Divisional Detective-Inspector Lejeune

Divisional Detective-Inspector Lejeune is the police investigator who converts Mark Easterbrook’s scattered suspicions into a disciplined inquiry into the Pale Horse murder organization. He recognizes that apparently natural deaths, consumer surveys, and a distinctive pattern of illness may belong to one carefully concealed scheme, then helps expose Zachariah Osborne through a controlled operation at Priors Court. His importance lies in the contrast he maintains throughout: the crime’s presentation encourages belief in occult power, but its mechanism depends on ordinary access, practical chemistry, and the deliberate management of suspicion.

Identity and First Contact

Mark Easterbrook chooses Lejeune rather than Scotland Yard as the officer best suited to hear what he has discovered. On meeting him, Mark is impressed by his quiet ability and imagination. Those qualities soon prove complementary: Lejeune listens to information from outside the police inquiry without treating it as a settled explanation, and Mark’s account gives him a route toward a case already marked by uncertainty.

When Mark says he has resolved to learn more, he recounts his call on Mrs Tuckerton and eventually describes C.R. Bradley and the Municipal Square Buildings in Birmingham. The mention of Bradley catches Lejeune’s attention. His response shows that Mark has connected his inquiry to a name that matters to the police, even though the broader organization and its reach remain unclear.

Building the Case from Scattered Evidence

Lejeune proposes assembling what the police know with what Mark has brought them. He sees evidence of an agency specializing in the removal of unwanted people, but stresses the character of the evidence: the operation is not associated with ordinary hired violence, and the deaths appear natural. Police have information about several deaths, including three already mentioned by Mark, and know that some people benefited from them; at this stage, however, that connection is not proof.

The difficulty is not simply that the organization is concealed. Its design seems to have been thought through in detail, while the investigators possess only scattered names and uncertain leads. Lejeune recognizes that the known list may represent only a fraction of a much wider operation. The names came to light because a dying woman wanted to make peace with heaven, an accidental disclosure that gives the police a starting point but no complete map. His caution keeps suspicion distinct from demonstration: possible beneficiaries, unexplained deaths, and a suspected network must still be connected by evidence.

From Symptoms to a Physical Cause

The case’s apparent supernatural dimension is tested against observable details. When Mrs Dane Calthrop finds Mark staring at the telephone after learning that Ginger Corrigan is unwell, she treats the illness as evidence bearing on the danger Mark fears. Mark resists that inference and hopes Ginger has only a commonplace ailment. Lejeune’s investigation ultimately gives that warning a medical explanation rather than confirming the occult account.

A crucial clue is a repeated pattern of hair loss. Eileen Brandon recalls that Lady Hesketh-Dubois had been in good health until shortly before her final illness, then lost thick white hair in handfuls. She connects this with Mary Delafontaine and with the earlier incident Mark had seen in a Chelsea coffee place, where a girl’s hair was pulled out by the roots. Eileen’s comparison makes the hair loss more than an incidental symptom: its recurrence across people associated with the inquiry points toward a shared cause.

Mark recognizes the pattern as consistent with thallium poisoning and fears that Ginger Corrigan may be suffering from it. His medical reading supplies the explanation: thallium poisoning can resemble a range of different illnesses, with symptoms that vary, while hair loss occurs sooner or later. He notes that the substance had once been used for depilation, is tasteless and soluble, and can be obtained for use as a poison. Lejeune accepts the significance of the diagnosis and connects it to the organization’s rule that a client must stay away from the intended victim. If the client has no apparent access to the victim’s food or drink and makes no purchase of poison, suspicion is less likely to fall on that person; the actual substitution can be made by someone with no known connection to the victim.

The Survey and the Method of Substitution

Lejeune’s questioning of Eileen Brandon turns an odd employment history into a possible link between research and access. Women employed by consumer-research concerns had been given lists of names in particular neighbourhoods, asked questions, and told to record the answers. Eileen found the questions desultory rather than directed toward a coherent research topic. She briefly wondered whether the visits were reconnaissance for burglary, but they did not involve descriptions of rooms or locks, or questions about when residents would be away.

The questionnaires ranged across ordinary household purchases: cereals and cake mixes, soap flakes and detergents, cosmetics, and many kinds of medicines and remedies, including aspirin, sleeping pills, cough pastilles, and indigestion treatments. Eileen had not been asked to provide samples. Lejeune’s later explanation identifies the function of this information: a canvass establishes which familiar products a target uses, while disguising its purpose as routine market research. People accustomed to answering surveys may not regard the questions as suspicious.

The scheme’s final step depends on impersonating an ordinary service visitor. Lejeune explains that the organizer might appear as a porter, meter reader, plumber, electrician, or other workman, apparently carrying the credentials appropriate to the role. Under that cover, the visitor replaces a product the victim regularly uses with a similar preparation. The victim may become ill days later; a doctor, unaware of any reason to suspect a familiar household product, can interpret the symptoms as natural disease. The organizer’s method thus separates the client from the person who handles the poison and makes the poisoning difficult to trace to either.

Priors Court and the Exposure of Osborne

Some three weeks later, Lejeune goes to Priors Court with Mark Easterbrook, Detective-Sergeant Lee, and Zachariah Osborne. Osborne is excited to be included, and Lejeune warns him to keep quiet. The visit becomes the setting for a staged confrontation involving Mr Venables, whose cooperation is part of the police plan. Lejeune later explains to Mark that the investigators had too little evidence to reveal their hand early; they needed to lead Osborne toward a false sense of security and then confront him suddenly in the hope of breaking his composure.

The explanation of the organization’s operation strips the occult performance of its power to explain deaths. Lejeune identifies thallium poisoning as the cause, distinguishing a real, concealed method from the supernatural claims associated with Thyrza Grey, Sybil Stamfordis, and Bella. The ritual may impress a client, but the deaths are accomplished through poisoning and an apparently legitimate visit to the victim’s home.

After Osborne is exposed, Lejeune describes the psychological effect that killing has had on him. In Lejeune’s account, the power and sense of importance Osborne derived from murder have made him feel almost godlike; when the investigation abruptly reveals him as caught, that self-image collapses into ranting and boasts. Lejeune’s assessment does not excuse the crimes: it marks the difference between the killer’s inflated sense of control and the reality of discovery. His role in the ending is both practical and interpretive, explaining how the police’s carefully withheld information enabled the arrest and why the apparent mastery behind the scheme could not survive exposure.