The Woman on the Orient Express by Lindsay Jayne Ashford

Author:Lindsay Jayne Ashford
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Mystery, Literary Fiction, Historical, Biographical, Thriller & Suspense, Literary, Historical Fiction, Genre Fiction, Literature & Fiction
ISBN: 9781503938120
Publisher: Lake Union Publishing
Published: 2016-09-20T07:00:00+00:00

Max left them with a railway timetable and a tin of foul-smelling yellow powder, which he said they would need to sprinkle all over the seats of the carriage on the train to Ur Junction as a precaution against fleas. If he had given this last gift before they’d settled on a date for their visit, they might have changed their minds. But Agatha had already promised to make the trip in early December. It was the place she most wanted to visit on her holiday in Mesopotamia and, as she told Max, she wanted to save the best until last.

Lunch arrived as soon as Max disappeared. Nancy had ordered a salad, and to her surprise Agatha asked for it, too.

“I thought you’d want the roast lamb,” Nancy said.

“Oh dear, you’re getting to know me too well.” Agatha reached for the vinaigrette dressing. “I do like my food, as a rule.”

“But not today?”

There was the slightest hesitation. “I . . . I’m not very hungry.”

Nancy saw Agatha’s eyes glisten, as if tears were not far away. She bent over her plate, jabbing her knife into a pat of butter, which she spread onto a roll with the concentration of an artist applying paint to canvas.

“I could see when I sat down that something was wrong,” Nancy began. “Would it help to talk about it?”

Agatha laid down the knife, staring at it as if it were about to leap up and stab her. “It’s nothing, honestly. Not compared to what you’ve been through, anyway.”

“It didn’t look like nothing.” Nancy reached across the table to take hold of her hand. “Something’s upset you enough to make you cry.”

Agatha nodded, bringing her napkin up to her face as a single tear slid down her cheek. “I’m sorry,” she mumbled. “It’s just that Archie—my husband—is getting married today.”

“Oh, Agatha! Why didn’t you tell me? No wonder you’re upset!”

“I thought I could cope with it. I thought that by coming here, thousands of miles away, it wouldn’t seem so bad. But it . . .” She trailed off with a sharp indrawn breath. “I came down to lunch early. I left my watch in the bedroom so I wouldn’t know the time, wouldn’t know the exact moment when they . . .” She pressed her lips into her teeth, turning their pinkness to white. “He’s marrying the girl he was with that night when I drove to the quarry. I wouldn’t have known—but my daughter told me. She wanted to be a bridesmaid.”

Nancy went cold inside. It was as if Agatha was telling her own story, from the other side. The intensity of her grief cast a harsh light on the letter Nancy had written to her lover, begging him to come with her, to leave his wife and daughter for a new life in Baghdad. She felt an overwhelming sense of shame: never for a moment had she put that other woman before herself, or thought about what her life would be like if her husband left her.

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