Not Safe After Dark (34 page)

When I assured her I would be delighted, we made an arrangement that I was to call at Rose Cottage the following Tuesday at four o’clock, after securing my mother’s permission, of
course.

•

That Tuesday visit was the first of many. Inside, Rose Cottage belied its name. It seemed dark and gloomy, unlike ours, which was always full of sunlight and bright flowers. The
furnishings were antique, even a little shabby. I recollect no family photographs of the kind that embellished most mantelpieces, but there was a huge gilt-framed painting of a young girl working
alone in a field hanging on one wall. If the place sometimes smelled a little musty and neglected, the aroma of Miss Teresa’s fresh-baked scones more often than not made up for it.

‘Mr Hardy was full of contradictions,’ Miss Teresa told me on one occasion. ‘He was a dreamer, of course, and never happier than when wandering the countryside alone with his
thoughts. But he was also a fine musician. He played the fiddle on many social occasions, such as dances and weddings, and he was often far more gregarious and cheerful than many of his critics
would have imagined. He was also a scholar, head forever buried in a book, always studying Latin or Greek. I was no dullard, either, you know, and I like to think I held my own in our
conversations, though I had little Latin and less Greek.’ She chuckled, then turned serious again. ‘Anyway, one never felt one really
knew
him. One was always looking at a mask.
Do you understand me, young man?’

I nodded. ‘I think so, Miss Teresa.’

‘Yes, well,’ she said, staring into space as she sometimes did while speaking of Hardy. ‘At least that was
my
impression. Though he was a good ten years older than me, I
like to believe I got glimpses of the man behind the mask. But because the other villagers thought him a bit odd, and because he was difficult to know, he also attracted a lot of idle gossip. I
remember there was talk about him and that Sparks girl from Puddletown. What was her first name, Eunice?’

‘Tryphena.’

‘That’s right.’ She curled her lip and seemed to spit out the name. ‘Tryphena Sparks. A singularly dull girl, I always thought. We were about the same age, you know, she
and I. Anyway, there was talk of a child. Utter rubbish, of course.’ She gazed out of the window at the green, where a group of children were playing a makeshift game of cricket. Her eyes
seemed to film over. ‘Many’s the time I used to walk through the woodland past the house, and I would see him sitting there at his upstairs window seat, writing or gazing out on the
garden. Sometimes he would wave and come down to talk.’ Suddenly she stopped, then her eyes glittered, and she went on, ‘He used to go and watch hangings in Dorchester. Did you know
that?’

I had to confess that I didn’t, my acquaintance with Hardy being recent and restricted only to his published works of fiction, but it never occurred to me to doubt Miss Teresa’s
word.

‘Of course, executions were public back then.’ Again she paused, and I thought I saw, or rather
sensed
a little shiver run through her. Then she said that was enough for
today, that it was time for scones and tea.

I think she enjoyed shocking me like that at the end of her little narratives, as if we needed to be brought back to reality with a jolt. I remember on another occasion she looked me in the eye
and said, ‘Of course, the doctor tossed him aside as dead at birth, you know. If it hadn’t been for the nurse he would never have survived. That must do something to a man, don’t
you think?’

We talked of many other aspects of Hardy and his work, and, for the most part, Miss Eunice remained silent, nodding from time to time. Occasionally, when Miss Teresa’s memory seemed to
fail her on some point, such as a name or what novel Hardy might have been writing in a certain year, she would supply the information.

I remember one visit particularly vividly. Miss Teresa stood up rather more quickly than I thought her able to, and left the room for a few moments. I sat politely, sipping my tea, aware of Miss
Eunice’s silence and the ticking of the grandfather clock out in the hall. When Miss Teresa returned, she was carrying an old book, or rather two books, which she handed to me.

It was a two-volume edition of
Far from the Madding Crowd
, and, though I didn’t know it at the time, it was the first edition, from 1874, and was probably worth a small fortune. But
what fascinated me even more than Helen Paterson’s illustrations was the brief inscription on the flyleaf:
To Tess, With Affection, Tom
.

I knew that Tess was the diminutive of Teresa because I had an Aunt Teresa in Harrogate, and it never occurred to me to question that the ‘Tess’ in the inscription was the person
sitting opposite me, or that the ‘Tom’ was none other than Thomas Hardy himself.

