Murder in Mesopotamia: A Hercule Poirot Mystery Read online

  He paused and then said: “It is odd, that curious thing she said to you. ‘I know why you are here.’ What did she mean by it?”

  “I can’t imagine,” I said frankly.

  “She thought you were there for some ulterior reason apart from the declared one. What reason? And why should she be so concerned in the matter. Odd, too, the way you tell me she stared at you all through tea the day you arrived.”

  “Well, she’s not a lady, M. Poirot,” I said primly.

  “That, ma soeur, is an excuse but not an explanation.”

  I wasn’t quite sure for the minute what he meant. But he went on quickly.

  “And the other members of the staff?”

  I considered.

  “I don’t think Miss Johnson liked Mrs. Leidner either very much. But she was quite open and aboveboard about it. She as good as admitted she was prejudiced. You see, she’s very devoted to Dr. Leidner and had worked with him for years. And of course, marriage does change things—there’s no denying it.”

  “Yes,” said Poirot. “And from Miss Johnson’s point of view it would be an unsuitable marriage. It would really have been much more suitable if Dr. Leidner had married her.”

  “It would really,” I agreed. “But there, that’s a man all over. Not one in a hundred considers suitability. And one can’t really blame Dr. Leidner. Miss Johnson, poor soul, isn’t so much to look at. Now Mrs. Leidner was really beautiful—not young, of course—but oh! I wish you’d known her. There was something about her . . . I remember Mr. Coleman saying she was like a thingummyjig that came to lure people into marshes. That wasn’t a very good way of putting it, but—oh, well—you’ll laugh at me, but there was something about her that was—well—unearthly.”

  “She could cast a spell—yes, I understand,” said Poirot.

  “Then I don’t think she and Mr. Carey got on very well either,” I went on. “I’ve an idea he was jealous just like Miss Johnson. He was always very stiff with her and so was she with him. You know—she passed him things and was very polite and called him Mr. Carey rather formally. He was an old friend of her husband’s of course, and some women can’t stand their husband’s old friends. They don’t like to think that anyone knew them before they did—at least that’s rather a muddled way of putting it—”

  “I quite understand. And the three young men? Coleman, you say, was inclined to be poetic about her.”

  I couldn’t help laughing.

  “It was funny, M. Poirot,” I said. “He’s such a matter-of-fact young man.”

  “And the other two?”

  “I don’t really know about Mr. Emmott. He’s always so quiet and never says much. She was very nice to him always. You know—friendly—called him David and used to tease him about Miss Reilly and things like that.”

  “Ah, really? And did he enjoy that?”

  “I don’t quite know,” I said doubtfully. “He’d just look at her. Rather funnily. You couldn’t tell what he was thinking.”

  “And Mr. Reiter?”

  “She wasn’t always very kind to him,” I said slowly. “I think he got on her nerves. She used to say quite sarcastic things to him.”

  “And did he mind?”

  “He used to get very pink, poor boy. Of course, she didn’t mean to be unkind.”

  And then suddenly, from feeling a little sorry for the boy, it came over me that he was very likely a cold-blooded murderer and had been playing a part all the time.

  “Oh, M. Poirot,” I exclaimed. “What do you think really happened?”

  He shook his head slowly and thoughtfully.

  “Tell me,” he said. “You are not afraid to go back there tonight?”

  “Oh no,” I said. “Of course, I remember what you said, but who would want to murder me?”

  “I do not think that anyone could,” he said slowly. “That is partly why I have been so anxious to hear all you could tell me. No, I think—I am sure—you are quite safe.”

  “If anyone had told me in Baghdad—” I began and stopped.

  “Did you hear any gossip about the Leidners and the expedition before you came here?” he asked.

  I told him about Mrs. Leidner’s nickname and just a little of what Mrs.

  Kelsey had said about her.

  In the middle of it the door opened and Miss Reilly came in. She had been playing tennis and had her racquet in her hand.

  I gathered Poirot had already met her when he arrived in Hassanieh.

  She said how-do-you-do to me in her usual offhand manner and picked up a sandwich.

