Death in a Desert Land

by Andrew Wilson

  I packed up the dagger and took out another box. This one contained a group of exquisite small bowls and shells, each fashioned from bright gold, which looked as though they might once have contained cosmetic powders. The sight made me think of the array of jars and receptacles on Katharine’s dressing table. Her husband had also made reference to them. What was it he had said? We had been standing in this room and he had been showing us a pot used for the storage of a primitive kind of makeup. Yes, that was it. “She has a seemingly infinite amount of jars; I’ve no idea what’s in them.” My mind began to work. What if someone . . . yes, that would fit very nicely indeed. That would certainly explain it. But I stopped myself. How did I know that this theory, hardly even formed in my brain, was not some half-baked product of my fancy? My imagination had already conjured a scenario around an ancient dagger. Supposition was one thing, evidence and proof quite another.

  I covered the shells and bowls with tissue paper and replaced the lid of the box, but in doing so I knocked to the floor a pencil that had been sitting at the edge of the trestle table. As I bent down to pick it up, I noticed a small circle of wax on the ground. I picked up the disk and ran it through my fingers. I recalled the time when Leonard Woolley had given us a brief tour of the antika room. Yes, he had been holding a pair of candles, because he said the treasures looked even more magical in the soft light. Perhaps, in the panic and chaos that had followed Katharine’s cries, Woolley had upset the candleholder and a spot of liquid wax had dropped onto the floor, where it then solidified.

  I heard the sound of men’s voices approaching, and a moment later Woolley walked into the antika room with Hamoudi. The foreman was an imposing character, a tall man with a long face, a pronounced nose, and a slightly protruding jaw; in fact, there was something animalistic about him. He was wearing a long, flowing tunic or thawb fashioned from a light fabric, together with an agal, or traditional head covering. His eyes were small and dark and shone with intelligence. Woolley talked to him in Arabic, and the foreman replied in a series of deep, harsh-sounding pronouncements.

  “He’s saying that he cannot believe that my wife would do anything wrong,” Woolley said. “You see, he holds her in the highest possible regard.” Hamoudi continued to talk over the archaeologist. “He thinks it is against Allah’s will that she be locked up in the shed. There is talk among the men about it—even rumors of some kind of protest or rebellion.” Hamoudi’s voice quickened and rose in pitch. “Yes, Hamoudi, if you could just slow down, I will tell the lady,” he said, addressing the Arab. “He wants me to tell you that the Shaytan has come to Ur. The devil. There is a force here that is like a poison festering and killing a healthy body. My wife is innocent and only greater evil can come from keeping her locked up like a prisoner.”

  When the speech came to an end, both men looked at me for a response. I started slowly, first of all asking Woolley to convey my thanks to the foreman for agreeing to meet. I too believed that no good would come from locking up Katharine Woolley in the storeroom. I then asked Woolley to put my question to Hamoudi: Had he seen anything suspicious among his men? At this the foreman looked at me with distrust.

  “He wants to know what you are suggesting?” Woolley said. “He’s not happy with the question.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said to Woolley. “Let me try and rephrase it.” I said that I was not implying that either he or his men had done anything wrong. Rather, I wondered if he had seen any of his workmen behaving in a way that might suggest something odd—that one of them might in fact be a European in disguise. The question was met with a laugh so loud, it reverberated around the room. Hamoudi’s little eyes squeezed shut and his mouth revealed an array of broken and discolored teeth.

  “What does he find so funny?” I asked.

  Each time Woolley tried to answer, Hamoudi split the air with his laughter and soon tears were rolling down his worn, sun-spoilt face. Finally, the foreman explained himself to Woolley.

  “He doesn’t mean to be rude,” said the archaeologist. “But it’s the idea that a white man—a Westerner—could fool him or the other men by dressing up in that manner. He says the intruder would be discovered in a matter of hours. The man would stand out like . . . well, he uses an indecent expression that is probably best not translated. Better to say that the Westerner would indeed be discovered quickly.”

