Agatha Christie - Murder in Mesopotamia

‘Giving on the courtyard?’

‘Yes.’

‘Was it open or shut? Open, I seem to remember. But perhaps one of you opened it?’

‘No, it was open all the time. I wondered–’

I stopped.

‘Go on, nurse.’

‘I examined the window, of course, but I couldn’t see anything unusual about it. I wondered whether, perhaps, somebody changed the glasses that way.’

‘Changed the glasses?’

‘Yes. You see, Miss Johnson always takes a glass of water to bed with her. I think that glass must have been tampered with and a glass of acid put in its place.’

‘What do you say, Reilly?’

‘If it’s murder, that was probably the way it was done,’ said Dr Reilly promptly. ‘No ordinary moderately observant human being would drink a glass of acid in mistake for one of water – if they were in full possession of their waking faculties. But if anyone’s accustomed to drinking off a glass of water in the middle of the night, that person might easily stretch out an arm, find the glass in the accustomed place, and still half asleep, toss off enough of the stuff to be fatal before realizing what had happened.’

Captain Maitland reflected a minute.

‘I’ll have to go back and look at that window. How far is it from the head of the bed?’

I thought.

‘With a very long stretch you could just reach the little table that stands by the head of the bed.’

‘The table on which the glass of water was?’

‘Yes.’

‘Was the door locked?’

‘No.’

‘So whoever it was could have come in that way and made the substitution?’

‘Oh, yes.’

‘There would be more risk that way,’ said Dr Reilly. ‘A person who is sleeping quite soundly will often wake up at the sound of a footfall. If the table could be reached from the window it would be the safer way.’

‘I’m not only thinking of the glass,’ said Captain Maitland absent-mindedly.

Rousing himself, he addressed me once again.

‘It’s your opinion that when the poor lady felt she was dying she was anxious to let you know that somebody had substituted acid for water through the open window? Surely the person’s name would have been more to the point?’

‘She mayn’t have known the name,’ I pointed out.

‘Or it would have been more to the point if she’d managed to hint what it was that she had discovered the day before?’

Dr Reilly said: ‘When you’re dying, Maitland, you haven’t always got a sense of proportion. One particular fact very likely obsesses your mind. That a murderous hand had come through the window may have been the principal fact obsessing her at the minute. It may have seemed to her important that she should let people know that. In my opinion she wasn’t far wrong either. It was important! She probably jumped to the fact that you’d think it was suicide. If she could have used her tongue freely, she’d probably have said “It wasn’t suicide. I didn’t take it myself. Somebody else must have put it near my bedthrough the window.”’

Captain Maitland drummed with his fingers for a minute or two without replying. Then he said:

‘There are certainly two ways of looking at it. It’s either suicide or murder. Which do you think, Dr Leidner?’

Dr Leidner was silent for a minute or two, then he said quietly and decisively: ‘Murder. Anne Johnson wasn’t the sort of woman to kill herself.’

‘No,’ allowed Captain Maitland. ‘Not in the normal run of things. But there might be circumstances in which it would be quite a natural thing to do.’

‘Such as?’

Captain Maitland stooped to a bundle which I had previously noticed him place by the side of his chair. He swung it on to the table with something of an effort.

‘There’s something here that none of you know about,’ he said. ‘We found it under her bed.’

He fumbled with the knot of the covering, then threw it back, revealing a heavy great quern or grinder.

That was nothing in itself – there were a dozen or so already found in the course of the excavations.

What riveted our attention on this particular specimen was a dull, dark stain and a fragment of something that looked like hair.

‘That’ll be your job, Reilly,’ said Captain Maitland. ‘But I shouldn’t say that there’s much doubt about this being the instrument with which Mrs Leidner was killed!’

It was rather horrible. Dr Leidner looked as though he were going to faint and I felt a bit sick myself.

Dr Reilly examined it with professional gusto.

‘No fingerprints, I presume?’ he threw out.

‘No fingerprints.’

Dr Reilly took out a pair of forceps and investigated delicately.

‘H’m – a fragment of human tissue – and hair – fair blonde hair. That’s the unofficial verdict. Of course, I’ll have to make a proper test, blood group, etc., but there’s not much doubt. Found under Miss Johnson’s bed? Well, well – so that’s the big idea. She did the murder, and then, God rest her, remorse came to her and she finished herself off. It’s a theory – a pretty theory.’

Dr Leidner could only shake his head helplessly.

‘Not Anne – not Anne,’ he murmured.

‘I don’t know where she hid this to begin with,’ said Captain Maitland. ‘Every room was searched after the first crime.’

Something jumped into my mind and I thought, ‘In the stationery cupboard,’ but I didn’t say anything.

‘Wherever it was, she became dissatisfied with its hiding-place and took it into her own room, which had been searched with all the rest. Or perhaps she did that after making up her mind to commit suicide.’

‘I don’t believe it,’ I said aloud.

And I couldn’t somehow believe that kind nice Miss Johnson had battered out Mrs Leidner’s brains. I just couldn’t see it happening! And yet it did fit in with some things – her fit of weeping that night, for instance. After all, I’d said ‘remorse’ myself – only I’d never thought it was remorse for anything but the smaller, more insignificant crime.

‘I don’t know what to believe,’ said Captain Maitland. ‘There’s the French Father’s disappearance to be cleared up too. My men are out hunting around in case he’s been knocked on the head and his body rolled into a convenient irrigation ditch.’

‘Oh! I remember now–’ I began.

Everyone looked towards me inquiringly.

‘It was yesterday afternoon,’ I said. ‘He’d been cross-questioning me about the man with a squint who was looking in at the window that day. He asked me just where he’d stood on the path and then he said he was going out to have a look round. He said in detective stories the criminal always dropped a convenient clue.’

‘Damned if any of my criminals ever do,’ said Captain Maitland. ‘So that’s what he was after, was it? By Jove, I wonder if he did find anything. A bit of a coincidence if both he and Miss Johnson discovered a clue to the identity of the murderer at practically the same time.’

He added irritably, ‘Man with a squint? Man with a squint? There’s more in this tale of that fellow with a squint than meets the eye. I don’t know why the devil my fellows can’t lay hold of him!’

‘Probably because he hasn’t got a squint,’ said Poirot quietly.

‘Do you mean he faked it? Didn’t know you could fake an actual squint.’

Poirot merely said: ‘A squint can be a very useful thing.’

‘The devil it can! I’d give a lot to know where that fellow is now, squint or no squint!’

‘At a guess,’ said Poirot, ‘he has already passed the Syrian frontier.’

‘We’ve warned Tell Kotchek and Abu Kemal – all the frontier posts, in fact.’