33 pages • 1 hour read
Agatha ChristieThe Pale Horse
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1961A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Character Analysis
Mark Easterbrook
Mark Easterbrook is a professional historian who finds that he has been unwittingly drawn into a complex scheme of murder when he witnesses a fight inside a café and comes to discover something nefarious about a local historical inn called the Pale Horse. Mark is a down-to-earth man of good character who cannot help but try to set things right when he has the power to do so.
Mark could have stopped asking questions and walked away, but he feels a strong sense of justice that he must act upon due to his unique knowledge of the situation. There is nobody else who cares to set things right, and so he feels that he must act, even demonstrating a willingness to leave behind friendships to do so. In the end, Mark leaves Hermia behind, although he had for some time imagined marrying her, and falls in love with Ginger as he realizes that Hermia is not a good fit for his personality while Ginger proves to be an equal partner.
Mark shows that he is both intelligent and resourceful, piecing together the clues of the mystery that continue to elude many others, even drawing on prior knowledge and scholarship in his recognition of the symptoms of thallium poisoning, leading to the case’s solution. Not only is he an academic, but he is also willing to listen to his heart and intuition. He is unwilling to simply write off the witches at the Pale Horse as imposters and acknowledges that sometimes there are things that cannot be understood—things that are beyond scientific evidence but that could nevertheless be real and true.
Ginger (Katherine Corrigan)
Katherine Corrigan, more commonly known as Ginger, is a feisty, headstrong woman who proves herself equal to solving the mystery of the Pale Horse and taking down the crime syndicate in her community. Completely different from Mark’s best friend Hermia, who demonstrates none of Ginger’s character or wits, Ginger immediately jumps at the chance of joining Mark in the investigation. Of strong character and uncommon street smarts, Ginger proves to be a worthy opponent of Osborne and the three witches at the Pale Horse in her ability to stay ahead of the game.
Ginger takes the lead in many of the pair’s investigative tactics: she is the one who draws most of the information out of Poppy and hatches the plan to pose as clients for Bradley, even offering herself as the victim to ferret out the truth. At first, Ginger’s curiosity moves her to join the investigation, but she quickly becomes determined to discover the truth and find justice for the victims; in the end, she finds herself desiring to be in Mark’s company and is receptive to his proposal of marriage (as long as she can ensure that Hermia will no longer be a rival).
Inspector Lejeune
Detective-Inspector Lejeune is the lead detective on the case of the murder of Fr. Gorman and is swept up into the affair at the Pale Horse. While Mark and Ginger approach the events from the more subjective and veiled side of things as they investigate Bradley and the Pale Horse, Lejeune approaches the investigation more traditionally and in a typical fashion for a member of law enforcement.
However, Lejeune is not a typical bumbling policeman set up as a foil for the more intelligent and resourceful amateurs. He is good at his job and is the only one to see through the duplicitous Osborne and pin the charges on him as the mastermind of the operation. Suspicious of Osborne from the start, Lejeune demonstrates his wits in seeing through Osborne’s deceit and ensuring that he is followed throughout the investigation.
Ariadne Oliver
Ariadne Oliver is a celebrated author of mystery novels and functions as the literary stand-in for the author herself, Agatha Christie. A close friend of Mark and an anxious recluse with hardly any taste for public adulation, Mrs. Oliver appears throughout the novel as a sounding board for Mark’s theories and suggestions and, at the same time, offers him sage advice at crucial points in the investigation, providing him the insight about hair-loss that linked the various victims together.
Father Gorman
The local Catholic priest—a rarity for a rural village in an Anglican country—Fr. Gorman is beloved by the community and is well-known for his kindness and calm demeanor. Willing to travel out into a dreary night to hear the confession of a woman on her deathbed, Fr. Gorman is murdered for being witness to a dying woman’s confession about the operation run out of the Pale Horse. Fr. Gorman’s resourcefulness proves, in the end, to be how the mysterious affair is solved as he had the foresight to write down the names of the people mentioned by the dying woman, a list that proves to be crucial evidence in linking the victims together.
Thyrza Grey
Thyrza Grey is the spiritualist who lives at the Pale Horse and is the ringleader of the women who perform the rituals supposedly meant to bring death to the victims of the clients who arrange wagers with Bradley. Thyrza proves to be a gentle and well-spoken woman, appearing at first instance to be nothing more than a country spinster running an old inn but is revealed to be a wicked charlatan willing to convince people of the trio’s supernatural powers. It is unclear how much Thyrza believes in her own powers, as the reader is left in the dark as to whether she is aware of the true cause of the killings.
Related Titles
By Agatha Christie
