When Last I Died

by Gladys Mitchell

  "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 séance 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 éscritoire, 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 th
at 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 'like Londoners' he stopped to investigate. There was nothing to be seen, but he could hear loud thumpings and bumpings which seemed to come from the back of the house. He knew the house was supposed to be empty, so he went round to the window and peered in. The glass was dusty, however, and he could see nothing. Nevertheless, he did not think there was anybody there. It being none of his business, as he afterwards said, he went on his way.

  "Next day, being Saturday, two or three of the school-children came into the garden of the haunted house to play hide-and-seek among the shrubs and trees. They became frightened, however, by loud, heavy noises inside the house, and one child declared that she had seen a ghost at one of the upstairs windows.

  "As Samuel Kindred's story was public-house gossip by this time, four or five men armed with sticks, accompanied by Farmer Stokes with a shot-gun, went to the house on Saturday evening, having had a drink at the public-house first, to see what they could find. There was nothing to be seen, but the heavy noises were heard, and a half-brick, which came sailing through the air, struck one of the men on the shoulder and bruised him badly. What they described as 'mad bellows and screeches' of laughter followed, and in the end they broke a downstairs window and entered the house. As soon as they were in the hall, some furniture near them began to move about in an unaccountable manner, and they retreated, telling each other lurid tales of traditional hauntings. Farmer Stokes loosed off his gun, and the result was a perfect cascade of small articles down the stairs. He proposed to mount the stairs, but finding that the others had all deserted him, he gave up the idea and followed them back to the road.

  "There the whole group waited for about twenty minutes, but he could not persuade the others to return with him to the house. Next day, after Evensong, my dear father, with Farmer Stokes, Mr. Morant from the Hall, Mr. Carter and old Everett, the shoemaker, went to the haunted house, but found it perfectly quiet. They climbed in, but the furniture was all in place, and everything seemed to be in order.

  "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."