Bleeding Heart Square

by Andrew Taylor

  He was jealous by nature too, and capable of violence. Lydia thought this wasn’t because he loved her but simply because he disliked it when anyone tried to take his possessions away – again like a child, this time with his toys. During their engagement, at a hunt ball at a neighbour’s house, a drunken subaltern had manoeuvred her into the morning room and tried to kiss her. Marcus, almost equally drunk, had followed them in, given the silly boy a bloody nose and thrown him out of the house, much to the delight of the servants.

  It was a long step between a drunken fight at a hunt ball in Gloucestershire and what had happened on Friday in Bleeding Heart Square. But it was at least possible that Marcus or somebody watching on his behalf had seen her with Mr Wentwood and drawn quite the wrong conclusions. Marcus was good at getting things wrong. And if he had had something to do with the attack, she might be able to find a hint of it at the house, perhaps a letter from one of his like-minded friends or even an orphaned cufflink. If nothing else, looking for a clue and failing to find it was better than doing nothing but wonder and worry.

  Sunday morning was the best time to visit Frogmore Place. The house was shut up, Marcus had told her, and he was living at his club. The servants would have gone back to Longhope; the Langstones did not maintain two separate staffs. There was a caretaker, Mrs Eggling, but she was religious, and on Sunday went to church twice a day, morning and evening.

  Lydia was still, in theory at least, the mistress of 9 Frog-more Place, and she still had her latchkey in her handbag. She was perfectly entitled to march up the steps to the front door, let herself in and take away any or all of her own possessions and also those in her charge for those hypothetical future generations of little Langstones. She would be within her rights if she commandeered the services of Mrs Eggling to help her. But she didn’t want to advertise her presence, partly because of wanting to snoop among Marcus’s possessions but more because she had broken with that part of her life. If she had to revisit her past, she preferred there to be no witnesses, no accusing glances, no one to ask questions, no one to try to persuade her to stay, and above all no danger of bumping into Marcus.

  A bus took her as far as Marble Arch. She walked the rest of the way. Marcus’s car was not in Frogmore Place or in the mews at the back. At the house the blinds were drawn over the windows. She ran up the steps to the front door, inserted her key and let herself into the hall.

  Inside, the air was cold and slightly damp. The grandfather clock still ticked and a collection of cards lay on the salver on the pier table at the foot of the stairs. Next to the salver was the crystal vase, lacking its usual flowers but still with an inch of brown water in the bottom. Mrs Eggling was growing slack.

  All the doors were closed. The inner doors to the principal rooms were locked when the house was unoccupied. She walked slowly up the hall to the cupboard under the stairs. Inside, concealed in a recess, was a row of hooks holding the spare keys. Lydia took the one for her own bedroom and climbed the stairs through the silent house. It was only after she had passed the first-floor landing that she remembered the pearls. She would need the study key for that. No matter – she would fetch the clothes first.

  She unlocked her bedroom door and let herself into the familiar space beyond. The blind was down and the curtains were half drawn. The dressing table had been cleared of its usual litter of silver-backed brushes, mirrors and little pots. Why had she once needed so many expensive objects to make herself presentable to the world? No one had yet put dustsheets over the furniture. Perhaps Marcus thought that covering the furniture would lend an unwanted impression of permanence to his wife’s departure. One had to think of the servants, Marcus was always saying, which made life so complicated. One had to think about what they would think and what they might say to other servants.

  Lydia did not remove her hat and gloves. She lifted the empty suitcase onto the bed and opened it. From the wardrobe she selected a grey knitted frock with clear, pale blue buttons and a heavy coat, a dark navy blue that was almost black. She turned to the chest of drawers and dug out three pairs of woollen combinations and a knitted camisole. She needed stockings too, and stays. She studied the jumpers available, debating the merits of fawn cashmere or a tawny yellow silk, but decided in the end to squeeze in both of them. It was a struggle to close the lid of the suitcase.

