Murder in Mesopotamia: A Hercule Poirot Mystery Page 5

  Mrs. Leidner had brought with her from the antika room a very delicate little saucer broken in several pieces, and this she now proceeded to join together. I watched her for a minute or two and then asked if I could help.

  “Oh, yes, there are plenty more.” She fetched quite a supply of broken pottery and we set to work. I soon got into the hang of it and she praised my ability. I suppose most nurses are handy with their fingers.

  “How busy everybody is!” said Mrs. Mercado. “It makes me feel dreadfully idle. Of course I am idle.”

  “Why shouldn’t you be if you like?” said Mrs. Leidner.

  Her voice was quite uninterested.

  At twelve we had lunch. Afterwards Dr. Leidner and Mr. Mercado cleaned some pottery, pouring a solution of hydrochloric acid over it. One pot went a lovely plum colour and a pattern of bulls’ horns came out on another one. It was really quite magical. All the dried mud that no washing would remove sort of foamed and boiled away.

  Mr. Carey and Mr. Coleman went out on the dig and Mr. Reiter went off to the photographic room.

  “What will you do, Louise?” Dr. Leidner asked his wife. “I suppose you’ll rest for a bit?”

  I gathered that Mrs. Leidner usually lay down every afternoon.

  “I’ll rest for about an hour. Then perhaps I’ll go out for a short stroll.”

  “Good. Nurse will go with you, won’t you?”

  “Of course,” I said.

  “No, no,” said Mrs. Leidner, “I like going alone. Nurse isn’t to feel so much on duty that I’m not allowed out of her sight.”

  “Oh, but I’d like to come,” I said.

  “No, really, I’d rather you didn’t.” She was quite firm—almost peremptory. “I must be by myself every now and then. It’s necessary to me.”

  I didn’t insist, of course. But as I went off for a short sleep myself it struck me as odd that Mrs. Leidner, with her nervous terrors, should be quite content to walk by herself without any kind of protection.

  When I came out of my room at half-past three the courtyard was deserted save for a little boy with a large copper bath who was washing pottery, and Mr. Emmott, who was sorting and arranging it. As I went towards them Mrs. Leidner came in through the archway. She looked more alive than I had seen her yet. Her eyes shone and she looked uplifted and almost gay.

  Dr. Leidner came out from the laboratory and joined her. He was showing her a big dish with bulls’ horns on it.

  “The prehistoric levels are being extraordinarily productive,” he said. “It’s been a good season so far. Finding that tomb right at the beginning was a real piece of luck. The only person who might complain is Father Lavigny. We’ve had hardly any tablets so far.”

  “He doesn’t seem to have done very much with the few we have had,” said Mrs. Leidner dryly. “He may be a very fine epigraphist but he’s a remarkably lazy one. He spends all his afternoons sleeping.”

  “We miss Byrd,” said Dr. Leidner. “This man strikes me as slightly unorthodox—though, of course, I’m not competent to judge. But one or two of his translations have been surprising, to say the least of it. I can hardly believe, for instance, that he’s right about that inscribed brick, and yet he must know.”

  After tea Mrs. Leidner asked me if I would like to stroll down to the river. I thought that perhaps she feared that her refusal to let me accompany her earlier in the afternoon might have hurt my feelings.

  I wanted her to know that I wasn’t the touchy kind, so I accepted at once.

  It was a lovely evening. A path led between barley fields and then through some flowering fruit trees. Finally we came to the edge of the Tigris. Immediately on our left was the Tell with the workmen singing in their queer monotonous chant. A little to our right was a big waterwheel which made a queer groaning noise. It used to set my teeth on edge at first. But in the end I got fond of it and it had a queer soothing effect on me. Beyond the waterwheel was the village from which most of the workmen came.

  “It’s rather beautiful, isn’t it?” said Mrs. Leidner.

  “It’s very peaceful,” I said. “It seems funny to me to be so far away from everywhere.”

  “Far from everywhere,” repeated Mrs. Leidner. “Yes. Here at least one might expect to be safe.”

