The Baghdad Railway Club(34)

It was a hot box, really, with plenty of flies in it, but quite a decent diggings all considered, being pleasantly furnished, with two wicker sofas, scattered rugs on a stone floor, a divan, green-shaded oil lamps. Ahmad now upped the ante by saying, ‘You will really like it,’ a good deal of threat put into that word ‘really’.

One doorway connected to a slightly more modest version of the same room: Jarvis’s quarters; another led to a narrow stone room running along the side of the building – a sort of scullery. Jarvis too had a door leading into this area, which in turn had its own exterior door leading out into the compound. Ahmad, who had his own sleeping quarters elsewhere, would come and go by this.

We were back in the main room. Ahmad was pointing to the divan, saying, ‘You will have a piece of sleep.’

He appeared to be commanding me to go to sleep there and then. It struck me that he might mean the peace of sleep. Jarvis, who was distributing my things about the room, said a couple of words in Arabic to Ahmad, who then went off.

‘He’s squared for half a dozen bottles of Bass, sir,’ said Jarvis; ‘he’ll be back with them in a minute.

I said, ‘I hope he has them in a cool place. Do you suppose it was an Arab who did for Boyd?’

Jarvis may have nodded.

‘They’re starting to turn, sir. A stone was pitched through the window of the Hotel.’

‘They were throwing flowers when we arrived,’ I said.

‘Some of them were,’ said Jarvis. ‘You see they’re not all the same. There’s the Sunni and the Shia. They have a disagreement about the religion. I don’t know the ins and outs of it, but the Sunnis have been top dogs in Baghdad under the Turks, and they’re shaping up to be the same with us. They know how to toe the line, sir.’

Ahmad returned with a bottle of Bass. I had a vision of him taking the cork out with his teeth – he had a good face for doing that sort of thing – but I saw it had already been removed. He handed it to me together with a small glass in a metal holder.

‘Clean glass,’ he said, in his sinister sort of way.

‘Thanks,’ I said, nodding, and setting bottle and glass down on the low table in the centre of the room.

‘Drink,’ said Ahmad, eyeing me.

‘Can you tell him to go?’ I said to Jarvis.

Jarvis got him out of the room, more by gestures than words.

‘Which do you suppose he is?’ I said when he’d gone. ‘Sunni or Shia?’

‘Shia, I think,’ said Jarvis.

So he was part of the awkward squad. That was a bad look-out. I took up the bottle of beer, and thought for a moment: What if he’s poisoned it? It would have been a perfectly reasonable move on his part; I knew for a fact that no Arabs were allowed in the kitchens of the Hotel or the Residency, but I was parched so I raised it to my lips. After I’d taken a belt, I said, ‘You’ll have one of these yourself, won’t you, Jarvis?’

‘I will do sir, yes. Later on.’

It wouldn’t really do for us to drink together, I knew that much.

Jarvis said, ‘I don’t believe it was an Arab who killed Captain Boyd, sir, and I mean to find out who did. I’ve plenty of free time, sir. I mean to turn detective.’

I gave this faintly alarming news the go-by, or tried to.

‘You were a detective yourself, weren’t you sir? On the railway force at York?’

I nodded.

‘Jarvis,’ I said, ‘how was it that Lieutenant Colonel Shepherd was actually here in Rose Court?’

He was fixing the mosquito net over my bed.

‘I saw him walking past the gates just as I was driving in.’

Having fixed up the net, Jarvis said, ‘This flipping place, sir.’

‘I thought you liked it.’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Well, I do try.’

He was much less given to chirpiness than I’d first thought. And his uniform was quite black with sweat.





Chapter Seven


I traversed the Baghdad labyrinth. It was getting on for nine. The heat had hardly abated; the only difference was that the light had turned dark green again. Jarvis and Ahmad between them had prepared my evening meal: some species of spiced meat (Ahmad’s contribution), with fried potato (Jarvis’s doing). Jarvis had not eaten himself, but had gone off early to his bed with a bottle of beer. It bothered me that there was a connection between him and Shepherd. I’d now got possessed of the idea that they were in league; that Shepherd had been somehow instrumental in having Jarvis posted batman to me. But why would Jarvis have anything against a man who’d saved his life?

I must find out more about what had befallen him at Kut-al-Amara.