The Pale Horse - Agatha Christie [64]
“Seems harmless enough,” I commented.
“What were you expecting?”
“I don’t really know.”
I had wished, I suppose, for something overt that I could tackle.
But the victims of the Pale Horse died of their own free will… No, the word free was not the one to use. Seeds of physical weakness in them developed by a process that I did not understand.
Ginger rebuffed a weak suggestion of mine about a false gas meter man.
“He had genuine credentials,” she said. “I asked for them! He was only the man who gets up on a ladder inside the bathroom and reads off the figures and writes them down. He’s far too grand to touch pipes or gas jets. And I can assure you he hasn’t arranged an escape of gas in my bedroom.”
No, the Pale Horse did not deal with accidental gas escapes—nothing so concrete!
“Oh! I had one other visitor,” said Ginger. “Your friend, Dr. Corrigan. He’s nice.”
“I suppose Lejeune sent him.”
“He seemed to think he ought to rally to a namesake. Up the Corrigans!”
I rang off, much relieved in mind.
I got back to find Rhoda busy on the lawn with one of her dogs. She was anointing it with some unguent.
“The vet’s just gone,” she said. “He says it’s ringworm. It’s frightfully catching, I believe. I don’t want the children getting it—or the other dogs.”
“Or even adult human beings,” I suggested.
“Oh, it’s usually children who get it. Thank goodness they’re away at school all day—keep quiet, Sheila. Don’t wriggle.
“This stuff makes the hair fall out,” she went on. “It leaves bald spots for a bit but it grows again.”
I nodded, offered to help, was refused, for which I was thankful, and wandered off again.
The curse of the country, I have always thought, is that there are seldom more than three directions in which you can go for a walk. In Much Deeping, you could either take the Garsington road, or the road to Long Cottenham, or you could go up Shadhanger Lane to the main London–Bournemouth road two miles away.
By the following day at lunchtime, I had sampled both the Garsington and the Long Cottenham roads. Shadhanger Lane was the next prospect.
I started off, and on my way was struck by an idea. The entrance to Priors Court opened off Shadhanger Lane. Why should I not go and call on Mr. Venables?
The more I considered the idea, the more I liked it. There would be nothing suspicious about my doing so. When I had been staying down here before, Rhoda had taken me over there. It would be easy and natural to call and ask if I might be shown again some particular object that I had not had time really to look at and enjoy on that occasion.
The recognition of Venables by this chemist—what was his name—Ogden?—Osborne?—was interesting, to say the least of it. Granted that, according to Lejeune, it would have been quite impossible for the man in question to have been Venables owing to the latter’s disability, yet it was intriguing that a mistake should have been made about a man living in this particular neighbourhood—and a man, one had to admit, who fitted in so well in character.
There was something mysterious about Venables. I had felt it from the first. He had, I was sure, first-class brains. And there was something about him—what word could I use?—the word vulpine came to me. Predatory—destructive. A man, perhaps, too clever to be a killer himself—but a man who could organise killing very well if he wanted to.
As far as all that went, I could fit Venables into the part perfectly. The mastermind behind the scenes. But this chemist, Osborne, had claimed that he had seen Venables walking along a London street. Since that was impossible, then the identification was worthless, and the fact that Venables lived in the vicinity of the Pale Horse meant nothing.
All the same, I thought, I would like to have another look at Mr. Venables. So in due course I turned in at