Murder in Mesopotamia: A Hercule Poirot Mystery (Hercule Poirot 14)

“Impossible—impossible—I take no account of the word! The impossible, always I examine it very closely! But we will pass on for the moment. Who else have you? Carl Reiter, a young man with a German name, David Emmott—”

“He has been with me two seasons, remember.”

“He is a young man with the gift of patience. If he committed a crime, it would not be in a hurry. All would be very well prepared.”

Dr. Leidner made a gesture of despair.

“And lastly, William Coleman,” continued Poirot.

“He is an Englishman.”

“Pourquoi pas? Did not Mrs. Leidner say that the boy left America and could not be traced? He might easily have been brought up in England.”

“You have an answer to everything,” said Dr. Leidner.

I was thinking hard. Right from the beginning I had thought Mr. Coleman’s manner rather more like a P. G. Wodehouse book than like a real live young man. Had he really been playing a part all the time?

Poirot was writing in a little book.

“Let us proceed with order and method,” he said. “On the first count we have two names. Father Lavigny and Mr. Mercado. On the second we have Coleman, Emmott and Reiter.

“Now let us pass to the opposite aspect of the matter—means and opportunity. Who amongst the expedition had the means and the opportunity of committing the crime? Carey was on the dig, Coleman was in Hassanieh, you yourself were on the roof. That leaves us Father Lavigny, Mr. Mercado, Mrs. Mercado, David Emmott, Carl Reiter, Miss Johnson and Nurse Leatheran.”

“Oh!” I exclaimed, and I bounded in my chair.

Mr. Poirot looked at me with twinkling eyes.

“Yes, I’m afraid, ma soeur, that you have got to be included. It would have been quite easy for you to have gone along and killed Mrs. Leidner while the courtyard was empty. You have plenty of muscle and strength, and she would have been quite unsuspicious until the moment the blow was struck.”

I was so upset that I couldn’t get a word out. Dr. Reilly, I noticed, was looking highly amused.

“Interesting case of a nurse who murdered her patients one by one,” he murmured.

Such a look as I gave him!

Dr. Leidner’s mind had been running on a different tack.

“Not Emmott, M. Poirot,” he objected. “You can’t include him. He was on the roof with me, remember, during that ten minutes.”

“Nevertheless we cannot exclude him. He could have come down, gone straight to Mrs. Leidner’s room, killed her, and then called the boy back. Or he might have killed her on one of the occasions when he had sent the boy up to you.”

Dr. Leidner shook his head, murmuring: “What a nightmare! It’s all so—fantastic.”

To my surprise Poirot agreed.

“Yes, that’s true. This is a fantastic crime. One does not often come across them. Usually murder is very sordid—very simple. But this is unusual murder . . . I suspect, Dr. Leidner, that your wife was an unusual woman.”

He had hit the nail on the head with such accuracy that I jumped.

“Is that true, nurse?” he asked.

Dr. Leidner said quietly: “Tell him what Louise was like, nurse. You are unprejudiced.”

I spoke quite frankly.

“She was very lovely,” I said. “You couldn’t help admiring her and wanting to do things for her. I’ve never met anyone like her before.”

“Thank you,” said Dr. Leidner and smiled at me.