Dr Reilly scraped out his pipe with a chuckle.
Last woman on earth Id describe that way.
No repressions about her.
Life, life and more life thats what she wanted and got, too!
Do you consider it a possibility, psychologically speaking, that she wrote those letters?
Yes, I do.
But if she did, the reason arose out of her instinct to dramatize herself.
Mrs Leidner was a bit of a film star in private life! She had to be the centre of things in the limelight.
By the law of opposites she married Leidner, whos about the most retiring and modest man I know.
He adored her but adoration by the fireside wasnt enough for her.
She had to be the persecuted heroine as well.
In fact, said Poirot, smiling, you dont subscribe to his theory that she wrote them and retained no memory of her act?
No, I dont.
I didnt turn down the idea in front of him.
You cant very well say to a man whos just lost a dearly loved wife that that same wife was a shameless exhibitionist, and that she drove him nearly crazy with anxiety to satisfy her sense of the dramatic.
As a matter of fact it wouldnt be safe to tell any man the truth about his wife!
Funnily enough, Id trust most women with the truth about their husbands.
Women can accept the fact that a man is a rotter, a swindler, a drug-taker, a confirmed liar, and a general swine without batting an eyelash and without its impairing their affection for the brute in the least!
Women are wonderful realists.
Frankly, Dr Reilly, what was your exact opinion of Mrs Leidner?
Dr Reilly lay back in his chair and puffed slowly at his pipe.
Frankly its hard to say!
I didnt know her well enough.
Shed got charm any amount of it.
Brains, sympathy What else?
She hadnt any of the ordinary unpleasant vices.
She wasnt sensual or lazy or even particularly vain.
She was, Ive always thought (but Ive no proofs of it), a most accomplished liar.
What I dont know (and what Id like to know) is whether she lied to herself or only to other people.
Im rather partial to liars myself.
A woman who doesnt lie is a woman without imagination and without sympathy.
I dont think she was really a man-hunter she just liked the sport of bringing them down with my bow and arrow.
If you get my daughter on the subject
We have had that pleasure, said Poirot with a slight smile.
Hm, said Dr Reilly. She hasnt wasted much time!
Shoved her knife into her pretty thoroughly, I should imagine!
The younger generation has no sentiment towards the dead. Its a pity all young people are prigs!
They condemn the old morality and then proceed to set up a much more hard-and-fast code of their own.
If Mrs Leidner had had half a dozen affairs Sheila would probably have approved of her as living her life fully or obeying her blood instincts.
What she doesnt see is that Mrs Leidner was acting true to type her type.
The cat is obeying its blood instinct when it plays with the mouse!
Its made that way.
Men arent little boys to be shielded and protected.
Theyve got to meet cat women and faithful spaniel, yours till-death adoring women, and hen-pecking nagging bird women and all the rest of it!
Lifes a battlefield not a picnic!
Id like to see Sheila honest enough to come off her high horse and admit that she hated Mrs Leidner for good old thorough going personal reasons.
Sheilas about the only young girl in this place and she naturally assumes that she ought to have it all her own way with the young things in trousers.
Naturally it annoys her when a woman, who in her view is middle-aged and who has already two husbands to her credit, comes along and licks her on her own ground.
Sheilas a nice child, healthy and reasonably good-looking and attractive to the other sex as she should be.
But Mrs Leidner was something out of the ordinary in that line.