When Last I Died

by Gladys Mitchell

  Counsel for the Defence cited the 'long arm of coincidence' in his closing speech. He insisted that coincidence was an everyday happening. He begged the jury to remember strange coincidences in their own lives and to attempt to explain them away in the light of ordinary reason. His client did not deny, he said, the presence of the boys at the house; she did not deny the purpose for which their services had been used. But the faking of spiritualist miracles was not murder, nor was it in any sense akin to murder, and it was for murder that his client was being tried, the murder of these boys she had befriended.

  She had a long and honourable record in the Institution of which they had heard so much. She had a reputation, even, for kindness. One of the witnesses for the prosecution had been, himself, a boy at the Institution, and, in spite of the fact that his evidence had been given against the prisoner, he had had to agree that she had been a kind woman, bringing into the lives of these poor boys—victims of our social system rather than sinners in their own right!—something of a mother's care and love.

  Was it likely, was it probable, in fact, was it possible at all, that such a woman could have done the deed attributed to her by the prosecution ?

  "Not a bad effort," said Ferdinand. "Really not bad at all. I'm prepared to lay you a monkey to sixpence that that jury will let her off. The missing link is vital. You can't put the job on to Bella without something better than that wretched hysteria-patient of yours, and that's that. After all, Crodders ain't so far wrong about coincidences, and the jury, curse them for superstitious fatheads, know it."

  Mrs. Bradley agreed.

  "We have to allow for the fact that there are three women on the jury, though," she added, "and we have yet to hear the summing-up."

  "Yes. Shouldn't think Nolly would be particularly prejudiced in her favour," Ferdinand agreed, more cheerfully. "After all, he must remember her former trial, even if-the jury don't, but he can't manufacture evidence, much as he might like to. He can only throw his weight about, and he's always scrupulously fair. No, I take it that the priceless Bella will drive off amid cheers come this time to-morrow. Cousin Muriel has dished us. She had the whole thing in her hands, and she chucked it clean away. She and the Naval rating, between 'em, ought to have cooked Bella's goose, but it's all over now, I fancy, bar the enthusiasm of an exhilarated populace."

  Chapter Ten

  REACTIONS OF AN ELDERLY PSYCHOLOGIST

  Strength stoops unto the grave, Worms feed on Hector brave: Swords may not fight with fate: Earth still holds ope her gate. Come, come, the bells do cry: I am sick, I must die.

  · · · · ·

  Wit with his wantonness Tasteth death's bitterness; Hell's executioner Hath no ears for to hear What vain art can reply; I am sick, I must die.

  · · · · ·

  NASHE.

  MR. JUSTICE KNOWLES commenced his summing-up by emphasizing to the jury the point at issue in the trial. The question for them to settle was whether or not the prisoner had, by her wilful act, murdered, by starving them to death, two boys named respectively Frederick Pegwell and Richard Kectleborough.

  That two boys had died of starvation (an even more sinister report by the medical witnesses was not referred to) and had been buried beneath the floor in the cellar or crypt of a house known as Nunsuch in the village of Tonning, there could be no doubt. The facts and cause of the deaths were not disputed by the defence, and the medical witnesses who had appeared for the defence, as well as those who had appeared for the prosecution, were agreed upon the approximate date of the deaths.

  It was not disputed, either, that the accused had visited, and even lived in, the house. As to her assertion that she and her relatives believed the house to be haunted, the jury must make up their own minds to what extent the accused really believed this. The question here was not whether the house really was or was not haunted, but whether the prisoner believed that it was, for this might have some bearing upon their verdict.

  The question, then, resolved itself into this: Did the accused murder Frederick Pegwell and Richard Kettleborough?

  The prosecution had produced a witness to show that the prisoner had connived at, and even assisted in, the escape of these two boys from what was a remand home for young criminals. The jury might ask themselves whether this young man, who had also been for some years an inmate of this home, was a reliable witness....

  Here Mr. Pratt looked at Mrs. Bradley and held his thumbs down.

  ... or whether it could be expected that he should remember clearly all the details of his life there. On the other hand, the jury must remember that this witness, like all the other witnesses, was on oath, and that he had given his evidence straightforwardly and undoubtedly had so far improved his way of life that he was to-day in an honourable calling, the most honourable, perhaps, in the world, that of an Able Seaman in the Royal Navy.

  The jury had also heard another witness declare that the two boys Pegwell and Kettleborough had been employed by the accused to counterfeit psychic phenomena in order that the reputation of the haunted house might be exploited for gain.

