When Last I Died

Table of Contents

About the Author

By the Same Author

Title Page

Copyright Page

Chapter One THE DIARY

Chapter Two REACTIONS OF AN ELDERLY SERVANT

Chapter Three COUNSEL'S OPINION

Chapter Four THE WIDOW'S MITE

Chapter Five THE HAUNTED HOUSE

Chapter Six THE DEAR DEPARTED

Chapter Seven THE HAUNTED HOUSE

Chapter Eight THE WIDOW'S MITE

Chapter Nine COUNSEL'S OPINION

Chapter Ten REACTIONS OF AN ELDERLY PSYCHOLOGIST

Chapter Eleven THE DIARY

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WHEN LAST I DIED

Gladys Maude Winifred Mitchell – or 'The Great Gladys' as Philip Larkin described her – was born in 1901, in Cowley in Oxfordshire. She graduated in history from University College London and in 1921 began her long career as a teacher. She studied the works of Sigmund Freud and attributed her interest in witchcraft to the influence of her friend, the detective novelist Helen Simpson.

Her first novel, Speedy Death, was published in 1929 and introduced readers to Beatrice Adela Lestrange Bradley, the heroine of a further sixty-six crime novels. She wrote at least one novel a year throughout her career and was an early member of the Detection Club along with G. K. Chesterton, Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers. In 1961 she retired from teaching and, from her home in Dorset, continued to write, receiving the Crime Writers' Association Silver Dagger Award in 1976. Gladys Mitchell died in 1983.

ALSO BY GLADYS MITCHELL

Speedy Death

The Mystery of a Butcher's Shop

The Longer Bodies

The Saltmarsh Murders

Death at the Opera

The Devil at Saxon Wall

Dead Men's Morris

Come Away, Death

St Peter's Finger

Printer's Error

Brazen Tongue

Hangman's Curfew

Laurels Are Poison

The Worsted Viper

Sunset Over Soho

My Father Sleeps

The Rising of the Moon

Here Comes a Chopper

Death and the Maiden

The Dancing Druids

Tom Brown's Body

Groaning Spinney

The Devil's Elbow

The Echoing Strangers

Merlin's Furlong

Faintley Speaking

Watson's Choice

Twelve Horses and the

Hangman's Noose

The Twenty-third Man

Spotted Hemlock

The Man Who Grew Tomatoes

Say It With Flowers

The Nodding Canaries

My Bones Will Keep

Adders on the Heath

Death of the Delft Blue

Pageant of Murder

The Croaking Raven

Skeleton Island

Three Quick and Five Dead

Dance to Your Daddy

Gory Dew

Lament for Leto

A Hearse on May-Day

The Murder of Busy Lizzie

Winking at the Brim

A Javelin for Jonah

Convent on Styx

Late, Late in the Evening

Noonday and Night

Fault in the Structure

Wraiths and Changelings

Mingled with Venom

The Mudflats of the Dead

Nest of Vipers

Uncoffin'd Clay

The Whispering Knights

Lovers, Make Moan

The Death-Cap Dancers

The Death of a Burrowing Mole

Here Lies Gloria Mundy

Cold, Lone and Still

The Greenstone Griffins

The Crozier Pharaohs

No Winding-Sheet

GLADYS MITCHELL

When Last I Died

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ISBN 9781409076803

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Copyright © the Executors of the Estate of Gladys Mitchell 1941

Gladys Mitchell has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work

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First published in Great Britain in 1941 by Michael Joseph

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ISBN: 9781409076803

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Chapter One

THE DIARY

But thou, whose pen hath like a pack-horse served, Whose stomach unto gall hath turned thy food, Whose senses, like poor prisoners, hunger-starved, Whose grief hath parched thy body, dried thy blood....

DRAYTON.

THE lunch had consisted of sausage-meat roll, diced swede and mashed potatoes; these covered with thick floury gravy and followed by tinned plums and custard. The boys had consumed the first course in three minutes, the second in one and a half, and still, to Mrs. Bradley's possibly prejudiced eye—for she had nephews, great-nephews and, now that Ferdinand was married, a grandson—they retained a wolfish aspect which depressed her. Her notions on diet, she informed the Warden, when he canvassed her opinion of the menu, were, she thought, about a century out of date.

The Warden wisely decided to treat this reply as a witticism, and as he was essentially a serious-minded man the subject of conversation languished. Grace, which had, to Mrs. Bradley's embarrassment, preceded the meal, now, with suitable grammatical adjustments, indicated its conclusion, and, with remarkable orderliness and very little noise, the boys filed out except for one child who re-seated himself and continued to eat.

"What on earth is he doing?" said the Warden. He raised his voice. "Dinnie!" The boy, with a regretful glance at his plate, stood up. "Why haven't you finished?"

"Sir?"

"Why haven't you finished? Come up here." The boy approached with considerable reluctance. "And step up smartly when you're called. Don't you know we have a visitor?"

"Yes, sir." He shot a half-glance at Mrs. Bradley, contemptuously, she thought.

"Well, where are your manners? Now, then, answer my question."

"It would only have gone into the swill-tub for the pigs," said the boy, in an almost inaudible voice. He had dark red hair and brown eyes flecked with lighter specks so that it seemed as though the sun danced on a trout stream. His brows slanted in an alarmingly Mephistophelean manner, and he had a wide mouth set in a grim jaw. The Americans, with their flair for good-humoured expressiveness, would have dubbed him a tough citizen, thought Mrs. Bradley, for whom bad boys had academic and occasionally—for she was a woman—sentimental interest.

They were all bad boys at the Institution. The Government, with one of those grandmotherly inspirations which are the dread and bane of progressive educationists, had decreed, some ten years previously, that its theories with regard to the preventive detention of delinquent children were a long way out of date, and were to be re-stated in accordance with the facts so far gleaned by child-guidance clinics.

Mrs. Bradley, among other psychologists, had been called into consultation, but her simple suggestion was that delinquent children, who, like delinquent adults, can be divided into those brands which can be snatched from the burning and those which, unfortunately, cannot, should (literally) be killed or cured. The former treatment was to be painless, the latter drastic. This view was received without enthusiasm by the authorities and was treated, even by the Press, with reserve.

Now, ten years later, she had been called in again; not (be it stated hastily to those who retain the uncivilized view that human life is necessarily sacred) to assist in translating her theory into fact, but because, strangely enough, the Government had discovered that the new methods in preventive detention had again sprung a leak and badly needed plugging.

Why they should have called into consultation one with whose thought upon the subject they would be bound to disagree, not even Mrs. Bradley herself could say, well-versed though she was in morbid psychology, but she had answered the summons as a good democrat should, promptly and with an open mind.

The trouble was, the Warden had explained, that in spite of humane treatment, fewer punishments, better food, and the provision of playing fields, bad boys, on the whole, continued to be bad, and even attempted, more frequently than could be justified, to escape from Elysium—in other words, the Institution —into the wicked and troubled world.

The worst of it was, he continued, voicing his own point of view with a certain naïveté which she found entertaining, that the two boys who had run away a week before Mrs. Bradley's arrival, had not, so far, been traced, and were, as he expressed it, still at large.

It could not be helped, Mrs. Bradley suggested; for she found that she was sorry for the Warden in his obvious anxiety, although she knew that he did not like her.

No, it could not be helped, the Warden agreed, but it was particularly unfortunate as, some years previously, just before he had been appointed, two boys had contrived a similar disappearance and had never been found.

"What? Never?" said Mrs. Bradley, startled; for the police, she reflected, are noted, among other things, for their bloodhound abilities. "Do you mean to say ...?"

"I mean to say," said the Warden, looking, all in a moment, haggard with worry, "that, from then until now, there has been not another sign of either of them. I received my appointment partly on an undertaking that such a thing should never happen again, and I've been careful, very careful indeed, but, if we don't get these two soon, I shall feel that I ought to ask the authorities to accept my resignation. You see, the kind of boy who is sent here—just excuse me one moment...."

He checked further revelations and confessions in order to attend to the matter of immediate moment.

"What do you mean, Dinnie?"

"You know what I mean," replied the boy.

"Don't be impudent! Answer me directly!"

"But you do know what he means," murmured Mrs. Bradley. In spite of her pity for the Warden in his distress, she found that, on the whole, humane though she believed him to be, and a great improvement on his predecessor, whom she remembered very well from her previous visit, she could not approve of all his methods, and this one, of attempting to make a boy look a fool when he was not a fool, she deplored almost more than any other. She had been an interested but disapproving witness of it several times during her stay.

The Warden, feeling, no doubt, that it was due to his estimate of himself and his position to ignore it, took no notice of the interruption, but addressed himself again to the truculent and obstinate-looking Dinnie.

"Now, boy! Answer me directly. Tell me at once what you mean!"

"There was an extra dinner, and I ate it," said the boy.

"Right. Go and finish it. To-morrow do without your pudding. If you had answered me at first when I asked you, I should not have punished you at all."

He rose briskly. The rest of the staff had left the high table and had gone out with the boys, so that, except for Dinnie, now busily and hastily gulping down the pig-food, the hall was empty but for himself and Mrs. Bradley.

"Have to be sharp on them," he said, feeling, for some reason, that some justification was needed for the combination of bullying and weakness he had shown. "No good letting him get away with that."

"How did there come to be an extra dinner?" Mrs. Bradley tactfully inquired.

"That still remains to be investigated." He investigated it by sending for the housekeeper the moment he reached his sitting-room.

"It was Canvey. He felt sick and did not go in to dinner. But as we had had no notification, his dinner was sent in as usual," said the housekeeper, looking, Mrs. Bradley thought, in the presence of the Warden like a drab female thrush confronting an imposing frog.

"I had better see Canvey." The Frog touched the buzzer which had already brought a boy to act as messenger. "Get Canvey, Williams, please. All right, Margaret, thank you.... We use Christian names with one another here. It helps the atmosphere," he remarked to Mrs. Bradley when the boy and the housekeeper had gone.

Ganvey was a rat-faced boy with handsome, wide-open eyes, affording a strange impression of cunning and frankness mingled. Call the cunning lack of self-confidence, and the frankness an attempt, probably an unconscious one, to compensate for this, and you had a different portrait of the boy and not necessarily a less faithful one, Mrs. Bradley surmised.

"What's the matter with you that you couldn't eat your dinner?" the Warden inquired. He prided himself, Mrs. Bradley had discovered, upon taking a personal interest in each boy. That this might prove embarrassing and even disagreeable to the boy, obviously never entered his head.

"Sir, I don't like sausage-meat, sir. It makes me sick, sir," responded Canvey, bestowing on the interlocutor his wide gaze.

"Nonsense, boy. Did you eat your pudding yesterday?"

"Sir, yes, sir."

"Your vegetables?"

"Yes, sir."

"No, you did not!" thundered the Warden. "You did not eat your vegetables."

The boy remained silent, but he did not drop his eyes, and he and the Warden stared at one another, until the Warden, apparently the weaker character, added :

"Well?"

"Sir?"

"Your vegetables."

"I felt ill, sir."

"No, no. You didn't feel ill. You've been smoking. Have you been stealing tobacco from the staff?"

"Sir, no, sir."

The Warden produced a cane. The boy eyed it with a certain degree of sullen speculation.

"Well?" said the Warden.

"I didn't steal anything. It was rhubarb leaves," said the boy.

"Then you deserve to feel sick. See that you eat your tea." He put the cane away, and the boy departed.

"Rhubarb leaves," said Mrs. Bradley thoughtfully.

"Yes. A good many of these boys are inveterate smokers when they come here, and we have to cure them. I have given up smoking, myself. I don't want boys coming into this room and smelling tobacco. I don't feel that that would be playing the game. But I can scarcely help it if the staff have an occasional pipe or cigarette. One can scarcely expect them to adopt all one's own standards."

"One could engage non-smokers, I suppose," said Mrs. Bradley, interested in a system which regarded the powers of self-denial of the staff as being inferior to those of the boys. The Warden, again scenting a witticism, made no direct reply. He said :

"It is very difficult to get these boys to see that certain things aren't good for them, and, of course, if they come here with the craving, they'll satisfy it somehow if they can. It is one of our many difficulties, to eradicate these tendencies."

Mrs. Bradley thought it might be not only difficult but impossible to eradicate the tobacco habit, judging by men, young and old, of her acquaintance, and some women, too, who were addicted to it.

"I suppose voluntary abstinence, for some reason which they can appreciate, would be the only means of overcoming it," she observed. "Athletes, for instance, voluntarily give up tobacco, among other things, I believe."

"It wouldn't work here. These boys have no esprit de corps," responded the Warden, looking disfavourably upon her.

"In that case it might be as well to let them smoke, if they can find anything to smoke, or even to offer a packet of cigarettes as a good-conduct prize," she suggested.

The Warden disregarded these flippancies, and asked, rather abruptly, whether she would like to see another group at work.

"No. I should prefer to take over a group myself, for a week," she said. The Warden, looking rather like a snake-charmer who has been asked by one of the spectators for leave to take over the management of his pets, replied vaguely and dubiously, whereat she cackled and did not renew the request. "Why is that boy Dinnie here?" she asked.

"He was employed by a receiver of stolen bicycles," replied the Warden. "He used to ride away on those left at the roadside. Ladies' bicycles were his speciality. He wasn't caught until he went outside his class and tried to ride off on a motor cycle."

"And Canvey?"

"Nasty little nark," said the Warden pardonably. "He used to push away babies left in perambulators, and then 'find them abandoned' and claim the reward, if there was one."

"And if there was not?"

"Then he and the woman he worked with used to wait a week and then abandon the babies themselves. One mother committed suicide, and another was injured for life by her husband because of that boy."

"And the woman he worked with," Mrs. Bradley gently remarked.

Her own methods with the boys were characteristic. She thought they needed stimulating, and applied psychological treatment, to their astonishment and her own amusement. She discovered very soon that they were afraid of her. One even went so far as to ask whether she was there to pick out the "mentals."

"We are all 'mentals,' my poor child," she remarked.

Nevertheless, at the end of two days she could tell the Warden where to lay hands upon his missing boys, for it was common knowledge where and how they had gone, and this common knowledge she soon shared.

"Word-associations," she replied, when, the lambs having been caused to return to their apparently unpopular fold, the Warden asked her to tell him how she had done it.

"My predecessor could have done with the same sort of help," he volunteered abruptly. "You knew, perhaps, that the loss of those two runaways cost him his job? He was not exactly asked to resign, but—well, it was clearly indicated that there was no future for him here."

"Why? Surely he was not dismissed because two boys contrived to get away?"

The Warden shrugged. "He had a private income, I believe. But there was a public inquiry, and one or two things came out. It seemed fairly certain, for one thing, that the escape had been assisted, if not actually engineered, by a member of the staff. That was what went so seriously against him. Of course, he wasn't popular, but still——"

"Extraordinary," said Mrs. Bradley, hoping to hear more.

"Couldn't trace it to anyone, though," the Warden gloomily continued. "But somebody seemed to have supplied them with files, for example."

"Don't they use files in the manual centre?"

"Yes, of course they do. But those are always checked at the end of one period and at the beginning of the next. They are always in order. No, these files came in from outside. Different make, and so on. It all came out."

"Their associates outside?"

"Curiously enough, no. They were two rather freakish specimens, as it happened, and had no associates at all in the sense that you mean. One of them had committed a murder. He was quite simply a pathological case, and had no business here at all. On the other hand, there was no trace whatever of a criminal background. He came of the most respectable middle-class people. The other was a bit more up our street, but had no criminal associates. He worked entirely on his own, I understand, and had been employed at racing stables until he got the sack for stealing. He then became the terror of his neighbourhood. Went in for handbag snatching, and once cut a woman's head open. A little beauty, he must have been."

"Most of the staff are new to me," Mrs. Bradley remarked. "But of course, it is ten years since I was here. The housekeeper you have now, for instance——"

"Yes, they are all new except the man who takes the woodwork, and the physical training instructor."

