The Baghdad Railway Club(72)

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.