They Came to Baghdad (19 page)

Victoria nodded.

“Yes,” she said. “He's dead.”

“When did he die?”

“In Baghdad. In the Tio Hotel.” She added quickly, “It was—hushed up. Nobody knows.”

He nodded his head slowly.

“I see. It was that kind of business. But you—” He looked at her. “How did you know?”

“I got mixed up in it—by accident.”

He gave her a long considering look.

Victoria asked suddenly:

“Your nickname at school wasn't Lucifer, was it?”

He looked surprised.

“Lucifer, no? I was called Owl—because I always had to wear shiny glasses.”

“You don't know anyone who is called Lucifer—in Basrah?”

Richard shook his head.

“Lucifer, Son of the Morning—the fallen Angel.”

He added: “Or an old-fashioned wax match. Its merit if I remember rightly, was that it didn't go out in a wind.”

He watched her closely as he spoke, but Victoria was frowning.

“I wish you'd tell me,” she said presently, “exactly what happened at Basrah.”

“I have told you.”

“No. I mean where were you when all this occurred?”

“Oh I see. Actually it was in the waiting room of the Consulate. I was waiting to see Clayton, the Consul.”

“And who else was there? This commercial traveller person and Carmichael? Anyone else?”

“There were a couple of others, a thin dark Frenchman or Syrian, and an old man—a Persian, I should say.”

“And the commercial traveller got the revolver out and you stopped him, and Carmichael got out—how?”

“He turned first towards the Consul's office. It's at the other end of a passage with a garden—”

She interrupted.

“I know. I stayed there for a day or two. As a matter of fact, it was just after you left.”

“It was, was it?” Once again he watched her narrowly—but Victoria was unaware of it. She was seeing the long passage at the Consulate, but with the door open at the other end—opening on to green trees and sunlight.

“Well, as I was saying, Carmichael headed that way first. Then he wheeled round and dashed the other way into the street. That's the last I saw of him.”

“What about the commercial traveller?”

Richard shrugged his shoulders.

“I understand he told some garbled story about having been attacked and robbed by a man the night before and fancying he had recognized his assailant in the Arab in the Consulate. I didn't hear much more about it because I flew on to Kuwait.”

“Who was staying at the Consulate just then?” Victoria asked.

“A fellow called Crosbie—one of the oil people. Nobody else. Oh yes, I believe there was someone else down from Baghdad, but I didn't meet him. Can't remember his name.”

“Crosbie,” thought Victoria. She remembered Captain Crosbie,
his short stocky figure, his staccato conversation. A very ordinary person. A decent soul without much
finesse
about him. And Crosbie had been back in Baghdad the night when Carmichael came to the Tio. Could it be because he had seen
Crosbie
at the other end of the passage, silhouetted against the sunlight, that Carmichael had turned so suddenly and made for the street instead of attempting to reach the Consul General's office?

She had been thinking this out in some absorption. She started rather guiltily when she looked up to find Richard Baker watching her with close attention.

“Why do you want to know all this?” he asked.

“I'm just interested.”

“Any more questions?”

Victoria asked:

“Do you know anybody called Lefarge?”

“No—I can't say I do. Man or woman?”

“I don't know.”

She was wondering about Crosbie. Crosbie? Lucifer?

Did Lucifer equal Crosbie?

III

That evening, when Victoria had said good night to the two men and gone to bed, Richard said to Dr. Pauncefoot Jones:

“I wonder if I might have a look at that letter from Emerson. I'd like to see just exactly what he said about this girl.”

“Of course, my dear fellow, of course. It's somewhere lying around. I made some notes on the back of it, I remember. He spoke very highly of Veronica, if I remember rightly—said she was ter
rifically keen. She seems to me a charming girl—quite charming. Very plucky the way she's made so little fuss about the loss of her luggage. Most girls would have insisted on being motored into Baghdad the very next day to buy a new outfit. She's what I call a sporting girl. By the way, how
was
it that she came to lose her luggage?”

“She was chloroformed, kidnapped, and imprisoned in a native house,” said Richard impassively.

