"Yes, I've been hearing about that from Miss Hodge. I'm her tenant here, of course. She came to tea yesterday, and told me a lot about it. It appears it was a sudden fancy on the part of the patient. She had never eaten raw grated carrot, and seems to have conceived a desire to try it."
"Or someone else conceived the idea for her," said the doctor. Meeting Mrs. Bradley's sharp glance, he smiled, shrugged, and then said, "Oh, yes, I admit it. If I'd had the guts I'd have said the old lady was murdered. Trouble was, I knew I couldn't prove it. No marks of violence; no cause of death beyond the simple one that she had choked herself. And doctors who have much to do with bringing accusations of murder aren't popular, as no doubt you know. No; there was no proof, and I didn't know the people, either. It just seemed like asking for trouble. Funnily enough, the niece knew I wasn't satisfied. Put it to me, point-blank. Proved her own innocence, anyhow; and nobody would be fool enough to suspect old Eliza of murder. Left the married couple. Nothing there to get hold of, so I signed the certificate. I think the majority of people would have done the same. Still, I was a bit taken aback when I read about the arrest of the niece for murdering the cousin."
"Yes?" said Mrs. Bradley.
"So the doctor wasn't satisfied?" she said abruptly to Eliza Hodge when next she saw her.
"Wasn't he? Poor young girl," responded Eliza. "I do hope she isn't sickening for something, madam."
"I meant about the grated carrot," said Mrs. Bradley, even more abruptly; but the old servant's face did not change, except that the concern in her eyes deepened.
"I believe you're right, madam," she agreed. "He asked me, I remember, a whole lot of questions, funny enough."
"What sort of questions do you mean?"
"Well, who gave it to her."
"And you weren't prepared to say."
"Well, Miss Bella said she was going out shopping in the village, and Mr. Tom and his wife said they were going out for a walk along the shore, so I suppose, if anyone gave it to her, it must have been me," replied the old servant, with a peculiarly hard expression on her face.
"And was it you?"
"You don't need to ask that, madam. You know it wasn't."
"Yes. Even the doctor knew that," said Mrs. Bradley. "But, since the subject has come up, Miss Hodge, I do wish, if it wouldn't cause you too much distress, you'd tell me what you really think."
"Well, I'm not going to speak ill of the dead, but I'll tell you one thing straight away, madam. One of them didn't go out. At least, I didn't think so. Mr. Tom, he went, and I see a flick of the blue dress his young wife had been wearing—or it might have been Miss Bella; she wore blue. But there was the sound of a sewing machine in Miss Bella's room, her having borrowed mine to run herself up an apron—one of mine, altered, it was."
"And she did grate up the carrot, using the nutmeg grater to do it."
"Well, yes, I think so, but, of course, I can't be sure. For one thing, although she asked for the nutmeg grater, I didn't actually see her use it. Still, there was carrot on it when I came to wash it. And as for the shopping, and being out of the house when her poor aunt died, well, she said she'd been out, and I couldn't contradict her."
"Perhaps," suggested Mrs. Bradley, "she grated the carrot for her aunt, and took it up to her so that she could help herself to it. That's what she suggested in the diary."
"It might have been that way, madam. I really couldn't say. Still, it seems funny that if the mistress wanted grated carrot, she hadn't said so to me and let me do it for her. Besides, I will say this: Miss Bella was perfectly open about the carrot when she spoke to me about the grater."
"Was your mistress at all fond of any kind of food which could look like grated carrot at a distance?" Mrs. Bradley enquired.
"Only pease pudding, and that's not very like," Eliza replied. "You mean Miss Bella thought it would do her good, and didn't tell her what she was going to do until it was all made ready? I couldn't say, I'm sure, madam. Anyway, it was a very great relief when she was found Not Guilty of Mr. Tom, although the suicide so soon after was very dreadful."
"The suicide?" said Mrs. Bradley, anxious to hear more about this.
"Oh, yes, madam. She took a little house down in the country, Miss Bella did, far enough away, you would think, for her to be able to forget all about the trial and what she'd gone through. But it seems some ill-natured people got hold of the tale and spread it all round the village. She left a farewell letter, poor thing, saying she had been driven to it by gossip. It was read at the coroner's inquest."
"Oh, dear me! What a very dreadful thing!" said Mrs. Bradley. "How did she do it? I suppose she drowned herself?"
"Yes, that was what she did, madam; she was found in a pond on the common, I believe."
"Dear, dear!" said Mrs. Bradley." Not far from her house, I presume?"
"I couldn't say how far, madam. Probably not very far. She was never much of a walker. But I don't know the district at all. I didn't even go to the funeral, not knowing how I was to get there and back the same night, her living all alone as she did, and me hardly one of the family to go poking myself in if not invited; although, really, who could have invited me I don't quite see, I'm sure."
"Did Miss Tessa go to the funeral?"
"There, again, I couldn't say, madam. I've not had a word from Miss Tessa since poor Mr. Tom's sad death. In her last letter she mentioned she was going to move. I kept the letter. I expect I've got it somewhere, if you'd like to see it. It's nice for me to talk to somebody who takes such an interest in it all."
Mrs. Bradley, who still wondered whether her apparently insatiable curiosity about the whole affair would not, at some point, strike Eliza as unnecessary and impertinent, was relieved to hear this last statement. She said immediately that she would be very glad to see it, and, upon its being produced, she noticed that, as Eliza had indicated already, it was written in a far more careless and dashing hand than the neatly written diary which she had already seen. In fact, it bore most of the indications of a singularly ill-balanced personality. Had it been the writer who had committed suicide, it would have been most comprehensible, thought Mrs. Bradley. "The sisters must have been women of widely different temperament," she remarked.
"Temper, too," responded Eliza. "Miss Tessa would fly off the handle, as they say, over anything. But I never knew Miss Bella to be angry. She was sort of sharp and abrupt, but never lost control like Miss Tessa. I liked Miss Tessa the better for it. Give me somebody that speaks their mind, and perhaps has to apologize afterwards for being over-hasty. Still, that isn't everybody's taste, and I dare say Miss Bella might have been a lot easier to live with in the long run."
Mrs. Bradley consulted the diary again that evening. The wish-fulfilment dream and the self-pity so frankly expressed seemed ingenuous enough, but there were other passages over which, comparing them with Eliza's version of the facts, she frowned in concentration for minutes at a time.
How, for instance, could Bella so have misinterpreted the old servant's feeling for her mistress as to suggest that Eliza considered the fall a "judgment" on Aunt Flora for being contrary? Nothing in Mrs. Bradley's conversations with Eliza. had led her to believe that such a remark could possibly have been made, least of all to Bella, whom, it had become very clear, she did not like very much.