The Pale Horse by Agatha Christie
Here, I felt, round-eyed girls who had tearfully discovered themselves to be prospective mothers, had confided their troubles to Mrs. Dane Calthrop and received sound, if not always orthodox, advice; here angry relatives had unburdened themselves of their resentment over their in-laws; here mothers had explained that their Bob was not a bad boy; just high-spirited, and that to send him away to an approved school was absurd. Husbands and wives had disclosed marital difficulties.
And here was I, Mark Easterbrook, scholar, author, man of the world, confronting a grey-haired weather-beaten woman with fine eyes, prepared to lay my troubles in her lap. Why? I didn’t know. I only had that odd surety that she was the right person.
“We’ve just had tea with Thyrza Grey,” I began.
Explaining things to Mrs. Dane Calthrop was never difficult. She leaped to meet you.
“Oh I see. It’s upset you? These three are a bit much to take, I agree. I’ve wondered myself… So much boasting. As a rule, in my experience, the really wicked don’t boast. They can keep quiet about their wickedness. It’s if your sins aren’t really bad that you want so much to talk about them. Sin’s such a wretched, mean, ignoble little thing. It’s terribly necessary to make it seem grand and important. Village witches are usually silly ill-natured old women who like frightening people and getting something for nothing that way. Terribly easy to do, of course. When Mrs. Brown’s hens die all you have to do is nod your head and say darkly: ‘Ah, her Billy teased my Pussy last Tuesday week.’ Bella Webb might, be only a witch of that kind. But she might, she just might, be something more… Something that’s lasted on from a very early age and which crops up now and then in country places. It’s frightening when it does, because there’s real malevolence—not just a desire to impress. Sybil Stamfordis is one of the silliest women I’ve ever met—but she really is a medium—whatever a medium may be. Thyrza—I don’t know… What did she say to you? It was something that she said that’s upset you, I suppose?”
“You have great experience, Mrs. Dane Calthrop. Would you say, from all you know and have heard, that a human being could be destroyed from a distance, without visible connection, by another human being?”
Mrs. Dane Calthrop’s eyes opened a little wider.
“When you say destroyed, you mean, I take it, killed? A plain physical fact?”
“Yes.”
“I should say it was nonsense,” said Mrs. Dane Calthrop robustly.
“Ah!” I said, relieved.
“But of course I might be wrong,” said Mrs. Dane Calthrop. “My father said that airships were nonsense, and my great-grandfather probably said that railway trains were nonsense. They were both quite right. At that time they both were impossible. But they’re not impossible now. What does Thyrza do, activate a death ray or something? Or do they all three draw pentagrams and wish?”
I smiled.
“You’re making things come into focus,” I said. “I must have let that woman hypnotise me.”
“Oh no,” said Mrs. Dane Calthrop. “You wouldn’t do that. You’re not really the suggestible type. There must have been something else. Something that happened first. Before all this.”
“You’re quite right.” I told her, then, as simply as I could with an economy of words, of the murder of Father Gorman, and of the casual mention in the nightclub of the Pale Horse. Then I took from my pocket the list of names I had copied from the paper Dr. Corrigan had shown me.
Mrs. Dane Calthrop looked down at it, frowning.
“I see,” she said. “And these people? What have they all in common?”
“We’re not sure. It might be blackmail—or dope—”
“Nonsense,” said Mrs. Dane Calthrop. “That’s not what’s worrying you. What you really believe is—that they’re all dead?”
I gave a deep sigh.
“Yes,” I said. “That’s what I believe. But I don’t really know that that is so. Three of them are dead. Minnie Hesketh-Dubois, Thomasina Tuckerton, Mary Delafontaine. All three died in their beds from natural causes. Which is what Thyrza Grey claims would happen.”
“You mean she claims she made it happen?”
“No, no. She wasn’t speaking of any actual people. She was expounding what she believes to be a scientific possibility.”
“Which appears on the face of it to be nonsense,” said Mrs. Dane Calthrop thoughtfully.
“I know. I would just have been polite about it and laughed to myself, if it hadn’t been for that curious mention of the Pale Horse.”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Dane Calthrop musingly. “The Pale Horse. That’s suggestive.”
She was silent a moment. Then she raised her head.
“It’s bad,” she said. “It’s very bad. Whatever is behind it, it’s got to be stopped. But you know that.”
“Well yes… But what can one do?”
“That you’ll have to find out. But there’s no time to be lost.” Mrs. Dane Calthrop rose to her feet, a whirlwind of activity. “You must get down to it—at once.” She considered. “Haven’t you got some friend who could help you?”
I thought. Jim Corrigan? A busy man with little time, and already probably doing all he could. David Ardingly—but would David believe a word? Hermia? Yes, there was Hermia. A clear brain, admirable logic. A tower of strength if she could be persuaded to become an ally. After all, she and I—I did not finish the sentence. Hermia was my steady— Hermia was the person.
“You’ve thought of someone? Good.”
Mrs. Dane Calthrop was brisk and businesslike.
