Agatha Christie - They Came to Baghdad

‘No, no, old man, not shoot him. Just give him a fright. Recognized him suddenly as a fellow who swindled me over some antikas. Just a bit of fun.’

Richard Baker was a fastidious soul who disliked publicity of any kind. His instincts were to accept the explanation at its face value. After all, what could he prove? And would old Fakir Carmichael thank him for making a song and dance about the matter. Presumably if he were on some hush-hush, cloak-and-dagger business he would not.

Richard relaxed his grasp on the man’s arm. The fellow was sweating, he noticed.

The kavass was talking excitedly. It was very wrong, he was saying, to bring firearms into the British Consulate. It was not allowed. The Consul would be very angry.

‘I apologize,’ said the fat man. ‘Little accident – that’s all.’ He thrust some money into the kavass’s hand who pushed it back again indignantly.

‘I’d better get out of this,’ said the stout man. ‘I won’t wait to see the Consul.’ He thrust a card suddenly on Richard. ‘That’s me and I’m at the Airport Hotel if there’s any fuss, but actually it was a pure accident. Just a joke if you know what I mean.’

Reluctantly, Richard watched him walk with an uneasy swagger out of the room and turn towards the street.

He hoped he had done right, but it was a difficult thing to know what to do when one was as much in the dark as he was.

‘Mr Clayton, he is disengaged now,’ said the kavass.

Richard followed the man along the corridor. The open circle of sunlight at the end grew larger. The Consul’s room was on the right at the extreme end of the passage.

Mr Clayton was sitting behind his desk. He was a quiet grey-haired man with a thoughtful face.

‘I don’t know whether you remember me?’ said Richard. ‘I met you in Tehran two years ago.’

‘Of course. You were with Dr Pauncefoot Jones, weren’t you? Are you joining him again this year?’

‘Yes. I’m on my way there now, but I’ve got a few days to spare, and I rather wanted to run down to Kuwait. There’s no difficulty I suppose?’

‘Oh, no. There’s a plane tomorrow morning. It’s only about an hour and a half. I’ll wire to Archie Gaunt – he’s the Resident there. He’ll put you up. And we can put you up here for the night.’

Richard protested slightly.

‘Really – I don’t want to bother you and Mrs Clayton. I can go to the hotel.’

‘The Airport Hotel’s very full. We’d be delighted to have you here. I know my wife would like to meet you again. At the moment – let me see – we’ve got Crosbie of the Oil Company and some young sprig of Dr Rathbone’s who’s down here clearing some cases of books through the customs. Come upstairs and see Rosa.’

He got up and escorted Richard out through the door and into the sunlit garden. A flight of steps led up to the living quarters of the Consulate.

Gerald Clayton pushed open the wire door at the top of the steps and ushered his guest into a long dim hallway with attractive rugs on the floor and choice examples of furniture on either side. It was pleasant coming into the cold dimness after the glare outside.

Clayton called, ‘Rosa, Rosa,’ and Mrs Clayton, whom Richard remembered as a buoyant personality with abounding vitality, came out of an end room.

‘You remember Richard Baker, dear? He came to see us with Dr Pauncefoot Jones in Tehran.’

‘Of course,’ said Mrs Clayton shaking hands. ‘We went to the bazaars together and you bought some lovely rugs.’

It was Mrs Clayton’s delight when not buying things herself to urge on her friends and acquaintances to seek for bargains in the local souks. She had a wonderful knowledge of values and was an excellent bargainer.

‘One of the best purchases I’ve ever made,’ said Richard. ‘And entirely owing to your good offices.’

‘Baker wants to fly to Kuwait tomorrow,’ said Gerald Clayton. ‘I’ve said that we can put him up here for tonight.’

‘But if it’s any trouble,’ began Richard.

‘Of course it’s no trouble,’ said Mrs Clayton. ‘You can’t have the best spare room, because Captain Crosbie has got it, but we can make you quite comfortable. You don’t want to buy a nice Kuwait chest, do you? Because they’ve got some lovely ones in the souk just now. Gerald wouldn’t let me buy another one for here though it would be quite useful to keep extra blankets in.’

‘You’ve got three already, dear,’ said Clayton mildly. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me, Baker. I must get back to the office. There seems to have been a spot of trouble in the outer office. Somebody let off a revolver, I understand.’

‘One of the local sheikhs, I suppose,’ said Mrs Clayton. ‘They are so excitable and they do so love firearms.’

‘On the contrary,’ said Richard. ‘It was an Englishman. His intention seemed to be to take a potshot at an Arab.’ He added gently, ‘I knocked his arm up.’

‘So you were in it all,’ said Clayton. ‘I didn’t realize that.’ He fished a card out of his pocket. ‘Robert Hall, Achilles Works, Enfield, seems to be his name. I don’t know what he wanted to see me about. He wasn’t drunk, was he?’

‘He said it was a joke,’ said Richard drily, ‘and that the gun went off by accident.’

Clayton raised his eyebrows.

‘Commercial travellers don’t usually carry loaded guns in their pockets,’ he said.

Clayton, Richard thought, was no fool.

‘Perhaps I ought to have stopped him going away.’

‘It’s difficult to know what one should do when these things happen. The man he fired at wasn’t hurt?’

‘No.’

‘Probably was better to let the thing slide, then.’

‘I wonder what was behind it?’

‘Yes, yes…I wonder too.’

Clayton looked a little distrait.

‘Well, I must be getting back,’ he said and hurried away.

Mrs Clayton took Richard into the drawing-room, a large inside room, with green cushions and curtains and offered him a choice of coffee or beer. He chose beer and it came deliciously iced.

She asked him why he was going to Kuwait and he told her.

She asked him why he hadn’t got married yet and Richard said he didn’t think he was the marrying kind, to which Mrs Clayton said briskly, ‘Nonsense.’ Archaeologists, she said, made splendid husbands – and were there any young women coming out to the Dig this season? One or two, Richard said, and Mrs Pauncefoot Jones of course.

Mrs Clayton asked hopefully if they were nice girls who were coming out, and Richard said he didn’t know because he hadn’t met them yet. They were very inexperienced, he said.

For some reason this made Mrs Clayton laugh.

Then a short stocky man with an abrupt manner came in and was introduced as Captain Crosbie. Mr Baker, said Mrs Clayton, was an archaeologist and dug up the most wildly interesting things thousands of years old. Captain Crosbie said he never could understand how archaeologists were able to say so definitely how old these things were. Always used to think they must be the most awful liars, ha ha, said Captain Crosbie. Richard looked at him in a rather tired kind of way. No, said Captain Crosbie, but how did an archaeologist know how old a thing was? Richard said that that would take a long time to explain, and Mrs Clayton quickly took him away to see his room.

‘He’s very nice,’ said Mrs Clayton, ‘but not quite quite, you know. Hasn’t got any idea of culture.’

Richard found his room exceedingly comfortable, and his appreciation of Mrs Clayton as a hostess rose still higher.

Feeling in the pocket of his coat, he drew out a folded-up piece of dirty paper. He looked at it with surprise, for he knew quite well that it had not been there earlier in the morning.