Murder in Mesopotamia

Chapter 5. Tell Yarimjah

I don’t mind admitting that my first impression on seeing Mrs Leidner was one of downright surprise. One gets into the way of imagining a person when one hears them talked about. I’d got it firmly into my head that Mrs Leidner was a dark, discontented kind of woman. The nervy kind, all on edge. And then, too, I’d expected her to be – well, to put it frankly – a bit vulgar.

She wasn’t a bit like what I’d imagined her! To begin with, she was very fair. She wasn’t a Swede, like her husband, but she might have been as far as looks went. She had that blonde Scandinavian fairness that you don’t very often see. She wasn’t a young woman. Midway between thirty and forty, I should say. Her face was rather haggard, and there was some grey hair mingled with the fairness. Her eyes, though, were lovely. They were the only eyes I’ve ever come across that you might truly describe as violet. They were very large, and there were faint shadows underneath them. She was very thin and fragile-looking, and if I say that she had an air of intense weariness and was at the same time very much alive, it sounds like nonsense – but that’s the feeling I got. I felt, too, that she was a lady through and through. And that means something – even nowadays.

She put out her hand and smiled. Her voice was low and soft with an American drawl in it.

‘I’m so glad you’ve come, nurse. Will you have some tea? Or would you like to go to your room first?’

I said I’d have tea, and she introduced me to the people sitting round the table.

‘This is Miss Johnson – and Mr Reiter. Mrs Mercado. Mr Emmott. Father Lavigny. My husband will be in presently. Sit down here between Father Lavigny and Miss Johnson.’

I did as I was bid and Miss Johnson began talking to me, asking about my journey and so on.

I liked her. She reminded me of a matron I’d had in my probationer days whom we had all admired and worked hard for.

She was getting on for fifty, I should judge, and rather mannish in appearance, with iron-grey hair cropped short. She had an abrupt, pleasant voice, rather deep in tone. She had an ugly rugged face with an almost laughably turned-up nose which she was in the habit of rubbing irritably when anything troubled or perplexed her. She wore a tweed coat and skirt made rather like a man’s. She told me presently that she was a native of Yorkshire.

Father Lavigny I found just a bit alarming. He was a tall man with a great black beard and pince-nez. I had heard Mrs Kelsey say that there was a French monk there, and I now saw that Father Lavigny was wearing a monk’s robe of some white woollen material. It surprised me rather, because I always understood that monks went into monasteries and didn’t come out again.

Mrs Leidner talked to him mostly in French, but he spoke to me in quite fair English. I noticed that he had shrewd, observant eyes which darted about from face to face.

Opposite me were the other three. Mr Reiter was a stout, fair young man with glasses. His hair was rather long and curly, and he had very round blue eyes. I should think he must have been a lovely baby, but he wasn’t much to look at now! In fact he was just a little like a pig. The other young man had very short hair cropped close to his head. He had a long, rather humorous face and very good teeth, and he looked very attractive when he smiled. He said very little, though, just nodded if spoken to or answered in monosyllables. He, like Mr Reiter, was an American. The last person was Mrs Mercado, and I couldn’t have a good look at her because whenever I glanced in her direction I always found her staring at me with a kind of hungry stare that was a bit disconcerting to say the least of it. You might have thought a hospital nurse was a strange animal the way she was looking at me. No manners at all!

She was quite young – not more than about twenty-five – and sort of dark and slinky-looking, if you know what I mean. Quite nice-looking in a kind of way, but rather as though she might have what my mother used to call ‘a touch of the tar-brush’. She had on a very vivid pullover and her nails matched it in colour. She had a thin bird-like eager face with big eyes and rather a tight, suspicious mouth.

The tea was very good – a nice strong blend – not like the weak China stuff that Mrs Kelsey always had and that had been a sore trial to me.

There was toast and jam and a plate of rock buns and a cutting cake. Mr Emmott was very polite passing me things. Quiet as he was he always seemed to notice when my plate was empty.

Presently Mr Coleman bustled in and took the place beyond Miss Johnson. There didn’t seem to be anything the matter withhis nerves. He talked away nineteen to the dozen.

Mrs Leidner sighed once and cast a wearied look in his direction but it didn’t have any effect. Nor did the fact that Mrs Mercado, to whom he was addressing most of his conversation, was far too busy watching me to do more than make perfunctory replies.

Just as we were finishing, Dr Leidner and Mr Mercado came in from the dig.

Dr Leidner greeted me in his nice kind manner. I saw his eyes go quickly and anxiously to his wife’s face and he seemed to be relieved by what he saw there. Then he sat down at the other end of the table, and Mr Mercado sat down in the vacant place by Mrs Leidner. He was a tall, thin, melancholy man, a good deal older than his wife, with a sallow complexion and a queer, soft, shapeless-looking beard. I was glad when he came in, for his wife stopped staring at me and transferred her attention to him, watching him with a kind of anxious impatience that I found rather odd. He himself stirred his tea dreamily and said nothing at all. A piece of cake lay untasted on his plate.

There was still one vacant place, and presently the door opened and a man came in.

The moment I saw Richard Carey I felt he was one of the handsomest men I’d seen for a long time – and yet I doubt if that were really so. To say a man is handsome and at the same time to say he looks like a death’s head sounds a rank contradiction, and yet it was true. His head gave the effect of having the skin stretched unusually tight over the bones – but they were beautiful bones. The lean line of jaw and temple and forehead was so sharply outlined that he reminded me of a bronze statue. Out of this lean brown face looked two of the brightest and most intensely blue eyes I have ever seen. He stood about six foot and was, I should imagine, a little under forty years of age.

Dr Leidner said: ‘This is Mr Carey, our architect, nurse.’

He murmured something in a pleasant, inaudible English voice and sat down by Mrs Mercado.

Mrs Leidner said: ‘I’m afraid the tea is a little cold, Mr Carey.’

He said: ‘Oh, that’s quite all right, Mrs Leidner. My fault for being late. I wanted to finish plotting those walls.’

Mrs Mercado said, ‘Jam, Mr Carey?’

Mr Reiter pushed forward the toast.

And I remembered Major Pennyman saying: ‘I can explain best what I mean by saying that they all passed the butter to each other a shade too politely.’

Yes, there was something a little odd about it…

A shade formal…

You’d have said it was a party of strangers – not people who had known each other – some of them – for quite a number of years.