Amy Leatheran

Amy Leatheran is a nurse. In Murder in Mesopotamia, she mentions that she did her training at St. Christopher's Hospital, in London, and after that did two years maternity. She did some private work, and then worked for four years at Miss Bendix's Nursing Home at Devonshire Place. When she was in her early 30s she worked in Baghdad, after travelling with an English family there. While in Iraq she met an archaeologist, Dr Leidner, who employed her to look after his wife Louise.

Nurse Leatheran is thirty-two years old at the time of the events of Murder in Mesopotamia. She is described as having an "erect, confident bearing", and "a good-humoured face with slightly prominent blue eyes and glossy brown hair".

Louise Leidner liked Nurse Leatheran, and confided in her, telling her that she feared being killed. Nurse Leatheran deliberately reacted by not showing too much concern, as she felt that Louise was near enough to hysterics as it was. This caused Louise to laugh until tears streamed down her face. Nurse Leatheran bathed her forehead and wrists with a cold sponge, and told Louise to tell her calmly and sensibly all about it. Louise then said that Nurse Leatheran was "a treasure", and made her feel as if she were about six years old.

After Louise's death, Nurse Leatheran assists Hercule Poirot in his investigation. When she first sees Poirot, she is doubtful about him and his ability to solve the case. However, she gradually grows more confidence in him, and begins to feel as if Poirot is a surgeon performing an operation, and she is the nurse assisting him. She feels that it is her duty to help Poirot, and so when he drops his handkerchief, it feels just as natural for her to go and look for it, as it would have been for her to pick up a towel that a doctor had thrown on the floor.

Dr Leidner asks Nurse Leatheran to help him pack up all of Louise's clothes, to be given away. He also asks her to choose a memento from among Louise's belongings, saying that he would like her to have something, and he is sure that Louise would have wished it as well. He suggests that she take Louise's tortoiseshell toilet set, as Louise had no sisters, and there was no one else to have it. Nurse Leatheran is undecided as to whether to take a string of amber beads or the toilet set, but eventually decides on the latter.

Later she worked as nurse and assistant to Lady Matilda Cleckheaton.

Appearances

 * Murder in Mesopotamia (1936)
 * Passenger to Frankfurt (1970)

Portrayals
In the ITV 2001 TV adapatation of the novel, the part of Nurse Leatheran is played by Georgina Sowerby. She has a significantly reduced role compared with the original novel where she was a first person narrator of the story. Here, many of her roles were taken over by Captain Hastings although she still has many lines and appears in many scenes. Crucially, she sees Anne Johnson holding a piece of paper containing a draft of text which appeared in threatening notes which Louise Leidner had received. From this Nurse Lutheran concluded that Anne Johnson could be the killer and went to Baghdad to report this to Superintendent Maitland and Poirot. Nurse Leatheran also helped Hastings in conducting an experiment to see if a scream from Louise Leidner's bedroom could be heard in the living room. They reported that even a loud scream could not be heard unless the window was open. Poirot thought this finding was interesting, "even illuminating".