  She smoothed the coverlet where the suitcase had been and left the bedroom, locking the door behind her. It was possible that no one would know she had been here, not unless her maid went through her clothes. Lydia’s mind ran ahead to what she would do next: leave the suitcase in the cupboard under the stairs; collect the key to the study; look for the necklace and search Marcus’s desk in case there was anything that linked him to the attack on Mr Wentwood.

  On the final flight of stairs to the hall, just as she was deciding that she should also look in Marcus’s bedroom, she heard the familiar sound of a key turning in the front door and the faint screech as the tumblers turned and the bolt withdrew into the lock.

  There was no time to think. Burdened with the suitcase, she ran back to the first-floor landing. She staggered past the doors to the study and the drawing room to the lavatory at the end. This door was never locked when the house was empty. She put down the suitcase and slid the bolt across as quietly as she could. A familiar thud came from downstairs. Someone had closed the front door.

  Lydia pressed her ear against the lavatory door and listened. All she heard was the uneven rhythm of her own breathing. The window was small and barred. Nothing much larger than a monkey could climb out of it. She was safe in the short term – unless somebody tried the door – but she was trapped.

  Her mind jumped from one possibility to another: it was unlikely to be Mrs Eggling – she used the basement door; even less likely to be a burglar, by broad daylight and at the front door; so that meant it was almost certainly Marcus. On the whole she would have preferred it to be a burglar.

  Time passed – less than twenty minutes according to her watch but far longer by any other standard. She was forced to use the lavatory, and the flow of urine into the pan seemed as deafening as a waterfall. She dared not pull the chain.

  Then, somewhere beneath her, she heard another muffled thump.

  Relief poured over her. The front door again – so whoever it was had gone. But her confidence had been badly shaken. She waited for another five minutes, just to make sure, and eased back the bolt. When the lavatory door was open, she waited, listening, for thirty seconds. The house around her was silent.

  She picked up the suitcase and walked slowly towards the stairs, making sure she kept to the carpets rather than the bare boards on either side. The hallway widened at the head of the stairs. She tiptoed across the carpet. Suddenly she stopped. The door of Marcus’s study was now ajar.

  Her brain refused to acknowledge what her eyes saw. She stared through the gap between door and jamb. Something was moving very quietly in the room beyond. It sounded for all the world as though someone were eating a sandwich with a good deal of relish and no regard for table manners.

  Fear held her in a trance. She inclined her body gradually to the left so she could see more of the room. Details reached her in fragments, like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle scattered on a tray, their meaning temporarily lost. A pair of man’s shoes, black and well polished. A pair of lady’s shoes, maroon suede, with peep-toes: very pretty, though impractical and perhaps a little fast – and definitely not suitable for church. Dark blue trousers. A rather daring pink day dress with a very tight skirt split up the side revealing nude stockings.

  Lydia raised her eyes and suddenly most of the pieces in the jigsaw rearranged themselves on the tray and there was an almost complete picture, as plain and easy to understand as anything could be. Marcus was standing, but leaning against the back of an armchair. He was wearing his Old Marlburian tie and his dark blue suit. He was breathing through his mouth, which hung inelegantly open in an O. His head was thrown back and he was staring do
wn his nose straight at Lydia in the doorway; or he would have been staring if his eyes had been open.

  Oh you bastard, Lydia thought, oh you damned brute.

  Kneeling in front of him with her back to the door was a woman, thin and graceful in the pink dress. Her dark head with its carefully set curls was bent. The head bobbed up and down with tiny movements like a bird pecking at a tasty morsel. Marcus’s hands rested on her shoulders.

  The head stopped moving.

  Still with his eyes closed and still with his blind face turned towards the door, Marcus whispered hoarsely, ‘Don’t stop. For Christ’s sake, don’t stop now.’

  At that moment the last piece of the jigsaw dropped into place and there was no room for any ambiguity or misunderstanding, much as Lydia would have liked there to be. At that moment she snapped out of her trance. She ran down the stairs and along to the dusty hall. The suitcase banged against her leg. Her arm caught the vase and sent it flying against a radiator, whereupon it shattered into a shower of crystal. She wrenched open the front door and tumbled into the stuccoed respectability of Frogmore Place.

