The Pale Horse by Agatha Christie Page B

pull a rusty-looking bell at the side of the front door.

The Pale Horse
    II
    “It doesn't ring,” said Mrs Dane Calthrop, appearing at the door with the unexpectedness of a genie.
    I had already suspected that fact
    “They've mended it twice,” said Mrs Dane Calthrop. “But it never lasts. So I have to keep alert. In case it's something important. It's important with you, isn't it?”
    “It - well - yes, it is important - to me, I mean.”
    “That's what I meant, too.” She looked at me thoughtfully. “Yes, it's quite bad, I can see - Who do you want? The vicar?”
    “I - I'm not sure -”
    It had been the vicar I came to see - but now, unexpectedly, I was doubtful. I didn't quite know why. But immediately Mrs Dane Calthrop told me.
    “My husband's a very good man,” she said. “Besides being the vicar, I mean. And that makes things difficult sometimes. Good people, you see, don't really understand evil.” She paused and then said with a kind of brisk efficiency, “I think it had better be me.”
    A faint smile came to my lips. “Is evil your department?” I asked.
    “Yes, it is. It's important in a parish to know all about the various - well - sins that are going on.”
    “Isn't sin your husband's province? His official business, so to speak.”
    “The forgiveness of sins,” she corrected me. “He can give absolution. I can't. But I,” said Mrs Dane Calthrop with the utmost cheerfulness, “can get sin arranged and classified for him. And if one knows about it one can help to prevent its harming other people. One can't help the people themselves. I can't, I mean. Only God can call to repentance, you know - or perhaps you don't know. A lot of people don't nowadays.”
    “I can't compete with your expert knowledge,” I said, “but I would like to prevent people being harmed.”
    She shot me a quick glance.
    “It's like that, is it? You'd better come in and we'll be comfortable.”
    The vicarage sitting room was big and shabby. It was much shaded by a gargantuan Victorian shrubbery that no one seemed to have had the energy to curb. But the dimness was not gloomy for some peculiar reason. It was, on the contrary, restful. All the large shabby chairs bore the impress of resting bodies in them over the years. A fat clock on the chimney-piece ticked with a heavy comfortable regularity. Here there would always be time to talk, to say what you wanted to say, to relax from the cares brought about by the bright day outside.
    Here, I felt, round-eyed girls who had tearfully discovered themselves to be prospective mothers, had confided their troubles to Mrs Dane Calthrop and received sound, if not always orthodox, advice; here angry relatives had unburdened themselves of their resentment over their inlaws; here mothers had explained that their Bob was not a bad boy, just high-spirited, and that to send him away to an approved school was absurd. Husbands and wives had disclosed marital difficulties.
    And here was I, Mark Easterbrook, scholar, author, man of the world, confronting a grey-haired weather-beaten woman with fine eyes, prepared to lay my troubles in her lap. Why? I didn't know. I only had that odd surety that she was the right person.
    “We've just had tea with Thyrza Grey,” I began.
    Explaining things to Mrs Dane Calthrop was never difficult. She leaped to meet you.
    “Oh I see. It's upset you? Those three are a bit much to take, I agree. I've wondered myself. So much boasting. As a rule, in my experience, the really wicked don't boast. They can keep quiet about their wickedness. It's if your sins aren't really bad that you want so much to talk about them. Sin's such a wretched, mean, ignoble little thing. It's terribly necessary to make it seem grand and important. Village witches are usually silly ill-natured old women who like frightening people and getting something for nothing that way. Terribly easy to do, of course. When Mrs Brown's hens die all you have to do is nod your head and say