Bleeding Heart Square (20 page)
Read Bleeding Heart Square Online
Authors: Andrew Taylor
Tags: #Fiction, #Mystery & Detective, #Historical, #General
S
HE'S ACTING
like a prisoner now, isn't she? It's not just Serridge who's keeping her there, it's herself, her sense of shame--she's terrified that people will find out not just what a fool she's been but that she, Miss Philippa Penhow, has fornicated with a man who is not her husband.
Sunday, 13 April 1930
I am walking about the farm much more. I am trying to become hardier, and more used to walking on mud, etc. The country is such a very uncomfortable place. There are sometimes cows in the fields, and a horse tried to attack me the other day. Joseph said it was just being friendly.
I wonder if I could walk as far as Mavering.
I'm sure Joseph has been looking at Amy more than he should. I have heard them giggling together once. It is so DEMEAN IN G. I actually said something to him about it but he told me not to be a fool, and was really quite rude.
Worst of all, Rebecca has handed in her notice. She said the farm is too lonely for her and she needs to be nearer her family. I think she senses that something is wrong here.
I have found a safe place to keep my diary. I daren't leave it in the house. I'm sure Joseph is going through my things. Two of my rings have vanished. It might have been one of the maids but I think it's him.
And there's another reason why she stays: mad though it is, in some part of herself she's still hoping, against all the evidence, that there will be a happy ending.
Hunger is one of the most powerful arguments in the world. That was the main reason why Rory found himself walking up Doughty Street to Mecklenburgh Square at five to one. He had already spent his allowance for the week. Any sort of lunch would be better than none, and pride was a luxury reserved for those with full stomachs.
Number fifty-three was on the north side of the square, one of a terrace of tall, stately Georgian houses which had seen better days. Rory opened the gate in the railings, went down the area steps and knocked on the basement door. It was opened by Julian Dawlish, who was holding a cigarette in one hand and a glass of whisky in the other.
"Glad you could come, Wentwood." He stood back to allow Rory into the house. "Fenella is hacking things up in the kitchen, and I'm in charge of liquid refreshment. It's going to be a sort of indoor picnic in the primitive style. Can't manage cocktails yet but do you fancy a spot of whisky? There's gin if you prefer, and I think there's some beer somewhere."
"Thanks. Whisky, please."
Fenella appeared in a doorway at the end of the hallway. She was wearing a long apron stained with what looked like blood. "Rory, how lovely." She held up her cheek to be kissed. "I opened a tin of soup and it sort of exploded. Give him a drink, Julian, while I lay the table."
They were acting just like a bloody married couple already, Rory thought savagely, as he followed Julian Dawlish into a sparsely furnished sitting room at the front of the house. Dawlish splashed whisky into another glass and handed it to Rory.
"I know what you're thinking," he said. "What a hole. Help yourself to soda."
"Not at all," Rory said stiffly. He squirted soda into his glass. "Cheers."
"Cheerio." After they had drunk, Dawlish went on, "It will look very different once it's properly decorated and the curtains are up. Fenella is going to move some of her own stuff in. It will be very snug, I think." He snapped open his cigarette case and held it out. "Smoke?"
They lit cigarettes and sat down opposite each other on hard chairs. They both drank more whisky. Rory was nervous and he drank faster than usual. Before he knew what was happening, Dawlish had topped up his glass again.
"How's the job-hunting going?" Dawlish asked.
"So-so," he said, feeling a warm glow suffusing itself through his stomach.
"Do you do any freelancing?"
"I've not had much time to look into that. One needs the contacts, you see. And having been in India..."
"Yes, of course. And it's damned hard these days, I imagine, finding the openings. But would you be interested, in principle?"
The second whisky was rapidly joining the first. "I'd go for it like a shot."
"Because I might be able to put you on to something. If you're interested, that is." Dawlish smiled apologetically--he had to a fine art that knack of making it seem that you were doing him a favor by allowing him to do you a favor. "Pal of mine edits a magazine. A weekly. I know he's always looking for good stuff. Every time I see him he goes on about how hard it is to find reliable contributors."
"What's it called?"
"
Berkeley's.
"
"I know it." Of course he knew of
Berkeley's
, a magazine that specialized in political analysis and cultural reviews. Lord Byron had probably read it. So had Gladstone. So did everyone who was anyone except for dyed-in-the-wool Tories, whose reading was confined to the
Morning Post.