"The kitchen staff, I see, has been augmented."

"Yes. I believe that, before my time, besides the housekeeper, they had no one but a kitchen-maid, which left the unfortunate housekeeper responsible for all the cooking. But now we have two cooks and a scullery maid as well. They all live 'out,' however, except the housekeeper and one of the cooks. Those two have to be on duty for breakfasts."

"Interesting," said Mrs. Bradley. "I wonder whether, the authorities would encourage me in making a minor psychological experiment? I should like to take a house from the beginning of May until the end of September and have some of the boys to visit me there. If I had three boys each week for twenty or twenty-one weeks, that would give a short holiday to about two-thirds of your numbers, would it not?"

"The authorities would never allow it; and I should not like it myself," replied the Warden frankly. "We dare not spoil these boys. Sentiment, unfortunately, does not do. I am afraid they would take every possible advantage of such a scheme."

"Including making their escape. I know. That is what makes it interesting," said Mrs. Bradley. The Warden shook his head.

"It would never do. It wouldn't be good for them. After all, they're here as a punishment, you know."

"I am afraid so, yes. A terribly immoral state of affairs."

"And for guidance as well; and for the protection of society."

"I know. If I were a caged tiger, do you know the people who would have to be protected against me if ever I made my escape?"

"Yes, yes, all very well. I admit these boys have a grievance against society. But what can we do?"

"I told the Government of ten years ago what we could do," said Mrs. Bradley. "Well, I shall look about for my house at the seaside, and when I find it I shall come to you again."

The Warden felt that he could afford to smile, and therefore smiled. He even attempted light humour.

"I could tell you of the very place," he said. "I have the address in my desk here. It once belonged to the aunt of the former housekeeper. Perhaps you remember her from your previous visit? She would still have been here then. About six years ago she retired, having inherited her aunt's money, but was dead within the year. Tried for murder, acquitted, and then committed suicide, poor creature, because people were so unkind. Sounds like something on the films, but it's perfectly true. The house belongs to an old servant now, I believe, who is glad to let it in the summer."

"Boys or no boys, I should like to have that address," said Mrs. Bradley.

"'No boys,' is more likely to be correct," said the Warden, almost good-naturedly. He could afford to be pleasant to the somewhat terrifying old woman, he concluded. She had brought back his truants for him, and, in any case, she was leaving the Institution in the morning.

"Cynical old thing!" said Caroline Lestrange, looking up from Mrs. Bradley's letter.

"No," said Ferdinand, glancing at their son, Derek, aged seven, who was advancing purposefully to the table with a set of the game called Tiddleywinks. "No, indeed she isn't. If mother says they ought to be put out, she is probably perfectly sincere and perfectly right. They must be the most unhappy little devils on earth, those delinquent kids. You can't really do anything for most of 'em. They're a mess, like Humpty Dumpty when he fell off the wall. She goes on to ask whether we'd care to lend her Derek for a bit. I'm all for it. She needs him, I expect, to get the taste of the others out of her mouth."

His son came up and planted the game on the table. Then he surveyed his parents sternly.

"You can both choose your colour," he said, "and I'll have what's left. There's blue and green and red and yellow and purple and white. I don't use the white. I only use the green and purple and yellow and blue and red. I don't like white. Do you like white, mother?"

"No, thank you, darling," Caroline replied.

"I'm not going to play," said his father, basely. "I've got this letter from Gran and I'd better answer it."

He fled, pursued by the joint maledictions of his wife and son, who, thereafter, forgot him, and settled down to Tiddleywinks until it was Derek's bedtime.

"Would you like to go and stay with Gran at the seaside for a bit?" asked Caroline, when she went in to say good-night. Her son's reply was brief but warm, and so by the middle of the following week all arrangements had been made.

The house which Mrs. Bradley had rented was about a hundred yards from the sea, and was, from the child's point of view, admirably situated. Mrs. Bradley had fitted up her dressing-room for him, and there he had a camp bed and a chest of drawers. On the top of this antiquated but useful piece of furniture he placed the model of a Viking ship made for him by a cousin. This was so much his most cherished possession that it could not be left at home.

The house was that of which Mrs. Bradley had heard from the Warden. Unattractive from the outside, and furnished in accordance with the taste of an earlier period, it was comfortable and convenient enough, and grandmother and grandson enjoyed one another's company and the pleasures of the sea and the shore. Permission had not, so far, been granted for any of the Warden's boys to join them.

George, Mrs. Bradley's chauffeur, one of the servants she had brought with her, had become mentor to the little boy, and introduced him to the wonders of the internal combustion engine and to the vocabulary of the mechanically-minded. The weather, on the whole, was fine, and although Mrs. Bradley deplored the ostrich-outlook of the authorities in refraining from granting their blessing to her holiday scheme for the Home Boys (as they were euphemistically entitled), she enjoyed the sea air, the old-fashioned house, and, until the last week of the child's visit, the innocuous gossip of the village.

During this last week, however, she was surprised and annoyed when the little boy said suddenly, one evening when he was having his supper, and only an hour before his bedtime,

"Gran, what lady was murdered in this house?"

"Murdered?" said Mrs. Bradley. She had no time to prepare an answer. "Oh, I expect they mean poor old Aunt What's-it. I've forgotten her name."

"Does her ghost walk?"

"Why should it?"

"Somebody told me it did."

"Had this person seen it?"

"No. What would it look like, Gran?"

"Exactly like the person, I suppose."

"I don't want to see it, Gran."

"No such luck. I've tried hard to see them, many and many a time. It isn't a scrap of good. I've come to the conclusion there are no such things. People are such liars, unfortunately."

"Do you think Miss Peeple was telling me lies, Gran? She said Miss Bella killed Aunt Flora, and Aunt Flora's spirit can't rest."

"Well, she's a funny old thing, and not very sensible, you know——"

"George says she's batty and sees double. Is it the same thing, Gran?"

"Exactly the same thing," said Mrs. Bradley, paying her usual mental tribute to her chauffeur.

"Yes ... but I think I'm glad I'm sleeping in the next room, Gran. Do you think I could move my bed in beside yours?"

"I think it would be great fun," said Mrs. Bradley. In the morning she said to the postmistress, in the course of a conversation engineered to lead up to the question:

"What is this tale that the house I have rented is haunted?"

"It's only Peggy Peeple's nonsense," said the postmistress. "Although you can't wonder at her, poor thing. There's plenty about here to swear the old lady was murdered. They do say it was her niece, Miss Bella Foxley, the one that inherited the money."

"Wasn't someone tried for it?—the niece, or some other relative?" said Mrs. Bradley, innocent of all real knowledge of the subject, but determined to get to the bottom of it.

"Oh, no, not for that. It was never brought in as murder, that wasn't. Oh, no! It's only people's wickedness to talk the way they do, but, of course, she did come in for the money, Miss Bella did, and then she was tried for murdering her cousin, and that set people off again. But the poor thing committed suicide in the end—drowned herself, so I heard—and some thought it was remorse that made her do it. But all that talk about her aunt, there was nothing so far as we knew, though they do say no smoke without fire."

Other customers came in then, and the conversation was abandoned. Neither did Mrs. Bradley find any occasion to resume it during her grandson's visit, for every time after that that she visited the shop, Derek happened to be with her.

At last the time came for him to return home, but he suggested that he should stay another week, so, despite his parents' protests that they missed him, and wanted him back, stay he did until the following Thursday.

During his visit Mrs. Bradley had heard, at intervals, of a holiday task he had been set. He went to school, but Caroline preferred that it should be a day school until he was nine.

The last day of his visit was wet. He woke up to a rainy morning, and although he pressed his nose to the glass of the window for nearly half an hour before he aroused his grandmother, the rain showed no sign of ceasing.

He was a philosophical child, and, when he did wake her up, he merely remarked that it was raining. Mrs. Bradley, however, viewed the inclement weather with some concern, and at breakfast voiced her thoughts.

"Too bad it should be wet for your last day. What would you like to do?"

Her grandson looked up from his plate.

"It would be a good idea to do my holiday task," he replied in his serious way. "I've got all my scraps; some I brought with me and the others I've collected down here. But, you see, Gran, I haven't a book to paste them in, and I haven't any paste."

"I dare say we could find a book," said Mrs. Bradley.

"Well, I have sort of found a book," said the little boy. "I found it on the shelf in your bedroom cupboard; only it's partly wrote in."

"Written in?"

"Yes; so I thought if I showed it to you and you said I could have it, perhaps we could make some paste and perhaps you've got a brush. A piece of paper would do, only I'd rather have a brush. It does it neater. Do you think I'll get the prize Gran?"

"Do you think you'll get the prize?"

"I expect so. If I could have a brush."

"In that case we must certainly provide a brush. Go and ask George about it. Perhaps he'll run you down to the village in the car, and then you could choose one for yourself."

"Oh, may I really, Gran? Oh, thanks!"

"Perhaps I'd better see the book before you go. If it isn't quite the thing, you could see what they've got at the village shop."

"They haven't got anything, because I asked. They've only got the miserable-est little drawing-books and exercise books and things. This one I found has got stiff-covers and it's thick. I suppose," he added, as a gloomy afterthought, "it really belongs to Miss Hodge."

Miss Hodge was the old servant who had inherited the house from Miss Bella's Aunt Flora, who had died (or, if one accepted Miss Peeple's warped view, thought Mrs. Bradley, had been murdered) in it. Miss Hodge was a woman of nearly seventy, and Mrs. Bradley and Derek both liked her.

"Well, we'd better look at this book of-yours," said Mrs. Bradley, "and then we can judge whether Miss Hodge would be likely to let us have it."

Her grandson led the way upstairs. The book, produced most carefully for her inspection, proved to be one of those large, thick, stiff-covered diaries which are produced, judging from the letterpress, for the use of business men in South Africa. About a quarter of it, or rather less, had been used. The rest was blank. The diary was six years out of date.

"It doesn't look very important," said Mrs. Bradley. "I'll tell you what we'll do. We'll call on Miss Hodge on the way to the village shop, and take the book with us, and see what she has to say."

George had hoped for an undisturbed morning during which he proposed to re-read and to psycho-analyse Nietzsche (for he was an unobtrusive but indefatigable student of Mrs. Bradley's methods, and had attended all her public lectures in England), but he put the book down and rose to his feet when his employer and her grandson entered the kitchen.

"George, I want a brush for pasting my scraps, and Gran wants to ask Miss Hodge about the book in her bedroom," said the little boy. "So we shall have to go to the village, if you don't mind."

"Very good, sir," said George.

"And, George, I shall have to ask your advice about the brush."

"Yes, sir?"

"And, George——"

"Sir?"

"Do you think I shall win the prize?"

"I sincerely hope so, sir. But kissing goes by favour, as they say."

"Is that what you say to yourself when you don't get what you want, George?"

"No, sir. I merely say Aliud alia dicunt. That comforts me a good deal, sir."

Mrs. Bradley cackled.

The cottage in which Miss Hodge lived whilst her house was let was about three-quarters of a mile from the sea and on the outskirts of the village. There was no pavement to walk on, but on either side of the front door flowers flourished in their season, as they did in front of all the cottages on that side of the village inn. The front door led directly into the parlour, and was opened to the visitors almost before they had finished knocking.

Miss Hodge, a thin, upright, fresh-faced, pleasant, elderly woman, had come directly from the kitchen, wafted towards the visitors upon an odour of cooking. She wiped her hands on her apron.

"Good morning, madam," she said. "Good morning, Master Derek. A nasty morning! Will you come in? Nothing wrong, I hope?"

"Nothing at all. It is just a question of a book which Derek has found," said Mrs. Bradley.

"You see, Miss Hodge, it would make an awfully nice scrap-book, and I have to give in a scrap-book, as my holiday task, to Miss Winter at school. Now, I've got the scraps—I think you would like to see them ..."

"I'm sure, Master Derek."

"... and all I want, you see, is the book." He produced it. Miss Hodge gave her hands an extra rub on the apron, and then took up the diary, but did no more than glance at the beginning of it.

"Dear me, Master Derek! Now what can you have got hold of here, I wonder?" she said mildly. "This isn't the mistress's writing. I don't seem to know this hand." She looked at Mrs. Bradley. "He can have the empty pages and welcome, Madam, if that would do, but I'd better p'raps just see what it is, as it seems to be wrote out so neat. Now, where did I put my glasses?"

Derek, assisting in the search, discovered them. Miss Hodge, in the laboured manner of an unaccustomed reader, perused a page or two slowly, and then looked over the top of her spectacles.

"It seems as if Miss Bella wrote it. I never knew she could write so nice. It's very like Mr. Tom's hand, now I call his letters to mind. But it's certainly all about Miss Bella, and partly about her aunt, my poor mistress, by the look of it. Ah, I remember now. Mrs. Muriel sent it after Miss Bella died."

"Oh, we can get hold of another book," said Mrs. Bradley quickly. "I am sure you wouldn't want us to have this one."

"Oh, Gran!" said the little boy.

"If Master Derek fancies this one, he shall have it, bless him! Only, I can't quite fancy throwing away Miss Bella's own words, her having such a sad end and so much trouble," said Miss Hodge, "although they found her 'Not Guilty.' Not that it did her any good, poor soul. I wonder if I could take out these pages that's wrote on without hurting the rest of the book?"

"Dear me," said Mrs. Bradley." Well, if you're quite sure he can have the book, Miss Hodge, I'll undertake to remove the written pages without spoiling them, and I'll get them bound for you, unless you'd like to take them out yourself. You see, the diary is very well put together in these sections. We should merely need to cut through the strings here and here ..."

"I'd much rather you did it, madam, than I. I'm sure you know more about it. And perhaps you'd care to have a read of it, madam. It was quite a celebrated case in its way, poor Miss Bella's case was...."

Mrs. Bradley, perceiving that Miss Hodge proposed to unfold a tale, sent Derek out to find George.

"Yes, Miss Bella had a sad life of it, poor thing," continued Miss Hodge, when Derek and George had gone off to the village shop. "She worked hard at that Home for dreadful boys until her aunt died, and then, when she might have been happy and independent, her gentleman cousin, Mr. Tom, fell out of a window, in what was said to be a haunted house, and then, of all things, if she wasn't arrested for murdering him, if ever you heard anything so wicked!"

"Why did they think she had murdered him?" asked Mrs. Bradley, interested not only in the story itself but in the persistent idea of a haunted house which seemed to run through it.

"Oh, I don't know. There was a whole lot of wicked, lying stories getting spread about after the poor mistress's death, and I believe someone wrote some ugly letters. And then, when Mr. Tom died so very shortly afterwards, it seemed that somebody thought themselves clever enough to put two and two together, and so she was arrested, and tried, poor thing. They had to let her off, of course, because nothing was proved against her, but it preyed so on her mind that she killed herself, and the money all went to Miss Tessa, the other niece."

"How long ago was this?" asked Mrs. Bradley.

"Six years ago this month she was tried and let off," said Miss Hodge. "I remember it by when the mistress died and left me the house and the money."

"I expect I was in America then," said Mrs. Bradley. "I suppose I missed the whole thing. It must have been very dreadful for the people who knew her. I'd like to read the diary, if I may, and I'll bring it back to you the moment I've finished with it and bound the pages, shall I?"

"No hurry, madam. Keep it as long as you like if it interests you. I just don't care to destroy it. That's all it is. I don't suppose I should ever read it myself, not all that writing. Just the little bits about the mistress."

"I ought to pay you for the pages I'm going to use, Miss Hodge," said Derek, when he returned from the village shop. "I have my own money, you know."

"Good gracious me, Master Derek! I'm sure you're more than welcome," said the old servant. "Especially," she added, with the sentimentality of her class and generation, "if you'd give me a nice kiss for it, now."

"With pleasure," said Derek gravely, putting his arms round her neck. Mrs. Bradley cackled at this display of social tact by her grandson, and her eyes were bright as a bird's as she looked at the manuscript in her hand.

