Poet's Cottage

by Josephine Pennicott

  Several long-time employees of Blackness House have scoffed at the men’s claims, saying that ‘they were all bone-idle fantasists’. There is no denying, however, that Blackness House has witnessed a great degree of human suffering. This latest tragedy which has threatened the life of young Violet Bydrenbaugh is another grim chapter to add to the dark and macabre tale of this house. One hopes it is the final chapter – but this reporter regrets with a heavy heart that she fears not.

  Sadie put down the magazine. Why had Birdie never mentioned this shocking incident? History, after all, was as much about what you edited out as what you told. She thought again of Violet as depicted in Webweaver, with her porcelain skin and flaxen curls and was surprised by her distress at this report about a stranger, probably long dead. What had been Violet’s fate? Had she survived her burns? Did she return from Melbourne alive? Sadie scribbled a name on her notepad: Birdie. If anybody knew what Violet’s life had become, it was her. Why hadn’t she mentioned it in either version of Webweaver? Or even personally in passing? The writer of the journal article, Louisa Wilson, had been convinced the fire at Blackness would become another infamous addition to the mansion’s mythology. Instead, it had been lost to recent history.

  Sadie wrote another name on her notebook. Gracie. Blackness House was part of her collection; perhaps she might know more of the story. That is, if she decided to get over her fury and speak to Sadie.

  Finally she added a third name: Thomasina. Would her aunt remember the event? Even if she did, was it cruel to ask someone who had endured such trauma in her childhood to dredge up the past? Sadie stared at the three names. Eeny, meeny, miny, mo. Her pen landed on Birdie. That was it then, she decided. She would seek out Birdie to see if she could shed any more light on the mystery. Engrossed as she was in her thoughts, she failed to feel another pair of eyes watching her.

  From behind her kitchen curtain, Thomasina watched Sadie reading. How Thomasina hated her being there! This woman – so pretty, with her little Pearl face and her lace dresses and her doll-like ways – had brought the dark memories back. Thomasina’s mother had been beautiful too – but not on the inside. Thomasina knew the true face of her mother. She saw herself again as a child, her mother dragging her by the arm, her face red as she screamed that she would feed Thomasina to her devil. She recalled the smell when she had urinated in fear, and her father shouting at her mother. So many dark and troubling voices from the past.

  ‘Be careful, lookalike Pearl woman,’ she whispered. ‘He’s still there. He hasn’t left.’ A memory came to her of her mother’s twitching body. It seemed so long ago now that she felt totally detached from the image. Sometimes she wondered privately if she had even seen it. Or had she imagined it because she was what her mother had always called her: A VERY WICKED CHILD? Maybe she had merely imagined seeing her mother on that table; after all, she had wished so many times that Pearl would die. And there was an even darker memory that she didn’t want to recall. The thing she had kept hidden deep inside herself for fear of all her mother had said would happen if Thomasina reported what she had seen. Because only a very wicked child indeed would see what had revealed itself to her that day.

  Often after her mother had beaten her, Thomasina had screamed, ‘I hate you! I wish you were dead!’ She had hated her mother with a wild passion. Pearl could be smiling at you one minute, and then for no apparent reason her eyes would fill with hatred and she would begin her cruel humiliations. Yet she didn’t vent her savage moods on Marguerite, only Thomasina. Many times her mother had told her that Thomasina deserved it because SHE WAS A VERY WICKED CHILD. ‘You are the worst child I have ever encountered. You will never get anywhere! Listen to me. I know, because I can see your rotten, useless core,’ Pearl used to sneer. Once she had even spat at her as she said it. ‘You’re stupid and ugly and no man will ever want you! You are nothing! YOU ARE A VERY WICKED CHILD!’

  Maxwell had pleaded with Pearl to stop her taunts but he had no hope of stemming her vitriol when she was in full swing. She would scream and throw whatever was close to hand at both Maxwell and Thomasina. She would pull at her own hair, rake her face and destroy everybody, everything, all joy and laughter. Thomasina found it difficult to hear people raving about her mother’s beauty and artistic genius. All she had known was the shouting woman who kicked, punched and punished her for no reason. That woman was meant to be dead. She had died, shaking and shuddering in her own blood in the cellar as Thomasina looked on. Now Sadie and Betty had brought her back. Damn them.