‘He called you Tess,’ I remember saying. ‘Perhaps he had you in mind when he wrote
Tess of the d’Urbervilles
?’

Miss Teresa’s face drained of colour so quickly I feared for her life, and it seemed that a palpable chill entered the room. ‘Don’t be absurd, boy,’ she whispered.
‘Tess Durbeyfield was hanged for murder.’

•

We had been officially at war for about a week, I think, when the police called. There were three men, one in uniform and two in plain clothes. They spent almost two hours in
Rose Cottage, then came out alone, got in their car and drove away. We never saw them again.

The day after the visit, though, I happened to overhear our local constable talking with the vicar in St Oswald’s churchyard. By a great stroke of fortune, several yews stood between us
and I was able to remain unseen while I took in every word.

‘Murdered, that’s what they say,’ said PC Walker. ‘Bashed his ’ead in with a poker, then chopped ’im up in little pieces and buried ’em in
t’garden. Near Dorchester, it were. Village called ’igher Bockhampton. People who lived there were digging an air-raid shelter when they found t’bones. ’Eck of a shock for
t’bairns.’

Could they possibly mean Miss Teresa? That sweet old lady who made such delightful scones and had known the young Thomas Hardy? Could she really have bashed someone on the head, chopped him up
into little pieces and buried them in the garden? I shivered at the thought, despite the heat.

But nothing more was heard of the murder charge. The police never returned, people found new things to talk about, and after a couple of weeks Miss Eunice and Miss Teresa reappeared in village
life much as they had been before. The only difference was that my mother would no longer allow me to visit Rose Cottage. I put up token resistance, but by then my mind was full of Spitfires,
secret codes and aircraft carriers anyway.

Events seemed to move quickly in the days after the police visit, though I cannot be certain of the actual time period involved. Four things, however, conspired to put the murder out of my mind
for some time: Miss Teresa died, I think in the November of that same year; Miss Eunice retreated into an even deeper silence than before; the war escalated; and I was called up to military
service.

•

The next time I gave any thought to the two ladies of Rose Cottage was in Egypt, of all places, in September 1942. I was on night watch with the Eighth Army, not far from
Alamein. Desert nights have an eerie beauty I have never found anywhere else since. After the heat of the day, the cold surprises one, for a start, as does the sense of endless space, but even more
surprising is the desertscape of wrecked tanks, jeeps and lorries in the cold moonlight, metal wrenched and twisted into impossible patterns like some petrified forest or exposed coral reef.

To spoil our sleep and shatter our nerves, Rommel’s Afrika Korps had got into the routine of setting up huge amplified speakers and blaring out ‘Lili Marlene’ over and over all
night long. It was on a night such as this, while I was trying to stay warm and awake and trying to shut my ears to the music, that I struck up a conversation with a soldier called Sidney Ferris
from one of the Dorset regiments.

When Sid told me he had grown up in Piddlehinton, I suddenly thought of the two ladies of Rose Cottage.

‘Did you ever hear any stories of a murder around there?’ I asked, offering Sid a cigarette. ‘A place called Higher Bockhampton?’

‘Lots of murder stories going around when I was a lad,’ he said, lighting up, careful to hide the flame with his cupped hand. ‘Better than the wireless.’

‘This would be a wife murdering her husband.’

He nodded. ‘Plenty of that and all. And husbands murdering their wives. Makes you wonder whether it’s worth getting married, doesn’t it? Higher Bockhampton, you say?’

‘Yes. Teresa Morgan, I believe the woman’s name was.’

He frowned. ‘Name don’t ring no bell,’ he said, ‘but I do recall a tale about some woman who was supposed to have killed her husband, cut him up in pieces and buried them
in the garden. A couple of young lads found some bones when they was digging an air-raid shelter a few years back. Animal bones, if you ask me.’

‘But did the villagers believe the tale?’

He shrugged. ‘Don’t know about anyone else, but I can’t say as I did. So many stories like that going around, they can’t all be true, or damn near all of us would be
murderers or corpses. Stands to reason, doesn’t it?’ And he took a long drag on his cigarette, holding it in his cupped hand, like most soldiers, so the enemy wouldn’t see the
pinpoint of light.

