Bleeding Heart Square

by Andrew Taylor

  ‘No – I’ve been in India since ’29.’ Wentwood grinned, which made him look much younger. ‘The idea was, I was going to make my fortune and then send for Miss Kensley. But it didn’t work out so I came back.’

  ‘Money,’ Narton said. ‘It always crops up somewhere. So maybe that’s why you and Miss Kensley are interested in Miss Penhow. In case a little of hers comes your way.’

  ‘No, of course not. Though it still seems odd, her just vanishing like that. Anyway, I thought you chaps had decided there was nothing suspicious about the business. Does this mean you think something’s happened to her?’

  ‘What do you mean, Mr Wentwood? Are you asking if she’s dead? Murdered, even? Is that what you’re saying?’

  ‘I’m not saying anything, Sergeant. Miss Kensley says Miss Penhow’s abroad.’

  ‘Just suppose she ain’t, what then? All we know for certain is that she was last seen in April 1930. So where might she be? And what about her money?’

  ‘I’ve no idea where she is. And I keep trying to tell you, Sergeant – we’re not interested in her money.’

  ‘Oh.’ Narton smiled. ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes, really. The money comes from the Penhow side of the family, nothing to do with the Kensleys.’

  ‘Of course. Though you’d be surprised how many people are concerned about money, wherever it comes from.’

  3

  When you read these early entries, you can’t help feeling it was Miss Penhow’s fault too. Why didn’t she realize that he was flattering her? That he could want only one thing she had to give?

  Wednesday, 8 January 1930

  This morning there was a letter from Mr Orburn waiting beside my place at breakfast. He enclosed a memorandum itemizing the works he considers necessary at 7 Bleeding Heart Square. It comes in all to a little over £105, and he recommends rounding it up to £110 in order to allow for contingencies. It seems a great deal of money but I suppose I should go ahead. No doubt Mr Orburn has a better idea of what is necessary than I do.

  He also enclosed a letter from Major Serridge, the gentleman I met on Monday. It struck me as very much like the man himself: gruff and to the point, written in a clear, plain hand; but there was no mistaking the kindly intention behind it. I think it worth copying out here in full:

  My dear Miss Penhow,

  When I had the pleasure of meeting you on Monday, you asked whether I knew where the name of Bleeding Heart Square came from. I wasn’t able to satisfy your curiosity then, but this morning I came across a piece of information I thought might be of interest to you.

  According to a man who lodges in the house and has made something of a study of these matters, there is an old legend relating to Bleeding Heart Square and Rosington Place next door. It seems that it was once the site of a palace, of which the only remaining sign is the chapel. Many years ago, there was a ball at which a devil appeared, dressed as a gentleman. He danced a great deal with the lady of the house, who was much taken with him. They danced out of the palace together, and vanished. In the morning, the only sign of her was a human heart, still warm – left in the middle of what is now Bleeding Heart Square!

  I’m afraid this is rather a sinister story for a lady’s ears, but I thought you would be interested in such a quaint old legend.

  Yours very sincerely,

  J. S. Serridge

  The Major is quite right – it is a sinister tale. It was most sensitive of him to take account of my feelings, though. Of course it is only one of those funny old stories that abound in these old places. Still, it’s not without interest so I record it here.

  Memo: write and thank him for his kindness.

  On her second morning at Bleeding Heart Square, Lydia went out for breakfast again. She bought a copy of The Times from a newsagent’s in Charleston Street, partly to give her something to do while she was at the café and partly because reading The Times was an activity that seemed to connect her to the person she had been before she left Frogmore Place.

  The same woman was behind the counter of the Blue Dahlia but she showed no sign of recognition. After ordering tea and a fried egg, Lydia worked her way through the pages of the newspaper with a growing sense of unreality. She scanned the Situations Vacant columns and wished she were a man. A stretch of the Thames in its upper reaches had turned a rusty colour and thousands of fish had been found dead. The Women’s Appeal Fund for German Jewish Women and Children had held a luncheon at the Savoy Hotel yesterday. The Welsh coalfields were in crisis again, and the Prince of Wales had made a gramophone record in aid of Poppy Day. According to the weather forecast London would have local morning fog and probably occasional rain later, though in Fetter Passage there was no later about it.

