The Woman on the Orient Express

by Lindsay Jayne Ashford

  “Time to go!” The voice came into her dream. She was in the garden at Sunningdale, playing French cricket with Rosalind and Archie. Someone was calling from the house, but it wasn’t her they wanted. Suddenly, she saw her mother coming across the grass. She looked very angry. She was mouthing words that Agatha couldn’t hear.

  “Wake up!”

  Agatha opened her eyes, struggling to make sense of what she saw. It was a pair of legs. Katharine’s legs. She sat up, rubbing her eyes, aware that she was naked. Somehow it no longer mattered.

  “We need to get a move on if we’re going to go shopping.” Katharine smiled. “Did you enjoy that?”

  Agatha nodded. “I feel like a new woman.” The truth of the words struck her as they came out. It was as if all the pain of the last two years had been scrubbed away with the grime and sweat. Not gone forever, of course. It would come back as surely as dirt under her fingernails. But she would savor this feeling while it lasted. She couldn’t remember when she had felt so tranquil, so liberated.

  CHAPTER 12

  Damascus to Baghdad

  At the Souk Al-Harir, Agatha bought a length of white silk embroidered in dark blue to send home to her sister and a pair of leather slippers, embellished with gold, for Charlotte. Then, for Rosalind, she spotted a doll in the scarlet robe and sequinned headdress of a Syrian bride. She caught up with Nancy and Katharine at a stall selling ready-made women’s clothes.

  “I quite envy them,” Nancy was saying. “I think I should quite like to go about in a veil. Think how much time it would save: you wouldn’t have to bother about your hair or makeup.”

  “I suppose you could look at it like that,” Katharine said. “But it’s fundamentally wrong, isn’t it, making women cover themselves while men dress exactly as they please?”

  “Well, yes, you’re right of course. If a woman was to do it out of choice, though, there could be advantages, couldn’t there?”

  “You’re not thinking of buying one, are you?” Agatha said as she ran her fingers over a shawl of lilac cashmere.

  “Not a veil,” Nancy replied. “But I’m rather taken with that dress.” She pointed out a long robe of eau de nil silk with silver frogging at the neck.

  “I think it would look charming on you,” Katharine said. “Why don’t you get it?”

  “No. I mustn’t.” Nancy glanced at Agatha. “But I might buy a length of fabric and have a go at making something similar when we get to Baghdad.”

  Katharine looked at her watch. “You’d better not spend too long deciding—we’ve only got an hour until the coach leaves.”

  “I saw something that color over there.” Agatha pointed to the stall where she’d bought the bolt of silk. “Shall we go and have a quick look?”

  Fifteen minutes later they joined Katharine at an open-air café on the edge of the souk. She had ordered for them, and within moments of their sitting down, a huge plate of food arrived.

  “It’s for us all to share,” Katharine said. “There’s falafel, tabbouleh, and baba ghanoush—oh, and that’s the meat dish we saw on that stall on the way to the hammam.” Agatha had never heard of such things. Katharine reeled off the ingredients of the meal as they helped themselves. Chickpeas, mint, tomatoes, aubergines, cracked wheat, pine nuts, black cherries, and minced lamb. When they’d polished almost everything off, she beckoned the waiter over and spoke to him in Arabic.

  “I’ve just ordered the speciality of the house for dessert.” She smiled. “Rosewater and almond-flavored ice cream topped with fresh pistachio nuts.”

  Agatha thought that nothing could surpass the Venetian ice cream experience, but this was sublime. She had a sudden vivid image of Max licking a blob of crema dei Dogi from the corner of his mouth. What would he make of this flavor, she wondered? She tried to work out where he would be now. Somewhere in the Mediterranean: probably nearer to Asia than Europe by now.

  His words of warning floated back into her head again as she savored the last spoonful. She casts a spell on you, and before you know it, you’ve become her slave . . . She glanced at Katharine, who was trying to catch the waiter’s attention to settle the bill. Everything they had done in Damascus had been directed by her, and they had fallen in with her plans without question. So yes, she had cast a spell, but it was a wonderful kind of enchantment. The camels, the massage, the souk, the food . . . Agatha smiled to herself, knowing that she would always remember this day.

  A fleet of six-wheeler buses awaited the passengers from the Taurus Express who were traveling on to Baghdad. The operation was run by a pair of Australian brothers, the Nairns, one of whom looked Katharine up and down appraisingly when she went to ask about seats. His frank blue eyes had white cat’s-whisker creases at the corners where the desert sun had not penetrated.

  “We have to be near the front.” Katharine held his gaze. “My friend doesn’t travel well—she’ll be ill if she sits at the back.” She glanced over her shoulder at Agatha, who was out of earshot, frowning at something Nancy was saying.

  “The seats are already allocated,” the Australian replied.

  “Well, un-allocate them!” Katharine thrust the tickets at him. “Otherwise, you’ll have an extremely unpleasant mess to deal with.”

  He bent his head, examining the tickets. “I’ll see what I can do. Miss—”

  “It’s Mrs.” She nodded slowly. “Thank you, Mr. Nairn.” Her lips parted, revealing her perfect teeth. As she turned away, she could feel his eyes following her.