  On the other hand, the jury would remember that this witness had contradicted herself on several important counts during the hearing of her evidence. First she had said that she tried to dissuade her husband from employing the boys, and then that she had agreed to it. She had also stated that the accused had received a share of the profits, and then she had denied that this was so. Furthermore, she had stated expressly that she had left the haunted house because she did not like what was going on there; she believed, she said, that the house was verily and indeed the haunt of supernatural beings, yet she had also made the statement that she knew that all the extraordinary occurrences which were experienced there were the work of these two boys, and she insisted that they were acting under instructions from the prisoner.

  It surely would not be contended, as learned counsel had pointed out (observed his Lordship), that all these statements could be true.

  "Why not?" wrote Mr. Pratt, passing the note to Mrs. Bradley. She glanced at it and grinned, pursing her lips almost immediately afterwards into a little beak, and looking again at the judge.

  There were tales of screams, shouts and moans, Mr. Justice Knowles continued, but if it were so, why had nothing been said or done about them at the time? Why were they dragged into the light of day for the first time more than six years afterwards ?

  On the other hand, there was the actual evidence of the bodies. Two bodies had been found under the house in circumstances which indicated foul play. If the bodies had been left unburied it might be argued that a horrible accident or even criminal negligence had taken place. But the fact that the bodies of two starved children had actually been buried, and buried in secret, and in a place where it was most unlikely that they would ever be found, indicated—in fact, insisted—that there had been foul play.

  There was also the evidence of the ex-Warden of the Institution. The jury would remember that this witness had stated that no trace of the missing boys had ever come to light. The jury would also remember that this witness had stated, further (and in this part of his evidence he was supported by the testimony of the present Warden), that for the police to fail to track down two such boys, of whom a full description could be circulated and who would be most unlikely to have money with them to assist them to get away from the environs of the Institution, was most unusual.

  His Lordship elaborated this part of his theme, and concluded with an exhortation to the jury to remember to give the prisoner the benefit of any reasonable doubt. Then he invited them to retire and consider their verdict.

  In the interval which followed this retirement, Mr. Pratt again scribbled a note to Mrs. Bradley.

  "What a pity we couldn't produce the motive for the murder of the boys!"

  Mrs. Bradley wrote in reply on the bottom of the same sheet of paper:

  "What was the motive for the murder of the boys? If you could tell me that I should be delighted."
<
br />   Pratt wrote on the other side of the paper (thus offending, Mrs. Bradley pointed out later, against all the canons of journalism and other authorship),

  "Why, what about the murder of Cousin Tom? What a blight on us that it has to be hush-hush, isn't it?"

  To this Mrs. Bradley wrote in reply:

  "Cousin Tom was not murdered until after the boys were imprisoned in the cellar. You've got the wrong notion. I had, too, at first, and it led to Bella's arrest. Tom may not have been a party to the killing of the boys, therefore he may have been a nuisance; he may have known facts about the death of Aunt Flora, therefore he may have been a menace; but the death of the boys must have had some connection with another matter, I think, and certainly with another person."

  "The thing is," said Ferdinand to his mother that evening, when, the jury having failed to agree, the trial was postponed until the next sessions—a matter of a few weeks—"you will have to go further into the alleged suicide of the sister. There's still some sort of mystery about that. Nobody is going to get me to believe that anyone as completely hard-boiled as Bella Foxley wanted to fake a suicide because people were sending her anonymous letters. Besides, the villagers didn't know who she was, did they?—Although, of course, you can never be sure about a thing like that. Because the shepherd doesn't know there's a wolf in the fold, it doesn't stand to reason the sheep don't."

  "They would be likely to betray the fact to the shepherd, though, don't you think?" observed Mrs. Bradley. "But I think, all the same, dear child, it is your metaphor and not your reasoning which is at fault."

  "Pratt showed me your note about the motive for the murder of the boys," continued Ferdinand. "I thought you had made up your mind that they were killed because they knew she had murdered Cousin Tom, until you suddenly presented me with that contrary opinion of yours the other week, about Muriel."

  "I did think so at first, but the evidence of the caretaker and his daughter, plus the evidence of Miss Biddle, caused me to change my mind, and the medical evidence confirmed everything. You see, Bella Foxley was arrested so soon after the death of and the inquest on, Cousin Tom that she would have had no chance of returning to the house to bury the bodies of the two boys until they would have reached an advanced state of decomposition. Now the bodies, as I saw them when they were first disinterred by the police, did not bear out this theory. The boys had been buried, I should have said, before they were quite dead, and the medical evidence at the trial bore out this suggestion of mine. Q.E.D."

  "It is indeed," agreed Ferdinand. "Well, it will be a very serious thing if you don't get her at the next attempt. What are you going to do?"

  "I am going to rent a cottage in the village where Tessa Foxley was drowned," Mrs. Bradley replied. "There may be, as you suggest, a more powerful motive for that impersonation than the desire to put an end to anonymous letters, and there may be a motive for the murder of the boys which has no connection whatsoever with the death of Cousin Tom or else a different connection from any which we visualized at first. I had better interview the prisoner, I think, before I go to Pond. Can you arrange that for me?"

