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

“To start with, as I say, I concentrated solely and entirely on the personality of Mrs. Leidner. I had various means of assessing that personality. There were the reactions she produced in a number of people, all varying widely in character and temperament, and there was what I could glean by my own observation. The scope of the latter was naturally limited. But I did learn certain facts.

“Mrs. Leidner’s tastes were simple and even on the austere side. She was clearly not a luxurious woman. On the other hand, some embroidery she had been doing was of an extreme fineness and beauty. That indicated a woman of fastidious and artistic taste. From the observation of the books in her bedroom I formed a further estimate. She had brains, and I also fancied that she was, essentially, an egoist.

“It had been suggested to me that Mrs. Leidner was a woman whose main preoccupation was to attract the opposite sex—that she was, in fact, a sensual woman. This I did not believe to be the case.

“In her bedroom I noticed the following books on a shelf: Who were the Greeks?, Introduction to Relativity, Life of Lady Hester Stanhope, Back to Methuselah, Linda Condon, Crewe Train.

“She had, to begin with, an interest in culture and in modern science—that is, a distinct intellectual side. Of the novels, Linda Condon, and in a lesser degree Crewe Train, seemed to show that Mrs. Leidner had a sympathy and interest in the independent woman—unencumbered or entrapped by man. She was also obviously interested by the personality of Lady Hester Stanhope. Linda Condon is an exquisite study of the worship of her own beauty by a woman. Crewe Train is a study of a passionate individualist, Back to Methuselah is in sympathy with the intellectual rather than the emotional attitude to life. I felt that I was beginning to understand the dead woman.

“I next studied the reactions of those who had formed Mrs. Leidner’s immediate circle—and my picture of the dead woman grew more and more complete.

“It was quite clear to me from the accounts of Dr. Reilly and others that Mrs. Leidner was one of those women who are endowed by Nature not only with beauty but with the kind of calamitous magic which sometimes accompanies beauty and can, indeed, exist independently of it. Such women usually leave a trail of violent happenings behind them. They bring disaster—sometimes on others—sometimes on themselves.

“I was convinced that Mrs. Leidner was a woman who essentially worshipped herself and who enjoyed more than anything else the sense of power. Wherever she was, she must be the centre of the universe. And everyone round her, man or woman, had got to acknowledge her sway. With some people that was easy. Nurse Leatheran, for instance, a generous-natured woman with a romantic imagination, was captured instantly and gave in ungrudging manner full appreciation. But there was a second way in which Mrs. Leidner exercised her sway—the way of fear. Where conquest was too easy she indulged a more cruel side to her nature—but I wish to reiterate emphatically that it was not what you might call conscious cruelty. It was as natural and unthinking as is the conduct of a cat with a mouse. Where consciousness came in, she was essentially kind and would often go out of her way to do kind and thoughtful actions for other people.

“Now of course the first and most important problem to solve was the problem of the anonymous letters. Who had written them and why? I asked myself: Had Mrs. Leidner written them herself?

“To answer this problem it was necessary to go back a long way—to go back, in fact, to the date of Mrs. Leidner’s first marriage. It is here we start on our journey proper. The journey of Mrs. Leidner’s life.

“First of all we must realize that the Louise Leidner of all those years ago is essentially the same Louise Leidner of the present time.

“She was young then, of remarkable beauty—that same haunting beauty that affects a man’s spirit and senses as no mere material beauty can—and she was already essentially an egoist.

“Such women naturally revolt from the idea of marriage. They may be attracted by men, but they prefer to belong to themselves. They are truly La Belle Dame sans Merci of the legend. Nevertheless Mrs. Leidner did marry—and we can assume, I think, that her husband must have been a man of a certain force of character.

“Then the revelation of his traitorous activities occurs and Mrs. Leidner acts in the way she told Nurse Leidner. She gave information to the Government.

“Now I submit that there was a psychological significance in her action. She told Nurse Leatheran that she was a very patriotic idealistic girl and that that feeling was the cause of her action. But it is a well-known fact that we all tend to deceive ourselves as to the motives for our own actions. Instinctively we select the best-sounding motive! Mrs. Leidner may have believed herself that it was pat

riotism that inspired her action, but I believe myself that it was really the outcome of an unacknowledged desire to get rid of her husband! She disliked domination—she disliked the feeling of belonging to someone else—in fact she disliked playing second fiddle. She took a patriotic way of regaining her freedom.

“But underneath her consciousness was a gnawing sense of guilt which was to play its part in her future destiny.

“We now come directly to the question of the letters. Mrs. Leidner was highly attractive to the male sex. On several occasions she was attracted by them—but in each case a threatening letter played its part and the affair came to nothing.

“Who wrote those letters? Frederick Bosner or his brother William or Mrs. Leidner herself?

“There is a perfectly good case for either theory. It seems clear to me that Mrs. Leidner was one of those women who do inspire devouring devotions in men, the type of devotion which can become an obsession. I find it quite possible to believe in a Frederick Bosner to whom Louise, his wife, mattered more than anything in the world! She had betrayed him once and he dared not approach her openly, but he was determined at least that she should be his or no one’s. He preferred her death to her belonging to another man.

“On the other hand, if Mrs. Leidner had, deep down, a dislike of entering into the marriage bond, it is possible that she took this way of extricating herself from difficult positions. She was a huntress who, the prey once attained, had no further use for it! Craving drama in her life, she invented a highly satisfactory drama—a resurrected husband forbidding the banns! It satisfied her deepest instincts. It made her a romantic figure, a tragic heroine, and it enabled her not to marry again.

“This state of affairs continued over a number of years. Every time there was any likelihood of marriage—a threatening letter arrived.

“But now we come to a really interesting point. Dr. Leidner came upon the scene—and no forbidding letter arrived! Nothing stood in the way of her becoming Mrs. Leidner. Not until after her marriage did a letter arrive.

“At once we ask ourselves—why?

“Let us take each theory in turn.

. . . “If Mrs. Leidner wrote the letters herself the problem is easily explained. Mrs. Leidner really wanted to marry Dr. Leidner. And so she did marry him. But in that case, why did she write herself a letter afterwards? Was her craving for drama too strong to be suppressed? And why only those two letters? After that no other letter was received until a year and a half later.

“Now take the other theory, that the letters were written by her first husband, Frederick Bosner (or his brother). Why did the threatening letter arrive after the marriage? Presumably Frederick could not have wanted her to marry Leidner. Why, then, did he not stop the marriage? He had done so successfully on former occasions. And why, having waited till the marriage had taken place, did he then resume his threats?

“The answer, an unsatisfactory one, is that he was somehow or other unable to protest sooner. He may have been in prison or he may have been abroad.

“There is next the attempted gas poisoning to consider. It seems extremely unlikely that it was brought about by an outside agency. The likely persons to have staged it were Dr. and Mrs. Leidner themselves. There seems no conceivable reason why Dr. Leidner should do such a thing, so we are brought to the conclusion that Mrs. Leidner planned and carried it out herself.

“Why? More drama?