They Came to Baghdad

‘Quick,’ she said. She swept off pillows, and raised sheet and blanket. The man lay across the top of the bed. Victoria pulled sheet and blanket over him, dumped the pillows on top and sat down herself on the side of the bed.

Almost immediately there came a low insistent knocking on the door.

Victoria called out, ‘Who is it?’ in a faint, alarmed voice.

‘Please,’ said a man’s voice outside. ‘Open, please. It is the police.’

Victoria crossed the room, pulling her dressing-gown round her. As she did so, she noticed the man’s red knitted scarf was lying on the floor and she caught it up and swept it into a drawer, then she turned the key and opened the door of her room a small way, peering out with an expression of alarm.

A dark-haired young man in a mauve pin-stripe suit was standing outside and behind him was a man in police officer’s uniform.

‘What’s the matter?’ Victoria asked, letting a quaver creep into her voice.

The young man smiled brilliantly and spoke in very passable English.

‘I am so sorry, miss, to disturb you at this hour,’ he said, ‘but we have a criminal escaped. He has run into this hotel. We must look in every room. He is a very dangerous man.’

‘Oh dear!’ Victoria fell back, opening the door wide. ‘Do come in, please, and look. How very frightening. Look in the bathroom, please. Oh! and the wardrobe – and, I wonder, would you mind looking under the bed? He might have been there all evening.’

The search was very rapid.

‘No, he is not here.’

‘You’re sure he’s not under the bed? No, how silly of me. He couldn’t be in here at all. I locked the door when I went to bed.’

‘Thank you, miss, and good evening.’

The young man bowed and withdrew with his uniformed assistant.

Victoria, following him to the door, said:

‘I’d better lock it again, hadn’t I? To be safe.’

‘Yes, that will be best, certainly. Thank you.’

Victoria relocked the door and stood by it for some few minutes. She heard the police officers knock in the same way on the door the other side of the passage, heard the door open, an exchange of remarks and the indignant hoarse voice of Mrs Cardew Trench, and then the door closing. It reopened a few minutes later, the sound of their footsteps moved down the passage. The next knock came from much farther away.

Victoria turned and walked across the room to the bed. It was borne in upon her that she had probably been excessively foolish. Led away by the romantic spirit, and by the sound of her own language, she had impulsively lent aid to what was probably an extremely dangerous criminal. A disposition to be on the side of the hunted against the hunter sometimes brings unpleasant consequences. Oh well, thought Victoria, I’m in for it now, anyway!

Standing beside the bed she said curtly:

‘Get up.’

There was no movement, and Victoria said sharply, though without raising her voice:

‘They’ve gone. You can get up now.’

But still there was no sign of movement from under the slightly raised hump of pillows. Impatiently, Victoria threw them all off.

The young man lay just as she had left him. But now his face was a queer greyish colour and his eyes were closed.

Then, with a sharp catch in her breath, Victoria noticed something else – a bright red stain seeping through on to the blanket.

‘Oh, no,’ said Victoria, almost as though pleading with someone. ‘Oh, no – no!’

And as though in recognition of that plea the wounded man opened his eyes. He stared at her, stared as though from very far away at some object he was not quite certain of seeing.

His lips parted – the sound was so faint that Victoria scarcely heard.

She bent down.

‘What?’

She heard this time. With difficulty, great difficulty, the young man said two words. Whether she heard them correctly or not Victoria did not know. They seemed to her quite nonsensical and without meaning. What he said was, ‘Lucifer – Basrah …’

The eyelids drooped and flickered over the wide anxious eyes. He said one word more – a name. Then his head jerked back a little and he lay still.

Victoria stood quite still, her heart beating violently. She was filled now with an intense pity and anger. What to do next she had no idea. She must call someone – get someone to come. She was alone here with a dead man and sooner or later the police would want an explanation.

Whilst her brain worked rapidly on the situation, a small sound made her turn her head. The key had fallen out of her bedroom door, and whilst she stared at it, she heard the sound of the lock turning. The door opened and Mr Dakin came in, carefully closing the door behind him.

He walked across to her saying quietly:

‘Nice work, my dear. You think quickly. How is he?’

With a catch in her voice Victoria said:

‘I think he’s – he’s dead.’

She saw the other’s face alter, caught just a flash of intense anger, then his face was just as she had seen it the day before – only now it seemed to her that the indecision and flabbiness of the man had vanished, giving place to something quite different.

He bent down – and gently loosened the ragged tunic.

‘Very neatly stabbed through the heart,’ said Dakin as he straightened up. ‘He was a brave lad – and a clever one.’

Victoria found her voice.

‘The police came. They said he was a criminal. Was he a criminal?’

‘No. He wasn’t a criminal.’

‘Were they – were they the police?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Dakin. ‘They may have been. It’s all the same.’

Then he asked her:

‘Did he say anything – before he died?’

‘Yes.’

‘What was it?’

‘He said Lucifer – and then Basrah. And then after a pause he said a name – a French name it sounded like – but I mayn’t have got it right.’

‘What did it sound like to you?’

‘I think it was Lefarge.’

‘Lefarge,’ said Dakin thoughtfully.

‘What does it all mean?’ said Victoria, and added with some dismay: ‘And what am I to do?’

‘We must get you out of it as far as we can,’ said Dakin. ‘As for what it’s all about, I’ll come back and talk to you later. The first thing to do is to get hold of Marcus. It’s his hotel and Marcus has a great deal of sense, though one doesn’t always realize it in talking to him. I’ll get hold of him. He won’t have gone to bed. It’s only half-past one. He seldom goes to bed before two o’clock. Just attend to your appearance before I bring him in. Marcus is very susceptible to beauty in distress.’

He left the room. As though in a dream she moved over to the dressing-table, combed back her hair, made up her face to a becoming pallor and collapsed on to a chair as she heard footsteps approaching. Dakin came in without knocking. Behind him came the bulk of Marcus Tio.

This time Marcus was serious. There was not the usual smile on his face.

‘Now, Marcus,’ said Mr Dakin, ‘you must do what you can about this. It’s been a terrible shock to this poor