  I glanced at her sharply, but I think she was speaking more to herself than to me, and I don’t think she realized that her words had been revealing.

  We began to walk back to the house.

  Suddenly Mrs. Leidner clutched my arm so violently that I nearly cried out.

  “Who’s that, nurse? What’s he doing?”

  Some distance ahead of us, just where the path ran near the expedition house, a man was standing. He wore European clothes and he seemed to be standing on tiptoe and trying to look in at one of the windows.

  As we watched he glanced round, caught sight of us, and immediately continued on the path towards us. I felt Mrs. Leidner’s clutch tighten.

  “Nurse,” she whispered. “Nurse . . .”

  “It’s all right, my dear, it’s all right,” I said reassuringly.

  The man came along and passed us. He was an Iraqi, and as soon as she saw him near to, Mrs. Leidner relaxed with a sigh.

  “He’s only an Iraqi after all,” she said.

  We went on our way. I glanced up at the windows as I passed. Not only were they barred, but they were too high from the ground to permit of anyone seeing in, for the level of the ground was lower here than on the inside of the courtyard.

  “It must have been just curiosity,” I said.

  Mrs. Leidner nodded.

  “That’s all. But just for a minute I thought—”

  She broke off.

  I thought to myself. “You thought what? That’s what I’d like to know. What did you think?”

  But I knew one thing now—that Mrs. Leidner was afraid of a definite flesh-and-blood person.

  Eight

  NIGHT ALARM

  It’s a little difficult to know exactly what to note in the week that followed my arrival at Tell Yarimjah.

  Looking back as I do from my present standpoint of knowledge I can see a good many little signs and indications that I was quite blind to at the time.

  To tell the story properly, however, I think I ought to try to recapture the point of view that I actually held—puzzled, uneasy and increasingly conscious of something wrong.

  For one thing was certain, that curious sense of strain and constraint was not imagined. It was genuine. Even Bill Coleman the insensitive commented upon it.

  “This place gets under my skin,” I heard him say. “Are they always such a glum lot?”

  It was David Emmott to whom he spoke, the other assistant. I had taken rather a fancy to Mr. Emmott, his taciturnity was not, I felt sure, unfriendly. There was something about him that seemed very steadfast and reassuring in an atmosphere where one was uncertain what anyone was feeling or thinking.

  “No,” he said in answer to Mr. Coleman. “It wasn’t like this last year.”

  But he didn’t enlarge on the theme, or say any more.

  “What I can’t make out is what it’s all about,” said Mr. Coleman in an aggrieved voice.

  Emmott shrugged his shoulders but didn’t answer.

  I had a rather enlightening conversation with Miss Johnson. I liked her very much. She was capable, practical and intelligent. She had, it was quite obvious, a distinct hero worship for Dr. Leidner.

  On this occasion she told me the story of his life since his young days. She knew every site he had dug, and the results of the dig. I would almost dare swear she could quote from every lecture he had ever delivered. She considered him, she told me, quite the finest field archaeologist living.

  “And he’s so simple. So completely unworldly. He doesn’t know the meaning of the word conceit. Only a really great man could be so simple.”

  “That’s true enough,” I said. “Big people don’t need to throw their weight about.”

  “And he’s
so light-hearted too, I can’t tell you what fun we used to have—he and Richard Carey and I—the first years we were out here. We were such a happy party. Richard Carey worked with him in Palestine, of course. Theirs is a friendship of ten years or so. Oh, well, I’ve known him for seven.”

  “What a handsome man Mr. Carey is,” I said.

  “Yes—I suppose he is.”

  She said it rather curtly.

  “But he’s just a little bit quiet, don’t you think?”

  “He usedn’t to be like that,” said Miss Johnson quickly. “It’s only since—”

  She stopped abruptly.

  “Only since—?” I prompted.

  “Oh, well.” Miss Johnson gave a characteristic motion of her shoulders. “A good many things are changed nowadays.”

  I didn’t answer. I hoped she would go on—and she did—prefacing her remarks with a little laugh as though to detract from their importance.

