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

“Was it open or shut? Open, I seem to remember. But perhaps one of you opened it?”

“No, it was open all the time. I wondered—”

I stopped.

“Go on, nurse.”

“I examined the window, of course, but I couldn’t see anything unusual about it. I wondered whether, perhaps, somebody changed the glasses that way.”

“Changed the glasses?”

“Yes. You see, Miss Johnson always takes a glass of water to bed with her. I think that glass must have been tampered with and a glass of acid put in its place.”

“What do you say, Reilly?”

“If it’s murder, that was probably the way it was done,” said Dr. Reilly promptly. “No ordinary moderately observant human being would drink a glass of acid in mistake for one of water—if they were in full possession of their waking faculties. But if anyone’s accustomed to drinking off a glass of water in the middle of the night, that person might easily stretch out an arm, find the glass in the accustomed place, and still half asleep, toss off enough of the stuff to be fatal before realizing what had happened.”

Captain Maitland reflected a minute.

“I’ll have to go back and look at that window. How far is it from the head of the bed?”

I thought.

“With a very long stretch you could just reach the little table that stands by the head of the bed.”

“The table on which the glass of water was?”

“Yes.”

“Was the door locked?”

“No.”

“So whoever it was could have come in that way and made the substitution?”

“Oh, yes.”

“There would be more risk that way,” said Dr. Reilly. “A person who is sleeping quite soundly will often wake up at the sound of a footfall. If the table could be reached from the window it would be the safer way.”

“I’m not only thinking of the glass,” said Captain Maitland absent-mindedly.

Rousing himself, he addressed me once again.

“It’s your opinion that when the poor lady felt she was dying she was anxious to let you know that somebody had substituted acid for water through the open window? Surely the person’s name would have been more to the point?”

“She mayn’t have known the name,” I pointed out.

“Or it would have been more to the point if she’d managed to hint what it was that she had discovered the day before?”

Dr. Reilly said: “When you’re dying, Maitland, you haven’t always got a sense of proportion. One particular fact very likely obsesses your mind. That a murderous hand had come through the window may have been the principal fact obsessing her at the minute. It may have seemed to her important that she should let people know that. In my opinion she wasn’t far wrong either. It was important! She probably jumped to the fact that you’d think it was suicide. If she could have used her tongue freely, she’d probably have said ‘It wasn’t suicide. I didn’t take it myself. Somebody else must have put it near my bed through the window.’ ”

Captain Maitland drummed with his fingers for a minute or two without replying. Then he said:

“There are certainly two ways of looking at it. It’s either suicide or murder. Which do you think, Dr. Leidner?”

Dr. Leidner was silent for a minute or two, then he said quietly and decisively: “Murder. Anne Johnson wasn’t the sort of woman to kill herself.”

“No,” allowed Captain Maitland. “Not in the normal run of things. But there might be circumstances in which it would be quite a natural thing to do.”