When Last I Died (14 page)

Mrs. Bradley mentally blessed the commonplace book, of which she had heard on her previous visit, and begged that it might be produced. The entry was not dated—a point not of very great importance, since Cousin Tom's death was referred to, and this fixed the time sufficiently for those circumstances which she suspected that she was investigating.

The entry read:
Mrs. Gubb very excited and upset. She says she heard screams and yells from the haunted house as she came past this morning on her way here. The other day the new tenant, a Mr. Turney, fell out of a bedroom window and was killed. Mrs. Gubb says that what with one thing and another, nobody will want to go near that house, even in daylight, soon.

Mrs. Bradley asked permission to make a copy of the entry, and, having made it, autographed a copy of one of her own books at Miss Biddle's deprecating but eager request, departed, went back to the inn, carefully collated such information as she now possessed, heard half a dozen more legends of ancient hauntings from the villagers, and went off again to interview Mrs. Muriel.

"I want you to come back to that house with me, Mrs. Turney," she said. A request couched in such terms was almost bound to be refused, and Mrs. Bradley was not at all surprised to hear Cousin Muriel reply :

"Oh, no, really, really, I couldn't. You don't know what you're asking! I'll tell you anything you like about the house, but I couldn't possibly set foot in it again, and nobody ought to expect it."

As Mrs. Bradley did not expect it she inclined her head sympathetically and added :

"You came to hear of the house through Bella Foxley, and you say that she had recommended houses to you before?"

"Well, yes. She had rather a flair, Tom used to say. She found Hazy for us. You know—that house where two men of the Plague Year walk about and say, "Bring out your dead." Of course, they never
did
say it while we were there, and so Tom couldn't put much about it in the article he wrote. We only stayed a month, but it was a
very
interesting old house, and we had a good deal of success with
planchette
there. Although, I might tell you, I don't really like
planchette.
It makes me think— it almost makes me believe——"

"Did your husband ask a fee for admission to his séances?"

"Why, how else could we have lived?" asked Cousin Muriel. "He certainly did not get very much for his writing."

"Then—if you don't object to the question—did he never encounter people who were disappointed when the séance, we will say, produced no results?"

"The séances
always
produced results," responded Muriel. "If it wasn't one thing it would be another. That was what was so wonderful, and rather frightening, really. Tom never had what you might call a
barren
séance."

"Really?" said Mrs. Bradley, noting down this extraordinary fact.

"Oh, no," said Muriel eagerly. "I don't know whether you've attended many séances, but Tom could
induce
the spirits. He had the most wonderful powers."

"Oh? So your husband was a medium?"

"No. I was. But I could only work through him. He always said he got wonderful results with me. They used to scare me sometimes, all the same. I mean, you can go too far ... that's what people say."

"Tell me," said Mrs. Bradley after a pause, "did Miss Foxley have mediumistic powers?"

"Bella? Oh, dear no! She was terribly materialistic. She used to sit with us——"

"Always?" asked Mrs. Bradley sharply.

"Well, if she was staying in the house. Not otherwise, of course. Although Tom did say once that when I was in a trance Bella came and
spoke.
Oh, only her astral body or something, of course. I'm afraid I don't remember all the terms. But, at any rate, she projected herself, it seems——"

"By means of the road or the railway," was Mrs. Bradley's mental note upon this——"

"And
appeared.
Tom said it was very interesting, and that he telegraphed to the Institution next day to know whether Bella was very ill or even dead. Of course she wasn't either the one or the other, bur they did say, funnily enough, that she'd fallen off her bicycle in the grounds as she was making a quick dash into the village that morning for some shopping that hadn't turned up. She was in a fearful state, and complained about her ankle, although she wouldn't have the doctor to it."

"Strange that a figment of that kind could travel all that way," said Mrs. Bradley.

"Oh, it wasn't
all
that way," Muriel put in brightly. "It was only about twelve miles as the crow flies, which is the way such things would travel I suppose."

"I don't know" said Mrs. Bradley soberly. "Wouldn't they perhaps be earth-bound to the roads?"

