When Last I Died

will ensue, as this type is usually mischievous and does not always mean to be annoying.'

Mrs. Bradley returned the journal by registered post. She was deeply and sincerely obliged to Cousin Muriel, she said, for the loan of it. It had cleared up several very doubtful points.

It had, at any rate, cleared up one. The poltergeist was human.

There remained the minor problem of whether to tackle the sister, Miss Tessa, first, or whether to have what Mrs. Bradley described to Ferdinand as 'another go' at the haunted house. She found herself to be slightly in favour of the visit to Miss Foxley. It would be interesting to visit one who had had, it seemed, so great an interest in Bella's death. Mrs. Bradley also hoped (merely to satisfy her own curiosity, for she could not believe that it would affect the investigation very seriously) to deduce which of the two accounts of Tessa's unhappy affairs was the true one, the bigamous marriage or the illegitimate child.

George first drove her through part of the New Forest to the house which Bella Foxley had purchased, and even past the dirty little pond (they afterwards discovered) in which Bella's body had been found. They also passed the village hall in which the inquest had been held. But they had little time to spare, and had too few details of the suicide at their command to do more than take a slight and morbid interest in the locality. Miss Foxley had sold the cottage, however. This was no news to Mrs. Bradley, for the address she had obtained from the caretaker was in Devon.

'Not Cornwall,' she thought, remembering one of the entries in the diary. She ordered George to pull up at the cottage. It was still untenanted. Mrs. Bradley amused herself by peering in at the dirty windows, both front and back, by dabbling her hand in a large rain-water butt which was just outside the back door, and by carefully pacing, checking and timing the distance between the cottage and the scum-covered pond.

Whilst she was thus engaged, she discovered that she was the focus of attention (although that was an exaggerated description of the owl-like staring which she encountered as she turned to saunter back to the cottage) of a loose-mouthed, pallid, puffy-faced idiot boy, who proceeded, in an ungainly manner, to follow her to the gate.

He grinned in a sickly, shame-faced, leering manner when she looked at him. Mrs. Bradley leered back.

'Pullen ur aid onder wartur,' he said, pointing to the rainwater butt.

'Good heavens!' said Mrs. Bradley, greatly impressed. She walked round to the water-butt, to the great delight of the idiot, and peered into it again.

He repeated his assertion, grinning. Mrs. Bradley gave him a shilling, which he put into the top of his sock, and went back to George, who was waiting impassively in the car.

Still in the broad sunlight of the middle day they came through a white-washed village to the sea, and a few miles further on drove past Miss Foxley's home, and then pulled up, to have a look at it without attracting too much attention.

Chapter Six

THE DEAR DEPARTED

The world's a bubble and the life of man Less than a span; In his conception wretched, from the womb, So to the tomb; Curst from his cradle, and brought up to years With cares and fears. Who then to frail mortality shall trust But limns on water, or but writes in dust.

BACON.

IT was rather an extraordinary house to have chosen, thought Mrs. Bradley. Granted that the owner's main object had been to obtain complete privacy, it would have been reasonable enough to choose this white-washed cottage, but from the point of view of one who, presumably, was in hiding from the curiosity of neighbours and possibly that of the police, there was a good deal to be said in favour of a flat in London. This cottage, remote, situated on the edge of a moor and within sound and sight of the Bristol Channel (an old turnpike house, no doubt), and its solitary tenant, would be bound to arouse local interest. Besides, it was the sort of place at which hikers and cyclists were apt to call, demanding teas, or water with which to make tea. The tenant of it could scarcely be said to have chosen the best kind of cover.

Mrs. Bradley, shaking her head, told George to drive on and find a convenient place to park the car at the side of the road, and she herself went up to the door and knocked.

Too bad, she felt, if Miss Foxley should not be at home. But Miss Foxley was at home, and came to the door. Mrs. Bradley recognized her at once from the photographs in the album which Miss Hodge had shown her.

'Yes?' said the owner of the cottage.

'Miss Foxley?' said Mrs. Bradley.

'Yes.'

'My name is Bradley. I called to see you about the house which you let to me for some spiritualist ...'