"Interested?" Dawlish said.
"Very much so. But I'm not sure what I can offer."
"Ah," Dawlish said. "I think you underestimate yourself. Look, it's easier if I put my cards on the table. This could do you a good turn, but it could do me a good turn too."
"I don't follow."
"I know the editor is interested in how the Fascists work in this country. Their recruiting, their propaganda and so on. As you know the magazine, you'll appreciate they're--well, let's say skeptical about Fascism and all its works. There's the meeting coming up in Rosington Place at the end of the week. Now that's interesting, because it shows that Mosley is trying to target the business community in particular. He's not a fool--he realizes he's not going to get anywhere without financial backers, without substantial support from the City--not just the big guns but the little fellows too. And a lot of his sponsors were put off by the violence in Earls Court in June. The iron fist was a little too obvious, if you follow me. So if you were to write a piece of say a thousand or fifteen hundred words about the meeting, showing how they're trying to recruit support, I think that could be interesting. And if there's anything I can do to help, just ask."
He leaned forward with the whisky bottle. Rory held out his glass.
"You're assuming I would take a critical slant?"
Dawlish smiled. "I'm assuming you'd report what you saw and heard in an accurate and interesting way. Fenella showed me some of your cuttings. She's got a scrapbook, you know."
Rory tried to remember what he had sent her. There must have been the usual drivel he wrote for the
South Madras Times
--pieces on receptions and cricket matches, court cases and anecdotes. Samples of the jobbing work of a provincial journalist.
"What particularly interested me were the ones on the Congress Party. There was one on the consequences of the Gandhi-Irwin Pact, I remember, and another on Gandhi's work with the untouchables. It's a shame there weren't more like that."
"They didn't go down well with all our readers," Rory said. "Nor with the editor. I only got some of the pieces through because he was on leave. But they weren't political in stance. I was only reporting what was actually happening."
"I don't think
Berkeley's
would mind that sort of reporting. In fact I think they'd rather like it. It's a fresh eye, the outsider's perspective. Have you got a typewriter, by the way?"
"Yes, of course."
There were footsteps outside. "Lunch is served," Fenella said. "Bring your glasses."
Fear smothered her like black treacle, making it hard to breathe and impossible to think. She tried the door again. It wouldn't move. She ran to the window and peered through a gap between the planks. All she could see were dying nettles and a stretch of ragged hedgerow. She opened her mouth to call for help and then closed it.
There were two possibilities: either a sudden gust of wind had improbably blown the door shut and somehow wedged it, or somebody had closed it deliberately with the intention of making her a prisoner. If she called out, the only person likely to hear would be her captor--assuming there was a captor.
Lydia had been standing with her back to the doorway looking at the cigar box. Nobody could have closed the door without seeing her inside. Why shut her in? She tried to think it through but there was not an obvious answer.
Sooner or later, she told herself firmly, she would be missed. She had been seen in the village. She had little doubt that Mrs. Alforde would organize a search party, and little doubt that Mrs. Alforde would find her. It was tiresome--not least because it was growing colder--but surely nothing to worry about.
In the depths of her mind, however, more malign possibilities were stirring. A mother and baby had died in this nasty little barn. It was a place that aroused strong emotions. As the minutes passed, she found it harder and harder to be entirely rational. The light was fading, and she thought she heard rustlings in the straw and saw minute movements on the very edge of her range of vision.
And were there rats too?
"Help! Is there anyone there? Help!" She waited by the window, and then tried again, crying out the same words that were flat and useless because there was nobody to hear them.
Lydia's throat was growing sore. There were half a dozen smoke-blackened bricks in one corner of the barn, perhaps a makeshift hearth for a tramp or even Amy Narton. She lifted one of them. Holding it in both hands, she banged it against the planks of the door. And again, and again, and again. The door didn't budge and showed only the smallest indentations under the rain of blows.
The rough surface of the brick was chafing her hands. She put on her gloves again and kept hammering as rapidly as she could. The brick grew heavier, her arms more tired and her hands more painful. Each time she hit the wood, she gasped; and she had the strange, uncomfortable thought that Amy Narton must have made similar rhythmic sounds in the last desperate hours of her short life.
