Bleeding Heart Square (22 page)

Fenella was a bitch. In fact, she was a bloody bitch. And if one were to be absolutely precise about it, as Virginia Woolf would no doubt wish one to be, Fenella was a bloody, calculating bitch.

Lydia huddled over the fire in the big cold sitting room of her father's flat with
A Room of One's Own
open but unread on the arm of her chair. It was a short book but was proving very hard to finish.

She was pleased for Rory--of course she was: she hadn't seen him so happy and excited since she had met him. But she couldn't help suspecting that Fenella had an ulterior motive. Perhaps she was one of those women who are constitutionally incapable of releasing old lovers: they want to retain the advantages of the relationship without the romantic drawbacks. Fenella was keeping Rory dangling and she was probably doing the same with the unfortunate but well-connected Julian Dawlish.

She had to face facts, Lydia told herself: one reason she felt unsettled was that if Rory became a regular contributor to magazines like
Berkeley's
, he would no longer have to live at Bleeding Heart Square. The only things that connected them were the accident of their being under the same roof and this disturbing business about Miss Penhow. And it was all so humiliating too--she really didn't want to be so interested in an unemployed journalist who had been to a grammar school and had holes in his socks. She wasn't in love with him--it was simply a morbid fascination that had nothing to do with Rory but everything to do with Marcus.

If she didn't soon find a more effective distraction than Virginia Woolf, she would drown in her own thoughts. There was no one to talk to--she was alone in the house; even Mrs. Renton's room was in darkness. She could hardly swagger into the saloon bar of the Crozier and order a large whisky. Without warning, she had an acute sense of her own isolation and, before she knew what was happening, she felt tears in her eyes.

But she was damned if she was going to wallow in self-pity. She looked around the room, for distraction, for anything that would take her away from her own emotions. Her eyes fell on her father's old writing box, which was still on the shelf on the left of the fireplace. Fimberry had disturbed her when she was looking at it before.

She put the box on the dining-room table and removed the lid with its broken hinges. Inside was the jumble of dried-up inks, stubs of sealing wax, rusty nibs and paper clips, broken pencils and scraps of paper. There was the sheet of foolscap with the list of names--the
same
name:
P. M. Penhow
, written over and over again--as if someone had been practicing it. On the smaller sheet of paper were the words
I expect you are surprised to hear
. She turned over this second sheet and discovered that there was something else on the back, written faintly in pencil at the top of the page. It was not in the same handwriting but in the clumsy, rather childish version of copperplate that they used to teach in board schools.

and so tell the padre you're sorry for all the upset, that you met an old pal, a sailor who you were going to marry, and you went off and married him, and now you're making a new life in America. We want him to break the news to all and sundry because you're ashamed. A lot depends on this, old man. You won't let me down.

There was no signature. The last page of a letter to America? She had wanted a distraction and now she had found one, she wished she hadn't. She fetched her handbag from her bedroom and emptied its contents onto the table.

An astonishing amount of rubbish had accumulated since she had left Frogmore Place. There were more paper clips, an old matchbox with no matches in it, three bus tickets, a silver three-penny piece, a partly used lipstick that she had forgotten she had owned and at least half a cigarette's worth of tobacco flakes. Finally she found, crumpled into a ball, the note that Serridge had given her with Shires' address and the time of her first appointment with him. She smoothed it out and laid it side by side with the penciled notes from the writing box.

The first was in ink and very short; the second was in pencil and not much longer. The handwriting wasn't very distinctive, in any case--hundreds of thousands of people, perhaps millions, must have been taught to write like that. All she could say with any certainty was that they might have been written by the same person. And that the person might have been Joseph Serridge.

A sense of urgency gripped her. She folded the two sheets of paper and tucked them into her handbag. She piled her own belongings on top of them, and felt happier when they were out of sight and the handbag was closed. She shoveled the rest of the items back in the box and returned it to its shelf.

