The Pale Horse

‘I’d have hollered if it had been me,’ admitted Luigi. ‘But she’s a real sport, Tommy is.’

‘You know her well?’

‘Oh, she’s in here most evenings. Tuckerton, that’s her name, Thomasina Tuckerton, if you want the whole set out. But Tommy Tucker’s what she’s called round here. Stinking rich, too. Her old man left her a fortune, and what does she go and do? Comes to Chelsea, lives in a slummy room half-way to Wandsworth Bridge, and mooches around with a gang all doing the same thing. Beats me, half of that crowd’s got money. Could have any mortal thing they want; stay at the Ritz if they liked. But they seem to get a kick out of living the way they do. Yes—it beats me.’

‘It wouldn’t be your choice?’

‘Ar, I’ve got sense!’ said Luigi. ‘As it is, I just cash in.’

I rose to go and asked what the quarrel was about.

‘Oh, Tommy’s got hold of the other girl’s boy friend. He’s not worth fighting about, believe me!’

‘The other girl seemed to think he was,’ I observed.

‘Oh, Lou’s very romantic,’ said Luigi tolerantly.

It was not my idea of romance, but I did not say so.

It must have been about a week later that my eye was caught by a name in the Deaths column of The Times.

TUCKERTON. On October 2nd at Fallowfield Nursing Home, Amberley, Thomasina Ann, aged twenty, only daughter of the late Thomas Tuckerton, Esq., of Carrington Park, Amberley, Surrey. Funeral private. No flowers.

No flowers for poor Tommy Tucker; and no more ‘kicks’ out of life in Chelsea. I felt a sudden fleeting compassion for the Tommy Tuckers of today. Yet after all, I reminded myself, how did I know that my view was the right one? Who was I to pronounce it a wasted life? Perhaps it was my life, my quiet scholarly life, immersed in books, shut off from the world, that was the wasted one. Life at second hand. Be honest now, was I getting kicks out of life? A very unfamiliar idea! The truth was, of course, that I didn’t want kicks. But there again, perhaps I ought to? An unfamiliar and not very welcome thought.

I dismissed Tommy Tucker from my thoughts, and turned to my correspondence.

The principal item was a letter from my cousin Rhoda Despard, asking me to do her a favour. I grasped at this, since I was not feeling in the mood for work this morning, and it made a splendid excuse for postponing it.

I went out into King’s Road, hailed a taxi, and was driven to the residence of a friend of mine, a Mrs Ariadne Oliver.

Mrs Oliver was a well-known writer of detective stories. Her maid, Milly, was an efficient dragon who guarded her mistress from the onslaughts of the outside world.

I raised my eyebrows inquiringly, in an unspoken question. Milly nodded a vehement head.

‘You’d better go right up, Mr Mark,’ she said. ‘She’s in a mood this morning. You may be able to help her snap out of it.’

I mounted two flights of stairs, tapped lightly on a door, and walked in without waiting for encouragement. Mrs Oliver’s workroom was a good-sized room, the walls papered with exotic birds nesting in tropical foliage. Mrs Oliver herself, in a state apparently bordering on insanity, was prowling round the room, muttering to herself. She threw me a brief uninterested glance and continued to prowl. Her eyes, unfocused, swept round the walls, glanced out of the window, and occasionally closed in what appeared to be a spasm of agony.

‘But why,’ demanded Mrs Oliver of the universe, ‘why doesn’t the idiot say at once that he saw the cockatoo? Why shouldn’t he? He couldn’t have helped seeing it! But if he does mention it, it ruins everything. There must be a way … there must be …’

She groaned, ran her fingers through her short grey hair and clutched it in a frenzied hand. Then, looking at me with suddenly focused eyes, she said, ‘Hallo, Mark. I’m going mad,’ and resumed her complaint.