Finally, her strength gave out. She took a step back and dropped the brick, which fell with a dull thud to the earth floor. Her arms were trembling. The blood pounded in her veins and her throat was dry. She was slightly deaf. The brick had ruined the gloves, in places cutting through the kid leather and digging into her skin beneath. She held up her hands to the light from the window. There were smears of grime and blood on the pale leather. At least she was warmer. She would rest her arms for five minutes, she decided, and then try again.
It was then that she heard somebody rattling the door. The emotion that surged through her was panic, not relief--suppose it was her captor coming back? She bent down and seized the brick. Light flooded into the barn, making her blink. It must be earlier in the afternoon than she had thought. The doorway was almost filled by a large, bear-like silhouette.
She raised the brick. "You? It was you?"
There was a deep chuckle. "Mrs. Langstone," Joseph Serridge said. "I don't think you'll be needing that."
She lowered the brick. For the first time she sensed the nature of the man's charm, a blind force like magnetism or a seismic tremor. Except it wasn't really charm but a sort of hypnotic spell, an impression of overwhelming power. For the first time she also understood what had happened to Miss Penhow and Amy Narton.
"Thank you. I wasn't quite sure--"
"What happened?" Serridge said, his voice hardening. "Are you all right?"
"Yes." Lydia dropped the brick on the pile in the corner. "I am now, at any rate."
"What's been going on?" Serridge advanced into the barn, forcing her to step back. He glanced around quickly. "You're the last person I expected to see." He swung round and towered over her. "What are you doing here?"
"I came for a walk," Lydia said sharply, feeling rattled. "I knew the farm my father used to own was over this way, and I thought I'd have a look at it. He told me he sold Morthams Farm to you."
"But what are you doing in Rawling? You didn't come all this way just to look at Morthams."
"No, of course not," Lydia snapped. "I came with Mrs. Alforde."
"I didn't realize you knew her."
"Colonel Alforde is my godfather," Lydia said.
"The devil he is. Well, I'm damned." Serridge began to smile, but then his face changed again. "So why is Mrs. Alforde here today, and why has she brought you?"
"Look here, Mr. Serridge, I know I'm probably trespassing, and I apologize for that. But I don't see why you should interrogate me like this. I'm having a day out of London with Mrs. Alforde. We've just had lunch with the Vicar."
"Oh, I see. Narton's funeral, I suppose. Mrs. Narton's an old servant, isn't she, and her dad worked on the estate."
"And now I'd better be getting back to the Vicarage," Lydia said, moving toward the door. "Mrs. Alforde and Mr. Gladwyn will be wondering where I am."
"Of course. But somebody shut you in. Who?"
Lydia was outside now. On the ground was a length of iron piping about five feet long.
"I don't like people going in here," Serridge said. "The structure's unsafe. I'm going to have it pulled down. It's not used for anything now."
Lydia pointed at the pipe. "Is that what was keeping the door shut?"
He nodded. "It had been wedged against it. Used to be the down-pipe from the guttering on the corner."
A long, rounded indentation marked where the pipe had lain, imprinting its outline on the smooth, clay-streaked mud beneath. Lydia noticed a small footprint at one end.
"You didn't see anyone?" Serridge asked. "Hear anyone?"
Lydia turned back to him, smudging the footprint with the heel of her own shoe as she did so. "No, I had my back to the door. There was an almighty bang. Somebody's idea of a practical joke, I suppose."
Serridge scowled, his face a dark red. "If I catch whoever did it, they'll be sorry. I promise you that, Mrs. Langstone. Now, do you want to come up to the farm? I've got the car up there--I can run you back to the Vicarage."
"Thank you, but no. They'll probably be worrying about me. It won't take me ten minutes to get back."
He hesitated, and she thought he would try to persuade her to come to Morthams Farm with him. She didn't want to go, for reasons she could only half acknowledge.
"All right. I'll walk you back to the road."
Lydia tried to protest that there was no need but he insisted. Serridge made her walk on the tussocky but relatively firm ground beside the hedge while he lumbered through the raw, recently ploughed earth of the field itself. At last they came to the gate. On the other side lay the lane, with the lights of the Vicarage already glimmering a hundred yards away.
Serridge paused, with his hand on the iron latch. "You'll be making plans soon, I reckon."
"What do you mean?"
"About what you do with your life."