  “I see.” I felt myself blush a little. It was best to bring the conversation to a close. “Well, perhaps you could ask him to keep his eyes open for anything suspicious,” I added.

  “Indeed,” replied Woolley, dismissing the Arab in another guttural interchange. When he had gone, the mask of joviality worn by the archaeologist fell away and he slumped into a depressed silence; it appeared that the interview with Hamoudi had only strengthened the suggestion that Katharine was indeed losing her mind. He walked over to a canvas chair in the corner of the antika room, sat down, and put his head in his hands. He looked like a man broken by circumstance. I knew, from what he had told me, that his marriage to Katharine was not intimate. That was hard enough for any man to endure. But now he was being forced to acknowledge that his wife might, at best, be clinically insane and, at the very worst, be a murderer.

  “Maybe it is better if Katharine is taken away tomorrow,” he said. “Perhaps she does need some serious medical help.”

  “What do you think will happen to her?” I asked.

  “I’m not sure,” he sighed. “I suppose it depends on what the police decide. As you know, the rule of law is extremely unforgiving in the Arab lands.”

  “Would she not get any kind of special treatment? You must be able to appeal to the British authorities here for a certain amount of clemency.”

  “I’m not sure,” he said again. “But I’m afraid to say that I fear the very worst.”

  As he said those words, a thought wormed its way through my mind: What if it was Leonard who was behind all of this? Could he be trying to drive his wife mad? After all, his marriage was a sham. Divorce would ruin him. If he could arrange for Katharine to be taken away to some discreet institution where she remained for the rest of her life, then surely that would solve all his problems. The marriage could be annulled. He could get on with his work without the burden of having a neurotic wife. He could be free to marry again. Was there another woman on the scene? I knew from personal experience that some men grew tired of their wives and hankered after younger models. And if he had been unable to enjoy personal relations with Katharine, then perhaps it was only natural for him to look elsewhere. Did Leonard have a mistress back in England? Or was there even someone in Iraq—in Baghdad, perhaps—or in the camp itself? I couldn’t imagine that he would find Miss Jones very alluring, but one never knew. Or did he have another kind of secret?

  “I see from your expression that you fear the worst, too,” he said.

  “Well, let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,” I said, dissembling.

  “It’s bad enough to think of Katharine locked up in that shed, but . . . ,” he said, his voice breaking. He swallowed a couple of times and then continued, “How will she cope with a prison cell in Baghdad? I’m afraid it would kill her.”

  “Don’t think about that,” I said, trying to sound as if I had his welfare at heart. “You need to remain strong, if only for Katharine’s sake.”

  He coughed, ran his hands through his hair, and stood up. His mouth twisted into a smile—perhaps he hoped that the gesture would be enough to raise his spirits—but I noticed that his eyes remained devoid of any spark of happiness. “Yes, you’re right,” he said. “You know, I do wonder what people back at home would think if they really knew how we lived out here.”

  “What, the basic conditions? The dust, the heat, and so on?”

  “Not just that,” he said. “May I speak honestly to you?”

  “Yes, of course. You know you can say anything to me.”

  He studied me for a moment as if assessing whether he could trust me. “There’s somethi
ng about the desert that strips away all the pretensions of human nature. It’s a shock at first to find out what lies underneath the veneer of respectability.”

  I was careful what to say next. “Is that something you’ve experienced yourself?” I asked gently.

  “I was just thinking about Carchemish,” he said vaguely, as if his mind was beginning to travel back in time. I knew that he had worked on that site with T. E. Lawrence and Hamoudi. “Particularly Jerablus. I was there . . . it must be seventeen years ago, now. You see, the archaeological remains at Jerablus fell under the control of the kaimakam, or governor, of Birajik.”

  These other names meant nothing to me, but I nodded my head in encouragement.

  “It was a place famous for the beautiful black ibis, which winters in Sudan and returns to Birajik to nest on the castle wall. We discovered a very fine mosaic floor, dating to about the fifth century AD, with an image of the glossy ibis—an indication, you see, that even in Roman times the bird always flew back to the Euphrates in order to nest.”

