Bleeding Heart Square

by Andrew Taylor

  ‘I think you should have thought of the effect on them already,’ Lydia said. ‘By the way, I shall want Marcus to settle an income on me. Shall we say five hundred a year? I don’t want to be greedy.’

  ‘I’m not sure he could find that sort of money.’

  ‘He can if he has to.’

  ‘He won’t agree.’

  ‘He will,’ Lydia said. ‘You’ll make him. I’m serious about this, Mother. I’m quite prepared to go to the papers. If necessary, I’ll do everything I can to ensure that the world knows what my husband and my mother were doing together.’

  Lady Cassington said in a quiet, uncertain voice, ‘You couldn’t prove anything.’

  ‘That’s the point, though. I wouldn’t have to prove it: I’d just have to say it.’

  ‘You wouldn’t get any sympathy, you know.’ Her mother studied her with narrow intelligent eyes. ‘That’s the trouble when people start throwing mud at other people. It ends up sticking to everyone. They’d think you were mad. A wicked liar.’

  ‘I’m quite happy to take that risk. Though if you can persuade Marcus to do the decent thing for once in his life there won’t be any need. The point is, you and Marcus have got something to lose. I haven’t. Not any more.’

  Her mother picked at the eiderdown. ‘You’ve become very hardbitten. I must say I’m surprised. And hurt.’

  ‘As somebody said to me the other day, you see things very differently when you haven’t a couple of shillings to rub together.’

  ‘What have you told Fin?’

  ‘Nothing. Yet.’

  ‘I’d hate to see him worried by something like this.’

  ‘In that case you’ll make sure he isn’t.’

  ‘Will you stay with your father?’

  Lydia stood up, walked over to the window again and looked down at the trim self-confident street below. She turned her head and stared at her mother. She felt cruelty rising inside her, a black tide. ‘That rather depends on who you mean by my father.’

  Julian Dawlish looked as if he hadn’t slept. He arrived as arranged a little after ten o’clock. He brought with him milk, tea, bread and bacon. Rory cooked them a primitive breakfast, which they ate at the kitchen table.

  Afterwards, Dawlish pushed aside his plate, cleared his throat and said, ‘Fenella rang me up this morning. It seems that she doesn’t want the job after all. Or the flat.’ He looked like a man who has seen his own ghost.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Rory said, because he couldn’t think of anything else to say.

  ‘Of course I shall carry on with the association. It’s – it’s important, as I’m sure you agree after what we saw on Saturday. One has to start somewhere, doesn’t one? Because otherwise everything falls to pieces and one might as well just lie down and wait for the worst to happen.’

  ‘Yes, one has to do something.’ Rory wasn’t sure whether his host was talking about the state of his own emotions or Fascism’s steady invasion of European politics. ‘Anything’s better than nothing.’

  ‘Precisely,’ Dawlish said, looking even more hag-ridden than before. He took out his case and lit a cigarette. ‘I – I hope she’s all right. Fenella, I mean. She seemed a bit – well, jumpy yesterday. I don’t know whether you noticed?’

  ‘I did notice something,’ Rory admitted.

  There was a pause in the conversation while Dawlish stubbed out the cigarette. Then he asked Rory how he was feeling.

  ‘Much better, thanks. I’ll walk back to Bleeding Heart Square when we’re done here and start packing.’

  ‘Nonsense. I’ll run you over in the car. Then I’ll take your piece over to Berkeley’s and have a word with the editor.’

  ‘That’s awfully kind.’

  Dawlish glanced at him and smiled a little awkwardly. ‘How long will it take you to pack your gear when you get back there?’

  ‘I don’t know – an hour or two at most, I should think.’

  Dawlish looked at his watch. ‘Suppose I pick you up after lunch. Half past two, say, will that suit?’

  ‘Absolutely. Thank you.’

  ‘You might as well have this flat for the time being. I’ll get someone in to sort out the attic.’

  ‘We must talk about rent and so on.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Dawlish said. ‘We shall. The association won’t need the whole house, after all. The ground floor and the first floor will be more than enough.’

  ‘I shouldn’t be surprised if Lydia Langstone wasn’t soon looking for somewhere to live.’

  ‘Women are queer fish,’ Dawlish went on, as if Rory had said something quite different. ‘That’s all there is to it. Kittle-cattle, as my father used to say. Don’t you agree?’