  “Well, M. Poirot,” she said. “How are you getting on with our local mystery?”

  “Not very fast, mademoiselle.”

  “I see you’ve rescued nurse from the wreck.”

  “Nurse Leatheran has been giving me valuable information about the various members of the expedition. Incidentally I have learnt a good deal—about the victim. And the victim, mademoiselle, is very often the clue to the mystery.”

  Miss Reilly said: “That’s rather clever of you, M. Poirot. It’s certainly true that if ever a woman deserved to be murdered Mrs. Leidner was that woman!”

  “Miss Reilly!” I cried, scandalized.

  She laughed, a short, nasty laugh.

  “Ah!” she said. “I thought you hadn’t been hearing quite the truth. Nurse Leatheran, I’m afraid, was quite taken in, like many other people. Do you know, M. Poirot, I rather hope that this case isn’t going to be one of your successes. I’d quite like the murderer of Louise Leidner to get away with it. In fact, I wouldn’t much have objected to putting her out of the way myself.”

  I was simply disgusted with the girl. M. Poirot, I must say, didn’t turn a hair. He just bowed and said quite pleasantly:

  “I hope, then, that you have an alibi for yesterday afternoon?”

  There was a moment’s silence and Miss Reilly’s racquet went clattering down on to the floor. She didn’t bother to pick it up. Slack and untidy like all her sort! She said in a rather breathless voice: “Oh, yes, I was playing tennis at the club. But, seriously, M. Poirot, I wonder if you know anything at all about Mrs. Leidner and the kind of woman she was?”

  Again he made a funny little bow and said: “You shall inform me, mademoiselle.”

  She hesitated a minute and then spoke with a callousness and lack of decency that really sickened me.

  “There’s a convention that one doesn’t speak ill of the dead. That’s stupid, I think. The truth’s always the truth. On the whole it’s better to keep your mouth shut about living people. You might conceivably injure them. The dead are past that. But the harm they’ve done lives after them sometimes. Not quite a quotation from Shakespeare but very nearly! Has nurse told you of the queer atmosphere there was at Tell Yarimjah? Has she told you how jumpy they all were? And how they all used to glare at each other like enemies? That was Louise Leidner’s doing. When I was a kid out here three years ago they were the happiest, jolliest lot imaginable. Even last year they were pretty well all right. But this year there was a blight over them—and it was her doing. She was the kind of woman who won’t let anybody else be happy! There are women like that and she was one of them! She wanted to break up things always. Just for fun—or for the sense of power—or perhaps just because she was made that way. And she was the kind of woman who had to get hold of every male creature within reach!”

  “Miss Reilly,” I cried, “I don’t think that’s true. In fact I know it isn’t.”

  She went on without taking the least notice of me.

  “It wasn’t enough for her to have her husband adore her. She had to make a fool of that long-legged shambling idiot of a Mercado. Then she got hold of Bill. Bill’s a sensible cove, but she was getting him all mazed and bewildered. Carl Reiter she just amused herself by tormenting. It was easy. He’s a sensitive boy. And she had a jolly good go at David.

  “David was better sport to her because he put up a fight. He felt her charm—but he wasn’t having any. I t
hink because he’d got sense enough to know that she didn’t really care a damn. And that’s why I hate her so. She’s not sensual. She doesn’t want affairs. It’s just cold-blooded experiment on her part and the fun of stirring people up and setting them against each other. She dabbled in that too. She’s the sort of woman who’s never had a row with anyone in her life—but rows always happen where she is! She makes them happen. She’s a kind of female Iago. She must have drama. But she doesn’t want to be involved herself. She’s always outside pulling strings—looking on—enjoying it. Oh, do you see at all what I mean?”

  “I see, perhaps, more than you know, mademoiselle,” said Poirot.

  I couldn’t make his voice out. He didn’t sound indignant. He sounded—oh, well, I can’t explain it.

  Sheila Reilly seemed to understand, for she flushed all over her face.

