The Last Seance

by Agatha Christie

  ‘“Oh Lord!” groaned George. “That’s a new one, isn’t it?”

  ‘“Quite new. I believe my predecessor, Nurse Carstairs, sent her along. Mrs Pritchard hasn’t seen her yet. She made me write, fixing an appointment for this afternoon.”

  ‘“Well, at any rate, I shall get my golf,” said George, and he went off with the kindliest feelings towards Zarida, the Reader of the Future.

  ‘On his return to the house, he found Mrs Pritchard in a state of great agitation. She was, as usual, lying on her invalid couch, and she had a bottle of smelling salts in her hand which she sniffed at frequent intervals.

  ‘“George,” she exclaimed. “What did I tell you about this house? The moment I came into it, I felt there was something wrong! Didn’t I tell you so at the time?”

  ‘Repressing his desire to reply, “You always do,” George said, “No, I can’t say I remember it.”

  ‘“You never do remember anything that has to do with me. Men are all extraordinarily callous—but I really believe that you are even more insensitive than most.”

  ‘“Oh, come now, Mary dear, that’s not fair.”

  ‘“Well, as I was telling you, this woman knew at once! She—she actually blenched—if you know what I mean—as she came in at the door, and she said: “There is evil here—evil and danger. I feel it.”’

  ‘Very unwisely George laughed.

  ‘“Well, you have had your money’s worth this afternoon.”

  ‘His wife closed her eyes and took a long sniff from her smelling bottle.

  ‘“How you hate me! You would jeer and laugh if I were dying.”

  ‘George protested and after a minute or two she went on.

  ‘“You may laugh, but I shall tell you the whole thing. This house is definitely dangerous to me—the woman said so.”

  ‘George’s formerly kind feeling towards Zarida underwent a change. He knew his wife was perfectly capable of insisting on moving to a new house if the caprice got hold of her.

  ‘“What else did she say?” he asked.

  ‘“She couldn’t tell me very much. She was so upset. One thing she did say. I had some violets in a glass. She pointed at them and cried out:

  ‘“Take those away. No blue flowers—never have blue flowers. Blue flowers are fatal to you—remember that.”’

  ‘“And you know,” added Mrs Pritchard, “I always have told you that blue as a colour is repellent to me. I feel a natural instinctive sort of warning against.”

  ‘George was much too wise to remark that he had never heard her say so before. Instead he asked what the mysterious Zarida was like. Mrs Pritchard entered with gusto upon a description.

  ‘“Black hair in coiled knobs over her ears—her eyes were half closed—great black rims round them—she had a black veil over her mouth and chin—and she spoke in a kind of singing voice with a marked foreign accent—Spanish, I think—”

  ‘“In fact all the usual stock-in-trade,” said George cheerfully.

  ‘His wife immediately closed her eyes.

  ‘“I feel extremely ill,” she said. “Ring for nurse. Unkindness upsets me, as you know only too well.”

  ‘It was two days later that Nurse Copling came to George with a grave face.

  ‘“Will you come to Mrs Pritchard, please. She has had a letter which upsets her greatly.”

  ‘He found his wife with the letter in her hand. She held it out to him.

  ‘“Read it,” she said.

  ‘George read it. It was on heavily scented paper, and the writing was big and black.

  ‘I have seen the future. Be warned before it is too late. Beware of the Full Moon. The Blue Primrose means Warning; the Blue Hollyhock means Danger; the Blue Geranium means Death . . .

  ‘Just about to burst out laughing, George caught Nurse Copling’s eye. She made a quick warning gesture. He said rather awkwardly, “The woman’s probably trying to frighten you, Mary. Anyway there aren’t such things as blue primroses and blue geraniums.”

  ‘But Mrs Pritchard began to cry and say her days were numbered. Nurse Copling came out with George upon the landing.

  ‘“Of all the silly tomfoolery,” he burst out.

  ‘“I suppose it is.”

  ‘Something in the nurse’s tone struck him, and he stared at her in amazement.

  ‘“Surely, nurse, you don’t believe—”

  ‘“No, no, Mr Pritchard. I don’t believe in reading the future—that’s nonsense. What puzzles me is the meaning of this. Fortune-tellers are usually out for what they can get. But this woman seems to be frightening Mrs Pritchard with no advantage to herself. I can’t see the point. There’s another thing—”

  ‘“Yes?”

