When Last I Died Read online

  Table of Contents

  About the Author

  By the Same Author

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Chapter One THE DIARY

  Chapter Two REACTIONS OF AN ELDERLY SERVANT

  Chapter Three COUNSEL'S OPINION

  Chapter Four THE WIDOW'S MITE

  Chapter Five THE HAUNTED HOUSE

  Chapter Six THE DEAR DEPARTED

  Chapter Seven THE HAUNTED HOUSE

  Chapter Eight THE WIDOW'S MITE

  Chapter Nine COUNSEL'S OPINION

  Chapter Ten REACTIONS OF AN ELDERLY PSYCHOLOGIST

  Chapter Eleven THE DIARY

  www.vintage-books.co.uk

  WHEN LAST I DIED

  Gladys Maude Winifred Mitchell – or 'The Great Gladys' as Philip Larkin described her – was born in 1901, in Cowley in Oxfordshire. She graduated in history from University College London and in 1921 began her long career as a teacher. She studied the works of Sigmund Freud and attributed her interest in witchcraft to the influence of her friend, the detective novelist Helen Simpson.

  Her first novel, Speedy Death, was published in 1929 and introduced readers to Beatrice Adela Lestrange Bradley, the heroine of a further sixty-six crime novels. She wrote at least one novel a year throughout her career and was an early member of the Detection Club along with G. K. Chesterton, Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers. In 1961 she retired from teaching and, from her home in Dorset, continued to write, receiving the Crime Writers' Association Silver Dagger Award in 1976. Gladys Mitchell died in 1983.

  ALSO BY GLADYS MITCHELL

  Speedy Death

  The Mystery of a Butcher's Shop

  The Longer Bodies

  The Saltmarsh Murders

  Death at the Opera

  The Devil at Saxon Wall

  Dead Men's Morris

  Come Away, Death

  St Peter's Finger

  Printer's Error

  Brazen Tongue

  Hangman's Curfew

  Laurels Are Poison

  The Worsted Viper

  Sunset Over Soho

  My Father Sleeps

  The Rising of the Moon

  Here Comes a Chopper

  Death and the Maiden

  The Dancing Druids

  Tom Brown's Body

  Groaning Spinney

  The Devil's Elbow

  The Echoing Strangers

  Merlin's Furlong

  Faintley Speaking

  Watson's Choice

  Twelve Horses and the

  Hangman's Noose

  The Twenty-third Man

  Spotted Hemlock

  The Man Who Grew Tomatoes

  Say It With Flowers

  The Nodding Canaries

  My Bones Will Keep

  Adders on the Heath

  Death of the Delft Blue

  Pageant of Murder

  The Croaking Raven

  Skeleton Island

  Three Quick and Five Dead

  Dance to Your Daddy

  Gory Dew

  Lament for Leto

  A Hearse on May-Day

  The Murder of Busy Lizzie

  Winking at the Brim

  A Javelin for Jonah

  Convent on Styx

  Late, Late in the Evening

  Noonday and Night

  Fault in the Structure

  Wraiths and Changelings

  Mingled with Venom

  The Mudflats of the Dead

  Nest of Vipers

  Uncoffin'd Clay

  The Whispering Knights

  Lovers, Make Moan

  The Death-Cap Dancers

  The Death of a Burrowing Mole

  Here Lies Gloria Mundy

  Cold, Lone and Still

  The Greenstone Griffins

  The Crozier Pharaohs

  No Winding-Sheet

  GLADYS MITCHELL

  When Last I Died

  This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author's and publisher's rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  ISBN 9781409076803

  Version 1.0

  www.randomhouse.co.uk

  Published by Vintage 2009

  2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1

  Copyright © the Executors of the Estate of Gladys Mitchell 1941

  Gladys Mitchell has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work

  This electronic book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

  First published in Great Britain in 1941 by Michael Joseph

  Vintage

  Random House, 20 Vauxhall Bridge Road,

  London SW1V 2SA

  www.vintage-books.co.uk

  Addresses for companies within The Random House Group Limited can be found at: www.randomhouse.co.uk/offices.htm

  The Random House Group Limited Reg. No. 954009

  A CIP catalogue record for this book

  is available from the British Library

  ISBN: 9781409076803

  Version 1.0

  Chapter One

  THE DIARY

  But thou, whose pen hath like a pack-horse served, Whose stomach unto gall hath turned thy food, Whose senses, like poor prisoners, hunger-starved, Whose grief hath parched thy body, dried thy blood....

