When Last I Died

"I am going to rent a cottage in the village where Tessa Foxley was drowned," Mrs. Bradley replied. "There may be, as you suggest, a more powerful motive for that impersonation than the desire to put an end to anonymous letters, and there may be a motive for the murder of the boys which has no connection whatsoever with the death of Cousin Tom or else a different connection from any which we visualized at first. I had better interview the prisoner, I think, before I go to Pond. Can you arrange that for me?"

"I don't know that she'll agree to have you visit her," replied Ferdinand.

"I know what you mean," said Mrs. Bradley, with her harsh cackle. "I did my best to get her hanged, you think. Well, let me know as soon as I can get permission to visit her."

She had few questions to ask Bella Foxley when they met. The prisoner was as uncommunicative as when they had conversed at her toll-house in Devon, so perhaps it was well that Mrs. Bradley was prepared to be brief.

"Don't worry. They'll probably get me next time," Bella announced, as soon as she was seated opposite the visitor. "What do you want?"

"Answers to a question or so," Mrs. Bradley replied, "and I will guarantee not to use what you tell me in a manner detrimental to your interests."

"Perhaps you think the gallows might serve my interests best?" said Bella with an ugly look and an even uglier laugh. Mrs. Bradley shrugged, and then, fixing her bright black eyes on the prisoner, looked at her expectantly.

"For my own satisfaction, if for no other reason, I should like to establish the truth," she said. "Now, Miss Foxley: suppose, instead of being charged with the murder of those two boys, you were charged with the murder of your sister, Miss Tessa Foxiey?"

Bella half-smiled. Mrs. Bradley waited. Her clients knew that expression of patient benevolence. It seemed to have hypnotic powers. She exercised them now upon Bella, and, to her relief, although not altogether to her surprise, the prisoner spoke almost good-humouredly.

"Poor Tessa! Of course, as you've guessed, she was mental. That's why she was taken advantage of. That's one of the reasons why I hate men. I had her to live with me after the other trial because I had nobody else, and I thought I ought to keep an eye on her as I was letting her have half the money, and—I suppose I might as well confess it and get it off my conscience—I was hoping something would happen, and it did. She was the suicide kind, I suppose. My aim was to assume her identity if anything happened to her. I suggested to her we should call each other by nicknames, and I always told people—not that we got to know many; I saw to that all right—that she was Bella and I was Tessa Foxley.

"People didn't seem to suspect anything; I suppose they thought she was what people were like when they'd been acquitted of murder.

"Anyway, one afternoon I got to her in time to pull her head out of the rainwater butt. Silly of me, because it would have done the trick all right, but, somehow, you can't watch people die. Anyway, next time she did it in the village pond, and it was all up with her by the time she was discovered."

"And you had an alibi, I believe, for the time of her death?" said Mrs. Bradley in very friendly tones.

"Yes. Good enough for the coroner. I thought I told you. I had been let in for giving a talk to the Mothers' Meeting. Nice fellow, the vicar. Very good to both of us. Glad to oblige him."

"What made you so anxious to assume your sister's identity?" asked Mrs. Bradley. Bella gave her a curious look, and then replied off-handedly:

"Oh, I don't know, you know. I'suppose I wanted a chance to forget all about the trial and all the unpleasantness. Still, I don't seem to have got far with it, do I?"

"It couldn't do any harm to tell me the truth, you know." Mrs. Bradley suggested. "If you wanted to begin life afresh, as they say, after the trial, why couldn't you have adopted an entirely new name? After all, the names Tessa Foxley and Bella Foxley are not so extremely unlike that you would have been able to hide yourself much behind your sister's name—except to people who knew you! Come, Miss Foxley, be reasonable."

But Bella shook her head, and her heavy face set obstinately.

"It's neither here nor there," she answered. "I reckon I've had this coming to me all my life. I haven't had a happy life, you know."

"But I suggest to you that you had a better reason than the one you've given me for assuming your sister's name," Mrs. Bradley persisted. "You knew those boys were dead."

"Forget it," said Bella tersely; and as Mrs. Bradley had no more questions to put she took her leave.

"Come again," said the prisoner in tones more genuine and less sardonic than Mrs. Bradley had expected. "It's something to talk to somebody a bit intelligent."

"Thank you," said Mrs. Bradley. "I have two or three more questions I want to put to you, and I shall be glad of an opportunity."

"Pleasure!" responded the prisoner, but more in good-humour than contempt.