When Last I Died (12 page)

"The moment they turned their backs on the house, however, and were walking down the weed-grown drive towards the road, the most unearthly pandemonium broke out behind them. They hastened back, but all was quiet again, and nothing found out of its place."

"Amazing," said Mrs. Bradley.

"Was it not?" said Miss Biddle, very much pleased by this reception of her account of the hauntings.

"And how long after that was it that the news of the
poltergeist
became general? In other words, what made Mr. Turney decide to rent the house in order to study the hauntings?" Mrs. Bradley enquired.

"Now it is very interesting and curious that you should ask that," replied Miss Biddle. "He must have had hearsay of it, for nothing had appeared in the papers then. All the same, it was not more than three or four days after that Sunday that we heard the house had the
To Let
board taken down, and that the owner, who was living at Torquay, had told old Joe to go in and cut the grass and tidy up the borders. Then, funnily enough, the
To Let
board went up again, but only for about ten days."

"And did Joe experience anything strange whilst he was attending to the garden?"

"Nothing at all, except that he declared he kept hearing voices which seemed to come up from his feet."

"Is Joe the present caretaker?"

"Oh, no. He's an almost witless old fellow who lives in that yellow cottage by the crossroads."

"I wonder how much he remembers about it?" said Mrs. Bradley thoughtfully.

"I'm afraid he's not to be depended upon," said Miss Biddle. "He's given to inventing his information. Nobody would have believed him about the voices if it could have been proved that he'd heard about the
poltergeist.
But it really didn't seem as though he
had
heard, so some people thought there might be something in his queer tale."

"I agree with them," said Mrs. Bradley. "Voices from under his feet ... a house with foundations very much older than the present superstructure ... a house so damp that the water marks the walls ... bellows and screeches of laughter ...
poltergeist
activity ... very interesting. Very interesting indeed."

Muriel rented a room. This fact she referred to at once. Mrs. Bradley imagined it was her way of introducing herself. It was a large room on the first floor of the house and at the front, and its only disadvantages, from her point of view, continued Muriel, were, first, that it had a bedroom fireplace (which she intended to have replaced by a 'proper one' as soon as she had enough money, provided that she could get 'the people downstairs' to agree), and, second, that it was not two rooms.

"I tried to get them to throw in the box-room," she explained, when the visitor was seated, "but they wouldn't part with it. Of course, they are very untidy, so I dare say they feel they must have somewhere to poke all the rubbish. They didn't want any more rent—not that I could have paid it; I have all my work cut out as it is—they simply wouldn't part with the room. I have all my meals with them, that's one thing. Now, when would your daughter want to begin? I'm afraid I couldn't reduce the fees very much, because my terms are by the term, if you understand what I mean, and not by the week. And would you want her to use your piano or mine? Because I can only take just so many pupils to use my piano, not that I wouldn't take more, but I've had to promise not to have the piano played here for certain hours of the day, and as it's an Agreement, I could hardly be expected to break it."

Mrs. Bradley, who had been wondering why she had been accepted, so to speak, at her face value, escorted into the house before she had stated her business, and installed in the best armchair, now briefly explained that she had no pupil to offer, but had come about something quite different.

"Oh, dear! How silly of me," said Muriel. Then, with the nervous purposefulness of the indigent, she continued hastily, "But if you're selling anything, I really don't need it, thank you."

She rose, as she said this, with the object of showing Mrs. Bradley out, but the visitor remained seated, and replied :

"I have nothing to sell. My errand is a painful one. If, when you have heard what I have to say, you still wish me to go, I shall go at once."

Muriel, looking extremely frightened, sat down again.

"Oh, dear," she said. "No, I didn't think you'd come to sell anything, although really they employ the most respectable people, I'm sure. In fact, I did a little canvassing myself after— after my husband's death, but I didn't like it at all. Some of the people were very rude and unkind. I suppose they have to be, with people bothering them all day. Still, it wasn't very pleasant."

"It is about your husband's death that I have come," said Mrs. Bradley.

