Murder in Mesopotamia

Chapter 20. Miss Johnson, Mrs Mercado, Mr Reiter

I don’t mind confessing that the idea came as a complete shock to me. I’d never thought of associating Miss Johnson with the letters. Mrs Mercado, perhaps. But Miss Johnson was a real lady, and so self-controlled and sensible.

But I reflected, remembering the conversation I had listened to that evening between M. Poirot and Dr Reilly, that that might be justwhy.

If it were Miss Johnson who had written the letters it explained a lot, mind you. I didn’t think for a minute Miss Johnson had had anything to do with the murder. But I did see that her dislike of Mrs Leidner might have made her succumb to the temptation of, well – putting the wind up her – to put it vulgarly.

She might have hoped to frighten away Mrs Leidner from the dig.

But then Mrs Leidner had been murdered and Miss Johnson had felt terrible pangs of remorse – first for her cruel trick and also, perhaps, because she realized that those letters were acting as a very good shield to the actual murderer. No wonder she had broken down so utterly. She was, I was sure, a decent soul at heart. And it explained, too, why she had caught so eagerly at my consolation of ‘what’s happened’s happened and can’t be mended.’

And then her cryptic remark – her vindication of herself – ‘she was never a nice woman!’

The question was, what was I to do about it?

I tossed and turned for a good while and in the end decided I’d let M. Poirot know about it at the first opportunity.

He came out next day, but I didn’t get a chance of speaking to him what you might call privately.

We had just a minute alone together and before I could collect myself to know how to begin, he had come close to me and was whispering instructions in my ear.

‘Me, I shall talk to Miss Johnson – and others, perhaps, in the living-room. You have the key of Mrs Leidner’s room still?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘Tres bien. Go there, shut the door behind you and give a cry – not a scream – a cry. You understand what I mean – it is alarm-surprise that I want you to express – not mad terror. As for the excuse if you are heard – I leave that to you – the stepped toe or what you will.’

At that moment Miss Johnson came out into the courtyard and there was no time for more.

I understood well enough what M. Poirot was after. As soon as he and Miss Johnson had gone into the living-room I went across to Mrs Leidner’s room and, unlocking the door, went in and pulled the door to behind me.

I can’t say I didn’t feel a bit of a fool standing up in an empty room and giving a yelp all for nothing at all. Besides, it wasn’t so easy to know just how loud to do it. I gave a pretty loud ‘Oh’ and then tried it a bit higher and a bit lower.

Then I came out again and prepared my excuse of a stepped (stubbed I suppose he meant!) toe.

But it soon appeared that no excuse would be needed. Poirot and Miss Johnson were talking together earnestly and there had clearly been no interruption.

‘Well,’ I thought, ‘that settles that. Either Miss Johnson imagined that cry she heard or else it was something quite different.’

I didn’t like to go in and interrupt them. There was a deck-chair on the porch so I sat down there. Their voices floated out to me.

‘The position is delicate, you understand,’ Poirot was saying. ‘Dr Leidner – obviously he adored his wife–’

‘He worshipped her,’ said Miss Johnson.

‘He tells me, naturally, how fond all his staff was of her! As for them, what can they say? Naturally they say the same thing. It is politeness. It is decency. It may also be the truth! But also it may not! And I am convinced, mademoiselle, that the key to this enigma lies in a complete understanding of Mrs Leidner’s character. If I could get the opinion – the honest opinion – of every member of the staff, I might, from the whole, build up a picture. Frankly, that is why I am here today. I knew Dr Leidner would be in Hassanieh. That makes it easy for me to have an interview with each of you here in turn, and beg your help.’

‘That’s all very well,’ began Miss Johnson and stopped.

‘Do not make me the British cliches,’ Poirot begged. ‘Do not say it is not the cricket or the football, that to speak anything but well of the dead is not done – that – enfin – there is loyalty! Loyalty it is a pestilential thing in crime. Again and again it obscures the truth.’

