When Last I Died

murder aren't popular, as no doubt you know. No; there was no proof, and I didn't know the people, either. It just seemed like asking for trouble. Funnily enough, the niece knew I wasn't satisfied. Put it to me, point-blank. Proved her own innocence, anyhow; and nobody would be fool enough to suspect old Eliza of murder. Left the married couple. Nothing there to get hold of, so I signed the certificate. I think the majority of people would have done the same. Still, I was a bit taken aback when I read about the arrest of the niece for murdering the cousin.'

'Yes?' said Mrs. Bradley.

'So the doctor wasn't satisfied?' she said abruptly to Eliza Hodge when next she saw her.

'Wasn't he? Poor young girl,' responded Eliza. 'I do hope she isn't sickening for something, madam.'

'I meant about the grated carrot,' said Mrs. Bradley, even more abruptly; but the old servant's face did not change, except that the concern in her eyes deepened.

'I believe you're right, madam,' she agreed. 'He asked me, I remember, a whole lot of questions, funny enough.'

'What sort of questions do you mean?'

'Well, who gave it to her.'

'And you weren't prepared to say.'

'Well, Miss Bella said she was going out shopping in the village, and Mr. Tom and his wife said they were going out for a walk along the shore, so I suppose, if anyone gave it to her, it must have been me,' replied the old servant, with a peculiarly hard expression on her face.

'And was it you?'

'You don't need to ask that, madam. You know it wasn't.'

'Yes. Even the doctor knew that,' said Mrs. Bradley. 'But, since the subject has come up, Miss Hodge, I do wish, if it wouldn't cause you too much distress, you'd tell me what you really think.'

'Well, I'm not going to speak ill of the dead, but I'll tell you one thing straight away, madam. One of them didn't go out. At least, I didn't think so. Mr. Tom, he went, and I see a flick of the blue dress his young wife had been wearing—or it might have been Miss Bella; she wore blue. But there was the sound of a sewing machine in Miss Bella's room, her having borrowed mine to run herself up an apron—one of mine, altered, it was.'

'And she did grate up the carrot, using the nutmeg grater to do it.'

'Well, yes, I think so, but, of course, I can't be sure. For one thing, although she asked for the nutmeg grater, I didn't actually see her use it. Still, there was carrot on it when I came to wash it. And as for the shopping, and being out of the house when her poor aunt died, well, she said she'd been out, and I couldn't contradict her.'

'Perhaps,' suggested Mrs. Bradley, 'she grated the carrot for her aunt, and took it up to her so that she could help herself to it. That's what she suggested in the diary.'

'It might have been that way, madam. I really couldn't say. Still, it seems funny that if the mistress wanted grated carrot, she hadn't said so to me and let me do it for her. Besides, I will say this: Miss Bella was perfectly open about the carrot when she spoke to me about the grater.'

'Was your mistress at all fond of any kind of food which could look like grated carrot at a distance?' Mrs. Bradley enquired.

'Only pease pudding, and that's not very like,' Eliza replied. 'You mean Miss Bella thought it would do her good, and didn't tell her what she was going to do until it was all made ready? I couldn't say, I'm sure, madam. Anyway, it was a very great relief when she was found Not Guilty of Mr. Tom, although the suicide so soon after was very dreadful.'

'The suicide?' said Mrs. Bradley, anxious to hear more about this.

'Oh, yes, madam. She took a little house down in the country, Miss Bella did, far enough away, you would think, for her to be able to forget all about the trial and what she'd gone through. But it seems some ill- natured people got hold of the tale and spread it all round the village. She left a farewell letter, poor thing, saying she had been driven to it by gossip. It was read at the coroner's inquest.'

'Oh, dear me! What a very dreadful thing!' said Mrs. Bradley. 'How did she do it? I suppose she drowned herself?'

'Yes, that was what she did, madam; she was found in a pond on the common, I believe.'

'Dear, dear!' said Mrs. Bradley.' Not far from her house, I presume?'

'I couldn't say how far, madam. Probably not very far. She was never much of a walker. But I don't know the district at all. I didn't even go to the funeral, not knowing how I was to get there and back the same night, her living all alone as she did, and me hardly one of the family to go poking myself in if not invited; although, really, who could have invited me I don't quite see, I'm sure.'

'Did Miss Tessa go to the funeral?'

'There, again, I couldn't say, madam. I've not had a word from Miss Tessa since poor Mr. Tom's sad death. In her last letter she mentioned she was going to move. I kept the letter. I expect I've got it somewhere, if you'd like to see it. It's nice for me to talk to somebody who takes such an interest in it all.'

