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?”
&n
bsp; “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?”