Just then Mr Coleman came bustling in. Bustling was just the word for it. If his tongue had hung out and he had suddenly produced a tail to wag you wouldn’t have been surprised.
‘Hallo-allo,’ he said. ‘Absolutely the world’s best shopper – that’s me. Have you shown nurse all the beauties of the town?’
‘She wasn’t impressed,’ said Miss Reilly dryly.
‘I don’t blame her,’ said Mr Coleman heartily. ‘Of all the one-horse tumble-down places!’
‘Not a lover of the picturesque or the antique, are you, Bill? I can’t think why you are an archaeologist.’
‘Don’t blame me for that. Blame my guardian. He’s a learned bird-fellow of his college – browses among books in bedroom slippers – that kind of man. Bit of a shock for him to have a ward like me.’
‘I think it’s frightfully stupid of you to be forced into a profession you don’t care for,’ said the girl sharply.
‘Not forced, Sheila, old girl, not forced. The old man asked if I had any special profession in mind, and I said I hadn’t, and so he wangled a season out here for me.’
‘But haven’t you any idea really what you’d like to do? You must have!’
‘Of course I have. My idea would be to give work a miss altogether. What I’d like to do is to have plenty of money and go in for motor-racing.’
‘You’re absurd!’ said Miss Reilly.
She sounded quite angry.
‘Oh, I realize that it’s quite out of the question,’ said Mr Coleman cheerfully. ‘So, if I’ve got to do something, I don’t much care what it is so long as it isn’t mugging in an office all day long. I was quite agreeable to seeing a bit of the world. Here goes, I said, and along I came.’
‘And a fat lot of use you must be, I expect!’
‘There you’re wrong. I can stand up on the dig and shout “Y’Allah” with anybody! And as a matter of fact I’m not so dusty at drawing. Imitating handwriting used to be my speciality at school. I’d have made a first-class forger. Oh, well, I may come to that yet. If my Rolls-Royce splashes you with mud as you’re waiting for a bus, you’ll know that I’ve taken to crime.’
Miss Reilly said coldly: ‘Don’t you think it’s about time you started instead of talking so much?’
‘Hospitable, aren’t we, nurse?’
‘I’m sure Nurse Leatheran is anxious to get settled in.’
‘You’re always sure of everything,’ retorted Mr Coleman with a grin.
That was true enough, I thought. Cocksure little minx.
I said dryly: ‘Perhaps we’d better start, Mr Coleman.’
‘Right you are, nurse.’
I shook hands with Miss Reilly and thanked her, and we set off.
‘Damned attractive girl, Sheila,’ said Mr Coleman.
‘But always ticking a fellow off.’
We drove out of the town and presently took a kind of track between green crops. It was very bumpy and full of ruts.
After about half an hour Mr Coleman pointed to a big mound by the river bank ahead of us and said: ‘Tell Yarimjah.’
I could see little black figures moving about it like ants.
As I was looking they suddenly began to run all together down the side of the mound.
‘Fidos,’ said Mr Coleman. ‘Knocking-off time. We knock off an hour before sunset.’
The expedition house lay a little way back from the river.
The driver rounded a corner, bumped through an extremely narrow arch and there we were.
The house was built round a courtyard. Originally it had occupied only the south side of the courtyard with a few unimportant out-buildings on the east. The expedition had continued the building on the other two sides. As the plan of the house was to prove of special interest later, I append a rough sketch of it here.
All the rooms opened on to the courtyard, and most of the windows – the exception being in the original south building where there were windows giving on the outside country as well. These windows, however, were barred on the outside. In the south-west corner a staircase ran up to a long flat roof with a parapet running the length of the south side of the building which was higher than the other three sides.
Mr Coleman led me along the east side of the courtyard and round to where a big open verandah occupied the centre of the south side. He pushed open a door at one side of it and we entered a room where several people were sitting round a tea-table.
‘Toodle-oodle-oo!’ said Mr Coleman. ‘Here’s Sairey Gamp.’
The lady who was sitting at the head of the table rose and came to greet me.
I had my first glimpse of Louise Leidner.
Chapter 5. Tell Yarimjah
I don’t mind admitting that my first impression on seeing Mrs Leidner was one of downright surprise. One gets into the way of imagining a person when one hears them talked about. I’d got it firmly into my head that Mrs Leidner was a dark, discontented kind of woman. The nervy kind, all on edge. And then, too, I’d expected her to be – well, to put it frankly – a bit vulgar.
She wasn’t a bit like what I’d imagined her! To begin with, she was very fair. She wasn’t a Swede, like her husband, but she might have been as far as looks went. She had that blonde Scandinavian fairness that you don’t very often see. She wasn’t a young woman. Midway between thirty and forty, I should say. Her face was rather haggard, and there was some grey hair mingled with the fairness. Her eyes, though, were lovely. They were the only eyes I’ve ever come across that you might truly describe as violet. They were very large, and there were faint shadows underneath them. She was very thin and fragile-looking, and if I say that she had an air of intense weariness and was at the same time very much alive, it sounds like nonsense – but that’s the feeling I got. I felt, too, that she was a lady through and through. And that means something – even nowadays.
She put out her hand and smiled. Her voice was low and soft with an American drawl in it.
‘I’m so glad you’ve come, nurse. Will you have some tea? Or would you like to go to your room first?’
I said I’d have tea, and she introduced me to the people sitting round the table.
‘This is Miss Johnson – and Mr Reiter. Mrs Mercado. Mr Emmott. Father Lavigny. My husband will be in presently. Sit down here between Father Lavigny and Miss Johnson.’
I did as I was bid and Miss Johnson began talking to me, asking about my journey and so on.
I liked her. She reminded me of a matron I’d had in my probationer days whom we had all admired and worked hard for.
She was getting on for fifty, I should judge, and rather mannish in appearance, with iron-grey hair cropped short. She had an abrupt, pleasant voice, rather deep in tone. She had an ugly rugged face with an almost laughably turned-up nose which she was in the habit of rubbing irritably when anything troubled or perplexed her. She wore a tweed coat and skirt made rather like a man’s. She told me presently that she was a native of Yorkshire.
Father Lavigny I found just a bit alarming. He was a tall man with a great black beard and pince-nez. I had heard Mrs Kelsey say that there was a French monk there, and I now saw that Father Lavigny was wearing a monk’s robe of some white woollen material. It surprised me rather, because I always understood that monks went into monasteries and didn’t come out again.
Mrs Leidner talked to him mostly in French, but he spoke to me in quite fair English. I noticed that he had shrewd, observant eyes which darted about from face to face.
Opposite me were the other three. Mr Reiter was a stout, fair young man with glasses. His hair was rather long and curly, and he had very round blue eyes. I should think he must have been a lovely baby, but he wasn’t much to look at now! In fact he was just a little like a pig. The other young man had very short hair cropped close to his head. He had a long, rather humorous face and very good teeth, and he looked very attractive when he smiled. He said very little, though, just nodded if spoken to or answered in monosyllables. He, like Mr Reiter, was an American. The last person was Mrs Mercado, and I couldn’t have a good look at her because whenever I glanced in her direction I always found her staring at me with a kind of hungry stare that was a bit disconcerting to say the least of it. You might have thought a hospital nurse was a strange animal the way she was looking at me. No manners at all!