But closing the handbag and putting the box away didn't obliterate what she had seen: Miss Penhow's name, written over and over again, and that fragment of--what? A letter? An instruction?
A lot depends on this, old man. You won't let me down.

Like falling dominoes, the thoughts led from one to the next, as if they had been queuing ever since she came here, waiting for this moment. Scraps of Mrs. Alforde's conversation rose up from her memory like unwanted ghosts: "making pen-and-ink sketches of the chimney pieces that Gerry's uncle put in the drawing room and the library"; "forged several checks, falsified the accounts and embezzled the mess funds."

And then there was her father returning from America where Miss Penhow's letter had come from. Now he was living without visible means of support in Miss Penhow's house. Except it was no longer Miss Penhow's house; it was now apparently owned by Joseph Serridge.

"Damn the man," she said aloud. How could her father have been so stupid? If he had forged a letter from Miss Penhow on Serridge's behalf, that must mean one of two things: either Serridge knew that Miss Penhow was dead and he was trying to cover up the fact, or he had no idea where she was and was trying to avoid being accused of her disappearance. Either way, her father was an accessory to whatever Serridge had done, and something was very wrong.

The front door banged. Lydia's pulse began to race. There were heavy and uneven footsteps on the stairs, followed by a tap on the door. When she opened it, she was almost relieved to find Malcolm Fimberry on the landing. At least he wasn't Serridge.

"Mrs. Langstone, good evening. I'm glad to catch you in." It was a cold night but the sweat was running down his face. "I wanted to apologize."

"There's nothing to apologize for."

"Oh but there is." He came up to her and laid his hand on her arm. "I cannot forgive myself for not warning you about the skull."

"It really doesn't matter at all." Lydia brushed his hand away from her arm, casually as though it were a fly. "After all, I'd seen it before."

"Yes, but it must have been such a shock." He snuffled and swallowed noisily. "However, it was such a pleasure to see you there this afternoon. I wonder--would you allow me to show you the chapel itself?"

"Thank you. But I'm--"

"What about tomorrow afternoon? I shall still have the keys after the meeting's over, you see. That would make everything much more convenient."

"I don't think I can manage that."

"Oh, but Mrs. Langstone, it really--"

He stopped as they both heard the rattle of the front door again, followed by a confused fumbling in the hall and the sound of Serridge saying wearily, "God damn it." As soon as he heard his landlord's voice, Fimberry backed rapidly away from Lydia as though he had suddenly realized that she was the bearer of an infectious disease.

There were dragging footsteps in the hall below. Lydia came out of the room and went to the head of the stairs. Serridge was at the bottom, supporting her father.

"Evening, Mrs. Langstone," he said in a flat voice. "I'm afraid the Captain's had one over the eight." He caught sight of Fimberry behind her. "Fimberry, come down and lend a hand, will you? It'll be easier with two of us."

Lydia went into her father's bedroom and straightened the bed-clothes. The two men manhandled him upstairs. He was conscious, quite cheerful and rather sleepy.

"On the bed?" Serridge said.

"Yes, please." Lydia edged away from him. "Is he all right?"

"He'll live." Serridge nudged the bedroom door fully open. "Best thing for him now is sleep. If we hold him up, would you pull his coat off?"

Ten minutes later, Lydia was alone with her father. He lay on his back, snoring loudly. She hung up his overcoat and jacket, removed his shoes and covered him with two blankets.

When she had finished, she stared down at him on the single bed beneath the unshaded bulb dangling from the ceiling. He looked very peaceful. If he had been awake and reasonably sober, she would have had to sit down with him and demand an explanation for what she had found in the box. She would have had to argue with him, cajole him, upbraid him and condemn him. Instead she inserted the wooden trees into his shoes--he was particular about maintaining their shape--and slipped them under the bed. Her father's snoring stopped. She looked down at him and saw that his eyes were open. He smiled sweetly at her, and she knew she was smiling back.

"Thank you, my dear," he said.

The eyelids slipped over the eyes like blinds over a window. He began to snore again.