The Baghdad Railway Club

by Andrew Martin

  ‘The Battle of Trafalgar?’ I said, dazed.

  Wilson shook his head. ‘He’s going all out with a new treatment he’s worked up: The Great Fire of London.’

  ‘And what’s this special item?’ I said, indicating the third placard.

  ‘You’ll see,’ said Wilson. ‘You’re the star.’

  The wife was talking to Buckley.

  ‘So you’ve been to the Picture House?’ he was saying, looking worried.

  ‘It’s really gorgeous,’ said the wife, ‘tip-up seats, two programmes a week continuous daily, all the latest American pictures, ice-cream parlour, balcony, gallery, fancy plasterwork – a lovely scheme of decoration, it is – and an orchestra!’ And then she remembered herself, so she indicated the Electric and said, ‘But this is my favourite.’

  Inside, the Electric was fairly plain. It was painted brown. As we crossed the entrance hall, the Chief was looking all around.

  ‘Ever been here before?’ Buckley was anxiously enquiring.

  The Chief shook his head, saying, ‘You don’t have an alcoholic licence, do you?’

  And there in a nutshell was the reason.

  We entered the auditorium and I heard the Chief asking Buckley, ‘Where’s the lantern operated from?’ He then shot me a look that told me he was taking the rise out of Buckley.

  The projection box was at the rear. It was dark. I sat next to the wife on the front row. We all sat on the front row. The wife said, ‘Your Chief wanted me to sign the Official Secrets Act before I came here.’

  ‘And did you?’

  ‘I told him not to be so daft. But I think Buckley may’ve had to sign it. And the fellow in there,’ she added, gesturing towards the projection box.

  Buckley was turning about, signalling that way. The room then became darker still, and the whirring started. On the picture screen appeared the words ‘WALLACE KING BRINGS THE WORLD TO YOU’, and then there was the desert of Mesopotamia, and something was happening beyond the furthest extent of it.

  ‘The sunrise,’ Wilson was whispering to the Chief. ‘That’s why we were there, you see: to film the sunrise.’ After a few minutes he leant over to Buckley, saying, ‘Not a flicker! Not a flicker!’ at which Buckley nodded rather graciously. ‘It’s a good job we don’t have sound,’ Wilson continued after a further half minute or so of the sun rising, ‘because just now you’d be hearing Mr King saying, “Pan right, you idiot, pan right!”’

  And the camera now began its travel, bringing the abandoned train into view.

  ‘Nice work,’ Buckley whispered to Wilson.

  ‘Not bad,’ said Wilson. ‘Well, I’ve been in the camera trade since I was a boy.’

  The camera came to rest on three figures, all blurred. The focus was adjusted and I saw myself with gun pointing at Shepherd. I was wavering, staggering somewhat. A man came into view – Findlay. He drew his gun; I turned as he was aiming it, and fired my own revolver – in complete silence of course – whereupon Findlay’s piece went spinning from his hand.

  ‘Good shot‚ lad,’ said the Chief, from three seats along.

  On the screen, I now had my gun aimed at both Findlay and Shepherd, and we were all speaking. The wife, next to me, was looking on, fascinated. Then Shepherd had his gun pointed at me, and she turned and stared at me in horror. Beyond Shepherd’s right shoulder, I could make out the muster of mounted Arabs. They were out of focus, but not completely so, and I saw a small figure in the middle of them gesturing to another of the tribe (if that be the word), who aimed a rifle. The small figure signalled to the marksman, and Shepherd fell down at that moment.

  ‘Is this real?’ gasped Buckley.

  ‘Better than The Gentleman Rider, eh?’ said Wilson.

  ‘But he’s not dead is he?’ said the wife, who’d had the whole story from me several times over.

  ‘He will be soon,’ I said, and the Chief leant towards the wife, kindly explaining, ‘The bullet went clean through his upper arm, shattered two ribs and – fortunately for him – lodged in the lung. If you’re going to be shot,’ he added, ‘be shot in the lung. It’s very seldom fatal.’

  I had fallen at the same time as Shepherd.

