When Last I Died

by Gladys Mitchell

  "Bella's rather feeble reply to this was that it was the wife who had gone to the house that night, but I don't think anybody could swallow that."

  "How many visits is Bella Foxley supposed to have paid to the house at nights between the two falls?" inquired Mrs. Bradley.

  "I can't say. According to her own story, she did not go again after that first time. According to the wife she went two or three times.

  "Well, the greatest fun was provided by the medical witnesses. Both sides had a regular platoon of them, and such a battle of the experts followed that one began to wonder whether the whole profession knew anything for certain about anybody's anatomy, or whether it wouldn't be better to go to a faith-healer or something if one had anything wrong.

  "I really think it was the arguments between the doctors which got Bella off, you know. The jury, strongly directed, gave her the benefit of the doubt, although my personal feeling still is that she was guilty."

  "What did the doctors say?" asked Mrs. Bradley.

  "Well, one lot declared that if the chap had pitched out on to his head, even from a first-floor window, he could have received the injuries which the police doctor had already described to the court, and which nobody on either side disputed. The prosecution, however, put in a couple of surgeons who declared that the injuries could not have been caused by the fall, but that the fellow must have been hit on the head and his skull smashed before he was pushed out at all."

  "But ..."

  "Yes, I know. But, you see, their contention was that a struggle must have taken place for her coat button to have got into his hand the way it did. I didn't tell you about that, did I? But the defence contended that a man who is falling from a height instinctively clutches out at things, or even makes clutching movements at the air. That being so, his hands would have been open, not clenched, and so the button must have been planted in his hand after death."

  "The wife?" said Mrs. Bradley, who had not heard of the button before.

  "Exactly. Although they left that to be inferred. My private opinion is that the prisoner had made a pass or two at the husband, and that the wife didn't like it and was ready to blacken her in any way she could. Nevertheless, that wouldn't necessarily affect her guilt. "On the contrary."

  "But ..."

  "Yes, I know. The point was that he had already tumbled out of the window shortly before. Both sides put their own interpretation upon that, of course. The prosecution contended it was either a rehearsal or a boss shot at the murder which Bella eventually brought off by the same means, having corrected the errors. On the other hand the defence argued that it proved the bloke was off his chump. Besides, they further contended that the button had not been in the dead man's hand when first he was found by the milk boy. It appears that the village policeman, having telephoned his inspector, hopped on his bike and came bursting up to the inn to tell the wife what had happened. His tale was that he found the wife alone, and that she went with him immediately—on the step of his bicycle, in point of fact—to the haunted house, and was left alone with the body, having promised not to touch it. Very irregular, and the bobby was well cursed for it, but he was a nice, simple, country chap, and as it couldn't be proved that she had touched the body, his sentimental action was overlooked by his superiors. Nevertheless, she had the opportunity if she wanted it."

  "And what was the prisoner's explanation of the button?" asked Mrs. Bradley.

  "The prisoner? She was very vague about it. In fact, she hadn't an explanation, really. But that, in itself, didn't prejudice the jury. They probably thought it looked more innocent that she couldn't explain it. Anyhow, her counsel managed to make a point with them there. One of the prosecution's own witnesses was wearing a cardigan which had a couple of buttons missing. Counsel had noticed this, and suggested that the juryman did not know when he had lost the buttons or where they were. Sheer bluff, of course, because he might have known exactly, but, as the buttons had not been sewn on again, even for him to appear in court—and most witnesses like to be a bit dressy to make their public appearance—counsel deduced—not that it took much doing; it was written all over him—that he was probably a careless sort of bloke who'd simply let the buttons drop off and hadn't bothered any further about them, and, sure enough, he got away with it. His point, of course, was that the button had been lost from the prisoner's coat some time previously, and had been planted in the dead man's hand either by some spiteful person or by the real murderer. Still, as I said before, I think it was the battle of the doctors that got her off. Juries don't care to give a verdict on expert testimony, anyway, and when the experts can't even agree among themselves it's rather optimistic to try for a conviction."

  Mrs. Bradley assented. Then she said :

  "And, apart from the button, why were you convinced that she was guilty?"

  "Her demeanour, chiefly, and the fact that I knew the story of the grated carrot—the aunt's death, you know. She had nothing to gain by the murder, of course, unless one believes the blackmail story. We had evidence of character and disposition from people who had known the dead man intimately, and he could have been a blackmailer, I thought. His psychic stuff was obviously completely phoney, I should say. Then, too, she could not tell a straightforward story which held water. It was rather too unusual a thing to leave an inn round about midnight to go and find out whether a ghost-hunter was all right. But, of course, it's not impossible that, having decided to do such a batty thing—not that I believe it !—she did exactly what she said she did—spoke to him and came away again."

