The Pale Horse - Agatha Christie [73]
And, of course, all that he said was true. Ginger had bronchopneumonia. There was nothing mysterious about the disease from which she was suffering. She just had it—and had it badly.
I had one interview with the Home Office psychologist. He was a quaint little cock robin of a man, rising up and down on his toes, with eyes twinkling through very thick lenses.
He asked me innumerable questions, half of which I could see no point in whatever, but there must have been a point, for he nodded sapiently at my answers. He entirely refused to commit himself, wherein he was probably wise. He made occasional pronouncements in what I took to be the jargon of his trade. He tried, I think, various forms of hypnotism on Ginger, but by what seemed to be universal consent, no one would tell me very much. Possibly because there was nothing to tell.
I avoided my own friends and acquaintances, yet the loneliness of my existence was insupportable.
Finally, in an excess of desperation, I rang up Poppy at her flower shop. Would she come out and dine with me. Poppy would love to do so.
I took her to the Fantasie. Poppy prattled happily and I found her company very soothing. But I had not asked her out only for her soothing qualities. Having lulled her into a happy stupor with delicious food and drink, I began a little cautious probing. It seemed to be possible that Poppy might know something without being wholly conscious of what it was she knew. I asked her if she remembered my friend Ginger. Poppy said, “Of course,” opening her big blue eyes, and asked what Ginger was doing nowadays.
“She’s very ill,” I said.
“Poor pet.” Poppy looked as concerned as it was possible for her to look, which was not very much.
“She got herself mixed up with something,” I said. “I believe she asked your advice about it. Pale Horse stuff. Cost her a terrible lot of money.”
“Oh,” exclaimed Poppy, eyes wider still. “So it was you!”
For a moment or two I didn’t understand. Then it dawned upon me that Poppy was identifying me with the “man” whose invalid wife was the bar to Ginger’s happiness. So excited was she by this revelation of our love life that she quite failed to be alarmed by the mention of the Pale Horse.
She breathed excitedly:
“Did it work?”
“It went a bit wrong somehow,” I added, “The dog it was that died.”
“What dog?” asked Poppy, at sea.
I saw that words of one syllable would always be needed where Poppy was concerned.
“The—er—business seems to have recoiled upon Ginger. Did you ever hear of that happening before?”
Poppy never had.
“Of course,” I said, “this stuff they do at the Pale Horse down in Much Deeping—you know about that, don’t you?”
“I didn’t know where it was. Down in the country somewhere.”
“I couldn’t quite make out from Ginger what it is they do….”
I waited carefully.
“Rays, isn’t it?” said Poppy vaguely. “Something like that. From outer space,” she added helpfully. “Like the Russians!”
I decided that Poppy was now relying on her limited imagination.
“Something of that kind,” I agreed. “But it must be quite dangerous. I mean, for Ginger to get ill like this.”
“But it was your wife who was to be ill and die, wasn’t it?”
“Yes,” I said, accepting the role Ginger and Poppy had planted on me. “But it seems to have gone wrong—backfired.”
“You mean—?” Poppy made a terrific mental effort. “Like when you plug an electric iron in wrong and you get a shock?”
“Exactly,” I said. “Just like that. Did you ever know that sort of thing happen before?”
“Well, not that way—”
“What way, then?”
“Well, I mean if one didn’t pay up—afterwards. A man I knew wouldn’t.” Her voice dropped in an awestricken fashion. “He was killed in the tube—fell off the platform in front of a train.”
“It might have been an accident.”
“Oh no,” said Poppy, shocked at the thought. “It was THEM.”
I poured some more champagne into Poppy’s glass. Here, I felt, in front of me was someone who might be helpful if only you could tear out of her the disassociated facts that were flitting about in what she called her brain. She had heard things said, and