The Pale Horse - Agatha Christie [59]
The meal came to an end.
“No coffee,” said Thyrza apologetically. “One doesn’t want to be overstimulated.” She rose. “Sybil?”
“Yes,” said Sybil, her face taking on what she clearly thought was an ecstatic and otherworld expression. “I must go and PREPARE….”
Bella began to clear the table. I wandered over to where the old inn sign hung. Thyrza followed me.
“You can’t really see it at all by this light,” she said.
That was quite true. The faint pale image against the dark encrusted grime of the panel could hardly be distinguished as that of a horse. The hall was lit by feeble electric bulbs shielded by thick vellum shades.
“That red-haired girl—what’s her name?—Ginger something—who was staying down here—said she’d do a spot of cleaning and restoring on it,” said Thyrza. “Don’t suppose she’ll ever remember about it, though.” She added casually, “She works for some gallery or other in London.”
It gave me a strange feeling to hear Ginger referred to lightly and casually.
I said, staring at the picture:
“It might be interesting.”
“It’s not a good painting, of course,” said Thyrza. “Just a daub. But it goes with the place—and it’s certainly well over three hundred years old.”
“Ready.”
We wheeled abruptly.
Bella, emerging out of the gloom, was beckoning.
“Time to get on with things,” said Thyrza, still brisk and matter-of-fact.
I followed her as she led the way out to the converted barn.
As I have said, there was no entrance to it from the house. It was a dark overcast night, no stars. We came out of the dense outer blackness into the long lighted room.
The barn, by night, was transformed. By day it had seemed a pleasant library. Now it had become something more. There were lamps, but these were not turned on. The lighting was indirect and flooded the room with a soft but cold light. In the centre of the floor was a kind of raised bed or divan. It was spread with a purple cloth, embroidered with various cabbalistic signs.
On the far side of the room was what appeared to be a small brazier, and next to it a big copper basin—an old one by the look of it.
On the other side, set back almost touching the wall, was a heavy oak-backed chair. Thyrza motioned me towards it.
“Sit there,” she said.
I sat obediently. Thyrza’s manner had changed. The odd thing was that I could not define exactly in what the change consisted. There was none of Sybil’s spurious occultism about it. It was more as though an everyday curtain of normal trivial life had been lifted. Behind it was the real woman, displaying something of the manner of a surgeon approaching the operating table for a difficult and dangerous operation. This impression was heightened when she went to a cupboard in the wall and took from it what appeared to be a kind of long overall. It seemed to be made, when the light caught it, of some metallic woven tissue. She drew on long gauntlets of what looked like a kind of fine mesh rather resembling a “bulletproof vest” I had once been shown.
“One has to take precautions,” she said.
The phrase struck me as slightly sinister.
Then she addressed me in an emphatic deep voice.
“I must impress upon you, Mr. Easterbrook, the necessity of remaining absolutely still where you are. On no account must you move from that chair. It might not be safe to do so. This is no child’s game. I am dealing with forces that are dangerous to those who do not know how to handle them!” She paused and then asked, “You have brought what you were instructed to bring?”
Without a word, I drew from my pocket a brown suède glove and handed it to her.
She took it and moved over to a metal lamp with a gooseneck shade. She switched on the lamp and held the glove under its rays which were of a peculiar sickly colour, turning the glove from its rich brown to a characterless grey.