  Her breakfast arrived. Lydia folded the newspaper open at the crossword. ‘Not shown by game birds (two words) (5, 7).’ She ate quickly, alert to her surroundings like a cat in a strange place.

  Two men came in and took a table near the door. One was in his fifties, a skinny fellow who threw off his shabby tweed overcoat to reveal a greasy suit. He wore a hard collar but no tie. All his clothes were a little too large for him, as though he had recently shrunk. He hadn’t shaved, and his hair needed cutting.

  His companion was much younger. His suit was obviously off the peg and his flat cap was frankly awful, the sort of thing a chauffeur might have worn on his day off. But she liked his long face, which seemed crowded with overlarge and irregularly distributed features. It looked unfinished, as though its maker had been tempted away by a more interesting job, which gave it a sort of vulnerability. For an instant he glanced in her direction. His eyes were striking, a vivid blue that was out of place among the muddy browns and shades of grey around him. He looked away.

  It was the flat cap that jogged her memory. She was almost sure this was the man she had seen yesterday afternoon, standing outside the Crozier and staring at Bleeding Heart Square.

  The door closed behind the elegant young woman who had been sitting by herself with The Times. Rory Wentwood watched her walking along the pavement in the direction of Hatton Garden.

  ‘That girl you’ve been staring at,’ Sergeant Narton said. ‘You’ll know her again, eh?’

  ‘What? Oh – that one? The one who just left?’

  ‘You’ve been looking at her all the time we’ve been in here.’

  ‘Not really,’ Rory said stiffly. ‘It’s just that she – she stood out. One noticed her in here, somehow. Not like the other customers. I was naturally curious.’

  ‘Have you seen her before?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Sure?’

  ‘Of course I am. I’d remember.’

  ‘She knows someone at number seven. I think she spent the night there.’

  Rory shrugged. ‘That’s nothing to do with me, Sergeant.’

  ‘All right.’ Narton leant forward and lowered his voice. ‘First, I’m grateful you agreed to meet me this morning.’

  ‘I don’t understand why—’

  ‘Now look here, sir, from what you said yesterday, you’ve never met Mr Serridge?’

  ‘That’s correct.’

  ‘So he’s never met you?’

  ‘He doesn’t even know I exist.’

  ‘Well there’s a thing. I’ve thought it over and discussed it with my superiors. And now I’ve got a little proposition for you. Could kill two birds with one stone. But it’s confidential. Police business, see? You mustn’t mention it to a soul, even your young lady.’

  Lydia unlocked the front door of 7 Bleeding Heart Square with her father’s spare latchkey. The hall no longer smelled of rotten meat, only of old cabbage and the bedroom slops. As she was closing the door behind her, she heard footsteps at the back of the hall. It was the plump man who had let her in when she had first arrived at the house.

  ‘Hello, hello,’ he said, smiling broadly. ‘It’s Miss Ingleby-Lewis, isn’t it?’ He had a high-pitched, breathless voice, cockney with a veneer of education spread thinly over
the vowels. ‘I hear you’re staying with us for a few days.’

  ‘It’s Mrs Langstone, actually.’

  ‘Beg pardon?’

  ‘My name,’ Lydia said, and tried to slip past him.

  But the man had contrived to pin her into the angle between the table and the wall. He smiled at her and his face twitched. ‘I don’t think we’ve been properly introduced. I’m Malcolm Fimberry.’

  ‘How do you do,’ Lydia said without enthusiasm. ‘Now I must really—’

  ‘I’m so glad to have run into you. Seeing as we’re going to be neighbours, I understand, in a manner of speaking. It’s a friendly house, and that’s good because it’s much nicer if everyone gets on well together, I always think.’ He gave her arm a little squeeze for emphasis. ‘Anything you want to know, you can always come and ask me. I’m on the ground floor, that door there.’

  Lydia tried to push past him but his arm, surprisingly solid, was suddenly in the way.

  ‘Will you please let me pass?’ she said. ‘I’m going upstairs.’

  At that moment the door opened behind her.

  ‘Mr Fimberry?’

