origins were lost in the mists of time: it was believed to have had something to do with the shape of his hands. He removed the crusts from his daughter’s toast and cut what was left into soldiers.
But his mind was still running on the Langstones. ‘It’s a shame Jack died in the spring,’ he said, wiping his fingers on his napkin.
‘Isn’t it better for them? It must be awful if your son dies before you.’
‘The point is, it means two lots of death duties within a year. One has to be practical.’
‘Perhaps we should ask Marcus to dinner. Or even down to Monkshill for a weekend. It might help him take his mind off things.’
‘If you like.’
Lord Cassington’s eyes returned to the casualties. The egg cup toppled over and fragments of ruined egg sprayed across the tablecloth.
Lady Cassington smiled. ‘He’s much better-looking than Wilfred,’ she said. ‘And really quite grown-up.’
On Friday evening, Captain Ingleby-Lewis returned from the Crozier humming the opening bars of Offenbach’s Barcarolle over and over again. He let himself into the house and, still humming, zigzagged from side to side of the hall in the general direction of the stairs. At this moment, Mrs Renton came out of her room carrying a pair of sheets. He collided with her, and the sheets fell to the floor.
‘Madam,’ said Captain Ingleby-Lewis, wrapping an affectionate arm around the newel post. ‘I can only apologize. The fault is entirely mine.’
Alerted by the noise, Lydia appeared at the head of the stairs. ‘Is everything all right?’
Mrs Renton stared up at her, and said nothing. The Captain began to hum again and hauled himself steadily up the stairs. Mrs Renton picked up the sheets.
Lydia came down to help her fold them. ‘Mr Fimberry’s?’
‘Yes,’ Mrs Renton said shortly. ‘No, no, Mrs Langstone — you take the corners, all right, and then bring them towards my corners.’
Above their heads, the Captain and his Barcarolle moved across the landing and finally came to harbour in the sitting room.
Lydia said, ‘Does the name Penhow mean anything to you?’
‘Why?’
‘The sheets reminded me. I found a laundry mark on my sheet that said Penhow.’
The folding of the sheet had brought the faces of Mrs Renton and Lydia only a few inches apart. The dark little eyes examined her.
‘Now we fold it this way,’ Mrs Renton said. ‘This house used to belong to Miss Penhow.’
‘What happened to her?’
‘She went away.’ Mrs Renton stepped back and put the folded sheet outside Mr Fimberry’s door. ‘Shall we do the other one?’
6
Philippa Penhow liked music. You had forgotten that. She considered that a taste for good music was doubly refined, both spiritual and genteel. Serridge played on that. He was good at finding out exactly what people wanted and then giving it to them.
Thursday, 13 February 1930
On Saturday afternoon, Mr Howlett came to Bleeding Heart Square with a young assistant, a hungry-looking man who stared at Lydia as though he would have liked to devour her. Mr Serridge had arranged for them to move the furniture from the cellar into Mr Wentwood’s flat.
Mr Howlett was out of uniform. His brown canvas coat deflated him and made him ordinary. Nipper followed the men into the house. He sniffed Lydia’s ankles and would only leave her alone when Mr Howlett kicked him aside. Afterwards, he tried to make friends with Mrs Renton but she pushed him away.
‘I don’t like dogs,’ she said. ‘Stupid animals. Watch he doesn’t bring mud in the house or scratch the paint.’
Howlett and his assistant tramped up and down the stairs between the cellar and the attic flat. Nipper followed them from floor to floor, his claws scratching and rattling on the linoleum and the bare boards.
The furniture was old, dark and heavy. The men swore at the weight of it. They rammed a chest of drawers against the newel post on the first-floor landing and left a dent in the wood nearly half an inch deep. It was quite good furniture too, Lydia noticed, old-fashioned and gloomy but rather better than the pieces in her father’s flat. Perhaps it was a sign that Mr Serridge valued Mr Wentwood more than Captain Ingleby-Lewis.
Mr Serridge supervised the work. Pipe in mouth, he wandered from attic to cellar. Lydia, as she passed to and fro between the kitchen, her bedroom and the sitting room, found him staring at her on several occasions. It was unsettling, but not in the usual way when men stared at her. It seemed to her that there was nothing lustful in his face, at most a look of curiosity and concentration, as if he were trying to work out a mathematical problem in his head.
Once or twice, he nodded to her and said, ‘All serene, Mrs Langstone?’
Later that day, a smell of liver and onions spread through the hall and up the stairs.
‘That smells good,’ Howlett said to Mrs Renton as he came down the stairs for the last time with the dog at his heels. ‘I wish I had that waiting at home for my tea.’
‘If wishes were horses, then beggars would ride,’ Mrs Renton said. ‘Good evening, Mr Howlett.’
He grunted. The front door banged behind him, the hungry-looking assistant and Nipper. Mrs Renton glanced at Lydia, who was coming downstairs with the rubbish.
‘Anyway,’ she said in a confidential whisper, ‘it’s not liver I’m cooking. It’s Mr Serridge’s heart. Shame to waste it.’
Lydia disliked Sundays. She did not believe in God but she had endured for most of her life the necessity of paying her respects to him at least once a week. The Langstones, of course, were churchgoers. When they were in Gloucester-shire, they attended church with the same unthinking regularity that they voted Conservative or complained about their servants. Marcus’s mother said the Langstones were obliged to set an example. Privilege conferred its responsibilities.
But this Sunday was not like other Sundays. It was the eleventh day of the eleventh month — Armistice Day. It was an occasion that Marcus took seriously because the death of his brother Wilfred gave him a personal interest
