"For the second time I recommence my journey from the beginning - Mrs. Leidner's first marriage - the threatening letters - her second marriage. The letters prevented her marrying any other man - but they did not prevent her marrying Dr. Leidner. How simple that is - if Dr. Leidner is actually Frederick Bosner.
"Once more let us start our journey - from the point of view this time of young Frederick Bosner.
"To begin with he loves his wife Louise with an overpowering passion, such as only a woman of her kind can evoke. She betrays him. He is sentenced to death. He escapes. He is involved in a railway accident but he manages to emerge with a second personality - that of a young Swedish archaeologist, Eric Leidner, whose body is badly disfigured and who will be conveniently buried as Frederick Bosner.
"What is the new Eric Leidner's attitude to the woman who was willing to send him to his death? First and most important, he still loves her. He sets to work to build up his new life. He is a man of great ability, his profession is congenial to him and he makes a success of it. But he never forgets the ruling passion of his life. He keeps himself informed of his wife's movements. Of one thing he is cold-bloodedly determined (remember Mrs. Leidner's own description of him to Nurse Leatheran - gentle and kind but ruthless), she shall belong to no other man. Whenever he judges it necessary he despatches a letter. He imitates some of the peculiarities of her hand-writing in case she should think of taking his letters to the police. Women who write sensational anonymous letters to themselves are such a common phenomenon that the police will be sure to jump to that solution given the likeness of the handwriting. At the same time he leaves her in doubt as to whether he is really alive or not.
"At last, after many years, he judges that the time has arrived; he re-enters her life. All goes well. His wife never dreams of his real identity. He is a well-known man. The upstanding, good-looking young fellow is now a middle-aged man with a beard and stooping shoulders. And so we see history repeating itself. As before, Frederick is able to dominate Louise. For the second time she consents to marry him. And no letter comes to forbid the banns.
"But afterwards a letter does come. Why?
"I think that Dr. Leidner was taking no chances. The intimacy of marriage might awaken a memory. He wishes to impress on his wife, once and for all, that Eric Leidner and Frederick Bosner are two different people. So much so that a threatening letter comes from the former on account of the latter. The rather puerile gas poisoning business follows - arranged by Dr. Leidner, of course. Still with the same object in view.
"After that he is satisfied. No more letters need come. They can settle down to happy married life together.
"And then, after nearly two years, the letters recommence.
"Why? Eh bien, I think I know. Because the threat underlying the letters was always a genuine threat. (That is why Mrs. Leidner has always been frightened. She knew her Frederick's gentle but ruthless nature.) If she belongs to any other man but him he would kill her. And she has given herself to Richard Carey.
"And so, having discovered this, cold-bloodedly, calmly, Dr. Leidner prepares the scene for murder.
"You see now the important part played by Nurse Leatheran? Dr. Leidner's rather curious conduct (it puzzled me at the very first) in securing her services for his wife is explained. It was vital that a reliable professional witness should be able to state incontrovertibly that Mrs. Leidner had been dead over an hour when her body was found - that is, that she had been killed at a time when everybody could swear her husband was on the roof. A suspicion might have arisen that he had killed her when he entered the room and found the body - but that was out of the question when a trained hospital Nurse would assert positively that she had already been dead an hour.
"Another thing that is explained is the curious state of tension and strain that had come over the expedition this year. I never from the first thought that that could be attributed solely to Mrs. Leidner's influence. For several years this particular expedition had had a reputation for happy good-fellowship. In my opinion the state of mind of a community is always directly due to the influence of the man at the top. Dr. Leidner, quiet though he was, was a man of great personality. It was due to his tact, to his judgment, to his sympathetic manipulation of human beings that the atmosphere had always been such a happy one.
"If there was a change, therefore, the change must be due to the man at the top - in other words, to Dr. Leidner. It was Dr. Leidner, not Mrs. Leidner, who was responsible for the tension and uneasiness. No wonder the staff felt the change without understanding it. The kindly genial Dr. Leidner, outwardly the same, was only playing the part of himself. The real man was an obsessed fanatic plotting to kill.
"And now we will pass on to the second murder - that of Miss Johnson. In tidying up Dr. Leidner's papers in the office (a job she took on herself unasked, craving for something to do) she must have come on some unfinished draft of one of the anonymous letters.
"It must have been both incomprehensible and extremely upsetting to her! Dr. Leidner has been deliberately terrorizing his wife! She cannot understand it - but it upsets her badly. It is in this mood that Nurse Leatheran discovers her crying.
