Murder in Mesopotamia: A Hercule Poirot Mystery

  I thought it was very nice of him. He was all pink with embarrassment like Englishmen are when they’ve done anything sentimental. I thought it was a very sweet thought.

  “Why, I think that’s a very nice idea, Mr. Coleman,” I said.

  And I picked up the little pot and went and got some water in it and we put the flowers in.

  I really thought much more of Mr. Coleman for this idea of his. It showed he had a heart and nice feelings about things.

  He didn’t ask me again what made me let out such a squeal and I’m thankful he didn’t. I should have felt a fool explaining.

  “Stick to common sense in future, woman,” I said to myself as I settled my cuffs and smoothed my apron. “You’re not cut out for this psychic stuff.”

  I bustled about doing my own packing and kept myself busy for the rest of the day.

  Father Lavigny was kind enough to express great distress at my leaving. He said my cheerfulness and common sense had been such a help to everybody. Common sense! I’m glad he didn’t know about my idiotic behaviour in Mrs. Leidner’s room.

  “We have not seen M. Poirot today,” he remarked.

  I told him that Poirot had said he was going to be busy all day sending off telegrams.

  Father Lavigny raised his eyebrows.

  “Telegrams? To America?”

  “I suppose so. He said, ‘All over the world!’ but I think that was rather a foreign exaggeration.”

  And then I got rather red, remembering that Father Lavigny was a foreigner himself.

  He didn’t seem offended though, just laughed quite pleasantly and asked me if there were any news of the man with the squint.

  I said I didn’t know but I hadn’t heard of any.

  Father Lavigny asked me again about the time Mrs. Leidner and I had noticed the man and how he had seemed to be standing on tiptoe and peering through the window.

  “It seems clear the man had some overwhelming interest in Mrs. Leidner,” he said thoughtfully. “I have wondered since whether the man could possibly have been a European got up to look like an Iraqi?”

  That was a new idea to me and I considered it carefully. I had taken it for granted that the man was a native, but of course when I came to think of it, I was really going by the cut of his clothes and the yellowness of his skin.

  Father Lavigny declared his intention of going round outside the house to the place where Mrs. Leidner and I had seen the man standing.

  “You never know, he might have dropped something. In the detective stories the criminal always does.”

  “I expect in real life criminals are more careful,” I said.

  I fetched some socks I had just finished darning and put them on the table in the living room for the men to sort out when they came in, and then, as there was nothing much more to do, I went up on the roof.

  Miss Johnson was standing there but she didn’t hear me. I got right up to her before she noticed me.

  But long before that I’d seen that there was something very wrong.

  She was standing in the middle of the roof staring straight in front of her, and there was the most awful look on her face. As though she’d seen something she couldn’t possibly believe.

  It gave me quite a shock.

  Mind you, I’d seen her upset the other evening, but this was quite different.

  “My dear,” I said, hurrying to her, “whatever’s the matter?”

  She turned her head at that and stood looking at me—almost as if she didn’t see me.

  “What is it?” I persisted.

  She made a queer sort of grimace—as though she were trying to swallow but her throat were too dry. She said hoarsely: “I’ve just seen something.”

  “What have you seen? Tell me. Whatever can it be? You look all in.”

  She gave an effort to pull herself together, but she still looked pretty dreadful.

  She said, still in that same dreadful choked voice: “I’ve seen how someone could come in from outside—and no one would ever guess.”

  I followed the direction of her eyes but I couldn’t see anything.

  Mr. Reiter was standing in the door of the photographic room and Father Lavigny was just crossing the courtyard—but there was nothing else.

  I turned back puzzled and found her eyes fixed on mine with the strangest expression in them.

  “Really,” I said, “I don’t see what you mean. Won’t you explain?”

  But she shook her head.

  “Not now. Later. We ought to have seen. Oh, we ought to have seen!”

  “If you’d only tell me—”

  But she shook her head.

