The house is inhabited by three modern “witches”, led by Thyrza Grey. When Mark goes to a village fete, organised by his cousin, at Much Deeping, with the famous mystery writer, Ariadne Oliver, he hears about a house which has been converted from an old inn called the Pale Horse. He begins to fear that the list contains the names of those who are dead or are shortly to die. The list includes the names Corrigan, Tuckerton and Hesketh-Dubois (the same name as Mark’s godmother who has recently died of what appear to be natural causes). When Mark encounters the police surgeon, Corrigan, he learns of the list of surnames found in the shoe of a murdered priest called Father Gorman. At dinner with a friend, a woman named Poppy Stirling mentions something called the Pale Horse that arranges deaths, but is suddenly scared at having mentioned it and will say no more. Soon afterwards, he finds out that one of the girls, Thomasina Tuckerton, has died. Mark Easterbrook, the central character of the book and its principal narrator, sees a fight between two girls in a Chelsea coffee bar, during which one pulls out some of the other’s hair at the roots. Mrs Lancaster mentioned “ten past eleven”, though, while Ardingly’s recollection placed the mentioned time at “12.10”. Mrs Lancaster from By the Pricking of My Thumbs may have been mentioned in a conversation, when one of the characters, David Ardingly, mentions how he met an old lady in a mental home who says exactly the same phrase which chilled Tuppence to the bone, and which had a similar effect on Ardingly. Mrs Oliver is apprehensive of attending a fete, for reasons that will be apparent to readers of her previous appearance in a Christie novel: Dead Man’s Folly. Mrs Dane Calthrop from The Moving Finger also reappears in approximately the same role as she played in that book: the rational but devoted Christian who wants the evil stopped. In addition to Ariadne Oliver, Major Despard and his wife Rhoda (who met and fell in love in Cards on the Table) also participate in the plot. This novel is notable as several of her earlier characters reappear in this book. The Pale Horse is mentioned in Revelation 6:8, where it is ridden by Death. The novel features her novelist detective Ariadne Oliver as a minor character, and reflects in tone the supernatural novels of Dennis Wheatley who was then at the height of his popularity. The UK edition retailed at fifteen shillings (15/- = 75p) and the US edition at $3.75.
The Pale Horse is a work of detective fiction by British writer Agatha Christie, first published in the UK by the Collins Crime Club on 6 November 1961, and in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company the following year.
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