‘I’ve no particular loyalty to Mrs Leidner,’ said Miss Johnson dryly. There was indeed a sharp and acid tone in her voice. ‘Dr Leidner’s a different matter. And, after all, she was his wife.’

‘Precisely – precisely. I understand that you would not wish to speak against your chief ’s wife. But this is not a question of a testimonial. It is a question of sudden and mysterious death. If I am to believe that it is a martyred angel who has been killed it does not add to the easiness of my task.’

‘I certainly shouldn’t call her an angel,’ said Miss Johnson and the acid tone was even more in evidence.

‘Tell me your opinion, frankly, of Mrs Leidner – as a woman.’

‘H’m! To begin with, M. Poirot, I’ll give you this warning. I’m prejudiced. I am – we all were – devoted to Dr Leidner. And, I suppose, when Mrs Leidner came along, we were jealous. We resented the demands she made on his time and attention. The devotion he showed her irritated us. I’m being truthful, M. Poirot, and it isn’t very pleasant for me. I resented her presence here – yes, I did, though, of course, I tried never to show it. It made a difference to us, you see.’

‘Us? You say us?’

‘I mean Mr Carey and myself. We’re the two old-timers, you see. And we didn’t much care for the new order of things. I suppose that’s natural, though perhaps it was rather petty of us. But it did make a difference.’

‘What kind of a difference?’

‘Oh! to everything. We used to have such a happy time. A good deal of fun, you know, and rather silly jokes, like people do who work together. Dr Leidner was quite light-hearted – just like a boy.’

‘And when Mrs Leidner came she changed all that?’

‘Well, I suppose it wasn’t her fault. It wasn’t so bad last year. And please believe, M. Poirot, that it wasn’t anything she did. She’s always been charming to me – quite charming. That’s why I’ve felt ashamed sometimes. It wasn’t her fault that little things she said and did seemed to rub me up the wrong way. Really, nobody could be nicer than she was.’

‘But nevertheless things were changed this season? There was a different atmosphere.’

‘Oh, entirely. Really. I don’t know what it was. Everything seemed to go wrong – not with the work – I mean with us – our tempers and our nerves. All on edge. Almost the sort of feeling you get when there is a thunderstorm coming.’

‘And you put that down to Mrs Leidner’s influence?’

‘Well, it was never like that before she came,’ said Miss Johnson dryly. ‘Oh! I’m a cross-grained, complaining old dog. Conservative – liking things always the same. You really mustn’t take any notice of me, M. Poirot.’

‘How would you describe to me Mrs Leidner’s character and temperament?’

Miss Johnson hesitated for a moment. Then she said slowly: ‘Well, of course, she was temperamental. A lot of ups and downs. Nice to people one day and perhaps wouldn’t speak to them the next. She was very kind, I think. And very thoughtful for others. All the same you could see she had been thoroughly spoilt all her life. She took Dr Leidner’s waiting on her hand and foot as perfectly natural. And I don’t think she ever really appreciated what a very remarkable – what a really great – man she had married. That used to annoy me sometimes. And of course she was terribly highly strung and nervous. The things she used to imagine and the states she used to get into! I was thankful when Dr Leidner brought Nurse Leatheran here. It was too much for him having to cope both with his work and with his wife’s fears.’

‘What is your own opinion of these anonymous letters she received?’

I had to do it. I leaned forward in my chair till I could just catch sight of Miss Johnson’s profile turned to Poirot in answer to his question.

She was looking perfectly cool and collected.

‘I think someone in America had a spite against her and was trying to frighten or annoy her.’

‘Pas plus serieux que ca?’

‘That’s my opinion. She was a very handsome woman, you know, and might easily have had enemies. I think, those letters were written by some spiteful woman. Mrs Leidner being of a nervous temperament took them seriously.’

‘She certainly did that,’ said Poirot. ‘But remember – the last of them arrived by hand.’

‘Well, I suppose that could have been managed if anyone had given their minds to it. Women will take a lot of trouble to gratify their spite, M. Poirot.’

They will indeed, I thought to myself!