  “You can think what you choose,” she said. “But I’m right about her. She was a clever woman and she was bored and she experimented—with people—like other people experiment with chemicals. She enjoyed working on poor old Johnson’s feelings and seeing her bite on the bullet and control herself like the old sport she is. She liked goading little Mercado into a white-hot frenzy. She liked flicking me on the raw—and she could do it too, every time! She liked finding out things about people and holding it over them. Oh, I don’t mean crude blackmail—I mean just letting them know that she knew—and leaving them uncertain what she meant to do about it. My God, though, that woman was an artist! There was nothing crude about her methods!”

  “And her husband?” asked Poirot.

  “She never wanted to hurt him,” said Miss Reilly slowly. “I’ve never known her anything but sweet to him. I suppose she was fond of him. He’s a dear—wrapped up in his own world—his digging and his theories. And he worshipped her and thought her perfection. That might have annoyed some women. It didn’t annoy her. In a sense he lived in a fool’s paradise—and yet it wasn’t a fool’s paradise because to him she was what he thought her. Though it’s hard to reconcile that with—”

  She stopped.

  “Go on, mademoiselle,” said Poirot.

  She turned suddenly on me.

  “What have you said about Richard Carey?”

  “About Mr. Carey?” I asked, astonished.

  “About her and Carey?”

  “Well,” I said, “I’ve mentioned that they didn’t hit it off very well—”

  To my surprise she broke into a fit of laughter.

  “Didn’t hit it off very well! You fool! He’s head over ears in love with her. And it’s tearing him to pieces—because he worships Leidner too. He’s been his friend for years. That would be enough for her, of course. She’s made it her business to come between them. But all the same I’ve fancied—”

  “Eh bien?”

  She was frowning, absorbed in thought.

  “I’ve fancied that she’d gone too far for once—that she was not only biter but bit! Carey’s attractive. He’s as attractive as hell . . . She was a cold devil—but I believe she could have lost her coldness with him. . . .”

  “I think it’s just scandalous what you’re saying,” I cried. “Why, they hardly spoke to each other!”

  “Oh, didn’t they?” She turned on me. “A hell of a lot you know about it. It was ‘Mr. Carey’ and ‘Mrs. Leidner’ in the house, but they used to meet outside. She’d walk down the path to the river. And he’d leave the dig for an hour at a time. They used to meet among the fruit trees.

  “I saw him once just leaving her, striding back to the dig, and she was standing looking after him. I was a female cad, I suppose. I had some glasses with me and I took them out and had a good look at her face. If you ask me, I believe she cared like hell for Richard Carey. . . .”

  She broke off and looked at Poirot.

  “Excuse my butting in on your case,” she said with a sudden rather twisted grin, “but I thought you’d like to have the local colour correct.”

  And she marched out of the room.

  “M. Poirot,” I cried. “I don’t believe one word of it all!”

  He looked at me and he smiled, and he said (very queerly I thought): “You can’t deny, nurse, that Miss Reilly has shed a certain—illumination on the case.”

  Nineteen

  A NEW SUSPICION

  We couldn’t say any more just then because Dr. Reilly came in, saying jokingly that he’d killed off the most tiresome of his patients.

  He and M. Poirot settled down to a more or less medical discussion of the psychology and mental state of an anonymous letter-writer. The doctor cited cases that he had known professionally, and M. Poirot told various stories from his own experience.

  “It is not so simple as it seems,” he ended. “There is the desire for power and very often a strong inferiority complex.”

  Dr. Reilly nodded.

  “That’s why you often find that the author of anonymous letters is the last person in the place to be suspected. Some quiet inoffensive little soul who apparently can’t say Bo to a goose—all sweetness and Christian meekness on the outside—and seething with all the fury of hell underneath!”

  Poirot said thoughtfully: “Should you say Mrs. Leidner had any tendency to an inferiority complex?”

  Dr. Reilly scraped out his pipe with a chuckle.

  “Last woman on earth I’d describe that way. No repressions about her. Life, life and more life—that’s what she wanted—and got, too!”

  “Do you consider it a possibility, psychologically speaking, that she wrote those letters?”

