Murder in Mesopotamia

I can’t say I took to her much. A thought too cool for my liking. An off-hand sort of girl, though good-looking. Black hair and blue eyes – a pale sort of face and the usual lipsticked mouth. She’d a cool, sarcastic way of talking that rather annoyed me. I had a probationer like her under me once – a girl who worked well, I’ll admit, but whose manner always riled me.

It looked to me rather as though Mr Coleman was gone on her. He stammered a bit, and his conversation became slightly more idiotic than it was before, if that was possible! He reminded me of a large stupid dog wagging its tail and trying to please.

After lunch Dr Reilly went off to the hospital, and Mr Coleman had some things to get in the town, and Miss Reilly asked me whether I’d like to see round the town a bit or whether I’d rather stop in the house. Mr Coleman, she said, would be back to fetch me in about an hour.

‘Is there anything to see?’ I asked.

‘There are some picturesque corners,’ said Miss Reilly. ‘But I don’t know that you’d care for them. They’re extremely dirty.’

The way she said it rather nettled me. I’ve never been able to see that picturesqueness excuses dirt.

In the end she took me to the club, which was pleasant enough, overlooking the river, and there were English papers and magazines there.

When we got back to the house Mr Coleman wasn’t there yet, so we sat down and talked a bit. It wasn’t easy somehow.

She asked me if I’d met Mrs Leidner yet.

‘No,’ I said. ‘Only her husband.’

‘Oh,’ she said. ‘I wonder what you’ll think of her?’

I didn’t say anything to that. And she went on: ‘I like Dr Leidner very much. Everybody likes him.’

That’s as good as saying, I thought, that you don’t like his wife.

I still didn’t say anything and presently she asked abruptly: ‘What’s the matter with her? Did Dr Leidner tell you?’

I wasn’t going to start gossiping about a patient before I got there even, so I said evasively: ‘I understand she’s a bit rundown and wants looking after.’

She laughed – a nasty sort of laugh – hard and abrupt.

‘Good God,’ she said. ‘Aren’t nine people looking after her already enough?’

‘I suppose they’ve all got their work to do,’ I said.

‘Work to do? Of course they’ve got work to do. But Louise comes first – she sees to that all right.’

‘No,’ I said to myself. ‘You don’t like her.’

‘All the same,’ went on Miss Reilly, ‘I don’t see what she wants with a professional hospital nurse. I should have thought amateur assistance was more in her line; not someone who’ll jam a thermometer in her mouth, and count her pulse and bring everything down to hard facts.’

Well, I must admit it, I was curious.

‘You think there’s nothing the matter with her?’ I asked.

‘Of course there’s nothing the matter with her! The woman’s as strong as an ox. “Dear Louise hasn’t slept.” “She’s got black circles under her eyes.” Yes – put there with a blue pencil! Anything to get attention, to have everybody hovering round her, making a fuss of her!’

There was something in that, of course. I had (what nurse hasn’t?) come across many cases of hypochondriacs whose delight it is to keep a whole household dancing attendance. And if a doctor or a nurse were to say to them: ‘There’s nothing on earth the matter with you!’ Well, to begin with they wouldn’t believe it, and their indignation would be as genuine as indignation can be.

Of course it was quite possible that Mrs Leidner might be a case of this kind. The husband, naturally, would be the first to be deceived. Husbands, I’ve found, are a credulous lot where illness is concerned. But all the same, it didn’t quite square with what I’d heard. It didn’t, for instance, fit in with that word ‘safer’.

Funny how that word had got kind of stuck in my mind.

Reflecting on it, I asked: ‘Is Mrs Leidner a nervous woman? Is she nervous, for instance, of living out far from anywhere?’

‘What is there to be nervous of? Good heavens, there are ten of them! And they’ve got guards too – because of the antiquities. Oh, no, she’s not nervous – at least– ’

She seemed struck by some thought and stopped – going on slowly after a minute or two.

‘It’s odd your saying that.’

‘Why?’

‘Flight-Lieutenant Jervis and I rode over the other day. It was in the morning. Most of them were up on the dig. She was sitting writing a letter and I suppose she didn’t hear us coming. The boy who brings you in wasn’t about for once, and we came straight up on to the verandah. Apparently she saw Flight-Lieutenant Jervis’s shadow thrown on the wall – and she fairly screamed! Apologized, of course. Said she thought it was a strange man. A bit odd, that. I mean, even if it was a strange man, why get the wind up?’

I nodded thoughtfully.

Miss Reilly was silent, then burst out suddenly: