Bleeding Heart Square

by Andrew Taylor

  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 in commemorating the glorious dead. The houses where Marcus lived, the farms and investments that paid for the servants who looked after them, the club subscriptions, the bills from the tailor, the wine merchant and the butcher – all these should have been Wilfred’s. A quirk of fate had given Marcus flat feet, and had allowed Wilfred to be killed. Marcus felt obscurely that he owed his brother something. The observance of Armistice Day was the tribute that Marcus paid to the glorious dead, and in particular to Wilfred.

  After breakfast, which Lydia ate alone because her father was still asleep, she went out for a walk. It was a grey morning, but in places sunshine filtered through the mist. She went through the wicket gate into Rosington Place, where she found Mr Fimberry, dressed in black and wearing his poppy, loitering near the noticeboard by the entrance to the chapel. A steady trickle of churchgoers flowed up the cul-de-sac towards them.

  ‘Good morning, Mrs Langstone.’ Fimberry raised his hat. ‘Are you joining us today?’

  ‘No, thank you,’ she said politely.

  Lydia walked down to the lodge. Mr Serridge was standing by the railings, smoking a pipe and idly watching a small crocodile of St Tumwulf’s girls, the school’s Roman Catholic contingent, filing up to the chapel. He nodded to Lydia but did not speak.

  She drifted south and west across London. The closer she came to Whitehall, the more crowded the pavements became, with the current of people flowing more and more strongly towards the white stone Cenotaph. She arrived shortly before eleven.

  She could not even see the Cenotaph, let alone the King and the politicians and the generals. A gun boomed on Horse Guards Parade. The sound bounced to and fro among the buildings like an India rubber ball. Then came the tolling of Big Ben. After that, the silence ruled, heavy and stifling. Lydia listened to what noises there still were – the rustle of leaves, a crying baby, several coughs, one defiant sneeze. She thought it probable that Marcus was somewhere in the crowd. Her stepfather, too.

  The two-minute silence ended with a shocking crash of gunfire and the roll of drums. The crowd stirred and shifted like trees in strong winds. Trumpeters sounded the Last Post. Suddenly everyone was singing ‘Oh God, our help in ages past’.

  Lydia turned and pushed her way through the singing figures and made her way to Trafalgar Square. All those hearts beating as one, she thought – Marcus loved this sort of thing. He liked it when crowds acted together like an enormous animal, united by a single purpose.

  She noticed a couple about thirty yards away walking along the north side of the square in front of the National Gallery. The man was Mr Wentwood and he was accompanying a young woman with a slight, elegant figure. Mr Wentwood glanced back and caught Lydia’s eye. He ducked his head in a sort of bow and half raised his arm, as though trying to acknowledge her, but wanting to do so as discreetly as he could.

  But the girl had noticed. She too looked back. She had a pretty face and fair hair beneath the black hat. Then people flowed between them and the meeting, if it could be called that, was over almost as soon as it had begun. But it gave Lydia a glimpse of Mr Wentwood’s private life, of a hinter-land that extended beyond Bleeding Heart Square and the Blue Dahlia café. The young woman had been very good-looking. A sister, Lydia wondered with an uncomfortable pang, or even a girlfriend?

  ‘Here,’ Rory said. ‘Have my handkerchief.’

  Fenella took it without a word. Turning to face St Martinin-the-Fields, she blew her nose and wiped her eyes. Rory turned away from her and lit a cigarette. Lydia Langstone was no longer in sight.

  ‘Sorry,’ Fenella said behind him. ‘I’m all right now.’

  ‘What was it? Thinking of your mother?’

  She shook her head. ‘All this.’ She waved a gloved hand towards Whitehall, towards the ebbing crowds: men in uniform, men on crutches, men with medals, wives, mothers and daughters. ‘They say we’re mourning the unforgotten dead, but of course they’re forgotten. All we’re mourning is our own beastly misery. We don’t give a damn about the people who died.’

  ‘I say,’ Rory said. ‘Isn’t that a bit bleak?’

  ‘Anyway, it’s pointless,’ Fenella went on. ‘Anyone can see it’s all going to happen again, and this time it will probably be much worse.’

