When Last I Died

Miss Bella and Miss Tessa have nicknames for one another, do you know?'

'Not that I know of. Short names, Bell and Tess, when they were younger, before Miss Tessa fell out with the mistress, like, and cut herself out of the money.'

'They didn't call one another Flossie and Dossie?'

'Good gracious, no, madam! Sounds more like a couple of barmaids, or something not even respectable!'

Mrs. Bradley agreed, and, to her horror, dreamed about rainwater butts.

Chapter Seven

THE HAUNTED HOUSE

'Now the wasted brands do glow, Whilst the screech-owl, screeching loud, Puts the wretch that lies in woe In remembrance of a shroud. Now it is the time of night That the graves all gaping wide, Every one lets forth his sprite, In the church-way paths to glide....'

SHAKESPEARE.

THREE days later Mrs. Bradley, to her surprise, received a letter from Miss Foxley advising her that she might rent the house for a week, if she so desired, but not for longer as 'it kept other visitors away.'

Mrs. Bradley wrote off a brief acceptance, and as the amount of the rent was mentioned she enclosed it, received a formal receipt by return of post, telephoned a number of interested people including her son Ferdinand and Mr. Pratt, and took up her week's tenancy of the haunted house on the following Saturday afternoon.

Altogether she had ten people in the house, but three of them were not at first seen except by Mrs. Bradley herself and by one another.

The other seven consisted of Ferdinand and Caroline, a Roman Catholic priest named Conlan, the Warden of the Institution, Mr. Pratt, a fellow-journalist named Carris (a man particularly interested in poltergeist phenomena) and Mrs. Bradley. The unknown three were two boys from the Institution who had come to the haunted house direct from Mrs. Bradley's own care, for they had just concluded their week's summer holiday at the house rented from Eliza Hodge, and the young instructor who had come down in charge of the party. These three were already at the haunted house when the party arrived, and had 'gone to ground' as Mrs. Bradley expressed it with some accuracy. Father Conlan did not put in an appearance until the Monday morning, and he left on the Tuesday evening with Ferdinand and Caroline. The journalists left on the Thursday morning. On the Thursday evening the two boys and their instructor returned to Miss Hodge's house, and by the Friday morning no one was left except Mrs. Bradley herself, but she had in her possession ten interesting documents, duly signed and dated which she was able, later on, to hand over to the police. Ferdinand and Mr. Pratt returned to the haunted house, in mystified response to Mrs. Bradley's further invitation, on the Friday afternoon.

The first seance was held on the Monday evening, and before the guests settled down in the library, which opened on the left of the hall as one entered the house, Mrs. Bradley earnestly requested them to make a thorough exploration to convince themselves that no unauthorised person and no 'trick' apparatus was to be found.

The guests, who had assembled much in the spirit of children attending a party, gleefully explored the whole house and then, except for the tiny pantry window, which they forgot, secured with adhesive tape all the entrances. Then they assembled with their hostess in the library and it was suggested by Caroline that they might have the windows open. A vote was taken upon this proposal and it was agreed to in view of the fact that seven people in the fair-sized but not particularly large room would soon produce a stuffy atmosphere, and that they were all witnesses of one another's actions.

The seance was almost ludicrously successful. Scarcely had the circle settled down—in the most informal manner, incidentally, grouped as the sitters pleased about the room, everyone talking, reading, smoking or, in the case of Mr. Pratt's friend Mr. Carris, playing Patience—when everyone was electrified by the sudden ringing of bells.

Mrs. Bradley had had the bell wires repaired, and every separate member of the party had either tested the bells or watched and listened whilst other people tested them.

The reaction, after the first shock, was disciplined and intelligent. Those who had agreed to do so—Ferdinand, Mrs. Bradley, Mr. Carris, and Father Conlan—went out of the room and made a concerted tour of the house. They went first to the servants' quarters, where the indicator was still vibrating. Each investigator had been provided with a small notebook in which he or she was to record the phenomena, if any, and his or her own reactions to them.