  Wilson said, ‘At this moment I was saying to Mr King, “Hadn’t we better go and help?” and he was saying, “If you leave off cranking, I’ll bloody shoot you!”’

  On the screen, I was attempting to stagger to my feet, which I had not remembered doing. In the course of that action, I faced the camera.

  ‘Oh‚ Jim,’ said the wife, ‘you look like nothing on earth.’

  But I wasn’t looking at me. I was watching the approaching rider – the one that had broken away from the Arabs; the one who had indicated to the marksman.

  ‘So that’s Harriet Bailey,’ said the Chief. ‘She’s quite a looker.’

  ‘Hold on a minute.’ I was saying, ‘Hold on a minute.’

  On the screen, I’d fallen down again. I was on the desert floor alongside Shepherd – looked like I was lying in bed with him. Major Findlay had approached Harriet Bailey, who had remained mounted, and who wore a keffiyah. The focus was again adjusted, and I could clearly see Findlay in profile, speaking to Harriet Bailey. He then gave a thin smile. But Miss Bailey did not return it. She pulled at the keffiyah, so that it fell away from her face, and she glowered down at Findlay. She then spoke to him, and his smile disappeared. Other men came running into the picture – Royal Engineers – and the screen went black.

  Silence in the auditorium.

  The lights came up, and I turned to Manners, who said, ‘She protected you, do you see? She ordered her Arab pal to shoot when Shepherd pulled the gun on you.’

  ‘What was she doing with those Arabs?’

  ‘Oh you know, buttering them up, arguing the British case. I can’t quite recall what lot they were, but her dealings with them were a matter of absolute confidentiality. I believe it was pure coincidence that she was in the same region of the desert as your party, and in order to come to your aid she had to break cover so to speak. As you could tell, she wasn’t very happy about it. You see, it was above all important that the Arabs should believe her to be quite independent of the British secret service, whereas in fact of course . . .’

  ‘She was the other agent.’

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘She was the one you wouldn’t let me speak to.’

  ‘Right again. I’m sorry about it all. We ought never to have mentioned any other agent in the first place.’

  ‘So before my arrival,’ I said, ‘Captain Boyd was in contact with Harriet Bailey only because they were both intelligence agents?’

  Manners nodded. ‘Unfortunately, Boyd was rather too overt – kept trying to telegraph to her, and when she came up from Basrah, he insisted on meeting her a couple of times.’

  ‘So word got out that they were lovers?’

  ‘I suppose so. And that gave Shepherd his cue to develop the clever tale about Major Findlay – who clearly was enamoured of Miss Bailey – having done for Captain Boyd.’

  My thoughts raced. Had Miss Bailey known I was investigating Shepherd? She’d given me a good look over on our first meeting. That might have been because I resembled Boyd, or because he had told her I would be arriving in order to work with Shepherd and keep tabs on him. She had asked me, with some concern, the whereabouts of my revolver.

  The wife stood up. She faced Buckley. ‘I want to see it again,’ she said.

  Manners was looking at his watch. He said, ‘Be my guest, Mrs Stringer. I’m sure you’d all like to see it again before it goes under lock and key. But I have a train to catch.’

  He shook all our hands, and I believe he had already quit the Electric Theatre by the time the lights dimmed once more, the whirring began again, and ‘WALLACE KING BRINGS THE WORLD TO YOU’ reappeared before us.

  This time we watched the reel in silence, and there was no sound in the auditorium but the flickering of the projection machine – until, that is, Harriet Bailey remove
d her keffiyah and glared down at Major Findlay, at which point her words were suddenly and very clearly audible: ‘No. I believe you did it.’

  It was the wife who had spoken. I turned to her. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘It’s what she said.’

  ‘You told me in your letter,’ I said, stunned. ‘You can see speech.’

  ‘Not as well as Margaret Lawson, I can’t.’

  ‘I knew!’ I said, ‘I knew!’ I turned to the Chief. ‘Did you see Findlay when he drew his gun? There was a delay. He cocked the trigger. It was a single-action. He had Boyd’s gun, not Shepherd. What time is Manners’s train?’

  ‘Half three,’ said the Chief. ‘London express.’

  It was twenty past.

