And then, in early 1966, two things happened. First, on a blistering summer’s day, January 26, as the people of Adelaide, in step with their countrymen, marked Australia Day, three children from a single family caught the tram from their home in the sleepy suburb of Somerton Park to the carnival fun of Glenelg Beach. After a day spent exploring the sand and the sea, having been spotted with a man who bought them ice-cream cones, the children disappeared into thin air.
The nation’s attention was captured by the investigation. Day after day, newspaper reports dissected every detail, printing each rumor and false lead. When new developments were thin on the ground, the papers ran reports about other unsolved crimes instead. The Somerton Body was resurrected, as was the Turner Tragedy. Editors hoped that the latter, with its lost child element, might satisfy readers hungry for more newsprint tragedy, but fresh reportsabout the Turner baby did not gain traction. The coroner had ruled, no further evidence had come to light, the times had moved on; and so, the mystery of the Beaumont Children replaced the Turner Tragedy in the collective imagination.
The other thing that happened was closer to home for the people of Tambilla. Mr. Thomas Turner, choosing to stay in London, decided at last to sell the house and surrounding farms. Local farmers took on the outer fields quickly enough, but Mr. Turner did not succeed in selling Halcyon. It seemed there was a limit to the number of people simultaneously wealthy and romantic enough to buy a Georgian manor house on the edge of a small, dusty town in rural South Australia. Not to mention, there were few folks willing to overlook what had happened there.
The house sat empty for a time, until finally, after more than a decade of being unable to sell for a price that came close to its value, Mr. Turner succeeded in renting Halcyon. The arrangement was less than ideal—he would have preferred a single well-to-do family—but by then he had waited so long, and he knew that beggars could not be choosers. The lease was taken up by a young couple, new to the area, who had decided to leave the city and—in the spirit of the seventies—set up a commune for like-minded people.
The other residents of Tambilla watched on from afar with characteristic interest, but over time stopped talking incessantly about the new people at the Wentworth place. It became quite usual to see one or two of them making the walk into the village for groceries and other essential supplies, dressed in tie-dyed shirts, their hair long and knotty, their faces clear and bright. Mrs. Pigott at the post office, who could never resist voicing every question that sprang to her mind, asked them how things worked up there at the house, which is how folks gleaned that there was some sort of roster at play whereby everybody in the Nirvana Commune took turns making sure the cooking and the cleaning were done, odd jobs completed and work undertaken in the garden.
They were trying to grow as much of their own food as they could, said Mrs. Pigott knowingly. They’d been told that once upon a time there was a kitchen garden at the house, but if that was the case, it had turned to weeds and thistles. Never mind, they were determined to build their own. One of the commune members had been a legal clerk before changing her name to Moon-Petal and retained enough respect for the law that she wrote to the landlord to ask his permission. He had written back a short, typed consent notice, very dry in tone, in which he noted that the garden had been a whim of his wife and, as she was now deceased, he didn’t care what they did with it.
The group of five that had been assigned to outdoor work in the spring of 1979 had been striking tomato plants in the old greenhouse for weeks by then, the seeds gathered from fruit on the leggy vines that were spreading wild and unstaked in the gardens when they’d arrived. Sonia M, who had been “reborn” and chose not to speak about her past, seemed to know a lot about gardening and growing, and she said that they were heirloom tomatoes and would respond well to drying and potting; sure enough, green shoots had sprouted, and now the time had come at last to plant them outside.
After much observation and discussion, and a meeting at which everybody had their say, the group decided to build their vegetable garden in a plot that seemed to have been a formal garden bed once, with a few arthritic rosebushes still in evidence. The patch, surrounded by overgrown hedges, was protected from the worst of the winds that tore up the driveway, while being close enough to the kitchen to be practical. Janice S, one of the leaseholders, who had some experience with communal living, spoke with calm authority on the need for practicality, even—especially—in an enterprise of free living such as theirs. The only drawback was an old walnut tree nearby that brought the cockatoos on dusk, but a scarecrow would take care of that, she assured them, with a confidence that could not be ignored.
And so, as the last frosts disappeared, and spring began to brighten and lift the sky, the group of intrepid outdoor workers started to dig their trenches. It was Ash P who made the chilling discovery. “Hey,” he called out, setting down his spade. “There’s something here.”
“Treasure? Are we rich?” Angel K joked, before remembering that she’d taken a vow to forsake all worldly possessions. “What is it?” she added quickly, adopting a more serious, quizzical tone.
Ash was on his knees by then, staring down into the hole he’d dug.
The group had gathered around and were avid in their attention, all but for a skinny boy named Henry R, who had a habit of finding himself and his interests out of step with those of other people and had chosen that very moment to gaze skyward at a pair of wheeling kites, wings outstretched as they soared in perfect synch. It was a choice for which he later said he’d be grateful for the rest of his life.
He watched, transfixed, as a breeze bearing the first hint of summer’s warmth kissed his cheek and he was transported back to a childhood memory of another pair of circling birds above another garden, and he heard his mother’s voice in his memory suddenly and clearly, singing a long-forgotten lullaby about a mockingbird, and his removal from the here and now was so complete that by the time his housemates’ horrified cries pulled him back, the hole had been covered with a spade, its heart-wrenching contents hidden once more from view.
Daniel Miller, 1980
***
Part VIII
27
Sydney
December 18, 2018
The light was bright and warm on her face, and it took a minute for Jess to remember where she was. She had been dreaming about babies and rose gardens. The first thing she saw as she opened her eyes was the deep green foliage of an overgrown forest. Wallpaper, she realized. This was Nora’s room. She was still wearing Nora’s dress.
She felt sluggish. Every day now started with the fresh weight of Nora’s death, but today something else was mixed in. A door closed downstairs and, after a momentary flicker of surprise, Jess remembered that Polly was also at Darling House—that she’d be staying another couple of days through until Thursday for the meeting with Nora’s solicitor. With the recollection, details from the evening before returned and Jess understood her malaise. She had snapped at her mother after Polly gave her a copy of Daniel Miller’s book.
Jess felt about for the book. She’d been reading the 1980 addendum the night before and had fallen asleep with the lamp still burning on the bedside table. She sat up and checked the quilt on either side of her. Just as she was beginning to wonder whether she’d dreamed the whole thing, she looked over the edge of the bed and saw that the book had fallen into the wastepaper basket.
As Jess retrieved it, a striking letterhead in the rubbish pile caught her eye. The address that ran beneath the company name was in Adelaide.
With an inkling already as to what she was going to discover, Jess took the piece of paper from the bin and opened it out flat.
Sure enough, it was the letter she’d been looking for, addressed to Nora from a firm of solicitors in South Australia, signed by one ofthe partners. Jess recognized the name immediately. Marcus Summers, the younger son of Percy and Meg; onetime resident of Tambilla, on-again-off-again friend to John Turner, part-time helper in his mother’s grocery shop.
With growing excitement, she read:
Dear Mrs. Turner-Bridges,
Re: Mrs. Isabel Turner and family, formerly of Tambilla, South Australia
I am writing to you on behalf of a client who has asked me to ascertain whether you would be willing to speak with him about the Turner family, formerly of Tambilla, South Australia.
Specifically, my client wishes to speak with you about the death of Thea Turner.
