Wednesday 19 February 2020

The Pale Horse by Agatha Christie


The Pale Horse by Agatha Christie

Review of the novel The Pale Horse by Agatha Christie
Published by Fontana / Collins. Copyright © Agatha Christie Ltd 1961
First Published: 1961
Dedication: To John and Helen Mildmay White with many thanks for the opportunity given me to see justice done
Cost: £1.00 (UK Paperback 1961)
ISBN: 978-0-00-819638-7 (Paperback Edition – starts on page 5 - 188 pages of small font.)

Unlike the adaptations of Agatha Christie’s work, this story does not have either of her well-known detectives solving the crime. In The Pale Horse, the narrator is Mark Easterbrook, and we learn more about him as the story unfolds. The novel also includes one of Christie's favourite characters, although in a minor role, ‘the famous crime writer’ Ariadne Oliver.

The story begins with Mark Easterbrook, who lives in Chelsea (London), struggling on writing a manuscript for a book he is writing. Although it is late in the evening, he decides to visit an Espresso Coffee Bar on the Kings Road. From his table, he watches a quarrel between two females, which results in one having ‘large tufts of hair being pulled out to the roots’. Although disturbing, he thinks nothing more of it, even when he reads of the death of the girl two weeks later.

When Mark is asked to do a favour for a friend, he contacts Mrs Ariadne Oliver, to persuade her to attend a garden fête. They discuss the coffee bar experience and Mrs Olivier states quite clearly that hair can not be pulled out that easily.

The policeman attempting to solve a murder in this story is Inspector Lejeune. He becomes involves when investigating the death of a catholic priest, Father Gorman, who has been bludgeoned to death after attending a dying woman’s confession. The woman reveals her concerns over the deaths of several people that may have been murdered to order. Trying to remember the names Farther Gorman writes them down on a piece of paper, which is recovered by the police. Trying to understand why the list of names was important, they start interviewing individuals associated with the list, but with little progress. Then an unlikely witness comes forward regarding the attack on Father Gorman.

    Mr Osborne, The proprietor of the chemist’s shop on the corner of Barton Street … He was a small, middle-aged man, with a bald domed head, a round ingenuous face, and glasses.

He describes the assailant:

    “Tall? How tall?”
    “Well---Five feet eleven to six feet, at least, I’d say. Though he might have seemed taller than he was because he was very thin. Slopping shoulders he had, and a definite Adam’s apple. Grew his hair rather long under his Homburg. A great beak of a nose. Very noticeable. Naturally I couldn’t say as to the colour of his eyes. I saw him in profile as you’ll appreciate. Perhaps fifty as to age. I’m going by the walk. A youngish man moves quite differently.”
    Lejeune made a mental survey of the distance across the street, then back again to Mr Osbourne, and wondered. He wondered very much …

The doctor that carried out the post-mortem on Father Gorman takes on board the task of researching some of the names on the list created by Father Gorman and in doing so he bumps into Mark Easterbrook - they were friends at university. Mark reveals details about his godmother, whose name is on the list. When shown the list, he recognises a further name as a recent death recorded in the national news. It was one of the two females that were quarrelling in the café. Mark’s concern is that the list is one of the people who have died or shortly going to die.

Marks attend the garden fête with Mrs Oliver, being held in the village of Much Deeping, and learns of a converted inn called The Pale Horse. The inn is now owned by Thyrza Gey, where she lives with two other women, and the three of them are known as ‘the local witches’. When Mark visits the home of Mrs Grey, she brings up her ability to kill at a distance, an ability that she claims to have developed. She offers her services to Mark.

Mark decides to investigate the link between the Father Gorman list and The Pale Horse set up. With the aid of a girlfriend, Mark discovers he needs to visit a Mr Bradley, a disbarred lawyer, in Birmingham. Bradley outlines the operation of those at The Pale Horse, explaining that what they do does not break the Law. Bradley makes a bet with a client that someone will die within a certain period and the client bets that they won’t. If Mr Bradley is proved right, then the client must pay up. Ginger, the girlfriend, and Mark decided to play out the scenario and test the operation of the witches in Much Deeping and Mark makes the bet that his wife will die. Ginger will play the part of Mark’s wife.

Following Mark’s attendance at a seance held at The Pale Horse, he visits his cousin, Rhoda Despard.

She looked at me kindly.
“You don’t know,” I said, “how—how brave she is. If, in some way they manage to harm her …”
Mrs Dane Calthrop said slowly:
“I don’t see—I really don’t see—how they can harm her in the way that you mean.”
“But they have harmed—other people.”
“It would seem so, yes …“ She sounded dissatisfied.
“In any other way, she will be all right. We’ve taken every imaginable precaution. No material harm can happen to her.”
“But it’s material harm that these people claim to be able to produce.” Mrs Dane Calthrop pointed out. “They claim to be able to work through the mind and the body. Illness—disease. Very interesting if they can. But quite horrible! And it’s got to be stopped, as we have already agreed.”
“But she’s the one who’s taking the risk,” I muttered.

“Well, stop worrying at all. It won’t do her any good. Don’t let’s shirk the issues. If she dies as a result of this experiment, then she dies for a good cause.”


But when Ginger, playing the part of Mark’s wife, becomes ill, both realise Ginger is in danger. In desperation, Mark asks seeks help from Ginger’s girlfriend and discovers The Pale Horse clients are visited by a customer research organisation, that wants to know about what foods and cosmetics and medicines they use. But it still doesn’t make sense.

