Murder in Mesopotamia: A Hercule Poirot Mystery

  They were mostly things I’d seen and heard and thought nothing much of. But now, somehow they seemed different—like a piece of fusty old stuff you take into the light and suddenly see the rich colours of an old embroidery. . . .

  Then I looked round the room we were sitting in and I got a queer feeling that what M. Poirot said was true—we were all starting on a journey. We were here together now, but we were all going our different ways.

  And I looked at everyone as though, in a sort of way, I were seeing them for the first time—and for the last time—which sounds stupid, but it was what I felt all the same.

  Mr. Mercado was twisting his fingers nervously—his queer light eyes with their dilated pupils were staring at Poirot. Mrs. Mercado was looking at her husband. She had a strange watchful look like a tigress waiting to spring. Dr. Leidner seemed to have shrunk in some curious fashion. This last blow had just crumpled him up. You might almost say he wasn’t in the room at all. He was somewhere far away in a place of his own. Mr. Coleman was looking straight at Poirot. His mouth was slightly open and his eyes protruded. He looked almost idiotic. Mr. Emmott was looking down at his feet and I couldn’t see his face properly. Mr. Reiter looked bewildered. His mouth was pushed out in a pout and that made him look more like a nice clean pig than ever. Miss Reilly was looking steadily out of the window. I don’t know what she was thinking or feeling. Then I looked at Mr. Carey, and somehow his face hurt me and I looked away. There we were, all of us. And somehow I felt that when M. Poirot had finished we’d all be somewhere quite different. . . .

  It was a queer feeling. . . .

  Poirot’s voice went quietly on. It was like a river running evenly between its banks . . . running to the sea. . . .

  “From the very beginning I have felt that to understand this case one must seek not for external signs or clues, but for the truer clues of the clash of personalities and the secrets of the heart.

  “And I may say that though I have now arrived at what I believe to be the true solution of the case, I have no material proof of it. I know it is so, because it must be so, because in no other way can every single fact fit into its ordered and recognized place.

  “And that, to my mind, is the most satisfying solution there can be.”

  He paused and then went on:

  “I will start my journey at the moment when I myself was brought into the case—when I had it presented to me as an accomplished happening. Now, every case, in my opinion, has a definite shape and form. The pattern of this case, to my mind, all revolved round the personality of Mrs. Leidner. Until I knew exactly what kind of a woman Mrs. Leidner was I should not be able to know why she was murdered and who murdered her.

  “That, then, was my starting point—the personality of Mrs. Leidner.

  “There was also one other psychological point of interest—the curious state of tension described as existing amongst the members of the expedition. This was attested to by several different witnesses—some of them outsiders—and I made a note that although hardly a starting point, it should nevertheless be borne in mind during my investigations.

  “The accepted idea seemed to be that it was directly the result of Mrs. Leidner’s influence on the members of the expedition, but for reasons which I will outline to you later this did not seem to me entirely acceptable.

  “To start with, as I say, I concentrated solely and entirely on the personality of Mrs. Leidner. I had various means of assessing that personality. There were the reactions she produced in a number of people, all varying widely in character and temperament, and there was what I could glean by my own observation. The scope of the latter was naturally limited. But I did learn certain facts.

  “Mrs. Leidner’s tastes were simple and even on the austere side. She was clearly not a luxurious woman. On the other hand, some embroidery she had been doing was of an extreme fineness and beauty. That indicated a woman of fastidious and artistic taste. From the observation of the books in her bedroom I formed a further estimate. She had brains, and I also fancied that she was, essentially, an egoist.

  “It had been suggested to me that Mrs. Leidner was a woman whose main preoccupation was to attract the opposite sex—that she was, in fact, a sensual woman. This I did not believe to be the case.

  “In her bedroom I noticed the following books on a shelf: Who were the Greeks?, Introduction to Relativity, Life of Lady Hester Stanhope, Back to Methuselah, Linda Condon, Crewe Train.

