When Last I Died (8 page)

"Well, who gave it to her."

"And you weren't prepared to say."

"Well, Miss Bella said she was going out shopping in the village, and Mr. Tom and his wife said they were going out for a walk along the shore, so I suppose, if anyone gave it to her, it must have been me," replied the old servant, with a peculiarly hard expression on her face.

"And was it you?"

"You don't need to ask that, madam. You know it wasn't."

"Yes. Even the doctor knew that," said Mrs. Bradley. "But, since the subject has come up, Miss Hodge, I do wish, if it wouldn't cause you too much distress, you'd tell me what you really think."

"Well, I'm not going to speak ill of the dead, but I'll tell you one thing straight away, madam.
One of them didn't go out.
At least, I didn't think so. Mr. Tom, he went, and I see a flick of the blue dress his young wife had been wearing—or it might have been Miss Bella; she wore blue. But there was the sound of a sewing machine in Miss Bella's room, her having borrowed mine to run herself up an apron—one of mine, altered, it was."

"And she
did
grate up the carrot, using the nutmeg grater to do it."

"Well, yes, I think so, but, of course, I can't be sure. For one thing, although she
asked
for the nutmeg grater, I didn't actually see her use it. Still, there was carrot on it when I came to wash it. And as for the shopping, and being out of the house when her poor aunt died, well, she said she'd been out, and I couldn't contradict her."

"Perhaps," suggested Mrs. Bradley, "she grated the carrot for her aunt, and took it up to her so that she could help herself to it. That's what she suggested in the diary."

"It might have been that way, madam. I really couldn't say. Still, it seems funny that if the mistress wanted grated carrot, she hadn't said so to me and let me do it for her. Besides, I will say this: Miss Bella was perfectly open about the carrot when she spoke to me about the grater."

"Was your mistress at all fond of any kind of food which could
look
like grated carrot at a distance?" Mrs. Bradley enquired.

"Only pease pudding, and that's not
very
like," Eliza replied. "You mean Miss Bella thought it would do her good, and didn't tell her what she was going to do until it was all made ready? I couldn't say, I'm sure, madam. Anyway, it was a very great relief when she was found Not Guilty of Mr. Tom, although the suicide so soon after was very dreadful."

"The suicide?" said Mrs. Bradley, anxious to hear more about this.

"Oh, yes, madam. She took a little house down in the country, Miss Bella did, far enough away, you would think, for her to be able to forget all about the trial and what she'd gone through. But it seems some ill-natured people got hold of the tale and spread it all round the village. She left a farewell letter, poor thing, saying she had been driven to it by gossip. It was read at the coroner's inquest."

"Oh, dear me! What a very dreadful thing!" said Mrs. Bradley. "How did she do it? I suppose she drowned herself?"

"Yes, that was what she did, madam; she was found in a pond on the common, I believe."

"Dear, dear!" said Mrs. Bradley." Not far from her house, I presume?"

"I couldn't say how far, madam. Probably not very far. She was never much of a walker. But I don't know the district at all. I didn't even go to the funeral, not knowing how I was to get there and back the same night, her living all alone as she did, and me hardly one of the family to go poking myself in if not invited; although, really, who could have invited me I don't quite see, I'm sure."

"Did Miss Tessa go to the funeral?"

"There, again, I couldn't say, madam. I've not had a word from Miss Tessa since poor Mr. Tom's sad death. In her last letter she mentioned she was going to move. I kept the letter. I expect I've got it somewhere, if you'd like to see it. It's nice for me to talk to somebody who takes such an interest in it all."

Mrs. Bradley, who still wondered whether her apparently insatiable curiosity about the whole affair would not, at some point, strike Eliza as unnecessary and impertinent, was relieved to hear this last statement. She said immediately that she would be very glad to see it, and, upon its being produced, she noticed that, as Eliza had indicated already, it was written in a far more careless and dashing hand than the neatly written diary which she had already seen. In fact, it bore most of the indications of a singularly ill-balanced personality. Had it been the writer who had committed suicide, it would have been most comprehensible, thought Mrs. Bradley. "The sisters must have been women of widely different temperament," she remarked.