  On Sunday morning Herbert Narton left the room he rented in Lambeth, locking the door behind him. He walked over the Thames and across London to Liverpool Street, where he bought a return ticket to Mavering. The journey took even longer on a Sunday afternoon than during the week. It was gone half past three before he reached the little station.

  Nobody else left the train. He took the footpath by the church and plodded towards Rawling. At the fork he paused. He chose the right-hand path, though it was the longer way to the cottage. Outside the village he glanced incuriously at the Hall. Going to rack and ruin now the Alfordes were no longer there. His wife said the new people were a bunch of loonies – Theosophists or something, whatever that might mean, all physical jerks and higher thoughts – but she didn’t think they’d stay, which was just as well because their morals were no better than they should be.

  The village itself came in sight. He wandered into the churchyard. It was horribly cold and no one was around. There were lights downstairs in the Vicarage and smoke curling up from its chimneys. Most of the inhabitants of Rawling, from the Vicar to Robbie Proctor, who was the next best thing to the village idiot, were having cups of tea in front of the fire.

  Narton lingered at the lych gate. Ahead of him a flagged path stretched to the south door of the church. He had been married inside that church and come out of it with Margaret on his arm and his colleagues in their best blue uniforms lined up to greet them. It had been spring and he remembered vividly the fresh green leaves on the pleached limes on either side of the path. Now the limes were leafless, and their intertwined branches and twigs showed black against the grey tones of the grass, the stone walls and the sky. The trees were like opposing ranks of ghostly dancers about to sweep him into their midst and bear him away to a sinister end he could not begin to perceive.

  Something nudged his memory – a conversation overheard between Malcolm Fimberry and Father Bertram at the chapel – something about a party in Bleeding Heart Square and a woman who danced with the devil. Narton had no truck with these old wives’ tales, but he knew who and where the devil was. The devil was alive and well and dividing his time between Morthams Farm and 7 Bleeding Heart Square. And now, according to young Wentwood, just to complicate matters that were already unbearably complicated, someone was sending parcels to him.

  Bleeding hearts to the devil?

  Narton left the path and zigzagged among the gravestones. The grass was long and wet and the damp seeped through his trousers. At the bottom of the churchyard was the area reserved for newer graves. He hesitated. Amy’s stone was near the yew in the corner. Goodnight, my dear.He cast one look back at the dancing limes and then hurried out of the churchyard by the lower entrance.

  It was bloody raining now, and the light was failing fast. Narton walked faster and faster, trying to put the cold and damp behind him, though God knew there was nothing at the other end worth hurrying to. Morthams Farm was half a mile to the left, screened by a ragged belt of trees, including three tall pines. He passed the opening of the rutted track up to the house and yard. The mailbox stood askew like a drunken sentinel on the corner. Aping the gentry, Serridge called the track a drive.

  The road swung to the right. Around the bend was the dark oblong of his own house, with a light in the kitchen window. The cottage had two rooms upstairs and two rooms down, plus a scullery tacked on to the end. Narton’s father-in-law had spent all his working life on the Hall’s home farm, and the cottage had come with the job. After he retired, the Alfordes had let him stay there. His daughter Margaret worked at the Hall, and they had let her keep the cottage after she handed in her notice to marry Herbert Narton.

  Pretty young thing. Couldn’t believe my luck.

  The Alfordes had had their heads in the clouds, Narton considered, more money than sense, an easy touch for anyone with a sob story – which was why of course they didn’t have much money left now. When they had sold up the estate, they had offered the Nartons the freehold of the cottage for not much more than the price of a decent dinner. He had been delighted at the time. He had seen himself growing old there, growing sweet peas and marrows, maybe asparagus if he could manage it; and Amy’s kiddies helping him pot seedlings.

