Death in a Desert Land

by Andrew Wilson

  Her eyes were full of fear. “Are you trying to poison me?” she said, pushing the cup away.

  “No, of course not. What gave you that idea?”

  “People have been doing strange things to me. Horrible things.”

  “Who? And what things? What do you mean?”

  She looked like a sullen child. “You wouldn’t understand. You wouldn’t believe me.”

  “Here, please try to take this,” I said, offering the cup to her once more. “You can trust me. I can assure you that this will not harm you.”

  I had some suspicions about Katharine Woolley, but I met her accusatory stare with kindness. It was obvious that she was very ill indeed. She took the cup and sipped its contents. “That’s right, a little more of the tea,” I said. “Now let’s get you into bed.” I helped her undress, pulled back the covers, and made sure she was comfortable. “You’ll feel better in the morning,” I said, not convinced at all that this was the truth. I cleaned the scratches on her arm and sat with her as the drug started to do its work. Her eyelids fluttered, closed, and soon she was asleep.

  When I returned to the sitting room, I discovered that everyone except for Leonard Woolley had gone to bed. He was sitting in a leather chair, nursing a large glass of brandy.

  “How is she?” he asked, gesturing for me to come and sit by him.

  “She’s taken the sedative, so at least she’ll get some sleep,” I replied.

  “I can’t believe it—she loved that animal. You should have seen her with it; it was like her own baby. I thought the attention she showed it was a bit pathetic at times. Surely she wouldn’t have done anything to harm it?”

  But he—like all of us—had seen the scratches on Katharine’s arms. “I suppose it must have been done in a fit of madness. She must not have known what she was doing,” he admitted.

  “Have you seen her like this before?”

  Woolley’s eyes clouded with painful memories. “I suppose you might as well know the truth,” he said, taking a large sip of the brandy. “I’m at a loss to know what to do. I’m not sure if I can endure it much longer.”

  “Do you want to tell me what’s been troubling you?”

  “You’ve seen what she’s like. I’ve been trying to pretend to everyone here that Katharine suffers from nothing more than terrible migraines. But over the last few weeks I’ve begun to worry about the state of her mind.”

  “Have you witnessed things that warrant such a concern?”

  “I have,” he said, sighing. “So many, I don’t know where to begin.” He stood up and checked the doors to make sure no one was listening. “I’ve been trying to keep it from the rest of the team here, but that has not been easy. A number of people came to me; poor souls, I should never have asked them to put up with it. Anyway, they felt that Katharine’s behavior had started to become not only eccentric but erratic. They said that . . . that they no longer felt safe around her. Well, after tonight’s incident, who is going to blame them?”

  “I think it’s best if you tell me everything, Mr. Woolley,” I said. “I’m not sure I’m the right person, but I will do my utmost to help.”

  “You will?”

  “Why, of course.”

  “Would you care for . . . ?” he asked, proffering the brandy. “No, I forgot: you don’t drink,” he said, pouring himself another measure. “Well, I may as well start at the beginning. I’m correct in saying that’s what you writers would do?”

  I nodded encouragingly. “That’s right.”

  “It’s not a pretty tale, I’m afraid, but it is one that you must hear if you are to understand anything about my wife. And you are sure you won’t be shocked?”

  “As you know, I was a nurse in the war, Mr. Woolley. There is precious little in this world that shocks me.”

  “Very well,” he said. “When I first met Katharine—Mrs. Keeling, as she was then—in the spring of 1924. She was already a widow. She was a beguiling creature, a beauty . . . well, she’s still that. She came out here as a volunteer and almost immediately I spotted her talents. She had a wonderful eye for capturing the essence of an object, almost as if she had a real affinity with the artifacts that we were digging up from the ground. Of course, she suffered from headaches then, but we managed to work around them. Her presence, however, caused some consternation with the heads of the sponsoring museums, and the director of the University of Pennsylvania Museum, George Byron Gordon. He’s dead now, by the way; had an unfortunate accident at the beginning of last year at the Racquet Club in Philadelphia.”