  “She had, to begin with, an interest in culture and in modern science—that is, a distinct intellectual side. Of the novels, Linda Condon, and in a lesser degree Crewe Train, seemed to show that Mrs. Leidner had a sympathy and interest in the independent woman—unencumbered or entrapped by man. She was also obviously interested by the personality of Lady Hester Stanhope. Linda Condon is an exquisite study of the worship of her own beauty by a woman. Crewe Train is a study of a passionate individualist, Back to Methuselah is in sympathy with the intellectual rather than the emotional attitude to life. I felt that I was beginning to understand the dead woman.

  “I next studied the reactions of those who had formed Mrs. Leidner’s immediate circle—and my picture of the dead woman grew more and more complete.

  “It was quite clear to me from the accounts of Dr. Reilly and others that Mrs. Leidner was one of those women who are endowed by Nature not only with beauty but with the kind of calamitous magic which sometimes accompanies beauty and can, indeed, exist independently of it. Such women usually leave a trail of violent happenings behind them. They bring disaster—sometimes on others—sometimes on themselves.

  “I was convinced that Mrs. Leidner was a woman who essentially worshipped herself and who enjoyed more than anything else the sense of power. Wherever she was, she must be the centre of the universe. And everyone round her, man or woman, had got to acknowledge her sway. With some people that was easy. Nurse Leatheran, for instance, a generous-natured woman with a romantic imagination, was captured instantly and gave in ungrudging manner full appreciation. But there was a second way in which Mrs. Leidner exercised her sway—the way of fear. Where conquest was too easy she indulged a more cruel side to her nature—but I wish to reiterate emphatically that it was not what you might call conscious cruelty. It was as natural and unthinking as is the conduct of a cat with a mouse. Where consciousness came in, she was essentially kind and would often go out of her way to do kind and thoughtful actions for other people.

  “Now of course the first and most important problem to solve was the problem of the anonymous letters. Who had written them and why? I asked myself: Had Mrs. Leidner written them herself?

  “To answer this problem it was necessary to go back a long way—to go back, in fact, to the date of Mrs. Leidner’s first marriage. It is here we start on our journey proper. The journey of Mrs. Leidner’s life.

  “First of all we must realize that the Louise Leidner of all those years ago is essentially the same Louise Leidner of the present time.

  “She was young then, of remarkable beauty—that same haunting beauty that affects a man’s spirit and senses as no mere material beauty can—and she was already essentially an egoist.

  “Such women naturally revolt from the idea of marriage. They may be attracted by men, but they prefer to belong to themselves. They are truly La Belle Dame sans Merci of the legend. Nevertheless Mrs. Leidner did marry—and we can assume, I think, that her husband must have been a man of a certain force of character.

  “Then the revelation of his traitorous activities occurs and Mrs. Leidner acts in the way she told Nurse Leidner. She gave information to the Government.

  “Now I submit that there was a psychological significance in her action. She told Nurse Leatheran that she was a very patriotic idealistic girl and that that feeling was the cause of her action. But it is a well-known fact that we all tend to deceive ourselves as to the motives for our own actions. Instinctively we select the best-sounding motive! Mrs. Leidner may have believed herself that it was pat
riotism that inspired her action, but I believe myself that it was really the outcome of an unacknowledged desire to get rid of her husband! She disliked domination—she disliked the feeling of belonging to someone else—in fact she disliked playing second fiddle. She took a patriotic way of regaining her freedom.

  “But underneath her consciousness was a gnawing sense of guilt which was to play its part in her future destiny.

  “We now come directly to the question of the letters. Mrs. Leidner was highly attractive to the male sex. On several occasions she was attracted by them—but in each case a threatening letter played its part and the affair came to nothing.

  “Who wrote those letters? Frederick Bosner or his brother William or Mrs. Leidner herself?

