"After all," pursued Ferdinand, "they can't continue to hold Bella merely for impersonating her sister. They will have to prove she killed her, and that won't be any easy matter. The evidence at the inquest on Tessa Foxley was pretty straightforward. Not a doubt in anyone's mind but that it was accidental death, except for that idiot boy, and no one is going to take any notice of him after all this time, even supposing he remembers a thing about it, which he probably doesn't. And it's tricky work, anyway, having the woman up for murder again. There's certain to be a bat-eyed, pudden-brained section of the community who'll paint the newspapers red swearing poor Bella is being victimised. You see if there isn't. The police want a cast-iron case, and they haven't any such thing, unless and until Mrs. Turney comes across with what she knows."
"The trouble is," said Mrs. Bradley mildly, "that the police have succeeded in convincing Muriel that once she owns up to having known about the cellar she might as well adjust the hangman's noose about her own neck. It is most unfortunate, but there it is."
"Well, something will have to be done," her son observed. His mother grimaced, but promised nothing. She, like Sherlock Holmes, had her methods, but they required, she felt, careful application.
She left Muriel alone for a fortnight, and concentrated all her energies upon finding out all she could about the history of the haunted house. The prosecution would have to establish that Bella could have known of the cellar. The tale of the hauntings, and the chronology of the buildings, she found in the County History. She perused the account twice, and then copied it out.
There were legends and ill-authenticated stories of the coach, a headless driver, a headless Cavalier, a hanging figure supposed to date from the time of the French Revolution, and, in short, all the usual nonsense. Of true poltergeist phenomena there was no mention in the County History nor in any other printed account of the house. That, however, scarcely mattered. Such phenomena rarely persisted long.*
* The longest recorded case of poltergeist activity seems to have lasted about twelve years. This was at Willington Mill, Northumberland. One of the shortest was the famous haunting of the family of Wesley, which lasted for two months.
The history of the house itself as a building next engaged her attention. The County History informed her that it had originally been built on the site of a former monastery, which had been suppressed by Henry the Eighth and reconstituted under Mary. The original dwelling-house had been built in 1541, after nearly all the monastic buildings had been destroyed, but upon the accession of Mary Tudor, the monks were brought back, the Abbey Church was returned to the community instead of being used as a Parish Church, and part of the 'new' house was used by the Abbot as his lodging.
In the next reign, however, the monks were again dispossessed. The house was enlarged by the addition of another wing, and the Church was neglected. The cloister garth became a bowling green, and it was said that the earliest hauntings of the house derived from this period in its history.
During the eighteenth century the house was purchased by members of the Hell-Fire Club, and the hauntings became more serious. One of the members, whilst engaged in his childish anti-godliness, was killed, and, later, the house was burnt down and the last ruins of the church destroyed.
In 1851 the present house had been erected on the site of the ruined building, except for the north rooms which helped to enclose the courtyard. These had been added about thirty years later. The names of previous tenants, with the varying degrees of ill-luck which had attended them, members of their families or any of their servants or friends resident in the house, were appended to the rest of the historical account, sometimes with considerable detail of the hauntings, sometimes baldly.
Of the well in the courtyard there was specific mention, and it was clear that Bella Foxley—or Cousin Tom, for that matter— could have deduced the opening of the passage from the well into the crypt.
"It is supposed," one writer had alleged, "that there must at one time have been a priest's hole in the house. This would have been constructed during the short and unlucky tenancy of the Catholic family of Merrill.... There is a strong hint in one of the family papers that access to the priest's hole could be gained by means of the ancient well in the courtyard. This, however, only seems to lead to a cellar under the house...."
That was all that Mrs. Bradley could glean of the history of the house. The tales of the hauntings were ill-authenticated, but at least there was no mention of anything which suggested the activities of a poltergeist. Not that this negative information was of much value, she reflected again, since poltergeist phenomena, besides being usually of fairly short duration, are apt to be episodic, spasmodic, and to attend upon the presence of certain living persons* rather than upon historic wrongs and infamies past and gone.
*"Its powers, then, seem to be fixed or loaded in the person of someone in the house, preferably a child in the most impressionable months of its life."— Sacheverell Sitwell.—"Poltergeists."
On the other hand, this is not invariably true. Cf. the phenomena at Borley Rectory, during the investigations carried out there by Mr. Harry Price and his observers from 1929 to 1939.—G.M.
Mrs. Bradley gave up the records, and returned to Cousin Muriel, again without result. Cousin Muriel, in fact, expressed the opinion that she would go off her head if people did not stop worrying her about those poor little boys. As Mrs. Bradley, looking at her frightened eyes and a twitching muscle just above her mouth, considered this more than likely, she forbore to press her, remarked that it was a pity that there was no one to exact vengeance for the murdered children, and, leaving this grim phrase to do what work it would to Cousin Muriel's conscience and such superstitious fears as she knew her to possess, went off to the Institution to find out what help the Warden could give in tracing the boys to Bella Foxley's company.
There was one hope in her mind, and one only, so far as this was concerned. The diary had named a certain Larry, and from the entry in which his name appeared, Mrs. Bradley had deduced that this Larry, if he could be found, might prove to have some knowledge of the means of escape used by Piggy and Alec, and some knowledge of where they had proposed to go. The difficulty, as she saw it, would be to get in touch with Larry. He might prove to have cut his connection with the Institution so completely, once he had left it, that it would be impossible to track him down. He might be dead, in prison, in another continent—anywhere. He might be out of touch with English newspapers, so that an advertisement would never reach him. He might be unable to read, or, even more likely (and she knew how completely illiterate some members of the criminal classes could be), he might be unwilling to come forward and expose himself voluntarily to police questioning.
The sooner all this was put to the proof, the better. She telephoned the Warden as soon as she arrived in the town nearest to the Institution, which was situated about two miles away on the slope of a treeless hill, and received an invitation to come immediately to see him.
He looked less like a frog, and a good deal more animated, than usual. He seemed, in fact, pleased to see her.
"Larry? Larry who?" he enquired, when Mrs. Bradley had stated the object of her visit.
"I don't know. He was here six years ago, with Piggy and Alec."
"That's another thing," said the Warden. "Who were Piggy and Alec?"