Lydia looked coldly at him and said with all the haughtiness she could muster, "I'm afraid Mrs. Alforde will be getting worried, Mr. Serridge. I wonder if you could open the gate?"
He looked down at her, his forehead corrugated with lines, his heavy brows huddled together. He looked so woebegone that for a second she almost felt sorry for him. Then it struck her that it was almost as if he knew about the divorce, or at least that a longer separation was likely. Had her father told him? But even her father didn't yet know about her conversations with Mr. Shires.
Serridge unhooked the gate and pulled it open, standing aside to allow her through. "I'll say good afternoon, Mrs. Langstone." He touched the brim of his hat with a forefinger. "Mind how you go."
Rory was still a little drunk by the time he returned to Bleeding Heart Square. He wasn't so far gone that he was incapacitated, either mentally or physically, but he was saturated with the fuzzy self-confidence that whisky brings, and as yet had little trace of the hangover that might follow. It wasn't just the whisky that was affecting him. It was also the possibility of work, real work. A connection with a magazine like
Berkeley's
could make all the difference. It might even be possible, using that as a springboard, eventually to make a living as a freelance, which was his real ambition. At this moment even Julian Dawlish seemed not such a bad fellow. After all, the chap could hardly be blamed for falling in love with Fenella, if that was in fact what had happened. They had arranged to meet on Friday evening to confirm the details for Saturday.
At the corner, Rory paused. There were people drinking in the Crozier. He heard a loud yapping at knee level and looked down. Nipper had been attached to the old pump with a piece of string. Howlett was visible through the window of the lounge bar, and his top hat was resting on the window ledge.
Rory bent down and scratched Nipper behind the ears, which seemed to please him. He rubbed the dog's neck, pushing his fingers under the collar. It was rather a handsome collar, or at least it had been, with a tarnished brass buckle and little brass stars set into the strap. There were footsteps behind him. He gave the dog a last pat and straightened up. Mrs. Renton, laden with a shopping basket, was coming up the alley from Charleston Street.
"Good afternoon," Rory said, cheerfully. "Let me carry that."
"Thank you." She held out the basket and he took it from her.
Nipper strained toward her, his tail wagging and his yapping intensifying.
"Oh stop it, do," Mrs. Renton said and backed away from him. She made a semicircular detour around the pump, keeping her distance. "Nasty thing."
"He's all right," Rory said. "I think he's pretty harmless, really."
Mrs. Renton shook her head. "I can't abide dogs. You can't trust them, not really. They'll go with anyone who feeds them."
She set off toward the house. Nipper backed away, squatted, and scratched vigorously behind his left ear with a hind leg. Fleas, probably, Rory thought. Behind him there was the ring of a bicycle bell and one of the mechanics at the workshop at the end of the square cycled past. It was the conjunction of those two factors, the bicycle and the dog scratching its ear, that collided with a third item that was lying like an unexploded bomb in his memory.
Mrs. Renton was unlocking the door of the house. "Are you coming, Mr. Wentwood?" she called. "I haven't got all day, you know."
"Oh dear. Oh dear me. A fall? How very unfortunate."
Lydia stripped off her ruined gloves. "No bones broken. It was all my fault. Luckily Mr. Serridge came to my rescue."
Cheerfulness broke like sunshine across Mr. Gladwyn's round, red face. "Serridge--yes. One of nature's gentlemen. Rebecca, take Mrs. Langstone upstairs and see what you can do to help."
Lydia held up her arms as Rebecca helped her out of her coat. "Is Mrs. Alforde back?"
"No--she's still at Mrs. Narton's, I presume." Mr. Gladwyn gnawed his lower lip. "She wouldn't want us to wait for her, I'm sure, especially in the circumstances. You'll need something to sustain you, Mrs. Langstone. As soon as you are ready, we shall have tea." He glided into his study to wait for it.
"This way, madam." Rebecca led Lydia toward the stairs. "I'll see what I can do with the coat while you're having your tea."
"Thank you."
"But I'm not sure there's much we can do with the gloves," Rebecca said as they climbed the stairs.
"Throw them away." Lydia wondered how long she would have to work at Shires and Trimble to earn enough for another pair of gloves like that.
Rebecca showed her into a guest bedroom with its own washbasin. Lydia removed her hat and stared at her pale face in the mirror above the taps. How on earth had that smear of mud arrived on her nose? Rebecca brought towels and a flannel. She murmured that the WC and bathroom were next door.