  “Call me Jim!”

  She saw Agatha and Nancy look up from their conversation with curious faces.

  “It’s all sorted out,” she said to them. “No need to worry about getting travel-sick.”

  “That’s a relief.” Agatha glanced at the steps up to the nearest coach. “But we saw one of the drivers carry a pair of rifles on board. They were half-hidden in a blanket, but the barrels were sticking out.”

  “Oh, that’s quite normal,” Katharine said. “We’re unlikely to run into trouble, but I wouldn’t care to cross the desert without guns. Come on—let’s get ourselves settled, shall we?”

  Three veiled Arab women were being shooed to the back of the bus as they boarded. One had live chickens in a basket, which joined in with squawks of protest as the women remonstrated with the driver.

  “I feel awful, taking their seats,” Agatha said.

  “Well, you mustn’t.” Katharine plopped down on a seat by the window. “They’re used to it, and you’re not. And they wouldn’t be very happy if you were to be violently sick in the middle of a nineteen-hour journey—particularly in this heat.”

  Ten minutes later the coach rolled out of Damascus, past orchards of fruit trees and date palms, which gradually gave way to the barren wilderness of the desert. Soon there was nothing to be seen but sand dunes and rocks. The sameness of the surroundings had a hypnotic effect, and before long, both Agatha and Nancy had nodded off.

  Katharine glanced at their sleeping faces, wishing that she, too, could lose herself in sleep. She looked at her watch. Six thirty. She counted the hours in her head. Less than forty to go until she was standing at the altar of the Anglican church in Baghdad. The thought of Leonard waiting for her, turning to smile at her, to kiss her, made her blood freeze.

  She felt a desperate urge to unburden herself, to pour out the fears she had been bottling up ever since she stepped onto the train in London. She looked again at the dozing women, realizing that they were both probably worn out from staying up most of last night looking after her.

  Something had changed on that journey down through Turkey. It had begun on the night of the flood, when they were all together in the compartment into the small hours. But Katharine’s fever had turned them into more than just fellow travelers. There was a tangible bond between them now. And Katharine longed to confide in these . . . She stopped short of the word that was nudging its way from the back of her mind.

  Friends.

  She didn’t think o
f herself as a woman who had friends. Not women friends, anyway. If someone had asked her to list those closest to her, she would have reeled off the names of the men at the dig. There was her sister in Norfolk, of course. But they had never been what Katharine would describe as close. Not close enough to confide in when Bertram died. And not close enough to know about the . . . what? There was no word to describe it. The doctor had come up with some gobbledygook about a congenital insensitivity to hormones, but even he had been unable to put a name to the thing that had driven Bertram to an early grave.

  She glanced out of the window. Nothing but sand and sky as far as the eye could see. There was something rather sinister about this bright landscape. You could get lost in it despite the openness. At noon it was impossible to tell if you were going north, southeast, or west, and these buses sometimes took the wrong way in the maze of tracks.

  Is that what you’re doing?

  The voice in her head was Bertram’s. She carried him with her still. If he had only told her what the doctor had said, talked to her instead of marching out into the night with a gun.

  You don’t have to go through with this, you know.

  “Oh, but I do,” she whispered at her reflection in the window. If she pulled out of this marriage to Leonard, she would be on her way back to London on the next train. Not back to the British Museum—there would be no job for her there once she was off the dig team. She would be reduced to touting for business around the fashion houses. But the world of haute couture, once so glamorous, held no appeal now. She couldn’t go back to hemlines and handbags and hats. Not when she was making her mark in a man’s world. A world of lost kingdoms and buried treasure. Living like a man was what she loved, what she craved.

  She had mastered them all—all the young men she worked with—and she could master Leonard, too, if she was clever about it. For all his gravitas, he was a novice in matters of the heart. His lack of protest about what wasn’t going to happen on the wedding night had made that plain. She would have to tantalize him, as she had tantalized Max. Give him glimpses of her, like a painting in an art gallery—something that could be gazed upon but not touched.

  In the seat beside her, Nancy stirred in her sleep, her body twitching as if she was in the middle of a nightmare. Which, in reality, Katharine thought, she was. And Agatha was not much better off. According to the newspapers, the ink was barely dry on her divorce from a husband whose infidelity had driven her to a nervous breakdown. How could either of these women bear to hear Katharine talking about her wedding? Confronted with the news, they would have to muster fake enthusiasm, pretend to be pleased for her. Then there would be questions about how the romance had evolved. That would be excruciating. And yet she found herself wanting to invite them to the church. Why? For moral support? Now that the time was almost upon her, she felt unaccountably terrified.

  As the bus veered to the right, a towering sand dune came into view. This stretch of desert was very much like the landscape outside Cairo. And it had been around this time, just as the sun was setting, that her husband had climbed onto the Great Pyramid at Giza and shot himself.

  She had never seen Bertram’s body. His commanding officer had come to find her, to break the awful news. She had asked to go to the mortuary, but he had advised her against it. In shock, she had acquiesced. Later, she wished she hadn’t. She tortured herself, imagining what had happened. And the nightmares made her afraid to fall asleep.

