The Pale Horse

by Agatha Christie

  “The girl turned her head away and screwed up her eyes. The doctor dipped a glass rod in cold water and drew it down the inside of her arm. The girl screamed with agony. He said, ‘You’ll be all right now.’ She said, ‘I expect so, but it was awful. It burnt.’ The queer thing to me was—not that she believed that she had been burnt, but that her arm actually was burnt. The flesh was actually blistered everywhere the rod had touched it.”

  “Was she cured?” Despard asked curiously.

  “Oh yes. The neuritis, or whatever it was, never reappeared. She had to be treated for the burnt arm, though.”

  “Extraordinary,” said Despard. “It goes to show, doesn’t it?”

  “The doctor was startled himself.”

  “I bet he was…” He looked at me curiously.

  “Why were you really so keen to go to that séance last night?”

  I shrugged my shoulders.

  “Those three women intrigue me. I wanted to see what sort of show they would put up.”

  Despard said no more. I don’t think he believed me. As I have said, he was a perceptive man.

  Presently I went along to the vicarage. The door was open but there seemed to be no one in the house.

  I went to the little room where the telephone was, and rang up Ginger.

  It seemed an eternity before I heard her voice.

  “Hallo!”

  “Ginger!”

  “Oh, it’s you. What happened?”

  “You’re all right?”

  “Of course I’m all right. Why shouldn’t I be?”

  Waves of relief swept over me.

  There was nothing wrong with Ginger; the familiar challenge of her manner did me a world of good. How could I ever have believed that a lot of mumbo jumbo could hurt so normal a creature as Ginger?

  “I just thought you might have had bad dreams or something,” I said rather lamely.

  “Well, I didn’t. I expected to have, but all that happened was that I kept waking up and wondering if I felt anything peculiar happening to me. I really felt almost indignant because nothing did happen to me—”

  I laughed.

  “But go on—tell me,” said Ginger. “What’s it all about?”

  “Nothing much out of the ordinary. Sybil lay on a purple couch and went into a trance.”

  Ginger gave a spurt of laughter.

  “Did she? How wonderful! Was it a velvet one and did she have nothing on?”

  “Sybil is no Madame de Montespan. And it wasn’t a black mass. Actually Sybil wore quite a lot of clothes, peacock blue, and lots of embroidered symbols.”

  “Sounds most appropriate and Sybil-like. What did Bella do?”

  “That really was rather beastly. She killed a white cock and then dipped your glove in the blood.”

  “Oo—nasty…What else?”

  “Lots of things,” I said.

  I thought that I was doing quite well. I went on:

  “Thyrza gave me the whole bag of tricks. Summoned up a spirit—Macandal was, I think, the name. And there were coloured lights and chanting. The whole thing would have been quite impressive to some people—scared ’em out of their wits.”

  “But it didn’t scare you?”

  “Bella did scare me a bit,” I said. “She had a very nasty-looking knife, and I thought she might lose her head and add me to the cock as a second victim.”

  Ginger persisted:

  “Nothing else frightened you?”

  “I’m not influenced by that sort of thing.”

  “Then why did you sound so thankful to hear I was all right?”

  “Well, because—” I stopped.

  “All right,” said Ginger obligingly. “You needn’t answer that one. And you needn’t go out of your way to play down the whole thing. Something about it impressed you.”

  “Only, I think, because they—Thyrza, I mean—seemed so calmly confident of the result.”

  “Confident that what you’ve been telling me about could actually kill a person?”

  Ginger’s voice was incredulous.

  “It’s daft,” I agreed.

  “Wasn’t Bella confident, too?”

  I considered. I said:

  “I think Bella was just enjoying herself killing cocks and working herself up into a kind of orgy of ill-wishing. To hear her moaning out “The Blood…the blood” was really something.”

  “I wish I’d heard it,” said Ginger regretfully.

  “I wish you had,” I said. “Frankly, the whole thing was quite a performance.”

  “You’re all right now, aren’t you?” said Ginger.

  “What do you mean—all right?”

  “You weren’t when you rang me up, but you are now.”

