Murder in Mesopotamia by Agatha Christie.
Title: Murder in Mesopotamia.
Author: Agatha Christie.
Genre: Fiction, detective fiction, mystery, crime.
Country: England, U.K.
Language: English.
Publication Date: 1936.
Summary: "I have arrived," said the note. Louise Leidner claimed the writer had followed her halfway around the world and was now coming to kill her. But the others on the dig in Iraq thought the archaeologist's wife was suffering from hysteria... until she was found bludgeoned in her bedroom. Local police, baffled by the variety of suspects, each with a motive, call on the assistance of a Belgian detective of some renown who is on his way to Baghdad-Hercule Poirot.
My rating: 7.5/10
My review:
♥ "She works herself up over nothing at all... I really can see no foundation for these fears."
"Fears of what, Dr. Leidner?"
He said vaguely, "Oh, just-nervous terrors, you know."
Ten to one, I thought to myself, it's drugs. And he doesn't realize it! Lots of men don't just wonder why their wives are so jumpy and have such extraordinary changes of mood.
♥ "Oh! I dare say. I'm not suggesting vulgar intrigues. But she's an allumeuse, that woman."
"Women are so sweet to each other," said Major Kelsey.
"I know. Cat, cat, cat, that's what you men say. But we're usually right about our own sex."
♥ "If you want it any other time, go outside and clap your hands, and when the boy comes say, jib mai' har. Do you think you can remember that?"
I said I thought so and repeated it a little haltingly.
"That's right. And be sure and shout it. Arabs don't understand anything said in an ordinary "English" voice."
"Languages are funny things," I said. "It seems odd there should be such a lot of different ones."
Mrs. Leidner smiled.
"There is a church in Palestine in which the Lord's Prayer is written up in-ninety, I think it is-different languages,"
♥ "We are all so glad you've come. We've been so very worried about our dear Mrs. Leidner, haven't we, Louise?"
"Have you?"
Her voice was not encouraging.
"Oh, yes. She really has been very bad, nurse. All sorts of alarms and excursions. You know when anybody said to me of some one, 'It's just nerves,' I always say: But what could be worse? Nerves are the core and centre of one's being, aren't they?"
♥ "Well, her first husband was killed in the war when she was only twenty. I think that's very pathetic and romantic, don't you?"
"It's one way of calling a goose a swan," I said dryly.
"Oh! nurse. What an extraordinary remark!"
It was really a very true one. The amount of women you hear say, "If Donald-or Arthur-or whatever his name was-had only lived." And I sometimes think but if he had, he'd have been a stout, unromantic, short-tempered, middle-aged husband as likely as not.
♥ I didn't think it was all her fault, but the fact remained that dear ugly Muss Johnson, and that common little spitfire Mrs. Mercado, couldnn't hold a candle to her in looks or in attraction. And after all, men are men all over the world. You soon see a lot of that in my profession.
♥ I looked at Mrs. Leidner sitting there and sewing at her pretty flowers, so remote and far away and aloof. I felt somehow I ought to warn her. I felt that perhaps she didn't know how stupid and unreasoning and violent jealousy and hate can be-and how little it takes to set them smouldering.
And then I said to myself, "Amy Leatheran, you're a fool, Mrs. Leidner's no chicken. She's close on forty if she's a day, and she must know all about life there is to know."
But I felt that all the same perhaps she didn't.
She had such a queer untouched look.
♥ Mrs. Leidner explained that later. She said that Father Lavigny was only interested in "written documents"-as she called them. They wrote everything on clay, these people, queer heathenish-looking marks too, but quite sensible. There were even school tablets-the teacher's lesson on one side and the pupil's effort on the back of it. I confess that that did interest me rather-it seemed so human, if you know what I mean.