"Temper, too," responded Eliza. "Miss Tessa would fly off the handle, as they say, over anything. But I never knew Miss Bella to be angry. She was sort of sharp and abrupt, but never lost control like Miss Tessa. I liked Miss Tessa the better for
it.
Give me somebody that speaks their mind, and perhaps has to apologize afterwards for being over-hasty. Still, that isn't everybody's taste, and I dare say Miss Bella might have been a lot easier to live with in the long run."

Mrs. Bradley consulted the diary again that evening. The wish-fulfilment dream and the self-pity so frankly expressed seemed ingenuous enough, but there were other passages over which, comparing them with Eliza's version of the facts, she frowned in concentration for minutes at a time.

How, for instance, could Bella so have misinterpreted the old servant's feeling for her mistress as to suggest that Eliza considered the fall a "judgment" on Aunt Flora for being contrary? Nothing in Mrs. Bradley's conversations with Eliza. had led her to believe that such a remark could possibly have been made, least of all to Bella, whom, it had become very clear, she did not like very much.

Then the beginning of the entry for January the twenty-eighth was puzzling. It did not seem at all likely that the doctor had diagnosed Aunt Flora's recovery from the fall as "the end," and Mrs. Bradley had made up her mind that the rest of the entry, referring to the arrival of Tom and Muriel after "they had travelled all night "was pure fiction.

Again, there was the ridiculous entry about the lobster and Eliza's delight when she was given it. This, however, could be dismissed as more cloud-cuckoo-land on the part of the diarist, and was not more important than it appeared on the surface to be. But the entry about the grated carrot was very interesting. There was, first, the discrepancy in the time. According to the diarist, it was not until seven o'clock in the evening that there had been any mention of grated carrot. Then, again upon the authority of the diary, it had been Aunt Flora herself who asked for it. Eliza's story, on the other hand, contradicted both these assertions. Aunt Flora had had the carrot during the afternoon, and yet, it seemed, knew nothing of grated carrot and certainly would not have suggested partaking of it. It was interesting, too, to note the awkward sentence in which Cousin Tom's name appeared. 'Tom said that he realized it could be nothing but the return of all her normal faculties and he thought she must be humoured.' Further, '
we
(Mrs. Bradley added the italics) went to the kitchen, therefore, Eliza being at the Chapel for her week-night meeting ...'

This was more than interesting, as Eliza, upon her own showing, was not a chapel-goer, and certainly was not likely to have attended, of all things, a weeknight meeting at a town some distance inland.

Then, (extremely suspicious this), there was the careful suggestion of what had happened when the old lady had been left with the saucerful of grated carrot and the spoon. 'The effort of eating,' the diarist had pronounced on what seemed almost a judicial and was certainly a remarkably detached and objective note,' must have been too much....' The careful dissociation of the narrator herself from the dreadful event she was describing was obviously intended to indicate that poor Aunt Flora had been alone when she died. But, unless there were guilty knowledge of the means which had encompassed her death, and unless the diary had not been written for the usual personal reasons, but was intended for a wider circle of readers than is usually the case, why this elaborate and stiffly-phrased disclaimer of all knowledge about the choking fit which had caused Aunt Flora's demise ?

There followed, then, the information about the sister. According to Eliza. Tessa had had no children, but had married a bigamist. According to Bella, her sister had not been married at all and had had an illegitimate baby. There were discrepancies, too, between what Mrs. Bradley had heard from the Warden of the Institution and what Bella Foxley had written.

Strangest of all, perhaps, was the extremely odd entry referring to Aunt Flora's dirty hair and head. She re-read that several times, trying to connect it with Eliza's statement that her mistress had had her hair dyed dark red and had kept it this unbecoming tint until the end.

There were other mistakes, notably the one which referred to Eliza's term of service. Between the twenty years mentioned by the old servant herself and the years between the age of sixteen and almost seventy referred to by the diarist, there was a substantial difference.

Then there was the reference to the Aunt's house having been put in the hands of the agents. The house had been willed to Eliza, and it did not seem as though the diarist knew this; yet Bella, as the chief inheriter, must have known it.

On a par with this small yet significant error, was the one about the files. According to the diarist it seemed as though the files used in the escape of Piggy and Alec had not been traced. According to the Warden, they must have been; otherwise the make could not have been compared with that of the files in use at the Institutional manual centre. Yet surely Bella would have known that the 'escape' files had never left the building ?