  ‘“Mrs Pritchard says that something about Zarida was faintly familiar to her.”

  ‘“Well?”

  ‘“Well, I don’t like it, Mr Pritchard, that’s all.”

  ‘“I didn’t know you were so superstitious, nurse.”

  ‘“I’m not superstitious; but I know when a thing is fishy.”

  ‘It was about four days after this that the first incident happened. To explain it to you, I shall have to describe Mrs Pritchard’s room—’

  ‘You’d better let me do that,’ interrupted Mrs Bantry. ‘It was papered with one of those new wallpapers where you apply clumps of flowers to make a kind of herbaceous border. The effect is almost like being in a garden—though, of course, the flowers are all wrong. I mean they simply couldn’t be in bloom all at the same time—’

  ‘Don’t let a passion for horticultural accuracy run away with you, Dolly,’ said her husband. ‘We all know you’re an enthusiastic gardener.’

  ‘Well, it is absurd,’ protested Mrs Bantry. ‘To have bluebells and daffodils and lupins and hollyhocks and Michaelmas daisies all grouped together.’

  ‘Most unscientific,’ said Sir Henry. ‘But to proceed with the story.’

  ‘Well, among these massed flowers were primroses, clumps of yellow and pink primroses and—oh go on, Arthur, this is your story—’

  Colonel Bantry took up the tale.

  ‘Mrs Pritchard rang her bell violently one morning. The household came running—thought she was in extremis; not at all. She was violently excited and pointing at the wallpaper; and there sure enough was one blue primrose in the midst of the others . . .’

  ‘Oh!’ said Miss Helier, ‘how creepy!’

  ‘The question was: Hadn’t the blue primrose always been there? That was George’s suggestion and the nurse’s. But Mrs Pritchard wouldn’t have it at any price. She had never noticed it till that very morning and the night before had been full moon. She was very upset about it.’

  ‘I met George Pritchard that same day and he told me about it,’ said Mrs Bantry. ‘I went to see Mrs Pritchard and did my best to ridicule the whole thing; but without success. I came away really concerned, and I remember I met Jean Instow and told her about it. Jean is a queer girl. She said, “So she’s really upset about it?” I told her that I thought the woman was perfectly capable of dying of fright—she was really abnormally superstitious.

  ‘I remember Jean rather startled me with what she said next. She said, “Well, that might be all for the best, mightn’t it?” And she said it so coolly, in so matter-of-fact a tone that I was really—well, shocked. Of course I know it’s done nowadays—to be brutal and outspoken; but I never get used to it. Jean smiled at me rather oddly and said, “You don’t like my saying that—but it’s true. What use is Mrs Pritchard’s life to her? None at all; and it’s hell for George Pritchard. To have his wife frightened out of existence would be the best thing that could happen to him.” I said, “George is most awfully good to her always.” And she said, “Yes, he deserves a reward, poor dear. He’s a very attractive person, George Pritchard. The last nurse thought so—the pretty one—what was her name? Carstairs. That was the cause of the row between her and Mrs P.”

  ‘Now I didn’t like hearing Jean say that. Of course one had w
ondered—’

  Mrs Bantry paused significantly.

  ‘Yes, dear,’ said Miss Marple placidly. ‘One always does. Is Miss Instow a pretty girl? I suppose she plays golf?’

  ‘Yes. She’s good at all games. And she’s nice-looking, attractive-looking, very fair with a healthy skin, and nice steady blue eyes. Of course we always have felt that she and George Pritchard—I mean if things had been different—they are so well suited to one another.’

  ‘And they were friends?’ asked Miss Marple.

  ‘Oh yes. Great friends.’

  ‘Do you think, Dolly,’ said Colonel Bantry plaintively, ‘that I might be allowed to go on with my story?’

  ‘Arthur,’ said Mrs Bantry resignedly, ‘wants to get back to his ghosts.’

  ‘I had the rest of the story from George himself,’ went on the Colonel. ‘There’s no doubt that Mrs Pritchard got the wind up badly towards the end of the next month. She marked off on a calendar the day when the moon would be full, and on that night she had both the nurse and then George into her room and made them study the wallpaper carefully. There were pink hollyhocks and red ones, but there were no blue amongst them. Then when George left the room she locked the door—’

  ‘And in the morning there was a large blue hollyhock,’ said Miss Helier joyfully.

