The Pale Horse Read online

  Lejeune rose.

  “Well, I wish you the best of luck,” he said. “And if, before you actually leave these parts, you should catch sight of that man—”

  “I’ll let you know at once, Mr. Lejeune. Naturally. You can count on me. It will be a pleasure. As I’ve told you, I’ve a very good eye for a face. I shall be on the lookout. On the qui vive, as they say. Oh yes. You can rely on me. It will be a pleasure.”

  Four

  Mark Easterbrook’s Narrative

  I

  I came out of the Old Vic, my friend Hermia Redcliffe beside me. We had been to see a performance of Macbeth. It was raining hard. As we ran across the street to the spot where I had parked the car, Hermia remarked unjustly that whenever one went to the Old Vic it always rained.

  “It’s just one of those things.”

  I dissented from this view. I said that, unlike sundials, she remembered only the rainy hours.

  “Now at Glyndebourne,” went on Hermia as I let in the clutch, “I’ve always been lucky. I can’t imagine it other than perfection: the music—the glorious flower borders—the white flower border in particular.”

  We discussed Glyndebourne and its music for a while, and then Hermia remarked:

  “We’re not going to Dover for breakfast, are we?”

  “Dover? What an extraordinary idea. I thought we’d go to the Fantasie. One needs some really good food and drink after all the magnificent blood and gloom of Macbeth, Shakespeare always makes me ravenous.”

  “Yes. So does Wagner. Smoked salmon sandwiches at Covent Garden in the intervals are never enough to stay the pangs. As to why Dover, it’s because you’re driving in that direction.”

  “One has to go round,” I explained.

  “But you’ve overdone going round. You’re well away on the Old (or is it the New?) Kent Road.”

  I took stock of my surroundings and had to admit that Hermia, as usual, was quite right.

  “I always get muddled here,” I said in apology.

  “It is confusing,” Hermia agreed. “Round and round Waterloo Station.”

  Having at last successfully negotiated Westminster Bridge we resumed our conversation, discussing the production of Macbeth that we had just been viewing. My friend Hermia Redcliffe was a handsome young woman of twenty-eight. Cast in the heroic mould, she had an almost flawless Greek profile, and a mass of dark chestnut hair, coiled on the nape of her neck. My sister always referred to her as “Mark’s girlfriend” with an intonation of inverted commas about the term that never failed to annoy me.

  The Fantasie gave us a pleasant welcome and showed us to a small table against the crimson velvet wall. The Fantasie is deservedly popular, and the tables are close together. As we sat down, our neighbors at the next table greeted us cheerfully. David Ardingly was a lecturer in History at Oxford. He introduced his companion, a very pretty girl, with a fashionable hairdo, all ends, bits and pieces, sticking out at improbable angles on the crown of her head. Strange to say, it suited her. She had enormous blue eyes and a mouth that was usually half open. She was, as all David’s girls were known to be, extremely silly. David, who was a remarkably clever young man, could only find relaxation with girls who were practically half-witted.

  “This is my particular pet, Poppy,” he explained. “Meet Mark and Hermia. They’re very serious and highbrow and you must try and live up to them. We’ve just come from Do it for Kicks. Lovely show! I bet you two are straight from Shakespeare or a revival of Ibsen.”

  “Macbeth at the Old Vic,” said Hermia.

  “Ah, what do you think of Batterson’s production?”

  “I liked it,” said Hermia. “The lighting was very interesting. And I’ve never seen the banquet scene so well managed.”

  “Ah, but what about the witches?”

  “Awful!” said Hermia. “They always are,” she added.

  David agreed.

  “A pantomime element seems bound to creep in,” he said. “All of them capering about and behaving like a threefold Demon King. You can’t help expecting a Good Fairy to appear in white with spangles to say in a flat voice:

  Your evil shall not triumph. In the end,

  It is Macbeth who will be round the bend.”

  We all laughed, but David, who was quick on the uptake, gave me a sharp glance.

  “What gives with you?” he asked.

  “Nothing. It was just that I was reflecting only the other day about Evil and Demon Kings in pantomime. Yes—and Good Fairies, too.”

