When Last I Died Read online

  "The mistress loved this room," said Eliza, looking round it with affectionate pride. "It was here that she died, madam. Had her bed brought down here and the dining-table and chairs moved out to get it in. What a job it was to get her downstairs and into it, too. She was a big, heavy woman, you know, madam, and had had her hair dyed dark red, which nobody really cared for, not even herself when it was done. 'I've made a fool of myself, Eliza,' she said to me when she came home— went up to London, she did, to have it tinted—'and I wish now I'd never had it done. But you can take it that nobody but myself is ever going to know that. I shall keep it touched up now I've taken the plunge.' And so she did, to the last. Ah, she was a wonderful old lady; eighty-one when she died, and all her faculties, as you might say. Nobody thought of her going like that at the end. It was on the Wednesday that she tumbled over. She wouldn't have me help her dress, and so, of course, it happened! The very first time I hadn't tied her strings for her—for she wore the old-fashioned petticoats to the end, two flannel ones and one white one in winter, and just the two white ones in summer—and down she went. I'd helped her ever since her rheumatism began to make her what she called fumble-fisted.

  "I was down in the kitchen when she fell, but of course, I heard the crash, and her calling out as she tumbled.

  "Doctor was very grave at first; a young doctor he was then, although we've got quite used to him in these parts by now. He said she'd never work off the effects like younger people can, so, when he put it like that, I said, 'Oh, doctor, you don't mean she won't get over it! Because if you mean that,' I said, 'I really ought to send for her relations.'

  "He looked at me very sober at that, and said, 'You'd better send for them, then.' That was on the following Saturday morning.

  "With that, he went, and I went straight to the bureau for the address of the Institution where Miss Bella was gone to be housekeeper. The mistress saw me, of course, and she called out from the bed, 'Don't you go writing to that addle-headed niece Tessa of mine! I'm not that far gone, Eliza, that I don't know how you favour her above Bella.'

  "'I thought you'd like Miss Bella to know you weren't quite yourself, mum,' I said; and at that she tried to raise herself a bit on the pillow and said, speaking sharp-like, as she always did when she wanted a bit of an argument,

  "'What do you mean—quite myself? I'm not in my dotage yet, thank goodness! Don't be a fool, Eliza!'

  "'No, mum,' I said, quite meek, for I'd found Miss Bella's address by that time, so I wanted to humour her a bit. But she saw I'd got it. Her eyes were very quick. Still, she said no more, except to tell me to put Care of the Warden on the envelope. It was that, I think, her wanting Miss Bella to come, that made me sure how very bad she was, and made me turn the letter into a telegram, to fetch her as soon as might be."

  "And I suppose you sent, also, to the other relatives who came?" said Mrs. Bradley.

  "No, that I didn't, madam. I wouldn't have taken the liberty. Not that Mr. Tom wasn't very fond of the mistress, although he wouldn't go in and see her, and as for his wife, well, she was more like an angel of mercy, because she hardly knew the mistress at all, and yet, when it came to the come to, she was far more help in the sickroom than ever poor Miss Bella was. But there! The married women are the handiest (although I'm not married myself), when it comes to looking after things in the house."

  "I don't quite understand, then," said Mrs. Bradley, "how Cousin Tom and his wife Muriel happened to be there at that very crucial time."

  "You may call it that," said Eliza. "The mistress rallied nicely, and the doctor, you could tell (although, of course, he wouldn't say so, taking to himself all the credit, as young men do), was wonderfully surprised at how she was getting over it. He said she must have had, for her age, a fine constitution, but, myself, I call it more the will-power. She could be very determined, the mistress, when she liked. I say it was her will-power pulled her round. But as for Mr. Tom knowing he ought to be present if it meant the poor mistrees's deathbed, I said to Miss Bella to send a telegram if she thought he ought to be present, and so I suppose she sent it, which I wouldn't venture to do."

  "Where exactly in the house did your mistress have her fall?" Mrs. Bradley enquired.

  "Why, in the bathroom passage, to be sure."

  "Ah, yes, of course. Now what was that about the tin of lobster which Miss Bella brought back with her after she had been out for the afternoon?"

  "Crayfish, not lobster, madam. She asked me to have some, but it always gives me such terrible indigestion that I asked her to excuse me, and she ate it all herself for her tea. I remember thinking it was too big a tin for one person, but there! Miss Bella would sooner belly bust than good stuff be lost, as my Yorkshire uncle used to say when we were children and didn't want to finish up our food."

  "Splendid!" said Mrs. Bradley, leaving the old servant with the impression that the exclamation referred less to the Yorkshire uncle's proverb than to some secret satisfaction which she felt over something else which had been disclosed to her. "And then, of course, came the extraordinary business of the grated carrot."

  "Extraordinary you may rightly call it, madam," assented Eliza immediately. "I can't imagine the mistress calling for such heathenish food. She liked carrot well enough in a stew, but never in my life had I known her eat them raw."

  "Raw carrot is good for the system," observed Mrs. Bradley. "Perhaps one of the relatives persuaded her that it would be good for her to eat some."

