They came to Baghdad - Agatha Christie [51]
‘He’ll soon find out that I’m not,’ said Victoria.
‘Anyway, I shall get you into the Olive Branch somehow. I’m not going to have you beetling round on your own. Next thing I know, you’d be heading for Burma or darkest Africa. No, young Victoria, I’m going to have you right under my eyes. I’m not going to take any chances on your running out on me. I don’t trust you an inch. You’re too fond of seeing the world.’
‘You sweet idiot,’ thought Victoria, ‘don’t you know wild horses wouldn’t drive me away from Baghdad!’
Aloud she said: ‘Well, it would be quite fun to have a job at the Olive Branch.’
‘I wouldn’t describe it as fun. It’s all terribly earnest. As well as being absolutely goofy.’
‘And you still think there’s something wrong about it?’
‘Oh, that was only a wild idea of mine.’
‘No,’ said Victoria thoughtfully, ‘I don’t think it was only a wild idea. I think it’s true.’
Edward turned on her sharply.
‘What makes you say that?’
‘Something I heard – from a friend of mine.’
‘Who was it?’
‘Just a friend.’
‘Girls like you have too many friends,’ grumbled Edward. ‘You are a devil, Victoria. I love you madly and you don’t care a bit.’
‘Oh yes, I do,’ said Victoria. ‘Just a little bit.’
Then, concealing her delighted satisfaction, she asked:
‘Edward, is there any one called Lefarge connected with the Olive Branch or with anything else?’
‘Lefarge?’ Edward looked puzzled. ‘No, I don’t think so, Who is he?’
Victoria pursued her inquiries.
‘Or any one called Anna Scheele?’
This time Edward’s reaction was very different. He turned on her abruptly, caught her by the arm and said:
‘What do you know about Anna Scheele?’
‘Ow! Edward, let go! I don’t know anything about her. I just wanted to know if you did.’
‘Where did you hear about her? Mrs Clipp?’
‘No – not Mrs Clipp – at least I don’t think so, but actually she talked so fast and so unendingly about everyone and everything that I probably wouldn’t remember if she mentioned her.’
‘But what made you think this Anna Scheele had anything to do with the Olive Branch?’
‘Has she?’
Edward said slowly, ‘I don’t know…It’s all so – so vague.’
They were standing outside the garden door to the Consulate. Edward glanced at his watch. ‘I must go and do my stuff,’ he said. ‘Wish I knew some Arabic. But we’ve got to get together, Victoria. There’s a lot I want to know.’
‘There’s a lot I want to tell you,’ said Victoria.
Some tender heroine of a more sentimental age might have sought to keep her man out of danger. Not so, Victoria. Men, in Victoria’s opinion, were born to danger as the sparks fly upwards. Edward wouldn’t thank her for keeping him out of things. And, on reflection, she was quite certain that Mr Dakin hadn’t intended her to keep him out of things.
III
At sunset that evening Edward and Victoria walked together in the Consulate garden. In deference to Mrs Clayton’s insistence that the weather was wintry Victoria wore a woollen coat over her summer frock. The sunset was magnificent but neither of the young people noticed it. They were discussing more important things.
‘It began quite simply,’ said Victoria, ‘with a man coming into my room at the Tio Hotel and getting stabbed.’
It was not, perhaps, most people’s idea of a simple beginning. Edward stared at her and said: ‘Getting what?’
‘Stabbed,’ said Victoria. ‘At least I think it was stabbed, but it might have been shot only I don’t think so because then I would have heard the noise of the shot. Anyway,’ she added, ‘he was dead.’
‘How could he come into your room if he was dead?’
‘Oh Edward, don’t be stupid.’
Alternately baldly and vaguely, Victoria told her story. For some mysterious reason Victoria could never tell of truthful occurrences in a dramatic fashion. Her narrative was halting and incomplete and she told it with the air of one offering a palpable fabrication.
When she had come to the end, Edward looked at her doubtfully and said, ‘You do feel all right, Victoria, don’t you? I mean you haven’t had a touch of