♥ It was the workmen that made me laugh. You never saw such a lot of scarecrows-all in long petticoats and rags, and their heads tied up as though they had toothache. And every now and then, as they went to and fro carrying away baskets of earth, they began to sing-at least I suppose it was meant to be singing-a queer sort of monotonous chant that went on and on over and over again. I noticed that most of their eyes were terrible-all covered with discharge, and one or two looked half blind. I was just thinking what a miserable lot they were when Dr. Leidner said, "Rather a fine-looking lot of men, aren't they?" and I thought what a queer world it was and how two different people could see the same thing each of them the other way round. I haven't put that very well, but you can guess what I mean.
♥ "And he's so simple. So completely unworldly. He doesn't know the meaning of the word conceit. Only a really great man could be so simple."
"That's true enough," I said. "Big people don't need to throw their weight about."
♥ I thought to myself that it was always the same way-wherever women are copped up together, there's bound to be jealousy.
♥ "Of course she's bound to get a bit full of herself, being the only young woman in the place. But that doesn't excuse her talking to Mrs. Leidner as though Mrs. Leidner were her great-aunt. Mrs. L's not exactly a chicken, but she's a damned good-looking woman. Rather like those fairy women who come out of marshes with lights and lure you away." He added bitterly, "You wouldn't find Sheila luring any one. All she does is to tick a fellow off."
♥ Mrs. Leidner told me her story on a Friday.
On Saturday morning there was a feeling of slight anticlimax in the air.
Mrs. Leidner, in particular, was inclined to be very off-hand with me and rather pointedly avoided any possibility of a tête-à-tête. Well, that didn't surprise me! I've had the same thing happen to me again and again. Ladies tell their nurses things in a sudden burst of confidence, and then, afterwards, they feel uncomfortable about it and wish they hadn't! It's only human nature.
I was very careful not to hint or remind her in any way of what she had told me. I purposely kept my conversation as matter-of-fact as possible.
♥ I don't think I shall ever forget my first sight of Hercule Poirot. Of course, I got used to him later on, but to begin with it was shock, and I think every one else must have felt the same!
I don't know what I'd imagined-something rather like Sherlock Holmes-long and lean with a keen, clever face. Of course, I knew he was a foreigner, but I hadn't expected him to be quite as foreign as he was, if you know what I mean.
When you saw him you just wanted to laugh! He was like something on the stage or at the pictures. To begin with, he wasn't above five foot five, I should think-an odd plump little man, quite old, with an enormous moustache, and a head like an egg. He looked like a hairdresser in a comic play!
And this was the man who was going to find out who killed Mrs. Leidner!
I suppose something of my disgust must have shown in my face, for almost straightaway he said to me with a queer kind of twinkle:
"You disapprove of me, ma sœur? Remember, the pudding proves itself only when you eat it."
The proof of the pudding's in the eating, I suppose he meant.
Well, that's a true enough saying, but I couldn't say I felt much confidence myself!
♥ There was a little pause-and in it a wave of horror seemed to float round the room.
I think it was at that moment that I first believed Dr. Reilly's theory to be right.
I felt that the murderer was in the room. Sitting with us-listening. One of us...
♥ Poirot drummed thoughtfully on the table.
"Then we can, I think," he said, "eliminate one motive from the case. It is, you comprehend, what I look for first. Who benefits by the deceased's death?"
♥ "A susceptible child is capable of great hero worship, and a young mind can easily be obsessed by an idea which persist into adult life."
"Quite true," said Dr. Reilly. "The popular view that a child forgets easily is not an accurate one. Many people go right through life in the grip of an idea which has been impressed on them in very tender years."
♥ Once more he cleared his throat. I've always noticed that foreigners can make the oddest noises.
♥ He looked up at a row of books on a shelf, repeating the titles aloud.
"Who Were the Greeks? Introduction to Relativity. Life of Lady Hester Stanhope. Crewe Train. Back to Methuselah. Linda Condon. Yes, they tell us something, perhaps.
"She was not a fool, your Mrs. Leidner. She's had a mind."
"Oh! she was a very clever woman," I said eagerly. "Very well read and up in everything. She wasn't a bit ordinary."