"Even if they were," said Muriel, who seemed oblivious of the purport of these suggestions, "they would only have had to come about seventeen miles, I believe."

"Ah?" said Mrs. Bradley. "And now, about this particular haunted house in which we are interested."

"Oh, nobody
appeared
there. It was simply a
poltergeist,
" replied her victim.

"In what way?"

"Raps, footsteps, raucous laughter, writing on the walls, bell-ringing, throwing things about, moving objects from one place to another, cold air, lights in windows—that sort of thing."

"How many of the things you have just mentioned took place in the haunted house?" asked Mrs. Bradley, who, in flying hieroglyphics, had taken down the entire list. "Raps?"

"Oh, yes, ever so many times."

"Footsteps?"

"Both light and heavy. Sometimes it sounded like somebody in great boots, sometimes more like stockinged feet. Sometimes they ran, and sometimes they walked, and once they just scuffled about over our heads as though two people were fighting."

"You said raucous laughter. Can you substantiate that?"

"I don't know what you mean, but it sounded more like costermongers.''

"Writing on the walls?"

"Oh, yes. But I cleaned it all off. It wasn't—it wasn't very nice."

"Are the spirits in the habit of being obscene?"

"No, that's the funny part. They're not.
^*
I mean, they usually write things you can't make any sense out of. I've never known them to be really
rude
."

^*
Apparently a mistake on Muriel's part .... "The rappings answered back with obscenity or blasphemy."
Poltergeists.
Sacheverell Sitwell. Faber and Faber, June, 1940.

"Did your husband object to having this writing cleaned off the walls?"

"No, he didn't mind once it was photographed. But the photographs looked even more horrid than the actual scribble, so Bella persuaded him to throw the negatives away and destroy the proofs. She said no one would believe they were spirit writings, and anyway they were embarrassing. Which it is quite true, they were."

"Do you remember them?" asked Mrs. Bradley.

"Oh, yes, of course I do, but I wouldn't repeat them to you."

"Write them down, then," said Mrs. Bradley, offering her a notebook and pencil. As Muriel hesitated she added with a cackle, "Don't worry. I expect I've heard worse things from some of my mental patients.... Now let us continue: bell-ringing?"

"Well, no, not at this house. At least—not after Tom cut all the wires. At least, I don't believe so."

"Was there a bell in every room in the house?"

"No, only in some of the rooms. I think there had been bells, but they were all out of order when we got there, but some we had repaired, but I don't remember which."

"I see. Now I know there were things thrown about and things moved, and I know there is a cold draught at one spot in the passage, so I need not ask you about those. What about lights in windows?"

"Yes, those have been seen from the road at times when both Tom and I—and Bella, when she was with us—were all downstairs, and we knew no one else was in the house or could have got in."

"The lights were always from the bedroom windows, then? Did the lights show at the same window each time, or was a different window ever used?"

"Oh, it was always the same window, so far as I know. Of course, people may not always have told us, but we asked them to, as soon as it was known the lights had been seen, because we did not use any of the bedrooms, after that, if they fronted the road. So we knew that if lights were seen it was not any light that we ourselves were using."

"Very interesting," thought Mrs. Bradley, "considering that the hauntings were a source of income."

"When Bella came to live with us," Muriel continued, "it was arranged that we should take it in turns in the evening to go out into the garden and see whether the lights were visible. If they were, then the one outside was to throw gravel at the drawing-room window, and the other two would rush upstairs to investigate."

"Oh? You took it in turns, did you?" said Mrs. Bradley.

"Well, when it came to the point, Bella said she was far too nervous to go tearing upstairs and bursting in on a ghost. She said if she saw one she'd die. So actually she used to be the one to go out into the garden, and Tom and I were the ones who always rushed upstairs."

"I wonder she wasn't afraid of the garden in the dark if she were so very nervous," said Mrs. Bradley.

"Oh, but she was," said Muriel. "She always took a loaded stick out with her—a cosh, she called it. One of those terrible boys had made it for her in the Institution workshop. Tom used to tease her about it, and ask her what good she thought it would be against a ghost, but she said it gave her confidence and she would always take it with her."

