Murder in Mesopotamia

Chapter 6. First Evening

After tea Mrs Leidner took me to show me my room.

Perhaps here I had better give a short description of the arrangement of the rooms. This was very simple and can easily be understood by a reference to the plan.

On either side of the big open porch were doors leading into the two principal rooms. That on the right led into the dining-room, where we had tea. The one on the other side led into an exactly similar room (I have called it the living-room) which was used as a sitting-room and kind of informal workroom – that is, a certain amount of drawing (other than the strictly architectural) was done there, and the more delicate pieces of pottery were brought there to be pieced together. Through the living-room one passed into the antiquities-room where all the finds from the dig were brought in and stored on shelves and in pigeon-holes, and also laid out on big benches and tables. From the antika-room there was no exit save through the living-room.

Beyond the antika-room, but reached through a door which gave on the courtyard, was Mrs Leidner’s bedroom. This, like the other rooms on that side of the house, had a couple of barred windows looking out over the ploughed countryside. Round the corner next to Mrs Leidner’s room, but with no actual communicating door, was Dr Leidner’s room. This was the first of the rooms on the east side of the building. Next to it was the room that was to be mine. Next to me was Miss Johnson’s, with Mr and Mrs Mercado’s beyond. After that came two so-called bathrooms.

(When I once used that last term in the hearing of Dr Reilly he laughed at me and said a bathroom was either a bathroom or not a bathroom! All the same, when you’ve got used to taps and proper plumbing, it seems strange to call a couple of mud-rooms with a tin hip-bath in each of them, and muddy water brought in kerosene tins, bathrooms!)

All this side of the building had been added by Dr Leidner to the original Arab house. The bedrooms were all the same, each with a window and a door giving on to the courtyard. Along the north side were the drawing-office, the laboratory and the photographic rooms.

To return to the verandah, the arrangement of rooms was much the same on the other side. There was the dining-room leading into the office where the files were kept and the cataloguing and typing was done. Corresponding to Mrs Leidner’s room was that of Father Lavigny, who was given the largest bedroom; he used it also for the decoding – or whatever you call it – of tablets.

In the south-west corner was the staircase running up to the roof. On the west side were first the kitchen quarters and then four small bedrooms used by the young men – Carey, Emmott, Reiter and Coleman.

At the north-west corner was the photographic-room with the dark-room leading out of it. Next to that the laboratory. Then came the only entrance – the big arched doorway through which we had entered. Outside were sleeping quarters for the native servants, the guard-house for the soldiers, and stables, etc., for the water horses. The drawing-office was to the right of the archway occupying the rest of the north side.

I have gone into the arrangements of the house rather fully here because I don’t want to have to go over them again later.

As I say, Mrs Leidner herself took me round the building and finally established me in my bedroom, hoping that I should be comfortable and have everything I wanted.

The room was nicely though plainly furnished – a bed, a chest of drawers, a washstand and a chair.

‘The boys will bring you hot water before lunch and dinner – and in the morning, of course. If you want it any other time, go outside and clap your hands, and when the boy comes say, ‘jib mai’ har’. Do you think you can remember that?’

I said I thought so and repeated it a little haltingly.

‘That’s right. And be sure and shout it. Arabs don’t understand anything said in an ordinary “English” voice.’

‘Languages are funny things,’ I said. ‘It seems odd there should be such a lot of different ones.’

Mrs Leidner smiled.

‘There is a church in Palestine in which the Lord’s Prayer is written up in – ninety, I think it is – different languages.’

‘Well!’ I said. ‘I must write and tell my old aunt that. She will be interested.’

Mrs Leidner fingered the jug and basin absently and shifted the soap-dish an inch or two.’

‘I do hope you’ll be happy here,’ she said, ‘and not get too bored.’

‘I’m not often bored,’ I assured her. ‘Life’s not long enough for that.’

She did not answer. She continued to toy with the washstand as though abstractedly.

Suddenly she fixed her dark violet eyes on my face.

‘What exactly did my husband tell you, nurse?’

Well, one usually says the same thing to a question of that kind.

‘I gathered you were a bit run-down and all that, Mrs Leidner,’ I said glibly. ‘And that you just wanted someone to look after you and take any worries off your hands.’

She bent her head slowly and thoughtfully.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes – that will do very well.’

