Murder in Mesopotamia: A Hercule Poirot Mystery

  Yes, I thought to myself, he’s right. Beauty’s a wonderful thing. She had been beautiful. It wasn’t the kind of looks you were jealous of—you just sat back and admired. I felt that first day I met her that I’d do anything for Mrs. Leidner!

  All the same, that night as I was being driven back to Tell Yarimjah (Dr. Reilly made me stay for an early dinner) one or two things came back to my mind and made me rather uncomfortable. At the time I hadn’t believed a word of all Sheila Reilly’s outpouring. I’d taken it for sheer spite and malice.

  But now I suddenly remembered the way Mrs. Leidner had insisted on going for a stroll by herself that afternoon and wouldn’t hear of me coming with her. I couldn’t help wondering if perhaps, after all, she had been going to meet Mr. Carey . . . And of course, it was a little odd, really, the way he and she spoke to each other so formally. Most of the others she called by their Christian names.

  He never seemed to look at her, I remembered. That might be because he disliked her—or it might be just the opposite. . . .

  I gave myself a little shake. Here I was fancying and imagining all sorts of things—all because of a girl’s spiteful outburst! It just showed how unkind and dangerous it was to go about saying that kind of thing.

  Mrs. Leidner hadn’t been like that at all. . . .

  Of course, she hadn’t liked Sheila Reilly. She’d really been—almost catty about her that day at lunch to Mr. Emmott.

  Funny, the way he’d looked at her. The sort of way that you couldn’t possibly tell what he was thinking. You never could tell what Mr. Emmott was thinking. He was so quiet. But very nice. A nice dependable person.

  Now Mr. Coleman was a foolish young man if there ever was one!

  I’d got to that point in my meditations when we arrived. It was just on nine o’clock and the big door was closed and barred.

  Ibrahim came running with his great key to let me in.

  We all went to bed early at Tell Yarimjah. There weren’t any lights showing in the living room. There was a light in the drawing office and one in Dr. Leidner’s office, but nearly all the other windows were dark. Everyone must have gone to bed even earlier than usual.

  As I passed the drawing office to go to my room I looked in. Mr. Carey was in his shirt sleeves working over his big plan.

  Terribly ill, he looked, I thought. So strained and worn. It gave me quite a pang. I don’t know what there was about Mr. Carey—it wasn’t what he said because he hardly said anything—and that of the most ordinary nature, and it wasn’t what he did, for that didn’t amount to much either—and yet you just couldn’t help noticing him, and everything about him seemed to matter more than it would have about anyone else. He just counted, if you know what I mean.

  He turned his head and saw me. He removed his pipe from his mouth and said: “Well, nurse, back from Hassanieh?”

  “Yes, Mr. Carey. You’re up working late. Everybody else seems to have gone to bed.”

  “I thought I might as well get on with things,” he said.

  “I was a bit behind-hand. And I shall be out on the dig all tomorrow. We’re starting digging again.”

  “Already?” I asked, shocked.

  He looked at me rather queerly.

  “It’s the best thing, I think. I put it up to Leidner. He’ll be in Hassanieh most of tomorrow seeing to things. But the rest of us will carry on here. You know it’s not too easy all sitting round and looking at each other as things are.”

  He was right there, of course. Especially in the nervy, jumpy state everyone was in.

  “Well, of course you’re right in a way,” I said. “It takes one’s mind off if one’s got something to do.”

  The funeral, I knew, was to be the day after tomorrow.

  He had bent over his plan again. I don’t know why, but my heart just ached for him. I felt certain that he wasn’t going to get any sleep.

  “If you’d like a sleeping draught, Mr. Carey?” I said hesitatingly.

  He shook his head with a smile.

  “I’ll carry on, nurse. Bad habit, sleeping draughts.”

  “Well, good night, Mr. Carey,” I said. “If there’s anything I can do—”

  “Don’t think so, thank you, nurse. Good night.”

  “I’m terribly sorry,” I said, rather too impulsively I suppose.

  “Sorry?” He looked surprised.

  “For—for everybody. It’s all so dreadful. But especially for you.”

