Agatha Christie - Murder in Mesopotamia

When we got back to the house I followed Dr Leidner into the office and broached the subject of my departure. He was very nice about it, thanked me for what I had done (Done! I had been worse than useless) and insisted on my accepting an extra week’s salary.

I protested because really I felt I’d done nothing to earn it.

‘Indeed, Dr Leidner, I’d rather not have any salary at all. If you’ll just refund me my travelling expenses, that’s all I want.’

But he wouldn’t hear of that.

‘You see,’ I said, ‘I don’t feel I deserve it, Dr Leidner. I mean, I’ve – well, I’ve failed. She – my coming didn’t save her.’

‘Now don’t get that idea into your head, nurse,’ he said earnestly. ‘After all, I didn’t engage you as a female detective. I never dreamt my wife’s life was in danger. I was convinced it was all nerves and that she’d worked herself up into a rather curious mental state. You did all anyone could do. She liked and trusted you. And I think in her last days she felt happier and safer because of your being here. There’s nothing for you to reproach yourself with.’

His voice quivered a little and I knew what he was thinking. He was the one to blame for not having taken Mrs Leidner’s fears seriously.

‘Dr Leidner,’ I said curiously. ‘Have you ever come to any conclusion about those anonymous letters?’

He said with a sigh: ‘I don’t know what to believe. Has M. Poirot come to any definite conclusion?’

‘He hadn’t yesterday,’ I said, steering rather neatly, I thought, between truth and fiction. After all, he hadn’t until I told him about Miss Johnson.

It was on my mind that I’d like to give Dr Leidner a hint and see if he reacted. In the pleasure of seeing him and Miss Johnson together the day before, and his affection and reliance on her, I’d forgotten all about the letters. Even now I felt it was perhaps rather mean of me to bring it up. Even if she had written them, she had had a bad time after Mrs Leidner’s death. Yet I did want to see whether that particular possibility had ever entered Dr Leidner’s head.

‘Anonymous letters are usually the work of a woman,’ I said. I wanted to see how he’d take it.

‘I suppose they are,’ he said with a sigh. ‘But you seem to forget, nurse, that these may be genuine. They may actually be written by Frederick Bosner.’

‘No, I haven’t forgotten,’ I said. ‘But I can’t believe somehow that that’s the real explanation.’

‘I do,’ he said. ‘It’s all nonsense, his being one of the expedition staff. That is just an ingenious theory of M. Poirot’s. I believe that the truth is much simpler. The man is a madman, of course. He’s been hanging round the place – perhaps in disguise of some kind. And somehow or other he got in on that fatal afternoon. The servants may be lying – they may have been bribed.’

‘I suppose it’s possible,’ I said doubtfully.

Dr Leidner went on with a trace of irritability.

‘It is all very well for M. Poirot to suspect the members of my expedition. I am perfectly certain none of them have anything to do with it! I have worked with them. I know them!’

He stopped suddenly, then he said: ‘Is that your experience, nurse? That anonymous letters are usually written by women?’

‘It isn’t always the case,’ I said. ‘But there’s a certain type of feminine spitefulness that finds relief that way.’

‘I suppose you are thinking of Mrs Mercado?’ he said.

Then he shook his head.

‘Even if she were malicious enough to wish to hurt Louise she would hardly have the necessary knowledge,’ he said.

I remembered the earlier letters in the attache-case.

If Mrs Leidner had left that unlocked and Mrs Mercado had been alone in the house one day pottering about, she might easily have found them and read them. Men never seem to think of the simplest possibilities!

‘And apart from her there is only Miss Johnson,’ I said, watching him.

‘That would be quite ridiculous!’

The little smile with which he said it was quite conclusive. The idea of Miss Johnson being the author of the letters had never entered his head! I hesitated just for a minute – but I didn’t say anything. One doesn’t like giving away a fellow woman, and besides, I had been a witness of Miss Johnson’s genuine and moving remorse. What was done was done. Why expose Dr Leidner to a fresh disillusion on top of all his other troubles?

It was arranged that I should leave on the following day, and I had arranged through Dr Reilly to stay for a day or two with the matron of the hospital whilst I made arrangements for returning to England either via Baghdad or direct via Nissibin by car and train.

Dr Leidner was kind enough to say that he would like me to choose a memento from amongst his wife’s things.

‘Oh, no, really, Dr Leidner,’ I said. ‘I couldn’t. It’s much too kind of you.’

He insisted.

‘But I should like you to have something. And Louise, I am sure, would have wished it.’

Then he went on to suggest that I should have her tortoiseshell toilet set!

‘Oh, no, Dr Leidner! Why, that’s a most expensive set. I couldn’t, really.’

‘She had no sisters, you know – no one who wants these things. There is no one else to have them.’

I could quite imagine that he wouldn’t want them to fall into Mrs Mercado’s greedy little hands. And I didn’t think he’d want to offer them to Miss Johnson.

He went on kindly: ‘You just think it over. By the way, here is the key of Louise’s jewel case. Perhaps you will find something there you would rather have. And I should be very grateful if you would pack up – all her clothes. I dare say Reilly can find a use for them amongst some of the poor Christian families in Hassanieh.’

I was very glad to be able to do that for him, and I expressed my willingness.

I set about it at once.

Mrs Leidner had only had a very simple wardrobe with her and it was soon sorted and packed up into a couple of suitcases. All her papers had been in the small attache-case. The jewel case contained a few simple trinkets – a pearl ring, a diamond brooch, a small string of pearls, and one or two plain gold bar brooches of the safety-pin type, and a string of large amber beads.

Naturally I wasn’t going to take the pearls or the diamonds, but I hesitated a bit between the amber beads and the toilet set. In the end, however, I didn’t see why I shouldn’t take the latter. It was a kindly thought on Dr Leidner’s part, and I was sure there wasn’t any patronage about it. I’d take it in the spirit it had been offered, without any false pride. After all, I had been fond of her.

Well, that was all done and finished with. The suitcases packed, the jewel case locked up again and put separate to give to Dr Leidner with the photograph of Mrs Leidner’s father and one or two other personal little odds and ends.

The room looked bare and forlorn emptied of all its accoutrements, when I’d finished. There was nothing more for me to do – and yet somehow or other I shrank from leaving the room. It seemed as though there was something still to do there – something I ought to see – or something I ought to have known. I’m not superstitious, but the idea did pop into my head that perhaps Mrs Leidner’s spirit was hanging about the room and trying to get in touch with me.

I remember once at the hospital some of us girls got a planchette and really it wrote some very remarkable things.

Perhaps, although I’d never thought of such a thing, I might be mediumistic.

As I say, one gets all worked up to imagine all sorts of foolishness sometimes.

I prowled round the room uneasily, touching this and that. But, of course, there wasn’t anything in the room but bare furniture. There was nothing slipped behind drawers or tucked away. I couldn’t hope for anything of that kind.