  "Well, Miss Bella actually grated it for her, I think, because she asked me for the nutmeg grater to do it on, but Miss Bella wasn't a vegetarian or any thing of that, that I know of. In fact, I don't see how she could have been, living in the Institution like she did. I'm sure she had no time for fads and fancies there."

  "Mr. Tom, perhaps, was a vegetarian?" Mrs. Bradley suggested.

  "Mr. Tom? Oh, no, madam. He might hunt ghosts and the like rubbish of that, but he was always one for his cut from the joint and two veg., with anybody. And with him like that, I don't see how his wife could have been anything but a meat-eater too."

  "Well, then, who do you suggest is the author of the grated carrot, Miss Hodge?"

  "I couldn't say, I'm sure, madam. It seems out of all reason, as I remember saying at the time, that she should have ate such stuff. My poor mistress! I only hope she died easy of it, weak as she was with the fall."

  Mrs. Bradley concurred sympathetically in this pious wish, and then added that she supposed Aunt Flora had been a churchwoman.''

  "Indeed not, madam, no. Not if she was ever such friends with the vicar. Which she was. Friendly enemies they were, so to speak, both being interested in rock gardens, and the vicar having more knowledge and the mistress more money. Oh, many's the time, as I remember well, that he would call, and they would go over the rock garden plant by plant, and sometimes he would bring her nice little white painted bits of pointed wood with the Latin name on in black, and stoop down and push them into the ground, so we always knew what we were looking at, even if we couldn't pronounce it. But Church! Oh, no. No more than me, and I, I am rather ashamed to say, have never gone anywhere since I was about twenty, although brought up to it by a pious father and mother. I was jilted at twenty by a young fellow. We used to sing out of the same hymnbook, and I never fancied Church after that. But the mistress—if she ever went anywhere those last years—she went to the Congregational at Raddleton in Mr. Tripps' car. One of her uncles was a Congregational minister, or so she told me once."

  Mrs. Bradley glanced at the portrait of the gentleman with whiskers, and Eliza, following her glance, exclaimed :

  "Oh, no, that wouldn't be him, madam! But he's in the family album if you'd like to have a look. That there was the mistress's husband. That was before I knew her. He died when she was sixty. I've only been with her the last twenty years."

  She went to the bureau, unlocked one of the drawers, and, after removing various books and papers, came over to Mrs. Bradley with a black-bound, Biblic
al-looking volume with thick, gold-edged leaves.

  "Don't be alarmed when you first open it, madam. It's got one of those little musical-boxes inside the front cover. Very pretty it plays."

  Mrs. Bradley turned back the cover, and a small prickly metal cylinder was disclosed under a sheet of glass. The cylinder revolved, and the thin sweet tune it played was Annie Laurie. When Mrs. Bradley turned the leaves over to look at the photographs, however, the music ceased.

  Eliza came over and stood beside her, laying work-roughened fingers on the pages as she talked. Anecdote followed description, and Mrs. Bradley was taken relentlessly from photograph to photograph, and was not allowed to miss one. She did not object at all to this, however (but only begged Eliza to draw up a chair so that they could rest the book on the table and both look at it in comfort), because a great many of the photographs, which were mainly of groups of people, showed either Aunt Flora or one or both of the nieces. Miss Tessa figured more often than Miss Bella, but never, when only one of them was in the group, did the old servant falter, even for so much as a moment, in naming which niece it was. They were, Mrs. Bradley could see, women of widely different appearance, the one large, square and resolute, the other smaller, more timid, more completely feminine.

  It took more than an hour to go through the whole of the album, and at the end of it Eliza said how much she had enjoyed herself, and that she supposed she ought to be going. At this, Mrs. Bradley produced two decanters, one containing port and the other sherry, and a tin of biscuits. Possibly under the influence of the port, Eliza suddenly said :

  "You know, madam, there was something very funny about that carrot. I don't say Miss Bella exactly forced it on the poor mistress, but I do say it was funny."

  "Yes, if she had never eaten such a thing before, it does seem odd, but sick people take these fancies," said Mrs. Bradley.

  "But she wasn't all that sick, madam, not at that time. It was when the doctor told us she would recover. And she was perfectly sensible; not wandering in her mind, or anything. And it wasn't like when one might be expecting. I grant you people do have strange fancies then in the eating line. I remember my own sister. Nothing would content her but duck eggs, although she never would touch one at other times. And the job we had to get them for her, us then living in London! Such nasty, indigestible things! I can't abear them myself. I said to her, afterwards, a wonder the baby wasn't born with webbed feet, I said. And the queer thing about that is that he became quite a champion swimmer, madam. So it all goes to show, doesn't it?"

  "Yes, indeed," agreed Mrs. Bradley politely.

  The next day she called in the doctor because her maid complained of a sore throat. He had heard of Mrs. Bradley and was anxious to make her acquaintance. As there was no servant except the maid who was ill, Mrs. Bradley herself opened the door.

  "Ah, Doctor!" she said.