  Lady Cassington sat at her dressing table, looking at Lydia’s reflection in the oval mirror. She was wearing a pale green wrap with lace at the sleeves and the collar. Her feet were bare and the hand holding the hairbrush was trembling slightly. The skin at the base of her neck, Lydia saw, was puffy and wrinkled.

  ‘I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,’ Lady Cassington said carefully and slowly. She had just returned from a tactical retreat to her bathroom, where no doubt she had considered her possible courses of action.

  ‘You know perfectly well,’ Lydia said. ‘If necessary, by the way, I shall make this public too.’

  ‘Lydia! Of all the wicked—’

  ‘I shouldn’t have found out if it hadn’t been for you,’ Lydia said. ‘It was you who got the Alfordes to ask me to tea. Mrs Alforde is a nice woman. She tried so hard to do the right thing. She even asked me out for a day in the country. She had to run down to Rawling, you see. There was a funeral she had to go to – a man called Narton, the husband of an old servant.’

  ‘My dear Lydia,’ her mother said, veering on to another tack, ‘on reflection, I think you’re right about you and Marcus. About the divorce, I mean. Sometimes one has to draw a line under things, and make the best of a bad business. Sometimes—’

  ‘We had lunch at the Vicarage after the funeral,’ Lydia interrupted. ‘Mrs Alforde and the Vicar put their heads together about the best way to help Mrs Narton. You must have seen Mrs Narton yourself when you went to stay at Rawling Hall. She looks about seventy now, but in fact she’s only forty-five. Did you know that?’

  ‘Of course I didn’t,’ Lady Cassington snapped. ‘Why on earth would I know a thing like that?’

  Lydia sat down on the window seat. Her mother swivelled in her chair to keep her in sight.

  ‘Mrs Alforde went to see Mrs Narton that afternoon,’ Lydia said. ‘They had a very long chat. The funny thing was, after she’d come back from seeing Mrs Narton, Mrs Alforde was completely different. She acted very strangely. In fact she was almost unfriendly towards me.’

  ‘I shouldn’t pay too much attention to that sort of thing, dear. I expect Hermione was upset by seeing what a state Mrs Narton was in. Or even by going back to Rawling. It was quite a comedown for the Alfordes, you know, having to give up the Hall. Gerry’s uncle lived very comfortably. Hermione must have thought that one day—’

  ‘It wasn’t that,’ Lydia said. ‘I know that because on Saturday afternoon Mrs Alforde turned up at Bleeding Heart Square. She and the Captain put their heads together and decided that I had to go and live with the Alfordes.’

  ‘I call that a very generous offer, dear,’ Lady Cassington said. ‘She has a very kind heart, I’ve always said that.’

  ‘But they wouldn’t tell me why.’

  ‘It speaks for itself, surely.’

  Lydia laughed. ‘That depends what you think it says. It seemed to me that something must have happened. And the more I thought about it, the more I realized that it must have been something on Thursday afternoon at Rawling, when Mrs Alforde went to see Mrs Narton. So I went and asked her. Asked Mrs Narton, I mean.’

  Her mother sighed but said nothing.

  ‘She was in quite a state,’ Lydia went on. ‘Did I mention that they think Mr Narton shot himself? That must hav
e made it even worse for her, mustn’t it?’

  ‘Did he leave a note?’

  ‘Yes, but Mrs Narton burned it. No one else saw it.’

  ‘How very wrong of her,’ Lady Cassington said.

  ‘When she was a girl, Serridge seduced her. She was very young – she had just gone into service at Rawling Hall.’ Lydia paused, watching her mother. ‘Serridge told Mr Narton about it just before he killed himself. He didn’t know, you see. Serridge told Narton that he had seduced his wife as well as his daughter. That’s what the note said.’

  ‘It seems very strange Mrs Narton should tell you. She’s never even met you.’

  ‘She knew who I was, even so. She said she’d known who I was as soon as she saw me at the funeral. She said it was something about the eyes and the shape of the mouth. And then she asked Mrs Alforde, just to make sure.’

  ‘Good Lord,’ her mother said. ‘I’ve always said you and I are quite alike from some angles. Something to do with the cheekbones, perhaps. But it’s funny to think of a servant remembering me after all those years.’

