that she was the right person.
'We've just had tea with Thyrza Grey,' I began.
Explaining things to Mrs Dane Calthrop was never difficult. She leaped to meet you.
'Oh I see. It's upset you? Those three are a bit much to take, I agree. I've wondered myself. So much boasting. As a rule, in my experience, the really wicked don't boast. They can keep quiet about their wickedness. It's if your sins aren't really bad that you want so much to talk about them. Sin's such a wretched, mean, ignoble little thing. It's terribly necessary to make it seem grand and important. Village witches are usually silly ill-natured old women who like frightening people and getting something for nothing that way. Terribly easy to do, of course. When Mrs Brown's hens die all you have to do is nod your head and say darkly: 'Ah, her Billy teased my Pussy last Tuesday week.' Bella Webb might be only a witch of that kind. But she might, she just might, be something more… something that's lasted on from a very early age and which crops up now and then in country places. It's frightening when it does, because there's real malevolence – not just a desire to impress. Sybil Stamfordis is one of the silliest women I've ever met – but she really is a medium – whatever a medium may be. Thyrza – I don't know. What did she say to you? It was something that she said that's upset you, I suppose?'
'You have great experience, Mrs Dane Calthrop. Would you say, from all you know and have heard, that a human being could be destroyed from a distance, without visible connection, by another human being?'
Mrs Dane Calthrop's eyes opened a little wider.
'When you say destroyed, you mean, I take it, killed? A plain physical fact?'
'Yes.'
'I should say it was nonsense,' said Mrs Dane Calthrop robustly.
'Ah!' I said, relieved.
'But of course I might be quite wrong,' said Mrs Dane Calthrop. 'My father said that airships were nonsense, and my great-grandfather probably said that railway trains were nonsense. They were both quite right. At that time they both were impossible. But they're not impossible now. What does Thyrza do, activate a death ray or something? Or do they all three draw pentagrams and wish?'
I smiled.
'You're making things come into focus,' I said. 'I must have let that woman hypnotize me.'
'Oh no,' said Mrs Dane Calthrop. 'You wouldn't do that. You're not really the suggestible type. There must have been something else. Something that happened first. Before all this.'
'You're quite right.' I told, then, as simply as I could with an economy of words, of the murder of Father Gorman, and of the casual mention in the night club of the Pale Horse. Then I took from my pocket the list of names I had copied from the paper Dr Corrigan had shown me.
Mrs Dane Calthrop looked down at it, frowning.
'I see,' she said. 'And these people? What have they all in common?'
'We're not sure. It might be blackmail – or dope -'
'Nonsense,' said Mrs Dane Calthrop. 'That's not what's worrying you. What you really believe is – that they're all dead?'
I gave a deep sigh.
'Yes,' I said. 'That's what I believe. But I don't really know that that is so. Three of them are dead. Minnie Hesketh-Dubois, Thomasina Tuckerton, Mary Delafontaine. All three died in their beds from natural causes. Which is what Thyrza Grey claims would happen.'
'You mean she claims she made it happen?'
'No, no. She wasn't speaking of any actual people.
She was expounding what she believes to be a scientific possibility.'
'Which appears on the face of it to be nonsense,' said Mrs Dane Calthrop thoughtfully.
'I know. I would just have been polite about it and laughed to myself, if it hadn't been for that curious mention of the Pale Horse.'
'Yes,' said Mrs Dane Calthrop musingly. 'The Pale Horse. That's suggestive.'
She was silent a moment. Then she raised her head.
'It's bad,' she said. 'It's very bad. Whatever is behind it, it's got to be stopped. But you know that.'
'Well, yes… but what can one do?'
'That you'll have to find out. But there's no time to be lost.' Mrs Dane Calthrop rose to her feet, a whirlwind of activity. 'You must get down to it – at once.' She considered. 'Haven't you got some friend who could help you?'
I thought. Jim Corrigan? A busy man with little time, and already probably doing all he could. David Ardingly – but would David believe a word? Hermia? Yes, there was Hermia. A clear brain, admirable logic. A tower of strength if she could be persuaded to become an ally. After all, she and I – I did not finish the sentence. Hermia was my steady – Hermia was the person.
'You've thought of someone? Good.'
Mrs Dane Calthrop was brisk and businesslike.
'I'll keep an eye on the three witches. I still feel that they are – somehow – not really the answer. It's like when the Stamfordis woman dishes out a lot of idiocy about Egyptian mysteries and prophecies from the Pyramid texts. All she says is plain balderdash, but there are pyramids and texts and temple mysteries. I can't help feeling that Thyrza Grey has got hold of something, found out about it, or heard it talked about, and is using it in a kind of wild hodgepodge to boost her own importance and control of occult powers. People are so proud of wickedness. Odd, isn't it, that people who are good are never proud of it? That's where Christian humility comes in, I suppose. They don't even know they are good.'
She was silent for a moment and then said:
'What we really need is a link of some kind. A link between one of these names and the Pale Horse. Something tangible.'
Chapter 8
Detective-Inspector Lejeune heard the well-known tune 'Father O'Flynn' being whistled outside in the passage and raised his head as Dr Corrigan came in.
'Sorry to disoblige everybody,' said Corrigan, 'but the driver of that Jaguar hadn't any alcohol in him at all. What P.C. Ellis smelled on his breath must have been Ellis's imagination or halitosis.'
But Lejeune at the moment was uninterested in the daily run of motorists' offences.
'Come and take a look at this,' he said.
Corrigan took the letter handed to him. It was written in a small neat script. The heading was Everest, Glendower Close, Bournemouth.
Dear Inspector Lejeune,
You may remember that you asked me to get in touch with you if I should happen to see the man who was following Father Gorman on the night that he was killed. I kept a good lookout in the neighbourhood of my establishment, but never caught a glimpse of him again.
Yesterday, however, I attended a church fete in a village about twenty miles from here. I was attracted by the fact that Mrs Oliver, the well-known detective writer, was going to be there autographing her own books. I am a great reader of detective stories and I was quite curious to see the lady.
What I did see, to my great surprise, was the man I described to you as having passed my shop the night Father Gorman was killed. Since then, it would seem, he must have met with an accident, as on this occasion he was propelling himself in a wheelchair. I made some discreet inquiries as to who he might be, and it seems he is a local resident of the name of Venables. His place of residence is Priors Court, Much Deeping. He is said to be a man of considerable means.
Hoping these details may be of some service to you,
Yours truly
Zachariah Osborne