  “So he was against Katharine’s presence here?”

  “Yes, and he wrote a letter to me outlining his position. There had been some talk—there’s always talk, isn’t there?—about the propriety of having a single woman on the excavation site, here in the middle of nowhere, thrown together with a number of men. It was beginning to bring the expedition into disrepute. Gordon said that he would hate to think that Katharine might become the subject of ‘inconsiderate remarks’ and that her reputation would be sullied.”

  “And what of Miss Jones? Was Mr. Gordon not concerned about her presence?”

  “Apparently not. I think he assumed she was the spinster type.”

  “And so you married Katharine?”

  “Yes, we were married by my brother, in fact. In Hampshire, in April 1927. But I want you to know that was not the only reason why I asked her to marry me. It wasn’t as if I was forced, if you see what I mean. No, I found her a bewitching woman. She could be vivacious, funny, charming. But she was mercurial.”

  That word sounded like a euphemism to me. “Mercurial?”

  “Yes, I suppose that’s what I found so attractive to begin with.” He stood and checked again that the doors to the room were closed. “I’d hate this to get out. You won’t say anything, will you, Mrs. Christie?”

  “I promise I will be discretion itself.”

  “Very well. It was on my wedding night that I got a taste of . . . well, of Katharine perhaps not being like other women.”

  “In what way?”

  “We had arranged to spend the night at a hotel in London. I don’t know what I thought would happen—I was a very inexperienced man; I’d devoted my life to my work, I suppose—but I was shocked and, yes, a good deal upset.”

  I let Woolley talk in his own time, as I could tell that he found discussing this intimate subject difficult and embarrassing.

  “She’d already made it known that she didn’t want anything to do with my family. That hurt me, but I understood she wanted to start a new life after the death of her husband.”

  It was interesting, I thought, that he chose not to share with me the manner in which Colonel Keeling had died.

  “And I had certain assumptions . . . because she had been a married woman.”

  “Assumptions, you say?”

  “Yes. I thought that she would have a certain knowledge and experience of these things.”

  “I see,” I said.

  “B-but,” he said, blushing. “That . . . that night, our first night together, she made it clear that she wanted to have separate bedrooms. I told her that this could be arranged. But she meant it in a more permanent sense, if you see what I mean. I pointed out to her that we had just got married, that this was our honeymoon night, but she got more and more upset. I couldn’t see any sense in what she was saying, but in hysterics she locked me in the bathroom and refused to let me out until I had promised that I would not make love to her. In the end, what could I do? Of course I gave her my word. Later, we tried to talk about it, but she was adamant. She did not want that from a marriage.”

  “Oh, dear, that must have been extremely difficult for you.”

  “And since then that is how it has been. I did seek out the advice of my sister, Edith, and, if the truth be told, I even considered divorce. But I decided that it would be unseemly to cause a scandal. And my family believed that divorce might well bring about the end of my career.”

&n
bsp; As I thought about my own divorce, I felt myself beginning to blush.

  “I’m sorry if I’ve shocked you, Mrs. Christie, I didn’t mean to—”

  “No, not at all,” I said. Even though it pained me to say the words, I thought it right that I share my own experience with Woolley, so as to reassure him that he wasn’t the only person in the world to have experienced marital problems. “You see, my own marriage broke down and before I came out here I agreed to divorce my husband, Archie.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that. I had no idea,” said Woolley.

  “He fell in love with another woman,” I said.

  “I don’t think Katharine has fallen in love with another man. Perhaps she just doesn’t care for those kind of feelings—with anyone.”

  “Yes, perhaps that’s it,” I said. “Some women—and men, I believe—are like that.”