  “A propos de what?”

  “Oh, in Chelsea at a coffee bar.”

  “How smart and up-to-date you are, aren’t you, Mark? All among the Chelsea set. Where heiresses in tights marry corner boys on the make. That’s where Poppy ought to be, isn’t it, duckie?”

  Poppy opened her enormous eyes still wider.

  “I hate Chelsea,” she protested. “I like the Fantasie much better! Such lovely, lovely food.”

  “Good for you, Poppy. Anyway, you’re not really rich enough for Chelsea. Tell us more about Macbeth, Mark, and the awful witches. I know how I’d produce the witches if I were doing a production.”

  David had been a prominent member of the O.U.D.S. in the past.

  “Well, how?”

  “I’d make them very ordinary. Just sly quiet old women. Like the witches in a country village.”

  “But there aren’t any witches nowadays?” said Poppy, staring at him.

  “You say that because you’re a London girl. There’s still a witch in every village in rural England. Old Mrs. Black, in the third cottage up the hill. Little boys are told not to annoy her, and she’s given presents of eggs and a home-baked cake now and again. Because,” he wagged a finger impressively, “if you get across her, your cows will stop giving milk, your potato crop will fail, or little Johnnie will twist his ankle. You must keep on the right side of old Mrs. Black. Nobody says so outright—but they all know!”

  “You’re joking,” said Poppy, pouting.

  “No, I’m not. I’m right, aren’t I, Mark?”

  “Surely all that kind of superstition has died out completely with education,” said Hermia sceptically.

  “Not in the rural pockets of the land. What do you say, Mark?”

  “I think perhaps you’re right,” I said slowly. “Though I wouldn’t really know. I’ve never lived in the country much.”

  “I don’t see how you could produce the witches as ordinary old women,” said Hermia, reverting to David’s earlier remark. “They must have a supernatural atmosphere about them, surely.”

  “Oh, but just think,” said David. “It’s rather like madness. If you have someone who raves and staggers about with straws in their hair and looks mad, it’s not frightening at all! But I remember being sent once with a message to a doctor at a mental home and I was shown into a room to wait, and there was a nice elderly lady there, sipping a glass of milk. She made some conventional remark about the weather and then suddenly she leant forward and asked in a low voice:

  “‘Is it your poor child who’s buried there behind the fireplace?’ And then she nodded her head and said ‘12:10 exactly. It’s always at the same time every day. Pretend you don’t notice the blood.’

  “It was the matter-of-fact way she said it that was so spine-chilling.”

  “Was there really someone buried behind the fireplace?” Poppy wanted to know.

  David ignored her and went on:

  “Then take mediums. At one moment trances, darkened rooms, knocks and raps. Afterwards the medium sits up, pats her hair and goes home to a meal of fish and chips, just an ordinary quite jolly woman.”

  “So your idea of the witches,” I said, “is three old Scottish crones with second sight—who practise their arts in secret, muttering their spells around a cauldron, conjuring up spirits, but remaining themselves just an ordinary trio of old women. Yes—it could be impressive.”

  “If you could ever get any actors to play it that way,” said
Hermia drily.

  “You have something there,” admitted David. “Any hint of madness in the script and an actor is immediately determined to go to town on it! The same with sudden deaths. No actor can just quietly collapse and fall down dead. He has to groan, stagger, roll his eyes, gasp, clutch his heart, clutch his head, and make a terrific performance of it. Talking of performances, what did you think of Fielding’s Macbeth? Great division of opinion among the critics.”

  “I thought it was terrific,” said Hermia. “That scene with the doctor, after the sleepwalking scene. ‘Canst thou not minister to a mind diseas’d.’ He made clear what I’d never thought of before—that he was really ordering the doctor to kill her. And yet he loved his wife. He brought out the struggle between his fear and his love. That ‘Thou shouldst have died hereafter’ was the most poignant thing I’ve ever known.”

  “Shakespeare might get a few surprises if he saw his plays acted nowadays,” I said drily.

  “Burbage and Co. had already quenched a good deal of his spirit, I suspect,” said David.