  ‘Almost exactly thirty years. It was the Christmas of 1904. Serridge had been hired as a beater for the shooting. You can guess who recommended him for the job. And he was enjoying himself with Mrs Narton, not that she was married then, of course. But then he got more interested in one of the guests at the Hall, a schoolgirl. Mrs Narton said she was a scrap of a thing but very pretty and very keen on Serridge. That was it as far as Mrs Narton was concerned. He just dropped her. Naturally she was jealous, and used to watch him like a hawk when she could. And the girl. So she wasn’t surprised when she heard the girl was pregnant. Serve her right, she said. But of course the family covered it up. They married the girl off to Mrs Alforde’s nephew, the Captain. So that’s why something about my face reminded Margaret Narton of Joseph Serridge when he was a young man.’

  There was silence in the big, warm bedroom with its smells of perfume, coffee and Virginia tobacco. Lydia heard Margaret Narton’s voice: That’s how they do it, folk like that – they take their pleasures and they make other people pay for them. And you keep on paying, don’t you? That’s what I felt when Serridge came sniffing around our Amy. He broke my heart, and then he broke hers, and that broke mine all over again but far worse than the first time. Then Amy died, and the baby too.

  Lady Cassington stood up and went over to the bedside table. She took another cigarette, lit it and sat on the edge of the bed. As she blew out smoke, she asked, ‘Have you finished, darling?’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘Do be sensible. It wouldn’t have made it better if I had. Not for me. And certainly not for you. It was just one of those silly things that happen when one’s young. And marrying Willy Ingleby-Lewis was the best way to deal with it. If you ask me, people talk too much.’

  ‘So Serridge really is my father? You admit it?’

  Her mother shrugged bony shoulders. ‘That Narton woman’s right. There is a likeness if you look for it.’ She ground out the cigarette in the ashtray. ‘He was very good-looking then, you know, and very charming when he wanted to be.’

  ‘What would you do if I told Fin?’

  ‘Darling, now don’t be so absurd. It would be too Lady Chatterley for words. Have you read the book? It’s quite dreadful, of course, and really rather dull, but it would so upset Fin to have something like that in his own family. Anyway, he’s never done you any harm. Quite the reverse. He’s very fond of you.’

  Lydia stared out of the window, wondering whether she would ever again sit in this house she had known for most of her life and look down on Upper Mount Street. One shouldn’t be frightened of change, she told herself, because it was going to happen anyway, whatever one felt about it.

  Lady Cassington was pursuing a line of thought of her own. ‘Did you say the Narton woman is only forty-five? She must have been even younger than I was when – when –’

  ‘Serridge likes them young,’ Lydia said coldly. She stopped, remembering Rebecca Proctor’s words: He likes the younger ones, madam. It was a moment of illumination, as though someone had come into a dark room and flicked the switch on the wall by the door, allowing Lydia to glimpse a possibility out of the corner of her eye.

  Her mother looked curiously at her. ‘What is it, darling?’ ‘Nothing,’ Lydia lied.

  ‘Nothing at all.’

  On her way out of the house, Lydia went into the library to say goodbye to Fin. He was sitting at his desk, an enormous Second Empire piece which he claimed had once been owned by a French duke. He liked to sit there in the mornings, basking in its garish splendour, writing letters, reading the newspaper and pretending to be a man of affairs.

  ‘I’ve come to say goodbye,’ Lydia said.

  ‘Are you going already? I hoped you’d be staying to lunch.’

  ‘Not today, I’m afraid. Will you give my love to Pammy?’

  ‘Of course.’ He screwed up his eyes and looked at her. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Yes and no.’

  ‘Anything I can do?’

  She shook her head. ‘I want to tell you myself: I’m divorcing Marcus.’

  ‘Your mother won’t like that. I suppose there’s no chance—’

  ‘No, darling,’ Lydia said. ‘Not the slightest. It’s all right, though – you needn’t worry.’ She bent down and kissed him. ‘I’ll be in touch.’

  At the door, she turned back. ‘By the way, I went to a Fascist meeting on Saturday.’

  ‘Really?’ His face brightened at the change of subject towards the comfort of the impersonal. ‘Was it interesting?’

  ‘Absolutely fascinating. What I hadn’t realized is what unpleasant people the Fascists are. They’re bullies, Fin. Perhaps that’s why they appeal to Marcus and Rex.’