  "Ah, Doctor!" he replied. Then, when he had examined the patient and prescribed for her, he remained for a bit to gossip, confessing that the village never troubled him much throughout the summer, and that he had plenty of time on his hands.

  "A good many months since I was here," he said. "The last time was when Eliza had an accident with a gardening fork and stuck it into her foot. That would have been two years ago last Easter. And before that—no, I don't believe I was in this house between that time and the previous time when the old lady choked herself with the carrot. I'd only just come here then. Hardly knew a soul in the village. I was called in by Eliza, of course, to see her mistress after a fall she had had. Tripped over, or something. I forget the details. They don't matter, anyway, because she was soon on the highroad. Must have had marvellous recuperative powers, considering her age. Can't think how she got over it as she did. Anyhow, point is, she did get over it. I tell you I was absolutely staggered when she pulled round. Then came the knock-out—that beastly grated carrot."

  "Yes, I've been hearing about that from Miss Hodge. I'm her tenant here, of course. She came to tea yesterday, and told me a lot about it. It appears it was a sudden fancy on the part of the patient. She had never eaten raw grated carrot, and seems to have conceived a desire to try it."

  "Or someone else conceived the idea for her," said the doctor. Meeting Mrs. Bradley's sharp glance, he smiled, shrugged, and then said, "Oh, yes, I admit it. If I'd had the guts I'd have said the old lady was murdered. Trouble was, I knew I couldn't prove it. No marks of violence; no cause of death beyond the simple one that she had choked herself. And doctors who have much to do with bringing accusations of murder aren't popular, as no doubt you know. No; there was no proof, and I didn't know the people, either. It just seemed like asking for trouble. Funnily enough, the niece knew I wasn't satisfied. Put it to me, point-blank. Proved her own innocence, anyhow; and nobody would be fool enough to suspect old Eliza of murder. Left the married couple. Nothing there to get hold of, so I signed the certificate. I think the majority of people would have done the same. Still, I was a bit taken aback when I read about the arrest of the niece for murdering the cousin."

  "Yes?" said Mrs. Bradley.

  "So the doctor wasn't satisfied?" she said abruptly to Eliza Hodge when next she saw her.

  "Wasn't he? Poor young girl," responded Eliza. "I do hope she isn't sickening for something, madam."

  "I meant about the grated carrot," said Mrs. Bradley, even more abruptly; but the old servant's face did not change, except that the concern in her eyes deepened.

  "I believe you're right, madam," she agreed. "He asked me, I remember, a whole lot of questions, funny enough."

  "What sort of questions do you mean?"

  "Well, who gave it to her."

  "And you weren't prepared to say."

  "Well, Miss Bella said she was going out shopping in the village, and Mr. Tom and his wife said they were going out for a walk along the shore, so I suppose, if anyone gave it to her, it must have been me," replied the old servant, with a peculiarly hard expression on her face.

  "And was it you?"

  "You don't need to ask that, madam. You know it wasn't."

  "Yes. Even the doctor knew that," said Mrs. Bradley. "But, since the subject has come up, Miss Hodge, I do wish, if it wouldn't cause you too much distress, you'd tell me what you really think."

  "Well, I'm not going to speak ill of the dead, but I'll tell you one thing straight away, madam. One of them didn't go out. At least, I didn't think so. Mr. Tom, he went, and I see a flick of the blue dress his young wife had been wearing—or it might have been Miss Bella; she wore blue. But there was the sound of a sewing machine in Miss Bella's room, her having borrowed mine to run herself up an apron—one of mine, altered, it was."

  "And she did grate up the carrot, using the nutmeg grater to do it."

  "Well, yes, I think so, but, of course, I can't be sure. For one thing, although she asked for the nutmeg grater, I didn't actually see her use it. Still, there was carrot on it when I came to wash it. And as for the shopping, and being out of the house when her poor aunt died, well, she said she'd been out, and I couldn't contradict her."

  "Perhaps," suggested Mrs. Bradley, "she grated the carrot for her aunt, and took it up to her so that she could help herself to it. That's what she suggested in the diary."

  "It might have been that way, madam. I really couldn't say. Still, it seems funny that if the mistress wanted grated carrot, she hadn't said so to me and let me do it for her. Besides, I will say this: Miss Bella was perfectly open about the carrot when she spoke to me about the grater."

  "Was your mistress at all fond of any kind of food which could look like grated carrot at a distance?" Mrs. Bradley enquired.

  "Only pease pudding, and that's not very like," Eliza replied. "You mean Miss Bella thought it would do her good, and didn't tell her what she was going to do until it was all made ready? I couldn't say, I'm sure, madam. Anyway, it was a very great relief when she was found Not Guilty of Mr. Tom, although the suicide so soon after was very dreadful."

  "The s
uicide?" said Mrs. Bradley, anxious to hear more about this.

  "Oh, yes, madam. She took a little house down in the country, Miss Bella did, far enough away, you would think, for her to be able to forget all about the trial and what she'd gone through. But it seems some ill-natured people got hold of the tale and spread it all round the village. She left a farewell letter, poor thing, saying she had been driven to it by gossip. It was read at the coroner's inquest."