The Pale Horse - Agatha Christie [60]
She switched off the lamp, nodding in approval.
“Most suitable,” she said. “The physical emanations from its wearer are quite strong.”
She put it down on top of what appeared to be a large radio cabinet at the end of the room. Then she raised her voice a little. “Bella. Sybil. We are ready.”
Sybil came in first. She wore a long black cloak over her peacock dress. This she flung aside with a dramatic gesture. It slid down, looking like an inky pool on the floor. She came forward.
“I do hope it will be all right,” she said. “One never knows. Please don’t adopt a sceptical frame of mind, Mr. Easterbrook. It does so hinder things.”
“Mr. Easterbrook has not come here to mock,” said Thyrza.
There was a certain grimness in her tone.
Sybil lay down on the purple divan. Thyrza bent over her, arranging her draperies.
“Quite comfortable?” she asked solicitously.
“Yes, thank you, dear.”
Thyrza switched off some lights. Then she wheeled up what was, in effect, a kind of canopy on wheels. This she placed so that it overshadowed the divan and left Sybil in a deep shadow in the middle of outlying dim twilight.
“Too much light is harmful to a complete trance,” she said.
“Now, I think, we are ready. Bella?”
Bella came out of the shadows. The two women approached me. With her right hand Thyrza took my left. Her left hand took Bella’s right. Bella’s left hand found my right hand. Thyrza’s hand was dry and hard, Bella’s was cold and boneless—it felt like a slug in mine and I shivered in revulsion.
Thyrza must have touched a switch somewhere, for music sounded faintly from the ceiling. I recognised it as Mendelssohn’s funeral march.
“Mise en scêne,” I said to myself rather scornfully. “Meretricious trappings!” I was cool and critical—but nevertheless aware of an undercurrent of some unwanted emotional apprehension.
The music stopped. There was a long wait. There was only the sound of breathing. Bella’s slightly wheezy, Sybil’s deep and regular.
And then, suddenly, Sybil spoke. Not, however, in her own voice. It was a man’s voice, as unlike her own mincing accents as could be. It had a guttural foreign accent.
“I am here,” the voice said.
My hands were released. Bella flitted away into the shadows. Thyrza said: “Good evening. Is that Macandal?”
“I am Macandal.”
Thyrza went to the divan and drew away the protecting canopy. The soft light flowed down onto Sybil’s face. She appeared to be deeply asleep. In this repose her face looked quite different.
The lines were smoothed away. She looked years younger. One could almost say that she looked beautiful.
Thyrza said:
“Are you prepared, Macandal, to submit to my desire and my will?”
The new deep voice said:
“I am.”
“Will you undertake to protect the body of the Dossu that lies here and which you now inhabit, from all physical injury and harm? Will you dedicate its vital force to my purpose, that that purpose may be accomplished through it?”
“I will.”
“Will you so dedicate this body that death may pass through it, obeying such natural laws as may be available in the body of the recipient?”
“The dead must be sent to cause death. It shall be so.”
Thyrza drew back a step. Bella came up and held out what I saw was a crucifix. Thyrza placed it on Sybil’s breast in a reversed position. Then Bella brought a small green phial. From this Thyrza poured out a drop or two onto Sybil’s forehead, and traced something with her finger. Again I fancied that it was the sign of the cross upside down.
She said to me, briefly, “Holy water from the Catholic church at Garsington.”
Her voice was quite ordinary, and this, which ought to have broken the spell, did not do so. It made the whole business, somehow, more alarming.
Finally she brought that rather horrible rattle we had seen before. She shook it three times and then clasped Sybil’s hand round it.
She stepped back and said:
“All is ready—”
Bella repeated the words:
“All is ready—”
Thyrza addressed me in a low tone:
“I don’t suppose you’re much impressed, are you, by all the ritual? Some of our visitors are. To you, I daresay,