Then came the incredible entry which referred to the inspector of police who investigated Cousin Tom's first fall from the window of the haunted house. It was inconceivable to Mrs. Bradley that he should have made any mention of the old lady and the grated carrot. There was no reason for his doing such a thing, for the old lady's death certificate was in order, and, except for the reference to a remark in the
Daily Pennon
, there had been no official suggestion that the old lady had died from anything but natural causes.

(Mrs. Bradley, incidentally, was so much interested in this point that she took the trouble to go up to London specially to consult the files of the newspaper in question. To her great interest, there was not a single reference to Aunt Flora's death in any of its columns for the whole year in which that death had occurred, for she went carefully through the lot.)

Then there was the slip in describing the pre-Institution activities of Alec. Either the diarist or the Warden was wrong, and, in view of the exhaustive records of each boy which were kept in the archives of the Institution, Mrs. Bradley did not, somehow, think it could be the Warden who was at fault. Of course, Bella Foxley
might
have been misinformed ... but, added to the rest of the evidence that the writer of the diary had made mistakes which the ex-housekeeper of the Institution ought not to have made, and, in most cases, Mrs. Bradley decided,
would not
have made, it was curious and very interesting.

She locked and bolted all the doors and fastened the down-stair windows—actions which, in that innocent countryside, she rarely troubled to perform—that night before she went to bed.

How in my thoughts shall I contrive The image I am framing, Which is so far superlative As 'tis beyond all naming?

· · · · · ·

It must be builded in the air, And 'tis my thoughts must do it, And only they must be the stair From earth to mount me to it."

D
RAYTON
.

FERDINAND'S friend stretched his legs and smiled at his hostess.

"I've been longing to meet you," he said.

"Flattering," said Mrs. Bradley. "I hope Ferdinand told you why you've come?"

"Oh, yes." He nodded his handsome head. "Bella Foxley. Interesting case. Curious that she committed suicide. Still, quite the type, of course."

"I should be interested to know exactly what you mean by that."

"I can't explain—exactly. But we see a lot of suicides, unfortunately, in our job. When I was a cub I had a regular Embankment beat for a fairly lurid sort of rag—the old
Gimlet.
You wouldn't remember it. Anyway, you can divide humanity into suicides and non-suicides. You ought to know more about it than I do! There is the person who would commit suicide no matter how life seemed to turn out, and there is the person who wouldn't, whatever sort of hell on earth he suffered. Bella Foxley, to my mind, belonged to the first group."

"Thank you," said Mrs. Bradley. "But why did she choose to commit suicide at that particular time?"

"Well, some unkind people suggested that it was remorse, because, although she was acquitted, she was guilty. Most people thought she was guilty, you know."

"Why did they think that?"

"She made an unfortunate impression in court, I think."

"Yes. Reason enough. People
will
jump to conclusions, and the awkward part is that, as often as not, they are justified.
It makes the scientific mind appear cumbersome and rather
unnecessarily slow. Did
you
think it was remorse, as well as that
she was guilty?"

"I thought she was guilty, but I don't think it was remorse that caused her to drown herself. I think she received anonymous letters."

"Yes, she would do, of course. There are always lunatics at large, and they have brought about the suicide of an innocent person before now. But we seem to have begun at the end. It was the trial I wanted to hear about."

"I remember it very well indeed," said the ex-journalist. "The case was most interesting to me. She was quite a tall woman, you know—five feet eight, I should think—and a bit bloated, with a bad skin—greasy and blackheads—rather repulsive, really. Besides which, she looked every inch a spinster, if you know what I mean. She was not at all nervous, either, and that was what impressed people most unfavourably, I think. Everybody still seems to think that the bold ones are guilty and the furtive ones innocent, although I don't pretend to know why. People don't change their nature or their general mental attitude because they've been accused of a crime."

"Of what did the accusation consist? How did they state it?"

"Well, the story told by the prosecution was that this woman had been blackmailed by her cousin, a man named Turney, and that she went to the house that night, and, pretending that she had come to pay up, took the opportunity of pushing him out of the window."

"How did they get hold of the blackmailing theory?" Mrs. Bradley inquired.

"That came from the wife, who was the chief witness for the prosecution. Her story was that she did not know why the prisoner had been paying certain sums of money to her husband, but that he had told her that the rent of the house and some money for psychical research had been provided by Bella, and that 'Bella would have to cough up a lot more before he was through with her.'"

