The Woman on the Orient Express

by Lindsay Jayne Ashford

  “Oh yes,” she said, grateful for the chance to escape.

  “Reste là,” he said when she jumped up. “Je vais l’amener à vous.” He would bring it out to the courtyard. So she had no choice but to join the others.

  Max was waiting on the other side of the door.

  “I must talk to you,” he whispered.

  She went to pass him, pretending she hadn’t heard.

  “Please!” She felt his hand on her arm. “I need to explain. Come with me, will you? Just for a second.”

  “You don’t need to explain your personal affairs to me, Max,” she said sharply. “It’s none of my business.”

  “But I do.” He glanced over his shoulder at the others, who were helping themselves to coffee. “I don’t want you thinking there’s something going on between me and . . .” His voice died as the Frenchman reappeared with the cuneiform tablet. Taking Agatha’s arm, Max propelled her back into the room. “Excuse me, Pierre,” he said, “there’s something I’ve got to show our guest—she’ll be back in two ticks.”

  He took her to a cubicle off the sitting room, which contained a trestle table covered in broken pottery. He closed the door behind them. “Sorry,” he said. “I just had to put things straight. What you saw—I know what it must have looked like, but it’s not as it seems.” His eyes met hers, and he held them. “It might sound a peculiar thing, but she gets these terrible headaches. Severe migraines. And it falls to me to treat them.” He glanced down at his hands. “I have no relish for the task, but she says that massage is the only thing that relieves the pain.”

  Agatha paused for a moment, considering this. “Why on earth can’t Leonard do it? It seems a strange thing to ask a colleague to do.”

  “He’s far too busy for that.”

  “Well, why doesn’t she go to a doctor, then?”

  “The nearest doctor is in Nasiriyah, thirty miles away, and as there’s no telephone here, we have to survive without him.” He clicked his tongue. “Katharine often wakes up in the night feeling unwell. She’s tried rousing Leonard, but no amount of calling seems to wake him—which is hardly surprising given how little sleep he allows himself. A few days after they were married, she resorted to tying a piece of string round his toe and tugging it violently when she needed him—but to no avail. So now she comes to me in emergencies.”

  The thought of the great archaeologist being tethered by the toe made Agatha want to smile in spite of herself.

  “I sometimes have to apply leeches to her forehead as well.” Max mirrored her expression with a wry look. “A doctor who visited the dig last season said bloodletting would be beneficial.”

  “Oh, that sounds a bit grim!” She saw the look of relief on his face at the lightness in her voice. “I suppose I did rather jump to conclusions when I saw her lying on your bed.” She went on, “After what you’d said on the train about not wanting her to know you were there, well . . .”

  He nodded. “I can see why you might put two and two together. She’s a very difficult woman to be around—if you’re a man, that is. She’s what my mother would call an allumeuse.”

  Despite her fluent French, this was a word Agatha hadn’t heard before. “Oh . . . ,” she hesitated. “Like a match, you mean?”

  “Exactly,” Max replied. “She draws men to her like moths to a flame. Except a flame doesn’t do it on purpose and she does. Even if you’re not interested, she makes it very hard to resist. It’s like a game to her.” He picked up a piece of pottery from the table, examining its rough edges. “When I first came here, three years ago, she used to ask me to brush her hair. It was in the evenings, when Leonard was holed up in the Antiquities Room. He’d have gone mad if he’d known what I was doing: not because he was jealous, or anything, but because he can’t stand people being idle. I tried to tell her that, but she wouldn’t have it. She has this way of making you do what she wants. She can be absolutely entrancing—but if you cross her, she creates this poisonous, charged atmosphere.”

  His face was still in shadow. Apparently, he was afraid of betraying his feelings. How far had things gone, Agatha wondered? Had she rebuffed him or had it been the other way round? She wanted desperately to know but sensed that to probe any further would be more than he could bear. “What about her husband,” she asked instead. “Does he know about all this?”

