When Last I Died

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

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

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

"Oh, I haven't, no. I did write to say I would attend the funeral if she wished it, but also said it would probably be painful to me to pay my respects, even my last ones, to Bella. Since then I have not been invited, and, of course, as I am only a relative by marriage, I should not dream of visiting her without an invitation, not even to drop in. I think in-laws make mistakes about that kind of thing. After all, they can't expect to be treated quite like the family, can they? Especially when their husband, like poor Tom, isn't there to go with them or anything."

Mrs. Bradley said that she quite understood, and that she would take very great care of the typescript. She returned to her own house at Wandles Parva, and made diligent comparison of Cousin Tom's notes with Bella's diary, bearing in mind the various types of poltergeist activity which, according to Muriel, had existed in the house. If these had been faked, had Cousin Tom faked them? Had Bella? Tom, apparently, was a fraud, yet the haunted house had a queer sort of reputation.

Again, there was the story that Tom had rented Hazy. Had Bella Foxley nerve enough to perform in that way in a house which had (Mrs. Bradley had read) a very impressive record of supposedly psychic occurrences? For Hazy had been 'written up ' in most of the journals devoted to ghosts and ghost-hunting. True, Bella was probably a murderer, but murderers sometimes suffer from nerves, and many of them are supremely superstitious. Perhaps there had been no manufactured evidence at Hazy. Perhaps it had frightened Cousin Tom.

This part of the business seemed insoluble without more evidence. Mrs. Bradley got out the diary again, and settled down to minute comparisons of facts and dates. With the knowledge she had gained since the case had first intrigued her curiosity, she could not avoid the conclusion that the diary, although it could not be said to incriminate Bella Foxley, did make very plain certain tendencies of thought, and did hint with horrid clarity at certain courses of action which made its genuineness even more suspect than she had supposed when first she read it.

Comparison with the copy of Cousin Tom's journal which was typewritten throughout—even the infrequent and neat corrections having been made on the typewriter—revealed another curious fact. Wherever the diary and the journal covered the same points, they tallied with one another, and the odd thing about this was that the noticeable errors of fact in the diary— errors of fact over which Bella Foxley ought to have made no errors—were repeated in Tom's journal.

Mrs. Bradley returned to her own notes upon the subject, written after she had read the diary and had questioned Eliza Hodge. Of course, the old servant might have forgotten, or deliberately lied about, some of the occurrences which took place about the time of the old lady's death, but, even allowing for this, the extraordinary similarity between the diary and the journal led to an obvious conclusion.

Of course, certain facts in each might be expected to tally; the cause of death, for instance, and the doctor's doubts and fears.

As for the poltergeist phenomena, they also might be expected to reveal themselves similarly to two careful and experienced observers. The fact that they had occurred, according to Cousin Tom's journal, exactly as the diary stated, was not a reason for surprise. Tom's entry for the nineteenth of February, for instance, was :

"Bella has turned up here, and may check the run of phenomena. This would be a great pity, as we have been getting on so wonderfully well until to-day, when there has been nothing much. I talked to Muriel about it, and I am afraid we did not see eye to eye. I believe she is thoroughly alarmed, and would be glad of an end to the manifestations, but John and Elvey were delighted, especially with the music."

"Dear Muriel is sometimes a little nervous about the more noisy manifestations, and I have had to take a strong line with her. All the same, we cannot turn Bella away. The night has been better than the day. Slippered or naked feet have walked past all the doors. This is encouraging, but I have advised the women to keep the doors locked. They think it is a safety measure, but I am interested to know whether this kind can be barred out."

The entry for February 22 also bore out the diary.