Death in a Desert Land

by Andrew Wilson

  “That’s hardly surprising,” he remarked. “So I’ve done nothing to upset you?”

  “No, and I’m sorry if I gave you that impression.”

  He gazed inquiringly at me, as if to test the veracity of my words, and his look was so disarming that I had no choice but to smile back. It was at this point that Captain Forster and Davison returned to the room. As my friend entered, I noticed that he had observed the silent interchange between Miller and me, but of course he was too discreet and well-mannered to say anything. Instead he asked Woolley whether there was a room that he and Forster could use to carry out their interviews. Leonard ran through a list of spaces: the antika room was free but hardly suitable, as it contained some highly valuable objects; his own room was being used for the containment of Cecil, while Katharine, after her ordeal, really should not be disturbed.

  “The other guest rooms really are too small, which leaves only this space, I’m afraid,” he said, gesturing at the table, still laid with breakfast things. “We could get the servants to clear up and have someone stationed at the door so you won’t be disturbed.”

  “How does that sound to you, Captain?” asked Davison.

  Forster did not look impressed but agreed that it would have to do. “If I could ask all of you to return to your rooms, we will call you one by one so you can give us your statements,” he said rather stiffly. “I need not remind you that this is a murder investigation. This is a very serious matter indeed.” A few of the group bristled; they must be feeling that they did not need to be patronized in this way, and indeed the overall effect of the unfortunate Captain Forster was that of a head boy at a minor public school who was intent on giving orders to his superiors. “Where are the Arab boys?” he asked, clapping his hands. “Let’s get this mess cleared up as soon as we can.”

  Our little group dispersed and a moment later Harry Miller and I found ourselves in the courtyard.

  “Shall we take a walk?” he asked.

  “Yes, why not,” I replied. “I could do with some air.”

  “I suppose we can’t go far . . . We don’t want to get into trouble with the captain,” he said, smirking.

  We walked towards the ziggurat, where a chain of Arab men and boys had resumed their backbreaking work. Miller asked me about the events of the previous night. I went over the horrible scene once more.

  “Do you really believe the boy’s the one behind it all?” he asked as we started a gentle circuit around the base of the structure. “Woolley seems to think as much—that he killed Sarah out of spite, because she had rejected him, and then he tried to frame Mrs. Woolley for the crime.”

  “I’m not sure,” I said. Since last night I had reassessed the situation.

  “So you don’t believe that he intended to shoot Katharine and then make it look like suicide?”

  “I don’t think Cecil has that kind of calculating mind,” I said. “He’s a hotheaded adolescent, not a cold-blooded killer. No, the person behind all of this is driven by something altogether different. It’s the work of someone with an ability to schematize and plot.”

  “You mean somebody like yourself?” said Miller. We came to a stop at the bottom of one of the ziggurat’s grand staircases.

  “I beg your pardon?” I said, somewhat taken aback. “I’m sorry, but I don’t think that’s a very amusing joke.”

  “You don’t?” said Harry, his eyes glinting with mischief. “I’m sorry if I offended the great lady novelist. But if I’m not mistaken, I suspect you and the killer share more than a few characteristics.”

  His comment was so outrageous that I had no choice but to laugh. “I do hope you’re not being serious, Mr. Miller.”

  “Oh, but I am,” he said, and moved a step closer to me. “In fact, I do believe, Mrs. Christie, that if I applied a little more pressure, you may actually confess to the crime.”

  I could feel my face reddening and my breath quickening. “Indeed?”

  “Oh, yes,” he said.

  Just then, as his face moved an inch or so towards mine, I heard something or someone above me on the ziggurat. I looked up, but as I did so a few grains of sand fell onto my face. Harry followed my gaze and instinctively pulled me towards him. For a moment I thrilled to the feel of his strong arms around me, but then I came to my senses. I was about to object—how dare he presume to act in this way?—but then I realized that he was simply trying to protect me.

  “Who is that?” he shouted, straining his head to look up towards the top of the ziggurat. “Who’s there?”

  We heard the scuffle of footsteps, but although Miller dashed from the base of the ziggurat towards the open ground, he said he couldn’t see anyone.

  “Whoever it was disappeared in a cloud of dust,” he said upon returning to me. “Are you all right? Here.” He passed me his handkerchief to clean my face. “Did you swallow any sand?”

  “No, I don’t think so. But my mouth does feel a little gritty.”

  “Let’s get back to the compound, where you can have a drink of water,” he suggested, turning his head as we walked in an attempt to spot whoever had been perched on the top of the ziggurat. “I wouldn’t worry; I’m sure we weren’t saying anything particularly revelatory. Probably just a couple of the Arab boys.”

  “Yes, perhaps,” I said, biting the corner of my lip. I was sure that they found it all rather amusing, the sight of a middle-aged Englishwoman making a fool of herself with a handsome American man. I really would have to make sure nothing of the sort happened again. What had I been thinking?

  We walked back to the camp in silence. I let Miller believe this was because of the disagreeable sensation of having sand in my mouth, but the reality was that I felt eaten up by shame.

  “I’d better knock before I go in,” said Harry when we stood outside the door to the main room. “I don’t want to walk in on an interview.”