  Hermia murmured:

  “The eternal surprise of the author at what the producer has done to him.”

  “Didn’t somebody called Bacon really write Shakespeare?” asked Poppy.

  “That theory is quite out of date nowadays,” said David kindly. “And what do you know of Bacon?”

  “He invented gunpowder,” said Poppy triumphantly.

  “You see why I love this girl?” he said. “The things she knows are always so unexpected. Francis, not Roger, my love.”

  “I thought it interesting,” said Hermia, “that Fielding played the part of Third Murderer. Is there a precedent for that?”

  “I believe so,” said David. “How convenient it must have been in those times,” he went on, “to be able to call up a handy murderer whenever you wanted a little job done. Fun if one could do it nowadays.”

  “But it is done,” protested Hermia. “Gangsters. Hoods—or whatever you call them. Chicago and all that.”

  “Ah,” said David. “But what I meant was not gangsterdom, not racketeers or Crime Barons. Just ordinary everyday folk who want to get rid of someone. That business rival; Aunt Emily, so rich and so unfortunately long-lived; that awkward husband always in the way. How convenient if you could ring up Harrods and say ‘Please send along two good murderers, will you?’”

  We all laughed.

  “But one can do that in a way, can’t one?” said Poppy.

  We turned towards her.

  “What way, poppet?” asked David.

  “Well, I mean, people can do that if they want to…People like us, as you said. Only I believe it’s very expensive.”

  Poppy’s eyes were wide and ingenuous, her lips were slightly parted.

  “What do you mean?” asked David curiously.

  Poppy looked confused.

  “Oh—I expect—I’ve got it mixed. I meant the Pale Horse. All that sort of thing.”

  “A pale horse? What kind of a pale horse?”

  Poppy flushed and her eyes dropped.

  “I’m being stupid. It’s just something someone mentioned—but I must have got it all wrong.”

  “Have some lovely Coupe Nesselrode,” said David kindly.

  II

  One of the oddest things in life, as we all know, is the way that when you have heard a thing mentioned, within twenty-four hours you nearly always come across it again. I had an instance of that the next morning.

  My telephone rang and I answered it—

  “Flaxman 73841.”

  A kind of gasp came through the phone. Then a voice said breathlessly but defiantly:

  “I’ve thought about it, and I’ll come!”

  I cast round wildly in my mind.

  “Splendid,” I said, stalling for time. “Er—is that—?”

  “After all,” said the voice, “lightning never strikes twice.”

  “Are you sure you’ve got the right number?”

  “Of course I have. You’re Mark Easterbrook, aren’t you?”

  “Got it!” I said. “Mrs. Oliver.”

  “Oh,” said the voice, surprised. “Didn’t you know who it was? I never thought of that. It’s about that fête of Rhoda’s. I’ll come and sign books if she wants me to.”

  “That’s frightfully nice of you. They’ll put you up, of course.”

  “There won’t be parties, will there?” asked Mrs. Oliver apprehensively.

  “You know the kind of thing,” she went on. “People coming up to me and saying am I writing something just now—when you’d think they could see I’m drinking ginger ale or tomato juice and not writing at all. And saying they like my books—which of course is pleasing, but I’ve never found the right answer. If you say ‘I’m so glad’ it sounds like ‘Pleased to meet you.’ A kind of stock phrase. Well, it is, of course. And you don’t think they’ll want me to go out to the Pink Horse and have drinks?”

  “The Pink Horse?”

  “Well, the Pale Horse. Pubs, I mean. I’m so bad in pubs. I can just drink beer at a pinch, but it makes me terribly gurgly.”

  “Just what do you mean by the Pale Horse?”

  “There’s a pub called that down there, isn’t there? Or perhaps I do mean the Pink Horse? Or perhaps that’s somewhere else. I may have just imagined it. I do imagine quite a lot of things.”

  “How’s the Cockatoo getting on?” I asked.

  “The Cockatoo?” Mrs. Oliver sounded at sea.

  “And the cricket ball?”

  “Really,” said Mrs. Oliver with dignity. “I think you must be mad or have a hangover or something. Pink Horses and cockatoos and cricket balls.”