Lydia turned on the hot tap and picked up the flannel. "Rebecca?"
"Yes, madam?"
"I went to the little barn." She watched the maid's face in the mirror. "The one you can see from the lane. Where Amy Narton died."
Rebecca's face remained blank and faintly disapproving, the face of a well-trained servant.
"I didn't fall over," Lydia went on, turning off the tap. "Someone shut me in. They wedged the door closed with a bit of piping. That's how I ruined the gloves, by picking up a brick and hammering on the door."
"Oh, madam," Rebecca said. "Shall I ask Mr. Gladwyn to call the police?"
"That depends. I think I know who did it, you see." Lydia rubbed at a smear of mud that had unaccountably appeared on her cheek. "There was a fresh footprint in the mud underneath where the piping was lying. Someone with small feet. A child, probably." She rinsed the flannel and wrung it out. "So that means it was almost certainly Robbie."
The color slipped away from Rebecca's face. But most of all Lydia noticed her eyes, the way they moved to and fro, looking for something that couldn't be found. It was a miserable business, bullying someone, which was what this came down to.
"What--what do you know about Robbie, madam? You do mean my nephew?"
"Yes. I know that you're fond of him. And I know that the barn is a special place because no one else normally goes there, even Mr. Serridge. Perhaps especially Mr. Serridge."
"Did Mrs. Alforde tell you, madam?"
"Not about Robbie. Mr. Wentwood did. As it happens, he's a friend of mine."
Rebecca let out her breath but said nothing.
Lydia picked up the towel and turned to face her. "It's all right. I don't want to make life difficult for Robbie. Or for you. But I thought you should know what happened. And there's something else: Mr. Serridge said the barn was dangerous. He's going to have it pulled down."
"I'm so sorry, madam. I just don't know what to say. If Mr. Gladwyn hears that--"
"There's no reason why he should," Lydia interrupted.
"You see, he's so funny about that barn and the skulls. Robbie, I mean. They're...they're special."
"His private Golgotha?"
For the first time Rebecca smiled, as one woman to another. "Yes. Mr. Wentwood told you about that."
Lydia turned back to the basin and buried her face in the flannel again. Afterward she said, "You'd better warn Robbie. He'll want to move his skulls."
"There's no harm in them," Rebecca said, as though Lydia had said something quite different. "It's just that they're like toys to him. Or even friends. He was that upset when one of them went. I don't know what he'd do if they all did."
"When he lost the goat's skull?"
The maid nodded. "He thinks it was old Narton."
"Hold on." Lydia dried her face again and sat down at the dressing table. "Sergeant Narton? When?"
"I'm not sure. Robbie's not very good with time. Must have been only a few days before he died."
"Are you sure he meant Narton?"
"Yes. He saw him coming out early one morning. He didn't dare go up to him. Narton hit him once."
Lydia picked up the hairbrush. "Robbie told you all this?"
The maid hovered at Lydia's shoulder. "He can speak more than you'd think, madam. It's just that he doesn't like doing it with strangers and it takes a bit of practice to understand what he's saying." She bent closer. "Are you really not going to do anything?"
"About Robbie this afternoon? Of course not." For a moment she thought the maid was about to burst into tears. "It didn't matter."
"Thank you. He was a bit funny today, you know, a bit over-wrought. That must have been why he shut you in. He probably thought you were after the other skulls."
It occurred to Lydia that at no point had Rebecca questioned Lydia's accusation: she had assumed that it was perfectly likely, even probable, that Robbie had shut her in the barn.
"I'll take the coat down to the kitchen, shall I, and dry it by the fire. That mud will soon brush off."
"Thank you. Tell me, what was she like? Miss Penhow, I mean."
"I called her Mrs. Serridge, of course. She was all right, quite a nice little thing. I was only with her for a week or two, but we got on fine. She gave herself airs sometimes but there was no harm in it. And you couldn't help feeling sorry for her. She was so unhappy."
"Was that obvious?"
Rebecca nodded. "She wanted to follow him around like a spaniel but he wasn't having any of it. She spent a lot of time crying. Or sulking, or trying to coax him round. She thought--she thought she was, well, attractive to him. That she could win him round that way. But then she found she couldn't."
"Was she pretty?"