“Dear, dear, yes so you told me. I remember now. All
most
improbable. Reminds me—now what does it remind me of?—ah! yes, Elizabeth Canning, of course. You remember she turned up with a most impossible story after being missing a fortnight. Very interesting conflict of evidence—about some gypsies, if it's the right case I'm thinking of. And she was such a plain girl, it didn't seem likely there could be a man in the case. Now little Victoria—Veronica—I never
can
get her name right—she's a remarkably pretty little thing. Quite likely there
is
a man in her case.”

“She'd be better looking if she didn't dye her hair,” said Richard drily.

“Does she dye it? Indeed. How knowledgeable you are in these matters.”

“About Emerson's letter, sir—”

“Of course—of course—I've no idea where I put it. But look anywhere you choose—I'm anxious to find it anyway because of those notes I made on the back—and a sketch of that coiled wire bead.”

O
n the following afternoon Dr. Pauncefoot Jones uttered a disgusted exclamation as the sound of a car came faintly to his ears. Presently he located it, winding across the desert towards the Tell.

“Visitors,” he said with venom. “At the worst possible moment, too. I want to superintend the cellulosing of that painted rosette on the northeast corner. Sure to be some idiots come out from Baghdad with a lot of social chatter and expecting to get shown all over the excavations.”

“This is where Victoria comes in useful,” said Richard. “You hear, Victoria? It's up to you to do a personally conducted tour.”

“I shall probably say all the wrong things,” said Victoria. “I'm really very inexperienced, you know.”

“I think you're doing very well indeed,” said Richard pleasantly. “Those remarks you made this morning about plano convex bricks might have come straight out of Delongaz's book.”

Victoria changed colour slightly, and resolved to paraphrase her
erudition more carefully. Sometimes the quizzical glance through the thick lenses made her uncomfortable.

“I'll do my best,” she said meekly.

“We push all the odd jobs on to you,” said Richard.

Victoria smiled.

Indeed her activities during the last five days surprised her not a little. She had developed plates with water filtered through cotton wool and by the light of a primitive dark lantern containing a candle which always went out at the most crucial moment. The darkroom table was a packing case and to work she had to crouch or kneel—the darkroom itself being as Richard remarked, a modern model of the famous medieval Little East. There would be more amenities in the season to come, Dr. Pauncefoot Jones assured her—but at the moment every penny was needed to pay workmen and get results.

The baskets of broken potsherds had at first excited her astonished derision (though this she had been careful not to display). All these broken bits of coarse stuff—what was the good of them?

Then as she found joins, stuck them and propped them up in boxes of sand, she began to take an interest. She learned to recognize shapes and types. And she came finally to try and reconstruct in her own mind just how and for what these vessels had been used some three thousand odd years ago. In the small area where some poor quality private houses had been dug, she pictured the houses as they had orginally stood and the people who had lived in them with their wants and possessions and occupations, their hopes and their fears. Since Victoria had a lively imagination, a picture rose up easily enough in her mind. On a day when a small clay pot was found encased in a wall with a half-dozen gold earrings in it, she
was enthralled. Probably the dowry of a daughter, Richard had said smiling.

Dishes filled with grain, gold earrings saved up for a dowry, bone needles, querns and mortars, little figurines and amulets. All the everyday life and fears and hopes of a community of unimportant simple people.

“That's what I find so fascinating,” said Victoria to Richard. “You see, I always used to think that archaeology was just Royal graves and palaces.

“Kings of Babylon,” she added, with a strange little smile. “But what I like so much about all this is that it's the ordinary everyday people—people like me. My St. Anthony who finds things for me when I lose them—and a lucky china pig I've got—and an awfully nice mixing bowl, blue inside and white out, that I used to make cakes in. It got broken and the new one I bought wasn't a bit the same. I can understand why these people mended up their favourite bowls or dishes so carefully with bitumen. Life's all the same really, isn't it—then or now?”

She was thinking of these things as she watched the visitors ascending the side of the Tell. Richard went to greet them, Victoria following behind him.