  “I’m afraid I’m rather a conservative old fogy. I sometimes think that if an archaeologist’s wife isn’t really interested, it would be wiser for her not to accompany the expedition. It often leads to friction.”

  “Mrs. Mercado—” I suggested.

  “Oh, her!” Miss Johnson brushed the suggestion aside. “I was really thinking of Mrs. Leidner. She’s a very charming woman—and one can quite understand why Dr. Leidner ‘fell for her’—to use a slang term. But I can’t help feeling she’s out of place here. She—it unsettles things.”

  So Miss Johnson agreed with Mrs. Kelsey that it was Mrs. Leidner who was responsible for the strained atmosphere. But then where did Mrs. Leidner’s own nervous fears come in?

  “It unsettles him,” said Miss Johnson earnestly. “Of course I’m—well, I’m like a faithful but jealous old dog. I don’t like to see him so worn out and worried. His whole mind ought to be on the work—not taken up with his wife and her silly fears! If she’s nervous of coming to out-of-the-way places, she ought to have stayed in America. I’ve no patience with people who come to a place and then do nothing but grouse about it!”

  And then, a little fearful of having said more than she meant to say, she went on: “Of course I admire her very much. She’s a lovely woman and she’s got great charm of manner when she chooses.”

  And there the subject dropped.

  I thought to myself that it was always the same way—wherever women are cooped up together, there’s bound to be jealousy. Miss Johnson clearly didn’t like her chief ’s wife (that was perhaps natural) and unless I was much mistaken Mrs. Mercado fairly hated her.

  Another person who didn’t like Mrs. Leidner was Sheila Reilly. She came out once or twice to the dig, once in a car and twice with some young man on a horse—on two horses I mean, of course. It was at the back of my mind that she had a weakness for the silent young American, Emmott. When he was on duty at the dig she used to stay talking to him, and I thought, too, that he admired her.

  One day, rather injudiciously, I thought, Mrs. Leidner commented upon it at lunch.

  “The Reilly girl is still hunting David down,” she said with a little laugh. “Poor David, she chases you up on the dig even! How foolish girls are!”

  Mr. Emmott didn’t answer, but under his tan his face got rather red. He raised his eyes and looked right into hers with a very curious expression—a straight, steady glance with something of a challenge in it.

  She smiled very faintly and looked away.

  I heard Father Lavigny murmur something, but when I said “Pardon?” he merely shook his head and did not repeat his remark.

  That afternoon Mr. Coleman said to me: “Matter of fact I didn’t like Mrs. L. any too much at first. She used to jump down my throat every time I opened my mouth. But I’ve begun to understand her better now. She’s one of the kindest women I’ve ever met. You find yourself telling her all the foolish scrapes you ever got into before you know where you are. She’s got her knife into Sheila Reilly, I know, but then Sheila’s been damned rude to her once or twice. That’s the worst of Sheila—she’s got no manners. And a temper like the devil!”

  That I could well believe. Dr. Reilly spoilt her.

  “Of course she’s bound to get a bit full of herself, being the only young woman in the place. But that doesn’t excuse her talking to Mrs. Leidner as though Mrs. Leidner were her great-aunt. Mrs. L.’s not exactly a chicken, but she’s a damned good-looking woman. Rather like those fairy women who come out of marshes with lights and lure you away.” He added bitterly, “You wouldn’t find Sheila luring anyone. All she does is to tick a fellow off.”

  I only remember two other incidents of any kind of significance.

  One was when I went to the laboratory to fetch some acetone to get the stickiness off my fingers from mending the pottery. Mr. Mercado was sitting in a corner, his head was laid down on his arms and I fancied he was asleep. I took the bottle I wanted and went off with it.

  That evening, to my great surprise, Mrs. Mercado tackled me.

  “Did you take a bottle of acetone from the lab?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I did.”

  “You know perfectly well that there’s a small bottle always kept in the antika room.”

  She spoke quite angrily.

  “Is there? I didn’t know.”

  “I think you did! You just wanted to come spying round. I know what hospital nurses are.”