  “Yes, I do. But if she did, the reason arose out of her instinct to dramatize herself. Mrs. Leidner was a bit of a film star in private life! She had to be the centre of things—in the limelight. By the law of opposites she married Leidner, who’s about the most retiring and modest man I know. He adored her—but adoration by the fireside wasn’t enough for her. She had to be the persecuted heroine as well.”

  “In fact,” said Poirot, smiling, “you don’t subscribe to his theory that she wrote them and retained no memory of her act?”

  “No, I don’t. I didn’t turn down the idea in front of him. You can’t very well say to a man who’s just lost a dearly loved wife that that same wife was a shameless exhibitionist, and that she drove him nearly crazy with anxiety to satisfy her sense of the dramatic. As a matter of fact it wouldn’t be safe to tell any man the truth about his wife! Funnily enough, I’d trust most women with the truth about their husbands. Women can accept the fact that a man is a rotter, a swindler, a drugtaker, a confirmed liar, and a general swine without batting an eyelash and without its impairing their affection for the brute in the least! Women are wonderful realists.”

  “Frankly, Dr. Reilly, what was your exact opinion of Mrs. Leidner?”

  Dr. Reilly lay back in his chair and puffed slowly at his pipe.

  “Frankly—it’s hard to say! I didn’t know her well enough. She’d got charm—any amount of it. Brains, sympathy . . . What else? She hadn’t any of the ordinary unpleasant vices. She wasn’t sensual or lazy or even particularly vain. She was, I’ve always thought (but I’ve no proofs of it), a most accomplished liar. What I don’t know (and what I’d like to know) is whether she lied to herself or only to other people. I’m rather partial to liars myself. A woman who doesn’t lie is a woman without imagination and without sympathy. I don’t think she was really a manhunter—she just liked the sport of bringing them down ‘with my bow and arrow.’ If you get my daughter on the subject—”

  “We have had that pleasure,” said Poirot with a slight smile.

  “H’m,” said Dr. Reilly. “She hasn’t wasted much time! Shoved her knife into her pretty thoroughly, I should imagine! The younger generation has no sentiment towards the dead. It’s a pity all young people are prigs! They condemn the ‘old morality’ and then proceed to set up a much more hard-and-fast code of their own. If Mrs. Leidner had had half a dozen affairs Sheila would probably have approved of her as ‘living h
er life fully’—or ‘obeying her blood instincts.’ What she doesn’t see is that Mrs. Leidner was acting true to type—her type. The cat is obeying its blood instinct when it plays with the mouse! It’s made that way. Men aren’t little boys to be shielded and protected. They’ve got to meet cat women—and faithful spaniel, yours-till-death adoring women, and hen-pecking nagging bird women—and all the rest of it! Life’s a battlefield—not a picnic! I’d like to see Sheila honest enough to come off her high horse and admit that she hated Mrs. Leidner for good old thorough-going personal reasons. Sheila’s about the only young girl in this place and she naturally assumes that she ought to have it all her own way with the young things in trousers. Naturally it annoys her when a woman, who in her view is middle-aged and who has already two husbands to her credit, comes along and licks her on her own ground. Sheila’s a nice child, healthy and reasonably good-looking and attractive to the other sex as she should be. But Mrs. Leidner was something out of the ordinary in that line. She’d got just that sort of calamitous magic that plays the deuce with things—a kind of Belle Dame sans Merci.”

  I jumped in my chair. What a coincidence his saying that!

  “Your daughter—I am not indiscreet—she has perhaps a tendresse for one of the young men out there?”

  “Oh, I don’t suppose so. She’s had Emmott and Coleman dancing attendance on her as a matter of course. I don’t know that she cares for one more than the other. There are a couple of young Air Force chaps too. I fancy all’s fish that comes to her net at present. No, I think it’s age daring to defeat youth that annoys her so much! She doesn’t know as much of the world as I do. It’s when you get to my age that you really appreciate a schoolgirl complexion and a clear eye and a firmly knit young body. But a woman over thirty can listen with rapt attention and throw in a word here and there to show the talker what a fine fellow he is—and few young men can resist that! Sheila’s a pretty girl—but Louise Leidner was beautiful. Glorious eyes and that amazing golden fairness. Yes, she was a beautiful woman.”