Not Safe After Dark

by Peter Robinson

  * * *

  The summer of 1939 had been unusually beautiful despite the political tensions. Or am I indulging in nostalgia for childhood? Our dale can be one of the most grim and desolate landscapes on the face of the earth, even in August, but I remember the summers of my youth as days of dazzling sunshine and blue skies. In 1939, every day was a new symphony of color—golden buttercups, pink clover, mauve cranesbill—ever changing and recombining in fresh palettes. While the tense negotiations went on in Europe, while Ribbentrop and Molotov signed the Nazi-Soviet pact, and while there was talk of conscription and rationing at home, very little changed in Lyndgarth.

  Summer in the dale was always a season for odd jobs—peat-cutting, wall-mending, sheep-clipping—and for entertainments, such as the dialect plays, the circus, fairs, and brass bands. Even after war was declared on September 3, we still found ourselves rather guiltily having fun, scratching our heads, shifting from foot to foot, and wondering when something really warlike was going to happen.

  Of course, we had our gas masks in their cardboard boxes, which we had to carry everywhere; streetlighting was banned, and motorcars were not allowed to use their headlights. This latter rule was the cause of numerous accidents in the dale, usually involving wandering sheep on the unfenced roads.

  Some evacuees also arrived from the cities. Uncouth urchins for the most part, often verminous and ill-equipped for country life, they seemed like an alien race to us. Most of them didn’t seem to have any warm clothing or Wellington boots, as if they had never seen mud in the city. Looking back, I realize they were far from home, separated from their parents, and they must have been scared to death. I am ashamed to admit, though, that at the time I didn’t go out of my way to give them a warm welcome.

  This is partly because I was always lost in my own world. I was a bookish child and had recently discovered the stories of Thomas Hardy, who seemed to understand and sympathize with a lonely village lad and his dreams of becoming a writer. I also remember how much he thrilled and scared me with some of the stories. After “The Withered Arm” I wouldn’t let anyone touch me for a week, and I didn’t dare go to sleep after “Barbara of the House of Grebe” for fear that there was a horribly disfigured statue in the wardrobe, that the door would slowly creak open and . . .

  I think I was reading Far from the Madding Crowd that hot July day, and, as was my wont, I read as I walked across the village green, not looking where I was going. It was Miss Teresa I bumped into, and I remember thinking that she seemed remarkably resilient for such an old lady.

  “Do mind where you’re going, young man!” she admonished me, though when she heard my effusive apologies, she softened her tone somewhat. She asked me what I was reading, and when I showed her the book, she closed her eyes for a moment and a strange expression crossed her wrinkled features.

  “Ah, Mr. Hardy,” she said, after a short silence. “I knew him once, you know, in his youth. I grew up in Dorset.”

  I could hardly hold back my enthusiasm. Someone who actually knew Hardy! I told her that he was my favorite writer of all time, even better than Shakespeare, and that when I grew up I wanted to be a writer, just like him.

  Miss Teresa smiled indulgently. “Do calm down,” she said, then she paused. “I suppose,” she continued, with a glance toward Miss Eunice, “that if you are really interested in Mr. Hardy, perhaps you might like to come to tea someday?”

  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 color 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 rumors 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 Eastvale.”

  “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 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. In
side 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 threescore 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?”

  “Of course. I take it this is about the alleged murder?”

  Miss Eunice raised her eyebrows. “So you’ve heard the rumors?” she said. “Well, there was a murder all right. Teresa Morgan murdered her husband, Jacob, and buried his body in the garden.” She held out her teacup and I poured. I noticed her hand was shaking slightly. Mine was, too. The shouts of the market vendors came in through my open windows.

  “When did she do this?” was all I could manage.

  Miss Eunice closed her eyes and pursed her cracked lips. “I don’t remember the exact year,” she said. “But it really doesn’t matter. You could look it up, if you wanted. It was the year the Queen was proclaimed Empress of India.”