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."

"So I understand," said Mrs. Bradley. But, wishing to settle first the very vexed question of the poltergeist, she added, "I have read that cases have been known of poltergeist phenomena commencing in a place where they have been unknown up to that time, on the occasion of an adolescent coining to live in the house. There is that strange but authentic case of the Rumanian girl Eleonore Zugun, in 1926, for instance. You remember that she came to live with the Countess Wassilko-Serecki, who had heard of her extraordinary powers, and that whilst she was with the Countess the most astonishing amount of poltergeist activity took place, ornaments and toys flying over partitions and from room to room, pins and needles burying themselves in the girl's flesh, hairbrushes and stilettos dropping, apparently from nowhere, and all that kind of thing."

"Ah," said Miss Biddle, "yes. I grant you anything you like about Eleonore Zugun. A most fascinating case. But there was no question of any adolescent being present in our haunted house. There was nobody but the tenant, Mr. Turney, his wife, and that unfortunate Miss Foxley. They were the only people living there while the poltergeist was active. It was all most unaccountable. But it all ceased soon after Mr. Turney's death."

"Do you happen to know for certain when the manifestations began?"

"Yes, I do. At least, let me try to be quite accurate, because I can see that there is something behind all this, dear Mrs. Bradley. You are more interested in Bella Foxley than in psychical research, I am sure."

With this shrewd comment, she went to a small éscritoire, opened it, and produced a leather-bound notebook.

"I call it my common-place book," she remarked. "I put down in it all the really interesting things that happen, with the dates. I am hoping I shall have something to publish one day. Now, let me see...."

She turned over the pages. Mrs. Bradley watched anxiously.

"Here we are," said Miss Biddle. "I knew I had noted it down. Six years ago, wasn't it? And the first date I have for the poltergeist is January 12th. I put: So the haunted house really is haunted! Samuel Kindred was passing the house at sunset yesterday, and heard the noise of loud quarrelling. As the voices were speaking 'like Londoners' he stopped to investigate. There was nothing to be seen, but he could hear loud thumpings and bumpings which seemed to come from the back of the house. He knew the house was supposed to be empty, so he went round to the window and peered in. The glass was dusty, however, and he could see nothing. Nevertheless, he did not think there was anybody there. It being none of his business, as he afterwards said, he went on his way.

"Next day, being Saturday, two or three of the school-children came into the garden of the haunted house to play hide-and-seek among the shrubs and trees. They became frightened, however, by loud, heavy noises inside the house, and one child declared that she had seen a ghost at one of the upstairs windows.

"As Samuel Kindred's story was public-house gossip by this time, four or five men armed with sticks, accompanied by Farmer Stokes with a shot-gun, went to the house on Saturday evening, having had a drink at the public-house first, to see what they could find. There was nothing to be seen, but the heavy noises were heard, and a half-brick, which came sailing through the air, struck one of the men on the shoulder and bruised him badly. What they described as 'mad bellows and screeches' of laughter followed, and in the end they broke a downstairs window and entered the house. As soon as they were in the hall, some furniture near them began to move about in an unaccountable manner, and they retreated, telling each other lurid tales of traditional hauntings. Farmer Stokes loosed off his gun, and the result was a perfect cascade of small articles down the stairs. He proposed to mount the stairs, but finding that the others had all deserted him, he gave up the idea and followed them back to the road.

"There the whole group waited for about twenty minutes, but he could not persuade the others to return with him to the house. Next day, after Evensong, my dear father, with Farmer Stokes, Mr. Morant from the Hall, Mr. Carter and old Everett, the shoemaker, went to the haunted house, but found it perfectly quiet. They climbed in, but the furniture was all in place, and everything seemed to be in order.

"The moment they turned their backs on the house, however, and were walking down the weed-grown drive towards the road, the most unearthly pandemonium broke out behind them. They hastened back, but all was quiet again, and nothing found out of its place."

"Amazing," said Mrs. Bradley.

"Was it not?" said Miss Biddle, very much pleased by this reception of her account of the hauntings.

"And how long after that was it that the news of the poltergeist became general? In other words, what made Mr. Turney decide to rent the house in order to study the hauntings?" Mrs. Bradley enquired.