  She was quite correct in her assumption. The sound of her cheerful normal voice had done wonders for me. Secretly, though, I took off my hat to Thyrza Grey. Bogus though the whole business might have been, it had infected my mind with doubt and apprehension. But nothing mattered now. Ginger was all right—she hadn’t had so much as a bad dream.

  “And what do we do next?” demanded Ginger. “Have I got to stay put for another week or so?”

  “If I want to collect a hundred pounds from Mr. Bradley, yes.”

  “You’ll do that if it’s the last thing you ever do… Are you staying on with Rhoda?”

  “For a bit. Then I’ll move on to Bournemouth. You’re to ring me every day, mind, or I’ll ring you—that’s better. I’m ringing from the vicarage now.”

  “How’s Mrs. Dane Calthrop?”

  “In great form. I told her all about it, by the way.”

  “I thought you would. Well, good-bye for now. Life is going to be very boring for the next week or two. I’ve brought some work with me to do—and a good many of the books that one always means to read but never has the time to.”

  “What does your gallery think?”

  “That I’m on a cruise.”

  “Don’t you wish you were?”

  “Not really,” said Ginger… Her voice was a little odd.

  “No suspicious characters approached you?”

  “Only what you might expect. The milkman, the man to read the gas meter, a woman asking me what patent medicines and cosmetics I used, someone asking me to sign a petition to abolish nuclear bombs and a woman who wanted a subscription for the blind. Oh, and the various flat porters, of course. Very helpful. One of them mended a fuse for me.”

  “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 the gates of Priors Court and walked up the quarter mile of winding drive.

  The same manservant answered the door, and said that Mr. Venables was at home. Excusing himself for leaving me in the hall, “Mr. Venables is not always well enough to see visitors,” he went away, returning a few moments later with the information that Mr. Venables would be delighted to see me.

  Venables gave me a most cordial welcome, wheeling his chair forward and greeting me quite as an old friend.

  “Very nice of you to look me up, my dear fellow. I heard you were down here again, and was going to ring up our dear Rhoda this evening and suggest you all come over for lunch or dinner.”

  I apologised for dropping in as I had, but said that it was a sudden impulse. I had gone for a walk, found that I was passing his gate, and decided to gate-crash.

  “As a matter of fact,” I said, “I’d love to have another look at your Mogul miniatures. I hadn’t nearly enough time to see them properly the other day.”

  “Of course you hadn’t. I’m glad you appreciate them. Such exquisite detail.”

  Our talk was entirely technical after this. I must admit that I enjoyed enormously having a closer look at some of the really wonderful things he had in his possession.

  Tea was brought in and he insisted that I partake of it.

  Tea is not one of my favourite meals but I appreciated the smoky China tea, and the delicate cups in which it was served. There was hot buttered anchovy toast, and a plum cake of the luscious old-fashioned kind that took me back to teatime at my grandmother’s house when I was a little boy.

  “Homemade,” I said approvingly.

  “Naturally! A bought cake never comes into this house.”

  “You have a wonderful cook, I know. Don’t you find it difficult to keep a staff in the country, as far away from things as you are here?”

  Venables shrugged his shoulders. “I must have the best. I insist upon it. Naturally—one has to pay! I pay.”

  All the natural arrogance of the man showed here. I said dryly: “If one is fortunate enough to be able to do that, it certainly solves many problems.”

  “It all depends, you know, on what one wants out of life. If one’s desires are strong enough—that is what matters. So many people make money without a notion of what they want it to do for them! As a result they get entangled in what one might call the moneymaking machine. They are slaves. They go to their offices early and leave late; they never stop to enjoy. And what do they get for it? Larger cars, bigger houses, more expensive mistresses or wives—and, let me say, bigger headaches.”

  He leaned forward.

  “Just the getting of money—that is really the be all and end all for most rich men. Plough it back into bigger enterprises, make more money still. But why? Do they ever stop to ask themselves why? They don’t know.”

  “And you?” I asked.

  “I—” he smiled. “I knew what I wanted. Infinite leisure in which to contemplate the beautiful things of this world, natural and artificial. Since to go and see them in their natural surroundings has of late years been denied me, I have them brought from all over the world to me.”

  “But money still has to be got before that can happen.”

