The Pale Horse - Agatha Christie [34]
He interrupted me.
“So you’ve swallowed all this, hook, line and sinker?”
“Not at all,” I said. “I just wanted to know if there is any scientific basis for it.”
Corrigan snorted.
“Scientific basis my foot!”
“All right. I just wanted to know.”
“You’ll be saying next she’s the Woman with the Box.”
“What Woman with a box?”
“Just one of the wild stories that turns up from time to time—by Nostradamus out of Mother Shipton. Some people will swallow anything.”
“You might at least tell me how you are getting on with that list of names.”
“The boys have been hard at work, but these things take time and a lot of routine work. Names without addresses or Christian names aren’t easy to trace or identify.”
“Let’s take it from a different angle. I’d be willing to bet you one thing. Within a fairly recent period—say a year to a year and a half—every one of those names has appeared on a death certificate. Am I right?”
He gave me a queer look.
“You’re right—for what it’s worth.”
“That’s the thing they all have in common—death.”
“Yes, but that mayn’t mean as much as it sounds, Mark. Have you any idea how many people die every day in the British Isles? And some of those names are quite common—which doesn’t help.”
“Delafontaine,” I said. “Mary Delafontaine. That’s not a very common name, is it? The funeral was last Tuesday, I understand.”
He shot me a quick glance.
“How do you know that? Saw it in the paper. I suppose.”
“I heard it from a friend of hers.”
“There was nothing fishy about her death. I can tell you that. In fact, there’s been nothing questionable about any of the deaths the police have been investigating. If they were ‘accidents’ it might be suspicious. But the deaths are all perfectly normal deaths. Pneumonia, cerebral haemorrhage, tumour on the brain, gallstones, one case of polio—nothing in the least suspicious.”
I nodded.
“Not accident,” I said. “Not poisoning. Just plain illnesses leading to death. Just as Thyrza Grey claims.”
“Are you really suggesting that that woman can cause someone she’s never seen, miles away, to catch pneumonia and die of it?”
“I’m not suggesting such a thing. She did. I think it’s fantastic and I’d like to think it’s impossible. But there are certain curious factors. There’s the casual mention of a Pale Horse—in connection with the removal of unwanted persons. There is a place called the Pale Horse—and the woman who lives there practically boasts that such an operation is possible. Living in that neighbourhood is a man who is recognised very positively as the man who was seen following Father Gorman on the night that he was killed—the night when he had been called to a dying woman who was heard to speak of ‘great wickedness.’ Rather a lot of coincidences, don’t you think?”
“The man couldn’t have been Venables, since according to you, he’s been paralysed for years.”
“It isn’t possible, from the medical point of view, that that paralysis could be faked?”
“Of course not. The limbs would be atrophied.”
“That certainly seems to settle the question,” I admitted. I sighed. “A pity. If there is a—I don’t know quite what to call it—an organisation that specialises in ‘Removals—Human’ Venables is the kind of brain I can see running it. The things he has in that house of his represent a fantastic amount of money. Where does that money come from?”
I paused—and then said:
“All these people who have died—tidily—in their beds, of this, that and the other—were there people who profited by their deaths?”
“Someone always profits by a death—in greater or lesser degree. There were no notably suspicious circumstances, if that is what you mean.”
“It isn’t quite.”
“Lady Hesketh-Dubois, as you probably know, left about fifty thousand net. A niece and a nephew inherit. Nephew lives in Canada. Niece is married and lives in North of England. Both could do with the money. Thomasina Tuckerton was left a very large fortune by her father. If she died unmarried before the age of twenty-one, it reverts