The diary, as Miss Hodge had indicated, was neatly and legibly written with a fine pen, and some attempt had been made at literary style, as though the diarist, consciously or unconsciously, had hoped that eyes other than her own would read the manuscript. Later on, Mrs. Bradley obtained permission to make an exact copy of it. This ran as follows :

January 17

I dreamt Aunt Flora was dead. They say the wish is father to the thought, so perhaps to the dream as well. It is not that I wish the poor old woman any ill, but there is no doubt that at ninety she is too long-lived. It is no joke for me to be earning my living at the age of forty-seven when I have had expectations (as they say) of two thousand pounds a year since I was twenty.

The chaplain's wife said yesterday that some people (meaning me) had much to be thankful for. A good salary, she remarked, no encumbrances (they have six children and the chaplain's mother to provide for) and a good appetite (I shall never go there to tea again !) are gifts of good fortune which fall to the lot of only one or two. She knows of nobody else, she added, quite so fortunately placed as I am. Detestable woman. I should regard myself as fortunately placed if I had my two thousand a year, and should be thankful—very thankful—for it, but I see nothing else in life to merit or justify my thanks. I responded to the chaplain's wife that a good husband and six olive branches were surely excellent reasons for thanks. Her reply, although phrased in the conventional terms, was extremely wintry.

January 18

I asked Vera, the kitchenmaid, to-day, what she thought any of us had to be thankful for. She said good health, which I believe she enjoys. But I have rheumatism always here, because of these stone floors, and I catch cold easily. The worst of it is that I get no sympathy from anybody. The others are never seedy or off-colour. Besides, I think they dislike me. Aunt Flora does not care much about me, either. Although she is ninety she retains all her faculties, as they say, and I believe she enjoys teasing me about the money. She asked me this Christmas-time what I intended to do with the two thousand when I got it, so I said I should start a restaurant. I should not dream of doing anything of the sort. I am not going to do any work at all when I get that money, and I am going to make quite sure that I spend the whole of the two thousand every year. I cannot touch the capital, of course. That remains for Tessa, and I imagine that her brat will get the income when I am gone unless cousin Tom comes next. As I have not seen the will, I do not know anything about this, but imagine that he is left out.

January 19

The chaplain preached to the boys to-day on Hosea, who seems to have had a sad life caused chiefly by a bad wife. I do not know what lesson there was for the boys in this. What hideous little faces they all have. It is nonsense to say, as William does in staff meetings sometimes when he thinks we all need a pep talk, that criminals are made and not born. These boys are predestined to crime, and no psychologist or educationist is going to persuade me otherwise. As for wives—a lot they are going to know about them! Most of these will be in prison a year after we let them out of here.

Denny has a poison bottle in which he places butterflies, moths, and other creatures for his collection. His ' smelling salts' the boys call it. How they love to watch the creatures die! And what a good thing it would be if this institution were one gigantic bottle into which we could drop the boys, one by one, as they came into our charge. A little struggling and choking, a fluttering of helpless limbs, and then—a perfect specimen of young criminal ready to be preserved, dissected, lectured upon and buried, according to his uses as an anatomical, biological or psychological specimen.

January 20

I wish now that I had followed my original intention, and kept this diary from New Year's Day instead of waiting until the beginning of the term. One is lazy in the holidays, I suppose.

It was good of Tom and Muriel to invite me to stay with them for the last few days before I returned to the Institution, especially as they have moved recently. I think Tom is overdoing this psychical research business, and Muriel looks a wreck. I am sure that ghost-hunting does not improve her nerves. A nice little modern house at the seaside would be far better for her—and for me, too. I should very much enjoy spending a rent-free weekend or two at Bournemouth, say, or Ilfracombe, during the summer.

Muriel makes a good wife, though, and Tom is so keen on his work that I suppose she feels she must help him all she can. But this dodging from one reputedly haunted house to another must be past a joke, especially as they find out nothing exciting enough for Tom to make into a best-seller. What he wants is a house like Borley Rectory. I often wonder why he never rented it. Can it be that he doesn't really want to find an authentic ghost?

Well, anyhow, apart from the nervous strain, I must say Muriel seems to keep pretty well. A pity they don't have children, but I suppose it must be rather hard on children to have a ghost-hunter for a father, so possibly all is for the best.

January 21

Talking of wives, it appears that unbeknown to everybody except Ronald who acted as best man, Denny was married during the Christmas holidays and has brought his wife to live in a house about half a mile from the front gates of the Institution. I think William is a little worried. He has to give married instructors permission to live out, as that is in the regulations. On the other hand, we can't have too many people living out, otherwise there are not enough left here to look after the boys at night. Therefore the next instructor who wants to get married will have to resign, as already we are what William calls (without mincing matters) dangerously understaffed at nights with Denny off the premises.

This is, of course, an overstatement. Nobody, least of all a man in William's position, is justified in accepting the responsibility of our being dangerously understaffed here at any time or under any circumstances, but we all know what he means and are sufficiently uncomfortable about it. Once, before my time, when two-thirds of the indoor staff were down with influenza, the boys made a mass attack on the food stores and the instructors' private rooms, and ten boys got away and were at liberty for three days, during which time they robbed hen-roosts, half-murdered an old woman and held up a village post-office.

January 22

Denny's wife seems a nice enough little thing. I was invited to tea there. I wonder sometimes what kind of wife I should have made, and whether it would have been better if I had married in 1916 when he wanted it. I wonder whether he really was killed, or whether, after he was reported missing, he ever turned up again, a case of lost memory or shell-shock. For all I know (or am ever likely to know) he is in a mental hospital. There was insanity in his family, and these things persist. There was no one but myself to wonder what had happened, and sometimes I wonder also whether I really cared, for I certainly don't care now. It is a very strange thing, when one thinks about it, to be forty-seven years old, and to be quite certain that not a soul on earth cares whether one is alive or dead. I suppose if I left the Institution, or died, the staff here would feel compelled to subscribe either to a gift or a wreath. As it would come to about half-a-crown each in either case, it would not matter to them, I suppose, whether I were going to a new post or to the grave.

January 23

A new post! Sometimes I used to think that, if only I could hit upon the right place, I might enjoy my job. Nowadays, of course, I know that I should be a failure anywhere; not a spectacular failure, like poor Justin, who was almost kicked to death by the boys before he was dismissed by the managers, but the sort of failure that rubs along somehow without ever being quite bad enough to get the sack.

"Hangs on by her eyebrows, poor devil," I heard Colin say in the staff-room the other day; and I am certain he was talking about me. It was kind of him to call me a poor devil. Most of them hate me like poison because, when I take my sick-leave, they are put to a good deal of inconvenience. But I know I could not manage a whole year right through, even with the holidays. I should die without my little bits of ill-health.

January 24

Two boys, Piggy and Alec, escaped last night and appear to have got clean away from the Institution. Both were serious cases. Piggy is in for killing his little sister by pushing her off a bedroom window-sill, and Alec was a thieves' boy, and used to get through larder windows which were too small for the cracksmen. They are nice boys and I hope they will not be caught. Piggy's little sister was a horrid child, he says. We are not supposed to discuss with the boys the reasons for their having been sent here, but when I am superintending the washing-up and the other household tasks they do as fatigues when the better-behaved (that means the cleverer) ones are at football, I hear a good many things which I am not supposed to know.

Alec is a merry little boy. Although he is fifteen now, and has been with us for two years, he does not seem to grow at all. He has told me that when he is released he will go back to his old employment unless he can get into some racing stables and train for a jockey. There is no harm in this boy. Thieves can be as honest as anybody else along their own lines, and it is all nonsense for William to think that boys like these can be reformed, or that the world would be a better place if they were.

January 25

William is spending all his time at the end of the telephone while the search for the boys continues. He looks worried, as well he may, for it proves, upon investigation of the sleeping quarters (we do not call them dormitories here, lest these lads should get ideas beyond their station!), that the bars of F room have been filed through and that Arthur, who is in charge of this room, ought to have known what was happening.

William has interrogated a boy named Larry, and search is still being made for the files, but Larry has said that Piggy and Alec must have taken the files away with them, and he has declared that he knows nothing about the bars.

It is part of William's policy to accept the word of a boy until he can disprove it. When he has disproved it (which he usually manages to do) he has the boy punished. This system is open to two objections. It has undermined William's moral sense, which can never have been very robust, and it disproves any theories that William is a gentleman. William is not a gentleman. He does not even punish the boys himself. This is Arthur's part of the work. He is called the Second Master and most of the boys are in awe of him. It was very daring of Piggy and Alec to make their escape from Arthur's room.

January 26

I received a telegram this morning and have had to ask for special leave of absence. Aunt Flora is seriously ill.

January 27

I have spent most of yesterday and all of to-day at Aunt Flora's bedside. She is unconscious. It appears that she tumbled over her flannel petticoat when she was walking along the landing and hit her head against the bathroom door. She had refused to allow Eliza to dress her and, of course, had not managed the strings. Eliza says that it is a judgment upon Aunt Flora for being so contrary, but she (Eliza) seems, all the same, in good spirits, in spite of the extra work. She is thinking, no doubt, upon the little legacy which Aunt Flora, for decency's sake, is certain to have left her in the will. I do not in the least object to having my money depleted upon Eliza's account.

I find myself wondering (for there is little to do except sit and wait for the end) whether it will be in order to have Aunt Flora's hair washed after she is dead. I have been noticing that her parting is very grimy, and that her white hair is so tinged with dirt as to be rather shocking. I do not like to speak to Eliza about this, in case she should think that I was finding fault, for she is a touchy old thing and I should not care to offend her. Perhaps the dirt is partly the result of the fall, although it hardly looks like it.

January 28

Aunt Flora has recovered consciousness, and this, says the doctor, is the end. He had rather thought that she would never speak again, or recognise any of us, but she has wonderful rallying powers. I only hope that they will not prove too wonderful, for that would be too bitterly disappointing. Tom and Muriel arrived at ten this morning. They had travelled all night, they said, in order to be in at the death. At least, Tom said this, and was immediately hushed by Muriel, who thought it an unfortunate metaphor. It was certainly very clumsy, but what does that matter? It is true—or so I profoundly hope.

January 29

William rang me up on long distance—a pretty penny it cost, but I suppose he will not pay it himself—to ask me when I could conclude my family business and return. There is still no news of Piggy and Alec, he says, although the police are doing their best, but a boy named Dick has bitten Francis in the hand, and the bite has turned septic and Francis is very feverish, and not able to continue his duties. Will I be prepared to 'fill-in?' I should like to retort that I cannot hurry Aunt Flora into eternity, much as I should like to do so, and that even Dick's bite would not turn septic when applied to an instructor's hand if the instructor drank whisky instead of taking drugs. (I know for a fact that Francis does this). But I refrained from both remarks, and replied that I should return as soon as possible, and that Aunt had rallied a little.

I went out for a short time this afternoon and brought back a tin of lobster for Eliza. It is her favourite delicacy, and she was greatly pleased. Aunt Flora keeps no other servant, and the house is a small one. It seems strange that she, who has so much money, should choose to live so simply. It is not a fad of her old age, either. It has been so since Uncle died.

Eliza was delighted with the lobster and continued to thank me long after any further thanks were necessary. It became, in fact, a little embarrassing for us both, but she is a dear old soul, and I sincerely hope that Aunt has provided for her in the will.

January 30

I am astonished, although, of course, I neither say so nor let it appear so, that Tom and Muriel took the trouble to make this long journey, busy as they have been over their moving. They have no possible expectations under the will, and therefore must be much more good-hearted than I had supposed.

Tom says that the new house promises well. There are recorded poltergeist disturbances, and, according to the villagers (who cannot, however, usually be depended upon for accurate information when hauntings are in question !) something more interesting still. I have not pressed Tom for details, as I find I cannot sleep after I have been listening to his stories, inconclusive and vague although most of them are. I will let him unburden himself before lunch to-morrow, and then I can forget all about what he tells me by the hour that bedtime comes. In any case, I have enough to think about. Aunt Flora has so far rallied that the doctor says she is out of danger !

January 31

I can hardly realize it! In fact, I try not to realize it, because when I allow myself to think about it at all, I can think only of my money. Yes, it has come about at last, and nothing but that strange by-product of civilised intercourse which we think of by the name of "decent behaviour" prevents me from shouting it aloud. At last, at last, after all these lean and dreadful years, and when, after the doctor's report, I had given up hope again, Aunt Flora is dead. It all happened strangely and suddenly. At seven o'clock yesterday evening she sat up and, in her normal voice, asked for some grated carrot. She has taken up this raw food dieting during her later life, and usually attributes her longevity to it. Tom said that he realised it could be nothing but the return of all her normal faculties; and he thought she must be humoured. We went to the kitchen, therefore, and, Eliza being at chapel for her weeknight meeting, I scraped some carrot on a nutmeg grater. The result was messy, but we hoped that it would do. I put it into a large, deep saucer, thinking that Aunt would manage it best that way, and placed a spoon beside the saucer on the tray, and also a glass of water.

The effort of eating must have been too much for the poor old thing. She had scarcely taken a third mouthful of the carrot— judging by what was left on the saucer—when she must have choked and, after struggling, I should think, to clutch the glass of water—for it was overturned—she must have fallen back dead.

When we came back again a little later on in the evening and saw her, I sent Tom running for more water. He came back with the tumbler, dashed the water into her face and made other efforts to revive her. It was hopeless. The doctor came a quarter of an hour later, but, of course, there was nothing to be done Poor Tom was in tears. He is a good-hearted man. I feel that in the past I have misjudged him sadly. He, with nothing to gain— but I need not dwell on that.

February 1

The doctor's manner has been somewhat off-hand. I asked him rather sharply whether he had any objection to signing the death certificate As he had already signed it, I suppose he thought this an improper and impertinent question, but I did not like his attitude, and took care to let him know it. Aunt is to be buried on Tuesday. There is no one to bid to the funeral except Tessa, and I don't suppose she will trouble herself to come, since Aunt cut her out of her will when she heard that the brat had been born out of wedlock. As though it was Tessa's fault! The man would have married her if he had not been killed in the war. Of course, Tessa was Aunt Flora's favourite until the child was born, but then I took my sister's place in her regard, and the money, which was to have been shared between us, was all diverted to me. Much good it has done me all these years! And Tessa did have her fun—while it lasted! But now ...! The future seems so bright I dare not look at it for fear that something should, after all, go wrong.

February 2

I have written to Tessa, care of the last address I have (although I know she moved from it just over three years ago) to tell her the news. Poor old Eliza is quite stricken with grief, and says that she shall never get another situation at her age, and that she had "looked to go before the mistress." I believe she is turned seventy, so I do hope that Aunt has done something handsome for her, as she has been in service here, she tells me, since she was sixteen and a half.

It is very useful and nice to have Tom here. He has undertaken all the funeral arrangements, and these are so much more easily done by a man than by a woman. Muriel and I walk about the house and look at the very simple, old-fashioned furniture and effects, and speculate upon Aunt, who has always been, to me, of a most forbidding and incomprehensible age, because, after all, she was forty-three years old when I was born! Muriel knows nothing much about her, except from Tom's descriptions.

February 3

My wreath is to be of white hyacinths and dark crimson carnations. As William has not seen fit to send me on my cheque, I am now very short of ready money, and may have to borrow off Tom for the funeral bakemeats, for which, presumably, I am liable to pay, as there is nothing much in the house or ordered.

February 4

The funeral went off quite well, and a surprising number of people attended; surprising to me, that is, for Tom said he believed that Aunt was greatly respected in the place. The flowers were really good, and the hearse looked quite a picture. It was a fine day, too, which is a great blessing on these occasions. I think a fine day is almost as important at a funeral as at a wedding. In fact, from the point of view of the general health, it is more so. I have heard of more than one person developing a fatal illness from standing at a graveside in the wet.

