‘Ingleby-Lewis.’
Narton nodded. ‘The place was heavily mortgaged, they say. He had a devil of a job trying to sell it. Then Serridge came along and suddenly the thing was done.’ Narton tapped the side of his nose. ‘I can guess whose money went to buy it. Ten to one Miss Penhow paid over the odds and Serridge and Ingleby-Lewis split the proceeds.’ He held up his hand like a traffic policeman. ‘Maybe. Who knows?’
‘And now Ingleby-Lewis is living in Serridge’s London house?’
‘Which used to belong to Miss Penhow. Something fishy, eh? Serridge has got a tame lawyer, a man called Shires, and he handled the purchase of the farm and probably a lot of other business for Miss Penhow and Serridge. You can bet most of it was on a cash basis.’ Narton rubbed his eyes as though trying to erase his tiredness. ‘But proving it? That’s another thing. And that’s the trouble with this case. Nothing to get your teeth into. You can’t point at anything and say, there’s the body, there’s the robbery, there’s the crime.’
‘Can’t you question Ingleby-Lewis?’
‘Of course I bloody can’t,’ Narton said.
‘Why not?’
‘It would give the game away. Besides, he may be on his uppers but he’s not the sort of man whose arm you can easily twist. He’s got friends.’
‘Serridge?’ Rory thought that behind Serridge was Shires and the might and trickery of the law.
‘Not just him. Do you know who Ingleby-Lewis’s ex-wife is? That young lady’s mother? She’s Lady Cassington now. She’s got a house in Mayfair and an estate somewhere in the West Country. Don’t let anyone tell you we are all equal before the law, young man. Because we are not. And the gentry are the worst of all. Say the wrong thing to one of them, and you find the whole world comes down on you like a ton of bricks. They’re all bloody related. They’re all looking out for each other.’ He swallowed the rest of his beer and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘What this country needed was the guillotine. That’s where we went wrong. Those Frenchies knew what was what.’
Rory was conscious of a twinge of disappointment. Lydia Langstone wasn’t just married – she was one of those upper-class women whose lives his sisters read about in magazines. She would have been presented at Court and had her wedding pictures in the Tatler. But what the devil was she doing in Bleeding Heart Square? Not that it mattered tuppence to him, of course. He was merely curious.
Narton coughed, hackingly, continuously. He took a cigarette from a packet and tapped it on the table. ‘If Ingleby-Lewis would talk, he could tell us a thing or two, I’m sure of that. But he won’t talk to me, of course. He knows who I am.’
‘You’ve met him?’
‘In the course of the investigation. He knows I’m a police officer and that I was concerned in the Penhow case. But who knows? Maybe he said something to his daughter. Maybe, if you and her get talking, you could slip in a question here or there, see if she knows anything about Morthams Farm or Miss Penhow.’
‘I don’t know. It seems a bit unsporting.’
Narton lit the cigarette and tossed the dead match into the ashtray. ‘Murder isn’t a sport, Mr Wentwood. It’s a matter of life or death. You do understand that, don’t you?’
Rory said nothing.
‘Anyway, can’t stay here chatting.’ Narton pushed back his chair and stood up. ‘Thank you for what you’re doing, Mr Wentwood. It’s not gone unnoticed by the powers that be.’
‘There’s the small matter of my expenses,’ Rory said, his uneasiness finding another outlet. ‘The train fare today, mainly. I don’t know whether you’d run to lunch as well.’
‘Keep a record, Mr Wentwood, and give me a list with receipts. It will be easier if I put in a single claim for you at the end of all this. But your money is as safe as houses, you can be sure of that. One advantage of dealing with the police.’
‘I don’t want to carry on with this.’
Narton wrapped his muffler carefully round his neck. ‘Let’s have a chat in a day or two. I need to see one or two people, think about one or two things. Believe me, Mr Wentwood, if I can find an alternative I will.’ He lowered his voice. ‘Now you can oblige me by keeping your eyes open. And don’t do anything foolish. Serridge is dangerous. I don’t want another death on my conscience.’
‘What do you mean? Who’s died already?’
Narton looked blankly at him. Then his lips turned down at the corners. ‘Why, Miss Penhow, of course. You surely don’t believe the poor lady can still be alive?’