Mrs. Bradley thought of the admission in the diary that Bella had become a lodger with Cousin Tom and his wife Muriel, but she said nothing.

"The defence pressed Mrs. Muriel Turney hard, of course, to declare how much money had changed hands between the prisoner and her husband, and scored quite well when they forced her to admit that her husband had once shown her five pounds, on another occasion three pounds ten, and lastly a further five. If the prisoner were interested in the experiments he was making in connection with the so-called haunted house, these sums, the defence suggested, were not excessive subscriptions from a woman with an income of a thousand a year.

"They also dug up the prisoner's sister and got evidence from her of the prisoner's generosity. Weak-looking, faded sort of woman. You'd never have connected her with Bella. It appeared that the prisoner thought her sister had been treated badly by being cut out of the aunt's will, and had made over half her income to her. In the light of this really rather magnificent gesture, the small sums paid over to the cousin seemed almost negligible, especially as the defence found witnesses to prove that the prisoner was paying for board and lodging whilst she was staying with the cousin and his wife, and that the sums mentioned might have been nothing more than these payments."

"They seem to have been made on rather a generous scale," Mrs. Bradley suggested. "She was only with Cousin Tom and his wife a week or two, I believe."

"Still, it seemed absurd to talk of blackmail when the sums were so trifling. If they weren't actual payments they were probably small loans. The defence tried to establish the financial position of the cousin at the time of his death, but didn't get much change there, because the prosecution were able to show that the fellow had no outstanding debts, and was, in fact, rather better off than he had been for some time, so they dropped that pretty quickly, for, without the blackmail theory, they couldn't find a motive."

"How did the prisoner herself account for her actions that night?" Mrs. Bradley enquired.

"Oh, well, of course, she was asked that by the prosecution. She went into the box all right. No trouble about that. She said that she and the wife had become very nervous in the haunted house and were unwilling to remain there, and so had gone to the inn. There the cousin came to see them several times, and had dinner, and then, after he had returned to the haunted house to continue his researches, which Mrs. Muriel was no longer willing to go on with, Mrs. M. became agitated, said that she knew something dreadful was going to happen, and that she felt she ought to go to the house and see whether all was well. Apparently she said this several nights."

"But she didn't go?"

"No. What is more, her story and the story told by the prisoner did not agree. The wife said that on one occasion the prisoner refused to let her go, flung her back on her bed, darted out and locked the door behind her. The next morning the husband was found hurt, but not seriously. The prisoner, on the other hand, stated that the wife said she was too nervous to go to the house alone and yet was in 'such a state'—the prisoner's words—that she offered to go with her. The wife then said, 'What good would any of us be against those awful things?' Therefore the prisoner, much against her inclinations, but to pacify the wife who was 'in a terrible state of nerves ' went alone to the house, and, throwing gravel up at the bedroom window, attracted the attention of the cousin and conversed with him. She declared upon oath that she did not enter the house, but that, 'finding he was all right and had got over his drinks,' she returned to the inn and reported to the wife that all was well.

"Well, that was where, I imagine, all the fun and most of the lying began. Next morning the boy who delivered the milk found Tom Turney lying on the gravel path outside the front windows of the house, and the man said that he had fallen from the bedroom. Apparently he soon recovered, but the curious thing is that he was lying on almost the same spot and was found by the same boy not so many days later. The only difference was that the second time he was dead.

"The wife's story here was about the blackmail. She declared that the prisoner had insisted upon going to the house after dark; she asserted that this was to pay over some money for which she was being blackmailed by the husband, and she gave it as her view that Bella Foxley, to rid herself of a nuisance and a drain upon her income, had pushed the chap out of the window and that in this second fall he had struck his head and had died.

"Bella's rather feeble reply to this was that
it was the wife who had gone to the house that night,
but I don't think anybody could swallow that."

"How many visits is Bella Foxley supposed to have paid to the house at nights between the two falls?" inquired Mrs. Bradley.

"I can't say. According to her own story, she did not go again after that first time. According to the wife she went two or three times.

"Well, the greatest fun was provided by the medical witnesses. Both sides had a regular platoon of them, and such a battle of the experts followed that one began to wonder whether the whole profession knew anything for certain about anybody's anatomy, or whether it wouldn't be better to go to a faith-healer or something if one had anything wrong.

