Chapter 22
I
'Are we in time? Will she live?'
I wandered up and down. I couldn't sit still.
Lejeune sat watching me. He was patient and kind.
'You can be sure that everything possible is being done.'
It was the same old answer. It did nothing to comfort me.
'Do they know how to treat thallium poisoning?'
'You don't often get a case of it. But everything possible will be tried. If you ask me, I think she'll pull through.'
I looked at him. How could I tell if he really believed what he was saying? Was he just trying to soothe me?
'At any rate, they've verified that it was thallium?'
'Yes, they've verified that.'
'So that's the simple truth behind the Pale Horse. Poison. No witchcraft, no hypnotism, no scientific death rays. Plain poisoning! And she flung that at me, damn her. Flung it in my face. Laughing in her cheek all the while, I expect.'
'Who are you talking about?'
'Thyrza Grey. That first afternoon when I went to tea there. Talked about the Borgias and all the build-up of 'rare and untraceable poisons'; the poisoned gloves and all the rest of it. 'Common white arsenic,' she said, 'and nothing else.' This was just as simple. All that hooey! The trance and the white cocks and the brazier and the pentagrams and the voodoo and the reversed crucifix – all that was for the crudely superstitious. And the famous 'box' was another bit of hooey for the contemporary-minded. We don't believe in spirits and witches and spells nowadays, but we're a gullible lot when it comes to 'rays' and 'waves' and psychological phenomena. That box, I bet, is nothing but a nice little assembly of electrical show-off, coloured bulbs and humming valves. Because we live in daily fear of fallout and strontium 90 and all the rest of it, we're amenable to suggestion along the line of scientific talk. The whole setup at the Pale Horse was bogus! The Pale Horse was a stalking horse, neither more nor less. Attention was to be focused on that, so that we'd never suspect what might be going on in another direction. The beauty of it was that it was quite safe for them. Thyrza Grey could boast out loud about what occult powers she had or could command. She could never be brought into court and tried for murder on that issue. Her box could have been examined and proved to be harmless. Any court would have ruled that the whole thing was nonsense and impossible! And, of course, that's exactly what it was.'
'Do you think they're all three in it?' asked Lejeune.
'I shouldn't think so. Bella's belief in witchcraft is genuine, I should say. She believes in her own powers and rejoices in them. The same with Sybil. She's got a genuine gift of mediumship. She goes into a trance and she doesn't know what happens. She believes everything that Thyrza tells her.'
'So Thyrza is the ruling spirit?'
I said slowly:
'As far as the Pale Horse is concerned, yes. But she's not the real brains of the show. The real brain works behind the scenes. He plans and organizes. It's all beautifully dovetailed, you know. Everyone has his or her job, and no one has anything on anyone else. Bradley runs the financial and legal side. Apart from that, he doesn't know what happens elsewhere. He's handsomely paid, of course; so is Thyrza Grey.'
'You seemed to have got it all taped to your satisfaction,' said Lejeune dryly.
'I haven't. Not yet. But we know the basic necessary fact. It's the same as it has been through the ages. Crude and simple. Just plain poison. The dear old death potion.'
'What put thallium into your head?'
'Several things suddenly came together. The beginning of the whole business was the thing I saw that night in Chelsea. A girl whose hair was being pulled out by the roots by another girl. And she said, 'It didn't really hurt.' It wasn't bravery, as I thought, it was simple fact. It didn't hurt.
'I read an article on thallium poisoning when I was in America. A lot of workers in a factory died one after the other. Their deaths were put down to astonishingly varied causes. Amongst them, if I remember rightly, were paratyphoid, apoplexy, alcoholic neuritis, bulbar paralysis, epilepsy, gastro-enteritis, and so on. Then there was a woman who poisoned seven people. Diagnoses included brain tumour, encephalitis, and lobar pneumonia. The symptoms vary a good deal, I understand. They may start with diarrhea and vomiting, or there may be a stage of intoxication, again it may begin with pain in the limbs, and be put down as polyneuritis or rheumatic fever or polio – one patient was put in an iron lung. Sometimes there's pigmentation of the skin.'
'You talk like a medical dictionary!'
'Naturally. I've been looking it up. But one thing always happens sooner or later. The hair falls out. Thallium used to be used for depilation at one time – particularly for children with ringworm. Then it was found to be dangerous. But it's occasionally given internally, but with very careful dosage going by the weight of the patient. It's mainly used nowadays for rats, I believe. It's tasteless, soluble, and easy to buy. There's only one thing: poisoning mustn't be suspected.'
Lejeune nodded.
'Exactly,' he said. 'Hence the insistence by the Pale Horse that the murderer must stay away from his intended victim. No suspicion of foul play ever arises. Why should it? There's no interested party who could have had access to food or drink. No purchase of thallium or any other poison is ever made by him or her. That's the beauty of it. The real work is done by someone who has no connection whatever with the victim. Someone, I think, who appears once and once only.'
He paused.
'Any ideas on that?'
'Only one. A common factor appears to be that on every occasion some pleasant harmless-seeming woman calls with a questionnaire on behalf of a domestic research unit.'
'You think that that woman is the one who plants the poison? As a sample? Something like that?'
'I don't think it's quite as simple as that,' I said slowly. 'I have an idea that the women are quite genuine. But they come into it somehow. I think we may be able to find out something if we talk to a woman called Eileen Brandon, who works in an Espresso off Tottenham Court Road.'
II
Eileen Brandon had been fairly accurately described by Poppy – allowing, that is to say, for Poppy's own particular point of view. Her hair was neither like a chrysanthemum, nor an unruly birds' nest. It was waved back close to her head, she wore the minimum of makeup and her feet were encased in what are called, I believe, sensible shoes. Her husband had been killed in a motor accident, she told us, and left her with two small children. Before her present employment, she had been employed by a firm called Customers Reactions Classified for over a year. She had left of her own accord as she had not cared for the type of work.
'Why didn't you care for it. Mrs Brandon?'
Lejeune asked the question. She looked at him.
'You're a detective-inspector of police? Is that right?'
'Quite right, Mrs Brandon.'
'You think there's something wrong about that firm?'
'It's a matter I'm inquiring into. Did you suspect something of the kind? Is that why you left?'
'I've nothing definite to go upon. Nothing definite that I could tell you.'
'Naturally. We understand that. This is a confidential inquiry.'
