Murder in Mesopotamia: A Hercule Poirot Mystery

  “If you don’t mind, nurse?” he said.

  I’m not squeamish. I got down on the floor and arranged myself as far as possible in the attitude in which Mrs. Leidner’s body had been found.

  “Leidner lifted her head when he found her,” said the doctor. “But I questioned him closely and it’s obvious that he didn’t actually change her position.”

  “It seems quite straightforward,” said Poirot. “She was lying on the bed, asleep or resting—someone opens the door, she looks up, rises to her feet—”

  “And he struck her down,” finished the doctor. “The blow would produce unconsciousness and death would follow very shortly. You see—”

  He explained the injury in technical language.

  “Not much blood, then?” said Poirot.

  “No, the blood escaped internally into the brain.”

  “Eh bien,” said Poirot, “that seems straightforward enough—except for one thing. If the man who entered was a stranger, why did not Mrs. Leidner cry out at once for help? If she had screamed she would have been heard. Nurse Leatheran here would have heard her, and Emmott and the boy.”

  “That’s easily answered,” said Dr. Reilly dryly. “Because it wasn’t a stranger.”

  Poirot nodded.

  “Yes,” he said meditatively. “She may have been surprised to see the person—but she was not afraid. Then, as he struck, she may have uttered a half cry—too late.”

  “The cry Miss Johnson heard?”

  “Yes, if she did hear it. But on the whole I doubt it. These mud walls are thick and the windows were closed.”

  He stepped up to the bed.

  “You left her actually lying down?” he asked me.

  I explained exactly what I had done.

  “Did she mean to sleep or was she going to read?”

  “I gave her two books—a light one and a volume of memoirs. She usually read for a while and then sometimes dropped off for a short sleep.”

  “And she was—what shall I say—quite as usual?”

  I considered.

  “Yes. She seemed quite normal and in good spirits,” I said. “Just a shade off-hand, perhaps, but I put that down to her having confided in me the day before. It makes people a little uncomfortable sometimes.”

  Poirot’s eyes twinkled.

  “Ah, yes, indeed, me, I know that well.”

  He looked round the room.

  “And when you came in here after the murder, was everything as you had seen it before?”

  I looked round also.

  “Yes, I think so. I don’t remember anything being different.”

  “There was no sign of the weapon with which she was struck?”

  “No.”

  Poirot looked at Dr. Reilly.

  “What was it in your opinion?”

  The doctor replied promptly:

  “Something pretty powerful, of a fair size and without any sharp corners or edges. The rounded base of a statue, say—something like that. Mind you, I’m not suggesting that that was it. But that type of thing. The blow was delivered with great force.”

  “Struck by a strong arm? A man’s arm?”

  “Yes—unless—”

  “Unless—what?”

  Dr. Reilly said slowly: “It is just possible that Mrs. Leidner might have been on her knees—in which case, the blow being delivered from above with a heavy implement, the force needed would not have been so great.”

  “On her knees,” mused Poirot. “It is an idea—that.”

  “It’s only an idea, mind,” the doctor hastened to point out. “There’s absolutely nothing to indicate it.”

  “But it’s possible.”

  “Yes. And after all, in view of the circumstances, it’s not fantastic. Her fear might have led her to kneel in supplication rather than to scream when her instinct would tell her it was too late—that nobody could get there in time.”

  “Yes,” said Poirot thoughtfully. “It is an idea. . . .”

  It was a very poor one, I thought. I couldn’t for one moment imagine Mrs. Leidner on her knees to anyone.

  Poirot made his way slowly round the room. He opened the windows, tested the bars, passed his head through and satisfied himself that by no means could his shoulders be made to follow his head.

  “The windows were shut when you found her,” he said. “Were they also shut when you left her at a quarter to one?”

  “Yes, they were always shut in the afternoon. There is no gauze over these windows as there is in the living room and dining room. They are kept shut to keep out the flies.”