  DRAYTON.

  THE lunch had consisted of sausage-meat roll, diced swede and mashed potatoes; these covered with thick floury gravy and followed by tinned plums and custard. The boys had consumed the first course in three minutes, the second in one and a half, and still, to Mrs. Bradley's possibly prejudiced eye—for she had nephews, great-nephews and, now that Ferdinand was married, a grandson—they retained a wolfish aspect which depressed her. Her notions on diet, she informed the Warden, when he canvassed her opinion of the menu, were, she thought, about a century out of date.

  The Warden wisely decided to treat this reply as a witticism, and as he was essentially a serious-minded man the subject of conversation languished. Grace, which had, to Mrs. Bradley's embarrassment, preceded the meal, now, with suitable grammatical adjustments, indicated its conclusion, and, with remarkable orderliness and very little noise, the boys filed out except for one child who re-seated himself and continued to eat.

  "What on earth is he doing?" said the Warden. He raised his voice. "Dinnie!" The boy, with a regretful glance at his plate, stood up. "Why haven't you finished?"

  "Sir?"

  "Why haven't you finished? Come up here." The boy approached with considerable reluctance. "And step up smartly when you're called. Don't you know we have a visitor?"

  "Yes, sir." He shot a half-glance at Mrs. Bradley, contemptuously, she thought.

  "Well, where are your manners? Now, then, answer my question."

  "It would only have gone into the swill-tub for the pigs," said the boy, in an almost inaudible voice. He had dark red hair and brown eyes flecked with lighter specks so that it seemed as though the sun danced on a trout stream. His brows slanted in an alarmingly Mephistophelean manner, and he had a wide mouth set in a grim jaw. The Americans, with their flair for good-humoured expressiveness,
would have dubbed him a tough citizen, thought Mrs. Bradley, for whom bad boys had academic and occasionally—for she was a woman—sentimental interest.

  They were all bad boys at the Institution. The Government, with one of those grandmotherly inspirations which are the dread and bane of progressive educationists, had decreed, some ten years previously, that its theories with regard to the preventive detention of delinquent children were a long way out of date, and were to be re-stated in accordance with the facts so far gleaned by child-guidance clinics.

  Mrs. Bradley, among other psychologists, had been called into consultation, but her simple suggestion was that delinquent children, who, like delinquent adults, can be divided into those brands which can be snatched from the burning and those which, unfortunately, cannot, should (literally) be killed or cured. The former treatment was to be painless, the latter drastic. This view was received without enthusiasm by the authorities and was treated, even by the Press, with reserve.

  Now, ten years later, she had been called in again; not (be it stated hastily to those who retain the uncivilized view that human life is necessarily sacred) to assist in translating her theory into fact, but because, strangely enough, the Government had discovered that the new methods in preventive detention had again sprung a leak and badly needed plugging.

  Why they should have called into consultation one with whose thought upon the subject they would be bound to disagree, not even Mrs. Bradley herself could say, well-versed though she was in morbid psychology, but she had answered the summons as a good democrat should, promptly and with an open mind.

  The trouble was, the Warden had explained, that in spite of humane treatment, fewer punishments, better food, and the provision of playing fields, bad boys, on the whole, continued to be bad, and even attempted, more frequently than could be justified, to escape from Elysium—in other words, the Institution —into the wicked and troubled world.

  The worst of it was, he continued, voicing his own point of view with a certain naïveté which she found entertaining, that the two boys who had run away a week before Mrs. Bradley's arrival, had not, so far, been traced, and were, as he expressed it, still at large.

  It could not be helped, Mrs. Bradley suggested; for she found that she was sorry for the Warden in his obvious anxiety, although she knew that he did not like her.

  No, it could not be helped, the Warden agreed, but it was particularly unfortunate as, some years previously, just before he had been appointed, two boys had contrived a similar disappearance and had never been found.

  "What? Never?" said Mrs. Bradley, startled; for the police, she reflected, are noted, among other things, for their bloodhound abilities. "Do you mean to say ...?"

  "I mean to say," said the Warden, looking, all in a moment, haggard with worry, "that, from then until now, there has been not another sign of either of them. I received my appointment partly on an undertaking that such a thing should never happen again, and I've been careful, very careful indeed, but, if we don't get these two soon, I shall feel that I ought to ask the authorities to accept my resignation. You see, the kind of boy who is sent here—just excuse me one moment...."