He turned up the collar of his overcoat and pulled his hat down low so all that was visible of his face were his eyes and the bridge of his nose. He stubbed out the half-smoked cigarette and slipped out of the pub.
Rory stared at the broken cigarette in the ashtray, along with the other butts. He had watched how Narton smoked. The man either smoked his cigarettes until the ends grew so hot he could no longer hold them or kept what was left unsmoked for later.
So something had rattled him. There had been a false note in what he had been saying. Where, exactly? What if Narton hadn’t meant Miss Penhow’s death but someone else’s? Who else had died?
Herbert Narton knew he had taken a terrible risk in encouraging young Wentwood to go to Rawling. True, the scheme had worked after a fashion, but there was no saying that it would not eventually backfire. Nor had the results been what he had hoped for. Still, Wentwood was living at Bleeding Heart Square and there was always the chance of progress in that direction.
At Liverpool Street he caught the train. He tried to doze during the journey. He knew he should eat but he found the consumption of food more and more of an effort. He seemed to be living on air. Perhaps because of that he felt literally less heavy and less substantial than usual, as though he were fading away. All that was left of substance was the hard, irreducible core of his anger. Anger? Not quite the right word. Sorrow was almost as good. Fear was somewhere in the mixture, and even a form of love. But none of the words fitted, and none of them ever would.
Nobody noticed him leaving the train at Mavering. It was a small station and the evening rush was long since over. Only one man was on duty and he was dealing with Hinks from the sorting office at the mail van. He walked down to the church and took the field path to Rawling. It was a clear night, and the moon was up, though slipping in and out of clouds. He had a torch in his pocket but did not use it. He had walked this way so often he could have followed the path blindfolded. When he came to the fork, he took the left-hand path. This was narrower than the one on the right that led to Rawling Hall before it reached the village. He walked more slowly, more cautiously. The going was muddier underfoot. The world seemed darker too, as though this tiny part of Essex had less light in it than the rest.
He came at last to where there was a gap in the hedgerow and he could look up the slope of the meadow to the house itself, with the huddle of farm buildings on the right. There was the soft glow of lamplight in two of the first-floor windows. Morthams Farm. He imagined he was an owl flying over Morthams towards Rawling, and his eyes scoured the fields between the farm and the village until they found the tiled roof of the little barn.
Scratch the itch.
Narton wondered why he had bothered to come. He scraped his nails into the soft skin of the underside of his wrist until he broke through to the flesh beneath – until, yet again, he made himself bleed. He scratched harder still and moaned with the pain. As he scratched, he allowed his eyes to sweep from side to side across the meadow. The grass was the darkest of greys.
Better now. He licked the blood, warm and salty. The moisture cooled on his skin.
It was all still there, he thought, beneath the field dappled with moonlight and shadows. Everything that had happened, layer upon layer, because nothing ever really went away. Bleeding Heart Square was full of layers too, layers of blood, and so was the barn. Especially the barn.
The meadow was full of shifting shapes. One of the shapes resolved itself into a girl
wobbling on a bicycle as she followed the slope of the field towards the farmhouse. He heard her laughter, high and excited, and knew that her attention was not on him or the field or even the bicycle but on another shadow beside her.
‘I’m a bloody fool to stand here,’ Narton said aloud. All those layers of blood, you can never wash them away.
His ears were unnaturally sharp. He heard the chink of harness from the farm buildings. A dog began to bark, though whether in the house or the yard he couldn’t tell. The barn would be empty, though.
Empty of the living. Crowded with the dead.
At that moment an idea drifted into his mind, settled in the silt at the bottom, sprouted, put out roots and flowered. All that in an instant. Sometimes, he thought, all a man has is his folly. No wonder he clings to it.
Lydia cooked Welsh rarebit for supper, following the detailed instructions Mrs Renton had provided. She had bought a bottle of pale ale to add to the cheese topping as it melted in the saucepan but Captain Ingleby-Lewis chanced to find it before she could use it. She cleared two thirds of the great scarred dining table and served the meal on matching plates, one slightly chipped.
