The Pale Horse Trivia Quiz

Answer: Mark Easterbrook

Agatha Christie's 'The Pale Horse' features Mark Easterbrook as its hero and central character. Mark is a historian writing a book about the Mughal Empire.

Answer: A priest

In the novel, a dying lady urgently wants to confess before a priest. Father Gorman is a priest called in who listens to the confession which shocks him. He makes a note of the names mentioned by the lady and puts the paper in his shoe. As he is returning home, he is murdered. The murder is investigated by a police Inspector named Lejeune.

Answer: Ariadne Oliver

Ariadne Oliver, the writer of mystery novels is featured in the novel. Ariadne comes to attend a village fête organised by Easterbrook's cousin Rhoda (Rhoda and Ariadne appear in an earlier Christie novel 'Cards on the Table'). Ariadne later on in the novel (unknowingly) provides a very important clue to help crack the case.

Answer: The name of an inn

In the novel, The Pale Horse is the name of a Tudor house, now converted to an inn managed by three strange women - a local witch, an occultist and a medium. Mark meets the three women when he goes to attend the village fête.

Answer: He would bet that somebody would die

Mark Easterbrook is brought into the case by an old friend named Corrigan, who is a doctor. Easterbrook goes through the list that was with Father Gorman and realises that many of the people on the list died suspiciously. With the help of Ginger, a friend of his cousin Rhoda, he finds out about Bradley, who was involved in the murders. Bradley would bet that someone would die and if that happened he would be paid money at very high odds. Bradley would involve the three women at The Pale Horse, Thyrza, Sybil and Bella, in his operations.

Answer: Venables

The police officer in charge of the case Lejeune meets a pharmacist named Zachariah Osbourne, who claims to have seen Gorman and the murderer on the night of the murder. Osbourne spots the man whom he suspects to be the murderer at a village fête. The man was Venables, a wealthy man.

But the police are surprised to learn that Venables is handicapped and could not have been the person following Father Gorman. But Osbourne sticks to his view and insists that Venables was the murderer.

Answer: True

Mark and Ginger make a plan to catch the murderers. Mark goes to Bradley and informs him that Ginger was his first wife, who was making trouble and preventing him from get married. Bradley bets at odds of 1800 to 1 that Ginger would die in a month and they sign an 'agreement' to that effect. Bradley asks Mark to go The Pale Horse with something belonging to Ginger. Mark attends a macabre ritual at The Pale Horse, where Thyrza uses a strange apparatus in her rituals and assures Mark that Ginger would die.

Answer: She becomes seriously ill

As a part of the plan, Ginger moves to a flat in London where she lives alone, pretending to be Mark's first wife. Suddenly she falls ill and her condition becomes serious. Mark rushes her to the hospital, but despite medical treatment her condition becomes serious and Mark realises that his plan has backfired.

Answer: Poisoning with thallium

Thanks to a chance remark by Ariadne Oliver, Mark realises that the earlier victims had a common symptom - falling of hair. When Mark finds the same symptom with Ginger, he realises that it was thallium poisoning. Doctors treat Ginger for thallium poisoning and save her life.
After reading this book, there were instances reported of people poisoned by thallium, who discovered it after reading the book and thanked Agatha Christie. In 1971, a serial killer named Graham Young was caught after the doctor in charge of the case read about thallium poisoning in 'The Pale Horse'.

Answer: Osbourne

The pharmacist Zachariah Osbourne was the brains behind the pale horse murders. He tried to implicate Venables in the case, without realising that Venables was crippled. Osbourne had a team of women researchers working for an organisation called CRC (Customers Reaction Classified).

The CRC researchers would visit the victim and collect information about the cosmetic products they used. Osbourne would then visit the victim in disguise (as a gas man or porter) and replace the cosmetic product with one containing thallium.

The victim would be then poisoned by thallium which caused different symptoms each time. The end result would be the death of victim. The Pale Horse and the three witches were only used as a front, along with Bradley to handle the financial aspects.

The real head was Osbourne. Inspector Lejeune arrests Osbourne at the end of the novel. The novel ends with Ginger renovating the Pale Horse inn and Mark proposing to her.