  “Come in,” said Forster.

  Both of us stepped into the room to see the captain seated at the long table studying his paperwork. Miller explained that he wanted to get some water for me.

  “Go ahead; we haven’t started yet,” the young officer said, waving his hand in the direction of the kitchen. “Davison said he was going to go on a recce of the ziggurat to see where the murder took place.”

  “Davison’s at the ziggurat?” I said, hoping that I had misunderstood Forster’s words.

  “I’ve been here before—one hot summer, when you lot were back in good old England—so I know the layout of the structure, but Davison said he would find it helpful to go and have a look,” he explained, not looking up from his papers.

  The revelation that it had been Davison who had evidently been spying on us left me feeling confused and a little dizzy. What had he seen? What had he heard?

  “But . . . ,” I said, gripping the back of one of the chairs.

  “Here, sit down,” said Miller. “Are you sure nothing hit you out there?”

  “Just a few grains of sand, nothing more,” I said, dropping into the chair. “I think I should go and have a lie-down.”

  “A good idea,” said Miller. “You won’t need Mrs. Christie right away, will you, Captain?”

  The captain did not bother looking up from his papers. “No, no,” he said, sounding distracted. “As soon as Davison gets back, we’re going to question Cecil McRae. We’ll let you know when we want to speak to both of you.”

  I pushed myself up from the chair, and although Harry tried to take my arm to accompany me, I brushed him off. I could not show him any further signs of encouragement. But just then I stumbled, either from the effects of dizziness or from a slight ruck in the rush matting, and Miller grabbed my arm, preventing me from a nasty fall. It was at that moment that Davison opened the door and walked into the room.

  “Oh, dear, has something happened?” Davison asked, rushing to help.

  “We’ve got everything under control,” said Miller, holding up his free hand in a rather possessive manner. “Mrs. Christ
ie just felt a little faint, I think, and I’m taking her back to her room.”

  As I stared into Davison’s hardened eyes I saw a hint of something approaching . . . what? Jealousy? Surely it could not be that. Suspicion, yes, but not of me. Perhaps it was some kind of warning?

  21

  I waited in my room for the gentle tap on the door that surely must come. I ran across the room and opened the door to a grave-looking Davison.

  “What was that all about?” I hissed as soon as he had stepped into my quarters. “Watching me from the top of the ziggurat? What were you thinking?”

  “I know you’re angry, but I can explain,” he said.

  “I do hope you can,” I said.

  “I see you’re not wasting any time on being civil,” he said.

  The comment stopped me in my tracks. Although I was showing all the outward signs of anger, I realized that my behavior was very much a performance. I trusted that Davison would always have my best interests at heart. And if he had felt a need to spy on Miller and me, I suspected that there would be a very good reason why. However, that did not mean that I was ready to give him an easy time.

  “Why should I be polite to you after what you’ve done?”

  “If you let me tell you what I know, then perhaps you’ll see,” he replied.

  “Very well,” I said, looking at him with a frosty expression.

  “It’s clear that you’ve become friendly with Mr. Miller,” he began. “I realize he’s a very attractive man, but you may not know the whole truth about him.”

  “You mean that he’s got a reputation as something of a ladies’ man? And that he had a relationship with Miss Bell?”

  “Yes, and certain other things, too,” he said.

  I waited for him to go on. He walked to the window that overlooked the courtyard and made sure the shutters were closed.

  “Well,” he said, clearing his throat, “there is the not-insignificant matter of his name.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Davison took a small notebook out of his jacket pocket and read from it. “ ‘Mr. Harry Miller, photographer, born in Philadelphia on the seventh of October 1889, died in an automobile accident in that city on the twenty-fifth of May 1925.’ ”

  I understood the implications straightaway. I blushed as I thought about the intimate talks I had enjoyed with the man I knew as Harry. I remembered the way I had felt when he rescued me, first on that backstreet in Baghdad and then when I had been at risk of falling from the top of the ziggurat. “So if Mr. Miller is not who he says he is, then who is he?”

  “I’m afraid we don’t know that at the moment” was Davison’s response. “It seems as though he assumed the identity of the dead man, a man who was without family. How he got hold of his papers and his passport, we’re not sure.”

  My mind started to work quickly, and I began to wonder out loud. “But why would he bother to do that? What was he running from?” I paused as I forced myself to think the very worst. There was no use in being sentimental, of imagining of what might have been. Thank goodness I had forced myself to draw back from him before we had become too friendly.

  “Perhaps he committed some crime in America and needed a new start,” I said. “But what if something—or someone—stood in the way of him achieving that? The man we know as Harry Miller enjoyed a close relationship with Gertrude Bell. What if she discovered his real identity? Perhaps he could not risk the exposure and so had no choice but to finish her off.”

  “Yes, my thoughts exactly,” replied Davison. “Now, I think you’d better tell me everything that has happened here, don’t you?”

  Slowly, but with as much precision as I could, I related the events that had occurred since I had first arrived at Ur. Katharine’s odd, paranoid behavior. The death of her cat. The strange atmosphere among the group. The rivalry between Mrs. Woolley and the young Miss Archer. That awful row at the picnic. The discovery of Sarah’s body.