It was the first time that she and her father had eaten in a relatively formal way and in the soft light this end of the room looked almost like a normal room in a normal house. Her father complimented her on the rarebit. Though he had been drinking beer steadily since lunchtime, he appeared to have reached an equilibrium that left him, at least for the time being, amiable and reasonably alert.
‘Well, this is cosy, eh?’ he said, lining up fork and knife exactly at half past six on his plate. ‘You’re full of unexpected talents, my dear.’
‘Thank you.’
‘How did you get on at that lawyer fellow’s?’
‘It’s rather boring work.’
‘I can’t imagine how those chaps manage it. Sitting in an office all day and shuffling bits of paper around. It’d drive me mad.’ He stroked his moustache approvingly. ‘Fact is, God didn’t create me to be a desk wallah.’
‘Father, there’s something I wanted to ask you.’ Father still sounded strange in her ears. ‘About those hearts.’
‘Eh? What?’
‘The ones Mr Serridge was sent in the post. There have been two since I’ve been here. Have there been others?’
‘Perhaps,’ Captain Ingleby-Lewis admitted cautiously. ‘Can’t really say.’
‘When did they start?’
‘I don’t know.’ He looked up at the ceiling. ‘A month or two ago?’
‘But why should anyone do that sort of thing?’
Ingleby-Lewis gave way to a fit of coughing. When it had finished, he lit a cigarette. ‘Some crackpot, my dear. The world’s full of them. Take my advice: best thing to do is put it out of your mind.’
‘But it’s not that easy. Is there – is there something about Mr Serridge I should know?’
‘Perfectly decent fellow,’ said Ingleby-Lewis. ‘Known him for years. Not a gentleman, of course, but can’t blame him for that. If you ask me, people talk a lot of rot about that sort of thing. Damn it, I shall have to pop out for some cigarettes.’
At that moment there came a tap on the door.
‘Come in,’ cried Ingleby-Lewis, and struggled to his feet.
The door opened, revealing Malcolm Fimberry on the threshold with a bottle of wine cradled in his arms.
‘I say,’ he squeaked. ‘Sorry to disturb you. I – I thought I might open some wine and I wondered if I could borrow a corkscrew.’
‘Wine, eh?’ Ingleby-Lewis sprang towards him. ‘Nothing simpler, old man. Come and sit down. Lydia, my dear, would you find Mr Fimberry a corkscrew in the kitchen?’
‘If you would like to join me in a glass,’ Fimberry suggested, ‘I’d be more than pleased.’
‘How very kind.’ Ingleby Lewis patted him on the shoulder and removed the bottle from his grasp. ‘Three glasses as well then, please, Lydia. Ah, a Beaujolais, I see. How very wise. You’re quite right of course – solitary drinking is not something one should encourage. Besides, life holds few finer pleasures than a glass of wine with friends.’
When Lydia returned with three unmatched glasses and a corkscrew, she found her father and Mr Fimberry sitting on either side of the fireplace and smoking Mr Fimberry’s cigarettes. Her father took the corkscrew and removed the cork with a skill born of long experience. He poured a stream of wine into the nearest glass.
‘None for me, thank you,’ Lydia said.
‘Nonsense,’ Ingleby-Lewis said. ‘Just a sip. Do you good. Warm you up.’ He turned to Fimberry. ‘My daughter feels the cold, you know. Especially at night.’ He measured a thimbleful into the smallest of the glasses and handed it ceremoniously to Lydia. He gave another glass to Fimberry and the largest one to himself. He raised his own glass to the light. ‘A fine colour. Your good health.’ He swallowed a third of the contents.
‘I hear you have a position at Shires and Trimble in Rosington Place, Mrs Langstone,’ Fimberry said, leaning towards her. ‘That must be interesting. Working for a solicitor, I mean.’
‘It’s early days yet,’ Lydia said grimly.
‘You’re just opposite the chapel, of course. In fact, as far as I can work out from an eighteenth-century plan of the palace, the house where Shires and Trimble are must be built over part of the Almoner’s lodging. Remarkable to think of the people who must have walked about here in their time. Good Queen Bess, Sir Thomas More, Richard the Third, John of Gaunt, all those splendid prelates of the Church. Why, we walk on history in this part of London. And that’s why we need Mr Howlett to guard our gates and keep order. In legal terms, Rosington Place, Bleeding Heart Square and their environs form the Rosington Liberty, and hence in many respects they still fall under the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Rosington.’