Eliza had everything ready for us on our return, and Tom and Muriel said that as they had no interest under the will they would not stay to hear it read, and as it was Eliza's afternoon out I sent her off to see her sister who lives in the next town, a fourpenny bus ride, and said that I would tell her any news on her return. The selfless old creature did not give the slightest indication that she thought Aunt might have remembered her in the will, and I said nothing about it, in case my surmises should be wrong. I could not bear to disappoint Eliza. She did say, just before she went (and when I was in a fever lest the lawyer should arrive and she feel bound to stay at home to see to things), that she supposed I would not be keeping the house on. I replied, very gently, that I did not think so, and positively pushed her out. She turned at the last, even then, and asked me whether it looked heartless, her taking her afternoon just as though the mistress had not died. I replied firmly to this, and at last got rid of her.

February 7

I have had no time to write up this diary for the past two days. Now I am back at the Institution, which I cannot leave suddenly without breaking the terms of my engagement. Besides, William asked me as a personal favour to stay at least until the end of the month. Fortunately the news of Aunt was so grave on the thirtieth that I gave provisional notice then, and I am determined not to stay beyond the twenty-eighth of February to please or oblige anybody.

I told Vera to-day all about my good fortune. Aunt's house is in the hands of the agent, and they trust to be able to make a good and quick sale, as the house is small, convenient and easily worked, and is within nice distance of the sea.

Vera was particularly interested to hear of poor old Eliza's fifty pounds a year, and said that she thought she should take a situation in private service. She was very raw and untrained when she was first appointed here, but I have done my best, and I think now that she might get a very good place.

The staff congratulated me on my inheritance, and we had quite a jolly evening with some port (provided by me) and a bottle of whisky. William, however, is very worried, as there is still no news of the missing boys.

Cyril, who cannot take very much to drink, asked me, after his third glass, whether I had sued the Daily Pennon yet. I did not know what he meant, and the others seemed so anxious to shut him up that I must make the opportunity to find out what he was talking about.

February 8

I tackled Cyril before supper this evening and he apologised and said he had meant nothing—it was simply a stupid joke. He seemed so anxious to reassure me that I became anxious, in my turn, to find out what the stupid joke is. Perhaps I would be better advised to let the subject drop, however, as, no doubt, plenty of people have been making spiteful remarks since they heard of my good fortune.

February 10

The beginning of a new week. A boy, Jones, has complained of the dumplings. He says they contain screwed-up pellets of paper. William has had a lengthy interview with Jones, but can ascertain nothing, as Jones had swallowed the pellets after chewing them. I was also called upon as cook, to interview the boy, but could get no further details of the complaint, and nothing will shake him in his assertions. It is very curious. I have spoken to Vera, but she declares that after I mixed the paste for the dumplings nobody entered the kitchen, for she was there the whole time until I came back from interviewing the butcher to whom I had complained about the chops the staff had one day whilst I was absent. The staff do not have the same food as the boys, and this is a bitter grievance which is always aired when the boys complain (as they do about once every five or six weeks) about the diet.

William, most unwisely in my opinion, has addressed the Institution publicly, to request that any foreign bodies discovered in the food shall be preserved and handed to the instructor in charge. After tea, therefore, Denny, who was on duty, received five buttons, a decayed tooth, half a dozen teeth from a comb, a small piece of lead pencil, a chip of glass, a fragment of bone, some matted hairs, a couple of match-sticks, some wood splinters and a score of other, more or less horrid, objects. Every boy had made it a point of honour to "find" something.

February 11

William has called another assembly and has announced that the next boy who finds a foreign body in the food will be flogged.

February 12

I have received an unpleasant letter which I have sent on to Tom, requesting his advice. It has a London postmark, but must have been sent by someone who lives near poor Aunt's house.

February 13

My letter has crossed with one from Tom enclosing a communication very similar to the one I have just sent to him. He wants to know what I want done about it, and suggests putting the letter into the hands of the police. I don't quite care for the idea, but probably it is the only way to stop the writer from becoming a serious nuisance. Another plan, he says, is to burn the next one unread—if there is a next one—and so let the writer work off her ill-nature and spite.

February 14

There is some news of Piggy and Alec. Two boys answering the description have been found by the Yorkshire police. William is to go to York to identify them. From the evidence, there is little doubt that these are the right boys. They have remained at large for three weeks. Much seems to have happened since they went. It seems a year to me, because it all happened before Aunt's death.

February 15

My legacy is to be paid quarterly. I had hoped to have it every month, and shall write off straight away to find out whether this cannot be arranged. I do wish I did not feel obliged to work out my month here. I should like to get away at once. For one thing, I have to find somewhere to live, as I do not think I should care for hotel life.

February 16

The boys are not Piggy and Alec.

February 17

I shall go sick for the rest of my month. Why not? It is an easy and pleasant way out, and as William cannot return until this afternoon at the earliest, I shall simply go to Tom and Muriel as soon as I have sent in a doctor's certificate, and write to William from there.

February 18

The doctor was very nice about the certificate and said that a rest would do me good. The certificate will last a fortnight, and that will do beautifully. It is wonderful to think that I shall never darken these doors again, and to work out my notice in sick leave is perfectly permissible. I have told Vera that I am going to be away for a few days, and that she will have to manage. If William has any sense, he will arrange for one or two of the instructors' wives to come in and give a hand with the dining arrangements. The menu is settled. They have or ly to prepare the food and cook it. Anyway, I cannot help their troubles. Oh, to be free! To be away from it all for ever! I can hardly believe my good luck. I wish I did not keep thinking about those anonymous letters.

February 19

I wish I had never read about Borley Rectory^* because I am sure that this house in which Tom and Muriel are living is exactly like it. I believe I am psychic. I have often thought so. At any rate, the house affects me most unpleasantly, and the atmosphere is not helped by the attitude of Tom and Muriel, who do not appear in the least pleased to see me, and are treating me so much like an intruder that I think I shall move to the village inn to-morrow, and not trouble them any further with my company.

^* "The Most Haunted House in England. Ten Tears' Investigation of Borley Rectory." By Harry Price. Longmans, Green and Co., 1940.

February 20

I have had a long conversation with Muriel. She is a nice woman, and I made the opportunity to ask her—as tactfully as I could, but, of course, these things have to be expressed in words, and it is not always that the best phrases come exactly when they are wanted most—whether my presence in the house was an inconvenience. To my distress, but not altogether to my astonishment, she burst into tears, and, with both hands clasping my arm, implored me to stay, saying that she knew they had been "horrid" but that the atmosphere of this weird house had quite daunted them and was getting on their nerves to such an extent that they had already begun quarrelling with one another—a thing, she added, with a fresh outbreak of crying, that had never happened before in their married life.

This I can believe. They have always been a devoted couple.

Reassured by her outburst, I reiterated my willingness to leave the house if my presence was the slightest embarrassment to either of them, but she again begged me to stay, and then asked, almost in a whisper, whether I had "seen" or "heard" anything since my arrival. I said that I had been aware of "presences" but had not seen or heard anything which could not be explained away. What did I mean by that, she wanted to know. Bats, rats or mice, I replied, and, of course, Tom coming past my door in his slippers. She looked at me oddly when I said that, and advised me to say nothing about that to Tom, as she had already accused him of walking in his sleep, and he had so vigorously denied it that the argument had been the prelude to their first quarrel.

"And I don't believe now that it was Tom," she concluded, "but I daren't say so, because if it wasn't Tom, who was it?"

February 21

A bitter letter from William affecting to sympathize with my illness but written to point out how extremely inconvenient it is of me to have to take sick leave at such a time. I shall not reply to it. A letter from Aunt's lawyer to say that the income can be paid monthly by arrangement with my bank. This is splendid. I have told Muriel privately that as long as I live with them I am going to make Tom an allowance of two hundred and fifty a year. This brought more tears, as she tried to thank me. They must be very badly off for the offer to have affected her as it did. I feel quite a philanthropist.

February 22

The manifestations have begun in earnest. Last night, as I was going upstairs, I heard a slight sound behind me. The house has electric lighting, and so everything was perfectly visible, and I could see that some small object had fallen on to the floor in the middle of the hall. I went down again and picked it up. Tom and Muriel keep no servants, so there was no one but our three selves in the house, and I had just left the other two in the dining-room which we use as a living-room. The object was a small perpetual calendar which I had seen on my dressing-table before I went downstairs that evening. I picked it up and took it upstairs with me.

Scarcely had I replaced it in its usual position when I heard the most appalling crash downstairs. I ran out of the bedroom and Tom and Muriel ran out from the dining-room, all of us anxiously calling out, "Are you all right?"

Then we saw that the entire contents of the kitchen shelves had been precipitated into the hall—several saucepans, a couple of enamel jugs, kettle-holders, three or four odd cups, a bottle-opener, two frying pans, an earthenware casserole, a fish slice and a porridge strainer were scattered all over the place. Nothing was broken, not even the handles off the cups, but two of the saucepans were dented.

When we had picked them up and put them back on the kitchen shelves—a hateful task, since none of us in the least wanted to enter the kitchen—all the bells in the house began to ring.

February 23

Tom has cut all the bell-wires, but the bells continue to ring. I do not like it at all.

February 24

The slippered footsteps are worse. They follow Muriel everywhere. She is a nervous wreck. Tom is having four people down for a séance. He is like a man with a pet snake—fascinated but frightened. We have now heard ghostly music.

February 25

I have moved to the village inn, and Muriel has come with me. She says she cannot stand the house any longer. The séance has completed her breakdown. The four people, three men and an elderly woman, arrived at four o'clock yesterday, and, after tea, Tom showed them his journal and notebook. He has kept an exact record of all the phenomena of the house. They seemed interested, and discussed everything in a detached, scientific way which was very comforting. Even Muriel cheered up, and was ready to agree that nothing harmful had happened. But the effect of all this was suddenly spoilt when, in the middle of the séance, there was a crash and a series of bumps overhead, and when we—or, rather, they—investigated (for Muriel and I remained downstairs holding on to one another for fright), it turned out that all the furniture in the spare bedroom had been overturned, and the electric-light flex had parted, depositing the lamp and shade on top of the dressing-chest which was on its side in the middle of the room. The bedhead fittings were undisturbed except that, as Tom switched on a torch, the bedhead flex began to swing like the pendulum of a clock. As soon as one of the gentlemen put out his hand to switch on the light, however, the swinging stopped, but the music broke out again.

They put the room to rights, but I was far too nervous to sleep in it, so went off to the inn and Muriel accompanied me. Tom and two of the visitors remained in the house. The other two visitors had to get back to town. It was then about half-past eight.

February 26

Muriel has rejoined Tom. She must be a heroine and I hope Tom appreciates the fact. Nothing much has happened to-day, so far as I know. I spent the early part of the afternoon with them, and they had nothing to report except a few hangings upstairs, but nothing had been moved. Tom and the visitors occupied themselves after the séance and our departure with chalking rings round every movable thing in the house—furniture, ornaments, pictures, books (there are no bookshelves here—it makes the house seem very cluttered-up and untidy) so that we can see at a glance whether anything has been moved. Tom has a fanatical gleam in his eye. The London experts have impressed him. He is longing now for further manifestations.

February 27

There are horrid stories round the village of something that walks in the grounds of Tom's house at night.

February 28

News of Piggy and Alec. Here in this village, too. Two boys answering to the description have been taken up by the village policeman for robbing a chicken-farm kept by a young couple called Tolleson on the outskirts of the village. As every police station has a description of the lads, they have been handed over to the inspector at Ridge, the nearest town. I have not seen the boys, but have no doubt that these are they. Still, it is none of my business now. William has written to invite me to go back for a "small presentation" if I feel well enough. I do not feel well enough. Nothing will induce me to visit the Institution again. They can keep their clock or suitcase or whatever it is. I shall not even answer the letter. It is better to cut all connection.

March 3

The stories in the village become more horrifying. There is now a coach and horses with a headless driver.

March 4

Muriel has rejoined me at the village inn. She says that if she stays in the house any longer she will go mad. She certainly seems almost beside herself. She says that the footsteps get worse. They are no longer quiet, but run all over the house. She lay awake for half an hour, by her watch, in an ecstasy of terror, last night, from half-past twelve until one. Tom came in at one— they share a room, but he had remained downstairs writing up his journal—and asked her whether she had heard anything. He had been out twice, he said, to investigate, but could-see nothing, and the noise stopped the moment he opened the dining-room door. In the morning, the spare-room furniture was found piled on to the bed.

March 5

These boys are not Piggy and Alec, either.

March 6

I have received three more anonymous letters. Somebody has discovered where I am living. They are the usual thing, plus a direct accusation of murder. I am supposed to have poisoned Aunt Flora. I took the letters to the police. They have promised to make some enquiries, but I have no faith in the police. They may be able to discover criminals of the ordinary kind, but they will never trace these letters to the sender. And why can't they find Piggy and Alec, if they are so clever? It seems impossible that two boys of that type can remain at large for so long.

March 7

Tom has told Muriel that he will give up his researches at the house.

March 8

Muriel has asked my advice. It would be a pity, she thinks, for Tom to give up the house, which is now attracting a good deal of attention in journals devoted to psychical research, and Tom has already made more money out of his articles than he has made in the past two years. Moving house, too, she points out, is a very expensive business. On the other hand, the house terrifies her. I told her some of the stories which are current in the village, but said I did not believe them. She said again that nothing will induce her to live in the house. She intends to tell Tom that he can live there alone or invite friends who are interested in the phenomena, and she will live with me for the time, until he has finished with the house.

March 9

Tom has heard all Muriel's arguments and it is agreed that he shall lease the house for another three months, and that if she still refuses to live there he will then move to a place of her choosing. I have persuaded Muriel to agree to this, and I am giving Tom a hundred a year of the money Aunt left to me, although I am no longer the "paying guest" at the house.

March 10

Two vulgar epithets and part of a prayer have been scribbled on the walls of Tom's house. He is tremendously excited, seems to have overcome all his nervousness, and invited us both to come in and see the new manifestations. I went, and, after a bit, Muriel (rather to my surprise) followed suit. She would not stay in the house, however, which, she said, made her want to scream. Tom sent off several telegrams from the village post-office to psychical research people, inviting them to come down and see the spirit-writing. He had a lot of fun this afternoon putting glass over it, as they have done in the Tower of London over prisoners' scribblings and carvings.

March 11

Things are getting worse—and more exciting—at the house. Last night we said good night to Tom at the inn, at which we had invited him to dine, and he left us at about ten o'clock. It was a dark night, no moon and a cloudy sky, and he went off singing. I do not mean, of course, that he was drunk. I will say for Tom that he carries his drinks well. We listened to the singing until we could hear it no longer, and then we went back inside the inn and up to bed. We were sharing a room because of Muriel's nerves, and at about eleven she leaned up, switched on the light and said that she could not bear it; she was certain that Tom was in some danger.

The house was not on the telephone, otherwise I would have rung him up, so I comforted her and she lay down again. As it happened, however, her uneasiness had now communicated itself to me and I could not sleep. At midnight I got up and dressed. I was now so worried that I could think of nothing except going to see whether Tom was all right, as I knew he was in the house alone.

I reached the house at about twenty minutes past twelve, walked up the drive, and saw a light in the bedroom which I knew Tom usually occupied. I threw some gravel up at the window and called out to know whether he was all right. He opened the window and called out to know who was there. I told him, and he replied:

"Good heavens, Bella! What on earth are you doing at this time of night? Of course I'm all right. In fact, the house is quieter than usual."

As he spoke I thought I could see a second figure just behind him in the room, and I called out :

"The headless coachman is just behind you!"

I heard him laugh, and as he did so the figure behind him disappeared. Then he told me. to go back before Muriel woke up and missed me and had another of her nervous attacks, so I called good night up to him, and, suddenly getting very nervous, ran back all the way down the drive to the gate. When I reached a point along the road from which the house can again be seen I saw that the light in his room had gone out.