They were two Frenchmen, interested in archaeology, who were making a tour through Syria and Iraq. After civil greetings, Victoria took them round the excavations, reciting parrot wise what was going on, but being unable to resist, being Victoria, adding sundry embellishments of her own, just, as she put it to herself, to make it more exciting.

She noticed that the second man was a very bad colour, and that he dragged himself along without much interest. Presently he
said, if Mademoiselle would excuse him, he would retire to the house. He had not felt well since early that morning—and the sun was making him worse.

He departed in the direction of the Expedition House, and the other, in suitably lowered tones explained that, unfortunately, it was his
estomac.
The Baghdad tummy they called it, did they not? He should not really have come out today.

The tour was completed, the Frenchman remained talking to Victoria, finally Fidos was called and Dr. Pauncefoot Jones, with a determined air of hospitality suggested the guests should have tea before departing.

To this, however, the Frenchman demurred. They must not delay their departure until it was dark or they would never find the way. Richard Baker said immediately that this was quite right. The sick friend was retrieved from the house and the car rushed off at top speed.

“I suppose that's just the beginning,” grunted Dr. Pauncefoot Jones. “We shall have visitors every day now.”

He took a large flap of Arab bread and covered it thickly with apricot jam.

Richard went to his room after tea. He had letters to answer, and others to write in preparation for going into Baghdad on the following day.

Suddenly he frowned. Not a man of particular neatness to the outward view, he yet had a way of arranging his clothes and his papers that never varied. Now he saw at once that every drawer had been disturbed. It was not the servants, of that he was sure. It must be, then, that sick visitor who had made a pretext to go down to the house, had coolly ransacked through his belongings. Nothing
was missing, he assured himself of that. His money was untouched. What, then, had they been looking for? His face grew grave as he considered the implications.

He went to the Antika Room and looked into the drawer which held the seals and seal impressions. He gave a grim smile—nothing had been touched or removed. He went into the living room. Dr. Pauncefoot Jones was out in the courtyard with the foreman. Only Victoria was there, curled up with a book.

Richard said, without preamble, “Somebody's been searching my room.”

Victoria looked up, astonished.

“But why? And who?”

“It wasn't you?”

“Me?” Victoria was indignant. “Of course not? Why should I want to pry among your things?”

He gave her a hard stare. Then he said:

“It must have been that damned stranger—the one who shammed sick and came down to the house.”

“Did he steal something?”

“No,” said Richard. “Nothing was taken.”

“But why on earth should anyone—”

Richard cut in to say:

“I thought
you
might know that.”

“Me?”

“Well, by your own account, rather odd things have happened to
you.
”

“Oh that—yes.” Victoria looked rather startled. She said slowly: “But I don't see why they should search
your
room. You've got nothing to do with—”

“With what?”

Victoria did not answer for a moment or two. She seemed lost in thought.

“I'm sorry,” she said at last. “What did you say? I wasn't listening.”

Richard did not repeat his question. Instead he asked:

“What are you reading?”

“You don't have much choice of light fiction here.
Tale of Two Cities, Pride and Prejudice
and
The Mill on the Floss.
I'm reading the
Tale of Two Cities.
”

“Never read it before?”

“Never. I always thought Dickens would be stuffy.”

“What an idea!”

“I'm finding it most exciting.”

“Where have you got to?” He looked over her shoulder and read out: “And the knitting women count One.”

“I think she's awfully frightening,” said Victoria.

“Madame Defarge? Yes, a good character. Though whether you could keep a register of names in knitting has always seemed to me rather doubtful. But then, of course, I'm not a knitter.”

“Oh I think you could,” said Victoria, considering the point. “Plain and purl—and fancy stitches—and the wrong stitch at intervals and dropped stiches. Yes—it could be done—camouflaged, of course, so that it looked like someone who was rather bad at knitting and made mistakes….”

Suddenly, with a vividness like a flash of lightning, two things came together in her mind and affected her with the force of an explosion. A name—a visual memory. The man with the ragged hand-knitted red scarf clasped in his hands—the scarf she had hur
riedly picked up later and flung into a drawer. And together with that name.
Defarge
—not Lefarge—
Defarge,
Madame Defarge.

