The Woman on the Orient Express Read online

  ALSO BY LINDSAY ASHFORD

  The Color of Secrets

  The Mysterious Death of Miss Jane Austen

  Frozen

  Strange Blood

  Where Death Lies

  The Killer Inside

  The Rubber Woman

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Text copyright © 2016 by Lindsay Ashford.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Lake Union Publishing, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Lake Union Publishing are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781503938120 (paperback)

  ISBN-10: 1503938123 (paperback)

  Cover design by Shasti O’Leary-Soudant

  For my parents, Janet and Graham Molton, and my brother, Tim.

  Also in memory of my mother-in-law, Yvonne Lawrence:

  February 20, 1936–February 22, 2016.

  CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  EPILOGUE

  AFTERWORD

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  PROLOGUE

  August 1963

  He comes from the river. Steals into my garden without warning. I am sitting in the camellia grove above the estuary, waiting for the sunset, watching a pair of oystercatchers at the water’s edge, and trying to work out who is going to murder Major Palgrave. The lapping of the tide lulls me to sleep, so I don’t see the boat heading for the mooring.

  “Mrs. Christie?” His shadow falls across my face.

  “Who is it?” My eyes snap open. I lean forward. With the light behind him, it is difficult to discern his features. Do I know him? He is tall and slim with a mane of dark hair. He is wearing tennis shorts and his legs glisten with droplets of water.

  He holds out his hand, steps toward me. The movement unmasks the sinking sun, whose fiery glow blinds me. As I blink away a flurry of green disks, he trips over the syllables of his name. It is a name from long ago. A name that carries the scent of Turkish cigarettes and hot desert winds.

  “I’m sorry to barge in on you like this.” His voice is gentle, like a doctor giving bad news. “I had to see you. You’re the only one who can help me.”

  I say nothing. I can hear the oystercatchers calling to each other, the sweet piping sound echoing across the water. He has come here for the story I promised never to write. A mystery that began more than thirty years ago when I stepped aboard the Orient Express, bound for Baghdad.

  He moves closer. I must say something, anything, to get myself out of this. I ask him if he realizes he is trespassing on private property. Then I drop my eyes to the small patch of grass that separates us and say that anyway, I haven’t the least idea what he is talking about. Even to my own ears it sounds unconvincing.

  He already knows enough to have tracked me down, to have taken the risk of cornering me in my own garden. Would it be wrong to tell him? Must a promise be kept when the author of the secret is dead and gone?

  “I have a photograph.” He reaches inside the knapsack slung over his shoulder and hands me the evidence. Exhibit A: Myself three decades ago. When I still had a waist and could swim without shame in nothing but a pink silk vest and a double pair of knickers. I smile from under the fronds of an overhanging tree. I have my arm around Katharine, who stares straight at the camera with that same bold, quizzical look she gave me when we first met. We have draped ourselves in towels to cover our modesty, but our hair, plastered to our heads, gives away the fact that we have only just clambered up the banks of the Euphrates, which lies, out of shot, to my left.

  I turn the photograph over. There, in Katharine’s small, meticulous handwriting, is the date, December 1928, and the words “Agatha and Self in Mesopotamia.” I flip it back and stare at the image again. There is a ringing in my ears—something I get these days when my blood pressure rises suddenly—and I can feel my heart pumping.

  “Do you remember?” The man’s voice has an edge of urgency now. He is afraid that age has addled my brain. No doubt the sight of me asleep with my mouth lolling open encouraged him to think so. I could easily play on this; send him away with a handful of half-baked tales of my travels in the Middle East. But the truth is that I recall that December afternoon as if it were yesterday. The shock of what happened that day in the desert still lingers, even after all these years. And something in Katharine’s eyes—that brave insolence—dares me to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

  “When did you find out?” I pass the picture back.

  “A few months ago. I wrote but you didn’t reply.”

  I shake my head. “I’m sorry. I do get a lot of letters. I have an assistant who—”

  “It’s all right.” He waves it away. “I understand. But I had to talk to you. You do see that, don’t you?” He hesitates. Bites his lip. “May I sit down?”

  I take a breath. I need time to think. “Let’s go to the house, shall we? A pot of tea and some cake?” I grab my stick and ease myself up from the wooden bench. But he is delving into the bag again.

  “There’s this other one—but there’s nothing written on it apart from the place and date. I thought perhaps you . . .” He trails off, blinking as he hands it to me, as if the sight of it is too much to bear.

  This one is more timeworn than the other. The right-hand corner has been bent and straightened out. And the sharp black-and-white has faded to sepia tones. The words written in the border have faded, too: Venice Lido—April 1928.