"And did you and your husband ever see the lights independently of Miss Foxley?" Mrs. Bradley enquired.

"Yes. Twice. But we weren't there so very long without Bella, you know. Of course, she only spent the one week-end there before aunt's death."

"Ah, yes," said Mrs. Bradley. She glanced at her watch. "I must go, I'm afraid, Mrs. Turney. Mý son has booked seats for a revue. Do you like that kind of thing? Some people are so ponderous nowadays. Now in my opinion, the modern revue-approximates more closely to the ancient Greek idea of comedy than serious thinkers would suppose."

Muriel nervously agreed.

The séances, one conducted by amateurs, the other by a famous member of the Society for Psychical Research, continued to have negative results. This, of course, proved nothing, although one, at least, of the sitters, would have been very much surprised at any manifestations.

Mrs. Muriel Turney, invited to the second of the séances, again declined the invitation, stating that she really did not think her nerves would stand it. The medium at the second séance said that her 'control' had been out of temper for some time, and probably would give nothing to the sitters that evening. She then fell into a trance, and the sitters waited for an hour and a half, by which time it was discovered that the medium had passed from her trance into natural sleep. She was gently awakened, and everybody went home or to the inn.

There was, however, one interesting and illuminating occurrence which followed the second séance. Mrs. Bradley made a detailed note of it. The entire house had been locked up and the doors sealed, and the windows, except the one in the séance room, had been sealed also, before the sitters took their places. This was an obvious precaution, and caused no surprise to anybody. The séance was held in the drawing-room, and during the period of silence which followed the beginning of the medium's trance, everybody in the circle was not only watching the medium, but (having been informed of the probable nature of any activity which might occur in this particular house) was alert to any noises which might come from other rooms.

No sounds were heard, but before the other visitors and the medium left the drawing-room, Mrs. Bradley made a thorough exploration of the house. On the wall of the bathroom passage was written in pencil the word
Bread.
The writing was either that of an illiterate, or else it had been done by a normally right-handed person using the left hand (or vice-versa). It had not been there before the séance began, for Mrs. Bradley, who had sealed up the doors and windows, except for the front door, before the other sitters arrived, had also made a careful search and inspection of all walls and passages.

She mentioned her interesting discovery to no one but her son Ferdinand, who, with Caroline, his wife, had come, at her request, for the séance.

"And what do you make of it, Mother?" he enquired, when the circle was broken up and the other guests had gone.

"What do you?" asked Mrs. Bradley.

"That the house must have a secret entrance, I suppose. But, even if it has, why should anyone bother? Or is it in the contract that people who pay to be allowed to hold séances here must get some return for their money?"

Mrs. Bradley put the question to Mrs. Muriel Turney in a letter, but did not reveal the nature of the 'return.' The teacher of music replied on a postcard:

"Lots of people get nothing. My husband and I were both sensitives."

Mrs. Bradley went to see her again, but did not tell her precisely what had happened.

"Will you allow me to borrow your husband's records of the
phenomena?" she asked. Muriel agreed to lend the typescript from
which Cousin Tom had worked up his reports of the
poltergeist.

"I suppose," said Mrs. Bradley casually, before leaving,
"Miss Foxley took no particular interest in spiritualism?"

"It frightened her," replied Cousin Muriel, in emphatic re-affirmation of what she had already said upon this subject. "She says that if she ever sees a ghost it will be someone come to fetch her, and it will mean her death. I've tried to tell her that that's a very old-fashioned idea about ghosts, but she clings to it and can't bear the subject mentioned."

"Ah, but you are speaking now of Miss Tessa, not Miss Bella. But it has to be mentioned, surely, when the house is let for these sittings?"

"No. The caretaker always writes to say that it has been 'requisitioned.' That's the word he has to use."

"Interesting," said Mrs. Bradley. She looked thoughtfully at Muriel. "I thought you said you had not visited Miss Tessa since her sister's suicide?"