When Last I Died

"But this won't help to get the wicked woman hanged!"

"I'm afraid not, no. You see, the diary mentions the fall, and then Bella announces that she went to the house to see whether she could discover any explanation of it, but, most tantalisingly, she leaves out any account of this visit and merely reports, the next day, that your husband had decided to give up the house as too dangerous. He wasn't in the house when he made that decision, was he?"

"I can't remember whether he was or not."

"I deduced he could not have been, because she goes on, after a mention of other matters, to state that three gentlemen and two ladies interested in psychical research came to the house and asked to be shown over it. She then states that, as she felt sure your husband 'would have wished it'—indicating that he was not able to be consulted on the matter—she herself showed them over the house. You, I suppose, Mrs. Turney, would have been with your husband at the inn?"

"I suppose so. Yes, of course. But I feel so dim and hazy. You see, poor Tom being killed so soon after ..."

"Quite so. Yes, I see. So Bella had the house to herself except for those strangers?"

"Well, yes, she would have had, except for the boys, wouldn't she?"

"Well that's the point. Were the boys there then?"

"Well, unless she'd murdered them by that time."

"But she hadn't. You see, if, as we think, the boys pushed Mr. Turney out of the window—as we have agreed they must have done, haven't we? ..."

"Yes, I suppose we have, but ..."

"And if, when these ladies and gentlemen came to see the haunted house, they had no manifestations of any kind ..."

"Didn't they?"

"Apparently they did not. Well, what does that tell us about the boys?"

"But ..."

"I know. They couldn't have starved to death in two days. In fact, they were alive when Bella was arrested."

"I don't know what you're trying to get me to say," said Muriel. "I can't explain it, if that's what you mean. Either these people didn't come, or else Bella was lying. I don't see why we should have to believe what she put down in that diary."

"Curiously enough, neither do I," said Mrs. Bradley. Muriel looked at her. There was fear, unmistakable, on the shallow little face. Mrs. Bradley nodded, slowly and rhythmically, still keeping her eyes fixed on those of her victim. Muriel was like someone in contact with electricity—-writhing, yet unable to drag herself away.

"You know what caused the jury to fail to agree?" said Mrs. Bradley at last.

"Oh, I know everybody on our side blamed me," said Muriel, recovering herself a little. "But, after all, I wasn't any worse than that half-baked sailor. How could you expect he would be believed! You must have known that his boyhood would tell against him. Nobody likes evidence from criminals."

"No, I agree about that. I had weighed that up very carefully, I assure you, before I suggested that he should be sought for to give evidence at all at the trial."

"There's one thing I ought to ask you," said Muriel, abandoning the subject of Larry. "Do I have to go into that awful witness box again? Because I don't believe I can do it."

" Needs must, when the devil drives, I should imagine," said Mrs. Bradley, with brisk, assured unkindness. Muriel looked at her, puzzled and slightly annoyed by these extraordinary tactics.

"What did you mean about love being all on one side?" she enquired in a voice of mingled curiosity and alarm.

"Oh, that!" said Mrs. Bradley. "That brings me back to my discrepancy, I believe. It's like trying to find a mistake in a column of figures. Ten to one you add it up again incorrectly, making the same mistake as you had made before. Have you ever done that?"

"Yes," said Muriel, looking pallid." But what's this all got to do with me?"

"What indeed?" said Mrs. Bradley with an unpleasant leer. "What, indeed? Well, good-bye, Mrs. Turney. I shall hope to see you again before the new trial."

"But you must tell me ... You must tell me what to expect," said Muriel wildly.

"Blessed is he that expecteth nothing," quoted Mrs. Bradley solemnly, "for he shall be gloriously surprised! And I shall be surprised," she added, as though to herself, "if I do not find the last clue I want in the haunted house."

"You are going there again?"

"To-night."

"Alone?"

"Well, I don't suppose there will be any point in taking Bella Foxley's lawyer with me, or the gentleman who led for the prosecution at the trial. Were you, by any chance, offering to come?"

"Me? Oh, I couldn't! As I told you before, my nerves simply wouldn't stand it."

"Yes, you did tell me, and I fully sympathise. You remember by the way, what you said about the poltergeist?"

"What—what do you mean?"

"Don't you remember telling me that you were always afraid that something inexplicable would happen in that house? I believe you used the expression 'playing with fire.' Do you believe that something outside human agency can function as a result of human interference with the province of the immaterial?"