  The plump man jumped away from Lydia as though she had poked him with a stick. Mrs Renton was standing in the doorway of the room to the right of the front door. She had a needle in one hand and what looked like a woman’s blouse in the other. ‘If you want your sheets mended, Mr Fimberry, you’ll have to pay in advance this time, if you please.’

  ‘Of course, Mrs Renton. Can’t make bricks without straw, can we?’ He produced a leather purse and shook a handful of change into the palm of his hand.

  ‘Three shillings will cover it.’

  He handed her a florin and a couple of sixpences. ‘Much obliged, I’m sure. Now I really must be off.’ He aimed a smile midway between the two women. ‘Father Bertram will be wondering where I’ve got to. No peace for the wicked, eh?’

  As the front door closed behind him, Mrs Renton stared calmly at Lydia. ‘You have to watch that one,’ she said. ‘Mind you, his bark’s worse than his bite.’

  ‘Unlike Nipper,’ Lydia said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘A dog I met the other day.’

  ‘Oh, that one.’ Mrs Renton peered at Lydia. ‘Nasty little thing. So you’re having the little room next to the Captain’s for the time being?’

  ‘Yes. My father thinks it will be all right. But I – I’m not quite sure how things are managed here. In all sorts of ways.’

  ‘I dare say the Captain isn’t much help on that front.’

  ‘I don’t know how things are run, you see.’ Lydia felt absurdly foolish, like a child again. ‘How the cooking and cleaning are done. That sort of thing.’

  ‘A char comes in to do the stairs and the hall and so on,’ Mrs Renton said. ‘And the bathroom and the WCs. It’s meant to be once a week. All the flats and rooms share the same bathroom – you know that? She obliges some of the tenants too, including Mr Fimberry, but not your father. He manages for himself, most of the time.’

  ‘What about cooking?’

  ‘There’s a kitchen on each floor except the attic. The flats share. But I don’t think the Captain has much use for kitchens. Well, that’s natural. Nor does Mr Serridge, come to that. Mr Serridge has got the other two rooms on your landing.’

  ‘I wonder if you would be able to advise me about what to do,’ Lydia said. ‘I haven’t done much of … of this sort of thing. And I’m afraid my father’s rather an old bachelor.’

  Mrs Renton looked up at her and pursed her lips. Lydia thought how unnatural it was, that someone like herself should be practically begging this old woman for help.

  There was a knock on the front door. Mrs Renton marched in an unhurried way down the hall and opened it. A tall young man was standing on the step. He whipped off his hat, a flat cap, and at that moment Lydia recognized him as the younger of the two men from the café at breakfast.

  ‘Good morning,’ he said to Mrs Renton. ‘I saw the sign in the window – apartments to let. As it happens, I’m looking for somewhere myself.’

  ‘Single gentleman?’

  ‘Yes.’ The bright blue eyes looked over Mrs Renton’s shoulders and stared at Lydia. ‘What exactly is available?’

  ‘There’s the attic flat,’ Mrs Renton said. ‘Bedroom and a sitting room. Share kitchen and bathroom. No meals or laundry.’

  ‘I see. May I see the rooms?’

  ‘The landlord likes to show people round himself.’

  ‘And when’s he due back?’

  ‘Not sure. Maybe tomorrow or Saturday.’

  ‘Thank you. Then I’ll call back tomorrow afternoon. My name’s Wentwood, by the way. Can you tell me what the rent is?’

  ‘You’ll have to discuss that with Mr Serridge. He does all that side of things.’

  ‘Righto. Well, thank you for your help.’ Once again his eyes sought Lydia’s. ‘I’ll say goodbye then.’

  As he turned to go, a postman mounted the steps behind him. Mr Wentwood stood to one side to allow the man to approach Mrs Renton. The postman groped inside his bag and produced a small parcel wrapped in brown paper and string. He handed it to Mrs Renton, who closed the door on the two men and put the parcel on the hall table.

  ‘Who’s it for?’ Lydia asked.

  ‘Mr Serridge.’

  ‘It looks like that other one.’

  ‘None of our business.’ Mrs Renton bent down and sniffed it. ‘Unless it begins to smell.’

