When Last I Died

"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?"

"She was nothing much to look at," the barber replied, "except she was big and heavy enough to have done it. One of those local permanent waves, and not set fit to speak of, but perhaps she'd had no chance to do much with it while she was awaiting her trial. I am not informed as to that, although you'd have thought that anybody would just have gone in and touched it up for such an important occasion."

"Ah!" said Mrs. Bradley, interested in this professional point of view.

"Yes. About a twenty-five to a thirty-shilling touch," the barber continued. "Not that I do ladies now, but I used to be a ladies' hairdresser when my old father was alive. Ours is a family business, you see, and he always did the gentlemen himself, right up to the last. He only retired four years back, and died last year, so I got a good knowledge of the ladies' side of the business, being in it twenty-two years, and also of all the other little extras that go with it, manicure, face-packs—Ah, and that reminds me, speaking of this Bella Foxley. She could have done with a mud-pack or two herself, and some mercolised wax, but that's neither here nor there."

Mrs. Bradley rang up Mr. Pratt and invited him to spend another week-end at the Stone House. Mr. Pratt accepted gracefully, and on the following Friday evening came down from London in time for dinner.

"More Foxleyana?" he inquired, lighting one of the special cigars selected by Ferdinand for his mother's guests (including himself) and then lying back in the very comfortable chair. "What have you been doing since I left you here last time?"

"Talking to my son on the telephone, and to his barber in person," Mrs. Bradley replied. "The barber was on the jury which acquitted Bella Foxley."

"The deuce he was!" said Mr. Pratt, deeply interested. "Did he give any special reason for the acquittal?"

"It appears that the judge was in the prisoner's favour and almost instructed the jury to bring in the verdict which was pronounced as the result of the trial. The barber himself was not at first in favour of acquitting her. He thought her face was against her."

"So it was, but that's not evidence."

"He said it was. After all, he is a student of personal appearance, don't forget."

Mr. Pratt chuckled.

"I've brought a book with me," he said. "It's the reminiscences of Cotter, the prosecuting counsel in the Foxley case. He's got a chapter—half a chapter, actually—about Bella. I thought you might like to read it. I don't agree with all he says, but there's no doubt that if they could only have proved motive (which, he hints, they could have done if only they could have referred to the death of the aunt) they would have got Bella hanged all right."

"So the prosecution had got hold of the grated carrot, had they?" said Mrs. Bradley. "From the report of the inquest, I suppose?"

"Must have been—unless one of their witnesses spilt a few beans in private which they couldn't very well spill in court."

Meanwhile, there was Mr. Cotter's book, and whilst the ex-journalist and Ferdinand played golf on Sunday morning, she spent an interesting time with Catalogue of Crime (a handsome twelve and sixpenny volume), and obtained, she told Ferdinand later, Counsel's opinion upon the case.

The eminent gentleman had intended a popular book, and had attempted to govern his literary style in accordance with this aspiration. His matter, however, was sufficiently interesting to be erected on almost any foundation or to carry almost any superstructure, and she not only read his remarks upon the Foxley case (to which he had given the title Ghaists or Bogles or——), but his reports and remarks upon a dozen other cases, with close interest.

Of Bella Foxley he said: "We were concerned throughout almost the whole of this baffling case with the contradictory testimony of the medical witnesses, and our hands were tied because we could not allow what, in some circumstances, might have been a telling point against the prisoner, namely, the extraordinary death (by natural causes) of her aunt, to be used in evidence. This deprived us of the possibility of showing a more powerful motive for the death of the cousin than that of a determination to be rid of a blackmailer. This motive, had it been put before the jury, must inevitably have influenced them when they came to consider their verdict.

The aunt, a woman approaching eighty years of age, had died as a result of choking herself with some grated carrot prepared for her by the prisoner, who inherited almost the whole of the aunt's fortune—a considerable amount for one who had always earned her own living. The cousin may have had some information about the aunt's death which he did not disclose but for which he died.