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