  Lydia was reading A Room of One’s Own and feeling increasingly envious of Mrs Woolf:

  My aunt … died by a fall from her horse while she was riding out to take the air in Bombay. The news of my legacy reached me one night about the same time that the act was passed that gave votes to women. A solicitor’s letter fell into the post-box and when I opened it I found that she had left me five hundred pounds a year for ever. Of the two – the vote and the money – the money, I own, seemed infinitely the more important.

  Five hundred a year? The money shone like a mirage, a glittering pile of gold, in Lydia’s mind. If a woman had that, she could do almost anything she wanted. She dropped the book on the table, dislodging puffs of dust and tobacco ash.

  Her father had gone out, and she had the flat to herself. She wandered from the sitting room to her father’s bedroom, which was larger than her own and looked out on a gloomy little yard surrounded on all sides by high walls of blackened brick. It was sparsely equipped with the sort of furniture Lydia would have considered inadequate for a servant’s bedroom. The air smelled of stale cigar smoke, and there were two empty brandy bottles in the waste-paper basket. She resisted the temptation to look inside the chest of drawers and the wardrobe, partly because she felt it beneath her to pry, but more because she was afraid of what she might find. She pitied her father but pity was perilously close to disgust.

  In the sitting room, kitchen and bedrooms, every surface seemed covered with a fine layer of sooty grime, slightly oily. Lydia found a moderately clean dishcloth under the kitchen sink and wiped the woodwork around the sittingroom windows. It was much harder work than she had expected, and much dirtier. Before moving to the mantelpiece, she tied up her hair with a silk headscarf. How did people manage without servants, she wondered for the first time in her life, and indeed how did servants themselves manage?

  There were footsteps on the landing and she looked round. The door was open, and Mrs Renton was staring at Lydia kneeling by the hearth. The old woman sniffed and moved away without speaking. But a few minutes later, she returned with an enamel bucket in her hand and a pinafore over her arm. In the bucket were dusters and rags. She put down the bucket in the doorway and draped the pinafore over the back of the nearest chair.

  ‘The dustbins are out the back in the yard,’ Mrs Renton said. ‘There’s a door at the end of the hall.’

  She nodded at Lydia and marched away. The work seemed a little easier after that, and not just because she was better equipped for it. When she had
finished the dusting, she filled the bucket and washed the windows. Even that was harder than it looked because one tended to smear the dirt on the glass rather than remove it.

  Lydia worked on until her stomach told her it was lunch-time. There was still no sign of Captain Ingleby-Lewis – she suspected she might find him in the Crozier but she didn’t want to put the theory to the test – and nothing to eat in the flat, except those wretched sardines. She would have to go out again. As she made herself ready, she noticed that there was a sooty line on her skirt. She tried to remove it without success. As for her hands, they looked red and wrinkled, like a washerwoman’s. She had another vivid mental image of Frogmore Place, this time of her bedroom: the dressing table, with its array of silver-backed brushes and pots and jars; her clothes laid out for her, with her stockings rolled ready for her to put on; and Susan, her maid, hovering near the door, hands clasped, eyes down.

  She found a shopping basket in the kitchen and went outside. The fog had lifted but the rain had grown heavier, and her feet slithered on the cobbles. She heard singing, faint but dreary, and guessed it came from the chapel. She walked to the Blue Dahlia in Fetter Passage again. Going there had almost become a habit, and a habit of any sort was reassuring in a world where almost everything was strange.

  The café was crowded and full of noise and smoke. She found a place at a table laid for two. She was surprised to find herself much hungrier than usual and ordered cutlets and peas, with plum pie and custard to follow. It would cost her half a crown, plus perhaps a tip. In the last forty-eight hours, she had become conscious about money in a way she had never been before. Soon she would have to sell some jewellery.

  While she was waiting for her cutlets, she returned to the crossword in The Times. Instead of attempting the clues, however, she jotted down items on a shopping list. Tea. Milk. Bread. As she was wondering whether she should economize and buy margarine rather than butter, somebody brushed her arm.

  ‘Excuse me,’ a man said. ‘Do you mind if I join you? All the other tables are full.’