She was recalled to herself by Richard saying to her courteously:

“Is anything the matter?”

“No—no, that is, I just thought of something.”

“I see.” Richard raised his eyebrows in his most supercilious way.

Tomorrow, thought Victoria, they would all go in to Baghdad. Tomorrow her respite would be over. For over a week she had had safety, peace, time to pull herself together. And she had enjoyed that time—enjoyed it enormously. Perhaps I'm a coward, thought Victoria, perhaps that's it. She had talked gaily about adventure, but she hadn't liked it very much when it really came. She hated that struggle against chloroform and the slow suffocation, and she had been frightened, horribly frightened, in that upper room when the ragged Arab had said
“Bukra.”

And now she'd got to go back to it all. Because she was employed by Mr. Dakin and paid by Mr. Dakin and she had to earn her pay and show a brave front! She might even have to go back to the Olive Branch. She shivered a little when she remembered Dr. Rathbone and that searching dark glance of his. He'd warned her….

But perhaps she wouldn't have to go back. Perhaps Mr. Dakin would say it was better not—now that they knew about her. But she would have to go back to her lodgings and get her things because thrust carelessly into her suitcase was the red knitted scarf…She had bundled everything into suitcases when she left for Basrah. Once she had put that scarf into Mr. Dakin's hands, perhaps her
task would be done. He would say to her perhaps, like on the pictures: “Oh! Good show, Victoria.”

She looked up to find Richard Baker watching her.

“By the way,” he said, “will you be able to get hold of your passport tomorrow?”

“My passport?”

Victoria considered the position. It was characteristic of her that she had not as yet defined her plan of action as regards the Expedition. Since the real Veronica (or Venetia) would shortly be arriving from England, a retreat in good order was necessary. But whether she would merely fade away, or confess her deception with suitable penitence, or indeed what she intended to do, had not yet presented itself as a problem to be solved. Victoria was always prone to adopt the Micawber-like attitude that Something would Turn Up.

“Well,” she said temporizing, “I'm not sure.”

“It's needed, you see, for the police of this district,” explained Richard. “They enter its number and your name and age and special distinguishing marks, etc., all the whole caboodle. As we haven't got the passport, I think we ought at any rate to send your name and description to them. By the way, what is your last name? I've always called you ‘Victoria.'”

Victoria rallied gallantly.

“Come now,” she said. “You know my last name as well as Ido.”

“That's not quite true,” said Richard. His smile curved upwards with a hint of cruelty. “I
do
know your last name. It's
you,
I think who don't know it.”

Through the glasses the eyes watched her.

“Of course I know my own name,” snapped Victoria.

“Then I'll challenge you to tell it to me—now.”

His voice was suddenly hard and curt.

“It's no good lying,” he said. “The game's up. You've been very clever about it. You've read up your subject, you've brought out very telling bits of knowledge—but it's the kind of imposture you can't keep up all the time. I've laid traps for you and you've fallen into them. I've quoted bits of sheer rubbish to you and you've accepted them.” He paused. “You're
not
Venetia Savile. Who are you?”

“I told you who I was the first time I met you,” said Victoria. “I'm Victoria Jones.”

“Dr. Pauncefoot Jones' niece?”

“I'm not his niece—but my name
is
Jones.”

“You told me a lot of other things.”

“Yes, I did. And they were all
true!
But I could see you didn't believe me. And that made me mad, because though I do tell lies sometimes—in fact quite often—what I'd just told you wasn't a lie. And so, just to make myself more convincing, I said my name was Pauncefoot Jones—I've said that before out here, and it's always gone down frightfully well. How could I tell you were actually coming to this place?”

“It must have been a slight shock to you,” said Richard grimly. “You carried it off very well—cool as a cucumber.”

“Not inside,” said Victoria. “I was absolutely
shaking.
But I felt that if I waited to explain until I got here—well at any rate I should be safe.”

“Safe?” he considered the word. “Look here, Victoria,
was
that incredible rigmarole you told me about being chloroformed really true?”

“Of course it was true! Don't you see, if I wanted to make up a story I could make up a much better one than that,
and
tell it better!”