The Pale Horse - Agatha Christie [10]
Lejeune continued to look deeply attentive and Mrs. Coppins warmed to her theme.
“Lent her some magazines, I did. But she didn’t seem able to keep her mind on reading. Said once, I remember, ‘If things aren’t all they should be, it’s better not to know about it, don’t you agree?’ and I said, ‘That’s right, dearie.’ And she said, ‘I don’t know—I’ve never really been sure.’ And I said that was all right, then. And she said, “Everything I’ve done has always been perfectly straightforward and aboveboard. I’ve nothing to reproach myself with.’ And I said, ‘Of course you haven’t, dear.’ But I did just wonder in my own mind whether in the firm that employed her there mightn’t have been some funny business with the accounts maybe, and she’d got wind of it—but had felt it wasn’t really her business.”
“Possible,” agreed Lejeune.
“Anyway, she got well again—or nearly so, and went back to work. I told her it was too soon. Give yourself another day or two, I said. And there, how right I was! Come back the second evening, she did, and I could see at once she’d got a high fever. Couldn’t hardly climb the stairs. You must have the doctor, I says, but no, she wouldn’t. Worse and worse she got, all that day, her eyes glassy, and her cheeks like fire, and her breathing terrible. And the next day in the evening she said to me, hardly able to get the words out: ‘A priest. I must have a priest. And quickly…or it will be too late.’ But it wasn’t our vicar she wanted. It had to be a Roman Catholic priest. I never knew she was a Roman, never any crucifix about or anything like that.”
But there had been a crucifix, tucked away at the bottom of the suitcase. Lejeune did not mention it. He sat listening.
“I saw young Mike in the street and I sent him for that Father Gorman at St. Dominic’s. And I rang for the doctor, and the hospital on my own account, not saying nothing to her.”
“You took the priest up to her when he came?”
“Yes, I did. And left them together.”
“Did either of them say anything?”
“Well now, I can’t exactly remember. I was talking myself, saying here was the priest and now she’d be all right, trying to cheer her up, but I do call to mind now as I closed the door I heard her say something about wickedness. Yes—and something, too, about a horse—horse racing, maybe. I like a half crown on myself occasionally—but there’s a lot of crookedness goes on in racing, so they say.”
“Wickedness,” said Lejeune. He was struck by the word.
“Have to confess their sins, don’t they, Romans, before they die? So I suppose that was it.”
Lejeune did not doubt that that was it, but his imagination was stirred by the word used. Wickedness….
Something rather special in wickedness, he thought, if the priest who knew about it was followed and clubbed to death….
II
There was nothing to be learnt from the other three lodgers in the house. Two of them, a bank clerk and an elderly man who worked in a shoe shop, had been there for some years. The third was a girl of twenty-two who had come there recently and had a job in a nearby department store. All three of them barely knew Mrs. Davis by sight.
The woman who had reported having seen Father Gorman in the street that evening had no useful information to give. She was a Catholic who attended St. Dominic’s and she knew Father Gorman by sight. She had seen him turn out of Benthall Street and go into Tony’s Place about ten minutes to eight. That was all.
Mr. Osborne, the proprietor of the chemist’s shop on the corner of Barton Street,