  She heard him sigh before he spoke. “It’s because of it that he married her. Word of her behavior got back to the trustees at the British Museum. A lot of the money comes from the Presbyterian Church in America, and if they got wind of it, there’d be a good chance of them pulling out—so the trustees made it clear she couldn’t go on living here as a single woman.”

  “But why him?”

  “Because he’s the boss.” Max looked up, his eyes wary, as if he was afraid of being overheard. “She likes people to think that she’s very independent—but what she really wants is security, someone who can protect her.”

  Agatha found this difficult to square with the confident, self-assured persona Katharine had projected on the train. But she reminded herself that she had already glimpsed what lay beneath the surface. The night Katharine had been delirious: the anguish in her voice when she had spoken of her first husband’s suicide; and the morning of the wedding, when she had said she knew what it felt like to have your private life picked over by the press. Perhaps it wasn’t so very hard to believe that she craved the solid respectability a man like Leonard could provide.

  “But does she love him?” At the risk of sounding nosy, Agatha had to ask. Because if Katharine didn’t love her husband—if it was just a marriage of convenience—then maybe she still had Max in her sights.

  Max opened his mouth to reply but was cut short by a knock at the door.

  “As tu finis?” Pierre sounded impatient.

  “We’d better go,” Max said. “Otherwise, you’ll be the one they’re whispering about.”

  CHAPTER 21

  “I can’t tell you how good it is to have you here.” Katharine was holding her cigarette in one hand and the handle of an ancient terra-cotta urn in the other. “I didn’t want to leave you in Baghdad. I’d have packed you both into Queen Mary if I could.”

  “I’m not sure Leonard would have been keen on that.” Nancy shot a sly glance at Agatha. “I expect he wanted you all to himself while he had the chance.”

  Katharine put the cigarette to her lips, inhaling deeply. The smoke she blew out hung like a cloud in the confined space of the cubicle. “Would you like to know how I spent my honeymoon night?” She paused, looking from one to the other. “Supervising the digging of the latrines. When we arrived, the workmen hadn’t finished preparing the new dig site. So I had to stand over them all night, to make sure they got it done before the others arrived.”

  “Oh, poor you—how miserable!” Nancy said. “I hope things have improved since.”

  “Not exactly.” There was a warning note in Katharine’s voice.

  “Well, if it’s any consolation,” Nancy went on, “I had what probably ranks as the worst honeymoon in history.”

  There was a curious intensity in Katharine’s eyes as she listened to Nancy’s description of her husband’s blatant infidelity. “I think I would have wanted to kill him,” she said. “What on earth did you do, stuck there with the two of them?”

  Nancy looked at Agatha before replying. “I’m afraid I jumped out of the frying pan into the fire.”

  Agatha watched Katharine’s face as Nancy gave a faltering account of her affair with the married actor. Katharine’s expression was unreadable. Agatha wondered if there were echoes of her own past in this story. Had she been unfaithful to her first husband? Was that why he had committed suicide?

  She scoured her memory for the exact words Katharine had uttered while she was delirious. That fool should never have told him . . . Such a shock . . . No one could take a thing like that. Yes, she thought. That could easily be what had happened. Katharine had taken a lover out in E
gypt. Possibly a friend or a close colleague of her husband’s. And then someone had told him.

  “The thing is . . .” Nancy fell silent. Agatha watched a wisp of cigarette smoke float across the table, eddying around the pile of pottery that lay abandoned now. “I . . . I’m expecting a baby.”

  Katharine made a small whispered sound, like a dry leaf crushed underfoot. She had gone very pale. Even her eyes seemed to have lost some of their color. Their vivid violet blue had a ghostly opalescence. “A baby?”

  “I’m sorry.” Nancy’s face flushed. “I’ve offended you. It’s an awful thing to admit to. I wouldn’t blame you if you threw me out.”

  “No, I . . .”

  Agatha sensed that Katharine was at a total loss for words. She had never seen her like this. All of her confidence seemed to have evaporated. Nancy’s news had delivered a body blow. Why?

  “I’m just surprised, that’s all.” Katharine stubbed out her cigarette and reached for another one. “I mean, you don’t look pregnant . . .”

