The Pale Horse

  “I’m afraid I’m terribly stupid about that sort of thing—architecture, I mean, and archaeology and all that. But you mustn’t mind my ignorance—”

  I didn’t mind at all. I preferred it.

  “Of course all that sort of thing is terribly interesting,” said Mrs. Tuckerton.

  I said that we specialists, on the contrary, were usually terribly dull and very boring on our own particular subject.

  Mrs. Tuckerton said she was sure that that wasn’t true, and would I like to have tea first and see the house afterwards, or see round the house and then have tea.

  I hadn’t bargained for tea—my appointment had been for three thirty, but I said that perhaps the house first.

  She showed me round, chatting vivaciously most of the time, and thus relieving me of uttering any architectural judgements.

  It was lucky, she said, that I’d come now. The house was up for sale—“It’s too big for me—since my husband’s death”—and she believed there was a purchaser already, though the agents had only had it on their books for just over a week.

  “I wouldn’t have liked you to see it when it was empty. I think a house needs to be lived in, if one is really to appreciate it, don’t you, Mr. Easterbrook?”

  I would have preferred this house unlived in, and unfurnished, but naturally I could not say so. I asked her if she was going to remain in the neighborhood.

  “Really, I’m not quite sure. I shall travel a little first. Get into the sunshine. I hate this miserable climate. Actually I think I shall winter in Egypt. I was there two years ago. Such a wonderful country, but I expect you know all about it.”

  I knew nothing about Egypt and said so.

  “I expect you’re just being modest,” she said gaily and vaguely. “This is the dining room. It’s octagonal. That’s right, isn’t it? No corners.”

  I said she was quite right and praised the proportions.

  Presently, the tour was completed, we returned to the drawing room and Mrs. Tuckerton rang for tea. It was brought in by the seedy-looking manservant. There was a vast Victorian silver teapot which could have done with a clean.

  Mrs. Tuckerton sighed as he left the room.

  “After my husband died, the married couple he had had for nearly twenty years insisted on leaving. They said they were retiring, but I heard afterwards that they took another post. A very highly-paid one. I think it’s absurd, myself, to pay these high wages. When you think what servants’ board and lodging costs—to say nothing of their laundry.”

  Yes, I thought, mean. The pale eyes, the tight mouth—avarice was there.

  There was no difficulty in getting Mrs. Tuckerton to talk. She liked talking. She liked, in particular, talking about herself. Presently, by listening with close attention, and uttering an encouraging word now and then, I knew a good deal about Mrs. Tuckerton. I knew, too, more than she was conscious of telling me.

  I knew that she had married Thomas Tuckerton, a widower, five years ago. She had been “much, much younger than he was.” She had met him at a big seaside hotel where she had been a bridge hostess. She was not aware that that last fact had slipped out. He had had a daughter at school near there—“so difficult for a man to know what to do with a girl when he takes her out.

  “Poor Thomas, he was so lonely… His first wife had died some years back and he missed her very much.”

  Mrs. Tuckerton’s picture of herself continued. A gracious kindly woman taking pity on this ageing lonely man. His deteriorating health and her devotion.

  “Though, of course, in the last stages of his illness I couldn’t really have any friends of my own.”

  Had there been, I wondered, some men friends whom Thomas Tuckerton had thought undesirable? It might explain the terms of his will.

  Ginger had looked up the terms of his will for me at Somerset House.

  Bequests to old servants, to a couple of godchildren, and then provision for his wife—sufficient, but not unduly generous. A sum in trust, the income to be enjoyed during her lifetime. The residue of his estate, which ran into a sum of six figures, to his daughter Thomasina Ann, to be hers absolutely at the age of twenty-one, or on her marriage. If she died before twenty-one unmarried, the money was to go to her stepmother. There had been, it seemed, no other members of the family.