  ‘Another war?’

  ‘Of course. You heard what Mr Dawlish was saying at the meeting the other night. The Nazis are just waiting for the right moment. And it’s not just them, either.’

  Rory ground out a cigarette beneath his heel. ‘You’re exaggerating. People will never stand for another war. They remember too well what happened in the last one. It’s only sixteen years ago.’

  ‘I wish you were right. Who was that woman?’

  For a moment he was tempted to say, which woman? ‘Her name’s Mrs Langstone,’ he said. ‘I think I mentioned her the other day. Her father has a flat in the same house as mine, and she’s staying with him.’

  ‘So she must know Mr Serridge?’

  ‘Yes. But I’m not sure how well. She struck me as a bit of a dark horse, actually.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘She doesn’t really belong in a place like Bleeding Heart Square. I wouldn’t be surprised if she and her father have come down in the world.’

  Fenella laughed, with one of those sudden changes of mood that had always amazed him. ‘You sound like your grandfather sometimes.’

  He grinned at her, relieved at the change of tone. ‘They probably lost their money in the slump or something. The new poor.’

  But Fenella was no longer smiling. ‘I think I’ll go home now.’

  ‘I’ll take you.’

  ‘No. If you don’t mind, I’d rather go by myself.’ She looked up at him. ‘I just feel like my own company. It’s nothing personal, you know.’

  ‘I know,’ Rory said. ‘That’s rather the problem, isn’t it?’

  Lydia Langstone hadn’t realized that being poor brought with it so many unpredictable humiliations. Being poor meant more than not being able to buy things. It changed the way that people looked at you. It changed how you looked at yourself.

  After breakfast on Monday morning she went to the Blue Dahlia, where she ordered a cup of coffee and asked to speak to the manageress. The manageress turned out to be the fat woman behind the counter who took the orders.

  ‘I wondered whether you had any vacancies,’ Lydia said.

  ‘You what?’ demanded the woman.

  ‘A position.’ Lydia lowered her voice, aware that the other customers were probably listening avidly. ‘I’m looking for a job, you see.’

  The woman shook her head. ‘We ain’t got anything going here, love.’ She leant on the counter, bringing her face closer to Lydia’s, and added in an unexpectedly gentle voice, ‘Anyway, our sort of job wouldn’t suit you, and you wouldn’t suit it.’

  Lydia left the café with her ears burning. It wasn’t so much the rejection that embarrassed her. It was the way the woman had talked to her at the end, the way she had called her ‘love’. On her way home, she went into the library in Charleston Street. Upstairs in the reference room, the Situations Vacant columns from the daily newspapers were pinned up on boards. She couldn’t reach them because there was a crowd of unemployed, both men and women, heaving like a football scrum in front of her.

  It was nearly lunchtime by the time she got back to Bleeding Heart Square. There were letters on the hall table – none for her or her father, but one of them was for Mr Wentwood. She heard a sound behind her and turned to see Mr Fimberry advancing down the hall, smiling broadly.

  ‘Mrs Langstone, I thought it must be you! You see – I recognize your footsteps already.’ He laid his hand on her arm. ‘I wondered whether this afternoon might be a good time for me to show you round the chapel in Rosington Place.’

>   ‘No,’ Lydia said, pulling her arm away. ‘I’m afraid it wouldn’t.’

  ‘You’re back home for lunch? I was just about to warm up some soup for myself, and—’

  To Lydia’s relief, she heard footsteps on the stairs. Fimberry glanced past her.

  ‘Good afternoon, Mr Serridge,’ he said.

  ‘Mrs Langstone?’ Serridge said, ignoring Fimberry. ‘Can I have a word?’

  Fimberry slipped into his own room, closing the door.

  Serridge towered over her. ‘He’s not been pestering you, has he?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘That means he has.’ Serridge scowled. ‘I’ll have a word.’

  ‘Please don’t. He’s just trying to be friendly.’

  ‘It’s up to you, Mrs Langstone. How are you getting on?’

  ‘Very well, thank you.’

  ‘I heard you were looking for a job.’

  Lydia nodded, wondering who had told him.

  ‘Any luck so far?’

