Agatha Christie - The Pale Horse

"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 three-fold 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."

"À 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 Oxford University Dramatic Society 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 leaned 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, 'Twelve-ten 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 round 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 dryly.

"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 dryly.

"Burbage and Company 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.

David looked at us.

"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.

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?"