Stop the Christie Murder: Do Conspiracies Ever Really Work?

In Elementary, Sherlock challenges the idea of conspiracies, pointing out that people are incapable of keeping schtum. 

I agree with Sherlock entirely. 

I also find conspiracies boring. Conspiracies, drug wars, gang stories..all bore me. The inner machinations of a group of self-absorbed people are not even passably interesting. Give me a single body in the library any day.

Christie created a few books with conspiracies. I have no idea whether she believed in them or whether they were part of the culture. Everyone else was writing spy/conspiracy/hidden agenda tales, so she did as well. 

I quite like the 1997 version for capturing

the time period. That's Andy Serkis on the

right!

I generally avoid such tomes. However, one conspiracy/murder mystery tale I enjoy is Pale Horse, so long as I ignore the implausibility of the underlying set-up. 

Christie, as always, focuses mainly on character so Mark Easterbrook and his experiences with other people run most of the narrative: his off-again/on-again girlfriend; the love of his life and fellow investigator, Ginger; the so-called witches; the local vicar's wife; the doctor...

But whether anyone would really be able to keep the conspiracy a secret, much less keep it operating smoothly...

I doubt it. 

 *Spoilers!*

How the conspiracy works: A client wants to kill someone off. The client visits a businessman and sets up a bet: I bet you so-and-so won't die by this date. If so-and-so DOES, I will pay you $$$$. 

The client is told to visit a pair of witches in a small village and then go abroad for a time. The witches perform a supposed curse, so the client (supposedly) believes that the witches killed the victim.

Meanwhile, survey takers inform a fake business run by the mastermind/contract killer what products the victim uses. The killer slips into the apartment or house and replaces a product with one that kills through thallium. The killer later retrieves the bad product. 

There was a true life case where a man killed numerous people with thallium and wasn't caught immediately. However, he was acting alone as was William Palmer with strychnine.

As a plan, I find The Pale Horse conspiracy fairly unbelievable. First, the killing method is hit or miss. A cat could knock over the product. Someone else could use it (an approach used by Heyer in one novel). The victim could carry it away somewhere (the products are hygiene products), so the killer can't retrieve it. The victim could decide to switch products or temporarily move on to another one (I do this with shampoo all the time), so the death doesn't happen when desired, and the client demands to be paid. The victim could be in the middle of moving and all the products get thrown out the day after they are delivered.  

Other variables: The client could fail to visit the witches, could blab about the witches, feel guilt and blab about the contract, be irritated by the introduction of the witches and send a separate contract killer to cancel the bet with the businessman. The client could ignore instructions and not stay away at the time of the death and therefore be suspected--at which point the client might blab to the police. The victim and client could get into an argument before the scheduled death and one could kill the other. If the murderer is the client, the client could blab to the police in the hopes of leniency. The client might actually truly believe in the occult and fear it, to the point of reporting the encounter and/or to the point of arguing, "I shouldn't have to pay anyone." The client could fail to pay up for entirely mercenary reasons (an approach used in the 1997 movie). 

The witches could turn on the contract killer if they imagine they are not getting a fair cut. So could the businessman. The witches or the businessman might decide to take over the organization, leading to a three-way turf war (witches versus businessman versus mastermind/killer).

For that matter, the survey takers could mess up: ask the wrong person questions, go to the wrong address, fail to mail in the paperwork, take down answers wrong, fill out the forms with whatever answers they want because they are too lazy to go canvassing...

In fact, the conspiracy here

unravels because the conspirators

cannot control the weather, new

passengers, forensic methods, etc.

In fairness, Christie was well-aware of all these holes. Her murderers are often found out because they can't control human vagaries, the oddness of, for instance, one of the survey takers becoming suspicious about the number of deaths she has encountered and telling a priest--who is then coshed on the head (the sequence in the novel). And Christie intelligently implies that the conspiracy would have unraveled eventually: for one, the contract killer is far too arrogant. 

Me? I think the very first killing would upend the entire edifice. The one crazy witch who truly believes in her powers would brag. The businessman would want a larger cut. The client would also blab and/or refuse to pay. The contract killer would try to insert himself into the investigation, as he does in the novel. The police would investigate, not because they identified the poison but because deaths of otherwise healthy people are suspicious. (Police have investigated deaths where the poison was not immediately identified.) The victim would become suspicious and contact a private investigator (the victims don't die immediately).

Unfortunately, I'm not sure my prevention investigators would be able to prevent that first death. But I doubt a conspiracy with so many moving parts would last long. So the deaths that start the novel--that of the priest and the survey taker--would ultimately be prevented.