Murder in Mesopotamia

Chapter 7. The Man at the Window

I think I’d better make it clear right away that there isn’t going to be any local colour in this story. I don’t know anything about archaeology and I don’t know that I very much want to. Messing about with people and places that are buried and done with doesn’t make sense to me. Mr Carey used to tell me that I hadn’t got the archaeological temperament and I’ve no doubt he was quite right.

The very first morning after my arrival Mr Carey asked if I’d like to come and see the palace he was – planning I think he called it. Though how you can plan for a thing that’s happened long ago I’m sure I don’t know! Well, I said I’d like to, and to tell the truth, I was a bit excited about it. Nearly three thousand years old that palace was, it appeared. I wondered what sort of palaces they had in those days, and if it would be like the pictures I’d seen of Tutankahmen’s tomb furniture. But would you believe it, there was nothing to see but mud! Dirty mud walls about two feet high – and that’s all there was to it. Mr Carey took me here and there telling me things – how this was the great court, and there were some chambers here and an upper storey and various other rooms that opened off the central court. And all I thought was, ‘But how does he know?’ though, of course, I was too polite to say so. I can tell you it was a disappointment! The whole excavation looked like nothing but mud to me – no marble or gold or anything handsome – my aunt’s house in Cricklewood would have made a much more imposing ruin! And those old Assyrians, or whatever they were, called themselves kings. When Mr Carey had shown me his old ‘palaces’, he handed me over to Father Lavigny, who showed me the rest of the mound. I was a little afraid of Father Lavigny, being a monk and a foreigner and having such a deep voice and all that, but he was very kind – though rather vague. Sometimes I felt it wasn’t much more real to him than it was to me.

Mrs Leidner explained that later. She said that Father Lavigny was only interested in ‘written documents’ – as she called them. They wrote everything on clay, these people, queer, heathenish-looking marks too, but quite sensible. There were even school tablets – the teacher’s lesson on one side and the pupil’s effort on the back of it. I confess that that did interest me rather – it seemed so human, if you know what I mean.

Father Lavigny walked round the work with me and showed me what were temples or palaces and what were private houses, and also a place which he said was an early Akkadian cemetery. He spoke in a funny jerky way, just throwing in a scrap of information and then reverting to other subjects.

He said: ‘It is strange that you have come here. Is Mrs Leidner really ill, then?’

‘Not exactly ill,’ I said cautiously.

He said: ‘She is an odd woman. A dangerous woman, I think.’

‘Now what do you mean by that?’ I said. ‘Dangerous? How dangerous?’

He shook his head thoughtfully.

‘I think she is ruthless,’ he said. ‘Yes, I think she could be absolutely ruthless.’

‘If you’ll excuse me,’ I said, ‘I think you’re talking nonsense.’

He shook his head.

‘You do not know women as I do,’ he said.

And that was a funny thing, I thought, for a monk to say. But of course I suppose he might have heard a lot of things in confession. But that rather puzzled me, because I wasn’t sure if monks heard confessions or if it was only priests. I supposed he was a monk with that long woollen robe – all sweeping up the dirt – and the rosary and all!

‘Yes, she could be ruthless,’ he said musingly. ‘I am quite sure of that. And yet – though she is so hard – like stone, like marble – yet she is afraid. What is she afraid of?’

That, I thought, is what we should all like to know!

At least it was possible that her husband did know, but I didn’t think anyone else did.

He fixed me with a sudden bright, dark eye.

‘It is odd here? You find it odd? Or quite natural?’

‘Not quite natural,’ I said, considering. ‘It’s comfortable enough as far as the arrangements go – but there isn’t quite a comfortable feeling.’

‘It makes me uncomfortable. I have the idea’ – he became suddenly a little more foreign – ‘that something prepares itself. Dr Leidner, too, he is not quite himself. Something is worrying him also.’

‘His wife’s health?’

‘That perhaps. But there is more. There is – how shall I say it – an uneasiness.’

And that was just it, there was an uneasiness.

We didn’t say any more just then, for Dr Leidner came towards us. He showed me a child’s grave that had just been uncovered. Rather pathetic it was – the little bones – and a pot or two and some little specks that Dr Leidner told me were a bead necklace.