  A group of men and women: young, tanned, and posing for the camera. They stand in a semicircle, close enough for arms and legs to touch. Nancy looks out from center left. Her wavy dark hair is half-covered by a close-fitting striped beret. Her eyes have an intense expression, at odds with her casual holiday attire of linen culottes and blouse. She looks tiny beside the muscular man to her right, who clasps her hand while his other rests on the shoulder of a smiling woman in a kimono.

  At the far end of the line, on the right, is a man in a patterned toweling robe and buckled canvas bathing shoes. He stands in profile, looking not at the camera but back at the line of friends. He is so tall that he can see over the heads of the others. His face is beautiful, but the set of his mouth and eyes has an obsessive, almost cruel quality. It could be a trick of the camera, but he seems to be staring at Nancy.

  “Do you know who they are?”

  I could say that I have no idea. I am not in the photograph, and in the spri
ng of 1928 I was hundreds of miles away, in London, humiliating myself in court. I close my eyes to shut out the image, but that face—that one face—is branded inside my eyelids. Even now, after all these years, it pierces me like broken glass.

  “You recognize somebody?”

  I have given myself away. If I lie now, he will know. But if I let it out, I’ll have to tell him everything. Can I face that?

  “Please.” He takes my hand. There is no pressure. His touch is as gentle as his voice. “If there’s something, anything you could tell me. You see, there’s no family left now—no one who knows.”

  You must tell him.

  Whose voice was that? Not Katharine’s or Nancy’s, but a man’s voice: the one I tried to shut out of my mind all those years ago when I climbed aboard the Orient Express.

  There was a sister. Maybe a brother now, too. You can’t deprive him of that. Think what it did to Rosalind.

  Oh, that’s cunning, using my own daughter to prick my conscience.

  I start for the house, beckoning the man to follow. With one long stride he catches up with me. His smile would melt any woman’s heart. I have around ten minutes to decide just how much I should tell him.

  CHAPTER 1

  October 1928—London, England

  Can we be haunted by those who are not yet dead? In the weeks that followed Agatha’s divorce from Archie Christie, a ghostly part of him seemed to follow her everywhere. Sitting in an empty house, she would hear his footsteps on the stairs. Waking in the night, she would feel the weight of his body in the bed. Opening the wardrobe, she would breathe in the familiar scent of shaving soap and cigarettes, even though his clothes were long gone. It was as if her senses had joined the conspiracy to push her over the edge.

  The trip on the Orient Express was an attempt to banish the ghost of Archie. She told everyone, including herself, that it was just a holiday. But for the first time in her life, she was traveling abroad on her own. Everything she would do in the next two months would be entirely of her own choosing. She would find out if she could do it. If she could stand being alone.

  Agatha knew how fortunate she was, having the money—and the time—for this escape. Having just delivered the final draft of The Seven Dials Mystery to her publisher, there was no need to be in England to start on novel number ten. The original plan was to sail to the West Indies and Jamaica, but then, just days before she was due to go, something changed her mind.

  Invited to a dinner party in Mayfair, she very nearly left within minutes of arriving because of a whispered conversation she couldn’t help overhearing. As the drinks were being served in the host’s conservatory, a woman on the other side of a giant tree fern was saying Agatha’s name. Two other female voices chimed in with words of disbelief.

  “Yes,” the first one hissed. “It’s definitely her.”

  “The one who faked her own death?”

  “And pretended she’d lost her memory?”

  Agatha moved closer to the trunk of the tree fern, wishing she could disappear.

  “They say she only did it to sell more books.”

  A pause and then: “I read an article—the Daily Mail I think it was—said she’d cost the taxpayers thousands with all those policemen searching for her.”

  “It’s the husband I feel sorry for.”

  “Ah, but they say he had a mistress!”

  “I wonder why she chose to disappear to a town in the middle of nowhere?”

  “No idea. But I’m amazed she has the nerve to show her face after a stunt like that!”

  Agatha wanted to run from the room, but there were people everywhere. By keeping her head down, she managed to get as far as the hallway. If she could just make it to the front door without bumping into the host, she could slip away unnoticed. But as she crossed the hall, she was hailed by someone coming down the stairs.

  “Mrs. Christie!”

  She turned to see a tall gray-haired man she didn’t recognize, smiling as he pulled something from his jacket pocket.

  “Would you be so kind as to sign this for me?”

  Agatha gave him a dubious look.

  “It’s for my mother. She’s bedridden now, and she does love your books. She’d be thrilled to have a signed copy.”

  It was The Secret of Chimneys. As she fanned her hand to dry the ink, he told her how much he, too, had enjoyed reading it. Before she knew it, they were being ushered into the dining room, where, thankfully, she was seated between him and the host.

  He told her he was a military man who had been stationed in Iraq. Soon they were chatting about what was in the papers, of the new discoveries made at Ur by Leonard Woolley and the treasures being unearthed there.

