Free The Pale Horse by Agatha Christie

made crudely from Plasticine by a child was borne out on closer inspection. It was a witless primitive face but I could not imagine why I had thought it sinister.
    Suddenly I felt angry with myself. All this nonsense about a converted inn and three middle-aged women!
    “Thank you, Bella,” said Thyrza.
    “Got all you want?”
    It came out almost as a mumble.
    “Yes, thanks.”
    Bella withdrew to the door. She had looked at nobody, but just before she went out, she raised her eyes and took a speedy glance at me. There was something in that look that startled me - though it was difficult to describe why. There was malice in it, and a curious intimate knowledge. I felt that without effort, and almost without curiosity, she had known exactly what thoughts were in my mind.
    Thyrza Grey had noticed my reaction.
    “Bella is disconcerting, isn't she, Mr Easterbrook?” she said softly. “I noticed her look at you.”
    “She's a local woman, isn't she?” I strove to appear merely politely interested.
    “Yes. I dare say someone will have told you she's the local witch.”
    Sybil Stamfordis clanked her beads.
    “Now do confess, Mr - Mr -”
    “Easterbrook.”
    “Mr Easterbrook. I'm sure you've heard that we all practise witchcraft. Confess now. We've got quite a reputation, you know.”
    “Not undeserved, perhaps,” said Thyrza. She seemed amused. “Sybil here has great gifts.”
    Sybil sighed pleasurably.
    “I was always attracted by the occult,” she murmured. “Even as a child I realised that I had unusual powers. Automatic writing came to me quite naturally. I didn't even know what it was! I'd just sit there with a pencil in my hand - and not know a thing about what was happening. And of course I was always ultrasensitive. I fainted once when taken to tea in a friend's house. Something awful had happened in that very room... I knew it! We got the explanation later. There had been a murder there - twenty-five years ago. In that very room!”
    She nodded her head and looked round at us with great satisfaction.
    “Very remarkable,” said Colonel Despard with polite distaste.
    “Sinister things have happened in this house,” said Sybil darkly. “But we have taken the necessary steps. The earthbound spirits have been freed.”
    “A kind of spiritual spring cleaning?” I suggested.
    Sybil looked at me rather doubtfully.
    “What a lovely coloured sari you are wearing,” said Rhoda.
    Sybil brightened.
    "Yes, I got it when I was in India. I had an interesting time there. I explored yoga, you know, and all that. But I could not help feeling that it was all too sophisticated - not near enough to the natural and the primitive. One must go back, I feel, to the beginnings, to the early primitive powers. I am one of the few women who have visited Haiti. Now there you really do touch the original springs of the occult. Overlaid, of course, by a certain amount of corruption and distortion. But the root of the matter is there.
    "I was shown a great deal, especially when they learned that I had twin sisters a little older than myself. The child who is born next after twins has special powers, so they told me. Interesting, wasn't it? Their death dances are wonderful. All the panoply of death, skulls and crossbones, and the tools of a gravedigger, spade, pick and hoe. They dress up as undertakers' mutes, top hats, black clothes.
    "The Grand Master is Baron Samedi, and the Legba is the god he invokes, the god who 'removes the barrier.' You send the dead forth - to cause death. Weird idea, isn't it?
    “Now this,” Sybil rose and fetched an object from the windowsill. “This is my Asson. It's a dried gourd with a network of beads and - you see these bits? - dried snake vertebrae.”
    We looked politely, though without enthusiasm.
    Sybil rattled her horrid toy affectionately.
    “Very interesting,” said Despard courteously.
    “I could tell you lots more -”
    At this point my attention wandered. Words came to me hazily as