"I really think it was the arguments between the doctors which got Bella off, you know. The jury, strongly directed, gave her the benefit of the doubt, although my personal feeling still is that she was guilty."

"What did the doctors say?" asked Mrs. Bradley.

"Well, one lot declared that if the chap had pitched out on to his head, even from a first-floor window, he could have received the injuries which the police doctor had already described to the court, and which nobody on either side disputed. The prosecution, however, put in a couple of surgeons who declared that the injuries could not have been caused by the fall, but that the fellow must have been hit on the head and his skull smashed before he was pushed out at all."

"But ..."

"Yes, I know. But, you see, their contention was that a struggle must have taken place for her coat button to have got into his hand the way it did. I didn't tell you about that, did I? But the defence contended that a man who is falling from a height instinctively clutches out at things, or even makes clutching movements at the air. That being so, his hands would have been open, not clenched, and so the button must have been planted in his hand after death."

"The wife?" said Mrs. Bradley, who had not heard of the button before.

"Exactly. Although they left that to be inferred. My private opinion is that the prisoner had made a pass or two at the husband, and that the wife didn't like it and was ready to blacken her in any way she could. Nevertheless, that wouldn't necessarily affect her guilt. "On the contrary."

"But ..."

"Yes, I know. The point was that he had already tumbled out of the window shortly before. Both sides put their own interpretation upon that, of course. The prosecution contended it was either a rehearsal or a boss shot at the murder which Bella eventually brought off by the same means, having corrected the errors. On the other hand the defence argued that it proved the bloke was off his chump. Besides, they further contended that the button had not been in the dead man's hand when first he was found by the milk boy. It appears that the village policeman, having telephoned his inspector, hopped on his bike and came bursting up to the inn to tell the wife what had happened. His tale was that he found the wife alone, and that she went with him immediately—on the step of his bicycle, in point of fact—to the haunted house, and was left alone with the body, having promised not to touch it. Very irregular, and the bobby was well cursed for it, but he was a nice, simple, country chap, and as it couldn't be proved that she
had
touched the body, his sentimental action was overlooked by his superiors. Nevertheless, she had the opportunity if she wanted it."

"And what was the prisoner's explanation of the button?" asked Mrs. Bradley.

"The prisoner? She was very vague about it. In fact, she hadn't an explanation, really. But that, in itself, didn't prejudice the jury. They probably thought it looked more innocent that she couldn't explain it. Anyhow, her counsel managed to make a point with them there. One of the prosecution's own witnesses was wearing a cardigan which had a couple of buttons missing. Counsel had noticed this, and suggested that the juryman did not know when he had lost the buttons or where they were. Sheer bluff, of course, because he might have known exactly, but, as the buttons had not been sewn on again, even for him to appear in court—and most witnesses like to be a bit dressy to make their public appearance—counsel deduced—not that it took much doing; it was written all over him—that he was probably a careless sort of bloke who'd simply let the buttons drop off and hadn't bothered any further about them, and, sure enough, he got away with it. His point, of course, was that the button had been lost from the prisoner's coat some time previously, and had been planted in the dead man's hand either by some spiteful person or by the real murderer. Still, as I said before, I think it was the battle of the doctors that got her off. Juries don't care to give a verdict on expert testimony, anyway, and when the experts can't even agree among themselves it's rather optimistic to try for a conviction."

Mrs. Bradley assented. Then she said :

"And, apart from the button, why were
you
convinced that she was guilty?"

"Her demeanour, chiefly, and the fact that I knew the story of the grated carrot—the aunt's death, you know. She had nothing to gain by the murder, of course, unless one believes the blackmail story. We had evidence of character and disposition from people who had known the dead man intimately, and he could have been a blackmailer, I thought. His psychic stuff was obviously completely phoney, I should say. Then, too, she could not tell a straightforward story which held water. It was rather too unusual a thing to leave an inn round about midnight to go and find out whether a ghost-hunter was all right. But, of course, it's not
impossible
that, having decided to do such a batty thing—not that I believe it !—she did exactly what she said she did—spoke to him and came away again."

"But that only refers to the first time, the time he was hurt but not killed," said Mrs. Bradley. "I suppose," she added, "he really was killed on the spot where the body was found?"