It was the workmen that made me laugh. You never saw such a lot of scarecrows – all in long petticoats and rags, and their heads tied up as though they had toothache. And every now and then, as they went to and fro carrying away baskets of earth, they began to sing – at least I suppose it was meant to be singing – a queer sort of monotonous chant that went on and on over and over again. I noticed that most of their eyes were terrible – all covered with discharge, and one or two looked half blind. I was just thinking what a miserable lot they were when Dr Leidner said, ‘Rather a fine-looking lot of men, aren’t they?’ and I thought what a queer world it was and how two different people could see the same thing each of them the other way round. I haven’t put that very well, but you can guess what I mean.

After a bit Dr Leidner said he was going back to the house for a mid-morning cup of tea. So he and I walked back together and he told me things. When he explained, it was all quite different. I sort of saw it all – how it used to be – the streets and the houses, and he showed me ovens where they baked bread and said the Arabs used much the same kind of ovens nowadays.

We got back to the house and found Mrs Leidner had got up. She was looking better today, not so thin and worn. Tea came in almost at once and Dr Leidner told her what had turned up during the morning on the dig. Then he went back to work and Mrs Leidner asked me if I would like to see some of the finds they had made up to date. Of course I said ‘Yes,’ so she took me through into the antika-room. There was a lot of stuff lying about – mostly broken pots it seemed to me – or else ones that were all mended and stuck together. The whole lot might have been thrown away, I thought.

‘Dear, dear,’ I said, ‘it’s a pity they’re all so broken, isn’t it? Are they really worth keeping?’

Mrs Leidner smiled a little and she said: ‘You mustn’t let Eric hear you. Pots interest him more than anything else, and some of these are the oldest things we have – perhaps as much as seven thousand years old.’ And she explained how some of them came from a very deep cut on the mound down towards the bottom, and how, thousands of years ago, they had been broken and mended with bitumen, showing people prized their things just as much then as they do nowadays.

‘And now,’ she said, ‘we’ll show you something more exciting.’

And she took down a box from the shelf and showed me a beautiful gold dagger with dark-blue stones in the handle.

I exclaimed with pleasure.

Mrs Leidner laughed.

‘Yes, everybody likes gold! Except my husband.’

‘Why doesn’t Dr Leidner like it?’

‘Well, for one thing it comes expensive. You have to pay the workmen who find it the weight of the object in gold.’

‘Good gracious!’ I exclaimed. ‘But why?’

‘Oh, it’s a custom. For one thing it prevents them from stealing. You see, if they did steal, it wouldn’t be for the archaeological value but for the intrinsic value. They could melt it down. So we make it easy for them to be honest.’

She took down another tray and showed me a really beautiful gold drinking-cup with a design of rams’ heads on it.

Again I exclaimed.

‘Yes, it is beautiful, isn’t it? These came from a prince’s grave. We found other royal graves but most of them had been plundered. This cup is our best find. It is one of the most lovely ever found anywhere. Early Akkadian. Unique.’

Suddenly, with a frown, Mrs Leidner brought the cup up close to her eyes and scratched at it delicately with her nail.

‘How extraordinary! There’s actually wax on it. Someone must have been in here with a candle.’ She detached the little flake and replaced the cup in its place.

After that she showed me some queer little terra-cotta figurines – but most of them were just rude. Nasty minds those old people had, I say.

When we went back to the porch Mrs Mercado was sitting polishing her nails. She was holding them out in front of her admiring the effect. I thought myself that anything more hideous than that orange red could hardly have been imagined.

Mrs Leidner had brought with her from the antika-room a very delicate little saucer broken in several pieces, and this she now proceeded to join together. I watched her for a minute or two and then asked if I could help.

‘Oh, yes, there are plenty more.’ She fetched quite a supply of broken pottery and we set to work. I soon got into the hang of it and she praised my ability. I suppose most nurses are handy with their fingers.

‘How busy everybody is!’ said Mrs Mercado. ‘It makes me feel dreadfully idle. Of course I am idle.’

‘Why shouldn’t you be if you like?’ said Mrs Leidner.

Her voice was quite uninterested.

At twelve we had lunch. Afterwards Dr Leidner and Mr Mercado cleaned some pottery, pouring a solution of hydrochloric acid over it. One pot went a lovely plum colour and a pattern of bulls’ horns came out on another one. It was really quite magical. All the dried mud that no washing would remove sort of foamed and boiled away.

Mr Carey and Mr Coleman went out on the dig and Mr Reiter went off to the photographic-room.