"I don't understand. He died—several years ago. There couldn't be—that dreadful woman hasn't left a confession?"

"No, nothing like that. Mrs. Turney, I am investigating matters connected with the trial of Bella Foxley. I wonder whether you would tell me one or two things I very badly want to know?"

"Well—I don't know. You see, I don't want to get into any trouble. After all, the jury did say she didn't do it, although I know she did."

"There will be no trouble, I assure you. I have already had a long conversation with one of the jurymen who acquitted Bella Foxley. And I am in touch with certain aspects of the case which seem to me significant. Mr. Conyers Eastward——"

"But he defended her!"

"Yes, I know he did. But never mind that now. The point is that he is a person of repute, and I am going to re-open the case, to some extent, with him."

"Yes, I see. I'm sure you're quite respectable. But, after all, that awful woman is dead, and, even if she weren't, she couldn't be tried again for the same crime, could she? Oh, I could have done anything to her! You should have seen her look at me when the jury brought in their verdict! She knew she'd done it, and she knew
how
she'd done it! And yet they let her off! And I used to dream night after night that poor Tom was calling me, trying to get me to understand something about that terrible house where it happened. But I always woke up just as I was on the point of understanding what he meant."

"That is very interesting indeed," said Mrs. Bradley. "You dreamt that your husband was trying to explain something to you about that haunted house, and you always woke up just as you were on the point of understanding what he meant."

"Why do you look at me like that!" cried Muriel. Mrs. Bradley's bright black eyes began to sparkle.

"I beg your pardon," she said. "I don't think you understand the importance of those dreams, but that doesn't matter now. Tell me this, Mrs. Turney. Would you want people to be convinced, even all these years afterwards, that Bella Foxley was a murderess—if she was one? Or are you willing to leave things as they are?"

"I don't believe Tom fell out of that window, either the first or the second time, and I don't believe the haunted house had anything to do with his death," replied the widow. "But as for Bella Foxley—if I could blacken her name even now that she's dead, I'd do it. It was something she knew, and something Tom knew, too! That's why she killed him. It was the grated carrot, you know. That's what it was. Tom knew. Oh, how I wish we'd never gone! It was the telegram that decided us, although Tom knew better than to expect anything under the will. Poor Aunt Flora! She hadn't very many relations to go and see her! But we weren't well off, you know, and Tom said she might think we thought we'd got expectations, and he wouldn't go anywhere near. We had no expectations of any sort, and didn't want to have any, and he knew what people would think—especially Bella—if they got to hear.

"Well, Bella was there already. She had arrived the day before. She was quite nice, and she and I went up to see Aunt Flora, who looked very, very frail and very much older than when I had seen her last, for all she had dyed her poor old hair since we were there before, although I didn't like to tell Tom that, and he wouldn't go in to see her. He couldn't bear illness, poor man."

"When had he seen her last?" Mrs. Bradley enquired.

"When Tom and I were married. I was Tom's second wife, you see, and we had only been married four years. Aunt Flora did not come to the wedding, but we sent her a piece of the cake —Tom
would
have a cake and orange blossom and everything, for
my
sake, because he said I was only a girl, and that, after all, it was my first marriage, even if it was his second. He was full of little jokes like that about it. I never felt his first wife came between us at all, although I believe he had been quite fond of her. But, after all, she had been dead for nearly twenty years when he married me. He was nearly sixty, you see, and although people made some remarks about December and May, it really wasn't like that at all. Tom was really very young for his age—more like a man of forty-five, I always thought—and I've always been rather reserved and sort of
old
for mine, so it was a more suitable marriage than you would think, considering I was only twenty at the time. I am only thirty now, although people have taken me for thirty-five or six."

She did look that age, thought Mrs. Bradley, but the fact had no importance. It might be important to know that Tom was so much older than she had imagined, though, she decided. A man of sixty-four or five might tumble out of first-floor windows and hurt or even kill himself where a man much younger might sustain no lasting injury. Curious he had not hurt himself the first time, all the same, at any rate, not seriously."