  "But that only refers to the first time, the time he was hurt but not killed," said Mrs. Bradley. "I suppose," she added, "he really was killed on the spot where the body was found?"

  "You mean ...?"

  "Supposing, for the sake of the argument, that she did murder him, did he die just where he was found?"

  "There was no evidence offered to the contrary by the prosecution, but I see what you mean. There were some very rum stories round the village—probably rot, but you never quite know—about cries and moans and what-not, a day or two after the death, by the way. But I only got that on the side. It didn't come out at the trial."

  Mrs. Bradley was silent for about a minute. Then she said :

  "It seems to me that Bella Foxley was arrested on insufficient evidence."

  "Not if you read what the wife said at the inquest. She practically accused Bella Foxley of the murder, and the coroner's jury brought in a verdict accordingly. She let out—only, of course, it had to be suppressed—that she believed the real motive was that Tom knew Bella had murdered the ancient aunt. He was murdered to shut his mouth, and to put an end to the blackmail. She wanted to shout the same thing at the trial, and it was with the greatest difficulty that she could be persuaded to be quiet about it, because, of course, the aunt's death was all signed up and generally accounted for by the local doctor, and as there was no question of poison or violence, and the death certificate was in order, it was hardly possible to drag it up again. Would have meant an exhumation order and all that, so, although the prosecution knew all about her ideas on the subject, they didn't feel they could possibly admit her theories—because, dash it, that's all they were !—as part of the evidence."

  "I see," said Mrs. Bradley. "The wife appears to have adopted a very biased, not to say spiteful, attitude towards Bella. It seems odd, considering that Bella had benefited them since she had come into the money."

  "I know. I think she really had got a bee in her bonnet about Bella's having been the murderess, but I believe she thought, too, that there was something between Bella and her husband. Anyway, she was so much incensed against her that one of the solicitors told me the prosecution had grave doubts about calling her at all. They were afraid she would prejudice their case. Juries detest a spiteful witness, and rightly. Spite and truth are never too closely related, even though the one may be based upon the other."

  "How true," said Mrs. Bradley, sighing. "And I suppose,
whether she murdered her cousin or not, there isn't much doubt that Bella really did murder the aunt?"

  Mr. Pratt shrugged and smiled.

  "One thing I can tell you," he said. "We were all after her for her story when she was acquitted, but she wouldn't give us anything at all. Said she wanted to get away and be at peace."

  "She went to her sister, I suppose."

  "Well, no. Some of the reporters lay in wait for her there, but, although the house was fairly persistently haunted, she did not turn up."

  "How long after the trial did she commit suicide?"

  "Oh, about a year. She took a cottage—two cottages turned into one, it was—not far from the New Forest. The reporters trailed her, but she still held out on them, and after a week or two she ceased to be news, of course, and so they went away. She didn't become news again until she committed suicide, and then she only got a line or two, because most people had forgotten all about her by then. Funnily enough, she had then joined forces with the sister. They were living together when it happened."

  "Really?" There was a lengthy pause.

  "She may have murdered the cousin, but she hadn't dismembered the body," said Mrs. Bradley, referring to the fact that a fickle populace had so soon forgotten Bella. "That always keeps a murderer's memory green. The public has a passion for horrors; although how they think most murderers can dispose of a body neatly and successfully without dismembering it I can't imagine."

  "The haunted house was the only interesting and unusual feature in Bella Foxley's case," said Mr. Pratt. "But, you know, some quite ordinary murders remain in people's memories. Take the case of Jessie M'Lachlan, for instance...."

  "The details were inclined to be unsavoury," Mrs. Bradley remarked. "And, of course, from the criminologist's point of view, what a beautiful case! You have not chosen a good example. Two hundred years hence the case of Jessie M'Lachlan will still fascinate, tease, beckon, and defeat the student of crime. It was a case in a million. No, not even that. I believe it is, and always will be, unique."

  The conversation turned easily, from this statement, to a discussion of the verdict in the case of Ronald True, and the problem in English law of the criminal lunatic; the eternal query in the case of Madeleine Smith; the vexed question of Thomson and Bywaters; and the talk continued into the small hours.

  The next day was Sunday, and at half-past five in the evening the guest departed regretfully for London.

  On Monday morning Mrs. Bradley telephoned her son.

  "I am eaten up with curiosity," she said. "Can't you find me somebody else who was mixed up with it all?"

  "Would one of the jurors do?" Ferdinand inquired. "I think I could get you a perfectly good juror. As a matter of fact, he's my barber."

  "Ah, an artist. Most satisfactory. When and where?"

  "I'll tell him you're coming, and let you know the arrangements. I suppose your time is your own?"

