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‘Yes.’
‘And how are things in America? They are very sadly here—very sadly indeed.’ Mr Bolford shook his head like a doctor describing a patient. ‘No heart in things, if you know what I mean. And no one coming along who takes any pride in a good job of work. D’you know who will cut your suit, Miss Scheele? Mr Lantwick—seventy-two years of age he is and he’s the only man I’ve got I can really trust to cut for our best people. All the others—’
Mr Bolford’s plump hands waved them away.
‘Quality,’ he said. ‘That’s what this country used to be renowned for. Quality! Nothing cheap, nothing flashy. When we try mass production we’re no good at it, and that’s a fact. That’s your country’s speciality, Miss Scheele. What we ought to stand for, and I say it again, is quality. Take time over things, and trouble, and turn out an article that no one in the world can beat. Now what day shall we say for the first fitting. This day week? At 11.30? Thank you very much.’
Making her way through the archaic gloom round bales of material, Anna Scheele emerged into daylight again. She hailed a taxi and returned to the Savoy. A taxi that was drawn up on the opposite side of the street and which contained a little dark man, took the same route but did not turn into the Savoy. It drove round to the Embankment and there picked up a short plump woman who had recently emerged from the service entrance of the Savoy.
‘What about it, Louisa? Been through her room?’
‘Yes. Nothing.’
Anna Scheele had lunch in the restaurant. A table had been kept for her by the window. The Maître d’Hôtel inquired affectionately after the health of Otto Morganthal.
After lunch Anna Scheele took her key and went up to her suite. The bed had been made, fresh towels were in the bathroom and everything was spick and span. Anna crossed to the two light air-cases that constituted her luggage, one was open, the other locked. She cast an eye over the contents of the unlocked one, then taking her keys from her purse she unlocked the other. All was neat, folded, as she had folded things, nothing had apparently been touched or disturbed. A brief-case of leather lay on top. A small Leica camera and two rolls of films were in one corner. The films were still sealed and unopened. Anna ran her nail across the flap and pulled it up. Then she smiled, very gently. The single almost invisible blonde hair that had been there was there no longer. Deftly she scattered a little powder over the shiny leather of the brief-case and blew it off. The brief-case remained clear and shiny. There were no fingerprints. But that morning after patting a little brilliantine on to the smooth flaxen cap of her hair, she had handled the brief-case. There should have been fingerprints on it, her own.
She smiled again.
‘Good work,’ she said to herself. ‘But not quite good enough …’
Deftly, she packed a small overnight-case and went downstairs again. A taxi was called and she directed the driver to 17 Elmsleigh Gardens.
Elmsleigh Gardens was a quiet, rather dingy Kensington Square. Anna paid off the taxi and ran up the steps to the peeling front door. She pressed the bell. After a few minutes an elderly woman opened the door with a suspicious face which immediately changed to a beam of welcome.
‘Won’t Miss Elsie be pleased to see you! She’s in the study at the back. It’s only the thought of your coming that’s been keeping her spirits up.’
Anna went quickly along the dark hallway and opened the door at the far end. It was a small shabby, comfortable room with large worn leather arm-chairs. The woman sitting in one of them jumped up.
‘Anna, darling.’
‘Elsie.’
The two women kissed each other affectionately.
‘It’s all arranged,’ said Elsie. ‘I go in tonight. I do hope—’
‘Cheer up,’ said Anna. ‘Everything is going to be quite all right.’
The small dark man in the raincoat entered a public callbox at High Street Kensington Station, and dialled a number.
‘Valhalla Gramophone Company?’
‘Yes.’
‘Sanders here.’
‘Sanders of the River? What river?’
‘River Tigris. Reporting on A. S. Arrived this morning from New York. Went to Cartier’s. Bought sapphire and diamond ring costing one hundred and twenty pounds. Went to florist’s, Jane Kent—twelve pounds eighteen shillings’ worth of flowers to be delivered at a nursing home in Portland Place. Ordered coat and skirt at Bolford and Avory’s. None of these firms known to have any suspicious contacts, but particular attention will be paid to them in future. A. S.’s room at Savoy gone through. Nothing suspicious found. Brief-case in suitcase containing papers relating to Paper Merger with Wolfensteins. All above board. Camera and two rolls of apparently unexposed films. Possibility of films being photostatic records, substituted other films for them, but original films reported upon as being straightforward unexposed films. A.S. took small overnight-case and went to sister at 17 Elmsleigh Gardens. Sister entering nursing home in Portland Place this evening for internal operation. This confirmed from nursing home and also appointment book of surgeon. Visit of A. S. seems perfectly above board. Showed no uneasiness or consciousness of being followed. Understand she is spending tonight at nursing home. Has kept on her room at the Savoy. Return passage to New York by clipper booked for twenty-third.’
The man who called himself Sanders of the River paused and added a postscript off the record as it were.
‘And if you ask what I think it’s all a mare’s nest! Throwing money about, that’s all she’s doing. Twelve pounds eighteen on flowers! I ask you!’