‘Perhaps you are right, mademoiselle. As you say, Mrs Leidner was handsome. By the way, you know Miss Reilly, the doctor’s daughter?’

‘Sheila Reilly? Yes, of course.’

Poirot adopted a very confidential, gossipy tone.

‘I have heard a rumour (naturally I do not like to ask the doctor) that there was a tendresse between her and one of the members of Dr Leidner’s staff. Is that so, do you know?’

Miss Johnson appeared rather amused.

‘Oh, young Coleman and David Emmott were both inclined to dance attendance. I believe there was some rivalry as to who was to be her partner in some event at the club. Both the boys went in on Saturday evenings to the club as a general rule. But I don’t know that there was anything in it on her side. She’s the only young creature in the place, you know, and so she’s by way of being the belle of it. She’s got the Air Force dancing attendance on her as well.’

‘So you think there is nothing in it?’

‘Well – I don’t know.’ Miss Johnson became thoughtful. ‘It is true that she comes out this way fairly often. Up to the dig and all that. In fact, Mrs Leidner was chaffing David Emmott about it the other day – saying the girl was running after him. Which was rather a catty thing to say, I thought, and I don’t think he liked it… Yes, she was here a good deal. I saw her riding towards the dig on that awful afternoon.’ She nodded her head towards the open window. ‘But neither David Emmott nor Coleman were on duty that afternoon. Richard Carey was in charge. Yes, perhaps she is attracted to one of the boys – but she’s such a modern unsentimental young woman that one doesn’t know quite how seriously to take her. I’m sure I don’t know which of them it is. Bill’s a nice boy, and not nearly such a fool as he pretends to be. David Emmott is a dear – and there’s a lot to him. He is the deep, quiet kind.’

Then she looked quizzically at Poirot and said: ‘But has this any bearing on the crime, M. Poirot?’

M. Poirot threw up his hands in a very French fashion.

‘You make me blush, mademoiselle,’ he said. ‘You expose me as a mere gossip. But what will you, I am interested always in the love affairs of young people.’

‘Yes,’ said Miss Johnson with a little sigh. ‘It’s nice when the course of true love runs smooth.’

Poirot gave an answering sigh. I wondered if Miss Johnson was thinking of some love affair of her own when she was a girl. And I wondered if M. Poirot had a wife, and if he went on in the way you always hear foreigners do, with mistresses and things like that. He looked so comic I couldn’t imagine it.

‘Sheila Reilly has a lot of character,’ said Miss Johnson. ‘She’s young and she’s crude, but she’s the right sort.’

‘I take your word for it, mademoiselle,’ said Poirot.

He got up and said, ‘Are there any other members of the staff in the house?’

‘Marie Mercado is somewhere about. All the men are up on the dig today. I think they wanted to get out of the house. I don’t blame them. If you’d like to go up to the dig–’

She came out on the verandah and said, smiling to me: ‘Nurse Leatheran won’t mind taking you, I dare say.’

‘Oh, certainly, Miss Johnson,’ I said.

‘And you’ll come back to lunch, won’t you, M. Poirot?’

‘Enchanted, mademoiselle.’

Miss Johnson went back into the living-room where she was engaged in cataloguing.

‘Mrs Mercado’s on the roof,’ I said. ‘Do you want to see her first?’

‘It would be as well, I think. Let us go up.’

As we went up the stairs I said: ‘I did what you told me. Did you hear anything?’

‘Not a sound.’

‘That will be a weight off Miss Johnson’s mind at any rate,’ I said. ‘She’s been worrying that she might have done something about it.’

Mrs Mercado was sitting on the parapet, her head bent down, and she was so deep in thought that she never heard us till Poirot halted opposite her and bade her good morning.

Then she looked up with a start.

She looked ill this morning, I thought, her small face pinched and wizened and great dark circles under her eyes.

‘Encore moi,’ said Poirot. ‘I come today with a special object.’

And he went on much in the same way as he had done to Miss Johnson, explaining how necessary it was that he should get a true picture of Mrs Leidner.

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.