlay
would
have gone after the picture himself. Returned to the club, I mean – after he got clear of me. He’d have discovered Jarvis had beaten him to it, in which case he’d have been looking for Jarvis.’

‘How would he know Jarvis had been in?’

‘He might have seen him coming out . . . Or from Layth. He does have some English, and he never left the building.’

Shepherd rose to his feet.

I said, ‘
When
did Jarvis go in after the photograph?’

‘About three-quarters of an hour ago. I’ve been charging about looking for him.’

‘How did you disentangle yourself from Major Findlay and Harriet Bailey, sir?’

‘They disentangled themselves from
me
,’ he said, with a ghost of the old smile. ‘Findlay made it perfectly clear he wanted rid of me.’

‘Where was this?’

‘Some alleyway between here and the club premises.’

Silence in the square.

Shepherd was holding his Turkish cigarettes out to me. I reached out, but he dropped the packet, and put his hand to his revolver. We heard a footfall, echoing in the square. I raised my own revolver. A patrol entered the square: a British sergeant and three sepoys. Shepherd went to them, giving over Jarvis’s paybook and papers, which he had taken from his pockets while searching for the photograph. He explained that the dead man had been my batman. Of the circumstances of Jarvis’s death, he told the sergeant nothing more than that we’d found the man shot – that it was very likely suicide. The man had been in a rather low state of health recently; he was oppressed by the heat, and the three of us had been under attacks from insurgents earlier in the evening; we’d all had a very narrow shave, and Jarvis had been badly knocked by the experience.

The sergeant asked: ‘Killed himself? With what, sir?’ His voice echoed in the dead square.

I came forward and showed him the Webley. ‘It’s my piece,’ I said; ‘Private Jarvis took it for cleaning.’ The matter could have been awkward for me, but the sweat and the agitation on the sergeant’s face was all down to the great humidity of the evening, and not at all to do with perplexity over the death of Jarvis. He was taking a note of our explanation, but made no attempt to claim the Webley as evidence. It was very obvious to all of us that it was easier to kill yourself with an officer’s revolver than with the rifle of the private – it was just another privilege of rank. As the sergeant made his note, I looked over to Jarvis, lying with his face turned away, as though in distaste for us all.

‘But might not
Harriet Bailey
have killed Boyd?’ I said.

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘Well,’ said Shepherd, ‘she’s too small.’

‘She’s tough though, practically lives in the desert from what I can gather.’

We were on Park Street, closing fast on the cavalry barracks. We’d come this way via Quiet Square, where Shepherd had discovered from Layth that Jarvis had indeed returned and gone up alone to the empty club room. After he’d left, Findlay had turned up with Harriet Bailey. They too had gone up to the room – and it appeared that Layth
had
told Findlay that Jarvis had been there first. It had taken the best part of a quarter of an hour to get this out of the Arab, who spoke of Jarvis as ‘Mr Stanley’, Findlay as ‘Effendi Fine Lay’, and Harriet Bailey as ‘El Khatun’, meaning ‘The Lady’.

At eleven o’clock at night, nothing less than a gymkhana had seemed to be in progress on the dusty gaslit field in front of the cavalry buildings. Late night and early morning were I believed the busiest times for exercising the horses – away from the heat of the day. Cavalry officers on their mounts criss-crossed the field; orderlies on fodder fatigue carted straw bales about the place; in the stable courts, men swabbed horses from buckets of water. Shepherd and I saw it all from the main gate, where Shepherd addressed a sentry: ‘Captain Stringer and Lieutenant Colonel Shepherd to see Major Findlay of the Ninth Hussars.’

Major Findlay, the sentry was telling Shepherd, had signed back in half an hour ago.

‘Where will we find him?’ said Shepherd.

‘In Dunn’s.’ (Or it might have been ‘Dun’s’ or ‘duns’.)

‘What’s that?’ said Shepherd. He was running out of charm, fast.

‘That side of the house,’ said the sentry, indicating the right-hand side of the main barracks building, which was another of the Baghdad music halls: all domes and turrets, like something dreamt rather than built.

As we made towards it, the sentry called out, ‘He might be in the bath if he’s any sense.’

Shepherd called back, ‘Why?’

‘Because it’s bath time.’

For all its fantastical front, the inside of the building smelt of dubbin, and was Spartan in the extreme. The bathhouse, we discovered, was in the basement: a white-painted room with ranks of partitions created by red velvet curtains. The officers were in tin baths behind the curtains. It was a peaceful scene. The gas burnt low; smoke rose up from behind a couple of the curtains but no steam. These were cold baths. Most of the men in them were silent, save for the occasional grunt and splash, but two of the bathers, in adjacent enclosures, were conversing, their voices echoing.

One said, ‘Apparently, the Kaiser has become a Moslem so as to impress the Arabs.’

‘Utter
rot
,’ said the other.

Shepherd and I patrolled the gangway between the booths. I knew what he was looking for. Perfectly ordinary dining-room chairs stood in this gangway, set at various angles, each one bedecked with the uniform of a bathing cavalry officer. Shepherd had stopped by one of the chairs. He indicated the tunic to me: a red wine stain. He too had seen the accident that had befallen Findlay when the bullets had started flying.

From behind the adjacent curtain there came no sound. Shepherd reached for the inside pocket of the tunic. He brought out an identity card and a photograph, displaying them to me silently like a conjurer doing a trick. One of the two conversing bathers spoke up again.