  "Better than that: my time is his," said Mrs. Bradley. She hung up and rang for Henri. Her cook appeared, preceded, in the manner of the Cheshire cat's grin, by an expression of marked anxiety.

  "Ze 'addock, madame?" he enquired, spreading his hands disconsolately. "What I 'ave said to ze fishmonger!"

  "No, no, Henri, dear child! This has nothing to do with the haddock, which was eaten in its entirety by Mr. Pratt. It is simply this: do you know any hairdressers?"

  Henri gazed at her stupefied. Then he began to talk in French and continued to do so for nearly ten minutes.

  "Ah," said Mrs. Bradley, who was old-fashioned enough to believe that French is the most civilised language on earth (except, possibly, for Chinese, which she did not know), "then you will agree with me, Henri, when I suggest that a hairdresser must be, of necessity, an artist."

  Henri agreed in another burst of idiomatic rhetoric. His employer nodded and dismissed him. Next day Ferdinand rang up to say that his barber, whose name was Sepulle, would be delighted to recall, for her benefit, his experiences at the trial of Bella Foxley.

  Mrs. Bradley met the barber in a room at the back of his shop. It was during business hours, but that, said Mr. Sepulle, mattered nothing. He himself had no appointments that afternoon, gentlemen being, on the whole, more prone to the 'drop-in' than to making appointments, and as to serving on a jury, well, appointments or no appointments, that had had to receive attention before anything.

  Not that it was altogether a waste of time, he continued; no, he should be sorry for anybody to think he thought that. We all had a duty, and ought to be prepared to face it. No shirking; that was his motto, peace or war. And it had been a very interesting case, although, in his opinion, it had been 'messed up.'"

  "Messed up?" Mrs. Bradley inquired.

  Well, there was this woman, Bella Foxley, brought in and charged with the wilful murder of her cousin, and pleading 'Not Guilty,' and then a whole lot of disagreement among a lot of doctors, and then all this stuff about Reasonable Doubt from the judge when the evidence had been completed, and then the jury sent out to consider their verdict.

  "We were out about an hour and three-quarters," concluded Mr. Sepulle, "arguing the point, with seven of us for an acquittal and five against. I was against."

  "Why?" asked Mrs. Bradley. The barber had believed Bella Foxley to be guilty because he did not like her face. That, surely, was not part of the evidence, Mrs. Bradley suggested, but he denied this. Her appearance was a fact, he protested, and, as such, it had importance. Then he added that the police knew what they were doing when they arrested her. To this Mrs. Bradley agreed, but very cautiously. What, in the end, she enquired, caused the five jurors who were against an acquittal to join those seven who were in favour ?

  Well, Mr. Sepulle had always believed that there were two ways of looking at everything, and the judge had stressed giving the prisoner the benefit of the doubt. The doubt in his own mind, he confessed, was rooted in the story that the house was naunted. He did not believe in haunted houses, he explained. Why should not the 'ghost' have committed the murder, and, that being so, there was nothing to suggest that the ghost had been Bella Foxley. Then there was the question of the time. That was extremely important. The medical evidence—not contested by the defence—suggested that death had taken place between eleven o'clock at night and two in the morning. Well, this Bella Foxley was supposed to have been visiting her cousin at this haunted house between those times. The wife swore to it.

  Now, he, (Mr. Sepulle), was a married man, and what he wanted to know was, was it likely that a wife was going to let some other woman go gallivanting off at that time of night to visit her husband in an empty house? She had done it once— granted. And, funny enough, the chap fell out of the window. But did it seem reasonable to suppose that the wife would let her do it more than once? Was it sensible to suppose the wife would have it? Not on your life it wasn't. Scared of the haunted house she might have been—thin, whining little thing—but she'd be a darn sight more scared of having some other woman larking about in an empty house with her husband, or he (Mr. Sepulle) was no judge of women.

  Then, again, would the prisoner really have been such a mutt as to repeat herself like that? And then, that blackmail stuff. That got nowhere with him. When you talked of blackmail you meant really fleecing people—draining them and draining them like a foul leech sucking blood. You didn't mean a little bit of a five pound note here and there from a woman who'd got a sackful of the ready, and was sweet on the chap anyway.

  "So there it was," Mr. Sepulle concluded. "I swallowed my doubts and gave her the benefit of them."

  "And how did she take the verdict?" asked Mrs. Bradley, somewhat overcome by Mr. Sepulle's piling of Pelion upon Ossa by following his ripe simile with an unimaginable metaphor.

  "She said her prayers," replied the barber, "and, somehow, that seemed to me unnatural."

  "Interesting," said Mrs. Bradley. "And was she—in spite of the fact that you did not like her appearance—a striking-looking woman? Should you know her anywhere, as
the saying is?"