Double, double, toil and trouble: The Pale Horse | 1961

(image from here)

"There are two methods, it seems to me, of approaching this strange business of the Pale Horse. In spite of the dictum of the White King, it is difficult to achieve simplicity. One cannot, that is to say, 'Begin at the beginning, go on to the end, and then stop.' For where is the beginning? To a historian, that is always the difficulty. At what point in history does one particular portion of history begin? 

In this case, you can begin at the moment when Father Gorman set forth from his presbytery to visit a dying woman. Or you can start before that, on a certain evening in Chelsea." 

- The Pale Horse, Forward

The Sum of It:

This tale of village witches and conspiracy to murder is narrated by a newcomer, an historian in his early thirties named Mark Easterbrook. He got mixed up in the tale somewhat by chance, and it all began for him when he stopped by a fashionably hip espresso bar in Chelsea for a break from his book about Mogul architecture. While he was there, he witnesses a cat fight between two ladies (Agatha uses the b-word! #gasp), one of whom has handfuls of her curly red hair pulled out by the roots, but bravely (so Mark thinks) proclaims it didn't really hurt. He's confused by the hipsters #beatniks, and also by the red-haired girl, whose name, it turns out, is Thomasina Tuckerton. He's even more confused a few days later when he sees her name in the obituaries! 

A bit later, Mark meets up with some friends after seeing Macbeth, and they start talking about whether or not village witches are a real thing, or just a handy scam by creepy old ladies to get free stuff and keep dogs from messing with their chickens #witchpriorities. One of the girls, apparently not the brightest bulb in the box, tries to explain about some folks who do murders for hire over at a place called the Pale Horse, but she gets confused and can't quite explain. Mark brushes off the oddness til this weirdness turns into a series of incidents: he bumps into an old friend who's now a medical examiner when he stops by Mark's recently deceased godmother's house to follow up on a lead. Turns out, the godmother's unique last name was among a list of names found on a murdered Catholic priest! Seems like the list was dictated to the priest by a woman dying of a sudden and mysterious illness. In the course of their conversation, Mark recognizes a couple of other names on the list, one of which is Tuckerton, and starts thinking something wicked this way comes...

Delightfully, Mark is a pal of Ariadne Oliver's, and when he stops by to talk to her about attending a fete' his cousin is putting on in Much Deeping, she has some classic Ariadne/Agatha rants about writing mysteries (ex: "Or drink," said Mrs. Oliver. "I wish I did. Like those American detectives that always have pints or rye conveniently in their desk drawers. It seems to solve all their problems. You know, Mark, I really can't think how anyone ever gets away with a murder in real life. It seems to me that the moment you've done a murder the whole thing is so terribly obvious.") and ultimately agrees to go to the fete' on the condition that she not be forced to go have drinks at a local pub in Much Deeping called The Pale Horse. Mark's curiosity grows, and ultimately he wrangles a visit there when they're in the village, finding it now a home occupied by three decidedly witchy women #Eaglesstyle, who seem more than happy to talk about mysterious ways of killing people. Ultimately, he and the vicar's wife decide he has enough facts to link these supposed witches to a string of mysterious deaths, and with the help of an affable red-headed cutie aptly nicknamed Ginger, he decides to set a trap for evil, never realizing how close he'll come to the real deal. 

The YOA Treatment:

This one is a great read! I keep worrying that the later we get in Agatha's career, the more likely her books will get a little weaker (for one thing, how could anyone be expected to come up with 86 original ideas?!) but I keep bumping into some of the strongest books yet, so once again am forced to conclude that Agatha is superhuman. 

Speaking of original ideas though, Agatha gave herself a good idea for a story in a throwaway anecdote shared by a character in this book as a means of explaining how creepy old ladies can seem like witches, and it turns up again in 1968 as the key premise of a Tommy & Tuppence tale, By the Pricking of My Thumbs! For kicks, here's the section in Pale Horse:

"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, Twenty-ten exactly. It's always at the same time every day. Pretend you don't notice the blood."

Clearly Agatha was well pleased with the creepiness of that premise, we can't wait to get to By the Pricking of My Thumbs #spineshivers! 