  Now the garden was a dripping wilderness crowded with the remains of last summer’s weeds. He glanced through the kitchen window as he passed it. Margaret, wearing coat, hat and gloves, was sitting at the table reading the Bible. Her lips moved and her finger crept along the line of text. When he let himself in at the back door, she did not look up.

  Not so pretty now.

  He knew better than to interrupt her. While she sat there reading, he removed his coat, riddled the kitchen range and added kindling and a thin layer of coke to the glowing embers that remained. He set a kettle on to boil and washed his hands.

  Margaret came to the end of the chapter and looked up. ‘Nothing to eat,’ she said. ‘I didn’t know you were coming today.’

  ‘It’s all right. I’m not hungry.’

  Her eyes went back to the Bible. It was easier when she didn’t talk. He investigated what was available. The leaves in the teapot could be used again. In the larder the milk jug had been left uncovered but in any case the milk had turned sour and a dead fly floated on its surface. There was however a little sugar left, and also half a loaf of stale white bread and a cup of beef dripping. He no longer had much interest in food and drink but he knew he needed them.

  ‘Where’s the key?’ Margaret said suddenly.

  He stood in the larder doorway and looked at her. ‘What key?’

  ‘The one for the parlour cupboard.’

  ‘I’ve got it here.’ He patted his waistcoat pocket. ‘It’s quite safe.’

  ‘I want it.’

  ‘You can’t have it.’

  ‘You should burn those things you’ve got in there. All of them.’

  He sighed. ‘Don’t be stupid. They might be important. We’ve talked about this over and over again. Don’t you listen to a word I say?’

  She stared up at him, pushing out her lower lip like a thwarted child. Her fingertip was still touching the page in front of her and moving slowly and erratically towards the right-hand margin. She had been not just pretty but beautiful, he thought, and elegant with it, like a lady; not that it mattered. He brought the bread and dripping from the larder and put them down on the table. Muttering under his breath, he picked up her left hand, the one with the thin gold wedding band.

  ‘You’re freezing,’ he snapped. ‘You silly woman. What do you think you’re trying to do? Die of pneumonia?’

  She stared at him, withdrew her hand but said nothing. He fetched a blanket from the unmade bed and draped it over her shoulders. She neither helped nor hindered him. He had seen mannequins with more life in them.

  He touched the range with his fingers. ‘It’s getting warmer. That’s what you need, warmth. You
’ll be better when you’ve had some tea.’

  She looked up without smiling. Then at last she held out her hand to him.

  ‘We’re a fine pair of crocks,’ Narton said furiously, and took it.

  He pulled out the chair beside hers. They sat there, hand in hand, staring at the kettle and waiting for the water to boil.

  On Sunday afternoon Rory walked north from Bleeding Heart Square, at first in a straight line and later in a long north-westerly arc that took him through Regent’s Park and over Primrose Hill. Fenella was not expecting him. He reached Cornwallis Grove a little before half past three. Fenella answered the door. He fancied a look of disappointment passed over her face when she saw it was him. Instantly he supplied the reason for it. That was the trouble with jealousy. It created a ferocious appetite that was capable of nourishing itself just as effectively on speculation as on fact.

  The hall was full of broken chairs, tins of paint, canvases stacked against the wall and an entire aviary of stuffed birds.

  ‘Come into the kitchen,’ she said. ‘It’s warmer.’

  On the way he tripped over a canvas bag of tools and grazed his hand on a half-built bookcase.

  ‘I’m beginning to think I’ll never be free of the old monster,’ Fenella said over her shoulder. ‘All that clutter is like having Dad around again.’

  ‘Will you miss it?’

  ‘Why should I? Quite the reverse.’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I mean the house and everything. It’s your home.’

  ‘It doesn’t feel like it since Mother died. The only thing I really miss is the car. A car gives you freedom – you can drive anywhere you like, at any time.’ She smiled at him. ‘You can always escape.’

  She turned aside to fill the kettle. Rory thought she looked almost incandescent with excitement. He hadn’t seen her in such a good mood since he had come back from India. It was either the job or that chap Dawlish, or more probably both.