  “There is a perfectly good case for either theory. It seems clear to me that Mrs. Leidner was one of those women who do inspire devouring devotions in men, the type of devotion which can become an obsession. I find it quite possible to believe in a Frederick Bosner to whom Louise, his wife, mattered more than anything in the world! She had betrayed him once and he dared not approach her openly, but he was determined at least that she should be his or no one’s. He preferred her death to her belonging to another man.

  “On the other hand, if Mrs. Leidner had, deep down, a dislike of entering into the marriage bond, it is possible that she took this way of extricating herself from difficult positions. She was a huntress who, the prey once attained, had no further use for it! Craving drama in her life, she invented a highly satisfactory drama—a resurrected husband forbidding the banns! It satisfied her deepest instincts. It made her a romantic figure, a tragic heroine, and it enabled her not to marry again.

  “This state of affairs continued over a number of years. Every time there was any likelihood of marriage—a threatening letter arrived.

  “But now we come to a really interesting point. Dr. Leidner came upon the scene—and no forbidding letter arrived! Nothing stood in the way of her becoming Mrs. Leidner. Not until after her marriage did a letter arrive.

  “At once we ask ourselves—why?

  “Let us take each theory in turn.

  . . . “If Mrs. Leidner wrote the letters herself the problem is easily explained. Mrs. Leidner really wanted to marry Dr. Leidner. And so she did marry him. But in that case, why did she write herself a letter afterwards? Was her craving for drama too strong to be suppressed? And why only those two letters? After that no other letter was received until a year and a half later.

  “Now take the other theory, that the letters were written by her first husband, Frederick Bosner (or his brother). Why did the threatening letter arrive after the marriage? Presumably Frederick could not have wanted her to marry Leidner. Why, then, did he not stop the marriage? He had done so successfully on former occasions. And why, having waited till the marriage had taken place, did he then resume his threats?

  “The answer, an unsatisfactory one, is that he was somehow or other unable to protest sooner. He may have been in prison or he may have been abroad.

  “There is next the attempted gas poisoning to consider. It seems extremely unlikely that it was brought about by an outside agency. The likely persons to have staged it were Dr. and Mrs. Leidner themselves. There seems no conceivable reason why Dr. Leidner should do such a thing, so we are brought to the conclusion that Mrs. Leidner planned and carried it out herself.

  “Why? More drama?

  “After that Dr. and Mrs. Leidner go abroad and for eighteen months they lead a happy, peaceful life with no threats of death to disturb it. They put that down to having successfully covered their traces, but such an explanation is quite absurd. In these days going abroad is quite inadequate for that purpose. And especially was that so in the case of the Leidners. He was the director of a museum expedition. By inquiry at the museum, Frederick Bosner could at once have obtained his correct address. Even granting that he was in too reduced circumstances to pursue the couple himself there would be no bar to his continuing his threatening letters. And it seems to me that a man with his obsession would certainly have done so.

  “Instead nothing is heard of him until nearly two years later when the letters are resumed.

  “Why were the letters resumed?

  “A very difficult question—most easily answered by saying that Mrs. Leidner was bored and wanted more drama. But I was not quite satisfied with that. This particular form of drama seemed to me a shade too vulgar and too crude to accord well with her fastidious personality.

  “The only thing to do was to keep an open mind on the question.

  “There were three definite possibilities: (1) the letters were written by Mrs. Leidner herself; (2) they were written by Frederick Bosner (or young William Bosner); (3) they might have been written originally by either Mrs. Leidner or her first husband, but they were now forgeries—that is, they were being written by a third person who was aware of the earlier letters.

  “I now come to direct consideration of Mrs. Leidner’s entourage.

  “I examined first the actual opportunities that each member of the staff had had for committing the murder.

  “Roughly, on the face of it, anyone might have committed it (as far as opportunity went), with the exception of three persons.

  “Dr. Leidner, by overwhelming testimony, had never left the roof. Mr. Carey was on duty at the mound. Mr. Coleman was in Hassanieh.