A written entry was duly made by everyone, and by the side of it everyone unhesitatingly wrote Faked. Two of the company, Caroline and the priest, also wrote, 'But I don't see how,' and 'Inexplicable, however,' respectively. Ferdinand added to his verdict the rider: 'I would have said Genuine if all the bells had been rung, but the poltergeist seems to have avoided coming too near to where we were, in case we heard him moving about. The bells in the hall and in the room where we had been sitting and in the bedroom over this seance room did not ring.'

The party returned to the room, and nothing more happened for about an hour. Then came a crash, followed by smaller tumbling noises, and the party, all this time, running out into the hall, beheld parts of a bedstead, three chairs, a candlestick and five metal trays lying on the floor at the foot of the staircase.

The company, not as well-controlled this time, went bounding upstairs. Nothing could be seen, heard, or in any way discovered, although every bedroom and every attic was searched. Two earnest seekers after truth even discovered the attic cupboard which had the airholes, but, so far as they could tell, it was empty and, as Caroline expressed it, innocent.

Opinions in the various notebooks varied on the subject of this second phenomenon. The majority wrote to the effect that they supposed the furniture had been thrown downstairs by human and not by super-human agency, but two of these confessed that they could not see how it had been done. Ferdinand wrote that he thought he had the glimmering of an idea of the method, and Mr. Pratt wrote: 'I think I know where they hid, but I cannot see why we did not get them on the back stairs.' The priest wrote: 'This is trickery, but it is cleverly done and I cannot determine the method. There must be a cellar.'

Caroline and Mr. Carris wrote that, failing any feasible explanation, they considered the phenomenon genuine, and Caroline added with her usual naivete: 'I don't think I should like to sleep here alone.'

None of the party slept there except the young instructor and his charges, but where they slept remained as secret as did the fact of their existence. The rest of the party spent the night at the inn, in accordance with a previous arrangement, although Mr. Carris demurred.

All day Tuesday the phenomena continued at irregular intervals, and in the evening, when it was dusk, and Ferdinand, Caroline, and Father Conlan were about to take their departure, Mrs. Bradley summoned everyone else to the dining-room and requested them to accompany the three to the gate.

'I will wave to you all from the window of the spare bedroom, the one from which Cousin Tom is supposed to have fallen,' she said. Ferdinand, suspecting that some more trickery was toward, glanced at her and raised his eyebrows.

'It's all right,' said his mother. 'I shall not fall out of the window.'

When the party was out on the gravel drive they turned to look up at the first floor. There was Mrs. Bradley waving from one of the windows, and behind her could be seen distinctly the outline of a shadowy man.

The priest began to run back, but Ferdinand caught his arm and reassured him. When the other three returned to the house, Mrs. Bradley was in the hall to meet them.

The two journalists made for the stairs, but, carefully though they searched, there was no one to be found in the house except the people for whom they could account.

'Illusion?' asked Mr. Pratt.

'Oh, no, there was someone with me,' said Mrs. Bradley. 'What's more, he and his confederates are still in the house.'

At these words the journalists, assisted by the Warden, who had been an interested but uncommunicative observer of the phenomena so far witnessed in the house, made a still more thorough search. The journalists came to the conclusion, after some trouble and a considerable expenditure of electricity, that the ventilated cupboard at the top of the attic stairs had nothing to conceal, and the Warden found that there was a communicating door between the chief bedroom and the room adjoining. Mrs. Bradley sat downstairs in the dining-room placidly knitting a shapeless length of mauve wool, adding (apparently as the fancy took her, for she seemed to be following no particular pattern) touches of grey and shrimp-pink, and blandly received reports as they came in. Occasionally she went to the window and stared out. There was never anything to be seen except the weedy drive and the gloomy trees. It was a disconcerting house, in more senses than one.

The searchers did not give up until a quarter to ten, when they, with their hostess, went along to the village for their nightcaps and to their beds. Next day they resumed their labours, and Mrs. Bradley thought at One point that the mystery was about to be solved by Mr. Carris, who stood for nearly a quarter of an hour in the grass-grown courtyard, inspecting it from every angle and sometimes gazing down into the well. Although he had thus the first clue in his hands, he did not follow it up, but merely remarked that wells should be covered in, and that this one, so near the scullery door, was particularly dangerous.

Mr. Pratt found the second clue, but, lacking the first, made nothing of his discovery. He merely remarked to Mrs. Bradley that it seemed as though the foundations of the house might be