CHAPTER 4 (#ulink_7b981d8b-7776-5252-92fe-8c547a9ba3ce)
It says a good deal for the buoyancy of Victoria’s temperament that the possibility of failing to attain her objective did not for a moment occur to her. Not for her the lines about ships that pass in the night. It was certainly unfortunate that when she had—well—frankly—fallen for an attractive young man, that that young man should prove to be just on the verge of departure to a place distant some three thousand miles. He might so easily have been going to Aberdeen or Brussels, or even Birmingham.
That it should be Baghdad, thought Victoria, was just her luck! Nevertheless, difficult though it might be, she intended to get to Baghdad somehow or other. Victoria walked purposefully along Tottenham Court Road evolving ways and means. Baghdad. What went on in Baghdad? According to Edward: ‘Culture.’ Could she, in some way, play up culture? Unesco? Unesco was always sending people here, there and everywhere, sometimes to the most delectable places. But these were usually, Victoria reflected, superior young women with university degrees who had got into the racket early on.
Victoria, deciding that first things came first, finally bent her steps to a travel agency, and there made her inquiries. There was no difficulty, it seemed, in travelling to Baghdad. You could go by air, by long sea to Basrah, by train to Marseilles and by boat to Beirut and across the desert by car. You could go via Egypt. You could go all the way by train if you were determined to do so, but visas were at present difficult and uncertain and were apt to have actually expired by the time you received them. Baghdad was in the sterling area and money therefore presented no difficulties. Not, that is to say, in the clerk’s meaning of the word. What it all boiled down to was that there was no difficulty whatsoever in getting to Baghdad so long as you had between sixty and a hundred pounds in cash.
As Victoria had at this moment three pounds ten (less ninepence), an extra twelve shillings, and five pounds in the PO Savings Bank, the simple and straightforward way was out of the question.
She made tentative queries as to a job as air hostess or stewardess, but these, she gathered, were highly coveted posts for which there was a waiting-list.
Victoria next visited St Guildric’s Agency where Miss Spenser, sitting behind her efficient desk, welcomed her as one of those who were destined to pass through the office with reasonable frequency.
‘Dear me, Miss Jones, not out of a post again. I really hoped this last one—’
‘Quite impossible,’ said Victoria firmly. ‘I really couldn’t begin to tell you what I had to put up with.’
A pleasurable flush rose in Miss Spenser’s pallid cheek.
‘Not—’ she began—‘I do hope not—He didn’t seem to me really that sort of man—but of course he is a trifle gross—I do hope—’
‘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:
Insert advertisement?
Try Foreign Office?
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?
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 if she has also applied to any other agencies—’
‘I’m on my way,’ said Victoria. ‘Where is she?’
‘The Savoy.’
‘And what’s her silly name? Tripp?’
‘Clipp, dear. Like a paper clip, but with two P’s—I can’t think why, but then she’s an American,’ ended Miss Spencer as if that explained everything.
‘Mrs Clipp at the Savoy.’
‘Mr and Mrs Hamilton Clipp. It was actually the husband who rang up.’
‘You’re an angel,’ said Victoria. ‘Goodbye.’
She hurriedly brushed her suit and wished it were slightly less shabby, recombed her hair so as to make it seem less exuberant and more in keeping with the role of ministering angel and experienced traveller. Then she took out Mr Greenholtz’s recommendation and shook her head over it.
We must do better than that, said Victoria.
From a No. 19 bus, Victoria alighted at Green Park, and entered the Ritz Hotel. A quick glance over the shoulder of a woman reading in the bus had proved rewarding. Entering the writing-room Victoria wrote herself some generous lines of praise from Lady Cynthia Bradbury who had been announced as having just left England for East Africa … ‘excellent in illness,’ wrote Victoria, ‘and most capable in every way …’
Leaving the Ritz she crossed the road and walked a short way up Albemarle Street until she came to Balderton’s Hotel, renowned as the haunt of the higher clergy and of old-fashioned dowagers up from the country.
In less dashing handwriting, and making neat small Greek ‘E’s, she wrote a recommendation from the Bishop of Llangow.
Thus equipped, Victoria caught a No. 9 bus and proceeded to the Savoy.
At the reception desk she asked for Mrs Hamilton Clipp and gave her name as coming from St Guildric’s Agency. The clerk was just about to pull the telephone towards him when he paused, looked across, and said:
‘That is Mr Hamilton Clipp now.’
Mr Hamilton Clipp was an immensely tall and very thin grey-haired American of kindly aspect and slow deliberate speech.
Victoria told him her name and mentioned the Agency.
‘Why now, Miss Jones, you’d better come right up and see Mrs Clipp. She is still in our suite. I fancy she’s interviewing some other young lady, but she may have gone by now.’
Cold panic clutched at Victoria’s heart.
Was it to be so near and yet so far?
They went up in the lift to the third floor.
As they walked along the deep carpeted corridor, a young woman came out of a door at the far end and came towards them. Victoria had a kind of hallucination that it was herself who was approaching. Possibly, she thought, because of the young woman’s tailor-made suit that was so exactly what she would have liked to be wearing herself. ‘And it would fit me too. I’m just her size. How I’d like to tear it off her,’ thought Victoria with a reversion to primitive female savagery.
The young woman passed them. A small velvet hat perched on the side of her fair hair partially hid her face, but Mr Hamilton Clipp turned to look after her with an air of surprise.