‘And then there’s Monica. The nicer I try to make her, the more irritating she gets … Such a stupid girl … Smug, too! Monica … Monica? I believe the name’s wrong. Nancy? Would that be better? Joan? Everybody is always Joan. Anne is the same. Susan? I’ve had a Susan. Lucia? Lucia? Lucia? I believe I can see a Lucia. Red-haired. Polo-necked jumper … Black tights? Black stockings, anyway.’

This momentary gleam of good cheer was eclipsed by the memory of the cockatoo problem, and Mrs Oliver resumed her unhappy prowling, picking up things off tables unseeingly and putting them down again somewhere else. She fitted with some care her spectacle case into a lacquered box which already contained a Chinese fan and then gave a deep sigh and said:

‘I’m glad it’s you.’

‘That’s very nice of you.’

‘It might have been anybody. Some silly woman who wanted me to open a bazaar, or the man about Milly’s insurance card which Milly absolutely refuses to have—or the plumber (but that would be too much good fortune, wouldn’t it?). Or, it might be someone wanting an interview—asking me all those embarrassing questions which are always the same every time. What made you first think of taking up writing? How many books have you written? How much money do you make? Etc. etc. I never know the answers to any of them and it makes me look such a fool. Not that any of that matters because I think I am going mad, over this cockatoo business.’

‘Something that won’t jell?’ I said sympathetically. ‘Perhaps I’d better go away.’

‘No, don’t. At any rate you’re a distraction.’

I accepted this doubtful compliment.

‘Do you want a cigarette?’ Mrs Oliver asked with vague hospitality. ‘There are some somewhere. Look in the typewriter lid.’

‘I’ve got my own, thanks. Have one. Oh no, you don’t smoke.’

‘Or drink,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘I wish I did. Like those American detectives that always have pints of rye conveniently in their collar 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.’

‘Nonsense. You’ve done lots of them.’

‘Fifty-five at least,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘The murder part is quite easy and simple. It’s the covering up that’s so difficult. I mean, why should it be anyone else but you? You stick out a mile.’

‘Not in the finished article,’ I said.

‘Ah, but what it costs me,’ said Mrs Oliver darkly. ‘Say what you like, it’s not natural for five or six people to be on the spot when B is murdered and all have a motive for killing B—unless, that is, B is absolutely madly unpleasant and in that case nobody will mind whether he’s been killed or not, and doesn’t care in the least who’s done it.’

‘I see your problem,’ I said. ‘But if you’ve dealt with it successfully fifty-five times, you will manage to deal with it once again.’

‘That’s what I tell myself,’ said Mrs Oliver, ‘over and over again, but every single time I can’t believe it, and so I’m in agony.’

She seized her hair again and tugged it violently.

‘Don’t,’ I cried. ‘You’ll have it out by the roots.’

‘Nonsense,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘Hair’s tough. Though when I had measles at fourteen with a very high temperature, it did come out—all round the front. Most shaming. And it was six whole months before it grew properly again. Awful for a girl—girls mind so. I thought of it yesterday when I was visiting Mary Delafontaine in that nursing home. Her hair was coming out just like mine did. She said she’d have to get a false front when she was better. If you’re sixty it doesn’t always grow again, I believe.’

‘I saw a girl pull out another girl’s hair by the roots the other night,’ I said. I was conscious of a slight note of pride in my voice as one who has seen life.

‘What extraordinary places have you been going to?’ asked Mrs Oliver.

‘This was in a coffee bar in Chelsea.’

‘Oh Chelsea!’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘Everything happens there, I believe. Beatniks and sputniks and squares and the beat generation. I don’t write about them much because I’m so afraid of getting the terms wrong. It’s safer, I think, to stick to what you know.’

‘Such as?’

‘People on cruises, and in hotels, and what goes on in hospitals, and on parish councils—and sales of work—and music festivals, and girls in shops, and committees and daily women, and young men and girls who hike round the world in the interests of science, and shop assistants—’

She paused, out of breath.

‘That seems fairly comprehensive to be getting on with,’ I said.