'I suppose you didn't get any results. Well, I'm afraid I can't help that, you know. Come in,' said Miss Foxley. She pushed back a moist-looking strand of iron-grey hair and held the door open wider. Mrs. Bradley, apologising, stepped slightly aside and then did up her shoe-lace before she went in. The cottage consisted, it seemed, of two rooms downstairs and two bedrooms. The front door opened directly into the living-room. 'Sit down,' added Miss Foxley. She dabbed at her chin with a handkerchief specked with tiny red spots. 'Been squeezing them out, and made rather a mess,' she said. 'Have to excuse me, I'm afraid. Not expecting a visitor this morning.'

'Mercolized wax,' suggested Mrs. Bradley.

'Tried it. Not much good. Martyr to the things. Complexions are God-given,' Miss Foxley responded brusquely. 'Now, then, about this haunted house. I can't help it, you know. I don't guarantee anything. The spirits won't come near some people. It's just a matter of luck.'

'Ah,' said Mrs. Bradley, 'but I don't say the spirits didn't come near. All I say is that they were the wrong kind of spirits. Not what I expected, and, really, rather alarming.'

'Say on,' said Miss Foxley. 'Are you new to the game?'

'I have never taken much interest in spiritualism,' said Mrs. Bradley, deliberately giving the science its old-fashioned name, 'but somebody discovered, quite by accident, that people of my colouring almost always have mediumistic powers.'

'And you have?'

'Well ...' said Mrs. Bradley deprecatingly.

'You mean you have. Well, go on. What did you see? The headless coachman the villagers talk about?'

'No. I saw two little boys.'

'Materialisation of the poltergeist, I should say. I think all poltergeist phenomena must be produced by entities with the mentality of little boys.'

'And then I saw a woman,' Mrs. Bradley continued. 'Do you believe in ghosts?' she suddenly demanded.

'No,' replied Miss Foxley, 'not in the way you mean. Go on about this woman. My sister, I suppose?'

'She didn't say who she was. She merely said, 'Tell Bella I'll be there.' She repeated this three times, and then we broke up the sitting.'

'Well, I don't see how you can tell Bella anything,' said Miss Foxley in a practical tone. 'Bella—if it means my sister Bella—has been dead for years. Still, I don't discredit what you say. The house belonged to Bella once, you know. I inherited it, along with the rest of her stuff.' She paused, and then said briskly, 'And now, what the hell are you getting at?'

'I want to know whether you will sell me that house,' said Mrs. Bradley.

'Oh?—I see.' For some reason she seemed taken aback by this simple statement, and repeated it aloud. 'You want to know whether I'll sell you that house.'

Mrs. Bradley waited. Miss Foxley, slatternly in a blouse which refused to remain tidy at the waist, and a skirt which revealed that one of her stockings was laddered, brooded, her black brows drawn together, her large and very well-kept hands irritably pushing back her hank of greasy hair. Suddenly her brow cleared.

'How much are you offering?' she demanded.

'I hadn't thought of a price.'

'You can have it for—— Look here, why don't you rent it? Then you could give it up when you were tired of experimenting with it.'

'So I could,' said Mrs. Bradley. 'But I don't want to experiment with it. I want to pull it down.'

'Pull it down?'

'Yes. I think it is a dangerous house. It is too much like Borley Rectory.'

'Never heard of the place. Oh, yes, I have, too. Isn't that the place Cousin Tom used to blether about?'

'There's a book on it,' said Mrs. Bradley vaguely. 'I believe your sister had read it.'

'Poor old Bella! What a rotten life, and what a rotten end! I was fond of her, in a way, you know. Surprised at the felo de se and all that.'

'Ah, yes. You identified the body, I believe.'

'Sure I identified the body. Nobody else to do it.'

'Did you have to go all the way from here?'

'No. On the spot.'

'Staying with her?'

'Staying with her? Living with her. She'd got the creeps, and asked me to come for good. Good thing for me I'd got a fool-proof alibi, or I might have found myself in the jug, you know. Looks bad to inherit a couple of thousand through the sudden death of a sister. Don't you think so?'

Mrs. Bradley demurred politely, but Miss Foxley was not to be put off.

'I'll say it does,' she continued, with truculent emphasis. 'Anyway, the vicar swore to me, so that was all right. At a Mothers' Meeting I was, addressing them on Manners and Morals, or some such tripe. Poor old Bella! She was a deep one, she was. I'd never have put it past her to have choked Aunt Flora for the money. She swore she didn't, but ... I wouldn't have a bet on it with the Recording Angel.'

'Then what about Cousin Tom?' asked Mrs. Bradley.