“But that’s so sad,” Nancy said, genuinely upset. “Nora was completely committed to her baby. It was one of the things that left a deep impression on my uncle. What happened between the two of them?”
Jess didn’t really know how to explain. Not in brief, not to a virtual stranger. To be honest, the details were a little vague. She knew that she and Polly had lived with Nora at Darling House when Jess was born, that they’d moved down the road a few years later, and that Polly had taken off for Queensland without a backward glance. Nora said that Polly had ever been nervy and unreliable (though she always defended her daughter if Jess dared to criticize), and then there was the incident when Jess was small. Nora tried to pass it off as one of those things—upsetting, certainly, but not decisive—yet Jess knew it had affected her deeply, changing the way she looked at Polly, and focusing her protective attentions on her granddaughter. “I guess they just grew apart,” she said, aware of how insufficient the explanation sounded.
“It happens,” said Nancy sadly. “Listen, I don’t want to take up your time, especially in the circumstances. You must have a lot on your plate. I only rang because I just found another series of scenes within Dan’s notebooks that might be of interest. Nothing on the reverend yet, I’m afraid; these are to do with Nora. I was in a bit of a rush last time and overlooked them. They’re not written from Nora’s point of view, you see, so they were hidden in plain sight.”
Jess was intrigued. “Whose viewpoint is it?”
“Well, now, that’s the interesting thing. The scenes are written from Uncle Dan’s point of view.”
“They’re in first person?”
“No, third person, as if he’s writing about someone else.”
“Someone called Daniel Miller?”
“That’s right. The scenes take the form of observations of, and conversations with, Nora. I can’t tell you much more than that—I’ve been so busy today I haven’t had a chance to read them again, but I know you said time was of the essence... Though of course with Nora, with everything that’s happened, I totally understand if—”
“I’d love to see them,” said Jess.
“Then I’ll scan and send them over and get out of your hair. Would you mind giving me your street address, too?”
She wanted to send flowers for Nora, Jess realized. “That’s very kind, but you don’t have to do that.”
“No, I do,” said Nancy, her voice taking on a slightly urgent strain that Jess hadn’t heard before. “I really do.”
When Nancy’s email arrived an hour later, Jess was sitting on the rocks overlooking the Darling House cove. This was the beach, she remembered, where she’d had her run-in with the soldier crabs all those years before, and Nora had rescued her.
The sun was shimmering in the sky; it was going to be another warm day, and Jess had been turning over the conversation withNancy in her mind, wondering why Daniel Miller would have written himself into a research scene. He had been present at every interview: Why treat these differently? It made her wonder whether perhaps these scenes weren’t notes at all, but rather, as Nancy had suggested, drafts that he’d written for his book. The notion was intriguing: it suggested that he’d had an active role to play, beyond the standard function of the writer. It implied that something had happened in the unfolding story of Tambilla and the Turner tragedy to warrant “Daniel Miller” walking onto the page. Perhaps even something worth telling the police...
As her phone sounded its cheerful ping, Jess shifted her screen out of the sunlight and swiped open the new email. The writing was small, and it wasn’t the easiest way to read the attachment, but Jess knew she wasn’t going to wait to get back to the house.
DM Notes: Nora, DM
January 1960
The first time Dan saw her was from a distance, on Monday, December 28, 1959, at the community meeting held by police officers running the Turner investigation. After days of rain, it had dawned hot and dry and the air inside the Institute building crackled as much with heat static as it did with the residents’ anxiety.
Dan had gone with his uncle, who provided useful cover as the two of them took seats on the edge of a row near the back of the room. Being the lone stranger at a community meeting called to discuss the deaths of a local family was not an ideal way to carry out inconspicuous research. Thankfully, several members of the press had made the trip from Adelaide and beyond and were taking heat as people craned their necks to stare curiously, even suspiciously, at the outsiders in their midst. The journalists, for their part, were undeterred, standing shoulderto shoulder against the back wall of the building, notepads and pens at the ready.
Dan had decided to forgo such tools himself. Over the years he’d learned that there were two types of witnesses: those who lit up at the promise offered by that pristine sheet of blank paper, and those who zipped their mouths shut in its glare. A chatty witness could be a blessing, no doubt, but only for as long as they resisted the temptation to embellish. On balance, he’d found it preferable to engage his witnesses in a more natural style of conversation; he’d trained himself to rely on his memory, transcribing the interviews later when he was alone again. In so doing, he’d discovered an additional benefit he hadn’t expected. It turned out that when he wasn’t staring at the lines on his notepaper, pen racing to scribble down everything he heard, he was better able to absorb the atmosphere in the room, to notice the tiny gestures and mannerisms that oftentimes told far more than the words being spoken.
On December 28, as the blank-faced clock near the kitchenette ticked past the hour, Sergeant Peter Duke from the police headquarters in Adelaide emerged from a room in the wings and approached the lectern on the small wooden stage. It was the sort of hall where children would perform ballet concerts and the local youth orchestra would squeak through carols in the lead-up to Christmas, which made its function this morning even more sobering. Dan would have bet there were people in that room who’d seen the Turner children take their turn on that stage in happier days.
Duke cleared his throat and made a waving gesture with his hands that called the room to order. He thanked everyone for coming before outlining the situation in careful detail and then assuring the community that they were doing everything possible to find answers. Dan’s first impressions of Duke were of a stand-up fellow, experienced but not yet jaded. Understandablethat he was cautious about the information he imparted—for a crime like this one, where everyone remained a suspect until they weren’t, police had to be careful how much they gave away.
As Sergeant Duke reached the end of his account, he reiterated that the search for the baby would continue alongside the investigation into the deaths, and that if there had been foul play, they’d find whoever was responsible; but he answered in the affirmative when asked by a reporter whether dogs were suspected.
“We found prints at the scene, and you all know how bad they’ve been this year.”
He turned when he said it to look down at a figure in the first row as if in apology. Dan had noticed the young woman dressed all in black and understood now that she must be related in some way to the Turner family.
“That’s Mrs. Turner’s sister-in-law,” his uncle said, leaning to speak quietly into Dan’s ear. “I hear she’s been down from Sydney for the past month. Came to stay for Christmas.”
Afterward, Dan had watched from afar as the woman was ushered out of the room by one of the local ladies. She was holding a bundle in her arms, he realized, a tiny new baby, born—as he was later to learn—days before, on Christmas Eve. He was able to get a better view of the haunted look on her face as she left and felt something inside his own chest tighten. Her expression, her hollow cheeks, the evident strain, were exactly as one would expect of someone who had suffered the worst sort of trauma. Dan knew that pain firsthand, and as she passed he felt its echo deep within his own heart.
In the end, it was she who contacted him. A couple of days after the community meeting, he received a message at his uncle’s house to say that Mrs. Turner-Bridges wished to speak withhim. Curious, and unable to believe his luck, he’d shown up at the specified time and date.
Mrs. Turner-Bridges had been waiting for him on the verandah at the top of the driveway. He hadn’t seen her at first. He’d stood for a moment, taking in the sight that greeted him as he broke through into the formal garden. He had heard about the Turner place, Halcyon, in his conversations with the townspeople—stories that seemed hyperbolic in their extravagance, as if the grisly nature of the family’s deaths must necessarily find its opposite in the paradisal description of their former home. But he saw now that the reports had not been exaggerated. To emerge from the dense driveway was to find oneself in Shangri-La.