  ‘Quite right,’ said Colonel Bantry. ‘Or at any rate, nearly right. One flower of a hollyhock just above her head had turned blue. It staggered George; and of course the more it staggered him the more he refused to take the thing seriously. He insisted that the whole thing was some kind of practical joke. He ignored the evidence of the locked door and the fact that Mrs Pritchard discovered the change before anyone—even Nurse Copling—was admitted.

  ‘It staggered George; and it made him unreasonable. His wife wanted to leave the house, and he wouldn’t let her. He was inclined to believe in the supernatural for the first time, but he wasn’t going to admit it. He usually gave in to his wife, but this time he wouldn’t. Mary was not to make a fool of herself, he said. The whole thing was the most infernal nonsense.

  ‘And so the next month sped away. Mrs Pritchard made less protest than one would have imagined. I think she was superstitious enough to believe that she couldn’t escape her fate. She repeated again and again: “The blue primrose—warning. The blue hollyhock—danger. The blue geranium—death.” And she would lie looking at the clump of pinky-red geraniums nearest her bed.

  ‘The whole business was pretty nervy. Even the nurse caught the infection. She came to George two days before full moon and begged him to take Mrs Pritchard away. George was angry.

  ‘“If all the flowers on that damned wall turned into blue devils it couldn’t kill anyone!” he shouted.

  ‘“It might. Shock has killed people before now.”

  ‘“Nonsense,” said George.

  ‘George has always been a shade pig-headed. You can’t drive him. I believe he had a secret idea that his wife worked the change herself and that it was all some morbid hysterical plan of hers.

  ‘Well, the fatal night came. Mrs Pritchard locked the door as usual. She was very calm—in almost an exalted state of mind. The nurse was worried by her state—wanted to give her a stimulant, an injection of strychnine, but Mrs Pritchard refused. In a way, I believe, she was enjoying herself. George said she was.’

  ‘I think that’s quite possible,’ said Mrs Bantry. ‘There must have been a strange sort of glamour about the whole thing.’

  ‘There was no violent ringing of a bell the next morning. Mrs Pritchard usually woke about eight. When, at eight-thirty, there was no sign from her, nurse rapped loudly on the door. Getting no reply, she fetched George, and insisted on the door being broken open. They did so with the help of a chisel.

  ‘One look at the still figure on the bed was enough for Nurse Copling. She sent George to telephone for the doctor, but it was too late. Mrs Pritchard, he said, must have been dead at least eight hours. Her smelling salts lay by her hand on the bed, and on the wall beside her one of the pinky-red geraniums was a bright deep blue.’

  ‘Horrible,’ said Miss Helier with a shiver.

  Sir Henry was frowning.

  ‘No additional details?’

  Colonel Bantry shook his head, but Mrs Bantry spoke quickly.

  ‘The gas.’

  ‘What about the gas?’ asked Sir Henry.

  ‘When the doctor arrived there was a slight smell of gas, and sure enough he found the gas ring in the fireplace very slightly turned on; but so little it couldn’t have mattered.’

  ‘Did Mr Pritchard and the nurse not notice it when they first went in?’

  ‘The nurse said she did notice a slight smell. George said he didn’t notice gas, but something made him feel very queer and overcome; but he put that down to shock—and probably it was. At any rate there was no question of gas poisoning. The smell was scarcely noticeable.’

  ‘And that’s the end of the story?’

  ‘No, it isn’t. One way and another, there was a lot of talk. The servants, you see, had overheard things—had heard, for instance, Mrs Pritchard telling her husband that he hated her and would jeer if she were dying. And also more recent remarks. She had said one day, apropos of his refusing to leave the house: “Very well, when I am dead, I hope everyone will realize that you have killed me.” And as ill luck would have it, he had been mixing some weed killer for the garden paths the day before. One of the younger servants had seen him and had afterwards seen him taking up a glass of hot milk for his wife.

  ‘The talk spread and grew. The doctor had given a certificate—I don’t know exactly in what terms—shock, syncope, heart failure, probably some medical terms meaning nothing much. However the poor lady had not been a month in her grave before an exhumation order was applied for and granted.’

