Murder in Mesopotamia: A Hercule Poirot Mystery Read online

  He looked quite distressed.

  Poirot shook his head gently.

  “No,” he said. “You have not told me, for instance, why you installed Nurse Leatheran in the house.”

  Dr. Leidner looked completely bewildered.

  “But I have explained that. It is obvious. My wife’s nervousness—her fears . . .”

  Poirot leaned forward. Slowly and emphatically he wagged a finger up and down.

  “No, no, no. There is something there that is not clear. Your wife is in danger, yes—she is threatened with death, yes. You send—not for the police—not for a private detective even—but for a nurse! It does not make the sense, that!”

  “I—I—” Dr. Leidner stopped. The colour rose in his cheeks. “I thought—” He came to a dead stop.

  “Now we are coming to it,” Poirot encouraged him. “You thought—what?”

  Dr. Leidner remained silent. He looked harassed and unwilling.

  “See you,” Poirot’s tone became winning and appealing, “it all rings what you have told me, except for that. Why a nurse? There is an answer—yes. In fact, there can be only one answer. You did not believe yourself in your wife’s danger.”

  And then with a cry Dr. Leidner broke down.

  “God help me,” he groaned. “I didn’t. I didn’t.”

  Poirot watched him with the kind of attention a cat gives a mouse-hole—ready to pounce when the mouse shows itself.

  “What did you think then?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. I don’t know. . . .”

  “But you do know. You know perfectly. Perhaps I can help you—with a guess. Did you, Dr. Leidner, suspect that these letters were all written by your wife herself?”

  There wasn’t any need for him to answer. The truth of Poirot’s guess was only too apparent. The horrified hand he held up, as though begging for mercy, told its own tale.

  I drew a deep breath. So I had been right in my half-formed guess! I recalled the curious tone in which Dr. Leidner had asked me what I thought of it all. I nodded my head slowly and thoughtfully, and suddenly awoke to the fact that M. Poirot’s eyes were on me.

  “Did you think the same, nurse?”

  “The idea did cross my mind,” I said truthfully.

  “For what reason?”

  I explained the similarity of the handwriting on the letter that Mr. Coleman had shown me.

  Poirot turned to Dr. Leidner.

  “Had you, too, noticed that similarity?”

  Dr. Leidner bowed his head.

  “Yes, I did. The writing was small and cramped—not big and generous like Louise’s, but several of the letters were formed the same way. I will show you.”

  From an inner breast pocket he took out some letters and finally selected a sheet from one, which he handed to Poirot. It was part of a letter written to him by his wife. Poirot compared it carefully with the anonymous letters.

  “Yes,” he murmured. “Yes. There are several similarities—a curious way of forming the letter s, a distinctive e. I am not a handwriting expert—I cannot pronounce definitely (and for that matter, I have never found two handwriting experts who agree on any point whatsoever)—but one can at least say this—the similarity between the two handwritings is very marked. It seems highly probable that they were all written by the same person. But it is not certain. We must take all contingencies into mind.”

  He leaned back in his chair and said thoughtfully: “There are three possibilities. First, the similarity of the handwriting is pure coincidence. Second, that these threatening letters were written by Mrs. Leidner herself for some obscure reason. Third, that they were written by someone who deliberately copied her handwriting. Why? There seems no sense in it. One of these three possibilities must be the correct one.”

  He reflected for a minute or two and then, turning to Dr. Leidner, he asked, with a resumal of his brisk manner: “When the possibility that Mrs. Leidner herself was the author of these letters first struck you, what theory did you form?”

  Dr. Leidner shook his head.

  “I put the idea out of my head as quickly as possible. I felt it was monstrous.”

  “Did you search for no explanation?”

  “Well,” he hesitated. “I wondered if worrying and brooding over the past had perhaps affected my wife’s brain slightly. I thought she might possibly have written those letters to herself without being conscious of having done so. That is possible, isn’t it?” he added, turning to Dr. Reilly.

  Dr. Reilly pursed up his lips.

  “The human brain is capable of almost anything,” he replied vaguely.