  With a clamour of raised voices and questions behind me I was out of the auditorium, out of the Electric Theatre and into Fossgate. I began to run, as fast as my crocked right leg would allow. Shepherd had told me he meant to get hold of a Colt single-action. He would doubtless have put in for one at the armoury. A man wasn’t supposed to have two pieces but Shepherd was a lieutenant colonel and very persuasive with it. What he had told Jarvis about his meeting with Boyd at the railway station had all been true. Boyd had gone back to the range afterwards. He spent half his time at the range, after all. Findlay might easily have found him there, or intercepted him on the way. They had returned to the station to talk privately, just as Boyd had talked privately with Shepherd. Findlay would have challenged Boyd over his connection with Miss Bailey and Boyd would not have been able to tell the truth because the truth – that they were in Intelligence work – was a secret. And so they would have started a fight.

  I skittered into Parliament Street.

  Miss Bailey‚ too‚ would have wanted to guard the secret of the reason for the connection with Boyd. Perhaps she would rather Findlay thought it a romance than know the truth. Findlay must have thought that, as well as protecting himself, he was saving the lady’s reputation by going back into the club room for the photograph. Perhaps that had been in his mind when he’d killed Boyd – that he was saving the lady from herself. Well, she was a married woman.

  I doubted that she’d known what he’d done – not at first. Her declaration in the desert had seemed like a moment of revelation, prompted by Findlay saying something like ‘We have run to ground the killer of Captain Boyd.’

  Jarvis had had no need to commit suicide. He had not stood by while Shepherd had killed Boyd because Shepherd had not killed Boyd. But Jarvis had . . . what was the word? He had misconstrued, and what he had misconstrued he had passed on to Findlay. No doubt Findlay did believe Shepherd was a traitor on the strength of what Jarvis had told him, but he couldn’t have believed Shepherd was the killer of Boyd, because he was the killer of Boyd.

  Pushing through the crowds in the square, I repeated to myself out loud, ‘Everything Shepherd said was true.’ Everything he had said was true, as far as it went. But he had covered up as well. He had heard of the rumour of his treachery as proved by his decision to confront Boyd, yet he’d let on that he was hearing it from me for the first time. And no doubt he had taken Baghdad railway medals from the bimbashi at the station . . . But he had left out the rest: the arrangement he had made to give over information in return for treasure. He had only come round to discussing this in our desert stand-off, where he’d said he wanted to string the Turks along, to play a private game with them in return for supposed treasure that he insisted was really nothing more than . . .

  I was alongside the window of Pearson’s. I had five minutes before Manners’s express departed for London. It was a four-minute run to the station. I pushed at the shop door. Old man Pearson stood behind the counter. When he saw me, he froze.

  ‘I’m Stringer,’ I said, panting. ‘I brought in the brooch or whatever it was.’

  ‘I know you did,’ he said, eyeing me steadily.

  ‘Well?’ I said. ‘Have you looked at it?’

  ‘I have. Do you want to sit down?’

  ‘No. Look, is it real?’

  ‘How do you mean “real”?’

  ‘Is it valuable?’

  ‘You might say that,’ he said. ‘Where did you lay hands on it?’

  ‘I’ll tell you later. Look, I’m in a hurry.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I can see that. Shall I start with the stones or the tassel?’

  ‘The stones.’

  ‘Pastes,’ he said. ‘You can tell by the tiny air bubbles in the . . .’

  I made a dart for the door, but checked myself. ‘And the tassel?’

  ‘Fake pearls. A combination of glass and fish scales believe it or not, a very curious and antique formula.’

  I believed that I heard old Pearson say, as the door clanged behind me, ‘I’ll give you two pounds for it if you like!’

  I raced pell-mell over Ouse Bridge and along Station Rise. At half past three exactly, I clattered through the ticket gate on to platform four, and the express was drawing away. I began chasing it. A platform guard stood in my way, and I just floored him. When the train cleared the platform, I did too, running over the black rubble of the Holgate sidings. The express was approaching Holgate Junction. In a moment, the curvature of the line would take it from my sight. I gave it up, sat down on the rubble half dead, but as the train began to bend, a head appeared from the window. The head was bald. It disappeared back into the carriage.