  The prize, I thought, had been a big one. And Mrs. Tuckerton liked money… It stuck out all over her. She had never had any money of her own, I was sure, till she married her elderly widower. And then, perhaps, it had gone to her head. Hampered, in her life with an invalid husband, she had looked forward to the time when she would be free, still young, and rich beyond her wildest dreams.

  The will, perhaps, had been a disappointment. She had dreamed of something better than a moderate income. She had looked forward to expensive travel, to luxury cruises, to clothes, jewels—or possibly to the sheer pleasure of money itself—mounting up in the bank.

  Instead the girl was to have all that money! The girl was to be a wealthy heiress. The girl who, very likely, had disliked her stepmother and shown it with the careless ruthlessness of youth. The girl was to be the rich one—unless….

  Unless…? Was that enough? Could I really believe that the blonde-haired meretricious creature talking platitudes so glibly was capable of seeking out the Pale Horse, and arranging for a young girl to die?

  No, I couldn’t believe it….

  Nevertheless, I must do my stuff. I said, rather abruptly:

  “I believe, you know, I met your daughter—stepdaughter—once.”

  She looked at me in mild surprise, though without much interest.

  “Thomasina? Did you?”

  “Yes, in Chelsea.”

  “Oh, Chelsea! Yes, it would be…” She sighed. “These girls nowadays. So difficult. One doesn’t seem to have any control over them. It upset her father very much. I couldn’t do anything about it, of course. She never listened to anything I said.” She sighed again. “She was nearly grown-up, you know, when we married. A stepmother—” she shook her head.

  “Always a difficult position,” I said sympathetically.

  “I made allowances—did my best in every way.”

  “I’m sure you did.”

  “But it was absolutely no use. Of course Tom wouldn’t allow her to be actually rude to me, but she sailed as near to the wind as she could. She really made life quite impossible. In a way it was a relief to me when she insisted on leaving home, but I could quite understand how Tom felt about it. She got in with a most undesirable set.”

  “I—rather gathered that,” I said.

  “Poor Thomasina,” said Mrs. Tuckerton. She adjusted a stray lock of blonde hair. Then she looked at me. “Oh, but perhaps you don’t know. She died about a month ago. Encephalitis—very sudden. It’s a disease that attacks young people, I believe—so sad.”

  “I did know she was dead,” I said.

  I got up.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Tuckerton, very much indeed for showing me your house.” I shook hands.

  Then as I moved away, I turned back.

  “By the way,” I said, “I think you know the Pale Horse, don’t you?”

  There wasn’t any doubt of the reaction. Panic, sheer panic, showed in those pale eyes. Beneath the makeup, her face was suddenly white and afraid.

  Her voice came shrill and high:

  “Pale Horse? What do you mean by the Pale Horse? I don’t know anything about the Pale Horse.”

  I let mild surprise show in my eyes.

  “Oh—my mistake. There’s a very interesting old pub—in Much Deeping. I was down there the other day and was taken to see it. It’s been charmingly converted, keeping all the atmosphere. I certainly thought your name was mentioned—but perhaps it was your stepdaughter who had been down there—or someone else of the same name.” I paused. “The place has got—quite a reputation.”

  I enjoyed my exit line. In one of the mirrors on the wall I saw Mrs. Tuckerton’s face reflected. She was staring aft
er me. She was very, very frightened and I saw just how she would look in years to come… It was not a pleasant sight.

  Fourteen

  Mark Easterbrook’s Narrative

  I

  “So now we’re quite sure,” said Ginger.

  “We were sure before.”

  “Yes—reasonably so. But this does clinch it.”

  I was silent for a moment or two. I was visualising Mrs. Tuckerton journeying to Birmingham. Entering the Municipal Square Buildings—meeting Mr. Bradley. Her nervous apprehension… his reassuring bonhomie. His skilful underlining of the lack of risk. (He would have had to underline that very hard with Mrs. Tuckerton.) I could see her going away, not committing herself. Letting the idea take root in her mind. Perhaps she went to see her stepdaughter, or her stepdaughter came home for a weekend. There could have been talk, hints of marriage. And all the time the thought of the MONEY—not just a little money, not a miserly pittance—but lots of money, big money, money that enabled you to do everything you had ever wanted! And all going to this degenerate, ill-mannered girl, slouching about in the coffee bars of Chelsea in her jeans and her sloppy jumpers, with her undesirable degenerate friends. Why should a girl like that, a girl who was no good and would never be any good, have all that beautiful money?

