Murder in Mesopotamia - Agatha Christie [15]
He jumped up looking startled and confused, as though her entrance had broken a spell. He said stammeringly: ‘I—I must go now. I’m in the middle of—the middle of—’
He didn’t complete the sentence but turned towards the door.
Mrs Leidner said in her soft, drawling voice: ‘You must finish telling me some other time. It was very interesting.’
She looked up at us, smiled rather sweetly but in a far-away manner, and bent over her embroidery again.
In a minute or two she said: ‘There are some books over there, nurse. We’ve got quite a good selection. Choose one and sit down.’
I went over to the bookshelf. Mrs Mercado stayed for a minute or two, then, turning abruptly, she went out. As she passed me I saw her face and I didn’t like the look of it. She looked wild with fury.
In spite of myself I remembered some of the things Mrs Kelsey had said and hinted about Mrs Leidner. I didn’t like to think they were true because I liked Mrs Leidner, but I wondered, nevertheless, if there mightn’t perhaps be a grain of truth behind them.
I didn’t think it was all her fault, but the fact remained that dear ugly Miss Johnson, and that common little spitfire Mrs Mercado, couldn’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.
Mercado was a poor fish, and I don’t suppose Mrs Leidner really cared two hoots for his admiration—but his wife cared. If I wasn’t mistaken, she minded badly and would be quite willing to do Mrs Leidner a bad turn if she could.
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.
I began to wonder what her life had been. I knew she’d only married Dr Leidner two years ago. And according to Mrs Mercado her first husband had died about fifteen years ago.
I came and sat down near her with a book, and presently I went and washed my hands for supper. It was a good meal—some really excellent curry. They all went to bed early and I was glad, for I was tired.
Dr Leidner came with me to my room to see I had all I wanted.
He gave me a warm handclasp and said eagerly:
‘She likes you, nurse. She’s taken to you at once. I’m so glad. I feel everything’s going to be all right now.’
His eagerness was almost boyish.
I felt, too, that Mrs Leidner had taken a liking to me, and I was pleased it should be so.
But I didn’t quite share his confidence. I felt, somehow, that there was more to it all than he himself might know.
There was something—something I couldn’t get at. But I felt it in the air.
My bed was comfortable, but I didn’t sleep well for all that. I dreamt too much.
The words of a poem by Keats, that I’d had to learn as a child, kept running through my head. I kept getting them wrong and it worried me. It was a poem I’d always hated—I suppose because I’d had to learn it whether I wanted to or not. But somehow when I woke up in the dark I saw a sort of beauty in it for the first time.
‘Oh say what ails thee, knight at arms, alone—and(what was it?)—palely loitering…? I saw the knight’s face in my mind for the first time—it was Mr Carey’s face—a grim, tense, bronzed face like some of those poor young men I remembered as a girl during the war…and I felt sorry for him—and then I fell off to sleep again and I saw that the Belle Dame sans Merci was Mrs Leidner and she was leaning sideways on a horse with an embroidery of flowers in her hands—and then the horse stumbled and everywhere there were bones coated in wax, and I woke up all goose-flesh and shivering,