The Pale Horse - Agatha Christie [4]
“Not in the finished article,” I said.
“Ah, but what it costs me,” said Mrs. Oliver darkly. “Say what you like, it’s not natural for five or six people to be on the spot when B is murdered and all have a motive for killing B—unless, that is, B is absolutely madly unpleasant and in that case nobody will mind whether he’s been killed or not, and doesn’t care in the least who’s done it.”
“I see your problem,” I said. “But if you’ve dealt with it successfully fifty-five times, you will manage to deal with it once again.”
“That’s what I tell myself,” said Mrs. Oliver, “over and over again, but every single time I can’t believe it, and so I’m in agony.”
She seized her hair again and tugged it violently.
“Don’t,” I cried. “You’ll have it out by the roots.”
“Nonsense,” said Mrs. Oliver. “Hair’s tough. Though when I had measles at fourteen with a very high temperature, it did come out—all round the front. Most shaming. And it was six whole months before it grew properly again. Awful for a girl—girls mind so. I thought of it yesterday when I was visiting Mary Delafontaine in that nursing home. Her hair was coming out just like mine did. She said she’d have to get a false front when she was better. If you’re sixty it doesn’t always grow again, I believe.”
“I saw a girl pull out another girl’s hair by the roots the other night,” I said. I was conscious of a slight note of pride in my voice as one who has seen life.
“What extraordinary places have you been going to?” asked Mrs. Oliver.
“This was in a coffee bar in Chelsea.”
“Oh Chelsea!” said Mrs. Oliver. “Everything happens there, I believe. Beatniks and sputniks and squares and the beat generation. I don’t write about them much because I’m so afraid of getting the terms wrong. It’s safer, I think, to stick to what you know.”
“Such as?”
“People on cruises, and in hotels, and what goes on in hospitals, and on parish councils—and sales of work—and music festivals, and girls in shops, and committees and daily women, and young men and girls who hike round the world in the interests of science, and shop assistants—”
She paused, out of breath.
“That seems fairly comprehensive to be getting on with,” I said.
“All the same, you might take me out to a coffee bar in Chelsea sometime—just to widen my experience,” said Mrs. Oliver wistfully.
“Any time you say. Tonight?”
“Not tonight. I’m too busy writing or rather worrying because I can’t write. That’s really the most tiresome thing about writing—though everything is tiresome really, except the one moment when you get what you think is going to be a wonderful idea, and can hardly wait to begin. Tell me, Mark, do you think it is possible to kill someone by remote control?”
“What do you mean by remote control? Press a button and set off a radioactive death ray?”
“No, no, not science fiction. I suppose,” she paused doubtfully, “I really mean black magic.”
“Wax figures and pins in them?”
“Oh, wax figures are right out,” said Mrs. Oliver scornfully. “But queer things do happen—in Africa or the West Indies. People are always telling you so. How natives just curl up and die. Voodoo—or juju… Anyway, you know what I mean.”
I said that much of that was attributed nowadays to the power of suggestion. Word is always conveyed to the victim that his death has been decreed by the medicine man—and his subconscious does the rest.
Mrs. Oliver snorted.
“If anyone hinted to me that I had been doomed to lie down and die, I’d take a pleasure in thwarting their expectations!”
I laughed.
“You’ve got centuries of good Occidental sceptical blood in your veins. No predispositions.”
“Then you think it can happen?”
“I don’t know enough about the subject to judge. What put it into your head? Is your new masterpiece to be Murder by Suggestion?”
“No, indeed. Good old-fashioned rat poison or arsenic is good enough for me. Or the reliable blunt instrument. Not firearms if possible. Firearms are so tricky. But you didn’t come here to talk to me about my books.”
“Frankly no—The fact is that my cousin Rhoda Despard has got a church fête