‘Delighted.’
‘Oh, no doctor,’ I protested. ‘I couldn’t think of such a thing.’
M. Poirot gave me a little friendly tap on the shoulder. Quite an English tap, not a foreign one.
‘You, ma soeur, will do as you are told,’ he said. ‘Besides, it will be of advantage to me. There is a good deal more that I want to discuss, and I cannot do it here where one must preserve the decencies. The good Dr Leidner he worshipped his wife and he is sure—oh, so sure—that everybody else felt the same about her! But that, in my opinion, would not be human nature! No, we want to discuss Mrs Leidner with—how do you say?—the gloves removed. That is settled then. When we have finished here, we take you with us to Hassanieh.’
‘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…’
Chapter 18
Tea at Dr Reilly’s
Before leaving, Poirot made a round of the expedition house and the outbuildings. He also asked a few questions of the servants at second hand—that is to say, Dr Reilly translated the questions and answers from English to Arabic and vice versa.
These questions dealt mainly with the appearance of the stranger Mrs Leidner and I had seen looking through the window and to whom Father Lavigny had been talking on the following day.
‘Do you really think that fellow had anything to do with it?’ asked Dr Reilly when we were bumping along in his car on our way to Hassanieh.
‘I like all the information there is,’ was Poirot’s reply.
And really, that described his methods very well. I found later that there wasn’t anything—no small scrap of insignificant gossip—in which he wasn’t interested. Men aren’t usually so gossipy.
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.
Stirring it carefully with his teaspoon he said: ‘And now we can talk, can we not? We can make up our minds who is likely to have committed the crime.’
‘Lavigny, Mercado, Emmott or Reiter?’ asked Dr Reilly.
‘No, no—that was theory number three. I wish to concentrate now on theory number two—leaving aside all question of a mysterious husband or brother-in-law turning up from the past. Let us discuss now quite simply which member of the expedition had the means and opportunity to kill Mrs Leidner, and who is likely to have done so.’
‘I thought you didn’t think much of that theory.’
‘Not at all. But I have some natural delicacy,’ said Poirot reproachfully. ‘Can I discuss in the presence of Dr Leidner the motives likely to lead to the murder of his wife by a member of the expedition? That would not have been delicate at all. I had to sustain the fiction that his wife was adorable and that everyone adored her!
‘But naturally it was not like that at all. Now we can be brutal and impersonal and say what we think. We have no longer to consider people’s feelings. And that is where Nurse Leatheran is going to help us. She is, I am sure, a very good observer.’