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.
Chapter Five
THE HAUNTED HOUSE
"Tell zeal it wants devotion; Tell love it is but lust; Tell time it is but motion; Tell flesh it is but dust; And wish them not reply, For thou must give the lie."
RALEIGH.
MRS. BRADLEY'S application for permission to hold séances in the house at which Cousin Tom had met his death was granted by Miss Foxley, and the séances were duly held. They were not conducted by Mrs. Bradley, although she was an interested participant.
She went twice to the house before the first séance, and contrived to dispense with the services of the caretaker as guide.
"Just as you like, mum," he said, when she pointed out that his voice and familiar tread did not give the spirits, if there were any, a chance, "although I didn't think, when I first had the pleasure of showing you round, as you was one of them fakers."
"One of those what?" said Mrs. Bradley.
"Well, you've heard of poodle-fakers, haven't you? I calls these here ghost-hunters spirit-fakers."
"Oh, no," said Mrs. Bradley. "A spirit-faker, in the full technical sense of the term, is a person who fakes, or manufactures, spirits for the purpose of deceiving the earnest seeker after psychical phenomena."
"Oh, ah," said the old man, deflated. He handed her the keys. "No good me telling you which is for which door. You'd never remember 'em all," he continued. Mrs. Bradley accepted the formidable bunch.
"I shall proceed according to the method of trial and error," she said. Lugubriously the old man watched her approach the drawing-room, and then he shuffled away to his dinner.
Mrs. Bradley had chosen her time carefully. She had discovered the hour at which the custodian dined, and the average amount of time he spent over his meal. She knew that she had approximately two hours at her disposal. It was her intention to make a thorough examination of the house and to repeat this examination, if she thought it necessary, once more before the first séance was held. She had arranged that this séance should be held after dark, and had rented the house for the twenty-four hours beginning at ten in the morning.
She did not go into the drawing-room until the caretaker was out of sight. Then she unlocked it and went straight across to the window. It was in front of this window that the body of Cousin Tom must have fallen. Taking a folding ruler from her skirt-pocket, she measured the height of the room. She had already formed a mental estimate of the height of the bedroom window-sill from the ground, and her measurements showed the drawing-room ceiling to be twelve feet high.