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 amp; 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?’

‘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.’