“I’ll keep an eye on the Three Witches. I still feel that they are—somehow—not really the answer. It’s like when the Stamfordis woman dishes out a lot of idiocy about Egyptian mysteries and prophecies from the Pyramid texts. All she says is plain balderdash, but there are Pyramids and texts and temple mysteries. I can’t help feeling that Thyrza Grey has got hold of something, found out about it, or heard it talked about, and is using it in a kind of wild hotchpotch to boost her own importance and control of occult powers. People are so proud of wickedness. Odd, isn’t it, that people who are good are never proud of it? That’s where Christian humility comes in, I suppose. They don’t even know they are good.”
She was silent for a moment and then said:
“What we really need is a link of some kind. A link between one of these names and the Pale Horse. Something tangible.”
Eight
Detective-Inspector Lejeune heard the well-known tune “Father O’Flynn” being whistled outside in the passage and raised his head as Dr. Corrigan came in.
“Sorry to disoblige everybody,” said Corrigan, “but the driver of that Jaguar hadn’t any alcohol in him at all… What P.C. Ellis smelt on his breath must have been Ellis’s imagination or halitosis.”
But Lejeune at the moment was uninterested in the daily run of motorists’ offences.
“Come and take a look at this,” he said.
Corrigan took the letter handed to him. It was written in a small neat script. The heading was Everest, Glendower Close, Bournemouth.
Dear Inspector Lejeune,
You may remember that you asked me to get in touch with you if I should happen to see the man who was following Father Gorman on the night that he was killed. I kept a good lookout in the neighbourhood of my establishment, but never caught a glimpse of him again.
Yesterday, however, I attended a church fête in a village about twenty miles from here. I was attracted by the fact that Mrs. Oliver, the well-known detective writer, was going to be there autographing her own books. I am a great reader of detective stories and I was quite curious to see the lady.
What I did see, to my great surprise, was the man I described to you as having passed my shop the night Father Gorman was killed. Since then, it would seem, he must have met with an accident, as on this occasion he was propelling himself in a wheeled chair. I made some discreet inquiries as to who he might be, and it seems he is a local resident of the name of Venables. His
Hoping these details may be of some service to you,
Yours truly,
Zachariah Osborne
“Well?” said Lejeune.
“Sounds most unlikely,” said Corrigan dampingly.
“On the face of it, perhaps. But I’m not so sure—”
“This Osborne fellow—he couldn’t really have seen anyone’s face very clearly on a foggy night like that. I expect this is just a chance resemblance. You know what people are. Ring up all over the country to say they’ve seen a missing person—and nine times out of ten there’s no resemblance even to the printed description!”
“Osborne’s not like that,” said Lejeune.
“What is he like?”
“He’s a respectable dapper little chemist, old-fashioned, quite a character, and a great observer of persons. One of the dreams of his life is to be able to come forward and identify a wife poisoner who has purchased arsenic at his shop.”
Corrigan laughed.
“In that case, this is clearly an example of wishful thinking.”
“Perhaps.”
Corrigan looked at him curiously.
“So you think there may be something in it? What are you going to do about it?”
“There will be no harm, in any case, in making a few discreet inquiries about this Mr. Venables of—” he referred to the letter— “of Priors Court, Much Deeping.”
Nine
Mark Easterbrook’s Narrative
I
“What exciting things happen in the country!” said Hermia lightly.
We had just finished dinner. A pot of black coffee was in front of us—
I looked at her. The words were not quite what I had expected. I had spent the last quarter of an hour telling her my story. She had listened intelligently and with interest. But her response was not at all what I had expected. The tone of her voice was indulgent—she seemed neither shocked nor stirred.
“People who say that the country is dull and the towns full of excitement don’t know what they are talking about,” she went on. “The last of the witches have gone to cover in the tumbledown cottage, black masses are celebrated in remote manor houses by decadent young men. Superstition runs rife in isolated hamlets. Middle-aged spinsters clank their false scarabs and hold séances and planchettes run luridly over sheets of blank paper. One could really write a very amusing series of articles on it all. Why don’t you try your hand?”
“I don’t think you really understand what I’ve been telling you, Hermia.”
“But I do, Mark! I think it’s all tremendously interesting. It’s a page out of history, all the lingering forgotten lore of the Middle Ages.”
“I’m not interested historically,” I said irritably. “I’m interested in the facts. In a list of names on a sheet of paper. I know what has happened to some of those people. What’s going to happen or has happened to the rest?”
“Aren’t you letting yourself get rather carried away?”
“No,” I said obstinately. “I don’t think so. I think the menace is real. And I’m not alone in thinking so. The vicar’s wife agrees with me.”
“Oh, the vicar’s wife!” Hermia’s voice was scornful.
“No, not ‘the vicar’s wife’ like that! She’s a very unusual woman. This whole thing is real, Hermia.”
Hermia shrugged her shoulders.
“Perhaps.”
“But you don’t think so?”
“I think your imagination is running away with you a little, Mark. I daresay your middle-aged pussies are quite genuine in believing it all themselves. I’m sure they’re very nasty old pussies!”
“But not really sinister?”
“Really, Mark, how can they be?”