♥ "I suppose," I said doubtfully, "that I ought to be leaving anyway. It's rather awkward."
"Do nothing for a day or two," said Dr. Reilly. "You can't very well go until after the funeral."
"That's all very well," I said. "And supposing I get murdered too, doctor?"
I said it half jokingly and Dr. Reilly took it in the same fashion and would, I think, have made some jocular response.
But M. Poirot, to my astonishment stood stock still in the middle of the floor and clasped his hands to his head.
"Ah! if that were possible," he murmured. "It is a danger-yes-a great danger-and what can one do? How can one guard against it?"
"Why, M. Poirot," I said, "I was only joking! Who'd want to murder me, I should like to know?"
"You-or another," he said, and I didn't like the way he said it at all. Positively creepy.
"But why?" I persisted.
He looked at me very straight then.
"I joke, mademoiselle," he said, "and I laugh. But there are some things that are no joke. There are things that my profession has taught me. And one of these things, the most terrible thing, is this:
"Murder is a habit..."
♥ I must confess I was glad of my cup of tea when we got to Dr. Reilly's house. M. Poirot, I noticed, put five lumps of sugar in his.
♥ "And Mrs. Leidner, was she worried by this animosity of Mrs. Mercado's?"
"Well," I said, reflecting, "I don't really think she was worried at all. In fact, I don't even know whether she noticed it. I thought once of just giving her a hint-but I didn't like to. Least said soonest mended. That's what I say."
♥ "And that's why I hate her so. She's not sensual. She doesn't want affairs. It's just cold-blooded experiment on her part and the fun of stirring people up and setting them against each other. She dabbled in that too. She's the sort of woman who's never had a row with any one in her life-but rows always happen where she is! She makes them happen. She's a kind of female lago. She must have drama. But she doesn't want to be involved herself. She's always outside pulling strings-looking on-enjoying it. Oh, do you see at all what I mean?"
"I see, perhaps, more than you know, mademoiselle," said Poirot.
I couldn't make his voice out. He didn't sound indignant. He sounded-oh, well, I can't explain it.
Sheila Reilly seemed to understand for she flushed all over the face.
"You can think what you choose," she said. "But I'm right about her. She was a clever woman and she was bored and she experimented-with people-like other people experiment with chemicals. She enjoyed working on poor old Johnson's feelings and seeing her bite on the bullet and control herself like the old sport she is. She liked goading little Mercado into a white-hot frenzy. She liked flicking me on the raw-and she could do it too, every time! She liked finding out things about people and holding it over them. Oh, I don't mean crude blackmail-I mean just letting them know that she knew-and leaving them uncertain what she meant to do about it. My God, though, that woman was an artist! There was nothing crude about her methods?"
♥ "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 drug-taker, 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."
♥ "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 lies 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."
♥ "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 pigs! 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 her 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 henpecking 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 thoroughgoing 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 kings-a kind of Belle Dame sans Merci."
♥ "But remember-the last of them arrived by hand."
"Well, I suppose that could have been managed if any one had given their minds to it. Women will take a lot of trouble to gratify their spite, M. Poirot!"
They will indeed, I thought to myself!
♥ "She is hardly the type to whom one would go for the truth," Poirot agreed.
"Waste of time talking to her," I snapped.
"Hardly that-hardly that. If a person tells you lies with her lips she is sometimes telling you truth with her eyes."
♥ My respect for him went up. It was clever the way he had tricked her into mentioning the letters.
"Are you going to tackle her about them?" I asked.
Mr. Poirot seemed quite shocked by the idea.
"No, no, indeed. Always it is unwise to parade one's knowledge. Until the last minute I keep everything here." He tapped his forehead. "At the right moment-I make the spring-like the panther-and, mon Dieu! the consternation!"
I couldn't help laughing to myself at little M. Poirot in the rôle of a panther.
♥ M. Poirot pretended to an interest in arcæology that I'm sure he couldn't have really felt, but Mr. Mercado responded at once.
