When Last I Died

been built?'

'Oh, before the new owner bought the house.'

'Yes. I wonder why she bought it?'

'She never bought it. It was left her. Come to think of it, there was some tale she wanted to live in it in memory of her sister that was accused of the murder, but it turned out to be too damp, so she hit on this idea of getting her money back, but she don't see much return, with Dad's wages to be paid all the time.'

'Did she live in it at all, do you know?'

'No, not that I know of. No, I'm sure she never did. She never even came to see it when she engaged Dad to look after it, nor have him go there to see her. Just got his character from the vicar.'

'Your father didn't know her at all, then, before that?'

'No, he'd never seen this one. He'd seen the one that was had up for the murder, of course. She was about here quite a bit. But from this one he even gets his wages by post. He gets paid by the quarter, though I don't know that it's any odds to anybody.'

'I wonder how she knew it was so damp? I still don't see why she ever wanted to live in it, anyway,' said Mrs. Bradley. The woman shook her head.

'People take these funny fancies. Morbid, I call it,' she said. 'But she always refuses to sell, although, on the whole, she must be losing money. She's had one or two offers for it from people who write books and all that. Sort of people who think it's romantic to live in a haunted house. They write and tell her so. She could have got rid of it twice, to my certain knowledge, because the offers went through Dad, and so we know. And she may have had others direct. Anyway, she wrote to Dad after he'd sent on the second one, and said to him to discourage anybody else who spoke to him about it. Said she wasn't going to sell, and that was flat. She said to tell 'em she had a sentimental interest. That always chokes people off.'

'I see,' said Mrs. Bradley. 'Well, no doubt you'll be seeing me again, for I shall fix up a seance before the end of the summer if I can get Miss Foxley's permission.'

She spent the rest of the day in discussing the haunted house with anybody who would listen, and among these people was a certain Miss Biddle, a spinster, who lived in a small house at the end of the village near the church. She was the daughter of the late vicar, and, according to the landlady of the inn with whom Mrs. Bradley had discussed the subject, the chief village authority upon the haunted house.

With this amount of introduction only, Mrs. Bradley intruded upon Miss Biddle at three in the afternoon, and was warmly welcomed.

'Not the Mrs. Bradley! Oh, I am delighted! This is so nice! Such a treat. I read all your books with the very greatest interest. I get them all from the London Circulating Library. Such a good one! Do you know it? One has only to ask for a book, never mind the price, and it is sent the very next time! A very dear friend of mine, blessed, I am glad to say, with this world's goods, pays the subscription for me every year as a Christmas present, and I can't tell you what it means to me, dear Mrs. Bradley, buried alive as we are in this little corner.'

Mrs. Bradley rightly observed that it was a very beautiful and interesting little corner.

'Now you must have had some reason for calling, I can't help thinking,' pursued her hostess helpfully. 'I can't flatter myself that you so much as knew of my existence. Now did you?'

'I am delighted, at any rate, to make your acquaintance, Miss Biddle,' replied Mrs. Bradley, sincerely and in the beautiful voice, which, like all beautiful voices, managed to convey something more than the actual words spoken. 'It's about this haunted house you have in the village, or, rather, just outside it. Miss Foxley's place, you know.'

'Very interesting,' said Miss Biddle. 'Rather sinister, too, by all accounts. And, of course, that unfortunate death! I am so glad they let that poor woman off, although I believe she did it. Yes, very interesting indeed. I remember my dear father, who was the vicar here at the time, saying that there had been none of this poltergeist nonsense in England in his young days. It was all on a par with this modern psychology. Quite wrong, of course, because, as everybody knows, there were the Wesleys, and although it might seem a great pity that John Wesley should have been driven out of the church by the violence of his own convictions, I am sure that a more upright and truthful family could not be found, and when there is evidence from such a source of poltergeist activities, well, I, for one, do not feel that it can possibly be disputed. As for my poor dear father's views on modern psychology, well, they were really amusing. One could not take them seriously, poor dear. He was dreadfully taken aback by Freud's theories of sex, I remember, and was so distressed by them that he could not bear to have them discussed. Havelock Ellis, too, he did not like. 'So noble a head,' he used to say, 'should have housed the brain of a benefactor of mankind.'