"Now it is very interesting and curious that you should ask that," replied Miss Biddle. "He must have had hearsay of it, for nothing had appeared in the papers then. All the same, it was not more than three or four days after that Sunday that we heard the house had the To Let board taken down, and that the owner, who was living at Torquay, had told old Joe to go in and cut the grass and tidy up the borders. Then, funnily enough, the To Let board went up again, but only for about ten days."

"And did Joe experience anything strange whilst he was attending to the garden?"

"Nothing at all, except that he declared he kept hearing voices which seemed to come up from his feet."

"Is Joe the present caretaker?"

"Oh, no. He's an almost witless old fellow who lives in that yellow cottage by the crossroads."

"I wonder how much he remembers about it?" said Mrs. Bradley thoughtfully.

"I'm afraid he's not to be depended upon," said Miss Biddle. "He's given to inventing his information. Nobody would have believed him about the voices if it could have been proved that he'd heard about the poltergeist. But it really didn't seem as though he had heard, so some people thought there might be something in his queer tale."

"I agree with them," said Mrs. Bradley. "Voices from under his feet ... a house with foundations very much older than the present superstructure ... a house so damp that the water marks the walls ... bellows and screeches of laughter ... poltergeist activity ... very interesting. Very interesting indeed."

Muriel rented a room. This fact she referred to at once. Mrs. Bradley imagined it was her way of introducing herself. It was a large room on the first floor of the house and at the front, and its only disadvantages, from her point of view, continued Muriel, were, first, that it had a bedroom fireplace (which she intended to have replaced by a 'proper one' as soon as she had enough money, provided that she could get 'the people downstairs' to agree), and, second, that it was not two rooms.

"I tried to get them to throw in the box-room," she explained, when the visitor was seated, "but they wouldn't part with it. Of course, they are very untidy, so I dare say they feel they must have somewhere to poke all the rubbish. They didn't want any more rent—not that I could have paid it; I have all my work cut out as it is—they simply wouldn't part with the room. I have all my meals with them, that's one thing. Now, when would your daughter want to begin? I'm afraid I couldn't reduce the fees very much, because my terms are by the term, if you understand what I mean, and not by the week. And would you want her to use your piano or mine? Because I can only take just so many pupils to use my piano, not that I wouldn't take more, but I've had to promise not to have the piano played here for certain hours of the day, and as it's an Agreement, I could hardly be expected to break it."

Mrs. Bradley, who had been wondering why she had been accepted, so to speak, at her face value, escorted into the house before she had stated her business, and installed in the best armchair, now briefly explained that she had no pupil to offer, but had come about something quite different.

"Oh, dear! How silly of me," said Muriel. Then, with the nervous purposefulness of the indigent, she continued hastily, "But if you're selling anything, I really don't need it, thank you."

She rose, as she said this, with the object of showing Mrs. Bradley out, but the visitor remained seated, and replied :

"I have nothing to sell. My errand is a painful one. If, when you have heard what I have to say, you still wish me to go, I shall go at once."

Muriel, looking extremely frightened, sat down again.

"Oh, dear," she said. "No, I didn't think you'd come to sell anything, although really they employ the most respectable people, I'm sure. In fact, I did a little canvassing myself after— after my husband's death, but I didn't like it at all. Some of the people were very rude and unkind. I suppose they have to be, with people bothering them all day. Still, it wasn't very pleasant."

"It is about your husband's death that I have come," said Mrs. Bradley.

"I don't understand. He died—several years ago. There couldn't be—that dreadful woman hasn't left a confession?"

"No, nothing like that. Mrs. Turney, I am investigating matters connected with the trial of Bella Foxley. I wonder whether you would tell me one or two things I very badly want to know?"

"Well—I don't know. You see, I don't want to get into any trouble. After all, the jury did say she didn't do it, although I know she did."

"There will be no trouble, I assure you. I have already had a long conversation with one of the jurymen who acquitted Bella Foxley. And I am in touch with certain aspects of the case which seem to me significant. Mr. Conyers Eastward——"

"But he defended her!"

"Yes, I know he did. But never mind that now. The point is that he is a person of repute, and I am going to re-open the case, to some extent, with him."

"Yes, I see. I'm sure you're quite respectable. But, after all, that awful woman is dead, and, even if she weren't, she couldn't be tried again for the same crime, could she? Oh, I could have done anything to her! You should have seen her look at me when the jury brought in their verdict! She knew she'd done it, and she knew how she'd done it! And yet they let her off! And I used to dream night after night that poor Tom was calling me, trying to get me to understand something about that terrible house where it happened. But I always woke up just as I was on the point of understanding what he meant."

