The Pale Horse
A priest’s death leads to sinister goings-on in an old country pub…To understand the strange goings on at The Pale Horse Inn, Mark Easterbrook knew he had to begin at the beginning. But where exactly was the beginning?Was it the savage blow to the back of Father Gorman’s head? Or was it when the priest’s assailant searched him so roughly he tore the clergyman’s cassock? Or could it have been the priest’s visit, just minutes before, to a woman on her death bed?Or was there a deeper significance to the violent squabble which Mark Easterbrook had himself witnessed earlier?Wherever the beginning lies, Mark and his sidekick, Ginger Corrigan, may soon have cause to wish they’d never found it…
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Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by Collins, The Crime Club 1961
The Pale Horse™ is a trade mark of Agatha Christie Limited and Agatha Christie>® and the Agatha Christie Signature are registered trade marks of Agatha Christie Limited in the UK and elsewhere. Copyright © 1961 Agatha Christie Limited. All rights reserved.
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Agatha Christie asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Source ISBN: 9780008196387
Ebook Edition © March 2017 ISBN: 9780007422654
Version: 2017-04-15
To John and Helen Mildmay White with many thanks for the opportunity given me to see justice done
Contents
Chapter 1: Mark Easterbrook’s Narrative
Chapter 4: Mark Easterbrook’s Narrative
Chapter 5: Mark Easterbrook’s Narrative
Chapter 6: Mark Easterbrook’s Narrative
Chapter 7: Mark Easterbrook’s Narrative
Chapter 9: Mark Easterbrook’s Narrative
Chapter 11: Mark Easterbrook’s Narrative
Chapter 12: Mark Easterbrook’s Narrative
Chapter 13: Mark Easterbrook’s Narrative
Chapter 14: Mark Easterbrook’s Narrative
Chapter 15: Mark Easterbrook’s Narrative
Chapter 16: Mark Easterbrook’s Narrative
Chapter 17: Mark Easterbrook’s Narrative
Chapter 18: Mark Easterbrook’s Narrative
Chapter 19: Mark Easterbrook’s Narrative
Chapter 20: Mark Easterbrook’s Narrative
Chapter 21: Mark Easterbrook’s Narrative
Chapter 22: Mark Easterbrook’s Narrative
Chapter 23: Mark Easterbrook’s Narrative
Chapter 24: Mark Easterbrook’s Narrative
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 always is 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.
Perhaps, since I am writing the greater part of this narrative myself, it is there that I should begin.
The Espresso machine behind my shoulder hissed like an angry snake. The noise it made had a sinister, not to say devilish, suggestion about it. Perhaps, I reflected, most of our contemporary noises carry that implication. The intimidating angry scream of jet planes as they flash across the sky; the slow menacing rumble of a tube train approaching through its tunnel; the heavy road transport that shakes the very foundations of your house … Even the minor domestic noises of today, beneficial in action though they may be, yet carry a kind of alert. The dish-washers, the refrigerators, the pressure cookers, the whining vacuum cleaners—‘Be careful,’ they all seem to say. ‘I am a genie harnessed to your service, but if your control of me fails …’
A dangerous world—that was it, a dangerous world.
I stirred the foaming cup placed in front of me. It smelt pleasant.
‘What else will you have? Nice banana and bacon sandwich?’
It seemed an odd juxtaposition to me. Bananas I connected with my childhood—or occasionally flambé with sugar and rum. Bacon, in my mind, was firmly associated with eggs. However, when in Chelsea, eat as Chelsea does. I agreed to a nice banana and bacon sandwich.
Although I lived in Chelsea—that is to say, I had had a furnished flat there for the last three months—I was in every other way a stranger in these parts. I was writing a book on certain aspects of Mogul architecture, but for that purpose I could have lived in Hampstead or Bloomsbury or Streatham or Chelsea and it would have been all the same to me. I was oblivious of my surroundings except for the tools of my trade, and the neighbourhood in which I lived was completely indifferent to me, I existed in a world of my own.