  “I’ve still got a while to go.” Nancy patted her stomach. “I’ve been trying to hide it. I’d be grateful if you didn’t mention it to the others.”

  “Of course I won’t. I’d better tell them you’re getting over some bug, though—just in case any of them tries dragging you off on some jaunt across the desert.” She flipped her lighter open and held it to the end of her cigarette. “Try not to be offended if they flirt with you. Max and Duncan, especially. It’s hard for them, stuck out here for months on end. And you’re a very pretty girl.”

  Agatha flinched. In Katharine’s mind, Max and Nancy were potential mates. Would she have said that if she was still interested in him herself?

  That night, when all the others had gone off to their beds, Katharine asked Saleem to bring hot water for a bath. The bathroom in the main building wasn’t much bigger than the one in the annex. It housed a small copper tub, just big enough to sit in with knees bent. It took five journeys to and from the kitchen for Saleem to fill it, but it was a nightly ritual Katharine insisted on—the one luxury of life at the dig.

  When the bath was ready and the oil lamp set on the floor, she sent Saleem away and slipped out of her robe. Then she poured in a splash of emerald liquid from a bottle purchased in Harrods’ beauty department the week before her wedding. The water bubbled up when she agitated it with her fingers.

  Climbing into the tub, she drew the foam up around her breasts so that only her neck and face were visible above the water. There was a window in the bathroom—just a square no more than a foot across—and she had left the blind up, deliberately.

  She began to soap herself, drawing her hands slowly and seductively over her body, knowing that he was watching.

  Agatha wasn’t sure how long she had been asleep. She had left the shutters open when she blew out her candle. The sky beyond the window was a smudge of gray in the black of the mud-brick wall.

  A single star came into view as she propped herself up on her elbows. Perhaps it was the sight of it that gave her the idea of going onto the roof. Or it might have been the claustrophobic feel of the little room. No need to light the candle. She would find her way across the courtyard by starlight.

  She felt her way along the corridor, hearing the now-familiar rise and fall of snoring from the room at the far end. Michael or Pierre? She wasn’t sure whose room this was. Not Duncan’s, she guessed. He was too young, surely, to have developed such a habit. And as for Max, well, she knew which room was his, and there was no sound coming from inside as she groped her way past the door.

  Stepping into the courtyard, she turned her face to the sky, dazzled at the sight of all the stars. In Baghdad she had often sat out on the veranda at night, looking at the sky. But it had never looked quite as spectacular as this. The stars looked close enough to touch.

  Carefully, she climbed the steps up to the roof. She picked her way past the heaps of broken pottery until she found a place to sit. The roof was still a little warm—from the stored heat of the sun or the fire Saleem had made after supper? She wasn’t sure. She made her shawl into a pillow and lay down flat, wishing she knew the names of the constellations scattered overhead like raindrops in a web of indigo silk.

  There was a patch of a different color low in the sky. An apricot haze, like the dying rays of the sun. She wondered what it could be. Not the sun—far too late for that. As she stared at it, it changed shape. Its edges became sharper, with a curve like a slice of melon. With a little gasp, she saw what it was. The moon. A crescent, on its back, rising up from the horizon like a golden boat gliding into an inky ocean.

  As she watched it rise higher, she thought of Nannar, the Sumerian moon god, an old man guiding his boat across the night sky. She might not know the names of the constellations, but she had enough awareness of the moon to know that a crescent rising late at night meant that it was waning, not new. An old moon. With an old man steering it. Strange that it was a man, not a woman, when in so many other cultures the moon was perceived as a female deity, with its changing shape echoing the rhythms of a woman’s body.

  The maiden, the mother, and the crone.

  She had been a maiden and a mother. Was this all that was left to her now, then? To be like the ever-shrinking slice of moon overhead, growing paler and more insignificant with every passing hour?

  I’m thirty-eight years old.

  She was not ready to relinquish the full-moon phase of her life. Not ready to give up on . . . what? Possibilities. That was all.