  As I was beginning to wonder what this had to do with his previous point, Woolley sensed my slight impatience. “Sorry to digress, but it’s important that you understand what we were doing there,” he continued. “There was some kind of mix-up about whether we were allowed to dig there. We feared there might be trouble, and Lawrence and I armed ourselves with revolvers, hoping that we wouldn’t have to use them. But when we were refused permission by the kaimakam to dig, I felt so angry that I took my gun out and placed it against the governor’s left ear. I was shocked when I heard myself say, ‘I shall shoot you here and now unless you give me permission to start work tomorrow.’ ”

  “And did you?”

  He paused for a moment before he said, “Luckily the governor leant back in his chair and said, with a wintry smile, that he could see no reason why we couldn’t start the next day. So you see, I believe many of us could be capable of murder, given the right circumstances.”

  “I don’t doubt it,” I said, thinking about some of my own terrible experiences.

  “Indeed, a murderer can often be a bonus out here.”

  The boldness of the statement surprised me, but again the rules of the desert were very different to the ones that existed in the drawing rooms of England. “In what way?”

  “The cook and general factotum employed on the dig at Carchemish was Hajji Wahid, a man Miss Bell found most charming, I believe,” he continued. “But Hajji was also a murderer. Apparently he had been rather too keen on a local young woman and had ignored the requests of the girl’s brothers to leave her alone. The situation got so out of hand that eventually Hajji killed four men in a skirmish. In due course, Hajji was sent to prison, but Campbell Thompson, who was in charge at Carchemish, thought that the man was just the sort of chap he was looking for. And so he proved. When he came out of prison, Hajji was the most loyal of employees. He never left Thompson’s side, always standing by with a gun, guarding him. And later, when I took charge, he became my bodyguard. Anyone who set foot into the site without permission was risking his life, and for the most part it was a very safe camp, because everyone knew that Hajji would not hesitate to shoot them dead.”

  “Yes, I can see that,” I said.

  “It’s a shame he’s not here now,” he said. “Hajji would not put up with any nonsense. In fact, I doubt any of this would have happened if he had been here.”

  There was something I wanted to know. “May I ask: Do you have a gun in your possession?”

  “Yes, of course,” Woolley replied. “It would be madness to live out here and not have any means of protecting oneself and also the very valuable treasures that we’ve dug up.”

  “And do you keep it on your person or in your room?”

  “It’s kept in a strongbox in my bedroom. Why do you ask?”

  “I wonder if you’d mind checking to see if it’s still there.”

  Woolley’s eyes narrowed as he looked at me. “What is it you suspect?”

  I did not, of course, tell him the whole truth. It was enough to reveal only part of what I surmised. “I’m worried that tonight, or at least before the police arrive tomorrow, someone may try to make an attempt on Katharine’s life.”

  He couldn’t quite take the words in, and his eyelids flickered as he tried to comprehend what I had just told him. “I’m afraid that your wife may be about to be murdered,” I added.

  As he contemplated the thought of losing his wife, a look of almost unimaginable grief crossed his face. If Woolley was the one behind the plot to drive Katharine mad—if that was indeed what was going on here—then he certainly was a very fine actor. He opened his mouth to speak, but uttered nothing except a low moan. Finally, he asked me to follow him to his room, where he would show me the gun. However, first he took his time to make sure everything in the antika room was safely stored away. As he turned the key in the door, I noticed that his hand was shaking slightly.

  “I think I’ve just finally cracked the translation of that particularly difficult tablet we unearthed the other day,” called out Father Burrows as we stepped into the bright light of the courtyard.

  “Not now, Eric,” replied Leonard.

  “It’s just that it is ever so exciting,” the Jesuit persisted. “You see, I was reading it all wrong. I had been thinking that—“

  But Woolley cut him off. “I said not now! For God’s sake, man, can’t you see I’m busy!” I had never seen Woolley lose his temper; he always seemed so composed, so controlled, even in the most stressful of situations. He pushed on across the courtyard with a determination and an energy that reminded me of an express train. He did turn around to see Burrows’s puzzled and somewhat hurt expression.