  A moment later, the train began to brake.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The express from York whirled my First Class carriage fast through the night. It was heading . . . Well, it makes no odds. Let’s say I was on War Business. I might mention that it was towards the end of that summer of 1917 – a season of blaring and indeed murderous sun in Mesopotamia and rather weak sun and frequent showers in Blighty. The rain was lashing at the windows as we flew along; the fields seemed grey-blue rather than green, and the gas was up.

  I caught up my Railway Magazine, opening it at the page marked ‘At the Club Room’ and ‘Forthcoming Talks’.

  ‘On Thursday October 9th,’ I read, ‘Mr John Maycroft will give his talk, Humour on the Rails, together with lantern slides. This was unavoidably postponed in January. Mr Maycroft is the author of Humours of a Country Station, Our Booking Office, Down or Up & c. & c., and is widely considered our principal railway comedian. Tea and coffee will be served.’

  This was not the page I had wanted to see. I had in any case already read of the promised coming of Maycroft, so I turned to the article I’d been halfway through: ‘Some Developments at Crewe’. My place was marked with a picture postcard I’d received a week before. It was of the booklet type, with attached leaf for longer messages. It had come from Manners and was doubtless one of the ones he’d bought in the York Station Hotel. It featured a grid of photographs showing parts of the Bar Walls and parts of the Minster. Underneath the pictures was written ‘Did you know that York is a jewel of the North?’

  ‘Well . . . did you?’ began the message from the ever more flippant Manners:

  . . . I believe you did. A tedious report will be despatched to you shortly, but I thought you should know that Major Findlay is dead. He was given pretty fair warning that he would be taken in charge for the murder of Boyd, and that Miss (or should I say Mrs) Bailey would give evidence against him. He did the right thing. Your York surmises proved quite correct, and we did not have to press the lady too hard. She had already resolved to speak out about her suspicions of Findlay, not that any of it really amounted to evidence, but in the end it didn’t need to. He had not spoken to her since they’d returned together to the clubhouse to look for the photograph. Findlay had then gone off on his own after Jarvis, who’d given him his wrong account of what had happened between Boyd and Shepherd. Findlay was thus encouraged in thinking he’d got away with what he’d done, and it seems he urged Jarvis to come out publicly against Shepherd. It was all too much for Jarvis. Anyhow later on, in the desert, Findlay announced the wounded Shepherd as the kille
r of Boyd, and all of Harriet Bailey’s doubts came together, resulting in her outburst.

  You are to be congratulated on provoking the crisis that brought this end about. The Chief had told me you would do something of the sort – that while you were not quite Sherlock Holmes, you were nothing if not dogged. I believe I am also indebted to your dear lady wife and a certain Miss Lawson, a type-writer by profession.

  As for Lieutenant Colonel Shepherd, he is pretty well patched up and out of Baghdad. He took it all like a sportsman, I must say, but of course he should have let on about the jewels even if they were fake. The fellow is what is called a lone wolf; he is also incorrigible. Of his present whereabouts I have absolutely no idea, and would rather like to keep it like that.

  Good luck to you, Captain Stringer,

  Peter Manners.

  I pocketed the card, and the train and I and the world raced on into the night.

  Historical Note

  My description of the British occupation of Baghdad in the summer of 1917, including the events leading up to that occupation, the disposition of British and Turkish forces, and the development of railways around Baghdad, is, I hope, roughly accurate. By the end of the war, the British had established full control over what would become the state of Iraq, at a cost of 92,000 British and Indian lives and an unknown number of Turkish and Arab lives. Iraq was established as a British mandate, but a nationalist revolt of 1920 showed the impossibility of direct colonial rule. The British therefore installed a monarchy under the Hashemite King Faisal. However, the regime was unpopular with Shia Muslims (Faisal was a Sunni), also with Kurds and nationalists. In 1958 it was overthrown in favour of a military dictatorship.

  By the Same Author

  Bilton

  The Bobby Dazzlers

  In the ‘Jim Stringer‚ Steam Detective’ series:

  The Necropolis Railway

  The Blackpool Highflyer