Agatha Christie - They Came to Baghdad

‘Everything,’ said Victoria. ‘You told me to chum up with her, and I did, and I don’t suppose you’ve any idea what it let me in for!’

‘Where’ve you been all this time, Victoria? I’ve been getting quite worried.’

‘Oh you have, have you? Where did you think I’d been?’

‘Well, Catherine gave me your message. Said you’d told her to tell me that you’d gone off to Mosul suddenly. It was something very important and good news, and I’d hear from you in due course.’

‘And you believed that?’ said Victoria in an almost pitying voice.

‘I thought you’d got on the track of something. Naturally, you couldn’t say much to Catherine –’

‘It didn’t occur to you that Catherine was lying, and that I’d been knocked on the head.’

‘What?’ Edward stared.

‘Drugged, chloroformed – starved…’

Edward cast a sharp glance around.

‘Good Lord! I never dreamed – look here, I don’t like talking out here. All these windows. Can’t we go to your room?’

‘All right. Did you bring my luggage?’

‘Yes, I dumped it with the porter.’

‘Because when one hasn’t had a change of clothes for a fortnight –’

‘ Victoria, what has been happening? I know – I’ve got the car here. Let’s go out to Devonshire. You’ve never been there, have you?’

‘ Devonshire?’ Victoria stared in surprise.

‘Oh, it’s just a name for a place not far out of Baghdad. It’s rather lovely this time of year. Come on. I haven’t had you to myself for years.’

‘Not since Babylon. But what will Dr Rathbone and the Olive Branch say?’

‘Blast Dr Rathbone. I’m fed up with the old ass anyway.’

They ran down the stairs and out to where Edward’s car was parked. Edward drove southwards through Baghdad, along a wide avenue. Then he turned off from there; they jolted and twisted through palm groves and over irrigation bridges. Finally, with a strange unexpectedness they came to a small wooded copse surrounded and pierced by irrigation streams. The trees of the copse, mostly almond and apricot, were just coming into blossom. It was an idyllic spot. Beyond the copse, at a little distance, was the Tigris.

They got out of the car and walked together through the blossoming trees.

‘This is lovely,’ said Victoria, sighing deeply. ‘It’s like being back in England in spring.’

The air was soft and warm. Presently they sat down on a fallen tree trunk with pink blossom hanging down over their heads.

‘Now, darling,’ said Edward. ‘Tell me what’s been happening to you. I’ve been so dreadfully miserable.’

‘Have you?’ she smiled dreamily.

Then she told him. Of the girl hairdresser. Of the smell of chloroform and her struggle. Of waking up drugged and sick. Of how she had escaped and of her fortuitous meeting with Richard Baker, and of how she had claimed to be Victoria Pauncefoot Jones on her way to the Excavations, and of how she had almost miraculously sustained the part of an archaeological student arriving from England.

At this point Edward shouted with laughter.

‘You are marvellous, Victoria! The things you think of – and invent.’

‘I know,’ said Victoria. ‘My uncles. Dr Pauncefoot Jones and before him – the Bishop.’

And at that she suddenly remembered what it was she had been going to ask Edward at Basrah when Mrs Clayton had interrupted by calling them in for drinks.

‘I meant to ask you before,’ she said. ‘How did you know about the Bishop?’

She felt the hand that held hers stiffen suddenly. He said quickly, too quickly:

‘Why, you told me, didn’t you?’

Victoria looked at him. It was odd, she thought afterwards, that that one silly childish slip should have accomplished what it did.

For he was taken completely by surprise. He had no story ready – his face was suddenly defenceless and unmasked.

And as she looked at him, everything shifted and settled itself into a pattern, exactly as a kaleidoscope does, and she saw the truth. Perhaps it was not really sudden. Perhaps in her subconscious mind that question: How did Edward know about the Bishop? had been teasing and worrying, and she had been slowly arriving at the one, the inevitable, answer…Edward had not learned about the Bishop of Llangow from her, and the only other person he could have learned it from, would have been Mr or Mrs Hamilton Clipp. But they could not possibly have seen Edward since her arrival in Baghdad, for Edward had been in Basrah then, so he must have learned it from them before he himself left England. He must have known all along, then, that Victoria was coming out with them – and the whole wonderful coincidence was not, after all, a coincidence. It was planned and intended.

And as she stared at Edward’s unmasked face, she knew, suddenly, what Carmichael had meant by Lucifer. She knew what he had seen that day as he looked along the passage to the Consulate garden. He had seen that young beautiful face that she was looking at now – for it was a beautiful face:

Lucifer, Son of the Morning, how art thou fallen?

Not Dr Rathbone – Edward! Edward, playing a minor part, the part of the secretary, but controlling and planning and directing, using Rathbone as a figurehead – and Rathbone, warning her to go while she could…

As she looked at that beautiful evil face, all her silly adolescent calf love faded away, and she knew that what she felt for Edward had never been love. It had been the same feeling that she had experienced some hours earlier for Humphrey Bogart, and later for the Duke of Edinburgh. It had been glamour. And Edward had never loved her . He had exerted his charm and his glamour deliberately. He had picked her up that day, using his charm so easily, so naturally, that she had fallen for it with out a struggle. She had been a sucker.

It was extraordinary how much could flash through your mind in just a few seconds. You didn’t have to think it out. It just came. Full and instant knowledge. Perhaps because really, underneath, you had known it all along…

And at the same time some instinct of self-preservation, quick as all Victoria ’s mental processes were quick, kept her face in an expression of foolish unthinking wonder. For she knew, instinctively, that she was in great danger. There was only one thing that could save her, only one card she could play. She made haste to play it.

‘You knew all along!’ she said. ‘You knew I was coming out here. You must have arranged it. Oh Edward, you are wonderful !’

Her face, that plastic impressionable face, showed one emotion – an almost cloying adoration. And she saw the response – the faintly scornful smile, the relief. She could almost feel Edward saying to himself, ‘The little fool! She’ll swallow anything! I can do what I like with her.’

‘But how did you arrange it?’ she said. ‘You must be very powerful. You must be quite different from what you pretend to be. You’re – it’s like you said the other day – you’re a King of Babylon.’

She saw the pride that lit up his face. She saw the power and strength and beauty and cruelty that had been disguised behind a facёade of a modest likeable young man.

‘And I’m only a Christian Slave,’ thought Victoria. She said quickly and anxiously, as a final artistic touch (and what its cost was to her pride no one will ever know), ‘But you do love me, don’t you?’

His scorn was hardly to be hidden now. This little fool – all these fools of women! So easy to make them think you loved them and that was all they cared about! They had no conception of greatness of construction, of a new world, they just whined for love! They were slaves and you used them as slaves to further your ends.