  “And in any case no one could get in that way,” mused Poirot. “And the walls are of the most solid—mud-brick—and there are no trapdoors and no skylights. No, there is only one way into this room—through the door. And there is only one way to the door through the courtyard. And there is only one entrance to the courtyard—through the archway. And outside the archway there were five people and they all tell the same story, and I do not think, me, that they are lying . . . No, they are not lying. They are not bribed to silence. The murderer was here. . . .”

  I didn’t say anything. Hadn’t I felt the same thing just now when we were all cooped up round the table?

  Slowly Poirot prowled round the room. He took up a photograph from the chest of drawers. It was of an elderly man with a white goatee beard. He looked inquiringly at me.

  “Mrs. Leidner’s father,” I said. “She told me so.”

  He put it down again and glanced over the articles on the dressing-table—all of plain tortoiseshell—simple but good. He looked up at a row of books on a shelf, repeating the titles aloud.

  “Who were the Greeks? Introduction to Relativity. Life of Lady Hester Stanhope. Crewe Traine. Back to Methuselah. Linda Condon. Yes, they tell us something, perhaps. She was not a fool, your Mrs. Leidner. She had a mind.”

  “Oh! she was a very clever woman,” I said eagerly. “Very well read and up in everything. She wasn’t a bit ordinary.”

  He smiled as he looked over at me.

  “No,” he said. “I’ve already realized that.”

  He passed on. He stood for some moments at the washstand, where there was a big array of bottles and toilet creams.

  Then, suddenly, he dropped on his knees and examined the rug.

  Dr. Reilly and I came quickly to join him. He was examining a small dark brown stain, almost invisible on the brown of the rug. In fact it was only just noticeable where it impinged on one of the white stripes.

  “What do you say, doctor?” he said. “Is that blood?”

  Dr. Reilly knelt down.

  “Might be,” he said. “I’ll make sure if you like?”

  “If you would be so amiable.”

  Mr. Poirot examined the jug and basin. The jug was standing on the side of the washstand. The basin was empty, but beside the washstand there was an empty kerosene tin containing slop water.

  He turned to me.

  “Do you remember, nurse? Was this jug out of the basin or in it when you left Mrs. Leidner at a quarter to one?”

  “I can’t be sure,” I said after a minute or two. “I rather think it was standing in the basin.”

  “Ah?”

  “But you see,” I said hastily, “I only think so because it usually was. The boys leave it like that after lunch. I just feel that if it hadn’t been in I should have noticed it.”

  He nodded quite appreciatively.

  “Yes. I understand that. It is your hospital training. If everything had not been just so in the room, you would quite unconsciously have set it to rights hardly noticing what you were doing. And after the murder? Was it like it is now?”

  I shook my head.

  “I didn’t notice then,” I said. “All I looked for was whether there was any place anyone could be hidden or if there was anything the murderer had left behind him.”

  “It’s blood all right,” said Dr. Reilly, rising from his knees. “Is it important?”

  Poir
ot was frowning perplexedly. He flung out his hands with petulance.

  “I cannot tell. How can I tell? It may mean nothing at all. I can say, if I like, that the murderer touched her—that there was blood on his hands—very little blood, but still blood—and so he came over here and washed them. Yes, it may have been like that. But I cannot jump to conclusions and say that it was so. That stain may be of no importance at all.”

  “There would have been very little blood,” said Dr. Reilly dubiously. “None would have spurted out or anything like that. It would have just oozed a little from the wound. Of course, if he’d probed it at all. . . .”

  I gave a shiver. A nasty sort of picture came up in my mind. The vision of somebody—perhaps that nice pig-faced photographic boy, striking down that lovely woman and then bending over her probing the wound with his finger in an awful gloating fashion and his face, perhaps, quite different . . . all fierce and mad. . . .

  Dr. Reilly noticed my shiver.

  “What’s the matter, nurse?” he said.

  “Nothing—just gooseflesh,” I said. “A goose walking over my grave.”

  Mr. Poirot turned round and looked at me.

  “I know what you need,” he said. “Presently when we have finished here and I go back with the doctor to Hassanieh we will take you with us. You will give Nurse Leatheran tea, will you not, doctor?”