  “For me? Why for me?”

  “Well, you’re such an old friend of them both.”

  “I’m an old friend of Leidner’s. I wasn’t a friend of hers particularly.”

  He spoke as though he had actually disliked her. Really, I wished Miss Reilly could have heard him!

  “Well, good night,” I said and hurried along to my room.

  I fussed around a bit in my room before undressing. Washed out some handkerchiefs and a pair of wash-leather gloves and wrote up my diary. I just looked out of my door again before I really started to get ready for bed. The lights were still on in the drawing office and in the south building.

  I suppose Dr. Leidner was still up and working in his office. I wondered whether I ought to go and say good night to him. I hesitated about it—I didn’t want to seem officious. He might be busy and not want to be disturbed. In the end, however, a sort of uneasiness drove me on. After all, it couldn’t do any harm. I’d just say goodnight, ask if there was anything I could do and come away.

  But Dr. Leidner wasn’t there. The office itself was lit up but there was no one in it except Miss Johnson. She had her head down on the table and was crying as though her heart would break.

  It gave me quite a turn. She was such a quiet, self-controlled woman. It was pitiful to see her.

  “Whatever is it, my dear?” I cried. I put my arm round her and patted her. “Now, now, this won’t do at all . . . You mustn’t sit here crying all by yourself.”

  She didn’t answer and I felt the dreadful shuddering sobs that were racking her.

  “Don’t, my dear, don’t,” I said. “Take a hold on yourself. I’ll go and make you a cup of nice hot tea.”

  She raised her head and said: “No, no, its all right, nurse. I’m being a fool.”

  “What’s upset you, my dear?” I asked.

  She didn’t answer at once, then she said: “It’s all too awful. . . .”

  “Now don’t start thinking of it,” I told her. “What’s happened has happened and can’t be mended. It’s no use fretting.”

  She sat up straight and began to pat her hair.

  “I’m making rather a fool of myself,” she said in her gruff voice. “I’ve been clearing up and tidying the office. Thought it was best to do something. And then—it all came over me suddenly—”

  “Yes, yes,” I said hastily. “I know. A nice strong cup of tea and a hot-water bottle in your bed is what you want,” I said.

  And she had them too. I didn’t listen to any protests.

  “Thank you, nurse,” she said when I’d settled her in bed, and she was sipping her tea and the hot-water bottle was in. “You’re a nice kind sensible woman. It’s not often I make such a fool of myself.”

  “Oh, anybody’s liable to do that at a time like this,” I said. “What with one thing and another. The strain and the shock and the police here, there and everywhere. Why, I’m quite jumpy myself.”

  She said slowly in rather a queer voice: “What you said in there is true. What’s happened has happened and can’t be mended. . . .”

  She was silent for a minute or two and then said—rather oddly, I thought: “She was never a nice woman!”

  Well, I didn’t argue the point. I’d always felt it was quite natural for Miss Johnson and Mrs. Leidner not to hit it off.

  I wondered if, perhaps, Miss Johnson had secretly had a feeling that she was pleased Mrs. Leidner was dead, and had then been ashamed of herself for the thought.

  I said: “Now you go to sleep and don’t worry about an
ything.”

  I just picked up a few things and set the room to rights. Stockings over the back of the chair and coat and skirt on a hanger. There was a little ball of crumpled paper on the floor where it must have fallen out of a pocket.

  I was just smoothing it out to see whether I could safely throw it away when she quite startled me.

  “Give that to me!”

  I did so—rather taken aback. She’d called out so peremptorily. She snatched it from me—fairly snatched it—and then held it in the candle flame till it was burnt to ashes.

  As I say, I was startled—and I just stared at her.

  I hadn’t had time to see what the paper was—she’d snatched it so quick. But funnily enough, as it burned it curled over towards me and I just saw that there were words written in ink on the paper.

  It wasn’t till I was getting into bed that I realized why they’d looked sort of familiar to me.

  It was the same handwriting as that of the anonymous letters.

  Was that why Miss Johnson had given way to a fit of remorse? Had it been her all along who had written those anonymous letters?

