The Pale Horse - Agatha Christie [77]
“Do you think they’re all three in it?” asked Lejeune.
“I shouldn’t think so. Bella’s belief in witchcraft is genuine, I should say. She believes in her own powers and rejoices in them. The same with Sybil. She’s got a genuine gift of mediumship. She goes into a trance and she doesn’t know what happens. She believes everything that Thyrza tells her.”
“So Thyrza is the ruling spirit?”
I said slowly:
“As far as the Pale Horse is concerned, yes. But she’s not the real brains of the show. The real brain works behind the scenes. He plans and organises. It’s all beautifully dovetailed, you know. Everyone has his or her job, and no one has anything on anyone else. Bradley runs the financial and legal side. Apart from that, he doesn’t know what happens elsewhere. He’s handsomely paid, of course; so is Thyrza Grey.”
“You seem to have got it all taped to your satisfaction,” said Lejeune drily.
“I haven’t. Not yet. But we know the basic necessary fact. It’s the same as it has been through the ages. Crude and simple. Just plain poison. The dear old death potion.”
“What put thallium into your head?”
“Several things suddenly came together. The beginning of the whole business was the thing I saw that night in Chelsea. A girl whose hair was being pulled out by the roots by another girl. And she said: ‘It didn’t really hurt.’ It wasn’t bravery, as I thought; it was simple fact. It didn’t hurt.
“I read an article on thallium poisoning when I was in America. A lot of workers in a factory died one after the other. Their deaths were put down to astonishingly varied causes. Amongst them, if I remember rightly, were paratyphoid, apoplexy, alcoholic neuritis, bulbar paralysis, epilepsy, gastroenteritis, and so on. Then there was a woman who poisoned seven people. Diagnosis included brain tumour, encephalitis, and lobar pneumonia. The symptoms vary a good deal, I understand. They may start with diarrhoea and vomiting, or there may be a stage of intoxication, again it may begin with pain in the limbs, and be put down as polyneuritis or rheumatic fever or polio—one patient was put in an iron lung. Sometimes there’s pigmentation of the skin.”
“You talk like a medical dictionary!”
“Naturally. I’ve been looking it up. But one thing always happens sooner or later. The hair falls out. Thallium used to be used for depilation at one time—particularly for children with ringworm. Then it was found to be dangerous. But it’s occasionally given internally, but with very careful dosage going by the weight of the patient. It’s mainly used nowadays for rats, I believe. It’s tasteless, soluble, and easy to buy. There’s only one thing, poisoning mustn’t be suspected.”
Lejeune nodded.
“Exactly,” he said. “Hence the insistence by the Pale Horse that the murderer must stay away from his intended victim. No suspicion of foul play ever arises. Why should it? There’s no interested party who could have had access to food or drink. No purchase of thallium or any other poison is ever made by him or her. That’s the beauty of it. The real work is done by someone who has no connection whatever with the victim. Someone, I think, who appears once and once only.”
He paused.
“Any ideas on that?”
“Only one. A common factor appears to be that on every occasion some pleasant harmless-seeming woman calls with a questionnaire on behalf of a domestic research unit.”
“You think that that woman is the one who plants the poison?