tell you what it means to me, dear Mrs. Bradley, buried alive as we are in this little corner."
Mrs. Bradley rightly observed that it was a very beautiful and interesting little corner.
"Now you must have had some reason for calling, I can't help thinking," pursued her hostess helpfully. "I can't flatter myself that you so much as knew of my existence. Now did you?"
"I am delighted, at any rate, to make your acquaintance, Miss Biddle," replied Mrs. Bradley, sincerely and in the beautiful voice, which, like all beautiful voices, managed to convey something more than the actual words spoken. "It's about this haunted house you have in the village, or, rather, just outside it. Miss Foxley's place, you know."
"Very interesting," said Miss Biddle. "Rather sinister, too, by all accounts. And, of course, that unfortunate death! I am so glad they let that poor woman off, although I believe she did it. Yes, very interesting indeed. I remember my dear father, who was the vicar here at the time, saying that there had been none of this poltergeist nonsense in England in his young days. It was all on a par with this modern psychology. Quite wrong, of course, because, as everybody knows, there were the Wesleys, and although it might seem a great pity that John Wesley should have been driven out of the church by the violence of his own convictions, I am sure that a more upright and truthful family could not be found, and when there is evidence from such a source of poltergeist activities, well, I, for one, do not feel that it can possibly be disputed. As for my poor dear father's views on modern psychology, well, they were really amusing. One could not take them seriously, poor dear. He was dreadfully taken aback by Freud's theories of sex, I remember, and was so distressed by them that he could not bear to have them discussed. Havelock Ellis, too, he did not like. 'So noble a head,' he used to say, 'should have housed the brain of a benefactor of mankind.'
"'So it does, father,' I used to reply; but he would not have it so. I suppose he would have been equally opposed to Darwin, and, in his youth, probably was."
It was amazing, Mrs. Bradley agreed, how soon the apparently revolutionary theories of succeeding generations of philosophers and scientists were absorbed and taken for granted when one remembered and realized the opposition offered to them at their inception.
"Poltergeist phenomena, now," she proceeded to argue, "are generally accepted by the present generation as scientifically demonstrable, although they are not yet subject to scientific explanation. But," she continued, "I understand, from gossip I have heard in the village, and from what the old caretaker and his daughter up at the house were able to tell me, that previous stories of hauntings betray no conception of poltergeist activity, but refer to such old superstitions as a phantom coach, a headless hunter, and so on. I was taken to see the Haunted Walk in the garden, although no one seems to know exactly when, how and why it received its title."
"Oh, I can explain that," said Miss Biddle eagerly. "But do let us have some tea. I get it myself, you know. I have a daily woman, but she goes as soon as she has washed up after lunch. I find it much nicer to have my little nest to myself for the afternoons and evenings, and, of course, it does come a good deal less expensive this way, especially as I do not give her her dinner. Servants, I always used to find, when I kept house for my dear father, do eat such a lot compared with ourselves, and if they are given inferior cuts of meat they are apt to become discontented."
Mrs. Bradley agreed. Her hostess then went off to get the tea, and after she had brought it in Mrs. Bradley returned to the question of the hauntings.
"Ah, yes, the haunted house," said Miss Biddle. "You were saying that you had heard the village stories."
Mrs. Bradley added that she had also read the story of Borley Rectory, and that some of the features of the haunted house seemed to bear a remarkable similarity to what was described in that book.
"Yes, and the queer thing about our haunted house is that, as I was saying, there is no tradition of poltergeist activity until just a month or two before the death of that unfortunate man, Mr.