When Last I Died

by Gladys Mitchell

  The flight of Muriel and Bella to the inn was mentioned, and the 'footsteps' were described, under March 4, as 'almost a nuisance now, as they have become so disturbing, and more often run than walk.' There were other references to them on later dates up to and including March 10, and then the wall-writings were mentioned but were not given in detail. Bella's night visit was mentioned, but only perfunctorily. Strangely enough, Cousin Tom made no reference whatsoever to his own fall from the bedroom window. The journal continued :

  "After she had gone I found a woman's suspender, a piece of paper which appeared to have been wrapped round some fish, and a good deal of horse manure in the spare room. These manifestations seem to show that the entity is not altogether friendly towards us, but I am in hope that no mischief 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 statemen
t, 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.

  "Tom? Oh, Tom was a goop," replied Miss Foxley roundly. "And as for that ... but there! I never knew her, except by hearsay from Bella."

  'Never knew whom?" asked Mrs. Bradley.

  "That redundant little wife of his—Muriel."

  "Oh, I see. But the inquest went off satisfactorily, didn't it?"

  "Did it? Would you say that? After all, they nabbed old Bella for slugging him, didn't they? Not that I think she did that. Aunt Flora, yes. Cousin Tom, no. No point in it, for one thing. I reckon Muriel did it."

  "I meant the inquest on your sister."

  "Oh, that? Yes, that went off all right. There was plenty of motive for suicide knocking about. Only wanted putting together and re-shuffling. Anonymous letters, general feeling of depression, dark hints to one or two of the villagers she might not live long, the disclosure that she had stood her trial for murder and had expressed remorse (that was my contribution, made privately). Didn't want the reporters nosing around, so that bit never came out at the inquest. Unnecessary, really."

  "Were the anonymous letters genuine, do you think?" Mrs. Bradley enquired.

  "Well, she certainly got 'em. I saw one or two. Pretty stinking. Oh, well!—Oh, and going* back to the ghosts, didn't you get any wall-writing?"

  "Oh, I had overlooked that. Yes," replied Mrs. Bradley. "The word Beads, or something similar. I wasn't interested. It's so easy to get into a house and scribble on the walls. I had it cleaned off."

  "I thought you psychists sealed the place up when you were in it? Haven't I read that somewhere? How did anyone come to get in?"

  "We did seal up the obvious means of ingress," said Mrs. Bradley carelessly.

  "Well, either you slipped up somewhere, or the writing was genuine," said Miss Foxley. "Well, see here. I'll let you know about the house. I'll have to write to my lawyer. Can't keep you any longer now. Got to go out and pull some vegetables and stuff for my dinner. Living the simple life here."

  She showed Mrs. Bradley to the door in an uncompromising manner, nodded with grim amiability at parting, and even came on to the road to see her go. A few minutes later, still at her front door, she watched with narrowed eyes as the car drove eastwards.

  "Did you get the snapshot, George?" asked Mrs. Bradley.

  "Two beauties, madam, I hope. I caught her fairly each time, one full-face and one profile."

  "Excellent," replied Mrs. Bradley. "And now, George, we return to the village of Pond, Hampshire, where poor Miss Foxley was drowned."

  In order to reach the south shore of the Bristol Channel by the end of the morning, Mrs. Bradley had left Wandles at dawn and was now extremely hungry. She directed George to drive into Taunton for lunch, and as she very much doubted whether there would be an inn at Pond, she decided to spend the night in Bournemouth.

  George enjoyed driving, and, having his private reasons for wishing to spend as many hours in Bournemouth as possible, got his employer to her favourite hotel by six, put up the car, washed himself, and went to a restaurant and thence to the entertainment at the Little Theatre.

  Mrs. Bradley, who would have preferred to have come more slowly from Taunton through Ilminster, Chard, Crewkerne and Dorchester, ate an excellent dinner at a table which had been found for her by the head waiter, an acquaintance of many years' standing, and after dinner strolled along the front before she went up to her room.

  George had instructions to bring the car round at half-past nine next morning, but, to his delight, the order was countermanded by half past-eight, and he received instructions to spend the day exactly as he pleased, as his employer proposed to go to Christchurch to visit the Priory, and would take the bus.

  George hired a bathing suit and a towel, and went for a swim. Then he called in at a pleasant bar for a drink. After that he sat in a deck chair on the front. He wore the grey flannel suit he always carried as one of the 'spares' in the car, put on his scarlet beret (a regrettable form of headgear of which, in justice to him, it must be recorded that he wore it only at the seaside and out of sight of Mrs. Bradley), and smoked cigarettes. At half-past twelve he went to a restaurant for lunch, and by two was on the front again, this time to play on the putting course and subsequently to walk on the pier. He had another swim before tea, and listened to the band in the evening.

  Mrs. Bradley took the bus along the Boscombe Road as far as Southbourne. From there she walked over Hengistbury Head, was ferried across to Mudeford with a boat-load of other people, caught another bus into Christchurch, visited the Priory, inspected an antique dealer's stock, bought a large knife which she would not permit the dealer to wrap up, and caused a certain amount of sensation by lunching with the weapon beside her plate.

  After lunch she went a pleasant little trip to Mudeford and back by river launch down to the mouth of the Stour, had shrimps and watercress for tea, and returned by bus to Bournemouth at half-past six. She dined at a quarter to eight, but did not go out again, for while she was still at dinner, having just eaten her fish, a message arrived from George.

  "She is here, madam, but does not know we are," George had written. Mrs. Bradley cackled. She had said nothing to him of the reason for her change of plan when she had countermanded the order for the car. She wrote on the bottom of his piece of paper, underneath his message :