murder in mesopotamia

allright, with this one, i'm truly doing justice to the title of this blog, coz this one is truly a confession of the satanic kind.

i just finished reading Murder in Mesopotamia by Agatha Christie. it's a Hercule Poirot novel. roughly, the plot is like this:

Dr. Leidner, an archaeologist hires nurse Amy Leatheran to keep his wife company, who seems to be suffering from an awful bout of nerves. the wife is murdered. Poirot is called in. then, Miss Johnson, Dr. Leidner's secretary of sorts gets murdered as well. as is expected, Poirot investigates and tracks down the murderer. the whole novel is written from nurse Leatheran's perspective, in a first person account, who, in her own words, was "in it all and yet an outsider, so to speak". simply put, that means she was the outsider in the expedition and just a silent spectator.

i wont spoil the suspense by revealing who it was. instead, i'll share an alternative ending that occurred to me as i was reading the book.

i was thinking, why not have the Nurse committing the murders? here's the detailed theory.

the nurse meets Dr. Leidner for the first time and falls in love with him. she rues the fact that he's married, and the wife is far more beautiful than her (which she is, in the novel). now it so happens, that this nurse of ours is mentally unbalanced and has managed to keep this a secret for all these years. her love becomes her obsession. one fine night, she goes and kills the wife.

to help this plot of mine, Dame Christie has shown every member of the expedition to have either the opportunity or the motive for murdering Mrs. Leidner. this would make out nurse the last person to suspect, as she is, after all, a newcomer.

later, the nurse realises that Miss Johnson, who has been with Dr. Leidner for many years secretly harbours undying love for him in her bosom. Nurse gets insecure. after all, miss johnson has been with the doc longer than she has, and who's to say that the grief-stricken doc might not seek solace in this constant companion's arms?

so the nurse kills her as well.

it is later revealed that the nurse is suffering from a split personality disorder. she has committed the murders without even knowing it. her obsessive love for the doc has awakened the killer inside her, and while she thought she was in her room sleeping, she was actually going around eliminating competition.

the beauty of it is that, in the novel, it is the nurse who discovers both bodies. so it could be something like for both murders, she comes back to her room after committing the murder, lies down, and then wakes up. her subconscious nags at her mind. she mistakes it for a sense of foreboding and goes over to the victim's room to check and discovers the dead body.

the split personality angle would also support the line about the nurse being in it all and yet an outsider, so to speak.

what do you think, guys? should i make a film adaptation of the book with this climax? ;-)