  She rang off.

  I was still considering this second mention of the Pale Horse when my telephone rang again.

  This time, it was Mr. Soames White, a distinguished solicitor who rang up to remind me that under the will of my godmother, Lady Hesketh-Dubois, I was entitled to choose three of her pictures.

  “There is nothing outstandingly valuable, of course,” said Mr. Soames White in his defeatist melancholy tones. “But I understand that at some time you expressed admiration of some of the pictures to the deceased.”

  “She had some very charming watercolours of Indian scenes,” I said. “I believe you already have written to me about this matter, but I’m afraid it slipped my memory.”

  “Quite so,” said Mr. Soames White. “But probate has now been granted, and the executors, of whom I am one, are arranging for the sale of the effects of her London house. If you could go round to Ellesmere Square in the near future….”

  “I’ll go now,” I said.

  It seemed an unfavourable morning for work.

  III

  Carrying the three watercolours of my choice under my arm, I emerged from Forty-nine Ellesmere Square and immediately cannoned into someone coming up the steps to the front door. I apologised, received apologies in return, and was just about to hail a passing taxi when something clicked in my mind and I turned sharply to ask:

  “Hallo—isn’t it Corrigan?”

  “It is—and—yes—you’re Mark Easterbrook!”

  Jim Corrigan and I had been friends in our Oxford days—but it must have been fifteen years or more since we had last met.

  “Thought I knew you—but couldn’t place you for the moment,” said Corrigan. “I read your articles now and again—and enjoy them, I must say.”

  “What about you? Have you gone in for research as you meant to do?”

  Corrigan sighed.

  “Hardly. It’s an expensive job—if you want to strike out on your own. Unless you can find a tame millionaire, or a suggestible Trust.”

  “Liver flukes, wasn’t it?”

  “What a memory! No, I went off liver flukes. The properties of the secretions of the Mandarian glands; that’s my present-day interest. You wouldn’t have heard of them! Connected with the spleen. Apparently serving no purpose whatever!”

  He spoke w
ith a scientist’s enthusiasm.

  “What’s the big idea, then?”

  “Well,” Corrigan sounded apologetic. “I have a theory that they may influence behaviour. To put it very crudely, they may act rather as the fluid in your car brakes does. No fluid—the brakes don’t act. In human beings, a deficiency in these secretions might— I only say might—make you a criminal.”

  I whistled.

  “And what happens to Original Sin?”

  “What indeed?” said Dr. Corrigan. “The parsons wouldn’t like it, would they? I haven’t been able to interest anyone in my theory, unfortunately. So I’m a police surgeon, in N.W. division. Quite interesting. One sees a lot of criminal types. But I won’t bore you with shop—unless you’ll come and have some lunch with me?”

  “I’d like to. But you were going in there,” I nodded towards the house behind Corrigan.

  “Not really,” said Corrigan. “I was just going to gatecrash.”

  “There’s nobody there but a caretaker.”

  “So I imagined. But I wanted to find out something about the late Lady Hesketh-Dubois if I could.”

  “I daresay I can tell you more than a caretaker could. She was my godmother.”

  “Was she indeed? That’s a bit of luck. Where shall we go to feed? There’s a little place off Lowndes Square—not grand, but they do a special kind of seafood soup.”

  We settled ourselves in the little restaurant—a cauldron of steaming soup was brought to us by a pale-faced lad in French sailor trousers.

  “Delicious,” I said, sampling the soup. “Now then, Corrigan, what do you want to know about the old lady? And incidentally, why?”

  “Why’s rather a long story,” said my friend. “First tell me what kind of an old lady she was?”

  I considered.

  “She was an old-fashioned type,” I said. “Victorian. Widow of an ex-Governor of some obscure island. She was rich and liked her comfort. Went abroad in the winters to Estoril and places like that. Her house is hideous, full of Victorian furniture and the worst and most ornate kind of Victorian silver. She had no children, but kept a couple of fairly well-behaved poodles whom she loved dearly. She was opinionated and a staunch Conservative. Kindly, but autocratic. Very set in her ways. What more do you want to know?”