They came to Baghdad - Agatha Christie [63]
‘There’s the boil –’
‘Oh, damn the boil!’
‘And there are one or two other things.’
‘What?’
‘The BOAC notice on the door. It wasn’t there later. I remembered being puzzled when I found the BOAC office was on the other side of the entrance hall. That’s one thing. And there’s another. That air stewardess, the one who knocked at his door. I’ve seen her since – here in Baghdad – and what’s more, at the Olive Branch. The first day I went there. She came in and spoke to Catherine. I thought then I’d seen her before.’
After a moment’s silence, Victoria said:
‘So you must admit, Edward, that it isn’t all my fancy.’
Edward said slowly:
‘It all comes back to the Olive Branch – and to Catherine. Victoria, all ragging apart, you’ve got to get closer to Catherine. Flatter her, butter her up, talk Bolshie ideas to her. Somehow or other get sufficiently intimate with her to know who her friends are and where she goes and whom she’s in touch with outside the Olive Branch.’
‘It won’t be easy,’ said Victoria, ‘but I’ll try. What about Mr Dakin. Ought I to tell him about this?’
‘Yes, of course. But wait a day or two. We may have more to go on,’ Edward sighed. ‘I shall take Catherine to Le Select to hear the cabaret one night.’
And this time Victoria felt no pang of jealousy. Edward had spoken with a grim determination that ruled out any anticipation of pleasure in the commission he had undertaken.
II
Exhilarated by her discoveries, Victoria found it no effort to greet Catherine the following day with an effusion of friendliness. It was so kind of Catherine she said, to have told her of a place to have her hair washed. It needed washing terribly badly. (This was undeniable, Victoria had returned from Babylon with her dark hair the colour of red rust from the clogging sand.)
‘It is looking terrible, yes,’ said Catherine, eyeing it with a certain malicious satisfaction. ‘You went out then in that dust-storm yesterday afternoon?’
‘I hired a car and went to see Babylon,’ said Victoria. ‘It was very interesting, but on the way back, the dust-storm got up and I was nearly choked and blinded.’
‘It is interesting, Babylon,’ said Catherine, ‘but you should go with someone who understands it and can tell you about it properly. As for your hair, I will take you to this Armenian girl tonight. She will give you a cream shampoo. It is the best.’
‘I don’t know how you keep your hair looking so wonderful,’ said Victoria, looking with what appeared to be admiring eyes at Catherine’s heavy erections of greasy sausage-like curls.
A smile appeared on Catherine’s usually sour face, and Victoria thought how right Edward had been about flattery.
When they left the Olive Branch that evening, the two girls were on the friendliest of terms. Catherine wove in and out of narrow passages and alleys and finally tapped on an unpromising door which gave no sign of hairdressing operations being conducted on the other side of it. They were, however, received by a plain but competent looking young woman who spoke careful slow English and who led Victoria to a spotlessly clean basin with shining taps and various bottles and lotions ranged round it. Catherine departed and Victoria surrendered her mop of hair into Miss Ankoumian’s deft hands. Soon her hair was a mass of creamy lather.
‘And now if you please…’
Victoria bent forward over the basin. Water streamed over her hair and gurgled down the waste-pipe.
Suddenly her nose was assailed by a sweet rather sickly smell that she associated vaguely with hospitals. A wet saturated pad was clasped firmly over her nose and mouth. She struggled wildly, twisting and turning, but an iron grip kept the pad in place. She began to suffocate, her head reeled dizzily, a roaring sound came in her ears…
And after that blackness, deep and profound.
Chapter 18
When Victoria regained consciousness, it was with a sense of an immense passage of time. Confused memories stirred in her – jolting in a car – high jabbering and quarrelling in Arabic – lights that flashed into