To-day the boots told me the news that Tom was hurt. He had been found by the boy who brings the milk. It seems that after I left he must have tumbled out of the window. Muriel is prostrate. I am afraid for her reason. She says the ghosts want the house to themselves.

March 12

On my own account I have been to the house to see whether there is any explanation of the mystery. Tom is in bed.

March 13

Tom is giving up the house as too dangerous.

March 14.

Another anonymous letter about the death of Aunt Flora. This time I am accused of having strangled her. Three gentlemen and two ladies interested in psychical research came down by train this morning expecting to be shown over the house by Tom. As I felt sure he would have wished it, I myself let them in and showed them over, but although they stayed four hours and we all lunched off corned beef, bread, and some chocolate, there were no manifestations of any kind. I showed them Tom's journal, which was on the writing-table, and they were very much interested in this, and asked leave to carry it away and study it at their leisure. I obtained a receipt for it, and let them have it. Later I broke to them the news of Tom's accident. It is sure to be in all the papers to-morrow if not to-night. The reporters have been nosing round here already.

March 15

The police have also been nosing round. I can't think why, unless Tom sent for them, but there seems no reason for that. They asked to see us, and Muriel blurted out all her fears about the haunted house, but the police, I can see, don't credit the hauntings. They ought to stay a few days and nights in the house !

March 16

The police now think that Piggy and Alec must have got away on a cargo boat or something. I had a letter from Vera to-day sent on from Aunt's house, the last address of mine she had. William, she says, is at his wits' end to find a new housekeeper, and she herself does not think she wants to work under anybody else now, but will give in her notice as soon as the new person is appointed. It seems that Denny's wife has been carrying on with my job temporarily, but, according to Vera, is not much good at it. I wish joy to whoever gets it! When the muddle about poor old Tom is cleared up I think I shall go and live in Cornwall. I have always loved the Cornish villages.

March 17

Muriel was much calmer this afternoon. She asked me whether I would be prepared to lend her a little money until she can find some work, as Tom is determined to return to the haunted house, and she has refused to live there. Tom cannot afford to pay her bills at the inn if I leave them and go to Cornwall. I said I would gladly help her, and that, if she cared to do it, I would be pleased to take her on as my paid companion. She asked whether she might have time to think it over, not that she wasn't grateful, but she had thought of something more in the secretarial line, or teaching music.

March 18

There is no doubt the police think Tom was pushed out of the window. That means that he must have said so, and is returning to the house to solve the mystery. The police have interviewed a good many people—tradespeople and others—and have again questioned Muriel and myself. How I wish I had never gone near the house that night! That's what's done it. They think I pushed him out, I do believe! I wonder what he has against me !

March 19

Muriel told me that they have been asking her whether he had anything on his mind. That would make it attempted suicide. She replied that he was in good spirits with every prospect of making some extra money out of his writings on the haunted house, that he was not financially embarrassed, and that, in any case, he was receiving an allowance. That brought them back to me, and they demanded to know what had made me think of giving Tom an allowance. I explained about Aunt, as briefly as I could, and the inspector rather nastily said: "Oh, yes, the old lady who was choked with the grated carrot. I remember."

In spite of my income and my freedom, I am beginning to wish that that particular carrot was still growing in the garden.

The diary ended somewhat abruptly, and Mrs. Bradley could not help wondering what had caused so assiduous a diarist— supposing the diary to be genuine, a supposition which, on the internal evidence, she was disposed to reject—to fall short of reporting the course of events at least up to the death of Cousin Tom.

She enquired, later, on what date Cousin Tom had died, and learned that it was on the morning of the twenty-second of March that his body had been found on a gravel path outside the haunted house. The ghosts believed in repeating their effects, it seemed.

Chapter Two

REACTIONS OF AN ELDERLY SERVANT

"And whereas none rejoice more in revenge Than women use to do: yet you well know, That wrong is better checked by being contemned Than being pursued...."

DANIEL.

AT half-past two in the afternoon, Mrs. Bradley drove into the village. The weather had improved. It was no longer raining, although there was no sunshine either. In the distance the sea boomed, a sullen sound in keeping with the lowering sky.

Derek accompanied his grandmother. They were to meet his father and mother at the station and drive them back to the house for an early tea.

The little boy had spent three hours upon his scrap-book, and the result, a little uneven, and marred here and there by the application of too much paste, was creditable enough, considering his age. Mrs. Bradley, in fact, was surprised at the dimensions and variety of his holiday collection when she assisted him in checking, classifying and naming it.

"We're allowed to have any help we can get," he announced. "Miss Winter says that no man is sufficient unto himself when he goes out into the world, and so she sees no reason why we should be sufficient unto ourselves at school. She lets us cheat our mathematics and everything else, if we want to. She says it's too fatiguing to fight against Nature in the raw. I don't know what it means, but she's awfully nice."

Mrs. Bradley inwardly commended Miss Winter for being, if not 'awfully nice,' at any rate the most sensible person she had heard of for some time. She then urged George to drive a little faster, as she thought the train was almost due. George replied with an inspired burst of speed which brought a flush of joy to the clear cheeks of the child, and caused Mrs. Bradley to quote Aristophanes in a dignified but heartfelt manner.

"Be valiant, daring and subtle, and never mind taking a risk,"^* said she in Greek, as the car drew up at the station.

^*The Frogs, Act 3. Trans. by D. W. Lucas and F. J. A. Gruso. 1936.

It was Ferdinand's habit to travel by train whenever it was possible to do so. Caroline, who detested trains, said that he liked working out the connections from Bradshaw and deciding how much time could have been saved if they had made three more changes. Ferdinand denied this, and said that driving made him sleepy.

At any rate, the train had not arrived when George pulled up, but they could hear a distant whistle.

Ferdinand and Caroline both looked well and were pleased to see their child again. Caroline questioned Mrs. Bradley, Derek supplied vociferous footnotes, and the scrap-book, solemnly brought from the house to the station in brown paper, had to be displayed.

It was agreed that the parents should remain at the house for the night, and should leave with Derek soon after breakfast next morning. Caroline, who was tired, was grateful; Derek was delighted, and, with his father's assistance, put in a valuable couple of hours after tea on the scrap-book. At eight he went to bed, sleepy, but, as an artist, satisfied.

"Staying on here all alone, Mother?" asked Ferdinand. "What on earth for?"

"Well, I'm still hoping that the authorities may let me have my boys. Besides, I've stumbled upon something interesting," replied Mrs. Bradley. She showed him the diary. "I was doing some work at Shafton, the reconstructed institution for delinquent boys, when I came on the story first. It appears that there was a housekeeper there named Bella Foxley. She resigned about six years ago, when she came into some money at the death of her aunt, an old lady who lived in this house, and died in it under, apparently, peculiar circumstances."

"Do you mean that she murdered the aunt?" asked Caroline.

"Oh, no, she didn't murder the aunt. At least, there was no suggestion of that. But certainly she murdered her cousin," said Ferdinand, before his mother could reply. "I remember the case quite well. She was acquitted, but, all the same, she did it. You were in America, Mother, at the time. I was asked to defend her, but I wouldn't undertake it. However, they got her off. Lack of motive. But the motive was there, all right."

"You mean she did murder the aunt, and the cousin knew it?" said Mrs. Bradley. "I can see all sorts of objections to that theory, and yet there is a great deal to be said in favour of it. The diary gives some very curious sidelights. Poltergeist phenomena——"

"Oh, lord, yes! The haunted house," said Ferdinand. "The prosecution didn't care for the poltergeist at all, I remember, but the defence produced some pretty good stuff on the subject. Their theory was suicide whilst the balance of the mind was affected. They tried to prove that the haunted house had got on Cousin Tom's nerves, and he'd chucked himself out of the window in a fit of panic. You know, Mother, you ought to meet Pratt, if you're interested in the case. He covered it for one of the evening papers. Of course, he's given up reporting ever since he brought off that record-breaking play, but I daresay he could give you a pretty good idea of how the trial went. Conscientious bloke, too. Wouldn't invent anything or distort anything—knowingly!"

"How was Cousin Tom supposed to have died?" asked Caroline. "Just by falling out of the window?"

"Well, that was the contention of the defence, but the prosecution got hold of medical witnesses who declared that a blow on the head was struck before he ever reached the ground. It became a battle of the experts in the end. I think that's why the jury let her off. The average person is suspicious and upset when expert witnesses can't agree, you know."

"I'm going to stay on for a bit and pump Eliza Hodge, my landlady," said Mrs. Bradley. "She used to be a servant here before the old lady died."

"But I still don't understand what your object is, Mother, in going back over all this," said Ferdinand. "What has struck you about it?"

"While I was at the Institution I helped to trace two boys who had broken out," replied Mrs. Bradley. "When Bella Foxley left the Institution two other boys had disappeared, and were never traced. That seems to me a most extraordinary thing."

"Why? Do you think she helped them to run away?" enquired Caroline.

"There is little to lead one to such a conclusion, but she mentions the boys several times in her diary, and the present Warden thinks that some member of the staff connived at the escape. If he is right, one wonders what could have been the motive. These boys were anti-social and degenerate. One of them had committed murder. It seems odd that any responsible person should think it desirable to have them at large. Especially-—although this is not mentioned in the diary—as Cousin Tom did die."

She spoke with her usual mildness, and Ferdinand looked at her sharply.

"What are you getting at, Mother?" he demanded. "You don't think one of those boys did the murder, do you?"

"Oh, no. I am prepared to believe that Bella Foxley did the murder. I think, too, that she murdered her aunt. And I think she contrived the escape of the boys. All of that is implicit in her diary, as I read it. Do you read it, child, before you go to bed. You will find it more than interesting."

It was to Miss Hodge that she took herself straightway when the guests had driven off in the morning. She had made up her mind that she would approach the subject bluntly, and she did.

"I was interested in the diary, Miss Hodge," she said. "I wonder ...." She looked into the eyes of the old servant.

"Yes, madam?" said Miss Hodge; and her eyes flickered nervously, Mrs. Bradley noticed.

"An impertinence on my part, perhaps, but—were you very much attached to Miss Bella and Miss Tessa? I suppose, by the way, that you are the Eliza of the diary?"

"Yes, madam, of course I am. As to Miss Bella and Miss Tessa—well, I was very fond indeed of Miss Tessa, and terrible grieved when she was so unfortunate."

"Unfortunate? You mean ...?"

"Yes, that's it, madam. Her husband turned out badly, I'm afraid. In fact, it proved he wasn't her husband. Such a nice fellow he was, too. But I suppose these bigamists often are, and that's where they lead themselves astray. I don't really think he meant Miss Tessa any harm, and fortunately— most fortunately as it turned out—nothing came of the marriage——"

"No children, you mean?"

"That's right. So it wasn't as bad as it might have been; and when it all came out he went away to South America before he got himself arrested, and there, it seems, he died of being attacked by a crocodile or a snake or something of them kind of horrible things."

"Is it certain that he's dead?"

"Oh, yes, madam. No manner of doubt, and really, for poor Miss Tessa, the best way out. But she always kept up her married name, I believe, although she never came back here no more. I did just write to her once, getting the address— although I suppose it was not my place—out of the bureau drawer where I knew the mistress kept it, for all she had said she would never see Miss Tessa again...."

"But surely it wasn't the girl's fault?"

"Well, she wasn't so much of a girl, if you take me, madam. She would have been all of thirty-five when she married him, and the mistress never liked the marriage anyhow, and when it came out what he was, she said she had always known something would happen, and Miss Tessa was old enough to have had more sense about men."

"Yes, I see. So she cut Miss Tessa out of her will, and left all the money to Miss Bella."

"Well, she did and she didn't. She left the money to Miss Bella, but Miss Tessa was to have it after her, unless Miss Bella should have got married, which there wasn't much chance she would. But, much to everybody's surprise, madam, Miss Bella gave Miss Tessa to understand that she was to have half the interest on the capital straight away. Of course, after the death of poor Mr. Tom, we heard no more about it, but I dare say she did it, all the same. Mr. Tom's death, and then Miss Bella being put in prison and tried for her life, took all our thoughts, as you can fancy, and ..."

"The sisters got on well together, then?"

"Well, I can't hardly say, madam. They didn't quarrel, that I know of, and I suppose Miss Bella must have been fond of Miss Tessa to share the interest with her like that; although, as she said to me herself, ' Why shouldn't a thousand do me as well as two thousand, Eliza? After all, I've never had more than two hundred up to now.' As, of course, madam, no more she hadn't, and a job that ate all the heart out of her, too, and all, even to get that much. But I was sorry to think Mr. Tom never came in for his share."

"You were very fond of both of them, then?"

Eliza hesitated for an instant, and then seemed to make up her mind.

"I'm not ever one to speak ill of the dead, madam."

"I am glad to hear you say that," said Mrs. Bradley. That this was a cryptic utterance was lost upon Eliza. She replied :

"No, that's not my way, madam. What's buried should bury our spite with it. That's what I always say. All the same, I was very, very glad when they let Miss Bella off. It would have been a most terrible thing, that would."

Mrs. Bradley agreed, and then said, changing the subject, it seemed :

"I wonder whether you'd care to come to tea with me at your house this afternoon? I shall be quite alone now that my grandson has gone back with his parents."

"That would be ever so nice, madam," said Eliza immediately. "Mrs. Bell is going over to Hariford, so I shall be all on my own, too."

"Good," said Mrs. Bradley. "I shall expect you early, then."

Eliza arrived at half-past three and found her hostess in the garden. Together they walked up the path and talked about the plants and flowers. The rockery particularly attracted attention. It had been one of Aunt Flora's hobbies, and Mrs. Bradley encouraged a subject of conversation of which she had some knowledge in order to keep the memory of Aunt Flora well in the foreground of her companion's mind.

These artless tactics were successful, and by the end of her visit she had a clear picture of the household just before the old lady's death. Eliza was not garrulous, nor did she make too many tiresome repetitions. She seemed to welcome questions, and was obviously so much interested herself in what she was talking about that Mrs. Bradley's curiosity did not strike her as excessive. It seemed perfectly natural to her that other people should be fascinated by stories about the tragic household in which she had had a place.

They had tea in the garden. It was brought out by the young maidservant who had come down with Mrs. Bradley because it was thought that a fortnight by the sea might do her good. It was doing her good, Mrs. Bradley had been glad to notice. She had taken Derek for some of his walks while Mrs. Bradley, who enjoyed what she called 'pottering about the house,' had done the dusting and had cooked most of the meals.

During tea Eliza's anecdotes were chiefly based upon the small and harmless eccentricities of her late mistress, but, later (for the evenings were not very warm), when they went into the house to a small but cheerful fire, the trickle of reminiscence gradually rose to flood height, and by the time the visitor left at half-past eight Mrs. Bradley's curiosity was satisfied to the extreme limit of whatever satisfaction Eliza was able to provide. In fact, Mrs. Bradley felt that if there was anything she had not been told, it was because it was something which the old servant herself did not know.

The fire had been lighted in the drawing-room, a room which had been furnished too heavily for its size. Heavy mahogany chairs, a sideboard (in the same kind of wood) which occupied almost the whole of a wall so that there was scarcely enough room to open the door, a dark red carpet with a thick pile, a mahogany bureau, an overladen mantelpiece and dark red velvet curtains which hung from the ceiling to the ground, created an impression of stifling and strangely hellish gloom which was not discounted, but, on the contrary, enhanced, by portraits of a gentleman with side whiskers and a lady wearing a bustle; by a couple of large fish labelled respectively Uncle Percy and Uncle George; and, finally, by a repellent arrangement of Wedgwood dinner plates affixed to the walls by wire brackets.