"That is very interesting indeed," said Mrs. Bradley. "You dreamt that your husband was trying to explain something to you about that haunted house, and you always woke up just as you were on the point of understanding what he meant."

"Why do you look at me like that!" cried Muriel. Mrs. Bradley's bright black eyes began to sparkle.

"I beg your pardon," she said. "I don't think you understand the importance of those dreams, but that doesn't matter now. Tell me this, Mrs. Turney. Would you want people to be convinced, even all these years afterwards, that Bella Foxley was a murderess—if she was one? Or are you willing to leave things as they are?"

"I don't believe Tom fell out of that window, either the first or the second time, and I don't believe the haunted house had anything to do with his death," replied the widow. "But as for Bella Foxley—if I could blacken her name even now that she's dead, I'd do it. It was something she knew, and something Tom knew, too! That's why she killed him. It was the grated carrot, you know. That's what it was. Tom knew. Oh, how I wish we'd never gone! It was the telegram that decided us, although Tom knew better than to expect anything under the will. Poor Aunt Flora! She hadn't very many relations to go and see her! But we weren't well off, you know, and Tom said she might think we thought we'd got expectations, and he wouldn't go anywhere near. We had no expectations of any sort, and didn't want to have any, and he knew what people would think—especially Bella—if they got to hear.

"Well, Bella was there already. She had arrived the day before. She was quite nice, and she and I went up to see Aunt Flora, who looked very, very frail and very much older than when I had seen her last, for all she had dyed her poor old hair since we were there before, although I didn't like to tell Tom that, and he wouldn't go in to see her. He couldn't bear illness, poor man."

"When had he seen her last?" Mrs. Bradley enquired.

"When Tom and I were married. I was Tom's second wife, you see, and we had only been married four years. Aunt Flora did not come to the wedding, but we sent her a piece of the cake —Tom would have a cake and orange blossom and everything, for my sake, because he said I was only a girl, and that, after all, it was my first marriage, even if it was his second. He was full of little jokes like that about it. I never felt his first wife came between us at all, although I believe he had been quite fond of her. But, after all, she had been dead for nearly twenty years when he married me. He was nearly sixty, you see, and although people made some remarks about December and May, it really wasn't like that at all. Tom was really very young for his age—more like a man of forty-five, I always thought—and I've always been rather reserved and sort of old for mine, so it was a more suitable marriage than you would think, considering I was only twenty at the time. I am only thirty now, although people have taken me for thirty-five or six."

She did look that age, thought Mrs. Bradley, but the fact had no importance. It might be important to know that Tom was so much older than she had imagined, though, she decided. A man of sixty-four or five might tumble out of first-floor windows and hurt or even kill himself where a man much younger might sustain no lasting injury. Curious he had not hurt himself the first time, all the same, at any rate, not seriously."

"Had you met your husband's cousin before?" she enquired, as Muriel paused. The widow nodded.

"Oh, yes, several times. She and Tom got on quite well together. She put him in the way of renting these haunted houses from time to time. She had even come away with us for part of her summer holiday, I remember. We were very hard up that year, and she said that if we would let her join us she would pay half the expenses and we could pay the other half between us. It was quite a generous offer, because, although we had two bedrooms, the one sitting-room did just as well for three as it would for two, so we actually saved a little more than you would think, especially as the rooms came a little cheaper, taking the two bedrooms with one sitting-room, you know. It was then she gave us the first news about this last haunted house. Tom was pleased. We had a happy time. I liked Bella then, and Tom liked her right to the end."

"Even after he knew ...?"

"That she choked poor aunt? Well, perhaps not quite so much then, but, of course, he couldn't be sure."

"But I thought he was sure?"

"Well, you see, what really happened was this:"

"We are coming to it at last," thought Mrs. Bradley.

"You see, Aunt Flora was so much better that we thought we might all venture to go out for a little while in the afternoon. A sickroom can be very monotonous, and poor Aunt Flora's (I don't mean it was her fault, of course !) was really rather stuffy and smelly. Well, Tom said he wouldn't be a minute, and Bella seemed to be hanging about, almost as though she wanted me out of the way...."

"You thought of that later," thought Mrs. Bradley. She grinned, and the narrator looked disconcerted." Wanted you out of the way, yes?" said Mrs. Bradley, nodding.