"I do not think at the moment that she suspects Dr. Leidner of being the murderer, but my experiments with sounds in Mrs. Leidner's and Father Lavigny's rooms are not lost upon her. She realizes that if it was Mrs. Leidner's cry she heard, the window in her room must have been open, not shut. At the moment that conveys nothing vital to her, but she remembers it.
"Her mind goes on working - ferreting its way towards the truth. Perhaps she makes some reference to the letters which Dr. Leidner understands and his manner changes. She may see that he is, suddenly, afraid.
"But Dr. Leidner cannot have killed his wife! He was on the roof all the time.
"And then, one evening, as she herself is on the roof puzzling about it, the truth comes to her in a flash. Mrs. Leidner has been killed from up here, through the open window.
"It was at that minute that Nurse Leatheran found her.
"And immediately, her old affection reasserting itself, she puts up a quick camouflage. Nurse Leatheran must not guess the horrifying discovery she has just made.
"She looks deliberately in the opposite direction (towards the courtyard) and makes a remark suggested to her by Father Lavigny's appearance as he crosses the courtyard.
"She refuses to say more. She has got to 'think things out.'
"And Dr. Leidner, who has been watching her anxiously, realizes that she knows the truth. She is not the kind of woman to conceal her horror and distress from him.
"It is true that as yet she has not given him away - but how long can he depend upon her?
"Murder is a habit. That night he substitutes a glass of acid for her glass of water. There is just a chance she may be believed to have deliberately poisoned herself. There is even a chance she may be considered to have done the first murder and has now been overcome with remorse. To strengthen the latter idea he takes the quern from the roof and puts it under her bed.
"No wonder that poor Miss Johnson, in her death agony, could only try desperately to impart her hard-won information. Through 'the window,' that is how Mrs. Leidner was killed, not through the door - through the window...
"And so thus, everything is explained, everything falls into place... Psychologically perfect.
"But there is no proof. No proof at all..."
None of us spoke. We were lost in a sea of horror... Yes, and not only horror. Pity, too.
Dr. Leidner had neither moved nor spoken. He sat just as he had done all along. A tired, worn, elderly man.
At last he stirred slightly and looked at Poirot with gentle tired eyes.
"No," he said, "there is no proof. But that does not matter. You knew that I would not deny truth... I have never denied truth... I think - really - I am rather glad... I'm so tired..."
Then he said simply:
"I'm sorry about Anne. That was bad - senseless - it wasn't me! And she suffered, too, poor soul. Yes, that wasn't me. It was fear..."
A little smile just hovered on his pain-twisted lips.
"You would have made a good archaeologist, M. Poirot. You have the gift of re-creating the past.
"It was all very much as you said.
"I loved Louise and I killed her... If you'd known Louise you'd have understood... No, I think you understand anyway..."
Chapter 29
L'ENVOI
There isn't really any more to say about things.
They got "Father" Lavigny and the other man just as they were going on board a steamer at Beyrouth.
Sheila Reilly married young Emmott. I think that will be good for her. He's no door-mat - he'll keep her in her place. She'd have ridden roughshod over poor Bill Coleman.
I nursed him, by the way, when he had appendicitis a year ago. I got quite fond of him. His people were sending him out to farm in South Africa.
I've never been out East again. It's funny - sometimes I wish I could. I think of the noise the water-wheel made and the women washing, and that queer haughty look that camels give you - and I get quite a homesick feeling. After all, perhaps dirt isn't really so unhealthy as one is brought up to believe!
Dr. Reilly usually looks me up when he's in England, and as I said, it's he who's got me into this. "Take it or leave it," I said to him. "I know the grammar's all wrong and it's not properly written or anything like that - but there it is."
And he took it. Made no bones about it. It will give me a queer feeling if it's ever printed.
M. Poirot went back to Syria and about a week later he went home on the Orient Express and got himself mixed up in another murder. He was clever, I don't deny it, but I shan't forgive him in a hurry for pulling my leg the way he did. Pretending to think I might be mixed up in the crime and not a real hospital Nurse at all!
Doctors are like that sometimes. Will have their joke, some of them will, and never think of your feelings!
I've thought and thought about Mrs. Leidner and what she was really like... Sometimes it seems to me she was just a terrible woman - and other times I remember how nice she was to me and how soft her voice was - and her lovely fair hair and everything - and I feel that perhaps, after all, she was more to be pitied than blamed...
And I can't help but pity Dr. Leidner. I know he was a murderer twice over, but it doesn't seem to make any difference. He was so dreadfully fond of her. It's awful to be fond of anyone like that.
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.
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