Agatha Christie - Murder in Mesopotamia

Mrs Mercado, however, wasn’t as honest as Miss Johnson had been. She burst into fulsome praise which, I was pretty sure, was quite far removed from her real feelings.

‘Dear, dear Louise! It’s so hard to explain her to someone who didn’t know her. She was such an exotic creature. Quite different from anyone else. You felt that, I’m sure, nurse? A martyr to nerves, of course, and full of fancies, but one put up with things in her one wouldn’t from anyone else. And she was so sweet to us all, wasn’t she, nurse? And so humble about herself – I mean she didn’t know anything about archaeology, and she was so eager to learn. Always asking my husband about the chemical processes for treating the metal objects and helping Miss Johnson to mend pottery. Oh, we were all devoted to her.’

‘Then it is not true, madame, what I have heard, that there was a certain tenseness – an uncomfortable atmosphere – here?’

Mrs Mercado opened her opaque black eyes very wide.

‘Oh! who can have been telling you that? Nurse? Dr Leidner? I’m sure he would never notice anything, poor man.’

And she shot a thoroughly unfriendly glance at me.

Poirot smiled easily.

‘I have my spies, madame,’ he declared gaily. And just for a minute I saw her eyelids quiver and blink.

‘Don’t you think,’ asked Mrs Mercado with an air of great sweetness, ‘that after an event of this kind, everyone always pretends a lot of things that never were? You know – tension, atmosphere, a “feeling that something was going to happen”? I think people just make up these things afterwards.’

‘There is a lot in what you say, madame,’ said Poirot.

‘And it really wasn’t true! We were a thoroughly happy family here.’

‘That woman is one of the most utter liars I’ve ever known,’ I said indignantly, when M. Poirot and I were clear of the house and walking along the path to the dig. ‘I’m sure she simply hated Mrs Leidner really!’

‘She is hardly the type to whom one would go for the truth,’ Poirot agreed.

‘Waste of time talking to her,’ I snapped.

‘Hardly that – hardly that. If a person tells you lies with her lips she is sometimes telling you truth with her eyes. What is she afraid of, little Madame Mercado? I saw fear in her eyes. Yes – decidedly she is afraid of something. It is very interesting.’

‘I’ve got something to tell you, M. Poirot,’ I said.

Then I told him all about my return the night before and my strong belief that Miss Johnson was the writer of the anonymous letters.

‘So she’s a liar too!’ I said. ‘The cool way she answered you this morning about these same letters!’

‘Yes,’ said Poirot. ‘It was interesting, that. For she let out the fact she knew all about those letters. So far they have not been spoken of in the presence of the staff. Of course, it is quite possible that Dr Leidner told her about them yesterday. They are old friends, he and she. But if he did not – well – then it is curious and interesting, is it not?’

My respect for him went up. It was clever the way he had tricked her into mentioning the letters.

‘Are you going to tackle her about them?’ I asked. M. Poirot seemed quite shocked by the idea.

‘No, no, indeed. Always it is unwise to parade one’s knowledge. Until the last minute I keep everything here,’ he tapped his forehead. ‘At the right moment – I make the spring – like the panther – and, mon Dieu! the consternation!’

I couldn’t help laughing to myself at little M. Poirot in the role of a panther.

We had just reached the dig. The first person we saw was Mr Reiter, who was busy photographing some walling.

It’s my opinion that the men who were digging just hacked out walls wherever they wanted them. That’s what it looked like anyway. Mr Carey explained to me that you could feel the difference at once with a pick, and he tried to show me – but I never saw. When the man said ‘Libn’ – mud-brick – it was just ordinary dirt and mud as far as I could see.

Mr Reiter finished his photographs and handed over the camera and the plate to his boy and told him to take them back to the house.

Poirot asked him one or two questions about exposures and film packs and so on which he answered very readily. He seemed pleased to be asked about his work.

He was just tendering his excuses for leaving us when Poirot plunged once more into his set speech. As a matter of fact it wasn’t quite a set speech because he varied it a little each time to suit the person he was talking to. But I’m not going to write it all down every time. With sensible people like Miss Johnson he went straight to the point, and with some of the others he had to beat about the bush a bit more. But it came to the same in the end.

‘Yes, yes, I see what you mean,’ said Mr Reiter. ‘But indeed, I do not see that I can be much help to you. I am new here this season and I did not speak much with Mrs Leidner. I regret, but indeed I can tell you nothing.’

There was something a little stiff and foreign in the way he spoke, though, of course, he hadn’t got any accent – except an American one, I mean.

‘You can at least tell me whether you liked or disliked her?’ said Poirot with a smile.

Mr Reiter got quite red and stammered: ‘She was a charming person – most charming. And intellectual. She had a very fine brain – yes.’

‘Bien! You liked her. And she liked you?’

Mr Reiter got redder still.

‘Oh, I – I don’t know that she noticed me much. And I was unfortunate once or twice. I was always unlucky when I tried to do anything for her. I’m afraid I annoyed her by my clumsiness. It was quite unintentional…I would have done anything–’

Poirot took pity on his flounderings.

‘Perfectly – perfectly. Let us pass to another matter. Was it a happy atmosphere in the house?’

‘Please?’

‘Were you all happy together? Did you laugh and talk?’

‘No – no, not exactly that. There was a little – stiffness.’

He paused, struggling with himself, and then said: ‘You see, I am not very good in company. I am clumsy. I am shy. Dr Leidner always he has been most kind to me. But – it is stupid – I cannot overcome my shyness. I say always the wrong thing. I upset water jugs. I am unlucky.’

He really looked like a large awkward child.

‘We all do these things when we are young,’ said Poirot, smiling. ‘The poise, the savoir faire, it comes later.’

Then with a word of farewell we walked on.

He said: ‘That, ma soeur, is either an extremely simple young man or a very remarkable actor.’

I didn’t answer. I was caught up once more by the fantastic notion that one of these people was a dangerous and cold-blooded murderer. Somehow, on this beautiful still sunny morning it seemed impossible.

‘They work in two separate places, I see,’ said Poirot, halting.

Mr Reiter had been doing his photography on an outlying portion of the main excavation. A little distance away from us a second swarm of men were coming and going with baskets.

‘That’s what they call the deep cut,’ I explained. ‘They don’t find much there, nothing but rubbishy broken pottery, but Dr Leidner always says it’s very interesting, so I suppose it must be.’

‘Let us go there.’

We walked together slowly, for the sun was hot.

Mr Mercado was in command. We saw him below us talking to the foreman, an old man like a tortoise who wore a tweed coat over his long striped cotton gown.

It was a little difficult to get down to them as there was only a narrow path or stair and basket-boys were going up and down it constantly, and they always seemed to be as blind as bats and never to think of getting out of the way.