Rebecca shrugged. "She could make herself look well enough. She needed an hour in the morning to get ready. I used to help her sometimes, and she was so fussy. But she dressed quite well, I'll say that for her. And she wasn't bad-looking, either, not when she had her teeth in and she'd had her hair tinted. She was a lady who needed her rouge and powder. Even so, you could see just by looking at them together that he was a good ten or fifteen years younger. And then if you saw her when she wasn't ready for company, you saw how old she really was. I dare say she felt younger than she was."
"We all feel that."
"Anyone with half an eye could see it was pointless."
"What do you mean?"
Rebecca drew herself up and stood primly, her hands clasped together in front of her. "He likes the younger ones, madam. Girls."
Lydia stood up, leaving the towel draped on the end of the bed and the flannel on the edge of the basin. Rebecca folded the coat neatly over her arm and opened the door. It was odd, Lydia thought, and rather unsettling, how quickly one became used to servants again. Or rather to not noticing all the little things they did for you.
"Rebecca? I found something else in the barn."
The maid stopped, her hand on the door handle and her face anxious.
"Nothing to worry about. Something on the ledge with the skulls, right at the end in the corner. An old cigar box. Do you know anything about it?"
"It was Mrs. Serridge's--Miss Penhow's, I mean. I remember Robbie showing it to me."
Lydia blinked. "She smoked cigars?"
Rebecca's face creased into a grin. "Oh no, madam. It must have been Mr. Serridge's once, I suppose. She used it for her diary. She was always writing in it."
"Why on earth did she keep it there?"
"Maybe so it wasn't obvious if Mr. Serridge went looking for it. I caught him looking through her writing desk once when she was having a bath."
"It can't have been very big."
"It wasn't. Just a little green book with hard covers."
That explained the pencil. Lydia said, "Do you know what happened to it?"
"Not seen hide nor hair of it since I left the farm. He'll have got his hands on it after she went, if she didn't take it with her."
Lydia nodded to Rebecca to open the door. As they crossed the landing and went downstairs, normality reasserted itself, and the maid, one step behind Lydia, kept her head modestly lowered and her hands clasped round the coat. The distance between them seemed ridiculous, given the nature of the conversation they had just had in the bedroom.
In the hall, Lydia turned to Rebecca and said in a low voice, partly because things had changed between them and partly because she wanted to show that she had no desire for them to return to their old formal footing, "You'll have to find another Golgotha, I suppose."
Rebecca looked at her and opened her mouth as if about to speak. Then her face changed as if a cloth had been wiped over it.
"Ah," Mr. Gladwyn said, emerging from the drawing room. "There you are, Mrs. Langstone. Fully restored, I hope?"
Lydia turned to him and smiled. "Yes, thank you. Rebecca's been looking after me very well."
"Good, good. Now come and get warm, and Rebecca will bring us our tea." He stood aside to allow her to enter the room. "What was that about Golgotha?"
"No--taffeta," Lydia said swiftly as she passed him in the doorway. "I was asking her advice about how to clean a dress."
Mrs. Alforde was sitting smoking by the fire. She said hello but hardly looked at Lydia. She looked tired and also older, as though she had lived too much time too quickly since lunch.
"Sorry I've kept you both waiting," Lydia said.
"Not at all," Mr. Gladwyn said earnestly. "Tea won't be a jiffy now, I'm sure."
"You've been in the wars, I gather," Mrs. Alforde said, tapping ash into the fire.
"No lasting damage except to my gloves. How was Mrs. Narton?"
Mrs. Alforde looked away. "As well as could be expected."
"I shall tell Cook to send her some soup," Mr. Gladwyn announced. "Ah, here is tea."
His ears had caught the rattle of the tea things in the hall. Rebecca shouldered open the door and wheeled in a trolley. It was a generous tea, with hot buttered crumpets, two sorts of cake and two sorts of sandwiches, as well as bread and butter. Mrs. Alforde poured and Mr. Gladwyn handed round the cups, the sandwiches and a little later the cake. At first there was not a great deal of conversation. Mrs. Alforde concentrated on eating, and so did Mr. Gladwyn. Lydia picked at a sandwich and drank two cups of tea.
