The Pale Horse - Agatha Christie [30]
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.