"So I decided I wouldn't be in a hurry, and, anyhow, I was waiting for Tom. Tom came out—I was waiting by the front door—and said that Bella seemed to have found herself a job in the kitchen. I couldn't understand that, because, Bella spending all her life in kitchens at that time, being housekeeper at that dreadful Home, you know, I didn't think she would want to go into one when she need not, so I went and looked through the window and tapped on the glass. She looked up, and I could see that she had a carrot in her hand...."

"I don't think she denied that she grated the carrot," said Mrs. Bradley, gently interrupting the narrative.

"Oh, I see. No, she didn't deny it. But I always say that Aunt thought she was getting pease-pudding. She would never have taken raw carrot; of that I'm very sure. Anyhow, Bella didn't come, so Tom and I walked on for a bit, and then Tom remembered that he'd left a letter for the house-agent up in our bedroom, and he badly wanted it to catch the post. He decided to go back, but told me not to come, but to wait for him at the bottom of the hill if I liked.

"Well, I did wait for him, but he was so long that I began to get chilly, and I walked back towards the house. There was no sign of him until I got right up to the porch, and then I saw him. He looked terrible. He said, 'Oh, there you are, Muriel! A dreadful thing has happened. Poor Aunt is choked to death. You had better go for the doctor.'

"I didn't know where the doctor lived, but he gave me quite a sharp push—he was always so gentle as a rule—and told me to hurry up.

"'I'm not going to leave that hell-cat alone with her,' he said. I couldn't think what he meant, but now I know."

"What did he mean?" asked Mrs. Bradley.

"Why, Bella, of course. He meant he knew Bella had done it, don't you see? And he wasn't going to give her a chance to remove anything which might give her away."

"But you couldn't have thought that at the time, you know, Mrs. Turney," said Mrs. Bradley, even more gently than she had yet spoken. Muriel looked at her, and then agreed.

"No, perhaps not; but I think it now," she said. "Well, I fetched the doctor. Poor aunt was choked with the carrot. The doctor confirmed it at once."

"But you can't prove, and your husband couldn't have proved, that Miss Foxley did the choking," said Mrs. Bradley. "He didn't see her do it, and, even if he had, I doubt whether her word would be considered less valid than his if she declared that he was lying. Why did you hate Miss Foxley at that time, Mrs. Turney? She had never done you any harm."

"I know she hadn't," agreed Muriel, "but, looking back, I can see it all."

Mrs. Bradley thought she herself could, too, but she did not say this. Believing, however, that no logical answer would be forthcoming to her question, she asked another :

"How long had you been in the new house when Bella Foxley came to stay with you?"

"Well, she came almost at once; that is, once the funeral was over. Tom and I did not stay for that. Then we heard about the will, and when we knew that poor Aunt Flora had left the house and furniture to Eliza, it was difficult, I thought, for Bella to remain. She ought to have gone back to the Home, of course, to work out her notice...."

"Ah, yes," said Mrs. Bradley. "She gave in her notice before Aunt Flora's death, I believe."

"Yes, I suppose she must have done, to get in the complete month." She paused. Then she exclaimed, "But that's a proof, surely, of what I've been saying! She did kill poor Aunt! She must have had it all planned before she went down there! Wicked, wicked thing! Didn't I tell you!"

Mrs. Bradley did not take up the challenge. She merely remarked that Bella hated the work she had been doing, and to this Muriel agreed.

"I suppose another post of the kind she had held would be comparatively easy to find," Mrs. Bradley added; but Muriel could offer no opinion on this.

"At any rate," she said, "she had no home to go to, and she said she felt bad, after Aunt's death and the funeral and everything, so we agreed to put her up, although we didn't really want to; but she kept hinting and hinting, in the way relations do, and in the end we felt we had to invite her, especially as she had found the house for us, and had visited us before.

"She was very good about everything, I must say. She paid well for her board and lodging, and I shouldn't have minded keeping her on for a month or two if it hadn't been for the way the house behaved."

"The way it behaved?" said Mrs. Bradley, intrigued.

"Oh, yes. It was dreadful. Not only frightening but dangerous. Things thrown about and furniture upset, and people creeping about in slippers after dark. It terrified me so much that I had to leave, and Bella was frightened, too, and she came with me. But Tom wouldn't leave—he said it was the most interesting house he had ever known. He researched, you know, in such things, and wrote books and articles. It didn't pay very well. We were always rather hard up. Still, the rents for those sort of houses are always very low, so we hadn't the usual expenses, and my poor Tom was very, very happy."

