He went on: “And witches, you know. There’s a lot of interesting things known now about witches. Why did they always confess, why did they admit so readily that they were witches, that they had flown on broomsticks to the Witches’ Sabbath?”
“Torture,” said Miss Marple.
“Not always,” said Jackson. “Oh, yes, torture accounted for some of it, but they came out with some of those confessions almost before torture was mentioned. They didn’t so much confess as boast about it. Well, they rubbed themselves with ointments, you know. Anointing they used to call it. Some of the preparations, belladonna, atropine, all that sort of thing; if you rub them on the skin they give you hallucinations of levitation, of flying through the air. They thought it all was genuine, poor devils. And look at the Assassins—medieval people, out in Syria, the Lebanon, somewhere like that. They fed them Indian hemp, gave them hallucinations of paradise and houris, and endless time. They were told that that was what would happen to them after death, but to attain it they had to go and do a ritual killing. Oh, I'm not putting it in fancy language, but that’s what it came to.”
“What it came to,” said Miss Marple, “is in essence the fact that people are highly credulous.”
“Well, yes, I suppose you could put it like that.”
“They believe what they are told,” said Miss Marple. “Yes, indeed, we’re all inclined to do that,” she added. Then she said, “Who told you these stories about India, about the doping of husbands with datura?” and she added sharply, before he could answer, “Was it Major Palgrave?”
Jackson looked slightly surprised. “Well—yes, as a matter of fact, it was. He told me a lot of stories like that.
Afterwards read another Marple, Murder with Mirrors, in which the murderers flee being exposed and conveniently drown one another in a nearby pond.
The perpetrators of the murder were painfully apparent from the nearly the moment of its commission. The motive was fairly easy to guess. There were no mirrors. Anywhere.
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