The Pale Horse - Agatha Christie [53]
He shook his head angrily, and then went on:
“This woman, Thyrza Grey; you say she boasted to you about her powers! Well, she can do so with impunity. Charge her with murder, put her in the dock, let her trumpet to heaven and a jury that she has released people from the toils of this world by will power or weaving spells—or what have you. She wouldn’t be guilty according to the law. She’s never been near the people who died, we’ve checked on that, she hasn’t sent them poisoned chocolates through the post or anything of that kind. According to her own account, she just sits in a room and employs telepathy! Why, the whole thing would be laughed out of Court!”
I murmured:
“But Lu and Aengus laugh not. Nor any in the high celestial House.”
“What’s that?”
“Sorry. A quotation from the ‘Immortal Hour.’”
“Well, it’s true enough. The devils in Hell are laughing but not the Host of Heaven. It’s an—an evil business, Mr. Easterbrook.”
“Yes,” I said. “It’s a word that we don’t use very much nowadays. But it’s the only word applicable here. That’s why—”
“Yes?”
Lejeune looked at me inquiringly.
I spoke in a rush. “I think there’s a chance—a possible chance—of getting to know a bit more about all this. I and a friend of mine have worked out a plan. You may think it very silly—”
“I’ll be the judge of that.”
“First of all, I take it from what you’ve said, that you are sure in your mind that there is such an organisation as the one we’ve been discussing, and that it works?”
“It certainly works.”
“But you don’t know how it works? The first steps are already formulated. The individual I call the client hears vaguely about this organisation, gets to know more about it, is sent to Mr. Bradley in Birmingham, and decides that he will go ahead. He enters into some agreement with Bradley, and then is, or so I presume, sent to the Pale Horse. But what happens after that, we don’t know! What, exactly, happens at the Pale Horse? Somebody’s got to go and find out.”
“Go on.”
“Because until we do know, exactly, what Thyrza Grey actually does, we can’t get any further—Your police doctor, Jim Corrigan, says the whole idea is poppycock—but is it? Inspector Lejeune, is it?”
Lejeune sighed.
“You know what I’d answer—what any sane person would answer—the answer would be ‘Yes, of course it is!’—but I’m speaking now unofficially. Very odd things have happened during the last hundred years. Would anyone have believed seventy years ago that a person could hear Big Ben strike twelve on a little box and, after it had finished striking, hear it again with his own ears through the window, from the actual clock itself—and no jiggery pokery. But Big Ben struck once—not twice—the sound was brought to the ears of the person by two different kinds of waves! Would you believe you could hear a man speaking in New York in your own drawing room, without so much as a connecting wire? Would you have believed—? Oh! a dozen other things—things that are now everyday knowledge that a child gabbles off!”
“In other words, anything’s possible?”
“That’s what I mean. If you ask me if Thyrza Grey can kill someone by rolling her eyes or going into a trance, or projecting her will, I still say ‘No.’ But—I’m not sure—How can I be? If she’s stumbled on something—”
“Yes,” I said. “The supernatural seems supernatural. But the science of tomorrow is the supernatural of today.”
“I’m not talking officially, mind,” Lejeune warned me.
“Man, you’re talking sense. And the answer is, someone has got to go and see what actually happens. That’s what I propose to do—go and see.”
Lejeune stared at me.
“The way’s already paved,” I said.
I settled down then, and told him about it. I told him exactly what I and a friend of mine planned to do.
He listened, frowning and pulling at his lower lip.
“Mr. Easterbrook, I see your point. Circumstances have, so to speak, given you the entrée. But I don’t know whether you fully realise that what you are proposing to do may be dangerous—these are dangerous people. It may be dangerous for you—but it will