The Baghdad Railway Club (24 page)

‘Half three,’ said the Chief. ‘London express.’

It was twenty past.

With a clamour of raised voices and questions behind me I was out of the auditorium, out of the Electric Theatre and into Fossgate. I began to run, as fast as my crocked right leg would allow. Shepherd had told me he meant to get hold of a Colt single-action. He would doubtless have put in for one at the armoury. A man wasn’t supposed to have two pieces but Shepherd was a lieutenant colonel and very persuasive with it. What he had told Jarvis about his meeting with Boyd at the railway station had all been true. Boyd
had
gone back to the range afterwards. He spent half his time at the range, after all. Findlay might easily have found him there, or intercepted him on the way. They had returned to the station to talk privately, just as Boyd had talked privately with Shepherd. Findlay would have challenged Boyd over his connection with Miss Bailey and Boyd would not have been able to tell the truth because the truth – that they were in Intelligence work – was a secret. And so they would have started a fight.

I skittered into Parliament Street.

Miss Bailey‚ too‚ would have wanted to guard the secret of the reason for the connection with Boyd. Perhaps she would rather Findlay thought it a romance than know the truth. Findlay must have thought that, as well as protecting himself, he was saving the lady’s reputation by going back into the club room for the photograph. Perhaps that had been in his mind when he’d killed Boyd – that he was saving the lady from herself. Well, she was a married woman.

I doubted that she’d known what he’d done – not at first. Her declaration in the desert had seemed like a moment of revelation, prompted by Findlay saying something like ‘We have run to ground the killer of Captain Boyd.’

Jarvis had had no need to commit suicide. He had not stood by while Shepherd had killed Boyd because Shepherd had
not
killed Boyd. But Jarvis had . . . what was the word? He had misconstrued, and what he had misconstrued he had passed on to Findlay. No doubt Findlay did believe Shepherd was a traitor on the strength of what Jarvis had told him, but he couldn’t have believed Shepherd was the killer of Boyd, because
he
was the killer of Boyd.

Pushing through the crowds in the square, I repeated to myself out loud, ‘Everything Shepherd said was true.’ Everything he had said was true,
as far as it went
. But he had covered up as well. He
had
heard of the rumour of his treachery as proved by his decision to confront Boyd, yet he’d let on that he was hearing it from me for the first time. And no doubt he
had
taken Baghdad railway medals from the bimbashi at the station . . . But he had left out the rest: the arrangement he had made to give over information in return for treasure. He had only come round to discussing this in our desert stand-off, where he’d said he wanted to string the Turks along, to play a private game with them in return for supposed treasure that he insisted was really nothing more than . . .

I was alongside the window of Pearson’s. I had five minutes before Manners’s express departed for London. It was a four-minute run to the station. I pushed at the shop door. Old man Pearson stood behind the counter. When he saw me, he froze.

‘I’m Stringer,’ I said, panting. ‘I brought in the brooch or whatever it was.’

‘I know you did,’ he said, eyeing me steadily.

‘Well?’ I said. ‘Have you looked at it?’

‘I have. Do you want to sit down?’

‘No. Look, is it real?’

‘How do you mean “real”?’

‘Is it valuable?’

‘You might say that,’ he said. ‘Where did you lay hands on it?’

‘I’ll tell you later. Look, I’m in a hurry.’

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I can see that. Shall I start with the stones or the tassel?’

‘The stones.’

‘Pastes,’ he said. ‘You can tell by the tiny air bubbles in the . . .’

I made a dart for the door, but checked myself. ‘And the tassel?’

‘Fake pearls. A combination of glass and fish scales believe it or not, a very curious and antique formula.’

I believed that I heard old Pearson say, as the door clanged behind me, ‘I’ll give you two pounds for it if you like!’

I raced pell-mell over Ouse Bridge and along Station Rise. At half past three exactly, I clattered through the ticket gate on to platform four, and the express was drawing away. I began chasing it. A platform guard stood in my way, and I just floored him. When the train cleared the platform, I did too, running over the black rubble of the Holgate sidings. The express was approaching Holgate Junction. In a moment, the curvature of the line would take it from my sight. I gave it up, sat down on the rubble half dead, but as the train began to bend, a head appeared from the window. The head was bald. It disappeared back into the carriage.

A moment later, the train began to brake.

The express from York whirled my First Class carriage fast through the night. It was heading . . . Well, it makes no odds. Let’s say I was on War Business. I might mention that it was towards the end of that summer of 1917 – a season of blaring and indeed murderous sun in Mesopotamia and rather weak sun and frequent showers in Blighty. The rain was lashing at the windows as we flew along; the fields seemed grey-blue rather than green, and the gas was up.

I caught up my
Railway Magazine
, opening it at the page marked ‘At the Club Room’ and ‘Forthcoming Talks’.

‘On Thursday October 9th,’ I read, ‘Mr John Maycroft will give his talk,
Humour on the Rails
, together with lantern slides. This was unavoidably postponed in January. Mr Maycroft is the author of
Humours of a Country Station
,
Our Booking Office
,
Down or Up
& c. & c., and is widely considered our principal railway comedian. Tea and coffee will be served.’

This was not the page I had wanted to see. I had in any case already read of the promised coming of Maycroft, so I turned to the article I’d been halfway through: ‘Some Developments at Crewe’. My place was marked with a picture postcard I’d received a week before. It was of the booklet type, with attached leaf for longer messages. It had come from Manners and was doubtless one of the ones he’d bought in the York Station Hotel. It featured a grid of photographs showing parts of the Bar Walls and parts of the Minster. Underneath the pictures was written ‘Did you know that York is a jewel of the North?’

‘Well . . . did you?’ began the message from the ever more flippant Manners:

I pocketed the card, and the train and I and the world raced on into the night.

My description of the British occupation of Baghdad in the summer of 1917, including the events leading up to that occupation, the disposition of British and Turkish forces, and the development of railways around Baghdad, is, I hope, roughly accurate. By the end of the war, the British had established full control over what would become the state of Iraq, at a cost of 92,000 British and Indian lives and an unknown number of Turkish and Arab lives. Iraq was established as a British mandate, but a nationalist revolt of 1920 showed the impossibility of direct colonial rule. The British therefore installed a monarchy under the Hashemite King Faisal. However, the regime was unpopular with Shia Muslims (Faisal was a Sunni), also with Kurds and nationalists. In 1958 it was overthrown in favour of a military dictatorship.

By the Same Author

Bilton

The Bobby Dazzlers
In the ‘Jim Stringer‚ Steam Detective’ series:

The Necropolis Railway
The Blackpool Highflyer
The Lost Luggage Porter
Murder at Deviation Junction
Death on a Branch Line
The Last Train to Scarborough
The Somme Stations

Andrew Martin is a journalist and novelist. His critically praised ‘Jim Stringer’ series began with 
The Necropolis Railway
 in 2002.  The following titles in the series, 
Murder at Deviation Junction 
and 
Death on a Branch Line
, were shortlisted for the CWA Ellis Peters Historical Crime Award and, in 2008, Andrew Martin was shortlisted for the CWA Dagger in the Library Award. 
The Somme Stations
won the 2011 CWA Ellis Peters Historical Crime Award.