She paused again, looking sadly back at the difficult but, seen in retrospect, desirable, happy past.

Revenge, thought Mrs. Bradley, might appease whatever strife was hidden behind that weak, anxious and, if one had to admit it, rather peevish little face.

"I thought," she said aloud, "that Bella did return to the Institution for a time?"

"Only to get her things. She stayed one night, that's all— or was it the week-end? It's so long ago now, and what happened later was so awful, that I really don't remember every little thing."

"I think it must have been the week-end," said Mrs. Bradley, thinking of the diary—although, as she immediately admitted to herself, it would have been easy enough for Bella to have transferred the episode of the boy Jones and the foreign bodies in the food from the time when it had really happened to the date on which it was chronicled in the diary. She was greatly intrigued by the diary. Its frankness, lies, evasions, and inventions made up such a curiously unintelligible whole.

"Did you see the two boys whom the police interviewed in your village?" she inquired.

"Boys?" said Muriel. "I don't remember any boys." Yet her colour rose as she spoke.

"Two boys had escaped from the Home at which Bella Foxley was employed, and at one point it was thought that the police had found them in that village."

"Oh?" Muriel looked thoroughly alarmed. "Oh, really? I never heard anything about it. How funny—how curious, I mean. No, I had no idea——"

"Naturally," said Mrs. Bradley, as one dismissing the subject. "I suppose there is no complete and exact record of the happenings in the haunted house, by the way?"

"Record? ... Oh, yes, of course there is! But ... oh, well, you could see it, I suppose. There is a typed copy somewhere, but I don't know where it went. The psychic people—the Society, you know—had one copy, and then there was a carbon. The copy I've got is in Tom's own handwriting, and I don't know whether I ought to lend it. Besides—forgive me; I don't mean to be rude, and I can see you take a real interest—I mean, not just curiosity and all that—but what are you trying to do? Even if it could be proved that Bella did push Tom out of the window, it wouldn't help. She's dead. She committed suicide, and, as I say to people (when I mention the subject at all) if that wasn't a confession, what could be?"

"I see," said Mrs. Bradley, "and I know I'm tiresome. But if I could just see the entries about the hauntings I should feel so very grateful."

"Well—all right, then," said Muriel, "but I can't let you take it away."

"It is very kind of you to let me see it at all," said Mrs. Bradley. "Is it a complete record?"

"You'll see that it goes right up to about—well, when Tom fell the first time."

She went over to the writing desk in the corner, rummaged, and brought out a stiff-covered exercise book containing perhaps a hundred pages of thick, blue-ruled paper. She looked at it, turned the pages; then thrust it back into the drawer.

"I've remembered where the typed copy is," she said. She took the cushions off an armchair and removed a brown-paper package.

"Here you are," she said. About forty sheets had been used, and Mrs. Bradley read them carefully. Then she turned to the last page. Upon this a summary of the hauntings had been worked out, dated and timed.

"I should be glad to be allowed to make a copy of this summary," she said. "It may be extremely important."

"Important for what?" inquired Muriel. Mrs. Bradley, making rapid hieroglyphics in her notebook, did not reply. When she had finished she read through all the entries once more before she put the typescript together and handed it over. It tallied pretty well with the diary.

Muriel put it into the desk, and came back to the hearth.

"He was murdered," she said. "Blackmail."

"I know," said Mrs. Bradley. "Just one more point. You knew of this haunted house, how long before your husband's aunt died?"

" About a month."

"As long as that? By the end of December?"

"Yes. It must have been as long as that, because we had to give a month's notice where we were. That was in the haunted flat in Plasmon Street."

"Yes, I see. That seems quite clear. It's been very good indeed of you, Mrs. Turney, to talk to me like this, and I am interested—more than I can tell you—in your story."

"Well," said Muriel, rising with the guest, "won't you stay and have a cup of tea or something? I'm sure it's been really nice to have a chat with somebody about it. But nothing can bring Tom back. Still, it's very kind of you to take an interest. I am ever so glad you called."

Mrs. Bradley was glad, too. Dimly she was beginning to see quite a number of things, all of them interesting; some astonishingly so.