‘Did anyone say what became of the woman?’ I asked.

‘She went away some years later. There was talk of someone else seen running away from the farmhouse, too, the night they said the murder must have taken place.’

‘Could it have been him? The husband?’

Sid shook his head. ‘Too slight a figure. Her husband was a big man, apparently. Anyway, that led to more talk of an illicit lover. There’s always a lover, isn’t there? Have
you noticed? You know what kind of minds these country gossips have.’

‘Did anyone say who the other person might have been?’

‘Nobody knew. Just rumours of a vague shape seen running away. These are old wives’ tales we’re talking about.’

‘But perhaps there’s some tru—’

But at that point I was relieved of my watch, and the next weeks turned out to be so chaotic that I never even saw Sid again. I heard later that he was killed at the Battle of Alamein just over
a month after our conversation.

•

I didn’t come across the mystery of Rose Cottage again until the early 1950s. At that time I was living in Eastvale, in a small flat overlooking the cobbled market square.
The town was much smaller and quieter than it is today, though little about the square has changed, from the ancient market cross, the Queen’s Arms on the corner, the Norman church and the
Tudor-fronted police station.

I had recently published my first novel and was still basking in that exquisite sensation that comes only once in a writer’s career: the day he holds the first printed and bound copy of
his very first work. Of course, there was no money in writing, so I worked part-time in a bookshop on North Market Street, and on one of my mornings off, a market day as I remember, I was absorbed
in polishing the third chapter of what was to be my second novel when I heard a faint tap at my door. This was enough to startle me, as I rarely had any visitors.

Puzzled and curious, I left my typewriter and went to open the door. There stood a wizened old lady, hunch-shouldered, white-haired, carrying a stick with a brass lion’s head handle and a
small package wrapped in brown paper, tied with string.

She must have noticed my confused expression because, with a faint smile, she said, ‘Don’t you recognize me, Mr Riley? Dear, dear, have I aged that much?’

Then I knew her, knew the voice.

‘Miss Eunice!’ I cried, throwing my door open. ‘Please forgive me. I was lost in my own world. Do come in. And you must call me Christopher.’

Once we were settled, with a pot of tea mashing beside us – though, alas, none of Miss Teresa’s scones – I noticed the dark circles under Miss Eunice’s eyes, the yellow
around the pupils, the parchment-like quality of her skin, and I knew she was seriously ill.

‘How did you find me?’ I asked.

‘It didn’t take a Sherlock Holmes. Everyone knows where the famous writer lives in a small town like East-vale.’

‘Hardly famous,’ I demurred. ‘But thank you anyway. I never knew you took the trouble to follow my fortunes.’

‘Teresa would have wished it. She was very fond of you, you know. Apart from ourselves and the police, you were the only person in Lyndgarth who ever entered Rose Cottage. Did you know
that? You might remember that we kept ourselves very much to ourselves.’

‘Yes, I remember that,’ I told her.

‘I came to give you this.’

She handed me the package and I untied it carefully. Inside was the Smith, Elder & Co. first edition of
Far from the Madding Crowd
, complete with Hardy’s inscription to
‘Tess’.

‘But you shouldn’t,’ I said. ‘This must be very valuable. It’s a fir—’

She waved aside my objections. ‘Please take it. It is what Teresa would have wished. And I wish it, too. Now listen,’ she went on. ‘That isn’t the only reason I came. I
have something very important to tell you, to do with why the police came to visit all those years ago. The thought of going to my grave without telling someone troubles me deeply.’

‘But why me? And why now?’

‘I told you. Teresa was especially fond of you. And you’re a writer,’ she added mysteriously. ‘You’ll understand. Should you wish to make use of the story, please
do so. Neither Teresa nor I have any living relatives to offend. All I ask is that you wait a suitable number of years after my death before publishing any account. And that death is expected to
occur at some point over the next few months. Does that answer your second question?’

I nodded. ‘Yes. I’m sorry.’

‘You needn’t be. As you may well be aware, I have long since exceeded my three score and ten, though I can hardly say the extra years have been a blessing. But that is God’s
will. Do you agree to my terms?’