  Twenty

  MISS JOHNSON,

  MRS. MERCADO, MR. REITER

  I don’t mind confessing that the idea came as a complete shock to me. I’d never thought of associating Miss Johnson with the letters. Mrs. Mercado, perhaps. But Miss Johnson was a real lady, and so self-controlled and sensible.

  But I reflected, remembering the conversation I had listened to that evening between M. Poirot and Dr. Reilly, that that might be just why.

  If it were Miss Johnson who had written the letters it explained a lot, mind you. I didn’t think for a minute Miss Johnson had had anything to do with the murder. But I did see that her dislike of Mrs. Leidner might have made her succumb to the temptation of, well—putting the wind up her—to put it vulgarly.

  She might have hoped to frighten away Mrs. Leidner from the dig.

  But then Mrs. Leidner had been murdered and Miss Johnson had felt terrible pangs of remorse—first for her cruel trick and also, perhaps, because she realized that those letters were acting as a very good shield to the actual murderer. No wonder she had broken down so utterly. She was, I was sure, a decent soul at heart. And it explained, too, why she had caught so eagerly at my consolation of “what’s happened’s happened and can’t be mended.”

  And then her cryptic remark—her vindication of herself—“she was never a nice woman!”

  The question was, what was I to do about it?

  I tossed and turned for a good while and in the end decided I’d let M. Poirot know about it at the first opportunity.

  He came out next day, but I didn’t get a chance of speaking to him what you might call privately.

  We had just a minute alone together and before I could collect myself to know how to begin, he had come close to me and was whispering instructions in my ear.

  “Me, I shall talk to Miss Johnson—and others, perhaps, in the living room. You have the key of Mrs. Leidner’s room still?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Très bien. Go there, shut the door behind you and give a cry—not a scream—a cry. You understand what I mean—it is alarm—surprise that I want you to express—not mad terror. As for the excuse if you are heard—I leave that to you—the stepped toe or what you will.”

  At that moment Miss Johnson came out into the courtyard and there was no time for more.

  I understood well enough what M. Poirot was after. As soon as he and Miss Johnson had gone into the living room I went across to Mrs. Leidner’s room and, unlocking the door, went in and pulled the door to behind me.

  I can’t say I didn’t feel a bit of a fool standing up in an empty room and giving a yelp all for nothing at all. Besides, it wasn’t so easy to know just how loud to do it. I gave a pretty loud “Oh” and then tried it a bit higher and a bit lower.

  Then I came out again and prepared my excuse of a stepped (stubbed I suppose he meant!) toe.

  But it soon appeared that no excuse would be needed. Poirot and Miss Johnson were talking together earnestly and there had clearly been no interruption.

  “Well,” I thought, “that settles that. Either Miss Johnson imagined that cry she heard or else it was something quite different.”

  I didn’t like to go in and interrupt them. There was a deck chair on the porch so I sat down there. Their voices floated out to me.

  “The position is delicate, you understand,” Poirot was saying. “Dr. Leidner—obviously he adored his wife—”

  “He worshipped her,” said Miss Johnson.

  “He tells me, naturally, how fond all his staff was of her! As for them, what can they say? Naturally they say the same thing. It is politeness. It is decency. It may also be the truth! But also it may not! And I am convinced, mademoiselle, that the key to this enigma lies in a complete understanding of Mrs. Leidner’s character. If I could get the opinion—the honest opinion—of every member of the staff, I might, from the whole, build up a picture. Frankly, that is why I am here today. I knew Dr. Leidner would be in Hassanieh. That makes it easy for me to have an interview with each of you here in turn, and beg your help.”

  “That’s all very well,” began Miss Johnson and stopped.

  “Do not make me the British clichés,” Poirot begged. “Do not say it is not the cricket or the football, that to speak anything but well of the dead is not done—that—enfin—there is loyalty! Loyalty it is a pestilential thing in crime. Again and again it obscures the truth.”

  “I’ve no particular loyalty to Mrs. Leidner,” said Miss Johnson dryly. There was indeed a sharp and acid tone in her voice. “Dr. Leidner’s a different matter. And, after all, she was his wife.”