  I stared at her.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mrs. Mercado,” I said with dignity. “I’m sure I don’t want to spy on anyone.”

  “Oh, no! Of course not. Do you think I don’t know what you’re here for?”

  Really, for a minute or two I thought she must have been drinking. I went away without saying any more. But I thought it was very odd.

  The other thing was nothing very much. I was trying to entice a pi dog pup with a piece of bread. It was very timid, however, like all Arab dogs—and was convinced I meant no good. It slunk away and I followed it—out through the archway and round the corner of the house. I came round so sharply that before I knew I had cannoned into Father Lavigny and another man who were standing together—and in a minute I realized that the second man was the same one Mrs. Leidner and I had noticed that day trying to peer through the window.

  I apologized and Father Lavigny smiled, and with a word of farewell greeting to the other man he returned to the house with me.

  “You know,” he said. “I am very ashamed. I am a student of Oriental languages and none of the men on the work can understand me! It is humiliating, do you not think? I was trying my Arabic on that man, who is a townsman, to see if I got on better—but it still wasn’t very successful. Leidner says my Arabic is too pure.”

  That was all. But it just passed through my head that it was odd the same man should still be hanging round the house.

  That night we had a scare.

  It must have been about two in the morning. I’m a light sleeper, as most nurses have to be. I was awake and sitting up in bed by the time that my door opened.

  “Nurse, nurse!”

  It was Mrs. Leidner’s voice, low and urgent.

  I struck a match and lighted the candle.

  She was standing by the door in a long blue dressing gown. She was looking petrified with terror.

  “There’s someone—someone—in the room next to mine . . . I heard him—scratching on the wall.”

  I jumped out of bed and came to her.

  “It’s all right,” I said. “I’m here. Don’t be afraid, my dear.”

  She whispered: “Get Eric.”

  I nodded and ran out and knocked on his door. In a minute he was with us. Mrs. Leidner was sitting on my bed, her breath coming in great gasps.

  “I heard him,” she said. “I heard him—scratching on the wall.”

  “Someone in the antika room?” cried Dr. Leidner.

  He ran out quickly—and it just flashed across my mind how differently these two had reacted. Mrs. Leidner’s fear was entirely pe
rsonal, but Dr. Leidner’s mind leaped at once to his precious treasures.

  “The antika room!” breathed Mrs. Leidner. “Of course! How stupid of me!”

  And rising and pulling her gown round her, she bade me come with her. All traces of her panic-stricken fear had vanished.

  We arrived in the antika room to find Dr. Leidner and Father Lavigny. The latter had also heard a noise, had risen to investigate, and had fancied he saw a light in the antika room. He had delayed to put on slippers and snatch up a torch and had found no one by the time he got there. The door, moreover, was duly locked, as it was supposed to be at night.

  Whilst he was assuring himself that nothing had been taken, Dr. Leidner had joined him.

  Nothing more was to be learned. The outside archway door was locked. The guard swore nobody could have got in from outside, but as they had probably been fast asleep this was not conclusive. There were no marks or traces of an intruder and nothing had been taken.

  It was possible that what had alarmed Mrs. Leidner was the noise made by Father Lavigny taking down boxes from the shelves to assure himself that all was in order.

  On the other hand, Father Lavigny himself was positive that he had (a) heard footsteps passing his window and (b) seen the flicker of a light, possibly a torch, in the antika room.

  Nobody else had heard or seen anything.

  The incident is of value in my narrative because it led to Mrs. Leidner’s unburdening herself to me on the following day.

  Nine

  MRS. LEIDNER’S STORY

  We had just finished lunch. Mrs. Leidner went to her room to rest as usual. I settled her on her bed with plenty of pillows and her book, and was leaving the room when she called me back.

  “Don’t go, nurse, there’s something I want to say to you.”

  I came back into the room.

  “Shut the door.”

  I obeyed.

  She got up from the bed and began to walk up and down the room. I could see that she was making up her mind to something and I didn’t like to interrupt her. She was clearly in great indecision of mind.