That was just a little bit enigmatic, but I wasn’t going to question it. Instead I said: ‘I hope you’ll let me help you with anything there is to do in the house. You mustn’t let me be idle.’

She smiled a little.

‘Thank you, nurse.’

Then she sat down on the bed and, rather to my surprise, began to cross-question me rather closely. I say rather to my surprise because, from the moment I set eyes on her, I felt sure that Mrs Leidner was a lady. And a lady, in my experience, very seldom displays curiosity about one’s private affairs.

But Mrs Leidner seemed anxious to know everything there was to know about me. Where I’d trained and how long ago. What had brought me out to the East. How it had come about that Dr Reilly had recommended me. She even asked me if I had ever been in America or had any relations in America. One or two other questions she asked me that seemed quite purposeless at the time, but of which I saw the significance later.

Then, suddenly, her manner changed. She smiled – a warm sunny smile – and she said, very sweetly, that she was very glad I had come and that she was sure I was going to be a comfort to her.

She got up from the bed and said: ‘Would you like to come up to the roof and see the sunset? It’s usually very lovely about this time.’

I agreed willingly.

As we went out of the room she asked: ‘Were there many other people on the train from Baghdad? Any men?’

I said that I hadn’t noticed anybody in particular. There had been two Frenchmen in the restaurant-car the night before. And a party of three men whom I gathered from their conversation had to do with the Pipeline.

She nodded and a faint sound escaped her. It sounded like a small sigh of relief.

We went up to the roof together.

Mrs Mercado was there, sitting on the parapet, and Dr Leidner was bending over looking at a lot of stones and broken pottery that were laid in rows. There were big things he called querns, and pestles and celts and stone axes, and more broken bits of pottery with queer patterns on them than I’ve ever seen all at once.

‘Come over here,’ called out Mrs Mercado. ‘Isn’t it too too beautiful?’

It certainly was a beautiful sunset. Hassanieh in the distance looked quite fairy-like with the setting sun behind it, and the River Tigris flowing between its wide banks looked like a dream river rather than a real one.

‘Isn’t it lovely, Eric?’ said Mrs Leidner.

The doctor looked up with abstracted eyes, murmured, ‘Lovely, lovely,’ perfunctorily and went on sorting potsherds.

Mrs Leidner smiled and said: ‘Archaeologists only look at what lies beneath their feet. The sky and the heavens don’t exist for them.’

Mrs Mercado giggled.

‘Oh, they’re very queer people – you’ll soon find that out, nurse,’ she said.

She paused and then added: ‘We are all so glad you’ve come. We’ve been so very worried about dear Mrs Leidner, haven’t we, Louise?’

‘Have you?’

Her voice was not encouraging.

‘Oh, yes. She really has been very bad, nurse. All sorts of alarms and excursions. You know when anybody says to me of someone, “It’s just nerves,” I always say: but what could be worse? Nerves are the core and centre of one’s being, aren’t they?’

‘Puss, puss,’ I thought to myself.

Mrs Leidner said dryly: ‘Well, you needn’t be worried about me any more, Marie. Nurse is going to look after me.’

‘Certainly I am,’ I said cheerfully.

‘I’m sure that will make all the difference,’ said Mrs Mercado. ‘We’ve all felt that she ought to see a doctor or do something. Her nerves have really been all to pieces, haven’t they, Louise dear?’

‘So much so that I seem to have got on your nerves with them,’ said Mrs Leidner. ‘Shall we talk about something more interesting than my wretched ailments?’

I understood then that Mrs Leidner was the sort of woman who could easily make enemies. There was a cool rudeness in her tone (not that I blamed her for it) which brought a flush to Mrs Mercado’s rather sallow cheeks. She stammered out something, but Mrs Leidner had risen and had joined her husband at the other end of the roof. I doubt if he heard her coming till she laid her hand on his shoulder, then he looked up quickly. There was affection and a kind of eager questioning in his face.

Mrs Leidner nodded her head gently. Presently, her arm through his, they wandered to the far parapet and finally down the steps together.

‘He’s devoted to her, isn’t he?’ said Mrs Mercado.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It’s very nice to see.’

She was looking at me with a queer, rather eager sidelong glance.

‘What do you think is really the matter with her, nurse?’ she asked, lowering her voice a little.