  “And then there was the thing with Miller’s camera,” I said.

  “His camera?” asked Davison.

  “Yes. Harry Miller—well, the man pretending to be him—told me that he had discovered his Leica in bits. As if someone had deliberately smashed it. I thought that this was because someone had wanted to destroy the film inside the camera because it might contain a clue to the identity of Sarah Archer’s murderer.” I paused. “But what if ‘Miller’ broke up the Leica himself?”

  “It seems highly likely,” he said.

  “I feel such a fool. To think that I was taken in by him.” I told Davison what had happened that day in the alley off Rashid Street. As I did so, a possibility struck me with such force that it left me reeling. “Do you think that it all could have been staged?” I asked, even though I knew Davison could not give me an answer. “That this man pretending to be Miller paid that young boy to try to grab my handbag so that he could then ingratiate himself with me?”

  “I don’t know, but we may have to face up to that possibility,” Davison allowed.

  “But this—this impostor wasn’t here when Tom, Katharine’s cat, was killed. He was in Baghdad.”

  “Or so he told you,” said Davison. “But he could have stolen into the compound and done that.”

  “So what do we do now?”

  “Of course, we can’t let this chap know we suspect anything,” he said. “It may be hard for you, but it’s important that you behave normally. Continue to enjoy your . . . friendship with him.”

  I knew exactly what Davison was implying. What was the best way of putting him right? “At one point I was foolish enough to believe something might come of our friendship, but fortunately pride and common sense told me otherwise. As you know, I have not had the best luck when it comes to such matters. And I doubt whether I will enjoy such a close relationship again.”

  “I see,” said Davison.

  “So you don’t need to spare my feelings when it comes to Mr. Miller, or whatever his real name is,” I added. “I didn’t expect anything from him.” This was not quite the whole truth, but by saying it I hoped to make the sentiment real. “I wonder what his game is. I’m sure it will come to light soon enough. Now, what else did you discover? Yes, what about Katharine Woolley’s first husband, Colonel Keeling, who supposedly killed himself in September 1919? Did you find out who identified the body?”

  “Yes. It was one of his work colleagues, Mr. Thurley,” replied Davison. “He told the police that the man on the mortuary slab was Colonel Keeling.”

  “But how would this Mr. Thurley know for certain if the man substituted for Keeling had suffered extensive head and face injuries? And what about other men of a similar age who disappeared at the same time?”

  Davison consulted his notebook once more. “Let’s see . . . Albert Morrison, a civil servant, who on the eighteenth of September 1919 walked out of his house in Cairo after a row with his wife and who was never seen again. He was born in 1882, so that would make him two years younger than Keeling. And then there was Patrick Deller, a man of independent means, who disappeared from his home on the fifteenth of the month. He was older, forty-five at the time of the disappearance, and lived alone. There is some suggestion that he may have been linked with . . . well, with something unsavory.”

  “Such as?”

  “Do you really want to know?”

  “Yes, of course I do. My grandmother always said a true lady can never be shocked nor surprised. Now go on.”

  “Well, it seems as though Deller took an unhealthy interest in young girls.”

  “I see. So that disappearance could have been an act of revenge by one or more of the justifiably angry parents or relatives. And no trace of a body?”

  “None,” he said, beginning to close his notebook.

  “And did you find out anything else about Colonel Keeling?”

  “I’m still waiting on a few pieces of information to come through,” he said. “If anything significant turns up, I’ve asked for it to be delive
red here.”

  “Right. But it does seem strange that the whole thing could be linked to two separate cases of swapped identity—first Colonel Keeling and then Harry Miller,” I said. “If Katharine Woolley believes her first husband may still be alive, we have to take that suspicion seriously, even if it does not sound at all credible. Unless . . . ,” I said, almost under my breath. But it was best to keep my thoughts to myself for the time being. “And there are a couple of other things I wondered if you might be able to help with.” I outlined what I needed to know: who in each case benefited from the wills of Miss Archer and Cecil McRae’s parents.

  “That shouldn’t be too difficult to find out,” said Davison. “I’ll send a message to the department back in London.” He looked at his watch. “Right, I’d better be getting back to Forster.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “He’s very young, isn’t he?”

  “Yes, and between you and me he hasn’t got a clue. It’s a mystery how he got the job.”

  He asked what I thought of Woolley’s theory.

  “I doubt very much Cecil is the one behind all of this,” I said, walking with Davison towards the door. “However, he may well be the key to it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Would you mind asking Captain Forster to step inside for a moment?”

  “What’s going on, Agatha? I can see you’ve come up with some kind of scheme. What is it?”

  As I outlined my plan, a real smile—one with verve and mischief and delight—began to form on Davison’s face.

  “I say, that’s splendid,” he said. “Highly risky, of course, and it remains to be seen whether Forster will go for it, but there’s a touch of genius there. Yes, only you could have thought of that. I’ll go and fetch the boy wonder.”

  A moment later Davison returned with an irritated-looking Forster. “Now, what’s all this about?” he barked. “We really do need to start questioning Cecil McRae. I’m not in the mood for any idle chitchat.”