When Last I Died

conversation are crude, boorish, unready, or even, for all social purposes, non-existent, can sometimes contrive to express themselves, when in receipt of pen and paper, in unexceptionable prose.'

'I don't see, all the same, why you think two people wrote the diary between them,' said Caroline.

'I don't know that they did. Bella was an unconscious collaborator. What interested me, and caused me to investigate the matter in the first place, were the ending of the diary, abrupt yet undramatic, and the mistakes in fact which were apparent almost at a glance and which became ludicrously obvious as soon as one began to examine the matter.

'Then came the very odd fact that, although the diary continued long past the time when everyone concerned had left Aunt Flora's house, the diary itself remained there. That seemed very curious.'

'Last entries faked? Written beforehand ?' said Ferdinand.

'It added to my idea that there was a plot. The plot, of course, came into being when Bella helped Pegwell and Kettle-borough to escape from the Institution. Well, the arrangement between Bella and Tom was that the boys should remain hidden in the haunted house, where Tom could make good use of them in faking the poltergeist phenomena, and where, Bella hoped, they would be safe from the police.

'That, I fancy, was as far as Tom was prepared to go, and, apart from Muriel's confession, I could not prove much of what follows.

'One thing which Tom never allowed for, of course, was the horrid jealousy which his necessary collusion with Bella over the boys evoked in Muriel. This jealousy led Muriel, later on, to kill him and to see that Bella was charged with the murder.'

'Didn't Bella know who had killed Tom?' Caroline enquired.

'She thought it was the boys. She does not seem to have suspected Muriel of that until now.'

'Then did Muriel kill the aunt?'

'It is most likely. But it doesn't matter now, in one sense, whether she did or not. The death of the aunt suggested to Tom this further plot to continue to blackmail Bella—not that he did anything so crude, I imagine, as to extort money by threats, or anything of that kind. Bella loved him, and he found it easy enough to get the money. It was, of course, very much more than those small amounts suggested at the trial. It was, very possibly, the half which was supposed to have gone to Tessa, although Bella did not admit it.'

'Well, he wrote the diary, intending to type it out later and threaten Bella with it if ever it became necessary to apply a little pressure. He purposely sent it to the house to Eliza Hodge, being pretty sure that the old servant would take care of it without being unduly curious about it. Then he wrote the anonymous letters and drove Bella almost mad, I should imagine, by the accusations of murder contained in them. Then he fell out of the window that first time, and allowed her to believe that the boys had pushed him out.'

'And that gave Muriel the idea of how to kill him without being suspected?' asked Caroline.

'Yes. She has now confessed it. I had an inkling of what had happened—I think we all had—when we heard about the button which was found in the dead man's hand.'

'Well, it was rather silly of Bella to go and visit Tom so late at night,' said Caroline. Mrs. Bradley looked benevolently at her daughter-in-law, and agreed.

'There is one thing I don't understand,' said Ferdinand. 'How did a comparatively frail woman such as Muriel contrive to get the two boys battened down under hatches in that cellar? I should have thought the lads would have popped up the well whilst she was screwing down the trap-door, or vice-versa.'

'Oh, Bella helped her over that.'

'So Bella is partly guilty?'

'No, but it flummoxed her at the trial. Tom must have told her that the boys had pushed him out and were dangerous. She suggested that they should shut the boys up until they had decided what was the best thing to do about them. She knew, of course, that, following the information which she was going to give at the inquest, it was almost certain that Bella would be arrested for murdering Tom. After that, Muriel dared not keep the boys alive in case they could witness against her. The probability was that they had been fast asleep at the time, but her guilty conscience would not allow her to run any risks.

'When Bella had been acquitted of the murder of Tom, she knew, from the way in which Muriel had given her evidence, that she had an implacable enemy, and she knew the reason for it. It was to escape from Muriel's hatred, I think, that she assumed Tessa's identity, although I am certain that she never suspected that Muriel had killed Tom. She did think, though, that Muriel had choked Aunt Flora.

'I myself had some glimmering of the truth, I think, when I realized that there was a curious little entry which seemed to leave a kind of time-gap in the diary. This gap was that the diary failed to explain what on earth made the whole four of them—Bella Foxley, Tom, Muriel and even Eliza—leave the old lady alone in the house on the day that she died. I could not believe that even the most irresponsible and heartless people would have done such a thing, and, when I questioned Eliza, I discovered that, as a matter of fact, they did not. Eliza herself was there, and either Bella or Muriel.

'Now there was, in connection with this entry, too, an interval unaccounted for by the author—whether Bella or Tom—between seven o'clock and that 'little later on in the evening ' during which Aunt Flora died.'

'But it doesn't prove anything,' protested Caroline.

'It proves that whoever wrote the diary was a liar, and a liar about the most important event mentioned,' said Ferdinand. 'Mother, presumably, became interested in Bella Foxley before she obtained Eliza's evidence, but the discrepancy between that evidence and the evidence of the diary was proof- presumptive, I should say, of foul play.'

'Yes, but Tom wanted to indicate foul play,' persisted Caroline.

'I know,' said her husband soothingly, 'but it was that— and I expect, the other curious mistake about the colour of the old lady's hair—which made mother think that there might be something worth investigating.'

'I am glad you mention the hair,' said Mrs. Bradley, 'for that indicated that whoever wrote the diary could not have gone in to see the old lady. The fine imaginative passage about the dirt in the parting—you remember ?—proved positively that whoever the author was, it could scarcely have been either Bella or Muriel, both of whom, according to old Eliza, spent time in the sick-room, a thing which Tom did not do, being afraid, on the one hand, we are asked to believe, that the old aunt might think he had come for what he could get—a thought repugnant to his nature—and, on the other, that he detested illness—a more likely explanation, I feel.'

'And were you positive, before Muriel confessed, that she was the murderer of the two boys?' asked Caroline.

'Yes. I don't want to go into details which you would not care to hear, but it was obvious that the boys' bodies had been buried before they had decomposed. Now they could not have been buried by Tom, for he was dead, and they could not have been buried by Bella, because before they were dead she would have been in prison. That left Muriel, and I have a statement from the old caretaker to show that Muriel visited the haunted house some days after the inquest to do some gardening, he thought.'

'Silly mistake to bury them at all,' said Ferdinand.

'I can't see how you knew she would confess if you could get her to the haunted house to try to kill you,' said Caroline.

'I based the theory upon a discovery I made earlier in the investigation,' explained Mrs. Bradley. 'I discovered that Muriel was superstitious. She indicated to me once that she didn't really think it was wise to counterfeit psychical phenomena. Therefore, when she came to the haunted house that night to kill me because I had allowed her to know what I had against her, she concluded that the sounds she heard, striking home as they did to a mind over-burdened with guilt, were proof of something that she had half-believed all her life—that there really are such things as ghosts, and that occasionally they take a quite uncomfortable interest in human affairs.'

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