Part of the reason the premise of this book is so engaging is the way that it keeps building and building. Typically, something crazy or mysterious happens and right away the detectives and police are on the case! Agatha cleverly set this one up a little differently, in a way that we see reflected in many modern crime shows, such as Midsomer Murders or even Sherlock, where one crime seems straightforward but something is a little off, and the police are trying to decide whether to just leave it or tease out the loose thread. She pairs that with the series of odd coincidences that ultimately gets Mark Easterbrook involved in trying to solve the mystery, about halfway through the book, by allowing one thing after another to connect the dots for him until he realizes there really is something sketchy going on, and that he might be the only one (besides the Vicar's old wife in Much Deeping) who is willing to dig through the seemingly bogus witchy stuff to figure out where the real crime is. This seemed like a very realistic way for an everyday person to get involved in trying to solve a mystery of some kind, and I enjoyed the new way to approach the story. Well done, again, Dame!

- E. 

Don't You Know That You're Toxic? | Agatha & Poison

This is an actual photo of Agatha in her WWI nurse outfit from the Agatha Christie Archive! We found it in this really interesting article from The Telegraph about how WWI influenced Agatha and her writing. Give it a read!

It's no secret (certainly not from those of you who've read a few books) that poison is one of Agatha's favorite weapons. She gets pretty creative with it at times, sometimes it's a mysterious tribal potion on the tip of a tiny tiny dart, sometimes it's mixed in with some coffee, and sometimes it's dissolved in a nice champagne cocktail #SparklingCyanide. As a part of our month with the #MaidensofMurder, we wanted to do a post looking into Agatha's interest and expertise in poisons as a murder weapon #ladieschoice #accordingtomostfictionaldetectives

The article we referenced in the photo caption notes that Agatha's work as a WWI nurse was pretty grim stuff, despite her own "stiff upper lip" attitude anytime she writes about it. She experienced quite a bit of grisly wounds and surgeries as she was caring for the soldiers who came through her hospital. As the article points out, despite this firsthand experience, she seems to prefer writing about the "clean method of poisoning." In fact, Agatha's first murder was a poisoning, in The Mysterious Affair at Styles. She got the idea to write a detective story while she was working in the dispensary at her town's wartime hospital. In her own words:

"It was while I was working in the dispensary that I first conceived the idea of writing a detective story. The idea had remained in my mind since [my sister] Madge's earlier challenge--and my present work seemed to offer a favourable opportunity...I began considering what kind of  detective story I could write. Since I was surrounded by poisons, perhaps it was natural that death by poisoning should be the method I selected."

She goes on to explain how terrifying working in the dispensary was at first, and how cautious and nervous she and her fellow amateurs were, but also points out what she learned during that time:

"After working in a hospital with several doctors one realizes how medicine, like everything else in this world, is very much a matter of fashion: that, and the personal idiosyncrasy of every medical practitioner."

This understanding of the idiosyncrasies of medicine and the physicians who prescribe it inspired some of Agatha's craftiest murderers. We certainly know one creepy doctor gave her some material, which she also describes in the autobiography:

"One day, seeking perhaps to impress me, he took from his pocket a dark-coloured lump and showed it to me, saying, "Know what this is?" "No," I said. "It's curare," he said. "Know about curare?" 

I said I had read about it. 

"Interesting stuff," he said, "very interesting. Taken by the mouth it does you no harm at all. Enter the bloodstream, it paralyzes and kills you. It's what they use for arrow poison. Do you know why I carry it in my pocket?"

"No," I said, "I haven't the slightest idea." It seemed to me an extremely foolish thing to do, but I didn't add that.

"Well you know," he said thoughtfully, "it makes me feel powerful." [#terrifiedeyesemoji]

She goes on to talk about how she had often wondered about him after she finished working with him, saying "He struck me, in spite of his cherubic appearance, as possibly rather a dangerous man [#noshit]. His memory remained with me so long that it was still there waiting when I first conceived the idea of my book The Pale Horse--and that must have been, I suppose, nearly fifty years later."

Here's hoping that guy never murdered anybody. But thanks to him, and to Agatha's wartime pharmacy experience, her imagination created a lot of our favorite mysteries, including Sparkling Cyanide, this month's #MaidensofMurder read! Our month of maidening continues next week with a post about the short story that led to Sparkling Cyanide, leading up to our review of the book itself!

- A. & E.