They came to Baghdad - Agatha Christie [67]
That was all Victoria wanted to see. She tiptoed back to her own place of imprisonment. There was little likelihood that anyone would come near her again tonight. She would wait until it was dark and the village or town more or less settled down to sleep and then she would go.
One other thing she noted. A torn shapeless bit of black material lay in a heap near the outside door. It was, she thought, an old aba and would come in useful to cover her Western clothes.
How long she waited Victoria did not know. It seemed to her interminable hours. Yet at last the various noises of local human kind died down. The far-off blaring of a gramophone or phonograph stopped its Arab songs, the raucous voices and the spitting ceased, and there was no more far-off women’s high pitched squealing laughter; no children’s crying.
At last she heard only a far-off howling noise which she took to be jackals, and the intermittent bursts of dog barking which she knew would continue through the night.
‘Well, here goes!’ said Victoria and stood up.
After a moments cogitation she locked the door of her prison on the outside and left the key in the lock. Then she felt her way across the outer room, picked up the black heap of material and came out at the top of the mud stairs. There was a moon, but it was still low in the sky. It gave sufficient light for Victoria to see her way. She crept down the stairs, then paused about four steps from the bottom. She was level here with the mudwall that enclosed the garden. If she continued down the stairs she would have to pass along the side of the house. She could hear snoring from the downstairs rooms. If she went along the top of the wall it might be better. The wall was sufficiently thick to walk along.
She chose the latter course and went swiftly and somewhat precariously to where the wall turned at right angles. Here, outside, was what seemed to be a palm garden, and at one point the wall was crumbling away. Victoria found her way there, partly jumped and partly slithered down and a few moments later was threading her way through palm trees towards a gap in the far wall. She came out upon a narrow street of a primitive nature, too small for the passage of a car, but suitable for donkeys. It ran between mud-brick walls. Victoria sped along it as fast as she could.
Now dogs began to bark furiously. Two fawn-coloured pi-dogs came snarlingly out of a doorway at her. Victoria picked up a handful of rubble and brick and shied a piece at them. They yelped and ran away. Victoria sped on. She rounded a corner and came into what was evidently the main street. Narrow and heavily rutted, it ran through a village of mud-brick houses, uniformly pale in the moonlight. Palms peeped over walls, dogs snarled and barked. Victoria took a deep breath and ran. Dogs continued to bark, but no human being took any interest in this possible night marauder. Soon she came out on a wide space with a muddy stream and a decrepit hump-backed bridge over it. Beyond, the road, or track, lay heading towards what seemed infinite space. Victoria continued to run until she was out of breath.
The village was well behind her now. The moon was high in the sky. To the left and the right and in front of her, was bare stony ground, uncultivated and without a sign of human habitation. It looked flat but was really faintly contoured. It had, as far as Victoria could see, no landmarks and, she had no idea in what direction the track led. She was not learned enough in the stars to know even towards what point of the compass she was