  “Delighted.”

  “Oh, no doctor,” I protested. “I couldn’t think of such a thing.”

  M. Poirot gave me a little friendly tap on the shoulder. Quite an English tap, not a foreign one.

  “You, ma soeur, will do as you are told,” he said. “Besides, it will be of advantage to me. There is a good deal more that I want to discuss, and I cannot do it here where one must preserve the decencies. The good Dr. Leidner he worshipped his wife and he is sure—oh, so sure—that everybody else felt the same about her! But that, in my opinion, would not be human nature! No, we want to discuss Mrs. Leidner with—how do you say?—the gloves removed. That is settled then. When we have finished here, we take you with us to Hassanieh.”

  “I suppose,” I said doubtfully, “that I ought to be leaving anyway. It’s rather awkward.”

  “Do nothing for a day or two,” said Dr. Reilly. “You can’t very well go until after the funeral.”

  “That’s all very well,” I said. “And supposing I get murdered too, doctor?”

  I said it half jokingly and Dr. Reilly took it in the same fashion and would, I think, have made some jocular response.

  But M. Poirot, to my astonishment, stood stock-still in the middle of the floor and clasped his hands to his head.

  “Ah! if that were possible,” he murmured. “It is a danger—yes—a great danger—and what can one do? How can one guard against it?”

  “Why, M. Poirot,” I said, “I was only joking! Who’d want to murder me, I should like to know?”

  “You—or another,” he said, and I didn’t like the way he said it at all. Positively creepy.

  “But why?” I persisted.

  He looked at me very straight then.

  “I joke, mademoiselle,” he said, “and I laugh. But there are some things that are no joke. There are things that my profession has taught me. And one of these things, the most terrible thing, is this: Murder is a habit. . . .”

  Eighteen

  TEA AT DR. REILLY’S

  Before leaving, Poirot made a round of the expedition house and the outbuildings. He also asked a few questions of the servants at second hand—that is to say, Dr. Reilly translated the questions and answers from English to Arabic and vice versa.

  These questions dealt mainly with the appearance of the stranger Mrs. Leidner and I had seen looking through the window and to whom Father Lavigny had been talking on the following day.

  “Do you really think that fellow had anything to do with it?” asked Dr. Reilly when we were bumping along in his car on our way to Hassanieh.

  “I like all the information there is,” was Poirot’s reply.

  And really, that described his methods very well. I found later that there wasn’t anything—no small scrap of insignificant gossip—in which he wasn’t interested. Men aren’t usually so gossipy.

  I must confess I was glad of my cup of tea when we got to Dr. Reilly’s house. M. Poirot, I noticed, put five lumps of sugar in his.

  Stirring it carefully with his teaspoon he said: “And now we can talk, can we not? We can make up our minds who is likely to have committed the crime.”

  “Lavigny, Mercado, Emmott or Reiter?” asked Dr. Reilly.

  “No, no—that was theory number three. I wish to concentrate now on theory number two—leaving aside all question of a mysterious husband or brother-in-law turning up from the past. Let us discuss now quite simply which member of the expedition had the means and opportunity to kill Mrs.

  Leidner, and who is likely to have done so.”

  “I thought you didn’t think much of that theory.”

  “Not at all. But I have some natural delicacy,” said Poirot reproachfully. “Can I discuss in the presence of Dr. Leidner the motives likely to lead to the murder of his wife by a member of the expedition? That would not have been delicate at all. I had to sustain the fiction that his wife was adorable and that everyone adored her!

  “But naturally it was not like that at all. Now we can be brutal and impersonal and say what we think. We have no longer to consider people’s feelings. And that is where Nurse Leatheran is going to help us. She is, I am sure, a very good observer.”

  “Oh, I don’t know about that,” I said.

  Dr. Reilly handed me a plate of hot scones—“To fortify yourself,” he said. They were very good scones.

  “Come now,” said M. Poirot in a friendly, chatty way. “You shall tell me, ma soeur, exactly what each member of the expedition felt towards Mrs. Leidner.”