I was silent for a moment. My mind wavered—turning from light to darkness and back again. The darkness of the Pale Horse, the light that Hermia represented. Good everyday sensible light—the electric light bulb firmly fixed in its socket, illuminating all the dark corners. Nothing there—nothing at all—just the everyday objects you always find in a room. But yet—but yet—Hermia’s light, clear as it might make things seem, was after all an artificial light….
My mind swung back, resolutely, obstinately….
“I want to look into it all, Hermia. Get to the bottom of what’s going on.”
“I agree. I think you should. It might be quite interesting. In fact, really rather fun.”
“Not fun!” I said sharply.
I went on:
“I wanted to ask if you’d help me, Hermia.”
“Help you? How?”
“Help me to investigate. Get right down to what this is all about.”
“But Mark dear, just at present I’m most terribly busy. There’s my article for the Journal. And the Byzantium thing. And I’ve promised two of my students—”
Her voice went on reasonably—sensibly— I hardly listened.
“I see,” I said. “You’ve too much on your plate already.”
“That’s it.” Hermia was clearly relieved at my acquiescence. She smiled at me. Once again I was struck by her expression of indulgence. Such indulgence as a mother might show over her little son’s absorption in his new toy.
Damn it all, I wasn’t a little boy. I wasn’t looking for a mother—certainly not that kind of a mother. My own mother had been charming and feckless; and everyone in sight, including her son, had adored looking after her.
I considered Hermia dispassionately across the table.
So handsome, so mature, so intellectual, so well read! And so—how could one put it? So— yes, so damnably dull!
II
The next morning I tried to get hold of Jim Corrigan—without success. I left a message, however, that I’d be in between six and seven, if he could come for a drink. He was a busy man, I knew, and I doubted if he would be able to come at such short notice, but he turned up all right at about ten minutes to seven. While I was getting him a whisky he wandered round looking at my pictures and books. He remarked finally that he wouldn’t have minded being a Mogul Emperor himself instead of a hard-pressed overworked police surgeon.
“Though, I daresay,” he remarked as he settled down in a chair, “that they suffered a good deal from woman trouble. At least I escape that.”
“You’re not married, then?”
“No fear. And no more are you, I should say, from the comfortable mess in which you live. A wife would tidy all that up in next to no time.”
I told him that I didn’t think women were as bad as he made out.
I took my drink to the chair opposite him and began:
“You must wonder why I wanted to get hold of you so urgently, but as a matter of fact something has come up that may have a bearing on what we were discussing the last time we met.”
“What was that?—oh, of course. The Father Gorman business.”
“Yes—But first, does the phrase The Pale Horse mean anything to you?”
“The Pale Horse… The Pale Horse—No, I don’t think so—why?”
“Because I think it’s possible that it might have a connection with that list of names you showed me—I’ve been down in the country with friends—at a place called Much Deeping, and they took me to an old pub, or what was once a pub, called the Pale Horse.”
“Wait a bit! Much Deeping? Much Deeping… Is it anywhere near Bournemouth?”
“It’s about fifteen miles or so from Bournemouth.”
“I suppose you didn’t come across anyone called Venables down there?”
“Certainly I did.”
“You did?” Corrigan sat up in some excitement. “You certainly have a knack of going places! What is he like?”
“He’s a most remarkable man.”
“He is, is he? Remarkable in what way?”
“Principally in the force of his personality. Although he’s completely crippled by polio—”
?
“What?”
“He had polio some years ago. He’s paralysed from the waist down.”
Corrigan threw himself back in his chair with a look of disgust.
“That tears it! I thought it was too good to be true.”
“I don’t understand what you mean.”
Corrigan said, “You’ll have to meet the D.D.I. Divisional Detective-Inspector Lejeune. He’ll be interested in what you have to say. When Gorman was killed, Lejeune asked for information from anyone who had seen him in the street that night. Most of the answers were useless, as is usual. But there was a pharmacist, name of Osborne, who has a shop in those parts. He reported having seen Gorman pass his place that night, and he also saw a man who followed close after him—naturally he didn’t think anything of it at that time. But he managed to describe this chap pretty closely—seemed quite sure he’d know him again. Well, a couple of days ago Lejeune got a letter from Osborne. He’s retired, and living in Bournemouth. He’d been over to some local fête and he said he’d seen the man in question there. He was at the fête in a wheeled chair. Osborne asked who he was and was told his name was Venables.”
He looked at me questioningly. I nodded.
“Quite right,” I said. “It was Venables. He was at the fête. But he couldn’t have been the man who was walking along a street in Paddington following Father Gorman. It’s physically impossible. Osborne made a mistake.”
“He described him very meticulously. Height about six feet, a prominent beaked nose, and a noticeable Adam’s apple. Correct?”
“Yes. It fits Venables. But all the same—”
“I know. Mr. Osborne isn’t necessarily as good as he thinks he is at recognising people. Clearly he was misled by the coincidence of a chance resemblance. But it’s disturbing to have you come along shooting your mouth off about that very district—talking about some pale horse or other. What is this pale horse? Let’s have your story.”