  A moment later we were in his room, which contained only a minimal amount of furniture: a rather sad single bed, a desk piled high with books and papers, and a wardrobe that contained barely a change of clothes. It reminded me of the quarters of a bachelor or a student rather than a married man.

  “It’s all kept under lock and key,” he said as he bent down to retrieve his strongbox from underneath the wardrobe. His fingers reached out and took hold of the metal box, presenting it to me with something of a flourish. From the pocket of his trousers he took out a key ring and selected a key. “In fact, it’s the same gun I was telling you about earlier, the one which I used—or at least I was prepared to use—when I was in—’ he said, as he tried to turn the lock. ‘What’s this? Why is this open?”

  His hands pushed into the box but seemed to turn over nothing but empty air. “I don’t understand. Where the . . . ?”

  I knew what he was going to say next.

  “The gun’s gone. Somebody’s taken my revolver. And the bullets, too.”

  17

  Each of us sat around the table trying to hide the suspicion in our eyes. Woolley had called the group into the main room and related the fact that his gun had gone missing. The news acted like a small explosion, sending waves of disbelief and confusion through the camp.

  “But when did you last see it?” asked McRae as he stood up.

  “I’m not certain,” said Woolley. “I think it was when I—”

  “You can’t be vague about it,” interrupted the architect.

  “Let me see,” said Woolley, blinking. “I remember going to look in the strongbox to check if there were any extra keys to the padlock on the shed. Yes, that was it.”

  “And the gun was there then?” McRae continued in his aggressively interrogative manner.

  “Yes . . . yes, it was,” replied Woolley.

  “And you’re sure you locked the box?”

  “Well, I’m almost positive I would have done,” Woolley answered, in a way that did not inspire confidence.

  “Damn it, man—sorry, ladies,” McRae said, addressing Miss Jones, Mrs. Archer, and me before he turned back to Woolley. “Can’t you see?”

  “See what?” said an exasperated Woolley.

  “Couldn’t Katharine hav
e taken it?”

  “I don’t see how or why she—”

  “But she may have had the opportunity!”

  The interchange between Woolley and McRae had taken on the air of a compulsive and ghoulish spectacle.

  “She can’t have done,” insisted Woolley. “She was locked in her room.”

  “How do you know for certain? Perhaps she picked the lock, crept into your room, and took your gun. You see, all of us, apart from Mr. and Mrs. Archer, were here in this room at the time. No one would have known if that’s what she had done.”

  For a moment the room was quiet before Mrs. Archer, who had been twisting her fingers in her lap, started mumbling to herself.

  “She killed my daughter; she killed Sarah, she murdered my beautiful girl,” she said. “She took a rock and smashed her head in. Sarah was so proud of her hair, her lovely hair. Now it’s all matted. I tried to make it look nice—I tried to smooth it out—but the comb got stuck. All that dried blood . . .”

  Mr. Archer, who had reverted back to his steady, composed self, placed a hand on his wife’s wrist. “Hush, now, dear. You’ve had a shock. We’ve all had a shock.”

  She broke away from her husband and turned to him, her voice full of venom. “A shock? Is that how you see it? Is that how you’d describe how you feel after the death of our daughter?”

  “Ruth, please . . .”

  Hubert Archer bent down and lowered his voice to say something the rest of us could not hear. She started to resist his quiet entreaties, when he took hold of her hand again and appeared to apply pressure to her wrist. Finally Mrs. Archer closed her eyes as she winced in pain.

  “That’s right, come with me,” he said, leading her from the table. “Let’s go and have a rest.”

  Just before she reached the door, Ruth Archer turned to the table and said, in a series of gasps, “Let me tell you something—all of you. If you don’t do something . . . something about that . . . that woman”—it was clear Mrs. Archer wanted to call Katharine Woolley something else entirely—“you’re all going to be . . .” She forced out the final word in one final exhalation: “. . . murdered!”