"The mistress loved this room," said Eliza, looking round it with affectionate pride. "It was here that she died, madam. Had her bed brought down here and the dining-table and chairs moved out to get it in. What a job it was to get her downstairs and into it, too. She was a big, heavy woman, you know, madam, and had had her hair dyed dark red, which nobody really cared for, not even herself when it was done. 'I've made a fool of myself, Eliza,' she said to me when she came home— went up to London, she did, to have it tinted—'and I wish now I'd never had it done. But you can take it that nobody but myself is ever going to know that. I shall keep it touched up now I've taken the plunge.' And so she did, to the last. Ah, she was a wonderful old lady; eighty-one when she died, and all her faculties, as you might say. Nobody thought of her going like that at the end. It was on the Wednesday that she tumbled over. She wouldn't have me help her dress, and so, of course, it happened! The very first time I hadn't tied her strings for her—for she wore the old-fashioned petticoats to the end, two flannel ones and one white one in winter, and just the two white ones in summer—and down she went. I'd helped her ever since her rheumatism began to make her what she called fumble-fisted.

"I was down in the kitchen when she fell, but of course, I heard the crash, and her calling out as she tumbled.

"Doctor was very grave at first; a young doctor he was then, although we've got quite used to him in these parts by now. He said she'd never work off the effects like younger people can, so, when he put it like that, I said, 'Oh, doctor, you don't mean she won't get over it! Because if you mean that,' I said, 'I really ought to send for her relations.'

"He looked at me very sober at that, and said, 'You'd better send for them, then.' That was on the following Saturday morning.

"With that, he went, and I went straight to the bureau for the address of the Institution where Miss Bella was gone to be housekeeper. The mistress saw me, of course, and she called out from the bed, 'Don't you go writing to that addle-headed niece Tessa of mine! I'm not that far gone, Eliza, that I don't know how you favour her above Bella.'

"'I thought you'd like Miss Bella to know you weren't quite yourself, mum,' I said; and at that she tried to raise herself a bit on the pillow and said, speaking sharp-like, as she always did when she wanted a bit of an argument,

"'What do you mean—quite myself? I'm not in my dotage yet, thank goodness! Don't be a fool, Eliza!'

"'No, mum,' I said, quite meek, for I'd found Miss Bella's address by that time, so I wanted to humour her a bit. But she saw I'd got it. Her eyes were very quick. Still, she said no more, except to tell me to put Care of the Warden on the envelope. It was that, I think, her wanting Miss Bella to come, that made me sure how very bad she was, and made me turn the letter into a telegram, to fetch her as soon as might be."

"And I suppose you sent, also, to the other relatives who came?" said Mrs. Bradley.

"No, that I didn't, madam. I wouldn't have taken the liberty. Not that Mr. Tom wasn't very fond of the mistress, although he wouldn't go in and see her, and as for his wife, well, she was more like an angel of mercy, because she hardly knew the mistress at all, and yet, when it came to the come to, she was far more help in the sickroom than ever poor Miss Bella was. But there! The married women are the handiest (although I'm not married myself), when it comes to looking after things in the house."

"I don't quite understand, then," said Mrs. Bradley, "how Cousin Tom and his wife Muriel happened to be there at that very crucial time."

"You may call it that," said Eliza. "The mistress rallied nicely, and the doctor, you could tell (although, of course, he wouldn't say so, taking to himself all the credit, as young men do), was wonderfully surprised at how she was getting over it. He said she must have had, for her age, a fine constitution, but, myself, I call it more the will-power. She could be very determined, the mistress, when she liked. I say it was her will-power pulled her round. But as for Mr. Tom knowing he ought to be present if it meant the poor mistrees's deathbed, I said to Miss Bella to send a telegram if she thought he ought to be present, and so I suppose she sent it, which I wouldn't venture to do."

"Where exactly in the house did your mistress have her fall?" Mrs. Bradley enquired.

"Why, in the bathroom passage, to be sure."

"Ah, yes, of course. Now what was that about the tin of lobster which Miss Bella brought back with her after she had been out for the afternoon?"

"Crayfish, not lobster, madam. She asked me to have some, but it always gives me such terrible indigestion that I asked her to excuse me, and she ate it all herself for her tea. I remember thinking it was too big a tin for one person, but there! Miss Bella would sooner belly bust than good stuff be lost, as my Yorkshire uncle used to say when we were children and didn't want to finish up our food."

"Splendid!" said Mrs. Bradley, leaving the old servant with the impression that the exclamation referred less to the Yorkshire uncle's proverb than to some secret satisfaction which she felt over something else which had been disclosed to her. "And then, of course, came the extraordinary business of the grated carrot."

"Extraordinary you may rightly call it, madam," assented Eliza immediately. "I can't imagine the mistress calling for such heathenish food. She liked carrot well enough in a stew, but never in my life had I known her eat them raw."

"Raw carrot is good for the system," observed Mrs. Bradley. "Perhaps one of the relatives persuaded her that it would be good for her to eat some."

"Well, Miss Bella actually grated it for her, I think, because she asked me for the nutmeg grater to do it on, but Miss Bella wasn't a vegetarian or any thing of that, that I know of. In fact, I don't see how she could have been, living in the Institution like she did. I'm sure she had no time for fads and fancies there."

"Mr. Tom, perhaps, was a vegetarian?" Mrs. Bradley suggested.

"Mr. Tom? Oh, no, madam. He might hunt ghosts and the like rubbish of that, but he was always one for his cut from the joint and two veg., with anybody. And with him like that, I don't see how his wife could have been anything but a meat-eater too."

"Well, then, who do you suggest is the author of the grated carrot, Miss Hodge?"

"I couldn't say, I'm sure, madam. It seems out of all reason, as I remember saying at the time, that she should have ate such stuff. My poor mistress! I only hope she died easy of it, weak as she was with the fall."

Mrs. Bradley concurred sympathetically in this pious wish, and then added that she supposed Aunt Flora had been a churchwoman.''

"Indeed not, madam, no. Not if she was ever such friends with the vicar. Which she was. Friendly enemies they were, so to speak, both being interested in rock gardens, and the vicar having more knowledge and the mistress more money. Oh, many's the time, as I remember well, that he would call, and they would go over the rock garden plant by plant, and sometimes he would bring her nice little white painted bits of pointed wood with the Latin name on in black, and stoop down and push them into the ground, so we always knew what we were looking at, even if we couldn't pronounce it. But Church! Oh, no. No more than me, and I, I am rather ashamed to say, have never gone anywhere since I was about twenty, although brought up to it by a pious father and mother. I was jilted at twenty by a young fellow. We used to sing out of the same hymnbook, and I never fancied Church after that. But the mistress—if she ever went anywhere those last years—she went to the Congregational at Raddleton in Mr. Tripps' car. One of her uncles was a Congregational minister, or so she told me once."

Mrs. Bradley glanced at the portrait of the gentleman with whiskers, and Eliza, following her glance, exclaimed :

"Oh, no, that wouldn't be him, madam! But he's in the family album if you'd like to have a look. That there was the mistress's husband. That was before I knew her. He died when she was sixty. I've only been with her the last twenty years."

She went to the bureau, unlocked one of the drawers, and, after removing various books and papers, came over to Mrs. Bradley with a black-bound, Biblical-looking volume with thick, gold-edged leaves.

"Don't be alarmed when you first open it, madam. It's got one of those little musical-boxes inside the front cover. Very pretty it plays."

Mrs. Bradley turned back the cover, and a small prickly metal cylinder was disclosed under a sheet of glass. The cylinder revolved, and the thin sweet tune it played was Annie Laurie. When Mrs. Bradley turned the leaves over to look at the photographs, however, the music ceased.

Eliza came over and stood beside her, laying work-roughened fingers on the pages as she talked. Anecdote followed description, and Mrs. Bradley was taken relentlessly from photograph to photograph, and was not allowed to miss one. She did not object at all to this, however (but only begged Eliza to draw up a chair so that they could rest the book on the table and both look at it in comfort), because a great many of the photographs, which were mainly of groups of people, showed either Aunt Flora or one or both of the nieces. Miss Tessa figured more often than Miss Bella, but never, when only one of them was in the group, did the old servant falter, even for so much as a moment, in naming which niece it was. They were, Mrs. Bradley could see, women of widely different appearance, the one large, square and resolute, the other smaller, more timid, more completely feminine.

It took more than an hour to go through the whole of the album, and at the end of it Eliza said how much she had enjoyed herself, and that she supposed she ought to be going. At this, Mrs. Bradley produced two decanters, one containing port and the other sherry, and a tin of biscuits. Possibly under the influence of the port, Eliza suddenly said :

"You know, madam, there was something very funny about that carrot. I don't say Miss Bella exactly forced it on the poor mistress, but I do say it was funny."

"Yes, if she had never eaten such a thing before, it does seem odd, but sick people take these fancies," said Mrs. Bradley.

"But she wasn't all that sick, madam, not at that time. It was when the doctor told us she would recover. And she was perfectly sensible; not wandering in her mind, or anything. And it wasn't like when one might be expecting. I grant you people do have strange fancies then in the eating line. I remember my own sister. Nothing would content her but duck eggs, although she never would touch one at other times. And the job we had to get them for her, us then living in London! Such nasty, indigestible things! I can't abear them myself. I said to her, afterwards, a wonder the baby wasn't born with webbed feet, I said. And the queer thing about that is that he became quite a champion swimmer, madam. So it all goes to show, doesn't it?"

"Yes, indeed," agreed Mrs. Bradley politely.

The next day she called in the doctor because her maid complained of a sore throat. He had heard of Mrs. Bradley and was anxious to make her acquaintance. As there was no servant except the maid who was ill, Mrs. Bradley herself opened the door.

"Ah, Doctor!" she said.

"Ah, Doctor!" he replied. Then, when he had examined the patient and prescribed for her, he remained for a bit to gossip, confessing that the village never troubled him much throughout the summer, and that he had plenty of time on his hands.

"A good many months since I was here," he said. "The last time was when Eliza had an accident with a gardening fork and stuck it into her foot. That would have been two years ago last Easter. And before that—no, I don't believe I was in this house between that time and the previous time when the old lady choked herself with the carrot. I'd only just come here then. Hardly knew a soul in the village. I was called in by Eliza, of course, to see her mistress after a fall she had had. Tripped over, or something. I forget the details. They don't matter, anyway, because she was soon on the highroad. Must have had marvellous recuperative powers, considering her age. Can't think how she got over it as she did. Anyhow, point is, she did get over it. I tell you I was absolutely staggered when she pulled round. Then came the knock-out—that beastly grated carrot."

"Yes, I've been hearing about that from Miss Hodge. I'm her tenant here, of course. She came to tea yesterday, and told me a lot about it. It appears it was a sudden fancy on the part of the patient. She had never eaten raw grated carrot, and seems to have conceived a desire to try it."

"Or someone else conceived the idea for her," said the doctor. Meeting Mrs. Bradley's sharp glance, he smiled, shrugged, and then said, "Oh, yes, I admit it. If I'd had the guts I'd have said the old lady was murdered. Trouble was, I knew I couldn't prove it. No marks of violence; no cause of death beyond the simple one that she had choked herself. And doctors who have much to do with bringing accusations of murder aren't popular, as no doubt you know. No; there was no proof, and I didn't know the people, either. It just seemed like asking for trouble. Funnily enough, the niece knew I wasn't satisfied. Put it to me, point-blank. Proved her own innocence, anyhow; and nobody would be fool enough to suspect old Eliza of murder. Left the married couple. Nothing there to get hold of, so I signed the certificate. I think the majority of people would have done the same. Still, I was a bit taken aback when I read about the arrest of the niece for murdering the cousin."

"Yes?" said Mrs. Bradley.

"So the doctor wasn't satisfied?" she said abruptly to Eliza Hodge when next she saw her.

"Wasn't he? Poor young girl," responded Eliza. "I do hope she isn't sickening for something, madam."

"I meant about the grated carrot," said Mrs. Bradley, even more abruptly; but the old servant's face did not change, except that the concern in her eyes deepened.

"I believe you're right, madam," she agreed. "He asked me, I remember, a whole lot of questions, funny enough."

"What sort of questions do you mean?"

"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.

Chapter Three

COUNSEL'S OPINION

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."

DRAYTON.

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?"

"You mean ...?"

"Supposing, for the sake of the argument, that she did murder him, did he die just where he was found?"

"There was no evidence offered to the contrary by the prosecution, but I see what you mean. There were some very rum stories round the village—probably rot, but you never quite know—about cries and moans and what-not, a day or two after the death, by the way. But I only got that on the side. It didn't come out at the trial."

Mrs. Bradley was silent for about a minute. Then she said :

"It seems to me that Bella Foxley was arrested on insufficient evidence."

"Not if you read what the wife said at the inquest. She practically accused Bella Foxley of the murder, and the coroner's jury brought in a verdict accordingly. She let out—only, of course, it had to be suppressed—that she believed the real motive was that Tom knew Bella had murdered the ancient aunt. He was murdered to shut his mouth, and to put an end to the blackmail. She wanted to shout the same thing at the trial, and it was with the greatest difficulty that she could be persuaded to be quiet about it, because, of course, the aunt's death was all signed up and generally accounted for by the local doctor, and as there was no question of poison or violence, and the death certificate was in order, it was hardly possible to drag it up again. Would have meant an exhumation order and all that, so, although the prosecution knew all about her ideas on the subject, they didn't feel they could possibly admit her theories—because, dash it, that's all they were !—as part of the evidence."

"I see," said Mrs. Bradley. "The wife appears to have adopted a very biased, not to say spiteful, attitude towards Bella. It seems odd, considering that Bella had benefited them since she had come into the money."

"I know. I think she really had got a bee in her bonnet about Bella's having been the murderess, but I believe she thought, too, that there was something between Bella and her husband. Anyway, she was so much incensed against her that one of the solicitors told me the prosecution had grave doubts about calling her at all. They were afraid she would prejudice their case. Juries detest a spiteful witness, and rightly. Spite and truth are never too closely related, even though the one may be based upon the other."

"How true," said Mrs. Bradley, sighing. "And I suppose, whether she murdered her cousin or not, there isn't much doubt that Bella really did murder the aunt?"

Mr. Pratt shrugged and smiled.

"One thing I can tell you," he said. "We were all after her for her story when she was acquitted, but she wouldn't give us anything at all. Said she wanted to get away and be at peace."

"She went to her sister, I suppose."

"Well, no. Some of the reporters lay in wait for her there, but, although the house was fairly persistently haunted, she did not turn up."

"How long after the trial did she commit suicide?"

"Oh, about a year. She took a cottage—two cottages turned into one, it was—not far from the New Forest. The reporters trailed her, but she still held out on them, and after a week or two she ceased to be news, of course, and so they went away. She didn't become news again until she committed suicide, and then she only got a line or two, because most people had forgotten all about her by then. Funnily enough, she had then joined forces with the sister. They were living together when it happened."

"Really?" There was a lengthy pause.

"She may have murdered the cousin, but she hadn't dismembered the body," said Mrs. Bradley, referring to the fact that a fickle populace had so soon forgotten Bella. "That always keeps a murderer's memory green. The public has a passion for horrors; although how they think most murderers can dispose of a body neatly and successfully without dismembering it I can't imagine."

"The haunted house was the only interesting and unusual feature in Bella Foxley's case," said Mr. Pratt. "But, you know, some quite ordinary murders remain in people's memories. Take the case of Jessie M'Lachlan, for instance...."

"The details were inclined to be unsavoury," Mrs. Bradley remarked. "And, of course, from the criminologist's point of view, what a beautiful case! You have not chosen a good example. Two hundred years hence the case of Jessie M'Lachlan will still fascinate, tease, beckon, and defeat the student of crime. It was a case in a million. No, not even that. I believe it is, and always will be, unique."

The conversation turned easily, from this statement, to a discussion of the verdict in the case of Ronald True, and the problem in English law of the criminal lunatic; the eternal query in the case of Madeleine Smith; the vexed question of Thomson and Bywaters; and the talk continued into the small hours.

