When Last I Died

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She was asked what she thought this remark about mischief meant, and replied that she supposed at the time that it referred either to the hauntings, or to Tom's previous fall. She added that they had had a good deal of trouble with poltergeist phenomena, for which reason she and the prisoner had gone to the inn, being unable to stand the continual nervous strain.

Being asked, further, whether she had ever considered that what she called the poltergeist was more probably some mischievous person who was taking advantage of the fact that the house had a ghostly reputation among the villagers, she replied that she ' had thought of it, of course,' and added, ' We always investigated each house we took of this kind to make sure nobody was playing about. My husband was quite experienced with haunted houses. He made his living by them, and had to be careful.'

Explanation of these statements took up what I regarded as an unnecessary amount of the court's time, but the judge ruled that all was admissible. Sir Godfrey Wenham was justified, of course, in exploiting this witness to the full, for she prejudiced our case with almost every word she spoke, although she was our witness. Incidentally, she blamed me bitterly afterwards for not having secured a conviction.

A curious point which did not come out in court but was told to Bella Foxley's solicitors by the youth Hodge who discovered the body, was that the 'hauntings' were always believed to take the form of a headless huntsman dressed 'like Robin Hood,' but having deer's antlers sprouting from his shoulders—a local variant of the legend of Herne the Hunter, apparently. The poltergeist phenomena were 'a new one on we,' the youth averred. He proved to be an earnest patron of the nearest cinema. He added that cries, groans and a kind of miserable wailing had been heard to come from the haunted house a few days previous to Thomas Turney's death, and that when people heard of the death they 'said there had been warning of it.'

The sequel to the case is well known, but it deserves to be detailed here, if only to show that in prosecuting Bella Foxley for the murder of her cousin the Crown was not entirely in the wrong, despite her acquittal by the jury. Almost a year after her release she was found dead in the village pond which was near the house she had taken in a remote part of Hampshire, far from all her old haunts, and where, presumably, she thought the past could be safely forgotten.

It was explained at the inquest that anonymous letters were the cause of her suicide, but it seems more likely that remorse had at last overtaken her, and that she had expiated her crime in the only manner which was in keeping with what she knew were her just deserts.'

Mrs. Bradley shook her head in denial of this conclusion and returned the book to its owner when he and Ferdinand returned from golf. She announced that she was going to solve the mystery of Bella Foxley.

'Oh, Mother! That wretched woman! After all, she's dead and buried. Why don't you leave well alone?' enquired her son.

'So said the ghost of Joan of Arc to George Bernard Shaw,' Mrs. Bradley replied, with a chuckle.

Chapter Four

THE WIDOW'S MITE

Who can tell what thief or foe, In the covert of the night, For his prey will work my woe, Or through wicked foul despite? So may I die unredrest, Ere my long love be possest.

CAMPION.

THERE were several avenues of approach (as the politicians might say) and it remained to arrange them in order. Mrs. Bradley gave this arrangement some thought whilst enjoying to the full the delightful early summer and the no less delightful results of it which were to be found in the garden of the Stone House and in the country around Wandles Parva.

At the end of a week she had made her decision, having put before herself in judicial manner all the alternatives.

There was the widow of Cousin Tom, the prejudiced and apparently spiteful Muriel. It was more than probable that she knew more than she had been permitted to disclose either at the inquest or the trial. It would be interesting to find out where she was living— Eliza Hodge might know—and to find out, too, whether, with the passing of time, her views had become modified in any way.

Then there was the sister Tessa, who had inherited all the aunt's money following Bella's barely comprehensible suicide. Mrs. Bradley would have said that the suicide was entirely incomprehensible but for the evidence of the diary which revealed its author as anti-social, introverted and somewhat defeatist by nature. Possibly the sister could throw more light upon these idiosyncrasies.

There remained the Institution. There Bella had worked as housekeeper and she had hated it with great intensity. Fortunately Mrs. Bradley was in a position to re-introduce herself there without being under the necessity to state her real errand.

She decided to take Muriel first. Her behaviour at the inquest and the trial scarcely accorded with the somewhat mouse-like character which Bella had given her in the diary, but that was not necessarily surprising. Bella, possibly, had never seen her roused. And yet—hadn't she?