  But he shot a lightning glance at Poirot, and as if in obedience to it, the latter abandoned the subject.

  “The letters are an interesting point,” he said. “But we must concentrate on the case as a whole. There are, as I see it, three possible solutions.”

  “Three?”

  “Yes. Solution one: the simplest. Your wife’s first husband is still alive. He first threatens her and then proceeds to carry out his threats. If we accept this solution, our problem is to discover how he got in or out without being seen.

  “Solution two: Mrs. Leidner, for reasons of her own (reasons probably more easily understood by a medical man than a layman), writes herself threatening letters. The gas business is staged by her (remember, it was she who roused you by telling you she smelt gas). But, if Mrs. Leidner wrote herself the letters, she cannot be in danger from the supposed writer. We must, therefore, look elsewhere for the murderer. We must look, in fact, amongst the members of your staff. Yes,” in answer to a murmur of protest from Dr. Leidner, “that is the only logical conclusion. To satisfy a private grudge one of them killed her. That person, I may say, was probably aware of the letters—or was at any rate aware that Mrs. Leidner feared or was pretending to fear someone. That fact, in the murderer’s opinion, rendered the murder quite safe for him. He felt sure it would be put down to a mysterious outsider—the writer of the threatening letters.

  “A variant of this solution is that the murderer actually wrote the letters himself, being aware of Mrs. Leidner’s past history. But in that case it is not quite clear why the criminal should have copied Mrs. Leidner’s own handwriting since, as far as we can see, it would be more to his or her advantage that they should appear to be written by an outsider.

  “The third solution is the most interesting to my mind. I suggest that the letters are genuine. They are written by Mrs. Leidner’s first husband (or his younger brother), who is actually one of the expedition staff.”

  Sixteen

  THE SUSPECTS

  Dr. Leidner sprang to his feet.

  “Impossible! Absolutely impossible! The idea is absurd!”

  Mr. Poirot looked at him quite calmly but said nothing.

  “You mean to suggest that my wife’s former husband is one of the expedition and that she didn’t recognize him?”

  “Exactly. Reflect a little on the facts. Some fifteen years ago your wife lived with this man for a few months. Would she know him if she came across him after that lapse of time? I think not. His face will have changed, his build will have changed—his voice may not have changed so much, but that is a detail he can attend to himself. And remember, she is not looking for him amongst her own household. She visualizes him as somewhere outside—a stranger. No, I do not think she would recognize him. And there is a second possibility. The young brother—the child of those days who was so passionately devoted to his elder brother. He is now a man. Will she recognize a child of ten or twelve years old in a man nearing thirty? Yes, there is young William Bosner to be reckoned with. Remember, his brother in his eyes may not loom as a traitor but as a patriot, a martyr for his own country—Germany. In his eyes Mrs. Leidner is the traitor—the monster who sent his beloved brother to death! A susceptible child is capable of great hero worship, and a young mind can easily be obsessed by an idea which persists into adult life.”

  “Quite true,” said Dr. Reilly.
“The popular view that a child forgets easily is not an accurate one. Many people go right through life in the grip of an idea which has been impressed on them in very tender years.”

  “Bien. You have these two possibilities. Frederick Bosner, a man by now of fifty odd, and William Bosner, whose age would be something short of thirty. Let us examine the members of your staff from these two points of view.”

  “This is fantastic,” murmured Dr. Leidner. “My staff! The members of my own expedition.”

  “And consequently considered above suspicion,” said Poirot dryly. “A very useful point of view. Commençons! Who could emphatically not be Frederick or William?”

  “The women.”

  “Naturally. Miss Johnson and Mrs. Mercado are crossed off. Who else?”

  “Carey. He and I have worked together for years before I even met Louise—”

  “And also he is the wrong age. He is, I should judge, thirty-eight or nine, too young for Frederick, too old for William. Now for the rest. There is Father Lavigny and Mr. Mercado. Either of them might be Frederick Bosner.”