He explained that they had already cut down through twelve levels of house occupation.
"We are now definitely in the fourth millennium," he said with enthusiasm.
I always thought a millennium was in the future-the time when everything comes right.
♥ Now I don't want anybody to get it into their heads that I'm the kind of woman who goes about eavesdropping on private conversations. I wouldn't do such a thing. Not for a moment. Not however much I wanted to.
And what I mean is if it had been a private conversation I wouldn't for a moment have done what, as a matter of fact, I actually did do.
As I looked at it I was in a privileged position. After all, you hear many a thing when a patient's coming round after an anæsthetic. The patient wouldn't want you to hear it-and usually has no idea you have heard it-but the fact remains you do hear it.
..All this is just leading up to the fact that I turned aside and went by a round-about way up behind the bug dump until I was a foot from where they were, but concealed from them by the corner of the dump. And if any one says it was dishonourable I just beg to disagree. Nothing ought to be hidden from the nurse in charge of the case, though, of course, it's the doctor to say what should be done.
♥ "But it is often the case that one learns more about a person from their enemies than from their friends."
"You suggest that their faults are more important than their virtues?" said Mr. Carey. His tone was dry and ironic.
"Undoubtedly-when it comes to murder. It seems odd that as far as I know nobody has yet been murdered for having too perfect a character! And yet perfection is undoubtedly an irritating thing."
♥ "She was a pretty fair devil to him. But, of course, he asks for it by being so darned sensitive. Just invites you to give him a kick in the pants."
"And did Mrs. Leidner give him-a kick in the pants?" inquired Poirot.
Emmott gave a sudden grin.
"No. Pretty little jabs with an embroidery needle-that was her method. He was irritating. Just like some blubbering, poor-spirited kid. But a needle's a painful weapon."
I stole a glance at Poirot and thought I detected a slight quiver of his lips.
"But you don't really believe that Carl Reiter killer her?" he asked.
"No. I don't believe you'd kill a woman because she persistently made you look a fool at every meal."
♥ Not that I'm really a matchmaker, and of course it was indecent to think of such a thing before the funeral even. But after all, it would be a happy solution. He was very fond of her, and there was no doubt she was absolutely devoted to him and would be perfectly happy devoting the rest of her life to him. That is, if she could bear to hear Louise's perfections sung all the time. But women can put up with a lot when they've got what they want.
♥ "One can't get any flowers or things in Hassanieh. Seemed rather rotten not to have any flowers for the grave. I thought I'd just nip in here and put a little posy in that little pot thing she always had flowers in on her table. Sort of show she wasn't forgotten-eh? A bit asinine, I know, but-well-I mean to say-"
I thought it was very nice of him. He was all pink with embarrassment like Englishmen are when they've done anything sentimental. I thought it was a very sweet thought.
"Why, I think that's a very nice idea, Mr. Coleman," I said.
And I picked up the little pot and went and got some water in it and we put the flowers in.
I really thought much more of Mr. Coleman for this idea of his. It showed he had a heart and nice feelings about things.
♥ I don't think that any of us had noticed that Mrs. Mercado was in the room. She must have crept in when we were all taken aback by the production of that horrible great bloodstained stone.
But now, without the least warning, she set up a noise like a pig having its throat cut.
♥ "Bismillahi ar rahman ar rahim. That is the Arab phrase used before starting out on a journey. Eh bien, we too, start on a journey. A journey into the past. A journey into the strange places of the human soul."
I don't think that up till that moment I'd ever felt any of the so-called "glamour of the East." Frankly, what had struck me was the mess everywhere. But suddenly, with M. Poirot's words, a queer sort of vision seemed to grow up before my eyes. I thought of words like Samarkand and Ispahan-and of merchants with long beards-and kneeling camels-and staggering porters carrying great bales on their backs held by a rope round the forehead-and women with henna-stained hair and tattooed faces kneeling by the Tigris and washing clothes, and I heard their queer, wailing chants and the far-off groaning of the water-wheel....