  And so—another visit to Birmingham. More caution, more reassurance. Finally, a discussion on terms. I smiled involuntarily. Mr. Bradley would not have had it all his own way. She would have been a hard bargainer. But in the end, the terms had been agreed, some document duly signed, and then what?

  That was where imagination stopped. That was what we didn’t know.

  I came out of my meditation to see Ginger watching me.

  She asked: “Got it all worked out?”

  “How did you know what I was doing?”

  “I’m beginning to know the way your mind works. You were working it out, weren’t you, following her—to Birmingham and all the rest of it?”

  “Yes. But I was brought up short. At the moment when she had settled things in Birmingham—What happens next?”

  We looked at each other.

  “Sooner or later,” said Ginger, “someone has got to find out exactly what happens at the Pale Horse.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know… It won’t be easy. Nobody who’s actually been there, who’s actually done it, will ever tell. At the same time, they’re the only people who can tell. It’s difficult… I wonder….”

  “We could go to the police?” I suggested.

  “Yes. After all, we’ve got something fairly definite now. Enough to act upon, do you think?”

  I shook my head doubtfully.

  “Evidence of intent. But is that enough? It’s this death wish nonsense. Oh,” I forestalled her interruption, “it mayn’t be nonsense—but it would sound like it in court. We’ve no idea, even, of what the actual procedure is.”

  “Well, then, we’ve got to know. But how?”

  “One would have to see—or hear—with one’s own eyes and ears. But there’s absolutely no place one could hide oneself in that great barn of a room—and I suppose that’s where it—whatever ‘it’ is—must take place.”

  Ginger sat up very straight, gave her head a kind of toss, rather like an energetic terrier, and said:

  “There’s only one way to find out what does really happen. You’ve got to be a genuine client.”

  I stared at her.

  “A genuine client?”

  “Yes. You or I, it doesn’t matter which, has got to want somebody put out of the way. One of us has got to go to Bradley and fix it up.”

  “I don’t like it,” I said sharply.

  “Why?”

  “Well—it opens up dangerous possibilities.”

  “For us?”

  “Perhaps. But I was really thinking about the—victim. We’ve got to have a victim—we’ve got to give him a name. It can’t be just invention. They might check up—in fact, they’d almost certainly check up, don’t you agree?”

  Ginger thought a minute and then nodded.

  “Yes. The victim’s got to be a real person with a real address.”

  “That’s what I don’t like,” I said.

  “And we’ve got to have a real reason for getting rid of him.”

  We were silent for a moment, considering this aspect of the situation.

  “The person, whoever it was, would have to agree,” I said slowly. “It’s a lot to ask.”

  “The whole setup has got to be good,” said Ginger, thinking it out. “But there’s one thing, you were absolutely right in what you were saying the other day. The weakness of the whole thing is that they’re in a cleft stick. The business has got to be secret—but not too secret. Possible clients have got to be able to hear about it.”

  “What puzzles me,” I said, “is that the police don’t seem to have heard about it. After all, they’re usually aware of what kind of criminal activities are going on.”

  “Yes, but I think that the reason for that is, that this is in every sense of the word, an amateur show. It’s not professional. No professional criminals are employed or involved. It’s not like hiring gangsters to bump people off. It’s all—private.”

  I said that I thought she had something there.