Before she tackled Muriel, however, Mrs. Bradley decided to take a look at another factor in the case, one with a personality, possibly, of its own; to wit, the haunted house.

She drove first to the inn at which Bella and Muriel had lodged. It was an old place pleasingly reconditioned, and George drove in through an ancient gatehouse arch and drew up in a gravelled courtyard.

Mrs. Bradley, bidding George put the car up and go and get himself a drink, went into the lounge and ordered a cocktail which she did not really want. While it was being brought, she looked about her.

The lounge was an oak-beamed, low-ceilinged room with the huge open fireplace of the original house and the comfortable armchairs and handy little tables of modernity. The order for the cocktail had been taken by a young girl who had come out from behind the reception desk, and who proved to be the daughter of the house. As she did not look more than eighteen it was unlikely, Mrs. Bradley thought, that she retained any memory of guests who had been at the inn six years before. The drink was brought by a waitress, who said pleasantly :

'Taking lunch here, madam?'

'Yes,' said Mrs. Bradley.

'Straight through the door at the back, madam. Only I thought I'd ask, because we shall fill up in a few minutes, and I could see you get a good table.'

Lunch offered no opportunity for the kind of conversation Mrs. Bradley had in mind, so when she received her cocktail she scribbled a note which she gave to the waitress to deliver to George in the bar. It was to tell him to get his lunch, and take the car back to Wandles for a suitcase. She proposed to spend at least one night, possibly two, at the inn, to make certain of the local geography before she interviewed Muriel, whose address, so far, she did not know.

After she had had lunch, a short walk, described by the girl who was now back at the reception desk, brought her to the haunted house. The owner of the house, with commendable commonsense, had decided to commercialise its reputation following the acquittal of Bella Foxley for the murder, and it was with little surprise and a certain amount of amusement that Mrs. Bradley found that she could enter the house upon payment of a shilling, and that in return for her entrance fee she was to be escorted round the building by an old man who pointed out the spot where the body had been found, the window from which it had fallen, the Haunted Walk (a picturesque addition, Mrs. Bradley surmised, to what had previously been known about the hauntings) and the Cold Room (further embellishment of an old tale?), where, sure enough, it was possible to feel a draught of air which came through some crack impossible to perceive in the dim light of the landing.

'Is that all?' she asked, when this conducted tour was over, and she found herself back at the front door.

'There's nothing else, without you can get a special permit, like they ghost-hunting gentlemen have that comes here sometimes in the summer,' the old man answered.

'And from whom do I get such a permit? You see, I used to know something of the people who lived here. I was abroad at the time the thing happened, but it was a great shock to me to hear of the gentleman's sudden death.'

'Ah, sudden it was, to be sure,' the old man answered. 'A kind, good gentleman, too. I remember him well. But murdered? Not unless the spirits did him in. Ah, that's what it must have been!' He chuckled, and then added, to Mrs. Bradley's gratification :

'Not as we heard much of the hauntings before he came here, mind you, though there was plenty to swear to the moanin' and 'owling that set up just after he died, and before it, too.'

'Oh, but I understood that the house was haunted by a horned huntsman,' said Mrs. Bradley. 'Somebody with no head.'

'Rubbage,' said the old man sturdily. 'Village chatter. Though, mind, it be a very old 'ouse; older, a sight, than what you can see of it now.'

'But it had been empty for a long time, surely?'

'Ah, but that was on account of the damp. Do what you would, that damp would come up, and where it rises from is more than I can tell you, for there ain't no water near, except for a well, but I never 'eard that was the trouble.'

'Does the water still come up?'

'Ah, that it do, but not this time of the year. Come October, though, if we gets any rain, the water will be marking all those walls.'

'What a pity. Can nothing be done?'

'I don't know, I'm sure. One house I was caretaker of, well, you could account for that being damp. Built over a river, that one was, on account the first owner was a little bit touched, it seems'—he tapped his forehead—'and said a witch was after him but that she wouldn't cross water—well, not running water. But there is nothing of that sort