When Last I Died

"And appeared. Tom said it was very interesting, and that he telegraphed to the Institution next day to know whether Bella was very ill or even dead. Of course she wasn't either the one or the other, bur they did say, funnily enough, that she'd fallen off her bicycle in the grounds as she was making a quick dash into the village that morning for some shopping that hadn't turned up. She was in a fearful state, and complained about her ankle, although she wouldn't have the doctor to it."

"Strange that a figment of that kind could travel all that way," said Mrs. Bradley.

"Oh, it wasn't all that way," Muriel put in brightly. "It was only about twelve miles as the crow flies, which is the way such things would travel I suppose."

"I don't know" said Mrs. Bradley soberly. "Wouldn't they perhaps be earth-bound to the roads?"

"Even if they were," said Muriel, who seemed oblivious of the purport of these suggestions, "they would only have had to come about seventeen miles, I believe."

"Ah?" said Mrs. Bradley. "And now, about this particular haunted house in which we are interested."

"Oh, nobody appeared there. It was simply a poltergeist," replied her victim.

"In what way?"

"Raps, footsteps, raucous laughter, writing on the walls, bell-ringing, throwing things about, moving objects from one place to another, cold air, lights in windows—that sort of thing."

"How many of the things you have just mentioned took place in the haunted house?" asked Mrs. Bradley, who, in flying hieroglyphics, had taken down the entire list. "Raps?"

"Oh, yes, ever so many times."

"Footsteps?"

"Both light and heavy. Sometimes it sounded like somebody in great boots, sometimes more like stockinged feet. Sometimes they ran, and sometimes they walked, and once they just scuffled about over our heads as though two people were fighting."

"You said raucous laughter. Can you substantiate that?"

"I don't know what you mean, but it sounded more like costermongers.''

"Writing on the walls?"

"Oh, yes. But I cleaned it all off. It wasn't—it wasn't very nice."

"Are the spirits in the habit of being obscene?"

"No, that's the funny part. They're not.^* I mean, they usually write things you can't make any sense out of. I've never known them to be really rude."

^* Apparently a mistake on Muriel's part .... "The rappings answered back with obscenity or blasphemy." Poltergeists. Sacheverell Sitwell. Faber and Faber, June, 1940.

"Did your husband object to having this writing cleaned off the walls?"

"No, he didn't mind once it was photographed. But the photographs looked even more horrid than the actual scribble, so Bella persuaded him to throw the negatives away and destroy the proofs. She said no one would believe they were spirit writings, and anyway they were embarrassing. Which it is quite true, they were."

"Do you remember them?" asked Mrs. Bradley.

"Oh, yes, of course I do, but I wouldn't repeat them to you."

"Write them down, then," said Mrs. Bradley, offering her a notebook and pencil. As Muriel hesitated she added with a cackle, "Don't worry. I expect I've heard worse things from some of my mental patients.... Now let us continue: bell-ringing?"

"Well, no, not at this house. At least—not after Tom cut all the wires. At least, I don't believe so."

"Was there a bell in every room in the house?"

"No, only in some of the rooms. I think there had been bells, but they were all out of order when we got there, but some we had repaired, but I don't remember which."

"I see. Now I know there were things thrown about and things moved, and I know there is a cold draught at one spot in the passage, so I need not ask you about those. What about lights in windows?"

"Yes, those have been seen from the road at times when both Tom and I—and Bella, when she was with us—were all downstairs, and we knew no one else was in the house or could have got in."

"The lights were always from the bedroom windows, then? Did the lights show at the same window each time, or was a different window ever used?"

"Oh, it was always the same window, so far as I know. Of course, people may not always have told us, but we asked them to, as soon as it was known the lights had been seen, because we did not use any of the bedrooms, after that, if they fronted the road. So we knew that if lights were seen it was not any light that we ourselves were using."

"Very interesting," thought Mrs. Bradley, "considering that the hauntings were a source of income."

"When Bella came to live with us," Muriel continued, "it was arranged that we should take it in turns in the evening to go out into the garden and see whether the lights were visible. If they were, then the one outside was to throw gravel at the drawing-room window, and the other two would rush upstairs to investigate."

"Oh? You took it in turns, did you?" said Mrs. Bradley.