  "I don't know that she'll agree to have you visit her," replied Ferdinand.

  "I know what you mean," said Mrs. Bradley, with her harsh cackle. "I did my best to get her hanged, you think. Well, let me know as soon as I can get permission to visit her."

  She had few questions to ask Bella Foxley when they met. The prisoner was as uncommunicative as when they had conversed at her toll-house in Devon, so perhaps it was well that Mrs. Bradley was prepared to be brief.

  "Don't worry. They'll probably get me next time," Bella announced, as soon as she was seated opposite the visitor. "What do you want?"

  "Answers to a question or so," Mrs. Bradley replied, "and I will guarantee not to use what you tell me in a manner detrimental to your interests."

  "Perhaps you think the gallows might serve my interests best?" said Bella with an ugly look and an even uglier laugh. Mrs. Bradley shrugged, and then, fixing her bright black eyes on the prisoner, looked at her expectantly.

  "For my own satisfaction, if for no other reason, I should like to establish the truth," she said. "Now, Miss Foxley: suppose, instead of being charged with the murder of those two boys, you were charged with the murder of your sister, Miss Tessa Foxiey?"

  Bella half-smiled. Mrs. Bradley waited. Her clients knew that expression of patient benevolence. It seemed to have hypnotic powers. She exercised them now upon Bella, and, to her relief, although not altogether to her surprise, the prisoner spoke almost good-humouredly.

  "Poor Tessa! Of course, as you've guessed, she was mental. That's why she was taken advantage of. That's one of the reasons why I hate men. I had her to live with me after the other trial because I had nobody else, and I thought I ought to keep an eye on her as I was letting her have half the money, and—I suppose I might as well confess it and get it off my conscience—I was hoping something would happen, and it did. She was the suicide kind, I suppose. My aim was to assume her identity if anything happened to her. I suggested to her we should call each other by nicknames, and I always told people—not that we got to know many; I saw to that all right—that she was Bella and I was Tessa Foxley.

  "People didn't seem to suspect anything; I suppose they thought she was what people were like when they'd been acquitted of murder.

  "Anyway, one afternoon I got to her in time to pull her head out of the rainwater butt. Silly of me, because it would have done the trick all right, but, somehow, you can't watch people die. Anyway, next time she did it in the village pond, and it was all up with her by the time she was discovered."

  "And you had an alibi, I believe, for the time of her death?" said Mrs. Bradley in very friendly tones.

  "Yes. Good enough for the coroner. I thought I told you. I had been let in for giving a talk to the Mothers' Meeting. Nice fellow, the vicar. Very good to both of us. Glad to oblige him."

  "What made you so anxious to assume your sister's identity?" asked Mrs. Bradley. Bella gave her a curious look, and then replied off-handedly:

  "Oh, I don't know, you know. I'suppose I wanted a chance to forget all about the trial and all the unpleasantness. Still, I don't seem to have got far with it, do I?"

  "It couldn't do any harm to tell me the truth, you know." Mrs. Bradley suggested. "If you wanted to begin life afresh, as they say, after the trial, why couldn't you have adopted an entirely new name? After all, the names Tessa Foxley and Bella Foxley are not so extremely unlike that you would have been able to hide yourself much behind your sister's name—except to people who knew you! Come, Miss Foxley, be reasonable."

  But Bella shook her head, and her heavy face set obstinately.

  "It's neither here nor there," she answered. "I reckon I've had this coming to me all my life. I haven't had a happy life, you know."

  "But I suggest to you that you had a better reason than the one you've given me for assuming your sister's name," Mrs. Bradley persisted. "You knew those boys were dead."

  "Forget it," said Bella tersely; and as Mrs. Bradley had no more questions to put she took her leave.

  "Come again," said the prisoner in tones more genuine and less sardonic than Mrs. Bradley had expected. "It's something to talk to somebody a bit intelligent."

  "Thank you," said Mrs. Bradley. "I have two or three more questions I want to put to you, and I shall be glad of an opportunity."

  "Pleasure!" responded the prisoner, but more in good-humour than contempt.

  Mrs. Bradley returned to the Stone House at Wandles Parva full of cheerfulness, and remained there for five days. At the end of that time she had given up the idea of her proposed stay in the village where Tessa Foxley had been drowned, but had paid three visits there. There was no doubt, it seemed, that Bella Foxley's alibi for the time of the murder was, although slightly shaky theoretically, almost fool-proof from a practical standpoint. The tremendous risks attendant upon transporting her sister's dead body in daylight fr
om the rain-water butt outside the back door of the cottage to the village pond were a deterrent to any but a maniac, Mrs. Bradley decided.