  She thought of her mother, who by the age of thirty-eight was already a widow. Had it ever crossed her mind that she was too young to live out the rest of her life alone? In Paris, or in Egypt, had there been men who noticed her, alone with a young daughter, and looked for an encouraging word or glance?

  As far as Agatha had been aware, there had never been even a hint of interest in anyone else. It was unlikely that her mother would choose to be anywhere now but in the place where she had been buried, next to her husband. But Agatha felt her spirit so strongly sometimes. Here. Now. Whispering in her ear.

  Was that possible?

  She focused on one star, brighter than the others, not far from the crescent moon. Scientists said that it took light from a star like that thousands, millions of years to reach people on earth. That seemed incredible. Unbelievable. But it was true. Looking at the stars, anything seemed possible. And sensing that, a strange sort of peace came over her. She was utterly alone. Just her and the moon and the stars. And it didn’t matter. It was enough.

  A small sound, like a pebble thrown against a window, pulled her back. She listened. Someone was climbing the stairs to the roof. Leonard? Come to gather more material for inspection? What would he say if he saw her lying there? She sat up quickly, the stars swirling in a giddy haze.

  “Agatha?”

  It was Katharine who emerged at the top of the staircase, silhouetted against the sky.

  “What are you doing up here?” There was a smile in her voice. “Couldn’t you sleep?” She slipped through the pottery shards with the grace and speed of a cat. “It’s wonderful, isn’t it?” She settled herself down, cross-legged, next to Agatha and tilted her head back. “Do you see that very bright star, right above us? That’s Sirius. And to the left of it—that constellation is Aquarius.”

  Agatha craned her neck. “I never knew it looked like that. Oh yes—I can see it now: like a woman sitting on the ground, clutching a jar. Amazing!”

  “I know. You can imagine people doing this thousands of years ago, can’t you? Sitting round a campfire, gazing at the sky, night after night, watching all the patterns come and go. The sheer scale of it. So beautiful and so empty. I come up here often, just to escape.”

  “I’m sorry—I’ve spoiled it for you.”

  “Not at all. It’s the men I want to get away from—not you.”

  “I suppose it must get oppressive sometimes.” Agatha paused. She wanted to ask if things had changed—for b
etter or worse—since Katharine’s marriage. But she was afraid to stray into what she sensed was forbidden territory.

  “It’s not as tense now as it used to be.” Katharine stretched out her legs, propping herself up on her elbows. “Now that Len and I are married, it’s . . . well . . . like a line drawn in the sand, I suppose. We all know where we are.”

  Len. She hadn’t ever called him that before. It seemed to signal a loosening up, a willingness to confide. If Agatha was quiet, if she made herself almost invisible, Katharine might just reveal a little more.

  “I understand, now, why you’re here.” Katharine was still looking at the stars. Her words took Agatha by surprise. “I wrote to my sister in England, telling her you were coming, and she sent me a newspaper cutting. About your husband’s marriage.” A pause and then: “I don’t blame you, wanting to get away. If I’d known, I wouldn’t have inflicted my own wedding on you. It must have been miserable, being reminded like that.”

  Agatha felt a numbing tightness in her throat. She fixed her gaze on that very bright star, watching it blur as tears pricked the back of her eyes. Sirius. She said the name over and over in her head, like counting to ten when you stub your toe. She didn’t want to talk about Archie. But Katharine was trying to make amends, trying to compensate for something she clearly felt embarrassed about. And was there any point in keeping silent when her life was public property anyway?

  “I don’t think I’ll ever get over losing my first husband.” Katharine sat upright, pulling her cigarette case from her dressing gown pocket. “He was the first man I ever truly loved—and I don’t think you ever do get over that.” She flipped up the top of her lighter, cupping it with her hands. The flame cast a yellow glow over her face. “There was an inquest into Bertram’s death and a journalist phoned me, asking questions. It was absolutely ghastly—as if I wasn’t feeling wretched enough, without the papers raking over it.” She sucked in smoke and blew it out. “It must have been ten times worse for you—that business in Harrogate.”