  “Yes, one must plan one’s coups—and that involves quite a lot of planning—but there is no need, really no need nowadays, to serve any sordid apprenticeship.”

  “I don’t know if I quite understand you.”

  “It’s a changing world, Easterbrook. It always has been—but now the changes come more rapidly. The tempo has quickened—one must take advantage of that.”

  “A changing world,” I said thoughtfully.

  “It opens up new vistas.”

  I said apologetically:

  “I’m afraid, you know, that you’re talking to a man whose face is set in the opposite direction—towards the past—not towards the future.”

  Venables shrugged his shoulders.

  “The future? Who can foresee that? I speak of today—now—the immediate moment! I take no account of anything else. The new techniques are here to use. Already we have machines that can supply us with the answer to questions in seconds—compared to hours or days of human labour.”

  “Computers? The electronic brain?”

  “Things of that kind.”

  “Will machines take the place of men eventually?”

  “Of men, yes. Men who are only units of manpower—that is. But Man, no. There has to be Man the Controller, Man the Thinker, who works out the questions to ask the machines.”

  I shook my head doubtfully.

  “Man, the Superman?” I put a faint inflection of ridicule into my voice.

  “Why not, Easterbrook? Why not? Remember, we know—or are beginning to know—something about Man the human animal. The practice of what is sometimes, incorrectly, called brainwashing has opened up enormously interesting possibilities in that direction. Not only the body, but the mind of man, responds to certain stimuli.”

  “A dangerous doctrine,” I said.

  “Dangerous?”

  “Dangerous to the doctored man.”

  Venables shrugged his shoulders.

  “All life is dangerous. We forget that, we who have been reared in one of the small pockets of civilisation. For that is all that civilisation really is, Easterbrook. Small pockets of men here and there who have gathered together for mutual protection and who thereby are able to outwit and control Nature. They have beaten the jungle—but that victory is only temporary. At any moment, the jungle will once more take command. Proud cities that were, are now mere mounds of earth, overgrown with rank vegetation, and the poor
hovels of men who just manage to keep alive, no more. Life is always dangerous—never forget that. In the end, perhaps, not only great natural forces, but the work of our own hands may destroy it. We are very near to that happening at this moment….”

  “No one can deny that, certainly. But I’m interested in your theory of power—power over mind.”

  “Oh that—” Venables looked suddenly embarrassed. “Probably I exaggerated.”

  I found his embarrassment and partial withdrawal of his former claim interesting. Venables was a man who lived much alone. A man who is alone develops the need to talk—to someone—anyone. Venables had talked to me—and perhaps not wisely.

  “Man the Superman,” I said. “You’ve rather sold me on some modern version of the idea, you know.”

  “There’s nothing new about it, certainly. The formula of the Superman goes back a long way. Whole philosophies have been built on it.”

  “Of course. But it seems to me that your Superman is—a Superman with a difference… A man who could wield power—and never be known to wield power. A man who sits in his chair and pulls the strings.”

  I looked at him as I spoke. He smiled.

  “Are you casting me for the part, Easterbrook? I wish it were indeed so. One needs something to compensate for—this!”

  His hand struck down on the rug across his knees, and I heard the sudden sharp bitterness in his voice.

  “I won’t offer you my sympathy,” I said. “Sympathy is very little good to a man in your position. But let me say that if we are imagining such a character—a man who can turn unforeseen disaster into triumph—you would be, in my opinion, exactly that type of man.”

  He laughed easily.

  “You’re flattering me.”

  But he was pleased, I saw that.

  “No,” I said. “I have met enough people in my life to recognise the unusual, the extra-gifted man, when I meet him.”

  I was afraid of going too far; but can one ever, really, go too far with flattery? A depressing thought! One must take it to heart and avoid the pitfall oneself.

  “I wondered,” he said thoughtfully, “what actually makes you say that? All this?” He swept a careless hand round the room.

  “That is a proof,” I said, “that you are a rich man who knows how to buy wisely, who has appreciation and taste. But I feel that there is more to it than mere possession. You set out to acquire beautiful and interesting things—and you have practically hinted that they were not acquired through the medium of laborious toil.”