Agatha Christie - Murder in Mesopotamia

‘I should imagine that he took the route through the hills. The route lorries sometimes take when running contraband.’

Captain Maitland grunted.

‘Then we’d better telegraph Deir ez Zor?’

‘I did so yesterday – warning them to look out for a car with two men in it whose passports will be in the most impeccable order.’

Captain Maitland favoured him with a stare.

‘You did, did you? Two men – eh?’

Poirot nodded.

‘There are two men in this.’

‘It strikes me, M. Poirot, that you’ve been keeping quite a lot of things up your sleeve.’

Poirot shook his head.

‘No,’ he said. ‘Not really. The truth came to me only this morning when I was watching the sunrise. A very beautiful sunrise.’

I don’t think that any of us had noticed that Mrs Mercado was in the room. She must have crept in when we were all taken aback by the production of that horrible great bloodstained stone.

But now, without the least warning, she set up a noise like a pig having its throat cut.

‘Oh, my God!’ she cried. ‘I see it all. I see it all now. It was Father Lavigny. He’s mad – religious mania. He thinks women are sinful. He’s killing them all. First Mrs Leidner – then Miss Johnson. And next it will be me…’

With a scream of frenzy she flung herself across the room and clutched Dr Reilly’s coat.

‘I won’t stay here, I tell you! I won’t stay here a day longer. There’s danger. There’s danger all round. He’s hiding somewhere – waiting his time. He’ll spring out on me!’

Her mouth opened and she began screaming again.

I hurried over to Dr Reilly, who had caught her by the wrists. I gave her a sharp slap on each cheek and with Dr Reilly’s help I sat her down in a chair.

‘Nobody’s going to kill you,’ I said. ‘We’ll see to that. Sit down and behave yourself.’

She didn’t scream any more. Her mouth closed and she sat looking at me with startled, stupid eyes.

Then there was another interruption. The door opened and Sheila Reilly came in.

Her face was pale and serious. She came straight to Poirot.

‘I was at the post office early, M. Poirot,’ she said, ‘and there was a telegram there for you – so I brought it along.’

‘Thank you, mademoiselle.’

He took it from her and tore it open while she watched his face.

It did not change, that face. He read the telegram, smoothed it out, folded it up neatly and put it in his pocket.

Mrs Mercado was watching him. She said in a choked voice: ‘Is that – from America?’

‘No, madame,’ he said. ‘It is from Tunis.’

She stared at him for a moment as though she did not understand, then with a long sigh, she leant back in her seat.

‘Father Lavigny,’ she said. ‘I was right. I’ve always thought there was something queer about him. He said things to me once – I suppose he’s mad…’ She paused and then said, ‘I’ll be quiet. But I must leave this place. Joseph and I can go in and sleep at the Rest House.’

‘Patience, madame,’ said Poirot. ‘I will explain everything.’

Captain Maitland was looking at him curiously.

‘Do you consider you’ve definitely got the hang of this business?’ he demanded.

Poirot bowed.

It was a most theatrical bow. I think it rather annoyed Captain Maitland.

‘Well,’ he barked. ‘Out with it, man.’

But that wasn’t the way Hercule Poirot did things. I saw perfectly well that he meant to make a song and dance of it. I wondered if he really did know the truth, or if he was just showing off.

He turned to Dr Reilly.

‘Will you be so good, Dr Reilly, as to summon the others?’

Dr Reilly jumped up and went off obligingly. In a minute or two the other members of the expedition began to file into the room. First Reiter and Emmott. Then Bill Coleman. Then Richard Carey and finally Mr Mercado.

Poor man, he really looked like death. I suppose he was mortally afraid that he’d get hauled over the coals for carelessness in leaving dangerous chemicals about.

Everyone seated themselves round the table very much as we had done on the day M. Poirot arrived. Both Bill Coleman and David Emmott hesitated before they sat down, glancing towards Sheila Reilly. She had her back to them and was standing looking out of the window.

‘Chair, Sheila?’ said Bill.

David Emmott said in his low pleasant drawl, ‘Won’t you sit down?’

She turned then and stood for a minute looking at them. Each was indicating a chair, pushing it forward. I wondered whose chair she would accept.

In the end she accepted neither.

‘I’ll sit here,’ she said brusquely. And she sat down on the edge of a table quite close to the window.

‘That is,’ she added, ‘if Captain Maitland doesn’t mind my staying?’

I’m not quite sure what Captain Maitland would have said. Poirot forestalled him.

‘Stay by all means, mademoiselle,’ he said. ‘It is, indeed, necessary that you should.’

She raised her eyebrows.

‘Necessary?’

‘That is the word I used, mademoiselle. There are some questions I shall have to ask you.’

Again her eyebrows went up but she said nothing further. She turned her face to the window as though determined to ignore what went on in the room behind her.

‘And now,’ said Captain Maitland, ‘perhaps we shall get at the truth!’

He spoke rather impatiently. He was essentially a man of action. At this very moment I felt sure that he was fretting to be out and doing things – directing the search for Father Lavigny’s body, or alternatively sending out parties for his capture and arrest.

He looked at Poirot with something akin to dislike.

‘If the beggar’s got anything to say, why doesn’t he say it?’

I could see the words on the tip of his tongue.

Poirot gave a slow appraising glance at us all, then rose to his feet.

I don’t know what I expected him to say – something dramatic certainly. He was that kind of person.

But I certainly didn’t expect him to start off with a phrase in Arabic.

Yet that is what happened. He said the words slowly and solemnly – and really quite religiously, if you know what I mean.

‘Bismillahi ar rahman ar rahim.’

And then he gave the translation in English.

‘In the name of Allah, the Merciful, the Compassionate.’

‘Bismillahi ar rahman ar rahim. That is the Arab phrase used before starting out on a journey.Eh bien, we too start on a journey. A journey into the past. A journey into the strange places of the human soul.’

I don’t think that up till that moment I’d ever felt any of the so-called ‘glamour of the East’. Frankly, what had struck me was the mess everywhere. But suddenly, with M. Poirot’s words, a queer sort of vision seemed to grow up before my eyes. I thought of words like Samarkand and Ispahan – and of merchants with long beards – and kneeling camels – and staggering porters carrying great bales on their backs held by a rope round the forehead – and women with henna-stained hair and tattooed faces kneeling by the Tigris and washing clothes, and I heard their queer wailing chants and the far-off groaning of the water-wheel.

They were mostly things I’d seen and heard and thought nothing much of. But now, somehow they seemed different – like a piece of fusty old stuff you take into the light and suddenly see the rich colours of an old embroidery…

Then I looked round the room we were sitting in and I got a queer feeling that what M. Poirot said was true – we were all starting on a journey. We were here together now, but we were all going our different ways.

And I looked at everyone as though, in a sort of way, I were seeing them for the first time – and for the last time – which sounds stupid, but it was what I felt all the same.