By the time he had reached his third cup of tea, Mr. Gladwyn had time for his conversational duties as a host. "Yes, Golgotha," he said. "A foolish mistake of mine--though I suppose it's natural that a clergyman should hear Golgotha rather than taffeta. Curiously enough--" here he leaned back in his chair and stretched out his legs "--it reminds me of rather a good story that went the rounds when I was up at Cambridge. There was a gallery in the university church, you know, which was where the heads of houses sat. And we undergraduates always called it Golgotha because it was the place of the skulls or heads." He paused and beamed at them, preparing them for the climax. "And of course we young wags used to say that Golgotha was the place of empty skulls."
He glanced from one face to another, clearly expecting a suitable response. Lydia managed a smile, and hoped that her expression implied that she was suppressing with difficulty an almost overwhelming desire to laugh immoderately.
Mrs. Alforde merely set down her cup on the table and reached for her cigarettes again. Lydia realized that she had not been listening to a word that Mr. Gladwyn was saying.
Neither of them spoke much on the drive back to London. Lydia was glad of this for several reasons, not least because it was dark and both Mrs. Alforde's driving and her temper had become even more erratic. They reached Bleeding Heart Square a little after seven o'clock. Mrs. Alforde stopped the car outside the house.
"Would you like to come in for a drink?" Lydia asked, glancing up at the facade of the house, at the lighted windows on the first floor; the top-floor windows were dark. "It looks as if Father's in."
"No, no, thank you," Mrs. Alforde said, too baldly for politeness. "I must get back to Gerry."
Lydia was relieved, partly because she wasn't sure what state either her father or the flat would be in, and of course finding something to drink might be difficult. She thanked Mrs. Alforde, who in turn thanked Lydia for keeping her company and hoped that she had not found Rawling too dreary. She murmured something about getting in touch soon and drove off rather quickly.
That night Lydia slept badly, skimming on the surface of unconsciousness, moving in and out of dreams which never made sense enough to be frightening but which left her profoundly uneasy. There was too much to think about. Sometimes she thought she heard dance music, and at other times a woman crying and the sound of Mr. Gladwyn's measured voice as the mourners clustered around Narton's open grave. And what had happened to Mrs. Alforde? She had seemed almost hostile on the way home. She badly needed to talk to Rory. If only he had been at home. And that in itself was a thought that made her restless because it took very little to imagine him with Fenella Kensley instead.
By half past five, she had given up trying to sleep. She lay in a huddle, to conserve warmth, while her mind roved among the events of yesterday. Everything has an explanation, she told herself, and somewhere in the world is the one that fits all this.
At half past six, cold and thirst drove her out of bed. It was still dark. She washed sketchily in cold water from the jug, dressed, put on the kettle and went into the sitting room. The curtains were still drawn from the previous evening. She pulled them aside because the room caught the best of the morning light when at last it came. She lit the gas fire and went back to make the tea.
When she returned, the room was warmer. The sky was very slightly lighter toward the east now. She lingered at the window, warming her fingers on the cup. A heavy bird fluttered past and glided toward the old pump on the corner by the Crozier. There were other birds there already, perching awkwardly on the pump handle and pecking at something. When the new arrival joined them, there was a great flurry of wings as though the newcomer were not a welcome guest.
Lydia huddled over the fire, drank her tea and smoked the first cigarette of the day. What on earth were the birds doing? She had never seen them there before. When she had finished the tea, she went back to the window. The birds were still outside by the pump.
She put on her coat and hat, went downstairs and opened the front door. As she approached the pump, the birds scrambled into the air. They were big, black crows and not in a hurry to leave. She glanced over her shoulder at the house behind her. All the windows except her own were still in darkness. But she thought she caught a movement at Mrs. Renton's window on the right of the front door, the merest glimpse of gray smudge behind the glass, a possible face.
She drew nearer the pump. A rusty nail protruded from one of the supports of its dilapidated wooden canopy. Hanging from it was a long and slightly twisted metal meat skewer with a ring at one end. The skewer had been driven through a lump of matter the size of a misshapen tennis ball. Or an overripe orange from Covent Garden with Hitler's picture on the label, or a russet from one of the old trees in the Monkshill orchard, or a very large egg from a bird or reptile.
The ring had been looped over the head of the nail, and tied to it was a brown luggage label. Lydia touched the label gently with her finger. There was only one word on it and, as the nausea rose in her throat, she knew what it would be before she made out the letters:
Serridge
.