‘What will you do, Louise?’ Dr Leidner asked his wife. ‘I suppose you’ll rest for a bit?’

I gathered that Mrs Leidner usually lay down every afternoon.

‘I’ll rest for about an hour. Then perhaps I’ll go out for a short stroll.’

‘Good. Nurse will go with you, won’t you?’

‘Of course,’ I said.

‘No, no,’ said Mrs Leidner, ‘I like going alone. Nurse isn’t to feel so much on duty that I’m not allowed out of her sight.’

‘Oh, but I’d like to come,’ I said.

‘No, really, I’d rather you didn’t.’ She was quite firm – almost peremptory. ‘I must be by myself every now and then. It’s necessary to me.’

I didn’t insist, of course. But as I went off for a short sleep myself it struck me as odd that Mrs Leidner, with her nervous terrors, should be quite content to walk by herself without any kind of protection.

When I came out of my room at half-past three the courtyard was deserted save for a little boy with a large copper bath who was washing pottery, and Mr Emmott, who was sorting and arranging it. As I went towards them Mrs Leidner came in through the archway. She looked more alive than I had seen her yet. Her eyes shone and she looked uplifted and almost gay.

Dr Leidner came out from the laboratory and joined her. He was showing her a big dish with bulls’ horns on it.

‘The prehistoric levels are being extraordinarily productive,’ he said. ‘It’s been a good season so far. Finding that tomb right at the beginning was a real piece of luck. The only person who might complain is Father Lavigny. We’ve had hardly any tablets so far.’

‘He doesn’t seem to have done very much with the few we have had,’ said Mrs Leidner dryly. ‘He may be a very fine epigraphist but he’s a remarkably lazy one. He spends all his afternoons sleeping.’

‘We miss Byrd,’ said Dr Leidner. ‘This man strikes me as slightly unorthodox – though, of course, I’m not competent to judge. But one or two of his translations have been surprising, to say the least of it. I can hardly believe, for instance, that he’s right about that inscribed brick, and yet he must know.’

After tea Mrs Leidner asked me if I would like to stroll down to the river. I thought that perhaps she feared that her refusal to let me accompany her earlier in the afternoon might have hurt my feelings.

I wanted her to know that I wasn’t the touchy kind, so I accepted at once.

It was a lovely evening. A path led between barley fields and then through some flowering fruit trees. Finally we came to the edge of the Tigris. Immediately on our left was the Tell with the workmen singing in their queer monotonous chant. A little to our right was a big water-wheel which made a queer groaning noise. It used to set my teeth on edge at first. But in the end I got fond of it and it had a queer soothing effect on me. Beyond the water-wheel was the village from which most of the workmen came.

‘It’s rather beautiful, isn’t it?’ said Mrs Leidner.

‘It’s very peaceful,’ I said. ‘It seems funny to me to be so far away from everywhere.’

‘Far from everywhere,’ repeated Mrs Leidner. ‘Yes. Here at least one might expect to be safe.’

I glanced at her sharply, but I think she was speaking more to herself than to me, and I don’t think she realized that her words had been revealing.

We began to walk back to the house.

Suddenly Mrs Leidner clutched my arm so violently that I nearly cried out.

‘Who’s that, nurse? What’s he doing?’

Some distance ahead of us, just where the path ran near the expedition house, a man was standing. He wore European clothes and he seemed to be standing on tiptoe and trying to look in at one of the windows.

As we watched he glanced round, caught sight of us, and immediately continued on the path towards us. I felt Mrs Leidner’s clutch tighten.

‘Nurse,’ she whispered. ‘Nurse…’

‘It’s all right, my dear, it’s all right,’ I said reassuringly.

The man came along and passed us. He was an Iraqi, and as soon as she saw him near to, Mrs Leidner relaxed with a sigh.

‘He’s only an Iraqi after all,’ she said.

We went on our way. I glanced up at the windows as I passed. Not only were they barred, but they were too high from the ground to permit of anyone seeing in, for the level of the ground was lower here than on the inside of the courtyard.

‘It must have been just curiosity,’ I said.

Mrs Leidner nodded.

‘That’s all. But just for a minute I thought–’

She broke off.

I thought to myself. ‘You thought what? That’s what I’d like to know.What did you think?’

But I knew one thing now – that Mrs Leidner was afraid of a definite flesh-and-blood person.