  “I’ve got to think it out first.”

  And pushing past me, she went stumbling down the stairs.

  I didn’t follow her as she obviously didn’t want me with her. Instead I sat down on the parapet and tried to puzzle things out. But I didn’t get anywhere. There was only the one way into the courtyard—through the big arch. Just outside it I could see the water boy and his horse and the Indian cook talking to him. Nobody could have passed them and come in without their seeing him.

  I shook my head in perplexity and went downstairs again.

  Twenty-four

  MURDER IS A HABIT

  We all went to bed early that night. Miss Johnson had appeared at dinner and had behaved more or less as usual. She had, however, a sort of dazed look, and once or twice quite failed to take in what other people said to her.

  It wasn’t somehow a very comfortable sort of meal. You’d say, I suppose, that that was natural enough in a house where there’d been a funeral that day. But I know what I mean.

  Lately our meals had been hushed and subdued, but for all that there had been a feeling of comradeship. There had been sympathy with Dr. Leidner in his grief and a fellow feeling of being all in the same boat amongst the others.

  But tonight I was reminded of my first meal there—when Mrs. Mercado had watched me and there had been that curious feeling as though something might snap any minute.

  I’d felt the same thing—only very much intensified—when we’d sat round the dining room table with Poirot at the head of it.

  Tonight it was particularly strong. Everyone was on edge—jumpy—on tenterhooks. If anyone had dropped something I’m sure somebody would have screamed.

  As I say, we all separated early afterwards. I went to bed almost at once. The last thing I heard as I was dropping off to sleep was Mrs. Mercado’s voice saying goodnight to Miss Johnson just outside my door.

  I dropped off to sleep at once—tired by my exertions and even more by my silly experience in Mrs. Leidner’s room. I slept heavily and dreamlessly for several hours.

  I awoke when I did awake with a start and a feeling of impending catastrophe. Some sound had woken me, and as I sat up in bed listening I heard it again.

  An awful sort of agonized choking groan.

  I had lit my candle and was out of bed in a twinkling. I snatched up a torch, too, in case the candle should blow out. I came out of my door and stood listening. I knew the sound wasn’t far away. It came again—from the room immediately next to mine—Miss Johnson’s room.

  I hurried in. Miss Johnson was lying in bed, her whole body contorted in agony. As I set down the candle and bent over her, her lips moved and she tried to speak—but only an awful hoarse whisper came. I saw that the corners of her mouth and the skin of her chin were burnt a kind of greyish white.

  Her eyes went from me to a glass that lay on the floor evidently where it had dropped from her hand. The light rug was stained a bright red where it had fallen. I picked it up and ran a finger over the inside, drawing back my hand with a sharp exclamation. Then I examined the inside of the poor woman’s mouth.

  There wasn’t the least doubt what was the matter. Somehow or other, intentionally or otherwise, she’d swallowed a quantity of corrosive acid—oxalic or hydrochloric, I suspected.

  I ran out and called to Dr. Leidner and he woke the others, and we
worked over her for all we were worth, but all the time I had an awful feeling it was no good. We tried a strong solution of carbonate of soda—and followed it with olive oil. To ease the pain I gave her a hypodermic of morphine sulphate.

  David Emmott had gone off to Hassanieh to fetch Dr. Reilly, but before he came it was over.

  I won’t dwell on the details. Poisoning by a strong solution of hydrochloric acid (which is what it proved to be) is one of the most painful deaths possible.

  It was when I was bending over her to give her the morphia that she made one ghastly effort to speak. It was only a horrible strangled whisper when it came.

  “The window . . . ” she said. “Nurse . . . the window . . . ”

  But that was all—she couldn’t go on. She collapsed completely.

  I shall never forget that night. The arrival of Dr. Reilly. The arrival of Captain Maitland. And finally with the dawn, Hercule Poirot.

