Free The Pale Horse by Agatha Christie Page B

shot me a glance, keen, searching. It took me aback.
    “Death. There's always been a greater trade in that than there ever has been in love potions. And yet - how childish it all was in the past! The Borgias and their famous secret poisons. Do you know what they really used? Ordinary white arsenic! Just the same as any little wife poisoner in the back streets. But we've progressed a long way beyond that nowadays. Science has enlarged our frontiers.”
    “With untraceable poisons?” My voice was sceptical.
    “Poisons! That's vieux jeu. Childish stuff. There are new horizons.”
    “Such as?”
    “The mind. Knowledge of what the mind is - what it can do - what it can be made to do.”
    “Please go on. This is most interesting.”
    “The principle is well known. Medicine men have used it in primitive communities for centuries. You don't need to kill your victim. All you need do is - tell him to die.”
    “Suggestion? But it won't work unless the victim believes in it.”
    “It doesn't work on Europeans, you mean,” she corrected me. “It does sometimes. But that's not the point. We've gone farther ahead than the witch doctor has ever gone. The psychologists have shown the way. The desire for death! It's there in everyone. Work on that! Work on the death wish.”
    “It's an interesting idea.” I spoke with a muted scientific interest. “Influence your subject to commit suicide? Is that it?”
    “You're still lagging behind. You've heard of traumatic illnesses?”
    “Of course.”
    “People who, because of an unconscious wish to avoid returning to work, develop real ailments. Not malingering - real illnesses with symptoms, with actual pain. It's been a puzzle to doctors for a long time.”
    “I'm beginning to get the hang of what you mean,” I said slowly.
    “To destroy your subject, power must be exerted on his secret unconscious self. The death wish that exists in all of us must be stimulated, heightened.”
    Her excitement was growing. “Don't you see? A real illness will be induced, caused by that death-seeking self. You wish to be ill, you wish to die - and so - you do get ill, and die.”
    She had flung her head up now, triumphantly. I felt suddenly very cold. All nonsense, of course. This woman was slightly mad. And yet -
    Thyrza Grey laughed suddenly.
    “You don't believe me, do you?”
    “It's a fascinating theory, Miss Grey - quite in line with modern thought, I'll admit. But how do you propose to stimulate this death wish that we all possess?”
    “That's my secret. The way! The means! There are communications without contact. You've only to think of wireless, radar, television. Experiments in extrasensory perception haven't gone ahead as people hoped, but that's because they haven't grasped the first simple principle. You can accomplish it sometimes by accident - but once you know how it works, you could do it every time...”
    “Can you do it?”
    She didn't answer at once - then she said, moving away: “You mustn't ask me, Mr Easterbrook, to give all my secrets away.”
    I followed her towards the garden door.
    “Why have you told me all this?” I asked.
    “You understand my books. One needs sometimes to - to - well - talk to someone. And besides -”
    “Yes?”
    “I had the idea - Bella has it, too - that you - may need us.”
    “Need you?”
    “Bella thinks you came here - to find us. She is seldom at fault.”
    “Why should I want to 'find you,' as you put it?”
    “That,” said Thyrza Grey softly, “I do not know - yet.”

The Pale Horse

Chapter 7
    “So there you are! We wondered where you were.” Rhoda came through the open door, the others behind her. She looked round her. “This is where you hold your sйances, isn't it?”
    “You're well informed.” Thyrza Grey laughed breezily. “In a village everyone knows your business better than you do. We've a splendid sinister reputation, so I've heard. A hundred years ago it would have been sink or swim or the funeral pyre.