The next day was Sunday, and at half-past five in the evening the guest departed regretfully for London.

On Monday morning Mrs. Bradley telephoned her son.

"I am eaten up with curiosity," she said. "Can't you find me somebody else who was mixed up with it all?"

"Would one of the jurors do?" Ferdinand inquired. "I think I could get you a perfectly good juror. As a matter of fact, he's my barber."

"Ah, an artist. Most satisfactory. When and where?"

"I'll tell him you're coming, and let you know the arrangements. I suppose your time is your own?"

"Better than that: my time is his," said Mrs. Bradley. She hung up and rang for Henri. Her cook appeared, preceded, in the manner of the Cheshire cat's grin, by an expression of marked anxiety.

"Ze 'addock, madame?" he enquired, spreading his hands disconsolately. "What I 'ave said to ze fishmonger!"

"No, no, Henri, dear child! This has nothing to do with the haddock, which was eaten in its entirety by Mr. Pratt. It is simply this: do you know any hairdressers?"

Henri gazed at her stupefied. Then he began to talk in French and continued to do so for nearly ten minutes.

"Ah," said Mrs. Bradley, who was old-fashioned enough to believe that French is the most civilised language on earth (except, possibly, for Chinese, which she did not know), "then you will agree with me, Henri, when I suggest that a hairdresser must be, of necessity, an artist."

Henri agreed in another burst of idiomatic rhetoric. His employer nodded and dismissed him. Next day Ferdinand rang up to say that his barber, whose name was Sepulle, would be delighted to recall, for her benefit, his experiences at the trial of Bella Foxley.

Mrs. Bradley met the barber in a room at the back of his shop. It was during business hours, but that, said Mr. Sepulle, mattered nothing. He himself had no appointments that afternoon, gentlemen being, on the whole, more prone to the 'drop-in' than to making appointments, and as to serving on a jury, well, appointments or no appointments, that had had to receive attention before anything.

Not that it was altogether a waste of time, he continued; no, he should be sorry for anybody to think he thought that. We all had a duty, and ought to be prepared to face it. No shirking; that was his motto, peace or war. And it had been a very interesting case, although, in his opinion, it had been 'messed up.'"

"Messed up?" Mrs. Bradley inquired.

Well, there was this woman, Bella Foxley, brought in and charged with the wilful murder of her cousin, and pleading 'Not Guilty,' and then a whole lot of disagreement among a lot of doctors, and then all this stuff about Reasonable Doubt from the judge when the evidence had been completed, and then the jury sent out to consider their verdict.

"We were out about an hour and three-quarters," concluded Mr. Sepulle, "arguing the point, with seven of us for an acquittal and five against. I was against."

"Why?" asked Mrs. Bradley. The barber had believed Bella Foxley to be guilty because he did not like her face. That, surely, was not part of the evidence, Mrs. Bradley suggested, but he denied this. Her appearance was a fact, he protested, and, as such, it had importance. Then he added that the police knew what they were doing when they arrested her. To this Mrs. Bradley agreed, but very cautiously. What, in the end, she enquired, caused the five jurors who were against an acquittal to join those seven who were in favour ?

Well, Mr. Sepulle had always believed that there were two ways of looking at everything, and the judge had stressed giving the prisoner the benefit of the doubt. The doubt in his own mind, he confessed, was rooted in the story that the house was naunted. He did not believe in haunted houses, he explained. Why should not the 'ghost' have committed the murder, and, that being so, there was nothing to suggest that the ghost had been Bella Foxley. Then there was the question of the time. That was extremely important. The medical evidence—not contested by the defence—suggested that death had taken place between eleven o'clock at night and two in the morning. Well, this Bella Foxley was supposed to have been visiting her cousin at this haunted house between those times. The wife swore to it.

Now, he, (Mr. Sepulle), was a married man, and what he wanted to know was, was it likely that a wife was going to let some other woman go gallivanting off at that time of night to visit her husband in an empty house? She had done it once— granted. And, funny enough, the chap fell out of the window. But did it seem reasonable to suppose that the wife would let her do it more than once? Was it sensible to suppose the wife would have it? Not on your life it wasn't. Scared of the haunted house she might have been—thin, whining little thing—but she'd be a darn sight more scared of having some other woman larking about in an empty house with her husband, or he (Mr. Sepulle) was no judge of women.

Then, again, would the prisoner really have been such a mutt as to repeat herself like that? And then, that blackmail stuff. That got nowhere with him. When you talked of blackmail you meant really fleecing people—draining them and draining them like a foul leech sucking blood. You didn't mean a little bit of a five pound note here and there from a woman who'd got a sackful of the ready, and was sweet on the chap anyway.

"So there it was," Mr. Sepulle concluded. "I swallowed my doubts and gave her the benefit of them."

"And how did she take the verdict?" asked Mrs. Bradley, somewhat overcome by Mr. Sepulle's piling of Pelion upon Ossa by following his ripe simile with an unimaginable metaphor.

"She said her prayers," replied the barber, "and, somehow, that seemed to me unnatural."

"Interesting," said Mrs. Bradley. "And was she—in spite of the fact that you did not like her appearance—a striking-looking woman? Should you know her anywhere, as the saying is?"

"She was nothing much to look at," the barber replied, "except she was big and heavy enough to have done it. One of those local permanent waves, and not set fit to speak of, but perhaps she'd had no chance to do much with it while she was awaiting her trial. I am not informed as to that, although you'd have thought that anybody would just have gone in and touched it up for such an important occasion."

"Ah!" said Mrs. Bradley, interested in this professional point of view.

"Yes. About a twenty-five to a thirty-shilling touch," the barber continued. "Not that I do ladies now, but I used to be a ladies' hairdresser when my old father was alive. Ours is a family business, you see, and he always did the gentlemen himself, right up to the last. He only retired four years back, and died last year, so I got a good knowledge of the ladies' side of the business, being in it twenty-two years, and also of all the other little extras that go with it, manicure, face-packs—Ah, and that reminds me, speaking of this Bella Foxley. She could have done with a mud-pack or two herself, and some mercolised wax, but that's neither here nor there."

Mrs. Bradley rang up Mr. Pratt and invited him to spend another week-end at the Stone House. Mr. Pratt accepted gracefully, and on the following Friday evening came down from London in time for dinner.

"More Foxleyana?" he inquired, lighting one of the special cigars selected by Ferdinand for his mother's guests (including himself) and then lying back in the very comfortable chair. "What have you been doing since I left you here last time?"

"Talking to my son on the telephone, and to his barber in person," Mrs. Bradley replied. "The barber was on the jury which acquitted Bella Foxley."

"The deuce he was!" said Mr. Pratt, deeply interested. "Did he give any special reason for the acquittal?"

"It appears that the judge was in the prisoner's favour and almost instructed the jury to bring in the verdict which was pronounced as the result of the trial. The barber himself was not at first in favour of acquitting her. He thought her face was against her."

"So it was, but that's not evidence."

"He said it was. After all, he is a student of personal appearance, don't forget."

Mr. Pratt chuckled.

"I've brought a book with me," he said. "It's the reminiscences of Cotter, the prosecuting counsel in the Foxley case. He's got a chapter—half a chapter, actually—about Bella. I thought you might like to read it. I don't agree with all he says, but there's no doubt that if they could only have proved motive (which, he hints, they could have done if only they could have referred to the death of the aunt) they would have got Bella hanged all right."

"So the prosecution had got hold of the grated carrot, had they?" said Mrs. Bradley. "From the report of the inquest, I suppose?"

"Must have been—unless one of their witnesses spilt a few beans in private which they couldn't very well spill in court."

Meanwhile, there was Mr. Cotter's book, and whilst the ex-journalist and Ferdinand played golf on Sunday morning, she spent an interesting time with Catalogue of Crime (a handsome twelve and sixpenny volume), and obtained, she told Ferdinand later, Counsel's opinion upon the case.

The eminent gentleman had intended a popular book, and had attempted to govern his literary style in accordance with this aspiration. His matter, however, was sufficiently interesting to be erected on almost any foundation or to carry almost any superstructure, and she not only read his remarks upon the Foxley case (to which he had given the title Ghaists or Bogles or——), but his reports and remarks upon a dozen other cases, with close interest.

Of Bella Foxley he said: "We were concerned throughout almost the whole of this baffling case with the contradictory testimony of the medical witnesses, and our hands were tied because we could not allow what, in some circumstances, might have been a telling point against the prisoner, namely, the extraordinary death (by natural causes) of her aunt, to be used in evidence. This deprived us of the possibility of showing a more powerful motive for the death of the cousin than that of a determination to be rid of a blackmailer. This motive, had it been put before the jury, must inevitably have influenced them when they came to consider their verdict.

The aunt, a woman approaching eighty years of age, had died as a result of choking herself with some grated carrot prepared for her by the prisoner, who inherited almost the whole of the aunt's fortune—a considerable amount for one who had always earned her own living. The cousin may have had some information about the aunt's death which he did not disclose but for which he died.

Still, these are but speculations. It is likely that the old lady's death was as accidental as the coroner said, but, lacking ability to show what, in the opinion of the jury, could be regarded as a powerful motive, our case was made very difficult from the outset.

The arrest of Bella Foxley was fully justified, however, and the evidence was clear. It was stated that she had visited the 'haunted house' as the newspapers called it, between those times when, according to all the medical witnesses (whether they had been called for the prosecution or for the defence) death could have taken place, and she could give no convincing denial, as it was known she had been there before.

In spite of the fact that there was some slight suggestion of a love affair between her and her cousin, the evidence of the wife went to show that she herself was fully cognisant of this visit, and, apart from the fact that she 'thought Bella was foolish to go,' had made no objection to it, except that she 'thought Bella was rather rough with her, the way she threw her down on the bed.'

The fact of this first visit, which was paid on March 11, was not denied by the prisoner, but she contested the further statement by Mrs. Turney that, later, similar visits had been paid, ending with the one which resulted in the death.

The defence attempted to show that no wife would have countenanced assignments with her husband in an empty house at such an hour, but we replied—I think with justice—that the prospect of monetary gain would overcome all such scruples.

However, to revert to the question of what we felt sure in our minds was the true motive for Thomas Turney's murder, it is reasonable to suppose that, at the inquest upon Mr. Turney, the coroner, an experienced man and a solicitor, had conducted his enquiry properly. There was no doubt, however, that the very evidence which the prosecution could not use at the trial, that is, the wife's evidence referring to the aunt's death, was, if not admitted, at least expressed at the inquest, and, although the coroner had begged the jury there to disregard it, it is perfectly certain that, being sensible men, they did not.

The wife, who had 'turned against' Bella Foxley (to use the prisoner's own words), had let her tongue run away with her at the inquest in a way which was deplorable but undoubtedly interesting, and this tattle, coupled with the evidence of the police doctor (who was also called at the trial), caused the examining magistrates to commit Bella Foxley for trial.

Her counsel (wisely, in my opinion) decided to put her in the box. She made a fairly convincing witness, and stressed that she had gone to the 'haunted house' that first night merely to make certain that the deceased was 'all right.' Her story was that she left as soon as he (speaking out of the window) had convinced her that all was well. Beyond that she refused (either on advice, or from sheer commonsense combined with a strong instinct for self-preservation) to be budged. The case for the defence was, quite simply, that the prisoner's declaration that that was the only night she had gone to the house ought to be believed, and that there never had been any case to go before the jury. From this position they did not permit themselves to be shaken, for my good friend Godfrey Wenham, now Sir Godfrey, who led for the defence, absolutely refused to allow us to jockey him into the position of trying to prove his client's innocence. It was for us to prove guilt, and, in spite of the testimony of our medical witnesses, who demonstrated clearly that the dead man had been attacked and had received a severe blow on the head before he fell from the window, we were unable to do this.

Nevertheless, I believed fully that the prisoner was guilty, and, although we lost, I shall always regard it as one of my most interesting cases. I was further cheered by the announcement to me (in private) by Sir Godfrey that he had not anticipated an acquittal, and thought that they had been very lucky to obtain one.

Such evidence as was offered against the prisoner by the wife of the dead man, Mrs. Muriel Turney, prejudiced the jury by showing too great an animosity. Had it not been entirely necessary to call her in order to establish the time at which Bella Foxley left the inn, and the fact that more than one such visit had been paid, together with the secondary motive for the crime, I should have been in favour of keeping her out of the box, for she was that most difficult and unsatisfactory type of witness, an hysterical subject. This, added to her unconcealed hatred of the prisoner, went sadly against us. Remarks made afterwards proved that, even without the conflicting testimony of the medical witnesses, she probably damaged our case irretrievably.

Another controversial point of which much was made on both sides by the use of those two-edged tools, the expert witnesses, was that of the button found in the dead man's hand. Even now I am not convinced in my own mind which side was right over this. The defence claimed, possibly quite justly, that a man falling from a height instinctively opens his hands to make clutching movements as he falls. This theory, of course, depended upon their premise that the man was alive when he began to fall.

Our own point was that, even if they were right in their 'clutching' theory, the man was already dead when he fell and that, therefore, his hand, clenched round the button from the murderer's coat, would remain closed. This suggestion was weakened by the evidence of one of our own witnesses, the police doctor, who was compelled to disclose that the button was not so much clenched in the dead man's hand as resting lightly on the palm which was 'slightly folded over it.'

The testimony of the youth who found the body was of no help to either side on this point, as he deposed that he 'was frightened to see the poor chap lying there all knocked out,' and went at once for help. Incidentally, we were unfortunate with this witness, too, for he was so flustered that throughout his evidence he often confused the two occasions on which he had found Mr. Turney lying on the path. Help, on both occasions, was not immediately forthcoming, for the superstitious villagers, who have always believed the house to be haunted, refused to go anywhere near it when they heard that someone had been found hurt there, and the only person at first to respond was the village policeman.

An interesting detail contributed by the prisoner herself was that the cardigan from which the button came had been given by her to Mrs. Muriel Turney, and that when she presented it all the buttons were in place, although she agreed that it was not then a new garment but was 'one she did not like the colour of, and Cousin Muriel fancied it.'

Mrs. Turney, on the other hand, while not denying the gift, stated that when Bella Foxley left the inn in such a hurry that night she said, 'Oh, my coat's downstairs; never mind; this will do.' As she said this she snatched up the cardigan from the foot of Mrs. Turney's bed (the women were sharing a room at the inn), and put it on. In reply to a question from the judge, she said that Bella was fully dressed, except that she had not troubled to put on her stockings, and, in reply to a question from the defending counsel, she agreed that both of them had gone to bed previous to Bella Foxley's having left the inn, and that Bella had awakened her by her preparations for going. 'She did not tell me what she intended to do, until I asked her,' the witness continued, 'and it is my belief that she proposed to sneak out without letting me know where she was going. Unfortunately for her, I am a light sleeper, and I woke up and asked her what was the matter. She said she was worried about Tom, and was going to see if he was all light. As Tom had already once fallen out of the window, I could see what she had in mind.'

In reply to another question she said, 'Yes, of course I offered to go with her. It is all nonsense for her to say I was too nervous to go. She said it would take me too long to get ready, and that by then the mischief would have been done. She then pushed me back on the bed.'

She was asked what she thought this remark about mischief meant, and replied that she supposed at the time that it referred either to the hauntings, or to Tom's previous fall. She added that they had had a good deal of trouble with poltergeist phenomena, for which reason she and the prisoner had gone to the inn, being unable to stand the continual nervous strain.

Being asked, further, whether she had ever considered that what she called the poltergeist was more probably some mischievous person who was taking advantage of the fact that the house had a ghostly reputation among the villagers, she replied that she ' had thought of it, of course,' and added, ' We always investigated each house we took of this kind to make sure nobody was playing about. My husband was quite experienced with haunted houses. He made his living by them, and had to be careful.'