  “But I just wish she had told me before we’d married!” There was anger in his voice now. “I might well have thought otherwise. I could have chosen someone else, or perhaps nobody at all would be better than this.” He paused to reflect on what he had just said. “Listen to me; you must think me an utter beast, talking like this about Katharine. No, I made my vows and I’m going to stick to them. ‘For richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part.’ ” He fell silent and pensive. Had his final phrase struck some deeper resonance within him?

  “Has your wife shown any signs of violence?”

  Woolley looked appalled at the question. “What do you mean?”

  “I wondered if you had seen her inflict harm on others . . . or herself.”

  “No, she’s not like that at all. I don’t know what you could be suggesting.”

  “I think we both know that Katharine killed her cat, don’t we? And I wondered whether there could have been other occasions when she might have lost her temper.”

  “She is headstrong, yes, and can be cruel at times. I think tonight was just an isolated event. She must have momentarily lost her mind.”

  “Did she ever mention Miss Bell to you?”

  “Gertrude?”

  “Yes.”

  “No, not really. But as I’ve told you, my wife and Gertrude didn’t get on.”

  “Do you know when the two women last met?”

  “I’ve got no idea. I last saw Gertrude in March, I think it was, when I went to Baghdad. Oh, yes, Katharine did accompany me then because we were on the way back to England. I spent a few days with Gertrude at the museum, working on the classification of some artifacts.”

  “So that was March 1926? And Miss Bell died in July.”

  “That’s right, but I don’t see how this has got anything to do with Katharine. We were both in England during that summer.”

  My mind was running ahead with possibilities. Could Katharine have sent those threatening letters and that drawing of a death pit to Miss Bell from England? Did Gertrude Bell know something about Katharine Woolley that might have prevented her marriage to Leonard? Perhaps Miss Bell had some knowledge of what happened to Katharine’s first husband.

  “I’m just trying to get a few things into some kind of order, that’s all,” I said. “You say your wife was a widow when she met you.”

  “Yes, she was married to a Lieutenant Colonel Keeling. That marriage, I’m afraid, was not a happy one.”

  “Do you know how Colonel Keeling died?”

  “A very sad case. He took his own life, I’m afraid. Katharine told me he shot himself in Cairo only a few months after their marriage.”

  I did not say anything. The silence forced Woolley to fit together the pieces of the puzzle himself. “You’re not . . .”

  “What?”

  “You can’t possibly believe that Katharine . . .”

  A look of horror filled his face as he slowly realized the seriousness of the implication.

  “Could she have killed her first husband?” he whispered.

  “I don’t know . . . Is that something you believe she could be capable of?”

  “No, not Katharine. She’s not that kind of woman. But . . .”

  Doubtless the events of the night played through his mind. “But if she could kill Tom, then perhaps she could have done that, too.” The articulation of that thought drained the color from his face. “No, I refuse to believe it. It’s too ridiculous for words!”

  “Yes, quite ridiculous,” I said.

  But both of us knew it wasn’t so far-fetched at all. In fact, it would fit the pattern. The question was: Would Katharine Woolley kill again? And if so, who would be her next victim?

  9

  I was dreading the gloomy atmosphere at breakfast the next morning, but it was enlivened by the return of Harry Miller from Baghdad. The American photographer was full of tales of the exotic city, but thankfully he chose not to regale everyone with how he had saved me from a street urchin. With him he brought back all the supplies. There was typing paper and carbon sheets for Cynthia Jones, new blocks of clay for Father Burrows, a nice set of pencils for Lawrence and Cecil McRae, and some religious pamphlets for Hubert Archer, who had set out on an early morning walking excursion with his wife and daughter.

  “Where’s the queen?” asked Miller with a mocking tone. “Is she still in bed?”

  The room went quiet except for the scrape of a knife across a piece of toast.

  “What’s the matter? Why are you all looking so odd?”

  I had been to see Katharine earlier that morning. She was still extremely drowsy, but it looked as though her symptoms had dissipated. However, I advised her to spend the day in her room. I said I would check on her at regular intervals, and Woolley, who was still sitting with her, was extremely grateful for all my help. However, I could tell that he was guarded around Katharine, mindful perhaps of the conversation we had had the night before.