They were mostly things I'd seen and heard and thought nothing much of. But now, somehow they seemed different-like a piece of fusty old stuff you take into the light and suddenly see the rich colours of an old embroidery....
Then I looked round the room we were sitting in and I got a queer feeling that what M. Poirot said was true-we were all starting on a journey. We were here together now, but we were all going our different ways.
♥ "But the motive? Nurse Leatheran had told me of the angry glances she had seen Mrs. Mercado direct at Mrs. Leidner. Mr. Mercado had evidently succumbed easily to Mrs. Leidner's spell. But I did not think the solution was to be found in mere jealousy. I was sure Mrs. Leidner was not in the least interested really in Mr. Mercado-and doubtless Mrs. Mercado was aware of the fact. She might be furious with her for the moment, but for murder there would have to be greater provocation. But Mrs. Mercado was essentially a fiercely maternal type. From the way she looked at her husband I realized, not only that she loved him, but that she would fight for him tooth and nail-and more than that-that she envisaged the possibility of having to do so. She was constantly on her guard and uneasy. The uneasiness was for him-not for herself. And when I studied Mr. Mercado I could make a fairly easy guess at what the trouble was. I took means to assure myself of the truth of my guess. Mr. Mercado was a drug addict-in an advanced stage of the craving.
"Now I need probably not tell you all that the taking of drugs over a long period has the result of considerably blunting the moral sense.
"Under the influence of drugs a man commits actions that he would not have dreamed of committing a few years earlier before he began the practice. In some cases a man has committed murder-and it has been difficult to say whether he was wholly responsible for his actions or not. The law of different countries varies slightly on that point. The chief characteristic of the drug-fiend criminal is overweening confidence in his own cleverness."
♥ "Regarded from Mrs. Leidner's point of view, Carl Reiter was far too easy a victim for good sport. He was prepared to fall on his face and worship immediately. Mrs. Leidner despised undiscriminating adoration-and the door-mat attitude nearly always brings out the worst side of a woman. In her treatment of Carl Reiter Mrs. Leidner displayed really deliberate cruelty. She inserted a gibe here-a prick there. She made the poor young man's life a hell to him."
Poirot broke off suddenly and addressed the young man in a personal, highly confidential manner.
"Mon ami, let this be a lesson to you. You are a man. Behave, then, like a man! It is against Nature for a man to grovel. Women and Nature have almost exactly the same reactions! Remember it is better to take the largest plate within reach and fling it at a woman's head than it is to wriggle like a worm whenever she looks at you!"
♥ "I have spoken of women who have calamitous magic. But men have that magic too. There are men who are able without the least effort to attract women. What they call in these days le sex appeal! Mr. Carey had this quality very strongly. He was to begin with devoted to his friend and employer, and indifferent to his employer's wife. That did not suit Mrs. Leidner. She must dominate-and she set herself out to capture Richard Carey. But here, I believe, something entirely unforeseen took place. She herself, for perhaps the first time in her life, fell a victim to an overmastering passion. She fell in love-really in love-with Richard Carey.
"And he-was unable to resist her. Here is the truth of the terrible state of nervous tension that he has been enduring. He has been a man torn by two opposing passions, he loved Louise Leidner-yes, but he also hated her. He hated her for undermining his loyalty to his friend. There is no hatred so great as that of a man who has been made to love a woman against his will."
♥ Somehow, the more I get older, and the more I see of people and sadness and illness and everything, the sorrier I get for every one. Sometimes, I declare, I don't know what's become of the good strict principles my aunt brought me up with. A very religious woman she was, and most particular. There wasn't one of our neighbours whose faults she didn't know backwards and forwards....
Oh, dear, it's quite true what Dr. Reilly said. How does one stop writing? If I could find a really good telling phrase.
I must ask Dr. Reilly for some Arab one.
Like the one M. Poirot used.
In the name of Allah, the Merciful, the Compassionate...
Something like that.