  He it was who took me gently by the arm and steered me into the dining room, where he made me sit down and have a cup of good strong tea.

  “There, mon enfant,” he said, “that is better. You are worn out.”

  Upon that, I burst into tears.

  “It’s too awful,” I sobbed. “It’s been like a nightmare. Such awful suffering. And her eyes . . . Oh, M. Poirot—her eyes . . .”

  He patted me on the shoulder. A woman couldn’t have been kinder.

  “Yes, yes—do not think of it. You did all you could.”

  “It was one of the corrosive acids.”

  “It was a strong solution of hydrochloric acid.”

  “The stuff they use on the pots?”

  “Yes. Miss Johnson probably drank it off before she was fully awake. That is—unless she took it on purpose.”

  “Oh, M. Poirot, what an awful idea!”

  “It is a possibility, after all. What do you think?”

  I considered for a moment and then shook my head decisively.

  “I don’t believe it. No, I don’t believe it for a moment.” I hesitated and then said, “I think she found out something yesterday afternoon.”

  “What is that you say? She found out something?”

  I repeated to him the curious conversation we had had together.

  Poirot gave a low soft whistle.

  “La pauvre femme!” he said. “She said she wanted to think it over—eh? That is what signed her death warrant. If she had only spoken out—then—at once.”

  He said: “Tell me again her exact words.”

  I repeated them.

  “She saw how someone could have come in from outside without any of you knowing? Come, ma soeur, let us go up to the roof and you shall show me just where she was standing.”

  We went up to the roof together and I showed Poirot the exact spot where Miss Johnson had stood.

  “Like this?” said Poirot. “Now what do I see? I see half the courtyard—and the archway—and the doors of the drawing office and the photographic room and the laboratory. Was there anyone in the courtyard?”

  “Father Lavigny was just going towards the archway and Mr. Reiter was standing in the door of the photographic room.”

  “And still I do not see in the least how anyone could come in from outside and none of you know about it . . . But she saw. . . .”

  He gave it up at last, shaking his head.

  “Sacré nom d’un chien—va! What did she see?”

  The sun was just rising. The whole eastern sky was a riot of rose and orange and pale, pearly grey.

  “What a beautiful sunrise!” said Poirot gently.

  The river wound away to our left and the Tell stood up outlined in gold colour. To the south were the blossoming trees and the peaceful cultivation. The waterwheel groaned in the distance—a faint unearthly sound. In the north were the slender minarets and the clustering fairy whiteness of Hassanieh.

  It was incredibly beautiful.

  And then, close at my elbow, I heard Poirot give a long deep sigh.

  “Fool that I have been,” he murmured. “When the truth is so clear—so clear.”

  Twenty-five

  SUICIDE OR MURDER?

  I hadn’t time to ask Poirot what he meant, for Captain Maitland was calling up to us and asking us to come down.

  We hurried down the stairs.

  “Look here, Poirot,” he said. “Here’s another complication. The monk fellow is missing.”

  “Father Lavigny?”

  “Yes. Nobody noticed it till just now. Then it dawned on somebody that he was the only one of the party not around, and we went to his room. His bed’s not been slept in and there’s no sign of him.”

  The whole thing was like a bad dream. First Miss Johnson’s death and then the disappearance of Father Lavigny.

  The servants were called and questioned, but they couldn’t throw any light on the mystery. He had last been seen at about eight o’clock the night before. Then he had said he was going out for a stroll before going to bed.

  Nobody had seen him come back from that stroll.

  The big doors had been closed and barred at nine o’clock as usual. Nobody, however, remembered unbarring them in the morning. The two houseboys each thought the other one must have done the unfastening.

  Had Father Lavigny ever returned the night before? Had he, in the course of his earlier walk, discovered anything of a suspicious nature, gone out to investigate it later, and perhaps fallen a third victim?

  Captain Maitland swung round as Dr. Reilly came up with Mr. Mercado behind him.