  Thomasina knew that the woman in the black cloak was going about the house; she had sometimes wondered whether she should warn Betty, who was bright, funny and real. The girl made Thomasina laugh. Would Betty know how to protect herself against the devil if he came up out of the cellar? But every time Thomasina’s conscience pricked her to say something she would see Sadie again, sitting in the garden or hanging out washing, laughing and talking to her daughter. The resemblance to Pearl would stitch up her mouth.

  She picked up a large carving knife she kept on the sink. Now she was older, she could protect herself. If the devil came after her, she was ready.

  Sadie stood up to go inside, gathering her notebooks and glancing about her as if belatedly aware she was being watched. Yes, she looked far too much like Pearl, Thomasina thought, and picked up the blade again. She could see it and the devil would sniff it. He would need to feed again and he would come. Should she warn the woman? She thought most people might have done so – but Thomasina knew there was A TRULY WICKED PERSON inside herself. Tell or not tell? Thomasina was still undecided as Sadie went indoors.

  The Red Dragon rises

  Pencubitt, Sunday, 12 July 1936

  For years after Pearl Tatlow was murdered, all the locals delighted in reliving exactly what they had been doing when they first heard of her death. It was such a horrifying event for our small community. She was killed shortly after lunch, the local gossips reported. The weather patterns had been strange in the north-west, with unseasonal heat one day and freezing temperatures the next. And yet, on the day of Pearl’s death, a thick fog and icy chill draped the town. On the same afternoon there was a shocking railway accident in which a tree fell onto the carriage of a train heading to Burnie. Five people died. But even that tragedy, which normally would have ignited the gossips of Pencubitt for months, failed to move us. We were too shocked by the events at Poet’s Cottage. Either one of our own was guilty of a heinous crime, or some stranger had infiltrated Pencubitt – a stranger who might well return. Most people believed the latter version, but many amateur sleuths proclaimed they knew who the killer was. Fingers were pointed at Maxwell (‘It’s always the husband!’), while others were convinced it was Arthur Stephens due to his outburst at the docks. Emily McCarthy was another popular suspect; the rumour-mongers speculated she had been having an affair with Maxwell and had sneaked back into town for revenge after Pearl had thrown her out of Poet’s Cottage. Nobody was indelicate enough to accuse me to my face, but I’m sure my name was mentioned too. (Even the poor old dentist who had been there the previous day to pull Thomasina’s tooth was hauled before them. People started to whisper behind his back and he ended up moving to Burnie to get away from it all.) As to what I had been doing that day, I was questioned most thoroughly by the large contingent of police who arrived from Hobart. My movements were of great interest to them, as I had the misfortune of being one of the last people to see Pearl Tatlow alive.

  How I regret my impulse to visit Pearl on that fateful morning. Mother had been insistent I not see the ‘harlot’, but the urge to find out how Pearl was bearing up since Teddy’s funeral was too strong, as was my curiosity over the supposed tunnels in her house. And I hadn’t seen Maxwell for far too long. I’d heard he was haggard, drawn and depressed, and spent his evenings drinking in the hotel. My heart swelled with resentment at how Pearl had transformed my old friend so dramatically.

  The fog ensured that not many people were out a
s I made my way to Poet’s Cottage. Locals commented later that they had never known a fog as thick in Pencubitt; it was as if the devil himself had sent it to disguise the evil in the town. I also remember the bitter cold of that day. Even through my heavy coat and winter underwear it nipped my bones and stole my breath. The cruel frost that morning had caused a horse to slip and break a leg on the icy road. We knew we were in for a harsh winter and I feared for Mother’s health.

  As I turned onto the sea-front road, the icy wind threatened to freeze my marrow solid. ‘Curiosity killed the cat’ goes the old saying and in my case it nearly proved to be true. By visiting Pearl that morning I became for a short time a suspect in her slaying; if convicted I could have been hanged. Or it might have been me who was murdered at Poet’s Cottage that day. That is the terror that still wakes me in the dead of night, the knowledge that if I had lingered with Pearl I could have been prey to the maniac who butchered her. For it must have been a maniac – who else could have done what he did to her body?

  Pearl opened the door in her stained negligee. Her red lipstick was smudged and dark rings circling her eyes told me she had not been sleeping. She held a mug; the smell betrayed the beverage as something other than tea. I attempted to hide my disapproval.