  “I’ve always been fascinated by archaeology,” she said. “I do envy you, living there. I’d love to visit Baghdad.”

  “Oh, you must go!” he said. “You can get there by the Orient Express.”

  His words had an almost magical effect. She found herself telling him how she had seen this train as a child, catching sight of the distinctive blue-and-gold livery when her mother took her to live in France before the war. She had watched men and women walking along the platform with rapturous faces, greeted by immaculate stewards standing to attention outside every carriage. She saw boxes of oysters glistening on ice, whole sides of bacon slung on hooks, and cartloads of every kind of fruit being loaded on board.

  And so, the day after the dinner party, Agatha went to Cook’s and canceled her tickets to the Caribbean. It took less than a week to sort out the visas for Syria and Iraq, and by the weekend she was boarding the train that would take her on the first leg of the journey, from London to Dover.

  Her friend and assistant, Charlotte, came to see her off. She thought it very unwise for a woman to be traveling alone to the Middle East, but she knew Agatha well enough not to try talking her out of it. As they said their good-byes, she cautioned her friend about the men she was likely to encounter in Baghdad.

  “You’d better be careful,” she said. “Those blue eyes of yours will turn heads, you know.”

  Agatha smiled at this kind, clumsy attempt to make her feel better about herself. On her wedding day, what seemed like a hundred years ago, Archie had said her eyes were incredible, like the sky when you flew above storm clouds. After the service, as they came out of church, he’d squeezed her arm and said, “Promise me one more thing, will you? Promise you’ll always be beautiful.”

  She remembered laughing and kissing him, then crossing her heart with her finger. “You’d love me just the same if I wasn’t, though, wouldn’t you?” she said. His own smile had disappeared as he replied. “Perhaps . . . perhaps I would. But it wouldn’t be quite the same.”

  Somehow that promise had been broken. What was it, she wondered, that had made her cease to be beautiful to him? Was it having a baby? Failing to lose the four or five pounds she had put on with pregnancy? Or was it simply that love had blinded him, and he had woken up one morning with the realization that he could have done better?

  “Don’t forget my Turkish slippers!” Charlotte yelled as the train sounded a warning blast.

  Agatha waved through the window, the sulfurous smoke of the engine filling her nostrils. To her it was a good smell. An exciting smell. She was turning a page. Agatha Christie, wife, was about to become Mary Miller, adventuress.

  The morning sunshine pierced the lace curtains on the second floor of number six, Connaught Mansions, dappling the stack of green leather suitcases on Nancy’s bed. She took two hatboxes from the top of the wardrobe and added them to the teetering pile of luggage. Then she walked across to the window. In the park below, people were already on the move. Two uniformed nannies in shiny black straw hats pushed perambulators through drifts of dry golden leaves. A milkman on a horse-drawn cart shouted something through the railings, and one of the women looked round, smiling and shaking her head. Somewhere in the bushes, a dog barked, and ducks cackled as they rose from the pond. In the distance Nancy co
uld see Buckingham Palace, the Union Jack fluttering in a light northwesterly breeze. This was a view she was never going to see again.

  Her room looked forlorn with the cases piled on the bed. The dressing table was stripped of everything familiar: the jewel-colored bottles of perfume; the silver hairbrush, comb, and hand mirror; the crystal jars of powder and cold cream. And the precious photograph that was in her handbag, wrapped in a scarf ruined by moth holes. When she had pulled out the square of peacock print silk, she had caught a faint whiff of lily of the valley. The scarf had belonged to her mother and retained a trace of her favorite scent. The smell had undone Nancy. The tears she had dammed up came flooding out. She could hear her mother’s voice as she lay weeping into her pillow: Come on now, darling: a true lady should always be able to control herself.

  In a moment she would go downstairs to the morning room, where the man she was about to leave forever would be sitting at the table behind his copy of the Financial Times. He would look up absentmindedly as she passed his chair. The paper would be laid aside only when Redfern brought in his breakfast of poached eggs, sausage, mushrooms, and bacon. As he ate, he would probably ask her what she planned to do today. He never actually listened to her replies, so she could very likely dispense with the lie she had prepared. He would go off to his club with no inkling that she was about to embark on a journey halfway round the world.

  By the time he was eating his lunch, she would have boarded the train that would take her to Dover. When he got home, she would already be in France. She reached inside her handbag and pulled out the tickets she had bought by pawning the diamond necklace and earrings she had inherited on her twenty-first birthday. Yes, this was really going to happen. The day had arrived, and she must be on that train. It was the only solution. Tonight she would be sleeping in a foreign country. And by the end of the week, she would be in Baghdad.

  Nancy had no idea what it would be like to live in such a place. All she knew had been gleaned from magazines and her cousin’s letters. In her wildest dreams she had never imagined setting up home in a city in the middle of the desert. But where else could she go? Who else would take her in?