  The thought of what she was about to do, of repeating the very same vows she had made to Bertram, set off a wave of panic. Pain and guilt rushed in, threatening to overwhelm her.

  I’m getting married the day after tomorrow.

  She tried to picture herself telling them. Perhaps if she left it until they were actually in Baghdad, at the moment they parted. Oh, by the way, I’m getting married tomorrow—will you come?

  No time for questions then.

  The only real landmark on the whole journey between Damascus and Baghdad was the desert fortress of Rutbah. The fleet of coaches arrived there at just after midnight. Agatha woke up as the driver applied the brakes. The one sign of life was a flickering light looming out of the darkness. As they came to a stop, she saw huge wooden gates. The thud as they were unbarred could be heard through the window. Standing on each side, their rifles raised, were a pair of guards in pith helmets and long leather boots. They boarded each coach in turn and walked the length of it, eyeing each passenger with fierce expressions.

  “The Camel Corps,” Katharine whispered. “They’re on the lookout for bandits masquerading as bona fide travelers.”

  When the inspection was over, the coaches were allowed to drive into the fort and the gates were shut behind them. Then Jim Nairn climbed aboard with a megaphone.

  “We’re taking a short rest here,” he announced. “It’ll be three hours until we get moving again. They don’t have many rooms, but if you don’t mind sharing, there are some beds.”

  It was even more cramped than he had suggested. Katharine, Agatha, and Nancy were herded into a windowless room with dark mud-brick walls. The only furniture was a pair of double beds. Before they could decide who would sleep where, another three women—all veiled—were shown into the room.

  “Well, it’s a good thing none of us is fat!” Katharine patted the mattress, sending a little shower of sand onto the floor. “Who’s going to be piggy in the middle?”

  “Do you think we should lie on our coats?” Nancy edged gingerly onto the bed. “Ugh! Is that a cockroach?” She pointed to a dark shape moving on the wall.

  “There’s another one!” Agatha was looking at the ceiling, where a naked lightbulb gave out a dim glow.

  There was a rustle from the other side of the room. One of the veiled women stepped forward, holding a small tin in her hand. “No frighten,” she said. “I have fire.”

  “What’s she doing?” Nancy craned her neck as the woman struck a match.

  “She’s lighting ajwain seeds,” Katharine said. “Can you smell it?”

  A curl of smoke rose from the tin and wafted across the room. “Oh,” Agatha said, “it’s like . . . rosemary or thyme or something.”

  “They use it out here to drive away insects.” Katharine nodded, beaming at the woman with the tin, who set it down on the floor between the two beds. “It’s very effective—I wish I’d had some on the train.”

  As the smoke rose toward the ceiling, the cockroaches came scuttling down, disappearing into a hole in the skirting board, which one of the other Arab women proceeded to block with her suitcase. Then everyone settled down for what remained of the night.

  Katharine closed her eyes, but sleep refused to come. She could feel the warmth of Nancy’s body through the coat she had wrapped herself up in. From the sound of their breathing, both the others were asleep. Across the room one of the Arab women was snoring. She couldn’t see her watch in the dark, but she knew it must be getting on for one o’clock in the morning. Monday morning. She had just one more night of freedom.

  She tried to imagine how she would feel if it was Leonard, not Nancy, lying beside her now. The thought made her insides curl. It wasn’t that she didn’t like him. He was not handsome, like Bertram, who had swept her away the first time she set eyes on him. But even if Leonard had been the most gorgeous creature ever to walk God’s earth, it wouldn’t have helped. She would still be afraid.

  She felt the bed shift as Nancy turned over. “Are you awake, Katharine?” she whispered.

  “Yes. Can’t seem to nod off.”

  “Me neither. I wish it was morning. I don’t like this place. If I fell asleep, I’d have nightmares—would you?”

  Katharine longed to spill it all out then. Her secret clung to her like the scent of the burning seeds beside the bed. If she whispered it now, in the dark, would it matter? Would it help? There was nothing Nancy or anyone else could do to change things. Better to keep it to herself, to maintain the image of the confident career woman who did exactly as
she liked and feared no one.

  “I’m not worried about nightmares,” she said. “It’s the snoring that’s keeping me awake. She sounds just like Mary’s camel, doesn’t she—when it kept spitting.”

  Nancy giggled in the darkness. “I’m glad you’re not asleep,” she said. “It’s horrible when you’re lying awake on your own, isn’t it?”

  It was still dark when Jim Nairn came banging on doors to wake everybody up. People trudged out into the courtyard and onto the waiting coaches like sleepwalkers. An hour into the onward journey, the first hint of light appeared in the eastern sky. As the horizon turned from gray to apricot, the coaches juddered to a halt. Agatha peered through the window, her eyes bleary with sleep. A group of men in traditional Arab robes were setting up primus stoves and unpacking copper pans from large wicker baskets. Then—to her amazement—they produced large tins of what looked like sausages.

  The passengers were summoned from their seats by Jim Nairn, who looked annoyingly bright-eyed and lively for a man who had probably had no sleep at all.

  “Breakfast!” he barked through the megaphone. “Line up in front of the bus, please!”