  ‘And the result of the autopsy was nil, I remember,’ said Sir Henry gravely. ‘A case, for once, of smoke without fire.’

  ‘The whole thing is really very curious,’ said Mrs Bantry. ‘That fortune-teller, for instance—Zarida. At the address where she was supposed to be, no one had ever heard of any such person!’

  ‘She appeared once—out of the blue,’ said her husband, ‘and then utterly vanished. Out of the blue—that’s rather good!’

  ‘And what is more,’ continued Mrs Bantry, ‘little Nurse Carstairs, who was supposed to have recommended her, had never even heard of her.’

  They looked at each other.

  ‘It’s a mysterious story,’ said Dr Lloyd. ‘One can make guesses; but to guess—’

  He shook his head.

  ‘Has Mr Pritchard married Miss Instow?’ asked Miss Marple in her gentle voice.

  ‘Now why do you ask that?’ inquired Sir Henry.

  Miss Marple opened gentle blue eyes.

  ‘It seems to me so important,’ she said. ‘Have they married?’

  Colonel Bantry shook his head.

  ‘We—well, we expected something of the kind—but it’s eighteen months now. I don’t believe they even see much of each other.’

  ‘That is important,’ said Miss Marple. ‘Very important.’

  ‘Then you think the same as I do,’ said Mrs Bantry. ‘You think—’

  ‘Now, Dolly,’ said her husband. ‘It’s unjustifiable—what you’re going to say. You can’t go about accusing people without a shadow of proof.’

  ‘Don’t be so—so manly, Arthur. Men are always afraid to say anything. Anyway, this is all between ourselves. It’s just a wild fantastic idea of mine that possibly—only possibly—Jean Instow disguised herself as a fortune-teller. Mind you, she may have done it for a joke. I don’t for a minute think that she meant any harm; but if she did do it, and if Mrs Pritchard was foolish enough to die of fright—well, that’s what Miss Marple meant, wasn’t it?’

  ‘No, dear, not quite,’ said Miss Marple. ‘You see, if I were going to kill anyone—which, of course, I wouldn’t dream of doing for a minute, because it would be very wicked,
and besides I don’t like killing—not even wasps, though I know it has to be, and I’m sure the gardener does it as humanely as possible. Let me see, what was I saying?’

  ‘If you wished to kill anyone,’ prompted Sir Henry.

  ‘Oh yes. Well, if I did, I shouldn’t be at all satisfied to trust to fright. I know one reads of people dying of it, but it seems a very uncertain sort of thing, and the most nervous people are far more brave than one really thinks they are. I should like something definite and certain, and make a thoroughly good plan about it.’

  ‘Miss Marple,’ said Sir Henry, ‘you frighten me. I hope you will never wish to remove me. Your plans would be too good.’

  Miss Marple looked at him reproachfully.

  ‘I thought I had made it clear that I would never contemplate such wickedness,’ she said. ‘No, I was trying to put myself in the place of—er—a certain person.’

  ‘Do you mean George Pritchard?’ asked Colonel Bantry. ‘I’ll never believe it of George—though—mind you, even the nurse believes it. I went and saw her about a month afterwards, at the time of the exhumation. She didn’t know how it was done—in fact, she wouldn’t say anything at all—but it was clear enough that she believed George to be in some way responsible for his wife’s death. She was convinced of it.’

  ‘Well,’ said Dr Lloyd, ‘perhaps she wasn’t so far wrong. And mind you, a nurse often knows. She can’t say—she’s got no proof—but she knows.’

  Sir Henry leant forward.

  ‘Come now, Miss Marple,’ he said persuasively. ‘You’re lost in a daydream. Won’t you tell us all about it?’

  Miss Marple started and turned pink.

  ‘I beg your pardon,’ she said. ‘I was just thinking about our District Nurse. A most difficult problem.’

  ‘More difficult than the problem of the blue geranium?’

  ‘It really depends on the primroses,’ said Miss Marple. ‘I mean, Mrs Bantry said they were yellow and pink. If it was a pink primrose that turned blue, of course, that fits in perfectly. But if it happened to be a yellow one—’

  ‘It was a pink one,’ said Mrs Bantry.