‘Oh, I don’t suppose it’s much,’ I said cheerfully.

‘Just a bit run-down, I expect.’

Her eyes still bored into me as they had done at tea. She said abruptly: ‘Are you a mental nurse?’

‘Oh, dear, no!’ I said. ‘What made you think that?’

She was silent for a moment, then she said: ‘Do you know how queer she’s been? Did Dr Leidner tell you?’

I don’t hold with gossiping about my cases. On the other hand, it’s my experience that it’s often very hard to get the truth out of relatives, and until you know the truth you’re often working in the dark and doing no good. Of course, when there’s a doctor in charge, it’s different. He tells you what it’s necessary for you to know. But in this case there wasn’t a doctor in charge. Dr Reilly had never been called in professionally. And in my own mind I wasn’t at all sure that Dr Leidner had told me all he could have done. It’s often the husband’s instinct to be reticent – and more honour to him, I must say. But all the same, the more I knew the better I could tell which line to take. Mrs Mercado (whom I put down in my own mind as a thoroughly spiteful little cat) was clearly dying to talk. And frankly, on the human side as well as the professional, I wanted to hear what she had to say. You can put it that I was just everyday curious if you like.

I said, ‘I gather Mrs Leidner’s not been quite her normal self lately?’

Mrs Mercado laughed disagreeably.

‘Normal? I should say not. Frightening us to death. One night it was fingers tapping on her window. And then it was a hand without an arm attached. But when it came to a yellow face pressed against the window – and when she rushed to the window there was nothing there – well, I ask you, itis a bit creepy for all of us.’

‘Perhaps somebody was playing a trick on her,’ I suggested.

‘Oh, no, she fancied it all. And only three days ago at dinner they were firing shots in the village – nearly a mile away – and she jumped up and screamed out – it scared us all to death. As for Dr Leidner, he rushed to her and behaved in the most ridiculous way. “It’s nothing, darling, it’s nothing at all,” he kept saying. I think, you know, nurse, men sometimes encourage women in these hysterical fancies. It’s a pity because it’s a bad thing. Delusions shouldn’t be encouraged.’

‘Not if they are delusions,’ I said dryly.

‘What else could they be?’

I didn’t answer because I didn’t know what to say. It was a funny business. The shots and the screaming were natural enough – for anyone in a nervous condition, that is. But this queer story of a spectral face and hand was different. It looked to me like one of two things – either Mrs Leidner had made the story up (exactly as a child shows off by telling lies about something that never happened in order to make herself the centre of attraction) or else it was, as I had suggested, a deliberate practical joke. It was the sort of thing, I reflected, that an unimaginative hearty sort of young fellow like Mr Coleman might think very funny. I decided to keep a close watch on him. Nervous patients can be scared nearly out of their minds by a silly joke.

Mrs Mercado said with a sideways glance at me:

‘She’s very romantic-looking, nurse, don’t you think so? The sort of woman things happen to.’

‘Have many things happened to her?’ I asked.

‘Well, her first husband was killed in the war when she was only twenty. I think that’s very pathetic and romantic, don’t you?’

‘It’s one way of calling a goose a swan,’ I said dryly.

‘Oh, nurse! What an extraordinary remark!’

It was really a very true one. The amount of women you hear say, ‘If Donald – or Arthur – or whatever his name was – hadonly lived.’ And I sometimes think but if he had, he’d have been a stout, unromantic, short-tempered, middle-aged husband as likely as not.

It was getting dark and I suggested that we should go down. Mrs Mercado agreed and asked if I would like to see the laboratory. ‘My husband will be there – working.’

I said I would like to very much and we made our way there. The place was lighted by a lamp, but it was empty. Mrs Mercado showed me some of the apparatus and some copper ornaments that were being treated, and also some bones coated with wax.

‘Where can Joseph be?’ said Mrs Mercado.

She looked into the drawing-office, where Carey was at work. He hardly looked up as we entered, and I was struck by the extraordinary look of strain on his face. It came to me suddenly: ‘This man is at the end of his tether. Very soon, something will snap.’ And I remembered somebody else had noticed that same tenseness about him.

As we went out again I turned my head for one last look at him. He was bent over his paper, his lips pressed very closely together, and that ‘death’s head’ suggestion of his bones very strongly marked. Perhaps it was fanciful, but I thought that he looked like a knight of old who was going into battle and knew he was going to be killed.