  ‘Hello, Birdie,’ she drawled. ‘Get that constipated look off your face. I’m not drunk. It’s just Mother’s pick-up.’ She narrowed her eyes. ‘Don’t you ever feel you need a pick-up, Tricky?’

  I stood staring and speechless, regretting my impulse to visit.

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ she sighed. ‘Just come in. Stop looking at me with that schoolmarm face of yours. It’s your little Tricky, Maxwell!’ She pulled me into the corridor. The house smelled stale, as if it had been too long since it had seen a mop and fresh air. The gramophone played her favourite tune. It pained me to hear it, recalling how Pearl and Teddy danced, lost in their desire for each other.

  She led me into the front room; sweet papers littered the windowsill and cobwebs hung in windows and corners. Children’s toys and Mandrake the Magician comic strips torn out of the Women’s Weekly were heaped on the floor.

  ‘Maxwell? Tricky’s here!’ she called again. The children were shouting outside, engrossed in some noisy game.

  ‘How have you been, Pearl?’ I asked.

  ‘How do I look?’ she snapped. I couldn’t work out whether she was angry at me or herself, or just life in general. ‘You know your mother’s been around here with that dirty priest?’ she said.

  I was shocked. Mother hadn’t mentioned anything of the sort.

  ‘Eva wants to watch herself with him.’ The music had wound to a halt and the needle scratch of static replaced the tune. ‘He’s a dirty little devil. Made a grab for my breast one day.’ She lit a cigarette and didn’t offer me one. ‘I wondered if he was doing it with Eva.’

  ‘Please refrain from making such comments about my mother,’ I said, forced into defending her. Although silently I agreed that Father Kelly did have lecherous eyes.

  ‘I had hoped you would be different, Tricky,’ Pearl said. ‘When I first met you, I thought you might have some joie de vivre, that you weren’t one of the grey people plopped like cow pats in this beige-coloured town. I’d hoped we could be friends.’

  ‘We are friends,’ I began weakly but she smiled unpleasantly.

  ‘You’ll end your days in this town, Birdie. Smoke and mist, an old woman alone, like Eva. Touching yourself under the covers at night, still dreaming about Maxwell. No children to care for you. No lover to awaken you. No, we can’t be friends, Birdie. You’re too tricky.’

  ‘Pearl! What are you saying?’ Maxwell stood in the doorway, his face flushed. I dared to glance at him, and was overwhelmed by a wave of longing. ‘Are you being rude to Tricky now? Have you gone totally mad?’

  ‘Yes!’ Pearl spat the word at him. ‘I have gone mad. Mad with boredom, mad with fear, mad with fury, mad with grief. Leave me to my madness. Let me remain in this room where you can keep me locked away from the good, righteous bores of Pencubitt.’ She waggled her finger at me and screwed her face up into a grimace. ‘The flypeople of Pencubitt who with their enormous fly eyes see all, judge all and leave specks of flydirt for history to record. The great books of Flydung by your friendly neighbours.’

  ‘Oh grow up, Pearl,’ Maxwell said with hostility. She shrugged as if his criticism meant nothing to her, then got up and began dancing around the room, singing loudly.

  I should have left at that point. She was drunk or in the midst of some sort of mental turmoil. She had made it plain she had no affection left for me. I was just an object of contempt, someone to jeer at. If I’d had any true courage I would have pointed out that she had betrayed my friendship, flirting with Victor when he was on a date with me. She had taunted me with her snide comments about Maxwell. She had read my feelings for her husband and it pleased her to play with my heart. I hated her for thinking herself so superior to more moral folk and for passing judgments on people she barely knew.

  ‘Do you know what I find the most boring?’ she said, dancing with a smug smile. ‘That you two just keep panting after each other. Why the hell don’t we all go upstairs together now? You could both get it out of your systems. We could both taste Tricky.’ She actually laughed, the witch, as she said this.

  Maxwell sat down on one of the armchairs, his head in his hands. He was shaking. Later he told me he had been so angry he’d wanted to strike her. It shows how much strength of character he had – Pearl would have pushed a saint to the limits.

  ‘You never shut up, do you?’ he muttered into his hands. ‘Am I to be punished forever for bringing you here?’

