‘Eh bien, ma soeur, and was not that just what Mrs Leidner had been fearing? A stranger from outside?’
‘But – but – Why, Dr Reilly knew all about me! He suggested my coming!’
‘How much did he really know about you? Mostly what you yourself had told him. Imposters have passed themselves off as hospital nurses before now.’
‘You can write to St. Christopher’s,’ I began.
‘For the moment will you silence yourself. Impossible to proceed while you conduct this argument. I do not say I suspect you now. All I say is that, keeping the open mind, you might quite easily be someone other than you pretended to be. There are many successful female impersonators, you know. Young William Bosner might be something of that kind.’
I was about to give him a further piece of my mind. Female impersonator indeed! But he raised his voice and hurried on with such an air of determination that I thought better of it.
‘I am going now to be frank – brutally so. It is necessary. I am going to lay bare the underlying structure of this place.
‘I examined and considered every single soul here. To begin with Dr Leidner, I soon convinced myself that his love for his wife was the mainspring of his existence. He was a man torn and ravaged with grief. Nurse Leatheran I have already mentioned. If she were a female impersonator she was a most amazingly successful one, and I inclined to the belief that she was exactly what she said she was – a thoroughly competent hospital nurse.’
‘Thank you for nothing,’ I interposed.
‘My attention was immediately attracted towards Mr and Mrs Mercado, who were both of them clearly in a state of great agitation and unrest. I considered first Mrs Mercado. Was she capable of murder, and if so for what reasons?
‘Mrs Mercado’s physique was frail. At first sight it did not seem possible that she could have had the physical strength to strike down a woman like Mrs Leidner with a heavy stone implement. If, however, Mrs Leidner had been on her knees at the time, the thing would at least be physically possible. There are ways in which one woman can induce another to go down on her knees. Oh! not emotional ways! For instance, a woman might be turning up the hem of a skirt and ask another woman to put in the pins for her. The second woman would kneel on the ground quite unsuspectingly.
‘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.
‘I thought it possible that there was some discreditable incident, perhaps a criminal incident, in Mr Mercado’s past which his wife had somehow or other succeeded in hushing up. Nevertheless his career hung on a thread. If anything of this past incident were bruited about, Mr Mercado would be ruined. His wife was always on the watch. But there was Mrs Leidner to be reckoned with. She had a sharp intelligence and a love of power. She might even induce the wretched man to confide in her. It would just have suited her peculiar temperament to feel she knew a secret which she could reveal at any minute with disastrous effects.
‘Here, then, was a possible motive for murder on the part of the Mercados. To protect her mate, Mrs Mercado, I felt sure, would stick at nothing! Both she and her husband had had the opportunity – during that ten minutes when the courtyard was empty.’
Mrs Mercado cried out, ‘It’s not true!’
Poirot paid no attention.
‘I next considered Miss Johnson. Was she capable of murder?
‘I thought she was. She was a person of strong will and iron self-control. Such people are constantly repressing themselves – and one day the dam bursts! But if Miss Johnson had committed the crime it could only be for some reason connected with Dr Leidner. If in any way she felt convinced that Mrs Leidner was spoiling her husband’s life, then the deep unacknowledged jealousy far down in her would leap at the chance of a plausible motive and give itself full rein.
‘Yes, Miss Johnson was distinctly a possibility.
‘Then there were the three young men.
‘First Carl Reiter. If, by any chance, one of the expedition staff was William Bosner, then Reiter was by far the most likely person. But if he was William Bosner, then he was certainly a most accomplished actor! If he were merely himself, had he any reason for murder?
‘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!’
He dropped his private manner and reverted to his lecture style.
‘Could Carl Reiter have been goaded to such a pitch of torment that he turned on his tormentor and killed her? Suffering does queer things to a man. I could not besure that it was not so!
‘Next William Coleman. His behaviour, as reported by Miss Reilly, is certainly suspicious. If he was the criminal it could only be because his cheerful personality concealed the hidden one of William Bosner. I do not think William Coleman, as William Coleman, has the temperament of a murderer. His faults might lie in another direction. Ah! perhaps Nurse Leatheran can guess what they would be?’
How did the man do it? I’m sure I didn’t look as though I was thinking anything at all.
‘It’s nothing really,’ I said, hesitating. ‘Only if it’s to be all truth, Mr Coleman did say once himself that he would have made a good forger.’
‘A good point,’ said Poirot. ‘Therefore if he had come across some of the old threatening letters, he could have copied them without difficulty.’
‘Oy, oy, oy!’ called out Mr Coleman. ‘This is what they call a frame-up.’
Poirot swept on.
‘As to his being or not being William Bosner, such a matter is difficult of verification. But Mr Coleman has spoken of a guardian – not of a father – and there is nothing definitely to veto the idea.’