  Ginger went on:

  “Suppose now that you, or I (we’ll examine both possibilities), are desperate to get rid of someone. Now who is there that you and I could want to do away with? There’s my dear old Uncle Mervyn—I’ll come into a very nice packet when he pops off. I and some cousin in Australia are the only ones left of the family. So there’s a motive there. But he’s over seventy and more or less gaga, so it would really seem more sensible for me to wait for natural causes—unless I was in some terrible hole for money—and that really would be quite difficult to fake. Besides, he’s a pet, and I’m very fond of him, and gaga or not gaga, he quite enjoys life, and I wouldn’t want to deprive him of a minute of it—or even risk such a thing! What about you? Have you got any relatives who are going to leave you money?”

  I shook my head.

  “No one at all.”

  “Bother. It could be blackmail, perhaps? That would take a lot of fixing, though. You’re not really vulnerable enough. If you were an M.P., or in the Foreign Office, or an up and coming Minister it would be different. The same with me. Fifty years ago it would have been easy. Compromising letters, or photographs in the altogether, but really nowadays, who cares? One can be like the Duke of Wellington and say ‘Publish and be damned!’ Well, now, what else is there? Bigamy?” She fixed me with a reproachful stare. “What a pity it is you’ve never been married. We could have cooked something up if you had.”

  Some expression on my face must have given me away. Ginger was quick.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “Have I raked up something that hurts?”

  “No,” I said. “It doesn’t hurt. It was a long time ago, I rather doubt if there’s anyone now who knows about it.”

  “You married someone?”

  “Yes. Whilst I was at the University. We kept it dark. She wasn’t—well, my people would have cut up rough. I wasn’t even of age. We lied about our ages.”

  I was silent a moment or two, reliving the past.

  “It wouldn’t have lasted,” I said slowly. “I know that now. She was pretty and she could be very sweet… but…”

  “What happened?”

  “We went to Italy in the long vacation. There was an accident—a car accident. She was killed outright.”

  “And you?”

  “I wasn’t in the car. She was—with a friend.”

  Ginger gave me a quick glance. I think she understood the way it had been. The shock of my discovery that the girl I had married was not the kind that makes a faithful wife.

  Ginger reverted to practical matters.

  “You were married in England?”

  “Yes. Registry office in Peterborough.”

  “But she died in Italy??
??

  “Yes.”

  “So there will be no record of her death in England?”

  “No.”

  “Then what more do you want? It’s an answer to prayer! Nothing could be simpler! You’re desperately in love with someone and you want to marry her—but you don’t know whether your wife is still alive. You’ve parted years ago and never heard from her since. Dare you risk it? While you’re thinking it out, sudden reappearance of the wife! She turns up out of the blue, refuses to give you a divorce, and threatens to go to your young woman and spill the beans.”

  “Who’s my young woman?” I asked, slightly confused. “You?”

  Ginger looked shocked.

  “Certainly not. I’m quite the wrong type—I’d probably go and live in sin with you. No, you know quite well who I mean—and she’ll be exactly right, I should say. The statuesque brunette you go around with. Very highbrow and serious.”

  “Hermia Redcliffe?”

  “That’s right. Your steady.”

  “Who told you about her?”

  “Poppy, of course. She’s rich, too, isn’t she?”

  “She’s extremely well-off. But really—”

  “All right, all right. I’m not saying you’re marrying her for her money. You’re not the kind. But nasty minds like Bradley’s could easily think so… Very well then. Here’s the position. You are about to pop the question to Hermia when up turns the unwanted wife from the past. She arrives in London and the fat’s in the fire. You urge a divorce—she won’t play. She’s vindictive. And then—you hear of the Pale Horse. I’ll bet anything you like that Thyrza, and that half-witted peasant Bella, thought that that was why you came that day. They took it as a tentative approach, and that’s why Thyrza was so forthcoming. It was a sales talk they were giving you.”

  “It could have been, I suppose.” I went over that day in my mind.

  “And your going to Bradley soon after fits in perfectly. You’re hooked! You’re a prospect—”

  She paused triumphantly. There was something in what she said—but I didn’t quite see….

  “I still think,” I said, “that they’ll investigate very carefully.”