  Pearl ignored him. ‘Why did you come crawling in here today, Tricky? Was it to gloat that Teddy is dead? You sent a flower and card – how perfectly sweet – but you never bothered to show your face earlier. Violet came, but not you.’

  So I told her why I’d come. Disregarding her icy gaze, I explained about my research and the book that mentioned the secret tunnel in her house. Maxwell and Pearl stared at each other for a minute, united in some silent communication, then Pearl burst out laughing. ‘Trust Tricky,’ she said, lighting another cigarette. ‘Only she would be interested in digging up dead bodies in the way she does.’

  ‘For God’s sake, shut up!’ Maxwell hissed at her. ‘Shut your mouth or I swear I’ll take the girls and leave tonight.’ I had never seen Maxwell display such emotion. His threat to leave rocked me to my core.

  Pearl was too stunned to speak. Then her eyes shone with sudden tears. ‘Please go, Tricky,’ she said at length. ‘Don’t ever mention that tunnel again. I have my devil guarding it downstairs.’

  Maxwell shot her a warning look. ‘I’ll see you to the door,’ he told me. He stood up and I awkwardly said goodbye to Pearl, who acted as if she hadn’t heard me. She was seated on the armchair where she had often sat perched next to Teddy. I was nearly at the door when she called my name. I turned around.

  ‘Thanks for calling, Birdie,’ she said. ‘Try to forgive me for Victor. I did you a favour that night. He’s a dud and a bore. He’s not good enough for you. Say a prayer to your God on my behalf if you still talk to him. He isn’t listening to me.’

  I told her I would, reluctant to leave. She didn’t seem herself and despite how she had betrayed me and the deterioration of our friendship, I was afraid of what she might be capable of. She seemed so deranged. I could not bear to witness another soul in such a state. But I ignored my impulse to stay. Who knows how differently events may have transpired if I had? It was the last time I would see her alive. Less than an hour later Pearl was dead.

  The police asked me endless questions. They suspected that Maxwell and I were having an affair, and that this was our motive for murdering Pearl. I described to them a man I had nearly collided with in the main street just after leaving Pearl’s. The fog was so thick, I barely saw his face. He was a stranger, I thought, as he did not return my greeting. But the
police acted as if I had made him up. And it was such a strange meeting through the unusually heavy fog that over the years I wondered if I had. Their suspicions made me muddle my words. I contradicted myself, I omitted details. However, I quite deliberately neglected to mention that Maxwell had threatened to leave Pearl, knowing how they would misinterpret his words. More than anybody, I was aware of how much Maxwell had had to put up with from his wife. How she had tormented him with her affairs. Maxwell wouldn’t have been capable of killing anything. He didn’t have it in him. I saw his extreme grief and distress when her body was discovered. He said that he had left the house to walk on the beach shortly after I had left Poet’s Cottage. Nobody could verify his statement. A fisherman recalled seeing a figure on the beach, but hadn’t paid any attention to who it was. It didn’t help that the fisherman, Jeremy Byrnes, was known for being the local drunk.

  With no reliable witnesses to his solitary walk, Maxwell was scrutinised in a manner both unreasonable and offensive. How could anybody in a town as small as Pencubitt not have seen Maxwell walking on the beach? The newspapers and gossips asking such questions omitted to mention the frigid conditions; most people were indoors.

  Although there was never enough evidence to charge either Maxwell or myself, the gossip and speculation continued for years afterwards. It didn’t help that sometime after Maxwell’s return from Europe, we had chosen to spend our days together, weathering the suspicion of the locals.

  I don’t like to imagine the terror Pearl must have felt when, thinking herself safe in her own home, she turned around to encounter her killer. What does haunt me is what she was doing in the cellar. Was it connected with my visit? Did she go down there to look for the tunnel I’d mentioned or to try to conceal something? I have pondered long on these questions without reaching any satisfactory answer. It was impossible to broach the subject with Maxwell; Pearl was a closed book between us – the subject made him too distressed. I think he felt unbearable guilt that he hadn’t been there to protect her when she was attacked. I too felt guilty, that I hadn’t responded to her silent cry for help but instead left Poet’s Cottage that day. For when I look back through the years, I know it was a cry for help she uttered. I’m convinced that in the last few hours of her life, Pearl had desperately wanted a friend. And I had abandoned her.