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?’
‘Of course. I take it this is about the alleged murder?’
Miss Eunice raised her eyebrows. ‘So you’ve heard the rumours?’ 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.’
I happened to know that was in 1877. I have always had a good memory for historical dates. If my calculations were correct, Miss Teresa would have been about twenty-seven at the time. ‘Will you tell me what happened?’ I asked.
‘That’s why I’m here,’ Miss Eunice said rather sharply. ‘Teresa’s husband was a brute, a bully and a drunkard. She wouldn’t have married him, had she had any choice in the matter. But her parents approved the match. He had his own small farm, you see, and they were only tenants. Teresa was a very intelligent girl, but that counted for nothing in those days. In fact, it was a positive disadvantage. As was her wilfulness. Anyway, he used to beat her to within an inch of her life – where the bruises wouldn’t show, of course. One day she’d had enough of it, so she killed him.’
‘What did she do?’
‘She hit him with the poker from the fireplace and, after darkness had fallen, she buried him deep in the garden. She was afraid that if the matter went to court the authorities wouldn’t believe her and she would be hanged. She had no evidence, you see. And Jacob was a popular man among the other fellows of the village, as is so often the case with drunken brutes. And Teresa was terrified of being publicly hanged.’
‘But did no one suspect her?’
Miss Eunice shook her head. ‘Jacob was constantly talking about leaving his wife and heading for the New World. He used to berate her for not bearing him any children – specifically sons – and threatened that one day she would wake up and he would be gone. Gone to another country to find a woman who could give him the children he wanted. He repeated these threats in the ale house so often that no one in the entire county of Dorset could fail to know about them.’
‘So when he disappeared, everyone assumed he had followed through on his threats to leave her?’
‘Exactly. Oh, there were rumours that his wife had murdered him, of course. There always are when such mysteries occur.’
Yes, I thought, remembering my conversation with Sid Ferris one cold desert night ten years ago: rumours and fancies, the stuff of fiction. And something about a third person seen fleeing from the scene. Well, that could wait.
‘Teresa stayed on at the farm for another ten years,’ Miss Eunice went on. ‘Then she sold up and went to America. It was a brave move, but Teresa no more lacked for courage than she did for beauty. She was in her late thirties then, and even after a hard life, she could still turn heads. In New York, she landed on her feet and eventually married a financier. Sam Cotter. A good man. She also took a companion.’
‘You?’ I asked.
Miss Eunice nodded. ‘Yes. Some years later Sam died of a stroke. We stayed on in New York for a while, but we grew increasingly homesick. We came back finally in 1919, just after the Great War. For obvious reasons, Teresa didn’t want to live anywhere near Dorset, so we settled in Yorkshire.’
‘A remarkable tale,’ I said.
‘But that’s not all,’ Miss Eunice went on, pausing only to sip some tea. ‘There was a child.’
‘I thought you said-’
She took one hand off her stick and held it up, palm out. ‘Christopher, please let me tell the story in my own way. Then it will be yours to do with as you wish. You have no idea how difficult this is for me.’ She paused and stared down at the brass lion’s head for so long I feared she had fallen asleep, or died. Outside in the market square a butcher was loudly trying to sell a leg of mutton. Just as I was about to go over to Miss Eunice, she stirred. ‘There was a child,’ she repeated. ‘When Teresa was fifteen, she gave birth to a child. It was a difficult birth. She was never able to bear any other children.’
‘What happened to this child?’
‘Teresa had a sister called Alice, living in Dorchester. Alice was five years older and already married with two children. Just before the pregnancy started to show, both Teresa and Alice went to stay with relatives in Cornwall for a few months, after it had been falsely announced that Alice was with child again. You would be surprised how often such things happened. When they came back, Alice had a fine baby girl.’
‘Who was the father?’
‘Teresa would never say. The one thing she did make clear was that no one had forced unwanted attentions on her, that the child was the result of a love match, an infatuation. It certainly wasn’t Jacob Morgan.’
‘Did she ever see the child again?’
‘Oh, certainly. What could be more natural than visiting one’s sister and seeing one’s niece grow up? When the girl was a little older, she began to pay visits to the farm, too.’ Miss Eunice stopped here and frowned so hard I thought her brow would crack like dry paper. ‘That was when the problems began,’ she said quietly.
‘What problems?’
Miss Eunice put her stick aside and held out her teacup. I refilled it. Her hands steady now, she held the cup against her scrawny chest as if its heat were the only thing keeping her alive. ‘This is the most difficult part,’ she said in a faint voice. ‘The part I didn’t know whether I could ever tell anyone.’
‘If you don’t wish-’
She waved my objection aside. ‘It’s all right, Christopher, I didn’t know how much I could tell you before I came here, but I know now. I’ve come this far. I can’t go back now. Just give me a few moments to collect myself.’
Outside, the market was in full swing and during the ensuing silence I could hear the clamour of voices selling and buying, arguing over prices.
‘Did I ever tell you that Teresa was an extremely beautiful young girl?’ Miss Eunice asked after a while.
‘I believe you mentioned it, yes.’
She nodded. ‘Well, she was. And so was her daughter. When she began coming by herself to the house, she was about twelve or thirteen years of age. Jacob didn’t fail to notice her, how well she was “filling out” as he used to say. One day Teresa had gone into the village for firewood and the child arrived in her absence. Jacob, just home from the ale house, was there alone to greet her. Need I say more, Mr Riley?’
I shook my head. ‘I don’t mean to excuse him in any way, but I’m assuming he didn’t know the girl was his stepdaughter?’
‘That is correct. He never knew. Nor did she know Teresa was her mother. Not until much later.’
‘What happened next?’
‘Teresa came in before her husband could have his way with the struggling, half-naked child. Everything else was as I said. She picked up the poker and hit him on the head. Not once, but six times. Then they cleaned up and waited until after dark and buried him deep in the garden. She sent her daughter back to her sister’s and carried on as if her husband had simply left her, just as he had threatened to do.’