They came to Baghdad - Agatha Christie [11]
‘It’s quite all right,’ said Victoria. She conjured up a pale brave smile. ‘I can take care of myself.’
‘Oh, of course, but it’s the unpleasantness.’
‘Yes,’ said Victoria. ‘It is unpleasant. However –’ She smiled bravely again.
Miss Spenser consulted her books.
‘The St Leonard’s Assistance to Unmarried Mothers want a typist,’ said Miss Spenser. ‘Of course, they don’t pay very much –’
‘Is there any chance,’ asked Victoria brusquely, ‘of a post in Baghdad?’
‘In Baghdad?’ said Miss Spenser in lively astonishment.
Victoria saw she might as well have said in Kamchatka or at the South Pole.
‘I should very much like to get to Baghdad,’ said Victoria.
‘I hardly think – in a secretary’s post you mean?’
‘Anyhow,’ said Victoria. ‘As a nurse or a cook, or looking after a lunatic. Any way at all.’
Miss Spenser shook her head.
‘I’m afraid I can’t hold out much hope. There was a lady in yesterday with two little girls who was offering a passage to Australia.’
Victoria waved away Australia.
She rose. ‘If you did hear of anything. Just the fare out – that’s all I need.’ She met the curiosity in the other woman’s eye by explaining – ‘I’ve got – er – relations out there. And I understand there are plenty of well-paid jobs. But of course, one has to get there first.
‘Yes,’ repeated Victoria to herself as she walked away from St Guildric’s Bureau. ‘One has to get there.’
It was an added annoyance to Victoria that, as is customary, when one has had one’s attention suddenly focused on a particular name or subject, everything seemed to have suddenly conspired to force the thought of Baghdad on to her attention.
A brief paragraph in the evening paper she bought stated that Dr Pauncefoot Jones, the well-known archaeologist, had started excavation on the ancient city of Murik, situated a hundred and twenty miles from Baghdad. An advertisement mentioned shipping lines to Basrah (and thence by train to Baghdad, Mosul, etc.). In the newspaper that lined her stocking drawer, a few lines of print about students in Baghdad leapt to her eyes. The Thief of Baghdad was on at the local cinema, and in the high-class highbrow bookshop into whose window she always gazed, a New Biography of Haroun el Rashid, Caliph of Baghdad, was prominently displayed.
The whole world, it seemed to her, had suddenly become Baghdad conscious. And until that afternoon at approximately 1.45 she had, for all intents and purposes never heard of Baghdad, and certainly never thought about it.
The prospects of getting there were unsatisfactory, but Victoria had no idea of giving up. She had a fertile brain and the optimistic outlook that if you want to do a thing there is always some way of doing it.
She employed the evening in drawing up a list of possible approaches. It ran:
Try Foreign Office?
Insert advertisement?
Try Iraq Legation?
What about date firms?
Ditto shipping firms?
British Council?
Selfridge’s Information Bureau?
Citizen’s Advice Bureau?
None of them, she was forced to admit, seemed very promising. She added to the list:
Somehow or other, get hold of a hundred pounds?
II
The intense mental efforts of concentration that Victoria had made overnight, and possibly the subconscious satisfaction at no longer having to be punctually in the office at nine a.m., made Victoria oversleep herself.
She awoke at five minutes past ten, and immediately jumped out of bed and began to dress. She was just passing a final comb through her rebellious dark hair when the telephone rang.
Victoria reached for the receiver.
A positively agitated Miss Spenser was at the other end.
‘So glad to have caught you, my dear. Really the most amazing coincidence.’
‘Yes?’ cried Victoria.
‘As I say, really a startling coincidence. A Mrs Hamilton Clipp – travelling to Baghdad in three days’ time – has broken her arm – needs someone to assist her on journey – I rang you up at once. Of course I don’t know