Explanation of these statements took up what I regarded as an unnecessary amount of the court's time, but the judge ruled that all was admissible. Sir Godfrey Wenham was justified, of course, in exploiting this witness to the full, for she prejudiced our case with almost every word she spoke, although she was our witness. Incidentally, she blamed me bitterly afterwards for not having secured a conviction.

A curious point which did not come out in court but was told to Bella Foxley's solicitors by the youth Hodge who discovered the body, was that the 'hauntings' were always believed to take the form of a headless huntsman dressed 'like Robin Hood,' but having deer's antlers sprouting from his shoulders—a local variant of the legend of Herne the Hunter, apparently. The poltergeist phenomena were 'a new one on we,' the youth averred. He proved to be an earnest patron of the nearest cinema. He added that cries, groans and a kind of miserable wailing had been heard to come from the haunted house a few days previous to Thomas Turney's death, and that when people heard of the death they 'said there had been warning of it.'

The sequel to the case is well known, but it deserves to be detailed here, if only to show that in prosecuting Bella Foxley for the murder of her cousin the Crown was not entirely in the wrong, despite her acquittal by the jury. Almost a year after her release she was found dead in the village pond which was near the house she had taken in a remote part of Hampshire, far from all her old haunts, and where, presumably, she thought the past could be safely forgotten.

It was explained at the inquest that anonymous letters were the cause of her suicide, but it seems more likely that remorse had at last overtaken her, and that she had expiated her crime in the only manner which was in keeping with what she knew were her just deserts."

Mrs. Bradley shook her head in denial of this conclusion and returned the book to its owner when he and Ferdinand returned from golf. She announced that she was going to solve the mystery of Bella Foxley.

"Oh, Mother! That wretched woman! After all, she's dead and buried. Why don't you leave well alone?" enquired her son.

"So said the ghost of Joan of Arc to George Bernard Shaw," Mrs. Bradley replied, with a chuckle.

Chapter Four

THE WIDOW'S MITE

Who can tell what thief or foe, In the covert of the night, For his prey will work my woe, Or through wicked foul despite? So may I die unredrest, Ere my long love be possest.

CAMPION.

THERE were several avenues of approach (as the politicians might say) and it remained to arrange them in order. Mrs. Bradley gave this arrangement some thought whilst enjoying to the full the delightful early summer and the no less delightful results of it which were to be found in the garden of the Stone House and in the country around Wandles Parva.

At the end of a week she had made her decision, having put before herself in judicial manner all the alternatives.

There was the widow of Cousin Tom, the prejudiced and apparently spiteful Muriel. It was more than probable that she knew more than she had been permitted to disclose either at the inquest or the trial. It would be interesting to find out where she was living—Eliza Hodge might know—and to find out, too, whether, with the passing of time, her views had become modified in any way.

Then there was the sister Tessa, who had inherited all the aunt's money following Bella's barely comprehensible suicide. Mrs. Bradley would have said that the suicide was entirely incomprehensible but for the evidence of the diary which revealed its author as anti-social, introverted and somewhat defeatist by nature. Possibly the sister could throw more light upon these idiosyncrasies.

There remained the Institution. There Bella had worked as housekeeper and she had hated it with great intensity. Fortunately Mrs. Bradley was in a position to re-introduce herself there without being under the necessity to state her real errand.

She decided to take Muriel first. Her behaviour at the inquest and the trial scarcely accorded with the somewhat mouse-like character which Bella had given her in the diary, but that was not necessarily surprising. Bella, possibly, had never seen her roused. And yet—hadn't she?

Before she tackled Muriel, however, Mrs. Bradley decided to take a look at another factor in the case, one with a personality, possibly, of its own; to wit, the haunted house.

She drove first to the inn at which Bella and Muriel had lodged. It was an old place pleasingly reconditioned, and George drove in through an ancient gatehouse arch and drew up in a gravelled courtyard.

Mrs. Bradley, bidding George put the car up and go and get himself a drink, went into the lounge and ordered a cocktail which she did not really want. While it was being brought, she looked about her.

The lounge was an oak-beamed, low-ceilinged room with the huge open fireplace of the original house and the comfortable armchairs and handy little tables of modernity. The order for the cocktail had been taken by a young girl who had come out from behind the reception desk, and who proved to be the daughter of the house. As she did not look more than eighteen it was unlikely, Mrs. Bradley thought, that she retained any memory of guests who had been at the inn six years before. The drink was brought by a waitress, who said pleasantly :

"Taking lunch here, madam?"

"Yes," said Mrs. Bradley.

"Straight through the door at the back, madam. Only I thought I'd ask, because we shall fill up in a few minutes, and I could see you get a good table."

Lunch offered no opportunity for the kind of conversation Mrs. Bradley had in mind, so when she received her cocktail she scribbled a note which she gave to the waitress to deliver to George in the bar. It was to tell him to get his lunch, and take the car back to Wandles for a suitcase. She proposed to spend at least one night, possibly two, at the inn, to make certain of the local geography before she interviewed Muriel, whose address, so far, she did not know.

After she had had lunch, a short walk, described by the girl who was now back at the reception desk, brought her to the haunted house. The owner of the house, with commendable commonsense, had decided to commercialise its reputation following the acquittal of Bella Foxley for the murder, and it was with little surprise and a certain amount of amusement that Mrs. Bradley found that she could enter the house upon payment of a shilling, and that in return for her entrance fee she was to be escorted round the building by an old man who pointed out the spot where the body had been found, the window from which it had fallen, the Haunted Walk (a picturesque addition, Mrs. Bradley surmised, to what had previously been known about the hauntings) and the Cold Room (further embellishment of an old tale?), where, sure enough, it was possible to feel a draught of air which came through some crack impossible to perceive in the dim light of the landing.

"Is that all?" she asked, when this conducted tour was over, and she found herself back at the front door.

"There's nothing else, without you can get a special permit, like they ghost-hunting gentlemen have that comes here sometimes in the summer," the old man answered.

"And from whom do I get such a permit? You see, I used to know something of the people who lived here. I was abroad at the time the thing happened, but it was a great shock to me to hear of the gentleman's sudden death."

"Ah, sudden it was, to be sure," the old man answered. "A kind, good gentleman, too. I remember him well. But murdered? Not unless the spirits did him in. Ah, that's what it must have been!" He chuckled, and then added, to Mrs. Bradley's gratification :

"Not as we heard much of the hauntings before he came here, mind you, though there was plenty to swear to the moanin' and 'owling that set up just after he died, and before it, too."

"Oh, but I understood that the house was haunted by a horned huntsman," said Mrs. Bradley. "Somebody with no head."

"Rubbage," said the old man sturdily. "Village chatter. Though, mind, it be a very old 'ouse; older, a sight, than what you can see of it now."

"But it had been empty for a long time, surely?"

"Ah, but that was on account of the damp. Do what you would, that damp would come up, and where it rises from is more than I can tell you, for there ain't no water near, except for a well, but I never 'eard that was the trouble."

"Does the water still come up?"

"Ah, that it do, but not this time of the year. Come October, though, if we gets any rain, the water will be marking all those walls."

"What a pity. Can nothing be done?"

"I don't know, I'm sure. One house I was caretaker of, well, you could account for that being damp. Built over a river, that one was, on account the first owner was a little bit touched, it seems"—he tapped his forehead—"and said a witch was after him but that she wouldn't cross water—well, not running water. But there is nothing of that sort here. Nobbut this yere silly tale about a man with no head."

"I wish I could find out when the stories of the hauntings first began," said Mrs. Bradley.

"Oh, that would have been donkeys' years ago, before I come here to live, and that were fifty year, nigh on. But when it comes to crockery and furniture thrown about, and writing on the walls, like what that Mr. Turney, him that fell out of window, used to say, well, I dunno, I'm sure. And that reminds me. Would you like to see the writing on the walls? Cost you another threepence. I'd almost forgot. Funny, too, because most of 'em wants to see it."

Mrs. Bradley produced the threepence and received a second printed ticket. The whole thing was run on very businesslike lines, she perceived. She wondered who the owner might be, and thought she might as well enquire. The reply she received surprised her.

"Why, the lady that got all the money. The sister of the one that was tried for the murder and afterwards drownded herself. She bought the house, and left it to her sister in the will—or, anyway, left it."

"Oh? Miss Tessa Foxley owns it?"

"Foxley. That's the name."

"And she pays you your wages?"

"Ah."

"Why doesn't she allow the whole of the house to be inspected? Why do you keep some of the rooms shut up?"

"Nothing of interest in 'em, that's the reason. But you can see 'em, if you have a mind. I got no orders about 'em either way. I keep 'em locked because it makes less cleaning, and that's the truth. Folks don't often complain. They reckon they've had their money's worth with what we calls the Death Room and the Death Spot and the Cold Room and the Haunted Walk. All them bits I've showed you already, see? Then generally the visitors haven't got no time to look at any more. It's all this rushing about with motors does it. They've just got time to see the Abbey Church and the ruins and this house, you see, in the afternoon, because they have to start rushing their-selves back to London, and there it is. Americans is worse than the English. Never knew such people to hustle you off your feet. And always ask for a Brochure, and taking either no interest at all in what you tell them or else too much, and asking you all kinds of things you don't know."

"Is there such a thing?" asked Mrs. Bradley, referring to the pamphlet. "I myself should like a copy if there is."

"Another sixpence. 'Tain't worth it. Keep your money is my advice."

"If it happens to have a plan of the house, it is what I want."

"Oh, ah, yes, it has got that."

"With the various places marked?"

"Oh, ah. Here it is. You can have a look at it, and then, if you don't want to buy it, you can give it me back, so be you haven't made it dirty. I generally charges a penny a look, but you needn't pay it, seeing you takes an interest."

"I'll buy it," said Mrs. Bradley firmly. "And I want Miss Foxley's address."

At dinner that night she had the booklet open upon the table, and affected to study it while she was drinking her soup. The waitress, whose custom it was to converse with the patrons if they were staying in the house, bent over it too, and observed, as she took up Mrs. Bradley's plate :

"Been to take a look at the haunted house? Waste of money, isn't it, madam? I went once, with my young man, when it was first opened to the public, and I can't say it was much of a thrill. I went to see Boris Karloff that same evening, and, believe me, there wasn't no comparison."

"No, I suppose not," said Mrs. Bradley. When the plates next were changed and she was being helped to fruit pie and custard, she said :

"Are you a native of these parts?"

"Well, yes, I am, really," the girl answered, "though I was in London for three or four years and lost the talk. They think you're kind of funny in London if you talk like you came from a village, so I picked up their way instead. Have to keep your end up, don't you, madam, if you want to get on in the world?"

Mrs. Bradley said that she supposed so, and then asked whether the house had had its present reputation very long.

"Well, I never heard much about it when I was little," said the girl. "It was always a coach and horses then, and it didn't do anything except go along the road that turns off just above the house to the right. I don't know whether you noticed? But I did hear that what is now part of the garden did used to be the road, till they brought it round a bit to make a less dangerous corner by them crossroads."

"How long has the house been there?"

"Oh, years and years, madam."

Mrs. Bradley waited for the introduction of the cheese course before continuing the talk. Then she said :

"The house was there, then, during your early childhood?"

"Oh, yes, madam. My grandmother remembers the alterations being made. She says there's been a house there hundreds and hundreds of years, only now it's been so altered and rebuilt and that, you'd hardly see the old bits unless you were something in the building line yourself."

Mrs. Bradley spread out her plan again and looked at it while she ate cheese and biscuit. She was still looking at it while she had her coffee. She took it upstairs with her when she went to bed, and placed it on the bedside table so that she could look at it again in the morning.

She was up early next day, but she did not go in immediately to breakfast. She walked up the village street and out on the common, and returned to call in at the Post Office, which opened at nine o'clock. She bought some stamps and then a postal order for her grandson (who liked to have the pleasure of exchanging postal orders for money), and, finding the village postmistress inclined for conversation, remarked upon the tragedy of the haunted house, observed that she had visited the house, and then added that she had once known the people slightly and had often wanted to write to the widow, but had been in America at the time of the husband's death. After her return to England, she had lost track of 'poor Muriel,' she remarked.

This slightly mendacious narrative had the desired effect. The widow, it appeared, had left at the Post Office an address to which letters could be forwarded, and although (as the postmistress painstakingly explained) it was some years now since any letters had had to be sent on, the address, no doubt, was still 'in the book.' The book was produced, and the address triumphantly dictated.

"Although, of course, she may have moved again," said the postmistress.

Mrs. Bradley returned to the inn with a hearty appetite for breakfast. When she had finished she walked over to the haunted house. This time it was not the old man but his daughter who showed her round.

"I was wondering," said Mrs. Bradley, as she paid her threepence to see the writing on the wall, "whether any of the people who go in for that kind of thing ever hold séances here. I rather gathered from your father that they did."

"Oh, yes, we've had half a dozen or more," replied the woman. "They have to get special permission, and they generally hold them in the Death Room, but I never heard that anything much ever came of it."

"I thought some very strange things used to happen before the last owner's death? At any rate, I should like to make some experiments myself," said Mrs. Bradley. "Is it very expensive?"

"I couldn't say, I'm sure. Folks from London do seem to have plenty of money to throw about, certainly, especially them that's got a hobby-horse, as you might call it. But you'll have to write to Miss Foxley. She does all the fixing herself. She don't leave it to we."

"When did the last séance take place? Do you happen to know?"

"Oh, less than three months ago, I think. Yes, it was well after Christmas. There's one gentleman has been twice. He's got some notion the ghosts might be more active, like, at some parts of the year than what they might be at others. Sounds cranky to me, but there! If you've got time on your hands and money to spend, I suppose it's an innocent kind of an amusement. Anyway, he was very unlucky both times, and said he couldn't understand it."

"Have you yourself ever noticed anything queer about the house?"

"What, me! I should think I was going off my onion if I did. Besides, you wouldn't find me caretaking here, not me, if anything turned up to frit me. Although they do say there was funny things seen and heard after the poor gentleman's death."

"You don't believe in ghosts?"

"I should think not, indeed! I wonder what parson would say! I'm his cook when I'm not here with Dad."

"Were you living in the village at the time when the tenant was killed?"

"No. I was in service in Warwickshire."

"Was the house said to be haunted when you were a child?"

"Oh, yes. Nobody much liked to come by at night on account of a coach or something. I never heard the rights of the tale, and I never met anybody who could say they had ever seen the coach. I don't hold with such truck. It's ungodly."

"Did you never hear of the ghost of the huntsman, a headless man with horns?"

"Oh, yes. But that's only what they frighten the little 'uns with round here."

"And you don't mind taking people's money to show them over a haunted house which isn't haunted?" Mrs. Bradley enquired.

The woman showed no ill-feeling over the question. She merely replied, with indifference :

"It isn't my job; it's my Dad's. I only come along on my afternoon off to keep him company, or let him go off for his pint. I suppose people can please themselves whether they come here or not. If they like to be fools and throw away their money for nothing, it isn't my business to stop them, and most of 'em seem to be interested. Have you seen all you want in here? Because I'm bound to lock the door up again before we go."

"I should like to see the Haunted Walk again," said Mrs. Bradley. "I noticed a summerhouse there. How long has that been built?"

"Oh, before the new owner bought the house."

"Yes. I wonder why she bought it?"

"She never bought it. It was left her. Come to think of it, there was some tale she wanted to live in it in memory of her sister that was accused of the murder, but it turned out to be too damp, so she hit on this idea of getting her money back, but she don't see much return, with Dad's wages to be paid all the time."

"Did she live in it at all, do you know?"

"No, not that I know of. No, I'm sure she never did. She never even came to see it when she engaged Dad to look after it, nor have him go there to see her. Just got his character from the vicar."

"Your father didn't know her at all, then, before that?"

"No, he'd never seen this one. He'd seen the one that was had up for the murder, of course. She was about here quite a bit. But from this one he even gets his wages by post. He gets paid by the quarter, though I don't know that it's any odds to anybody."

"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."