  “She’s not feeling too well,” I said.

  “What? Again?” replied Miller. “Don’t say we’re going to have to get the leeches out.”

  “Leeches?” I asked.

  “Sure. She likes the little bloodsuckers. Says they help relieve tension or something. Sounds like a load of—”

  “Well, I’m sure anything that can help Mrs. Woolley at the moment can only be a good thing,” I said.

  “What—like that time she made Len sleep outside her room with a string attached to his big toe?” said Lawrence McRae in an unpleasant tone of voice. “So that she could pull it if she needed him in the night?”

  “Is that true?” I asked.

  Miller nodded and poured himself another cup of coffee. “She’s got that man where she wants him all right,” he said. He looked around the table, studying each of us in turn. “But, seriously, has something happened?”

  Cynthia Jones told the story of what had occurred the night before.

  “I don’t believe it,” said Miller. “I know Katharine’s a bit odd, she has her moods, and some of the things that come out of her mouth can be cutting, but to kill Tom? She loved that cat.”

  “What else can we think?” said McRae. “We saw the scratches on her arms. She could pick up Tom, but obviously there had been a struggle when she began to hurt him.”

  “So what do you think happened?” asked Miller, still mystified.

  “The only logical solution is that she must have killed the cat in her room, where it scratched her,” said McRae. “She finished it off, put on those long gloves of hers to cover up the marks, got ready for dinner, and came in here.”

  “Would the cat not have made an almighty noise?” asked Cynthia. “We’ve all heard it at times making that awful yowling.”

  “Did you hear music coming from Katharine’s room last night?” asked McRae.

  “Yes, now you come to think of it, I think I did hear the sound of her gramophone,” said Cynthia.

  “Perhaps that drowned out the cries of the cat,” said McRae.

  “But to be so heartless?” said Miller.

  “She may not
have known what she was doing,” I said.

  “She was out of her mind? Is that what you’re saying?” asked the photographer.

  “By all accounts, it seems as though Mrs. Woolley has been under a tremendous amount of strain,” I said. “She may have carried out the attack under the delusion that the cat presented some kind of threat. And she could have blocked out all memory of it.”

  “Is that really possible?” asked Miller.

  “Yes, I’m afraid it is,” said Father Burrows, who had been silent up to this point. “Once, just after the end of the war, I saw a case of a poor man who had been convinced that his wife was a German soldier. When he came back from the front he attacked her—he came at her with a hammer—and as a result he had to be taken into hospital. After he’d come round from sedation, he had no memory of the incident. Luckily, the wife survived the attack, but of course the gentleman had to be locked away.”

  “So she’s . . . ?” asked Cynthia.

  “Mad, yes,” said McRae, finishing the sentence for her. “I always said she was unstable. But now it seems as though she might be dangerous.” Gertrude Bell had used the same word to describe Katharine Woolley.

  “What are you saying?” Cynthia asked, clearly frightened now.

  “I’m just wondering whether . . . whether it’s safe to be here, in the middle of nowhere,” answered McRae. “Who knows what she might do? I’m not concerned for my safety so much—I’m sure I can defend myself against a woman—but for those less able to protect themselves. We’ve got women to think of—girls like Sarah. And then there’s Cecil.”

  “You don’t need to worry about me,” said Cecil, finishing off his toast and brandishing a knife. There was something unpleasant in the way in which he smiled as he did this. “I can look after myself.”

  “I think it’s far too early to jump to any such conclusions,” I said, trying to calm everyone. “After all, we don’t know exactly what happened. I’m going to try and speak to Mrs. Woolley again today. Perhaps we’ll know more after that.”

  Father Burrows stood up from the table and started to clear away his breakfast things. “Perhaps the woman needs some religious guidance,” he said. “I could talk to her if you think it would help.”