  “But, my dear sir,” cried Dr. Leidner in a voice of mingled irritation and amusement, “Father Lavigny is known all over the world as an epigraphist and Mercado has worked for years in a well-known museum in New York. It is impossible that either of them should be the man you think!”

  Poirot waved an airy hand.

  “Impossible—impossible—I take no account of the word! The impossible, always I examine it very closely! But we will pass on for the moment. Who else have you? Carl Reiter, a young man with a German name, David Emmott—”

  “He has been with me two seasons, remember.”

  “He is a young man with the gift of patience. If he committed a crime, it would not be in a hurry. All would be very well prepared.”

  Dr. Leidner made a gesture of despair.

  “And lastly, William Coleman,” continued Poirot.

  “He is an Englishman.”

  “Pourquoi pas? Did not Mrs. Leidner say that the boy left America and could not be traced? He might easily have been brought up in England.”

  “You have an answer to everything,” said Dr. Leidner.

  I was thinking hard. Right from the beginning I had thought Mr. Coleman’s manner rather more like a P. G. Wodehouse book than like a real live young man. Had he really been playing a part all the time?

  Poirot was writing in a little book.

  “Let us proceed with order and method,” he said. “On the first count we have two names. Father Lavigny and Mr. Mercado. On the second we have Coleman, Emmott and Reiter.

  “Now let us pass to the opposite aspect of the matter—means and opportunity. Who amongst the expedition had the means and the opportunity of committing the crime? Carey was on the dig, Coleman was in Hassanieh, you yourself were on the roof. That leaves us Father Lavigny, Mr. Mercado, Mrs. Mercado, David Emmott, Carl Reiter, Miss Johnson and Nurse Leatheran.”

  “Oh!” I exclaimed, and I bounded in my chair.

  Mr. Poirot looked at me with twinkling eyes.

  “Yes, I’m afraid, ma soeur, that you have got to be included. It would have been quite easy for you to have gone along and killed Mrs. Leidner while the courtyard was empty. You have plenty of muscle and strength, and she would have been quite unsuspicious until the moment the blow was struck.”

  I was so upset that I couldn’t get a word out. Dr. Reilly, I noticed, was looking highly amused.

  “Interesting case of a nurse who murdered her patients one by one,” he murmured.

  Such a look as I gave him!

  Dr. Leidner’s mind had been running on a different tack.

  “Not Emmott, M. Poirot,” he objected. “You can’t include him. He was on the roof with me, remember, during that ten minutes.”

  “Nevertheless we cannot exclude him. He could have come down, gone straight to Mrs. Leidner’s room, killed her, and then called the boy back. Or he might have killed her on one of the occasions when he had sent the boy up to you.”

  Dr. Leidner shook his head, murmuring: “What a nightmare! It’s all so—fantastic.”

  To my surprise Poirot agreed.

  “Yes, that’s true. This is a fantastic crime. One does not often come across them. Usually murder is very sordid—very simple. But this is unusual murder . . . I suspect, Dr. Leidner, that your wife was an unusual woman.”

  He had hit the nail on the head with such accuracy that I jumped.

  “Is that true, nurse?” he asked.

  Dr. Leidner said quietly: “Tell him what Louise was like, nurse. You are unprejudiced.”

  I spoke quite frankly.

  “She was very lovely,” I said. “You couldn’t help admiring her and wanting to do things for her. I’ve never met anyone like her before.”

  “Thank you,” said Dr. Leidner and smiled at me.

  “That is valuable testimony coming from an outsider,” said Poirot politely. “Well, let us proceed. Under the heading of means and opportunity we have seven names. Nurse Leatheran, Miss Johnson, Mrs. Mercado, Mr. Mercado, Mr. Reiter, Mr. Emmott and Father Lavigny.”

  Once more he cleared his throat. I’ve always noticed that foreigners can make the oddest noises.

  “Let us for the moment assume that our third theory is correct. That is that the murderer is Frederick or William Bosner, and that Frederick or William Bosner is a member of the expedition staff. By comparing both lists we can narrow down our suspects on this count to four. Father Lavigny, Mr. Mercado, Carl Reiter and David Emmott.”

