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

Nineteen

A NEW SUSPICION

We couldn’t say any more just then because Dr. Reilly came in, saying jokingly that he’d killed off the most tiresome of his patients.

He and M. Poirot settled down to a more or less medical discussion of the psychology and mental state of an anonymous letter-writer. The doctor cited cases that he had known professionally, and M. Poirot told various stories from his own experience.

“It is not so simple as it seems,” he ended. “There is the desire for power and very often a strong inferiority complex.”

Dr. Reilly nodded.

“That’s why you often find that the author of anonymous letters is the last person in the place to be suspected. Some quiet inoffensive little soul who apparently can’t say Bo to a goose—all sweetness and Christian meekness on the outside—and seething with all the fury of hell underneath!”

Poirot said thoughtfully: “Should you say Mrs. Leidner had any tendency to an inferiority complex?”

Dr. Reilly scraped out his pipe with a chuckle.

“Last woman on earth I’d describe that way. No repressions about her. Life, life and more life—that’s what she wanted—and got, too!”

“Do you consider it a possibility, psychologically speaking, that she wrote those letters?”

“Yes, I do. But if she did, the reason arose out of her instinct to dramatize herself. Mrs. Leidner was a bit of a film star in private life! She had to be the centre of things—in the limelight. By the law of opposites she married Leidner, who’s about the most retiring and modest man I know. He adored her—but adoration by the fireside wasn’t enough for her. She had to be the persecuted heroine as well.”

“In fact,” said Poirot, smiling, “you don’t subscribe to his theory that she wrote them and retained no memory of her act?”

“No, I don’t. I didn’t turn down the idea in front of him. You can’t very well say to a man who’s just lost a dearly loved wife that that same wife was a shameless exhibitionist, and that she drove him nearly crazy with anxiety to satisfy her sense of the dramatic. As a matter of fact it wouldn’t be safe to tell any man the truth about his wife! Funnily enough, I’d trust most women with the truth about their husbands. Women can accept the fact that a man is a rotter, a swindler, a drugtaker, a confirmed liar, and a general swine without batting an eyelash and without its impairing their affection for the brute in the least! Women are wonderful realists.”

“Frankly, Dr. Reilly, what was your exact opinion of Mrs. Leidner?”

Dr. Reilly lay back in his chair and puffed slowly at his pipe.

“Frankly—it’s hard to say! I didn’t know her well enough. She’d got charm—any amount of it. Brains, sympathy . . . What else? She hadn’t any of the ordinary unpleasant vices. She wasn’t sensual or lazy or even particularly vain. She was, I’ve always thought (but I’ve no proofs of it), a most accomplished liar. What I don’t know (and what I’d like to know) is whether she lied to herself or only to other people. I’m rather partial to liars myself. A woman who doesn’t lie is a woman without imagination and without sympathy. I don’t think she was really a manhunter—she just liked the sport of bringing them down ‘with my bow and arrow.’ If you get my daughter on the subject—”

“We have had that pleasure,” said Poirot with a slight smile.

“H’m,” said Dr. Reilly. “She hasn’t wasted much time! Shoved her knife into her pretty thoroughly, I should imagine! The younger generation has no sentiment towards the dead. It’s a pity all young people are prigs! They condemn the ‘old morality’ and then proceed to set up a much more hard-and-fast code of their own. If Mrs. Leidner had had half a dozen affairs Sheila would probably have approved of her as ‘living h

er life fully’—or ‘obeying her blood instincts.’ What she doesn’t see is that Mrs. Leidner was acting true to type—her type. The cat is obeying its blood instinct when it plays with the mouse! It’s made that way. Men aren’t little boys to be shielded and protected. They’ve got to meet cat women—and faithful spaniel, yours-till-death adoring women, and hen-pecking nagging bird women—and all the rest of it! Life’s a battlefield—not a picnic! I’d like to see Sheila honest enough to come off her high horse and admit that she hated Mrs. Leidner for good old thorough-going personal reasons. Sheila’s about the only young girl in this place and she naturally assumes that she ought to have it all her own way with the young things in trousers. Naturally it annoys her when a woman, who in her view is middle-aged and who has already two husbands to her credit, comes along and licks her on her own ground. Sheila’s a nice child, healthy and reasonably good-looking and attractive to the other sex as she should be. But Mrs. Leidner was something out of the ordinary in that line. She’d got just that sort of calamitous magic that plays the deuce with things—a kind of Belle Dame sans Merci.”

I jumped in my chair. What a coincidence his saying that!

“Your daughter—I am not indiscreet—she has perhaps a tendresse for one of the young men out there?”

“Oh, I don’t suppose so. She’s had Emmott and Coleman dancing attendance on her as a matter of course. I don’t know that she cares for one more than the other. There are a couple of young Air Force chaps too. I fancy all’s fish that comes to her net at present. No, I think it’s age daring to defeat youth that annoys her so much! She doesn’t know as much of the world as I do. It’s when you get to my age that you really appreciate a schoolgirl complexion and a clear eye and a firmly knit young body. But a woman over thirty can listen with rapt attention and throw in a word here and there to show the talker what a fine fellow he is—and few young men can resist that! Sheila’s a pretty girl—but Louise Leidner was beautiful. Glorious eyes and that amazing golden fairness. Yes, she was a beautiful woman.”

Yes, I thought to myself, he’s right. Beauty’s a wonderful thing. She had been beautiful. It wasn’t the kind of looks you were jealous of—you just sat back and admired. I felt that first day I met her that I’d do anything for Mrs. Leidner!

All the same, that night as I was being driven back to Tell Yarimjah (Dr. Reilly made me stay for an early dinner) one or two things came back to my mind and made me rather uncomfortable. At the time I hadn’t believed a word of all Sheila Reilly’s outpouring. I’d taken it for sheer spite and malice.

But now I suddenly remembered the way Mrs. Leidner had insisted on going for a stroll by herself that afternoon and wouldn’t hear of me coming with her. I couldn’t help wondering if perhaps, after all, she had been going to meet Mr. Carey . . . And of course, it was a little odd, really, the way he and she spoke to each other so formally. Most of the others she called by their Christian names.

He never seemed to look at her, I remembered. That might be because he disliked her—or it might be just the opposite. . . .

I gave myself a little shake. Here I was fancying and imagining all sorts of things—all because of a girl’s spiteful outburst! It just showed how unkind and dangerous it was to go about saying that kind of thing.

Mrs. Leidner hadn’t been like that at all. . . .

Of course, she hadn’t liked Sheila Reilly. She’d really been—almost catty about her that day at lunch to Mr. Emmott.