  “I was only there a week, M. Poirot,” I said.

  “Quite long enough for one of your intelligence. A nurse sums up quickly. She makes her judgments and abides by them. Come, let us make a beginning. Father Lavigny, for instance?”

  “Well, there now, I really couldn’t say. He and Mrs. Leidner seemed to like talking together. But they usually spoke French and I’m not very good at French myself though I learnt it as a girl at school. I’ve an idea they talked mainly about books.”

  “They were, as you might say, companionable together—yes?”

  “Well, yes, you might put it that way. But, all the same, I think Father Lavigny was puzzled by her and—well—almost annoyed by being puzzled, if you know what I mean.”

  And I told him of the conversation I had had with him out on the dig that first day when he had called Mrs. Leidner a “dangerous woman.”

  “Now that is very interesting,” M. Poirot said. “And she—what do you think she thought of him?”

  “That’s rather difficult to say, too. It wasn’t easy to know what Mrs. Leidner thought of people. Sometimes, I fancy, he puzzled her. I remember her saying to Dr. Leidner that he was unlike any priest she had ever known.”

  “A length of hemp to be ordered for Father Lavigny,” said Dr. Reilly facetiously.

  “My dear friend,” said Poirot. “Have you not, perhaps, some patients to attend? I would not for the world detain you from your professional duties.”

  “I’ve got a whole hospital of them,” said Dr. Reilly.

  And he got up and said a wink was as good as a nod to a blind horse, and went out laughing.

  “That is better,” said Poirot. “We will have now an interesting conversation tête-à-tête. But you must not forget to eat your tea.”

  He passed me a plate of sandwiches and suggested my having a second cup of tea. He really had very pleasant, attentive manners.

  “And now,” he said, “let us continue with your impressions. Who was there who in your opinion did not like Mrs. Leidner?”

  “Well,” I said, “it’s only my opinion and I don’t want it repeate
d as coming from me.”

  “Naturally not.”

  “But in my opinion little Mrs. Mercado fairly hated her!”

  “Ah! And Mr. Mercado?”

  “He was a bit soft on her,” I said. “I shouldn’t think women, apart from his wife, had ever taken much notice of him. And Mrs. Leidner had a nice kind way of being interested in people and the things they told her. It rather went to the poor man’s head, I fancy.”

  “And Mrs. Mercado—she was not pleased?”

  “She was just plain jealous—that’s the truth of it. You’ve got to be very careful when there’s a husband and wife about, and that’s a fact. I could tell you some surprising things. You’ve no idea the extraordinary things women get into their heads when it’s a question of their husbands.”

  “I do not doubt the truth of what you say. So Mrs. Mercado was jealous? And she hated Mrs. Leidner?”

  “I’ve seen her look at her as though she’d have liked to kill her—oh, gracious!” I pulled myself up. “Indeed, M. Poirot, I didn’t mean to say—I mean, that is, not for one moment—”

  “No, no. I quite understand. The phrase slipped out. A very convenient one. And Mrs. Leidner, was she worried by this animosity of Mrs. Mercado’s?”

  “Well,” I said, reflecting, “I don’t really think she was worried at all. In fact, I don’t even know whether she noticed it. I thought once of just giving her a hint—but I didn’t like to. Least said soonest mended. That’s what I say.”

  “You are doubtless wise. Can you give me any instances of how Mrs. Mercado showed her feelings?”

  I told him about our conversation on the roof.

  “So she mentioned Mrs. Leidner’s first marriage,” said Poirot thoughtfully. “Can you remember—in mentioning it—did she look at you as though she wondered whether you had heard a different version?”

  “You think she may have known the truth about it?”

  “It is a possibility. She may have written those letters—and engineered a tapping hand and all the rest of it.”

  “I wondered something of the same kind myself. It seemed the kind of petty revengeful thing she might do.”

  “Yes. A cruel streak, I should say. But hardly the temperament for cold-blooded, brutal murder unless, of course—”