  “But those alibis, my friends, were not quite as good as they looked. I except Dr. Leidner’s. There is absolutely no doubt that he was on the roof all the time and did not come down until quite an hour and a quarter after the murder had happened.

  “But was it quite certain that Mr. Carey was on the mound all the time?

  “And had Mr. Coleman actually been in Hassanieh at the time the murder took place?”

  Bill Coleman reddened, opened his mouth, shut it and looked round uneasily.

  Mr. Carey’s expression did not change.

  Poirot went on smoothly.

  “I also considered one other person who, I satisfied myself, would be perfectly capable of committing murder if she felt strongly enough. Miss Reilly has courage and brains and a certain quality of ruthlessness. When Miss Reilly was speaking to me on the subject of the dead woman, I said to her, jokingly, that I hoped she had an alibi. I think Miss Reilly was conscious then that she had had in her heart the desire, at least, to kill. At any rate she immediately uttered a very silly and purposeless lie. She said she had been playing tennis on that afternoon. The next day I learned from a casual conversation with Miss Johnson that far from playing tennis, Miss Reilly had actually been near this house at the time of the murder. It occurred to me that Miss Reilly, if not guilty of the crime, might be able to tell me something useful.”

  He stopped and then said quietly: “Will you tell us, Miss Reilly, what you did see that afternoon?”

  The girl did not answer at once. She still looked out of the window without turning her head, and when she spoke it was in a detached and measured voice.

  “I rode out to the dig after lunch. It must have been about a quarter to two when I got there.”

  “Did you find any of your friends on the dig?”

  “No, there seemed to be no one there but the Arab foreman.”

  “You did not see Mr. Carey?”

  “No.”

  “Curious,” said Poirot. “No more did M. Verrier when he went there that same afternoon.”

  He looked invitingly at Carey, but the latter neither moved nor spoke.

  “Have you any explanation, Mr. Carey?”

  “I went for a walk. There was nothing of interest turn-

  ing up.”

  “In which direction did you go for a walk?”

  “Down by the river.”

  “Not back towards the house?”

  “No.”

  “I suppose,” said Miss Reilly, “that you were waiting for someone who didn’t come.”

  He looked at her but didn’t answer.

  Poirot did
not press the point. He spoke once more to the girl.

  “Did you see anything else, mademoiselle?”

  “Yes. I was not far from the expedition house when I noticed the expedition lorry drawn up in a wadi. I thought it was rather queer. Then I saw Mr. Coleman. He was walking along with his head down as though he were searching for something.”

  “Look here,” burst out Mr. Coleman, “I—”

  Poirot stopped him with an authoritative gesture.

  “Wait. Did you speak to him, Miss Reilly?”

  “No. I didn’t.”

  “Why?”

  The girl said slowly: “Because, from time to time, he started and looked round with an extraordinary furtive look. It—gave me an unpleasant feeling. I turned my horse’s head and rode away. I don’t think he saw me. I was not very near and he was absorbed in what he was doing.”

  “Look here,” Mr. Coleman was not to be hushed any longer. “I’ve got a perfectly good explanation for what—I admit—looks a bit fishy. As a matter of fact, the day before I had slipped a jolly fine cylinder seal into my coat pocket instead of putting it in the antika room—forgot all about it. And then I discovered I’d been and lost it out of my pocket—dropped it somewhere. I didn’t want to get into a row about it so I decided I’d have a jolly good search on the quiet. I was pretty sure I’d dropped it on the way to or from the dig. I rushed over my business in Hassanieh. Sent a walad to do some of the shopping and got back early. I stuck the bus where it wouldn’t show and had a jolly good hunt for over an hour. And didn’t find the damned thing at that! Then I got into the bus and drove on to the house. Naturally, everyone thought I’d just got back.”

  “And you did not undeceive them?” asked Poirot sweetly.

  “Well, that was pretty natural under the circumstances, don’t you think?”

  “I hardly agree,” said Poirot.