The Baghdad Railway Club(73)

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.

‘Do you know what I saw the other day? A fellow sleeping on a walking camel.’

The identity card held by Shepherd was Major Findlay’s; the photograph was of Harriet Bailey and the late Captain Boyd nearly kissing. From beyond the curtain there came the sound of a great waterfall. Findlay had risen to his feet in the bath. Shepherd eyed me, the beginnings of a smile on his face. Did he mean to confront Findlay? There came another waterfall: Findlay stepping from the bath. Shepherd slid the papers and the picture back into the pocket of the tunic. We walked fast from the bathhouse and barracks.

*

Lieutenant Colonel Shepherd and I sat in the same vis-à-vis as during our first proper talk: that is to say, we faced each other over a low table, with glasses of brandy before us. Only now there were revolvers – his Colt, my Webley – by the glasses, and whereas it had been the guests of the Midland Grand Hotel who had slept all around us on that occasion, it was now the residents of Baghdad who slept. Well, mostly. Distant shouts would come through the opened windows at the veranda. I had heard three wild cries of ‘Allahu Akhbar!’ from perhaps half a mile away as Shepherd had poured the drinks.

He’d suggested we go back to his place for a nightcap. We drank in his main upper room, which had the same general set-up as my own: little furniture and all of it low, including a carved wooden chest by the wall. He had no flytrap, and so the room fairly swarmed with them, but Shepherd didn’t seem to mind, or notice. Indicating his gun, I said, ‘Mind if I . . . ?’

He nodded, and I picked up the piece. It was a double-action, like most of the Colts in Baghdad. I said, ‘Jarvis told me Boyd favoured the single-action.’ I eyed Shepherd and he gave a half smile. ‘It’s a lovely weapon, the single. If I could lay my hands on one, I would do. A chap out on a desert patrol in the first week . . . he wandered away from the other fellows, and got held up by an Arab who took his gun off him: a single-action. The Arab was about to shoot the poor fellow, but he couldn’t understand the mechanism – didn’t know you had to cock it. Eventually, he gave up in disgust, and threw it back.’ Shepherd hesitated, blushed. ‘So of course our chap shot him.’

A long beat of silence; then Shepherd said, ‘I ought to have gone after the picture myself.’

Over my glass, I looked a question at him.

‘. . . Can’t have done anything for his state of mind,’ said Shepherd. ‘The photograph amounted to proof of adultery on both sides, and Boyd was quite a figure in Jarvis’s eyes. He wrote to the wife, you know, after the body was turned up.’

The same wife who’d wanted me to pass on her love.

I said, ‘Assuming we’re right about Findlay, what do you reckon Miss Bailey thinks?’

‘That woman is a closed book to me,’ said Shepherd.

‘You and she seem to hit it off pretty well, sir.’

‘Well,’ he said, ‘as to that . . .’ and he coloured up and trailed off.

‘Maybe he was making himself a nuisance,’ I said.

‘My suspicion is that she has some idea of what’s happened but doesn’t know the full picture, and doesn’t want to. It stretches credibility to think she’s completely ignorant. She’s incredibly clever you know.’ He refilled our glasses from the brandy bottle and put his feet on the table. ‘She has a first-class degree from Oxford – only it’s informal.’

‘Why?’

‘Because she’s a woman. They can’t formally be degree-holders.’

‘Do you have a first-class degree sir?’

He grinned. ‘I have what’s called a Gentleman’s Degree.’

‘Really, sir? Stevens made out you were practically a professor.’

‘Well, from his particular perspective . . .’

I didn’t believe he had been particularly set back by the deaths of either of Stevens or Jarvis. He had enjoyed the game of going to Samarrah, which had done for the one, and he’d enjoyed the game of searching out the picture, which had done for the other‚ albeit by a wound self-inflicted.