When Last I Died

Mrs. Bradley listened to this artless tale with deep attention, and then resumed her own theme along the lines laid down by Miss Hodge.

"In Miss Bella's time I doubt whether they would have had a chance to help with the cooking," she observed. "After all, you are a good enough cook, I suppose, to be able to give the right sort of help to amateurs, but a poor cook like Miss Bella ..."

"Miss Bella? She could cook something lovely, madam!"

"I thought that was Miss Tessa," said Mrs. Bradley.

"Oh, no, madam. Miss Bella had got all her diplomas and certificates. There wasn't anything she couldn't cook. Miss Tessa stopped short at toffee, and, it might be, boiling a potato, although even then you might get either potato soup or potato marbles, just according to how they happened to turn out. You'd have thought she was the cook, she was that nice, fair, clear colouring and complexion, but Miss Bella, for all her spotty face, was the one. She used to say she'd have got on better in service as a private cook than at anything, only it seemed a waste of her other education."

"But, surely," said Mrs. Bradley, "the vicar in the village where she was living after her trial couldn't have been mistaken? This is the one he declared was the cook, and this he also declared was Miss Tessa."

She produced the snapshot and also the enlargement of it. Eliza Hodge wiped her fingers upon her apron and took the photographs. Then she turned them over, but Mrs. Bradley had not given her the one which carried the vicar's signature.

"He must have got it quite wrong, madam," she said. "This is Miss Bella to the life, except she looks that much older. Did she age all that much at the trial, madam?"

"No, not at the trial," said Mrs. Bradley. "Would you be prepared to declare on oath that that is a photograph of Miss Bella?"

"On oath, madam? In court, do you mean? I should think we've had enough of courts, what with two of those dreadful inquests, and then Miss Bella's trial."

"Well, I mean, are you perfectly certain it is a photograph of Miss Bella? Are you so certain that you could not be persuaded otherwise, even by someone really very clever at persuading people? A lawyer, let us say."

"Why, of course I am," said the old servant stoutly.

"And no one could get you to declare that it was Miss Tessa?"

"It's nothing in the world like Miss Tessa. Have you forgot them photos in the album up at the house?"

"No. That's why I thought the vicar must be mistaken," said Mrs. Bradley. "Did Miss Bella and Miss Tessa have nicknames for one another, do you know?"

"Not that I know of. Short names, Bell and Tess, when they were younger, before Miss Tessa fell out with the mistress, like, and cut herself out of the money."

"They didn't call one another Flossie and Dossie?"

"Good gracious, no, madam! Sounds more like a couple of barmaids, or something not even respectable!"

Mrs. Bradley agreed, and, to her horror, dreamed about rainwater butts.

Chapter Seven

THE HAUNTED HOUSE

"Now the wasted brands do glow, Whilst the screech-owl, screeching loud, Puts the wretch that lies in woe In remembrance of a shroud. Now it is the time of night That the graves all gaping wide, Every one lets forth his sprite, In the church-way paths to glide...."

SHAKESPEARE.

THREE days later Mrs. Bradley, to her surprise, received a letter from Miss Foxley advising her that she might rent the house for a week, if she so desired, but not for longer as 'it kept other visitors away.'

Mrs. Bradley wrote off a brief acceptance, and as the amount of the rent was mentioned she enclosed it, received a formal receipt by return of post, telephoned a number of interested people including her son Ferdinand and Mr. Pratt, and took up her week's tenancy of the haunted house on the following Saturday afternoon.

Altogether she had ten people in the house, but three of them were not at first seen except by Mrs. Bradley herself and by one another.