  “Father Lavigny is out of the question,” said Dr. Leidner with decision. “He is one of the Pères Blancs in Carthage.”

  “And his beard’s quite real,” I put in.

  “Ma soeur,” said Poirot, “a murderer of the first class never wears a false beard!”

  “How do you know the murderer is of the first class?” I asked rebelliously.

  “Because if he were not, the whole truth would be plain to me at this instant—and it is not.”

  That’s pure conceit, I thought to myself.

  “Anyway,” I said, reverting to the beard, “it must have taken quite a time to grow.”

  “That is a practical observation,” said Poirot.

  Dr. Leidner said irritably: “But it’s ridiculous—quite ridiculous. Both he and Mercado are well-known men. They’ve been known for years.”

  Poirot turned to him.

  “You have not the true version. You do not appreciate an important point. If Frederick Bosner is not dead—what has he been doing all these years? He must have taken a different name. He must have built himself up a career.”

  “As a Père Blanc?” asked Dr. Reilly sceptically.

  “It is a little fantastic that, yes,” confessed Poirot. “But we cannot put it right out of court. Besides, these other possibilities.”

  “The young ’uns?” said Reilly. “If you want my opinion, on the face of it there’s only one of your suspects that’s even plausible.”

  “And that is?”

  “Young Carl Reiter. There’s nothing actually against him, but come down to it and you’ve got to admit a few things—he’s the right age, he’s got a German name, he’s new this year and he had the opportunity all right. He’d only got to pop out of his photographic place, cross the courtyard to do his dirty work and hare back again while the coast was clear. If anyone were to have dropped into the photographic room while he was out of it, he can always say later that he was in the dark-room. I don’t say he’s your man but if you are going to suspect someone I say he’s by far and away the most likely.”

  M. Poirot didn’t seem very receptive. He nodded gravely but doubtfully.

  “Yes,” he said. “He is the most plausible, but it may not be so simple as all that.”

  Then he said: “Let us say no more at present. I would like now, if I may, to examine the room where the crime took place.”

  “Certainly.” Dr. Leidner fumbled in his pockets, then loo
ked at Dr. Reilly.

  “Captain Maitland took it,” he said.

  “Maitland gave it to me,” said Reilly. “He had to go off on that Kurdish business.”

  He produced the key.

  Dr. Leidner said hesitatingly: “Do you mind—if I don’t—Perhaps, nurse—”

  “Of course. Of course,” said Poirot. “I quite understand. Never do I wish to cause you unnecessary pain. If you will be good enough to accompany me, ma soeur.”

  “Certainly,” I said.

  Seventeen

  THE STAIN BY THE WASHSTAND

  Mrs. Leidner’s body had been taken to Hassanieh for the postmortem, but otherwise her room had been left exactly as it was. There was so little in it that it had not taken the police long to go over it.

  To the right of the door as you entered was the bed. Opposite the door were the two barred windows giving on the countryside. Between them was a plain oak table with two drawers that served Mrs. Leidner as a dressing table. On the east wall there was a line of hooks with dresses hung up protected by cotton bags and a deal chest of drawers. Immediately to the left of the door was the washstand. In the middle of the room was a good-sized plain oak table with a blotter and inkstand and a small attaché case. It was in the latter that Mrs. Leidner had kept the anonymous letters. The curtains were short strips of native material—white striped with orange. The floor was of stone with some goatskin rugs on it, three narrow ones of brown striped with white in front of the two windows and the washstand, and a larger better quality one of white with brown stripes lying between the bed and the writing table.

  There were no cupboards or alcoves or long curtains—nowhere, in fact, where anyone could have hidden. The bed was a plain iron one with a printed cotton quilt. The only trace of luxury in the room were three pillows all made of the best soft and billowy down. Nobody but Mrs. Leidner had pillows like these.

  In a few brief words Dr. Reilly explained where Mrs. Leidner’s body had been found—in a heap on the rug beside the bed.

  To illustrate his account, he beckoned me to come forward.