It is Mrs Oliver that comes to the rescue when she recognises the symptoms being experienced by Ginger – the loss of hair. It’s not a case of witchcraft but poisoning by thallium, also used as and known as, rat poison. The black magic display by Thyrza and her two accomplices is nothing but a distraction. Mark and the police need to discover who has the skill to create and disguise a poison that will be accepted by an individual but will bring about their death.

As in usual Agatha Christie-style, everyone is brought together, and the murder in their desperation to prove their skills at evading detection reveals their crime to those present.

This is a very enjoyable, comparatively short story, where Mark Easterbrook plays the role of narrator extremely well, but it is the discussions with the other characters in the story that enable him to arrive at the solution. The story is complex in parts and the introduction of some characters are there as red herrings, perhaps by the characters themselves or by Christie to lead her reader astray. As the story is seen through the eyes of Mark Easterbrook, we discover very little of the investigation carried out by Inspector Lejeune and it is only at the end that his own investigation is proved right as he encourages the murderer to challenge his ideas. On reflection, I hope that an investigation is carried out into the characters that visited Mr Bradley, but we will never know. Rating, 5 stars

Dr Sheppard
19 February 2020


Tuesday 4 February 2020

The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley


The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley


Review of the novel The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley
Published by HarperCollins. Copyright © Lost and Found Books Ltd 2019
First Published: 2019
Dedication: For AC, my partner in crime.
Cost: £8.99 (UK Paperback 2019)
ISBN: 978-0-00-829715-2 (Paperback Edition - 388 pages)

This is a story of friends that met at university and have kept in touch with each other, now in their late twenties, they meet up as a party for the New Year. There are no actual chapters to the story, rather accounts of the holiday told by three of the friends and two of the staff at the holiday resort. The account of the holiday jumps back and forth, instead of being a continuous flow to the story and I’m not sure why the author felt they had to do this. However, there are four distinct passages of time:
Now - 2nd January 2019
Three days earlier - 30th December 20018
Two days earlier - New Year’s Eve 2018
One day earlier - New Year’s Day 2019

Heather, the young manageress of the accommodation, narrates the ‘now’ part of the tale, which is broken up by the narrative of the three females telling the story which spans over the three previous days. On these days the reader is introduced to the world as seen through the eyes of Emma, Katie and Miranda. The only other character given time to express his thoughts over the four days is Doug, the resident gamekeeper.
Chapter two opens, with Emma’s introduction;

New Year. All of us together for the first time in ages. Me and Mark, Miranda and Julien, Nick and Bo, Samira and Giles, their six-month-old baby, Priya. And Katie.
Four days in a winter Highland wilderness. Loch Corrin, it’s called. Very exclusive: they only let four parties stay there each year – the rest of the time it’s kept as a private residence. This time of the year, as you might guess, is the most popular. I had to reserve it pretty much the day after New Year last year, as soon as the bookings open up. The woman I spoke with assured me that with our group taking over most of the accommodation we should have the whole place to ourselves.

Due to the typesetting of the chapter headings, chapter one, an introduction by Heather, is only a page long although it finishes on page two and it closes with the words: ‘I found a body’. So, the reader knows immediately that someone has been killed, and the story is an account of how they came to lose their life in this remote Scottish highland venue, with the murderer being revealed on page 366.
The party have ordered in food and drink in excessive amounts. The inner-circle have been friends since Oxford University days, not all of them are at ease with each other as they strive to become the leader of the group and dominate the others and the games they play as part of the festivity entertainment. The party look down on those who are not group, putting themselves above the like of Heather and Doug. This is a story about the bitterness and long-standing hatred between individuals that were once friends and now their true feelings come out. However, as already stated, this is a tale seen only through the eyes of the three of the females. The males do join in the conversation, but their inner thoughts are told by the girls and it’s difficult to understand if they are a true reflection by the females giving an account of the three days.
There is a side tale in the narrative where we learn about Doug’s background, as the author tries to misdirect the reader to the real murderer, but for me, it fails before it starts. This character has strength in his interaction with the holiday party and Heather. The murderer has to be one of the holiday party that uses the venue to commit a crime as their anger and hatred for one of the group gets out of control.
As part of the vacation, the group have the opportunity to experience hunting in the wild. We are on page 217 as Doug that describes the outing in a chapter titled ‘Two days earlier - New Year’s Eve 2018’.

There’s a change in the group. He noticed it even before the argument between the man with the glasses and the beautiful blonde. He has seen it happen before, this shift. It starts with the rifles. Each of them is suddenly invested with a new, terrible power. At first, during the target practice, they flinch with each report, at the jump of the device as it punched bruises into flesh beneath their shoulders. But quickly – too quickly, perhaps – it became natural, and they were leaning into each shot: focussed, intent. They began enjoying themselves. But something else crept in too. A sense of competition. More than that … something primeval has been summoned.

There is, however, only one hind to be killed and Doug invites Emma to take the shot. Successful, she is anointed in the time-honoured tradition, with the blood of the kill, on her forehead and cheeks.

As can be seen here in this short extract, the story appears to be a reflection of the happenings, rather than a factual account. This is the same for the all that characters that tell the happenings over the four days, to such an extent that I found it difficult to believe I was reading an account by a different character, it seemed to me that it was a dream told by one individual. This approach to describing the activities over the four days results in a lack of detail and visual descriptions that would have added to the story and the reader’s enjoyment. This was a story that I found easy to put aside while reading something more enjoyable. I find it difficult to see why the author felt it necessary to jump from the present to go back in time, albeit, only three days. I felt that the story would have benefited to be told in the correct sequence. As might be guessed, I did not enjoy the story and I‘m not going to be search out other books by this author. Rating 2 stars.

Dr Sheppard
3 February 2020