  ‘Not yet. But it’s early days, I suppose.’

  Serridge scratched his untidy beard. He was such a big man, Lydia thought, and not just in terms of physique. He took up too much space. She found him far more oppressive than she did Mr Fimberry, though she was not sure why. There was the sound of hammering upstairs, perhaps from the attic flat. Mr Wentwood must be making himself at home. At least Mr Wentwood seemed relatively normal.

  ‘If you want a job,’ Serridge said, ‘I might be able to help you.’

  A narrow flight of stairs rose up to the tiny attic landing. Doors to left and right led to the sitting room and to the bedroom respectively. Both rooms had dormer windows, steeply sloping ceilings and gently sloping floors of ill-fitting, creaking boards. The rooms made you feel as though you were living life at an angle and were slightly drunk as well. The furniture was plain and old-fashioned. Most of the pieces were dull with lack of polish but they had a solidity lacking in Mrs Rutter’s furniture in Kentish Town.

  It took Rory nearly an hour to unpack. He set up his typewriter, a Royal Portable his parents had given him as a leaving present before he sailed to India, on the table in the sitting room. It squatted there, looking efficient and important. It was his badge of office, he thought, a visible sign that he was, or soon would be, a working journalist or copywriter.

  Most of his clothes went into a big chest of drawers with tarnished brass handles. One of the two top drawers had jammed, and he returned to it last of all. He was obliged to take out the drawer below it before he was able to ease it out of the chest. The drawer itself was empty but removing it dislodged a folded sheet of paper that had wedged itself at some point in the past between the drawer and the side of the chest. Yellowed with age and spotted with damp, it was covered with sloping handwriting in faded ink.

  … rather lax about making notes, as I had intended. Still, as I was rereading the Parable of the Prodigal Son this evening (Luke 15), I could not help be struck both by the beauty of the language and the spirituality of its message. We must rejoice when a sinner repents, Our Lord tells us, because Our Father which is in Heaven will …

  Someone’s Bible study notes, Rory thought idly, and began to screw up the sheet. As he did so, he noticed something written in pencil on the other side.

  Dear Mr Orburn

  Thank you for your letter of the 7th inst. I have considered what you say your proposals about re the house very carefully and decided to proceed as you suggest, so long as it doesn’t cost more than the cost does not exceed your estimate of £110. Please let me know when you will require the money, and I will so that I may instruct my bank manager to withdraw it from the deposit account.

  Yours faithfully truly,

  P. M. Penhow

  Rory frowned. P. M. Penhow. Fenella’s Aunt Philippa and Narton’s Miss Penhow came together in the signature. For the first time, she was more than a couple of words in someone else’s mouth. This piece of paper was independent proof of a living, breathing woman. It was a draft of a business letter, presumably – to a builder? No, more likely to her agent or her lawyer. Clearly she had not been used to writing this sort of letter. He touched the signature with the tip of his finger. Had she once owned this chest of drawers?

  Footsteps were coming up the stairs from the landing below. Rory dropped the paper into the drawer, closed it and turned towards the open door. Mrs Renton appeared, carrying a tray.

  ‘I brought you some tea,’ she announced.

  ‘That’s awfully kind.’

  ‘Not that I’m going to make a habit of it, Mr Wentwood. And there’s a letter come in the post. Mind you bring the cup down when you’ve finished, and don’t forget the tray.’

  The Lamb in Lamb’s Conduit Street was far enough away from Bleeding Heart Square for Narton to be able to relax. He ordered half a pint of mild-and-bitter and nursed it by the fire. He wondered whether Wentwood would turn up. That was the trouble with having to deal with amateurs. You couldn’t rely on them. Five minutes later, however, the young man came bounding through the door. Christ, thought Narton sourly, the chap’s like an overgrown puppy. But at least he was here.

  ‘I had your letter,’ Wentwood said. ‘Everything all right?’

  Narton nodded. ‘You needn’t shout about it though.’

  To his relief, Wentwood didn’t expect to have a drink bought for him. Indeed, he asked Narton if he wanted the other half of what he had in front of him. When the young man rejoined him at the table, Narton smiled at him with something approaching benevolence.