''So it does, father,' I used to reply; but he would not have it so. I suppose he would have been equally opposed to Darwin, and, in his youth, probably was.'

It was amazing, Mrs. Bradley agreed, how soon the apparently revolutionary theories of succeeding generations of philosophers and scientists were absorbed and taken for granted when one remembered and realized the opposition offered to them at their inception.

'Poltergeist phenomena, now,' she proceeded to argue, 'are generally accepted by the present generation as scientifically demonstrable, although they are not yet subject to scientific explanation. But,' she continued, 'I understand, from gossip I have heard in the village, and from what the old caretaker and his daughter up at the house were able to tell me, that previous stories of hauntings betray no conception of poltergeist activity, but refer to such old superstitions as a phantom coach, a headless hunter, and so on. I was taken to see the Haunted Walk in the garden, although no one seems to know exactly when, how and why it received its title.'

'Oh, I can explain that,' said Miss Biddle eagerly. 'But do let us have some tea. I get it myself, you know. I have a daily woman, but she goes as soon as she has washed up after lunch. I find it much nicer to have my little nest to myself for the afternoons and evenings, and, of course, it does come a good deal less expensive this way, especially as I do not give her her dinner. Servants, I always used to find, when I kept house for my dear father, do eat such a lot compared with ourselves, and if they are given inferior cuts of meat they are apt to become discontented.'

Mrs. Bradley agreed. Her hostess then went off to get the tea, and after she had brought it in Mrs. Bradley returned to the question of the hauntings.

'Ah, yes, the haunted house,' said Miss Biddle. 'You were saying that you had heard the village stories.'

Mrs. Bradley added that she had also read the story of Borley Rectory, and that some of the features of the haunted house seemed to bear a remarkable similarity to what was described in that book.

'Yes, and the queer thing about our haunted house is that, as I was saying, there is no tradition of poltergeist activity until just a month or two before the death of that unfortunate man, Mr. Turney, who was supposed to have been murdered by Miss Foxley's sister. So dreadful, after all that, that she committed suicide! But I have heard of similar cases. People are so terribly malicious, and they write those shocking anonymous letters. Enough to get on anybody's nerves, let alone on those of people who have been through such an ordeal as a trial for murder, especially if she was guilty, which many of us still believe she was.'

'So I understand,' said Mrs. Bradley. But, wishing to settle first the very vexed question of the poltergeist, she added, 'I have read that cases have been known of poltergeist phenomena commencing in a place where they have been unknown up to that time, on the occasion of an adolescent coining to live in the house. There is that strange but authentic case of the Rumanian girl Eleonore Zugun, in 1926, for instance. You remember that she came to live with the Countess Wassilko-Serecki, who had heard of her extraordinary powers, and that whilst she was with the Countess the most astonishing amount of poltergeist activity took place, ornaments and toys flying over partitions and from room to room, pins and needles burying themselves in the girl's flesh, hairbrushes and stilettos dropping, apparently from nowhere, and all that kind of thing.'

'Ah,' said Miss Biddle, 'yes. I grant you anything you like about Eleonore Zugun. A most fascinating case. But there was no question of any adolescent being present in our haunted house. There was nobody but the tenant, Mr. Turney, his wife, and that unfortunate Miss Foxley. They were the only people living there while the poltergeist was active. It was all most unaccountable. But it all ceased soon after Mr. Turney's death.'

'Do you happen to know for certain when the manifestations began?'

'Yes, I do. At least, let me try to be quite accurate, because I can see that there is something behind all this, dear Mrs. Bradley. You are more interested in Bella Foxley than in psychical research, I am sure.'

With this shrewd comment, she went to a small escritoire, opened it, and produced a leather-bound notebook.

'I call it my common-place book,' she remarked. 'I put down in it all the really interesting things that happen, with the dates. I am hoping I shall have something to publish one day. Now, let me see....'

She turned over the pages. Mrs. Bradley watched anxiously.

'Here we are,' said Miss Biddle. 'I knew I had noted it down. Six years ago, wasn't it? And the first date I have for the poltergeist is January 12th. I put: So the haunted house really is haunted! Samuel Kindred was passing the house at sunset yesterday, and heard the noise of loud quarrelling. As the voices were speaking