And again I felt what an extraordinary and quite unconscious power of attraction he had.

We found Mr Mercado in the living-room. He was explaining the idea of some new process to Mrs Leidner. She was sitting on a straight wooden chair, embroidering flowers in fine silks, and I was struck anew by her strange, fragile, unearthly appearance. She looked a fairy creature more than flesh and blood.

Mrs Mercado said, her voice high and shrill: ‘Oh, there you are, Joseph. We thought we’d find you in the lab.’

He jumped up looking startled and confused, as though her entrance had broken a spell. He said stammeringly: ‘I – I must go now. I’m in the middle of – the middle of– ’

He didn’t complete the sentence but turned towards the door.

Mrs Leidner said in her soft, drawling voice: ‘You must finish telling me some other time. It was very interesting.’

She looked up at us, smiled rather sweetly but in a far-away manner, and bent over her embroidery again.

In a minute or two she said: ‘There are some books over there, nurse. We’ve got quite a good selection. Choose one and sit down.’

I went over to the bookshelf. Mrs Mercado stayed for a minute or two, then, turning abruptly, she went out. As she passed me I saw her face and I didn’t like the look of it. She looked wild with fury.

In spite of myself I remembered some of the things Mrs Kelsey had said and hinted about Mrs Leidner. I didn’t like to think they were true because I liked Mrs Leidner, but I wondered, nevertheless, if there mightn’t perhaps be a grain of truth behind them.

I didn’t think it was all her fault, but the fact remained that dear ugly Miss Johnson, and that common little spitfire Mrs Mercado, couldn’t hold a candle to her in looks or in attraction. And after all, men are men all over the world. You soon see a lot of that in my profession.

Mercado was a poor fish, and I don’t suppose Mrs Leidner really cared two hoots for his admiration – but his wife cared. If I wasn’t mistaken, she minded badly and would be quite willing to do Mrs Leidner a bad turn if she could.

I looked at Mrs Leidner sitting there and sewing at her pretty flowers, so remote and far away and aloof. I felt somehow I ought to warn her. I felt that perhaps she didn’t know how stupid and unreasoning and violent jealousy and hate can be – and how little it takes to set them smouldering.

And then I said to myself, ‘Amy Leatheran, you’re a fool. Mrs Leidner’s no chicken. She’s close on forty if she’s a day, and she must know all about life there is to know.’

But I felt that all the same perhaps she didn’t.

She had such a queer untouched look.

I began to wonder what her life had been. I knew she’d only married Dr Leidner two years ago. And according to Mrs Mercado her first husband had died about fifteen years ago.

I came and sat down near her with a book, and presently I went and washed my hands for supper. It was a good meal – some really excellent curry. They all went to bed early and I was glad, for I was tired.

Dr Leidner came with me to my room to see I had all I wanted.

He gave me a warm handclasp and said eagerly:

‘She likes you, nurse. She’s taken to you at once. I’m so glad. I feel everything’s going to be all right now.’

His eagerness was almost boyish.

I felt, too, that Mrs Leidner had taken a liking to me, and I was pleased it should be so.

But I didn’t quite share his confidence. I felt, somehow, that there was more to it all than he himself might know.

There was something – something I couldn’t get at. But I felt it in the air.

My bed was comfortable, but I didn’t sleep well for all that. I dreamt too much.

The words of a poem by Keats, that I’d had to learn as a child, kept running through my head. I kept getting them wrong and it worried me. It was a poem I’d always hated – I suppose because I’d had to learn it whether I wanted to or not. But somehow when I woke up in the dark I saw a sort of beauty in it for the first time.

‘Oh say what ails thee, knight at arms, alone – and(what was it?) – palely loitering…? I saw the knight’s face in my mind for the first time – it was Mr Carey’s face – a grim, tense, bronzed face like some of those poor young men I remembered as a girl during the war…and I felt sorry for him – and then I fell off to sleep again and I saw that the Belle Dame sans Merci was Mrs Leidner and she was leaning sideways on a horse with an embroidery of flowers in her hands – and then the horse stumbled and everywhere there were bones coated in wax, and I woke up all goose-flesh and shivering, and told myself that curry never had agreed with me at night.