  “Hallo, Reilly. Got anything?”

  “Yes. The stuff came from the laboratory here. I’ve just been checking up the quantities with Mercado. It’s H.C.L. from the lab.”

  “The laboratory—eh? Was it locked up?”

  Mr. Mercado shook his head. His hands were shaking and his face was twitching. He looked a wreck of a man.

  “It’s never been the custom,” he stammered. “You see—just now—we’re using it all the time. I—nobody ever dreamt—”

  “Is the place locked up at night?”

  “Yes—all the rooms are locked. The keys are hung up just inside the living room.”

  “So if anyone had a key to that they could get the lot.”

  “Yes.”

  “And it’s a perfectly ordinary key, I suppose?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “Nothing to show whether she took it herself from the laboratory?” asked Captain Maitland.

  “She didn’t,” I said loudly and positively.

  I felt a warning touch on my arm. Poirot was standing close behind me.

  And then something rather ghastly happened.

  Not ghastly in itself—in fact it was just the incongruousness that made it seem worse than anything else.

  A car drove into the courtyard and a little man jumped out. He was wearing a sun helmet and a short thick trench coat.

  He came straight to Dr. Leidner, who was standing by Dr. Reilly, and shook him warmly by the hand.

  “Vous voilà, mon cher,” he cried. “Delighted to see you. I passed this way on Saturday afternoon—en route to the Italians at Fugima. I went to the dig but there wasn’t a single European about and alas! I cannot speak Arabic. I had not time to come to the house. This morning I leave Fugima at five—two hours here with you—and then I catch the convoy on. Eh bien, and how is the season going?”

  It was ghastly.

  The cheery voice, the matter-of-fact manner, all the pleasant sanity of an everyday world now left far behind. He just bustled in, knowing nothing and noticing nothing—full of cheerful bonhomie.

  No wonder Dr. Leidner gave an inarticulate gasp and looked in mute appeal at Dr. Reilly.

  The doctor rose to the occasion.

  He took the little man (he was a French archaeologist called Verrier who dug in the Greek islands, I heard later) aside and explained to him what had occurred.

  Verrier was horrified. He himself had been staying at an Italian dig right away from c
ivilization for the last few days and had heard nothing.

  He was profuse in condolences and apologies, finally striding over to Dr. Leidner and clasping him warmly by both hands.

  “What a tragedy! My God, what a tragedy! I have no words. Mon pauvre collègue.”

  And shaking his head in one last ineffectual effort to express his feelings, the little man climbed into his car and left us.

  As I say, that momentary introduction of comic relief into tragedy seemed really more gruesome than anything else that had happened.

  “The next thing,” said Dr. Reilly firmly, “is breakfast. Yes, I insist. Come, Leidner, you must eat.”

  Poor Dr. Leidner was almost a complete wreck. He came with us to the dining room and there a funereal meal was served. I think the hot coffee and fried eggs did us all good, though no one actually felt they wanted to eat. Dr. Leidner drank some coffee and sat twiddling his bread. His face was grey, drawn with pain and bewilderment.

  After breakfast, Captain Maitland got down to things.

  I explained how I had woken up, heard a queer sound and had gone into Miss Johnson’s room.

  “You say there was a glass on the floor?”

  “Yes. She must have dropped it after drinking.”

  “Was it broken?”

  “No, it had fallen on the rug. (I’m afraid the acid’s ruined the rug, by the way.) I picked the glass up and put it back on the table.”

  “I’m glad you’ve told us that. There are only two sets of fingerprints on it, and one set is certainly Miss Johnson’s own. The other must be yours.”

  He was silent for a moment, then he said: “Please go on.”

  I described carefully what I’d done and the methods I had tried, looking rather anxiously at Dr. Reilly for approval. He gave it with a nod.

  “You tried everything that could possibly have done any good,” he said. And though I was pretty sure I had done so, it was a relief to have my belief confirmed.