  He frowned. The doorbell rang. She smiled at him again and went into the hall, where Fripp was already at the door, holding it open for Marcus. He was wearing a patch over one eye and there was a dressing underneath the other. One side of his face was badly bruised. When he saw Lydia, the skin around the bruises lost its colour, giving his face a mottled appearance.

  ‘Hello,’ Lydia said. ‘I’m just going. Fripp, will you bring me my things?’

  ‘Lydia,’ Marcus blurted out, careless of the fact that he was within earshot of Fripp. ‘I had a letter from some damn-fool solicitor this morning. He claims he’s—’

  ‘You’re to leave Mr Wentwood alone, Marcus. Do you understand?’

  ‘You can’t expect me to—’

  ‘I don’t want to talk to you, Marcus. Go and see my mother. She’ll tell you what to do. And she’ll also tell you what I shall do if you don’t cooperate.’

  Fripp, his face impassive, held up her coat. She pushed her arms into the sleeves.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Marcus demanded.

  ‘I’m going to enjoy myself,’ Lydia said.

  It did not take Rory long to assemble his belongings. He took them downstairs and stacked them in the hall, then knocked on Mrs Renton’s door and paid what he owed for the sewing she had done.

  ‘I’m sorry you’re going, Mr Wentwood,’ she said. ‘But if you’re not happy somewhere, I always say it’s wise to move on, and sooner rather than later. Mr Fimberry’s leaving too. Father Bertram has found him somewhere else to live.’ She looked up at him with a sudden, searching glance. ‘I wonder how long Mrs Langstone will stay.’

  He nodded without committing himself to an opinion. ‘I’ll leave my things out here and go and have a bite of lunch. Would you mind keeping an eye on them? I’m being collected at about half past two.’

  A door slammed above their heads and heavy footsteps crossed the first-floor landing. ‘Willy,’ they heard Serridge say, ‘I thought you’d be in the Crozier by this time. What’s up with you? You’ve got a face like a funeral.’

  Rory nodded to Mrs Renton and let himself quietly out of the house. He turned left into Charleston Street. In Hatton Garden, as he was waiting on th
e pavement for a break in the traffic, he glanced to his left and saw Lydia coming out of one of the shops. He walked towards her and raised his hat.

  ‘Hello – I didn’t expect to see you here.’ He grinned. ‘Idiotic thing to say, I know. You could have been anywhere.’

  She smiled back. ‘I’ve been to see Mr Goldman.’

  ‘Is he all right?’

  ‘Gloomier than ever but quite happy. I’ve just sold him a ring that used to belong to my great-aunt.’

  ‘I hope he gave you a good price. In the circumstances.’

  ‘He gave me what seemed to him a fair price, which is probably not the same thing. Anyway, I feel rich and I want to celebrate. Let me take you to lunch.’

  ‘I can’t let you—’

  ‘Yes, you can. Don’t be gentlemanly about it. You gave me supper last night after all. How’s the ankle? Can you walk as far as Fetter Passage?’

  She pushed her arm through his and they crossed the road together. The Blue Dahlia was already busy. The manageress nodded when she saw them and pointed to a vacant table in the corner.

  ‘It’s liver on the menu again,’ Rory said.

  ‘I’m having the hotpot.’

  They sat down, chose what they would have for pudding and ordered. As they waited for their lunch, the excitement drained away from Lydia, leaving her listless and silent. When he poured water into her glass, a few drops fell on the table. She made liquid circles from them on the marble top, moving her finger round and round.

  ‘What is it?’ Rory said gently.

  She looked up. ‘I want to tell you something,’ she said. ‘Only I’m not sure I’m brave enough to do it.’

  ‘Try me.’

  ‘And it’s not fair to you.’

  ‘Let me judge that.’

  She leant closer to him and lowered her voice. ‘Do you think Serridge killed Miss Penhow?’

  He nodded. ‘It’s hard to see what else can have happened.’

  ‘And what about the others? Did they help?’

  Rory ticked them off on his fingers. ‘Howlett will do whatever Serridge tells him, as long as he’s paid. He provided the dog, and took the beastly thing back too. I’m sure there have been other things as well. He’s a useful ally to have in Rosington Place and Bleeding Heart Square.’ He moved on to the next finger. ‘And then there’s Shires: do you think he was in on it too?’