‘Very true,’ Ingleby-Lewis said. ‘A spot more? No?’ He refilled his own glass. ‘You must know the place like the back of your hand.’
Mr Fimberry simpered, his eyes huge behind his pincenez. ‘Oh, there are some fascinating stories associated with it, no doubt about that. After the Reformation, the Catholic dead were sometimes secretly interred beneath the chapel, in the days when the palace was rented to the Spanish ambassador. It is said that the bodies were brought here to Bleeding Heart Square, and then transferred to the chapel in Rosington Palace. They were secretly buried at midnight, to the accompaniment of solemn masses, beneath the under-croft floor.’
‘Extraordinary yarn,’ Ingleby-Lewis said, his eyes straying again towards the bottle.
‘Nobody really knows if the story is true,’ Fimberry went on. ‘There are those who claim that the funeral processions still walk on certain nights of the year, with a line of recusants carrying the corpses from Bleeding Heart Square to Rosington Chapel. Others say they have heard singing from the chapel when it is empty. And some people believe that the bodies lie beneath the square itself. There are many ghosts, you know.’ He glanced sideways at Lydia and gave her a tight-lipped smile. ‘Though I can find no historical trace of the one that people claim to have seen most often.’
‘Ghosts, eh?’ Ingleby-Lewis said. ‘Claptrap, if you ask me. If I ever come across a ghost I’m going to put my arm right through him.’
‘A little more wine, Mrs Langstone?’ Fimberry seized the bottle and gestured towards Lydia’s untouched glass.
‘No, thank you.’
‘Thank you, obliged to you,’ Ingleby-Lewis said, holding out his empty glass.
‘Which ghost is that?’ Lydia said quietly.
‘The ghost of the lady who lost her heart.’ Fimberry swallowed the rest of his wine and gave himself another glass. His face was now pinker than ever and covered with a sheen of perspiration. He took off his pince-nez and rubbed the lenses on his handkerchief. ‘A tragic story. The legend goes that there was a dance, a great ball at the Spanish ambassador’s. Royalty came. There was dancing and drinking and gambling far into the night.’
‘Goo
d as a play, eh?’ Ingleby-Lewis said contentedly, stretching out his legs in shiny, neatly creased trousers.
‘There was one particularly beautiful lady there, Mrs Langstone,’ Fimberry went on. ‘The story goes that she had married an old and wealthy husband, that she had been forced into the match by her parents. She did not love the man. Then, at the ball, which was a masked affair, I should have said, she met a charming stranger – tall and dark and everything a young woman could hope for in a lover. The husband was out of the way, playing cards in another room. The lady and the handsome stranger danced and drank and talked all night. As dawn was approaching, they were dancing so hard that they danced down the staircase, out of the doors and away from the rest of the party. There was so much excitement and so many people that no one realized the lady had gone until much later. Until it was too late.’
He paused and sipped his wine. Lydia waited, drawn despite herself into the story.
‘They found her the following morning in Bleeding Heart Square.’ Fimberry lowered his voice. ‘Lying dead beside the pump, still in all her finery. But her dress was – was disordered, and the body had been cut open. Her bleeding heart lay upon the cobbles.’
‘I say,’ Ingleby-Lewis said. ‘Rather strong meat, what?’
‘Oh – yes. I’m frightfully sorry, Mrs Langstone. I hope I—’
‘What about the man who was with her?’ Lydia asked.
‘He was never seen again.’
‘But who was he?’
Fimberry smiled. ‘They say he was the devil.’
10
Saturday, 22 February 1930
My hand is shaking so much I can hardly hold a pen. Major Serridge – he says I must call him Joseph now – called at two o’clock in a taxi. First he took me to see dear little Jacko, who was so pleased to see his mistress. He put his muddy paws all over my skirt, not that I minded, and tried to jump up into my arms. I truly believe he wanted me to carry him away.
Bleeding Heart Square Page 13