The Hound of Death - Agatha Christie [7]
Once before I remembered this– on the altar steps in Belgium…
The Dr Rose, he is of the Brotherhood. He knows the First Sign, and the form of the Second, though its meaning is hidden to all save a chosen few. He would learn of me the Sixth. I have withstood him so far–but I grow weak, Monsieur, it is not well that a man should come to power before his time. Many centuries must go by ere the world is ready to have the power of death delivered into its hand…I beseech you, Monsieur, you who love goodness and truth, to help me…before it is too late.
Your sister in Christ,
Marie Angelique
I let the paper fall. The solid earth beneath me seemed a little less solid than usual. Then I began to rally. The poor woman’s belief, genuine enough, had almost affected me! One thing was clear. Dr Rose, in his zeal for a case, was grossly abusing his professional standing. I would run down and–
Suddenly I noticed a letter from Kitty amongst my other correspondence. I tore it open.
‘Such an awful thing has happened,’ I read. ‘You remember Dr Rose’s little cottage on the cliff? It was swept away by a landslide last night, the doctor and that poor nun, Sister Marie Angelique, were killed. The debris on the beach is too awful–all piled up in a fantastic mass–from a distance it looks like a great hound…’ The letter dropped from my hand.
The other facts may be coincidence. A Mr Rose, whom I discovered to be a wealthy relative of the doctor’s, died suddenly that same night–it was said struck by lightning. As far as was known no thunderstorm had occurred in the neighbourhood, but one or two people declared they had heard one peal of thunder. He had an electric burn on him ‘of a curious shape’. His will left everything to his nephew, Dr Rose.
Now, supposing that Dr Rose succeeded in obtaining the secret of the Sixth Sign from Sister Marie Angelique. I had always felt him to be an unscrupulous man–he would not shrink at taking his uncle’s life if he were sure it could not be brought home to him. But one sentence of Sister Marie Angelique’s letter rings in my brain…‘being careful not to close the Circle…’ Dr Rose did not exercise that care–was perhaps unaware of the steps to take, or even of the need for them. So the Force he employed returned, completing its circuit…
But of course it is all nonsense! Everything can be accounted for quite naturally. That the doctor believed in Sister Marie Angelique’s hallucinations merely proves that his mind, too, was slightly unbalanced.
Yet sometimes I dream of a continent under the seas where men once lived and attained to a degree of civilization far ahead of ours…
Or did Sister Marie Angelique remember backwards–as some say is possible–and is this City of the Circles in the future and not in the past?
Nonsense–of course the whole thing was merely hallucination!
The Red Signal
‘No, but how too thrilling,’ said pretty Mrs Eversleigh, opening her lovely, but slightly vacant eyes very wide. ‘They always say women have a sixth sense; do you think it’s true, Sir Alington?’
The famous alienist smiled sardonically. He had an unbounded contempt for the foolish pretty type, such as his fellow guest. Alington West was the supreme authority on mental disease, and he was fully alive to his own position and importance. A slightly pompous man of full figure.
‘A great deal of nonsense is talked, I know that, Mrs Eversleigh. What does the term mean–a sixth sense?’
‘You scientific men are always so severe. And it really is extraordinary the way one seems to positively know things sometimes–just know them, feel them, I mean–quite uncanny–it really is. Claire knows