  ‘Cheerio,’ Wentwood said, raising his glass. ‘We have to toast my new home.’

  Narton drank obediently, then sat back and wiped his mouth. ‘So you’ve moved in all right?’

  ‘There wasn’t a great deal to move. Still, it’s a place of my own. I know I’ll have to find my own meals but I can’t tell you what a relief it is to get away from Mrs Rutter and Kentish Town. Listen – I found something.’ He took a sheet of paper from his pocket and passed it across the table. ‘It was in a chest of drawers in my room.’

  Narton took his time examining it.

  ‘Is it important?’ Wentwood demanded. ‘It proves she was there, doesn’t it? And who’s this chap Orburn?’

  ‘It proves nothing. It was her house, remember – she probably furnished it with her cast-offs. As for Orburn, he was her solicitor. He used to manage Bleeding Heart Square for her before Serridge took over.’ Narton put the letter on the table. ‘Have you seen Serridge?’

  ‘He turned up to give me the keys and read me a lecture about keeping up with the rent.’ Wentwood searched his jacket pockets for cigarettes and matches. ‘He’s a formidable character, isn’t he? Do you know what Miss Kensley told me the other night? That Miss Penhow thought he was God. I’d the feeling that she might not have been speaking metaphorically.’

  Narton grunted. ‘You’ve talked to her about Serridge then?’

  ‘I had to tell her where I was moving to.’

  ‘I asked you to keep all that under your hat.’

  ‘I know. But it wasn’t that easy. Besides, I said nothing to her about looking into what happened to her aunt. I just said that I happened to be passing, and saw there was a flat vacant that would suit me. Is it a problem?’

  Narton took the cigarette that Wentwood offered him and leant across the table towards the match. ‘As it happens, no. I’ve changed my mind on that front, see? I’ve got a request for you, Mr Wentwood. A suggestion, if you like. But we’ll need her cooperation.’

  ‘I’m not sure how she’d feel about that.’

  ‘The thing is,’ Narton said quietly, ‘you could do me a favour, a big favour. There is an important piece of evidence in this case, and I think we need a second opinion on it. Either Miss Penhow was murdered or she wasn’t. The official line is that she can’t have been murdered because she went to the States instead with person or persons unknown. We know that because she wrote a letter from New York, which is why our investigation was
officially closed. The thing is, some of us aren’t convinced that letter was genuine.’

  ‘Surely the police can call on handwriting experts?’

  ‘Oh we have, Mr Wentwood. Our man says there’s a better than fair chance that the letter was really written by Miss Penhow. But I’d like another opinion. Now I bet that young lady of yours has got letters from her aunt, maybe other pieces of writing.’

  ‘Perhaps she has. Why don’t you ask her?’

  ‘Come to that, you’ve got your own sample, that piece of paper you found. The point is, the letter from New York is no longer in our hands. When the investigation was closed, it was returned to the recipient. If we go and ask for it back, it’s as good as saying that we’re still suspicious, that we’re reopening the investigation.’

  ‘What’s wrong with that?’

  ‘Ever heard of softly softly, catchy monkey?’

  Rory said, ‘Who did she write to?’

  ‘The Vicar of Rawling. Man called Gladwyn.’

  ‘Rawling?’

  Narton stubbed out the cigarette half-smoked and put the rest away for later. ‘It’s a village in Essex on the Hertfordshire border, not far from Saffron Walden. It’s where Serridge bought a farm with Miss Penhow’s money, and it’s the place where Miss Penhow was last seen alive, more than four years ago. I can’t afford to upset Mr Gladwyn. For one thing, he’s rather a chum of Serridge’s. For another, he’s the godfather of my chief constable’s daughter. Tricky business all round, see? If we make an official approach, it’s going to get back to Serridge, and that could put the kibosh on everything. But if someone representing Miss Penhow’s relatives comes along, that’s another matter. You see that, don’t you?’

  Wentwood sat back. He had hardly touched his beer. ‘This is rather a lot to ask, isn’t it?’

  Narton screwed up his face and let out a sigh. ‘I’m not doing this for fun, sir, as I’m sure you’ll appreciate. Our job depends on members of the public being willing to cooperate with us.’