  “Precisely—precisely. I understand that you would not wish to speak against your chief’s wife. But this is not a question of a testimonial. It is a question of sudden and mysterious death. If I am to believe that it is a martyred angel who has been killed it does not add to the easiness of my task.”

  “I certainly shouldn’t call her an angel,” said Miss Johnson and the acid tone was even more in evidence.

  “Tell me your opinion, frankly, of Mrs. Leidner—as a woman.”

  “H’m! To begin with, M. Poirot, I’ll give you this warning. I’m prejudiced. I am—we all were—devoted to Dr. Leidner. And, I suppose, when Mrs. Leidner came along, we were jealous. We resented the demands she made on his time and attention. The devotion he showed her irritated us. I’m being truthful, M. Poirot, and it isn’t very pleasant for me. I resented her presence here—yes, I did, though, of course, I tried never to show it. It made a difference to us, you see.”

  “Us? You say us?”

  “I mean Mr. Carey and myself. We’re the two old-timers, you see. And we didn’t much care for the new order of things. I suppose that’s natural, though perhaps it was rather petty of us. But it did make a difference.”

  “What kind of a difference?”

  “Oh! to everything. We used to have such a happy time. A good deal of fun, you know, and rather silly jokes, like people do who work together. Dr. Leidner was quite lighthearted—just like a boy.”

  “And when Mrs. Leidner came she changed all that?”

  “Well, I suppose it wasn’t her fault. It wasn’t so bad last year. And please believe, M. Poirot, that it wasn’t anything she did. She’s always been charming to me—quite charming. That’s why I’ve felt ashamed sometimes. It wasn’t her fault that little things she said and did seemed to rub me up the wrong way. Really, nobody could be nicer than she was.”

  “But nevertheless things were changed this season? There was a different atmosphere.”

  “Oh, entirely. Really. I don’t know what it was. Everything seemed to go wrong—not with the work—I mean with us—our tempers and our nerves. All on edge. Almost the sort of feeling you get when there is a thunderstorm coming.”

  “And you put that down to Mrs. Leidner’s influence?”

  “
Well, it was never like that before she came,” said Miss Johnson dryly. “Oh! I’m a cross-grained, complaining old dog. Conservative—liking things always the same. You really mustn’t take any notice of me, M. Poirot.”

  “How would you describe to me Mrs. Leidner’s character and temperament?”

  Miss Johnson hesitated for a moment. Then she said slowly: “Well, of course, she was temperamental. A lot of ups and downs. Nice to people one day and perhaps wouldn’t speak to them the next. She was very kind, I think. And very thoughtful for others. All the same you could see she had been thoroughly spoilt all her life. She took Dr. Leidner’s waiting on her hand and foot as perfectly natural. And I don’t think she ever really appreciated what a very remarkable—what a really great—man she had married. That used to annoy me sometimes. And of course she was terribly highly strung and nervous. The things she used to imagine and the states she used to get into! I was thankful when Dr. Leidner brought Nurse Leatheran here. It was too much for him having to cope both with his work and with his wife’s fears.”

  “What is your own opinion of these anonymous letters she received?”

  I had to do it. I leaned forward in my chair till I could just catch sight of Miss Johnson’s profile turned to Poirot in answer to his question.

  She was looking perfectly cool and collected.

  “I think someone in America had a spite against her and was trying to frighten or annoy her.”

  “Pas plus sérieux que ça?”

  “That’s my opinion. She was a very handsome woman, you know, and might easily have had enemies. I think, those letters were written by some spiteful woman. Mrs. Leidner being of a nervous temperament took them seriously.”

  “She certainly did that,” said Poirot. “But remember—the last of them arrived by hand.”

  “Well, I suppose that could have been managed if anyone had given their minds to it. Women will take a lot of trouble to gratify their spite, M. Poirot.”

  They will indeed, I thought to myself!

  “Perhaps you are right, mademoiselle. As you say, Mrs. Leidner was handsome. By the way, you know Miss Reilly, the doctor’s daughter?”