Mrs. Bradley, who still wondered whether her apparently insatiable curiosity about the whole affair would not, at some point, strike Eliza as unnecessary and impertinent, was relieved to hear this last statement. She said immediately that she would be very glad to see it, and, upon its being produced, she noticed that, as Eliza had indicated already, it was written in a far more careless and dashing hand than the neatly written diary which she had already seen. In fact, it bore most of the indications of a singularly ill-balanced personality. Had it been the writer who had committed suicide, it would have been most comprehensible, thought Mrs. Bradley. 'The sisters must have been women of widely different temperament,' she remarked.

'Temper, too,' responded Eliza. 'Miss Tessa would fly off the handle, as they say, over anything. But I never knew Miss Bella to be angry. She was sort of sharp and abrupt, but never lost control like Miss Tessa. I liked Miss Tessa the better for it. Give me somebody that speaks their mind, and perhaps has to apologize afterwards for being over-hasty. Still, that isn't everybody's taste, and I dare say Miss Bella might have been a lot easier to live with in the long run.'

Mrs. Bradley consulted the diary again that evening. The wish- fulfilment dream and the self-pity so frankly expressed seemed ingenuous enough, but there were other passages over which, comparing them with Eliza's version of the facts, she frowned in concentration for minutes at a time.

How, for instance, could Bella so have misinterpreted the old servant's feeling for her mistress as to suggest that Eliza considered the fall a 'judgment' on Aunt Flora for being contrary? Nothing in Mrs. Bradley's conversations with Eliza. had led her to believe that such a remark could possibly have been made, least of all to Bella, whom, it had become very clear, she did not like very much.

Then the beginning of the entry for January the twenty-eighth was puzzling. It did not seem at all likely that the doctor had diagnosed Aunt Flora's recovery from the fall as 'the end,' and Mrs. Bradley had made up her mind that the rest of the entry, referring to the arrival of Tom and Muriel after 'they had travelled all night 'was pure fiction.

Again, there was the ridiculous entry about the lobster and Eliza's delight when she was given it. This, however, could be dismissed as more cloud-cuckoo-land on the part of the diarist, and was not more important than it appeared on the surface to be. But the entry about the grated carrot was very interesting. There was, first, the discrepancy in the time. According to the diarist, it was not until seven o'clock in the evening that there had been any mention of grated carrot. Then, again upon the authority of the diary, it had been Aunt Flora herself who asked for it. Eliza's story, on the other hand, contradicted both these assertions. Aunt Flora had had the carrot during the afternoon, and yet, it seemed, knew nothing of grated carrot and certainly would not have suggested partaking of it. It was interesting, too, to note the awkward sentence in which Cousin Tom's name appeared. 'Tom said that he realized it could be nothing but the return of all her normal faculties and he thought she must be humoured.' Further, 'we (Mrs. Bradley added the italics) went to the kitchen, therefore, Eliza being at the Chapel for her week-night meeting ...'

This was more than interesting, as Eliza, upon her own showing, was not a chapel-goer, and certainly was not likely to have attended, of all things, a weeknight meeting at a town some distance inland.

Then, (extremely suspicious this), there was the careful suggestion of what had happened when the old lady had been left with the saucerful of grated carrot and the spoon. 'The effort of eating,' the diarist had pronounced on what seemed almost a judicial and was certainly a remarkably detached and objective note,' must have been too much....' The careful dissociation of the narrator herself from the dreadful event she was describing was obviously intended to indicate that poor Aunt Flora had been alone when she died. But, unless there were guilty knowledge of the means which had encompassed her death, and unless the diary had not been written for the usual personal reasons, but was intended for a wider circle of readers than is usually the case, why this elaborate and stiffly-phrased disclaimer of all knowledge about the choking fit which had caused Aunt Flora's demise ?

There followed, then, the information about the sister. According to Eliza. Tessa had had no children, but had married a bigamist. According to Bella, her sister had not been married at all and had had an illegitimate baby. There were discrepancies, too, between what Mrs. Bradley had heard from the Warden of the Institution and what Bella Foxley had written.

Strangest of all, perhaps, was the extremely odd entry referring to Aunt Flora's dirty hair and head. She re-read that several times, trying to connect it with Eliza's statement that her mistress had had her hair dyed dark red and had kept it this unbecoming tint until the end.

There were