The Baghdad Railway Club(85)

When the body was turned up, Shepherd got me involved in trying to investigate the crime even though he’d done it, and so began a lot of play-acting. Shepherd said he had a suspicion of the culprit (as if it wasn’t himself) and wanted to pursue the matter secretly it being sensitive. It was painful to me to go along with this because you know what Capt. Boyd meant to me because I have told you. Shepherd would have me believe Capt. Boyd was a man likely to get into hot water over the ladies, but he himself I believe to be a QUEER.

I am hoping you will be in a safe place when you get this news. I pray God Capt. Stringer that you will be able to read this in your home town of York which I consider on a par with my home town of Scarborough. (This is meant complimentary.)

But I will NOT.

Capt. Stringer they say nothing lasts for ever but I don’t think so. I have been out here for two years straight no leave. I find it to be far too hot. My back which I have never showed you is covered with black fly bites and I can not sleep at all without taking more than is good for me in strong drink. On top of this, I let down my friend by not going to his aid, and by not speaking out until now. So I will in time do what I know must be done, and the writing of this letter will clear the way for me.

What exactly are we doing here? Building a nation it is said and who for? Not us. We already have one. But for the Arabs I ask you. Well it won’t happen overnight.

So we sit here waiting for the Turk to come back. Let him build the nation I say.

Why am I writing to you of all people?

It is because you asked about my experiences near the town of Kut-al-Amara which nobody has ever done.

In closing Capt. Stringer please find enclosed two tokens of my estimation. You will know which one Shepherd gave me after he came back from your run north saying here’s a trinket for you but I knew it was in order to keep silence about the events at the station.

Yours ever, Stanley Jarvis (Private)

The letter had come two days before in a package together with The City of the Khalifs (somewhat battered) and a sizeable brooch or pendant tightly wrapped about with newspaper, and consisting of three large green stones, each about the diameter of a shilling, surrounded by a larger quantity of smaller red ones, each about the diameter of a farthing. A glittering tassel hung down from it. I had immediately telephoned Manners at the War Office, and read over the letter. With his say-so, I had taken the brooch or pendant (rewrapped in its paper) into the best York jeweller, Pearson and Sons, in St Helen’s Square. Rather to my disappointment – because I’d been hoping to cause an immediate stir by handing over the thing – old Mr Pearson had said he was too busy to look at the brooch just then. I was to call back later in the week.

I knew the letter practically off by heart now. It was not quite clear on whether Shepherd had invited Boyd to the station or the other way around, or whose choice the station might have been. Shepherd might have chosen it, meaning to show Boyd the remaining Berlin–Baghdad railway medallions, and to fob him off with that tale. Then again Boyd might have chosen it, since he regarded it as a safe meeting place, as proved by the fact that he’d been planning to meet me there.

Boyd, it was becoming clear to me, must have influenced the allocation of Jarvis to me as batman. It would have been a way of opening up a channel of communication between us without our having to meet directly after that proposed first rendezvous.

Repocketing the letter, my thoughts turned to Jarvis himself. He had gone through the charade of playing detective when he knew the culprit all along. That might have brought him near to doing the deed promised in his letter – and he would have felt obliged to do it once having written and despatched the letter. The last straw had been the business over the photograph; the attempt to incriminate an innocent man. In the aftermath of the attack on the Railway Club – when giving over the photograph – Jarvis had told Findlay what Shepherd had done, and it was evidently to keep tabs on Shepherd – to catch him in the act of going under the Turkish trains to leave the data and collect the treasure – that Findlay had gone on the trip to Samarrah.

Beyond the window an express had pulled in.

I had the police office to myself, and I was cold, hence the fire I had lit, even though it was July. Baghdad had got into my blood, in more than one sense. Yet I had been away for no more than twelve weeks, and ten of those had been spent travelling, and five in the packed army hospital behind the cavalry barracks. I had never smoked the narghile, never been to the bazaar. On the other hand I had also never been shot. Much to my shame it had been a faint that had keeled me over when Shepherd had pointed the Colt single-action at me. I blamed my malarial condition.