  He checked further revelations and confessions in order to attend to the matter of immediate moment.

  "What do you mean, Dinnie?"

  "You know what I mean," replied the boy.

  "Don't be impudent! Answer me directly!"

  "But you do know what he means," murmured Mrs. Bradley. In spite of her pity for the Warden in his distress, she found that, on the whole, humane though she believed him to be, and a great improvement on his predecessor, whom she remembered very well from her previous visit, she could not approve of all his methods, and this one, of attempting to make a boy look a fool when he was not a fool, she deplored almost more than any other. She had been an interested but disapproving witness of it several times during her stay.

  The Warden, feeling, no doubt, that it was due to his estimate of himself and his position to ignore it, took no notice of the interruption, but addressed himself again to the truculent and obstinate-looking Dinnie.

  "Now, boy! Answer me directly. Tell me at once what you mean!"

  "There was an extra dinner, and I ate it," said the boy.

  "Right. Go and finish it. To-morrow do without your pudding. If you had answered me at first when I asked you, I should not have punished you at all."

  He rose briskly. The rest of the staff had left the high table and had gone out with the boys, so that, except for Dinnie, now busily and hastily gulping down the pig-food, the hall was empty but for himself and Mrs. Bradley.

  "Have to be sharp on them," he said, feeling, for some reason, that some justification was needed for the combination of bullying and weakness he had shown. "No good letting him get away with that."

  "How did there come to be an extra dinner?" Mrs. Bradley tactfully inquired.

  "That still remains to be investigated." He investigated it by sending for the housekeeper the moment he reached his sitting-room.

  "It was Canvey. He felt sick and did not go in to dinner. But as we had had no notification, his dinner was sent in as usual," said the housekeeper, looking, Mrs. Bradley thought, in the presence of the Warden like a drab female thrush confronting an imposing frog.

  "I had better see Canvey." The Frog touched the buzzer which had already brought a boy to act as messenger. "Get Canvey, Williams, please. All right, Margaret, thank you.... We use Christian names with one another here. It helps the atmosphere," he remarked to Mrs. Bradley when the boy and the housekeeper had gone.

  Ganvey was a rat-faced boy with handsome, wide-open eyes, affording a strange impression of cunning and frankness mingled. Call the cunning lack of self-confidence, and the frankness an attempt, probably an unconscious one, to compensate for this, and you had a different portrait of the boy and not necessarily a less faithful one, Mrs. Bradley surmised.

  "What's the matter with you that you couldn't eat your dinner?" the Warden inquired. He prided himself, Mrs. Bradley had discovered, upon taking a personal interest in each boy. That this might prove embarrassing and even disagreeable to the boy, obviously never entered his head.

  "Sir, I don't like sausage-meat, sir. It makes me sick, sir," responded Canvey, bestowing on the interlocutor his wide gaze.

  "Nonsense, boy. Did you eat your pudding yesterday?"

  "Sir, yes, sir."

  "Your vegetables?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "No, you did not!" thundered the Warden. "You did not eat your vegetables."

  The boy remained silent, but he did not drop his eyes, and he and the Warden stared at one another, until the Warden, apparently the weaker character, added :

  "Well?"

  "Sir?"

  "Your vegetables."

  "I felt ill, sir."

  "No, no. You didn't feel ill. You've been smoking. Have you been stealing tobacco from the staff?"

  "Sir, no, sir."

  The Warden produced a cane. The boy eyed it with a certain degree of sullen speculation.

  "Well?" said the Warden.

  "I didn't steal anything. It was rhubarb leaves," said the boy.

  "Then you deserve to feel sick. See that you eat your tea." He put the cane away, and the boy departed.

  "Rhubarb leaves," said Mrs. Bradley thoughtfully.

  "Yes. A good many of these boys are inveterate smokers when they come here, and we have to cure them. I have given up smoking, myself. I don't want boys coming into this room and smelling tobacco. I don't feel that that would be playing the game. But I can scarcely help it if the staff have an occasional pipe or cigarette. One can scarcely expect them to adopt all one's own standards."

  "One could engage non-smokers, I suppose," said Mrs. Bradley, interested in a system which regarded the powers of self-denial of the staff as being inferior to those of the boys. The Warden, again scenting a witticism, made no direct reply. He said :

  "It is very difficult to get these boys to see t
hat certain things aren't good for them, and, of course, if they come here with the craving, they'll satisfy it somehow if they can. It is one of our many difficulties, to eradicate these tendencies."