'Please go on. This is most interesting.'
'The principle is well known. Medicine men have used it in primitive communities for centuries. You don't need to kill your victim. All you need do is – tell him to die.'
'Suggestion? But it won't work unless the victim believes in it.'
'It doesn't work on Europeans, you mean,' she corrected me. 'It does sometimes. But that's not the point. We've gone farther ahead than the witch doctor has ever gone. The psychologists have shown the way. The desire for death! It's there in everyone. Work on that! Work on the death wish.'
'It's an interesting idea.' I spoke with a muted scientific interest. 'Influence your subject to commit suicide? Is that it?'
'You're still lagging behind. You've heard of traumatic illnesses?'
'Of course.'
'People who, because of an unconscious wish to avoid returning to work, develop real ailments. Not malingering – real illnesses with symptoms, with actual pain. It's been a puzzle to doctors for a long time.'
'I'm beginning to get the hang of what you mean,' I said slowly.
'To destroy your subject, power must be exerted on his secret unconscious self. The death wish that exists in all of us must be stimulated, heightened.'
Her excitement was growing. 'Don't you see? A real illness will be induced, caused by that death-seeking self. You wish to be ill, you wish to die – and so – you do get ill, and die.'
She had flung her head up now, triumphantly. I felt suddenly very cold. All nonsense, of course. This woman was slightly mad. And yet -
Thyrza Grey laughed suddenly.
'You don't believe me, do you?'
'It's a fascinating theory, Miss Grey – quite in line with modern thought, I'll admit. But how do you propose to stimulate this death wish that we all possess?'
'That's my secret. The way! The means! There are communications without contact. You've only to think of wireless, radar, television. Experiments in extrasensory perception haven't gone ahead as people hoped, but that's because they haven't grasped the first simple principle. You can accomplish it sometimes by accident – but once you know how it works, you could do it every time…'
'Can you do it?'
She didn't answer at once – then she said, moving away: 'You mustn't ask me, Mr Easterbrook, to give all my secrets away.'
I followed her towards the garden door.
'Why have you told me all this?' I asked.
'You understand my books. One needs sometimes to – to – well – talk to someone. And besides -'
'Yes?'
'I had the idea – Bella has it, too – that you – may need us.'
'Need you?'
'Bella thinks you came here – to find us. She is seldom at fault.'
'Why should I want to 'find you,' as you put it?'
'That,' said Thyrza Grey softly, 'I do not know – yet.'
Chapter 7
I
'So there you are! We wondered where you were.' Rhoda came through the open door, the others behind her. She looked round her. 'This is where you hold your seances, isn't it?'
'You're well informed.' Thyrza Grey laughed breezily. 'In a village everyone knows your business better than you do. We've a splendid sinister reputation, so I've heard. A hundred years ago it would have been sink or swim or the funeral pyre. My great-great-aunt – or one or two more greats – was burned as a witch, I believe, in Ireland. Those were the days!'
'I always thought you were Scottish?'
'On my father's side – hence the second sight. Irish on my mother's. Sybil is our pythoness, originally of Greek extraction. Bella represents Old English.'
'A macabre human cocktail,' remarked Colonel Despard.
'As you say.'
'Fun!' said Ginger.
Thyrza shot her a quick glance.
'Yes, it is in a way.' She turned to Mrs Oliver. 'You should write one of your books about a murder by black magic. I can give you a lot of dope about it.'
Mrs Oliver blinked and looked embarrassed.
'I only write very plain murders,' she said apologetically.
Her tone was of one who says 'I only do plain cooking.'
'Just about people who want other people out of the way and try to be clever about it.' she added.
'They're usually too clever for me,' said Colonel Despard. He glanced at his watch. 'Rhoda, I think -'
'Oh, yes, we must go. It's much later than I thought. '
Thanks and good-byes were said. We did not go back through the house but round to a side gate.
'You keep a lot of poultry,' remarked Colonel Despard, looking into a wired enclosure.
'I hate hens,' said Ginger. 'They cluck in such an irritating way.'
'Mostly cockerels they be.' It was Bella who spoke. She had come out from a back door.
'White cockerels,' I said.
'Table birds?' asked Despard.
Bella said, 'They're useful to us.'
Her mouth widened in a long curving line across the pudgy shapelessness of her face. Her eyes had a sly knowing look.
'They're Bella's province,' said Thyrza Grey lightly.
We said good-bye and Sybil Stamfordis appeared from the open front door to join in speeding the parting guests.
'I don't like that woman,' said Mrs Oliver, as we drove off. 'I don't like her at all.'
'You mustn't take old Thyrza too seriously,' said Despard indulgently. 'She enjoys spouting all that stuff and seeing what effect it has on you.'
'I didn't mean her. She's an unscrupulous woman, with a keen eye on the main chance. But she's not dangerous like the other one.'
'Bella? She is a bit uncanny, I'll admit.'
'I didn't mean her either. I meant the Sybil one. She seems just silly. All those beads and draperies and all the stuff about voodoo, and all those fantastic reincarnations she was telling us about. (Why is it that anybody who was a kitchenmaid or an ugly old peasant never seems to get reincarnated? It's always Egyptian princesses or beautiful Babylonian slaves. Very fishy.) But all the same, though she's stupid, I have a feeling that she could really do things – make queer things happen. I always put things badly – but I mean she could be used – by something – in a way just because she is so silly. I don't suppose anyone understands what I mean,' she finished pathetically.
'I do,' said Ginger. 'And I shouldn't wonder if you weren't right'
'We really ought to go to one of their seances,' said Rhoda wistfully. 'It might be rather fun.'
'No, you don't,' said Despard firmly. 'I'm not having you getting mixed up in anything of that sort.'
They fell into a laughing argument. I roused myself only when I heard Mrs Oliver asking about trains the next
