Bleeding Heart Square

‘Someone’s been sending Mr Serridge parcels,’ she said.

‘Oh yes?’

‘There was one on the day I arrived. It had been hanging around for a few days and it filled the house with a horrible smell.’ She stopped beside the Crozier, reluctant to turn into Bleeding Heart Square. ‘In the end we had to open it. There was a piece of rotting meat inside. Nothing else. No letter or anything. Mrs Renton said it was a heart, a lamb’s, perhaps, or a ewe’s. It — it had dried blood on it. I’ve never smelled anything quite as foul.’

‘But what was the point?’

‘I don’t know. Some sort of message?’

‘Saying what?’ Rory asked.

Lydia looked into his long, ugly face and wondered whether he knew more about this than he was letting on. ‘Perhaps it was a way of reminding everyone of the name. Reminding us all that we live in Bleeding Heart Square. And then there was another one on the doorstep a few days ago. Mrs Renton cooked it. It smelled rather nice, actually.’ She tried to smile at him to show that she was ironically amused by the whole business, that it didn’t make her skin crawl, especially when she was alone at night. ‘There was another parcel for Mr Serridge this morning, as a matter of fact. That’s why I didn’t have the liver and onions.’

It was a raw, cold afternoon and Lydia spent most of it huddled in front of the fire with A Room of One’s Own, waiting for her father to come back. A little after five o’clock, she heard his slow, dragging footsteps on the stairs. He came into the sitting room and grunted when he saw her. He wasn’t drunk, she thought, but he looked pale and ill. Still in his overcoat, he sat down at the table and patted his pockets for cigarettes.

‘What are you giving us for supper?’ he asked.

‘I hadn’t thought. I ate quite well at lunchtime. There’s bread and margarine if you’re hungry.’

‘Damn it,’ he muttered. ‘A chap can’t live on bread and margarine.’

‘I expect they’ll do you a sandwich at the Crozier.’

He looked up, alerted by her tone. ‘What’s biting you?’

‘I heard something today. That you sold a farm a few years ago to Mr Serridge and the lady who used to own this house.’

‘What do you know about her?’ he barked. ‘Sorry — didn’t mean to shout — you rather took me by surprise, that’s all. Who told you that?’

She ignored the question. ‘Is it true?’

He stared at her, frowning, and said, ‘Anyway, I sold it to Serridge.’

‘Not Miss Penhow?’

He found his cigarettes and lit one. ‘I told you — I sold Morthams Farm to Serridge just before I went to America. My aunt left it me in her will. Nice old girl, Aunt Connie. She was my godmother too. But I didn’t make a great deal of money out of the sale, because the farm was mortgaged up to the hilt and the damned tenant had let it go to pot. Still, it was a nice thought.’

‘But you knew Miss Penhow?’

‘I met her. Must have been years ago. Serridge introduced us. Shy little thing.’ Ingleby-Lewis opened his bloodshot eyes very wide, the picture of slightly debauched innocence. ‘Someone said she moved out and married some fellow she used to know.’ He consulted his watch. ‘Good God, I hadn’t realized it was so late. There’s a chap I’ve got to see.’

He struggled out of the chair. Lydia followed him onto the landing.

‘Did you ever go to Morthams?’

‘As a matter of fact, yes.’ He was halfway down the stairs now. He glanced back over his shoulder. ‘Not much of a place.’

‘What was it like?’

‘There was a house. And a bit of land.’

The front door slammed behind him. Lydia was about to go back to the flat when she heard footsteps in the part of the hall below that was out of sight. Mrs Renton appeared at the foot of the stairs.

‘Hello,’ Lydia said.

‘You were asking about Morthams Farm?’

‘Yes.’ Lydia stared at the wrinkled face upturned to hers. ‘Why?’

Mrs Renton frowned as though trying to work something out. Then she said, ‘It’s Mr Serridge’s other house.’

‘Yes, I know.’

Mrs Renton stared at Lydia with cloudy brown eyes. She seemed on the verge of saying something but then a car drew up outside and she rubbed her forearms, first one and then the other. The door opened and Serridge came in, his bulk blocking the light from the doorway and making the hall seem crowded. He was carrying a large cardboard suitcase and had a tweed overcoat over his arm.

‘Evening,’ he said, advancing towards them. ‘That parcel for me?’

‘Yes, sir,’ Mrs Renton said, and her body twitched in a vestigial curtsy.

This time they met in a tea shop opposite the forecourt of the British Museum. Its window was crowded with aspidistras, a barrier of green spikes separating the interior from the vulgarity of the outside world.

The proprietress swooped on Narton as soon as he pushed open the door, setting a bell jingling above his head. With a wave of a be-ringed hand, she tried to herd him towards a table in the gloom at the back of the tea shop. He was having none of that — you couldn’t be a police officer for as long as he had and allow people to push you around willy-nilly — and took up a position at the table by the aspidistras, which gave him a good view of the street outside.

The woman clucked her disapproval but recognized superior force when she encountered it. He suffered a further dose of her disapproval when he insisted he only wanted a cup of tea. Then Rory Wentwood came in, and the proprietress mellowed because he was a nicer class of customer and besides he wanted poached eggs on toast.

‘You’ve been in the wars,’ Narton said.

Wentwood brushed a crumb from the tablecloth. ‘A couple of men attacked me yesterday evening.’

‘Where?’

‘Bleeding Heart Square. It was about nine o’clock — I was coming back to the flat.’

‘After your wallet?’

Wentwood fell silent as the proprietress brought his tea. She fussed over him, making sure his knife and fork were straight, showing him unnecessarily where to find the sugar, which in any case he didn’t want. After she had left, he said, ‘I don’t think they were after money. They wanted to hurt me. To frighten me.’

‘Serridge,’ Narton said. ‘Ten to one he heard about you going to Rawling.’

‘He watched me crawling upstairs afterwards. Didn’t say anything. Didn’t help. Just watched.’

‘There you are then.’

Wentwood hooked a finger into his waistcoat pocket, took out something that glittered and tossed it on the tablecloth beside the cruet. ‘It’s possible one of them left that behind.’

Narton picked it up and held it to the light.

‘Wearing cufflinks, you see,’ Wentwood went on in a voice not perfectly steady. ‘A nice class of footpad, eh?’

‘You recognize the design?’

‘Mrs Langstone did.’

Narton grunted. ‘So where do you stand when it comes to politics? Bit of a Bolshevik?’

‘I haven’t got any politics. All I want’s a quiet life.’

‘That’s what we all need, Mr Wentwood. Maybe not what we all want.’ Narton tapped the cufflink with his fingernail. ‘What about the folk you mix with?’

‘No, they’re-’ Wentwood broke off. ‘Well, actually, Miss Kensley’s interested in that sort of thing. She has a — a friend who’s some sort of communist, I believe.’

‘So someone who’d seen you together might just think you thought the same way?’

‘It’s possible. But it doesn’t seem much of a motive for a gang of Fascist thugs to follow me home and beat me up.’