"Had you met your husband's cousin before?" she enquired, as Muriel paused. The widow nodded.

"Oh, yes, several times. She and Tom got on quite well together. She put him in the way of renting these haunted houses from time to time. She had even come away with us for part of her summer holiday, I remember. We were very hard up that year, and she said that if we would let her join us she would pay half the expenses and we could pay the other half between us. It was quite a generous offer, because, although we had two bedrooms, the one sitting-room did just as well for three as it would for two, so we actually saved a little more than you would think, especially as the rooms came a little cheaper, taking the two bedrooms with one sitting-room, you know. It was then she gave us the first news about this last haunted house. Tom was pleased. We had a happy time. I liked Bella then, and Tom liked her right to the end."

"Even after he knew ...?"

"That she choked poor aunt? Well, perhaps not quite so much then, but, of course, he couldn't be sure."

"But I thought he
was
sure?"

"Well, you see, what really happened was this:"

"We are coming to it at last," thought Mrs. Bradley.

"You see, Aunt Flora was so much better that we thought we might all venture to go out for a little while in the afternoon. A sickroom can be very monotonous, and poor Aunt Flora's (I don't mean it was her fault, of course !) was really rather stuffy and smelly. Well, Tom said he wouldn't be a minute, and Bella seemed to be hanging about, almost as though she wanted me out of the way...."

"You thought of that later," thought Mrs. Bradley. She grinned, and the narrator looked disconcerted." Wanted you out of the way, yes?" said Mrs. Bradley, nodding.

"So I decided I wouldn't be in a hurry, and, anyhow, I was waiting for Tom. Tom came out—I was waiting by the front door—and said that Bella seemed to have found herself a job in the kitchen. I couldn't understand that, because, Bella spending all her life in kitchens at that time, being housekeeper at that dreadful Home, you know, I didn't think she would want to go into one when she need not, so I went and looked through the window and tapped on the glass. She looked up, and I could see that she had a carrot in her hand...."

"I don't think she denied that she grated the carrot," said Mrs. Bradley, gently interrupting the narrative.

"Oh, I see. No, she didn't deny it. But I always say that Aunt thought she was getting pease-pudding. She would never have taken raw carrot; of that I'm very sure. Anyhow, Bella didn't come, so Tom and I walked on for a bit, and then Tom remembered that he'd left a letter for the house-agent up in our bedroom, and he badly wanted it to catch the post. He decided to go back, but told me not to come, but to wait for him at the bottom of the hill if I liked.

"Well, I did wait for him, but he was so long that I began to get chilly, and I walked back towards the house. There was no sign of him until I got right up to the porch, and then I saw him. He looked terrible. He said, 'Oh, there you are, Muriel! A dreadful thing has happened. Poor Aunt is choked to death. You had better go for the doctor.'

"I didn't know where the doctor lived, but he gave me quite a sharp push—he was always so gentle as a rule—and told me to hurry up.

"'I'm not going to leave that hell-cat alone with her,' he said. I couldn't think what he meant, but now I know."

"What did he mean?" asked Mrs. Bradley.

"Why, Bella, of course. He meant he knew Bella had done it, don't you see? And he wasn't going to give her a chance to remove anything which might give her away."

"But you couldn't have thought that at the time, you know, Mrs. Turney," said Mrs. Bradley, even more gently than she had yet spoken. Muriel looked at her, and then agreed.

"No, perhaps not; but I think it now," she said. "Well, I fetched the doctor. Poor aunt
was
choked with the carrot. The doctor confirmed it at once."

"But you can't prove, and your husband couldn't have proved, that Miss Foxley did the choking," said Mrs. Bradley. "He didn't see her do it, and, even if he had, I doubt whether her word would be considered less valid than his if she declared that he was lying. Why did you hate Miss Foxley at that time, Mrs. Turney? She had never done you any harm."

"I know she hadn't," agreed Muriel, "but, looking back, I can see it all."

Mrs. Bradley thought she herself could, too, but she did not say this. Believing, however, that no logical answer would be forthcoming to her question, she asked another :