Andrew Taylor - Bleeding Heart Square

Narton said nothing.

‘I could write to the Chief Constable. Or I could try something more straightforward.’

Serridge’s right hand shot out and caught Narton by the throat. Narton’s head slammed into the doorpost. Serridge tightened the grip round Narton’s neck. Narton tried to pull Serridge’s arm away. Serridge was too strong. He tried to kick Serridge’s shins. He couldn’t reach them. When Narton realized there was nothing he could do, he did nothing. He stared at Serridge, and Serridge stared back.

‘So,’ Serridge said at last, as though the silence had been filled with a conversation and he were now summing up its conclusion. ‘You’re too much of a fool even to be frightened. I wonder if your wife feels the same.’

Narton tried to speak but Serridge’s hand over his throat wouldn’t let him.

‘Yes,’ Serridge said thoughtfully. ‘Your dear lady wife, Margaret. Skivvying up at the Hall. Works all hours, I’m told. No choice, eh? This time of year, she must be walking there and back in the dark. Not like London here, is it? Night really means something. Easy to trip over something in the dark, you know. Might have a nasty fall one day if she’s not careful. Or she might bump into some tramp or other. There’s a lot of funny customers around, you know — you know that better than I do. Too lazy to get a job. Work-shy. Call themselves ex-servicemen but if you ask me most of them are blackguards who’d cut their grandmothers’ throats for sixpence. Or maybe there might be a fire while you’re up in the Smoke making a bloody ass of yourself. Easy to knock over a candle, ain’t it? An old place like this would burn like a torch.’ The hand tightened, and Narton gargled deep in his throat. ‘Yes, old man. If I were you I’d be worried about your Margaret.’

Serridge’s hand released its grip. Narton stayed where he was, rubbing his neck. Serridge took a step back and smiled.

‘No one knows I’m here,’ he went on. ‘That’s the beauty of a motor car. You’re free as air, aren’t you? I parked up a lane the other side of Mavering and walked over the fields. So it’s just you and me, old man.’

‘You can bugger off. That’s what you can do.’

Serridge didn’t move. ‘How’s Margaret, by the way? Still like to ride on top? Used to be quite a goer in the old days. And the way she squeals, eh? Like a stuck pig, she was. Had to cover her mouth. But maybe she’s a bit quieter now.’

Narton said nothing.

‘Been nice to have a chat,’ Serridge said. ‘But all good things must end.’ He was still smiling.

There was another parcel for Mr Serridge in the afternoon post. But this one was different. It was oblong in shape and about the size of a shoebox. It was wrapped as usual in brown paper and fastened with string. The name and address were printed.

When Lydia came back from work, she found Mrs Renton examining the parcel.

‘It’s bigger.’ Frowning, she picked it up and shook it gently. ‘But lighter.’

‘Do you think it’s from the same person?’ Lydia asked in not much more than a whisper.

‘How do I know?’ She put it down on the hall table. ‘You look like you need a tonic. Are you eating properly?’

‘Yes. It’s this beastly weather. It’s enough to make anyone feel a little blue round the edges.’

Mrs Renton sniffed. ‘Your father’s upstairs. Mr Fimberry’s with him. They were in the Crozier at dinnertime.’

‘I didn’t think that was really Mr Fimberry’s sort of thing.’

Mrs Renton lowered her voice. ‘He can be sly, that one.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Ask me no questions, dear, and I’ll tell you no lies.’ The old woman shuffled down the hallway to the door of her own room. ‘Men, eh? You watch out.’

Lydia went upstairs to her bedroom, where she took off her hat and coat. If only it were Rory Wentwood with her father, not Malcolm Fimberry. In the sitting room she found the two men sitting by the fire. Her father was sprawling like a discarded rug over the sofa, snoring quietly. Glass in hand, Fimberry leapt out of his chair as soon as he saw her, his pince-nez tumbling from his nose. Drops of beer spattered the arm of his chair. A smile like a nervous twitch cut his pink face in two.

Oh dear God, Lydia thought, I do believe the blasted man’s in love with me.

‘Mrs Langstone!’ he exclaimed. ‘I just popped in. I remembered your father saying that you found the nights a little cold.I–I have a spare hot-water bottle, and I wondered whether you might find it useful.’ He gestured towards the table where six empty pale ale bottles stood in a row. Beside them was a hot-water bottle made of stoneware. ‘Old-fashioned, I know. But so much safer than rubber.’

‘I’m sure it is. But I couldn’t possibly-’

‘It’s no trouble, really. As I said, I’ve got two.’

‘In that case, thank you, Mr Fimberry. I had one of those when I was a child. My nurse used to call it a stone pig.’

‘Stone as in stoneware, of course,’ he said eagerly. ‘Pig in the sense of an oblong mass of something, I suppose. It’s a difficult word to get hold of.’

‘Do sit down, Mr Fimberry.’ She wondered how much beer he had managed to consume.

He smiled at her again, and dabbed his face with a handkerchief. ‘Don’t mind me, Mrs Langstone.’

‘Actually, there are one or two things I need to do.’

He sat down rather suddenly in his chair. ‘You carry on. I’ll be perfectly all right. I just need to catch my breath if you don’t mind.’

‘Would you like some tea?’

‘Eh? No, thank you.’

Fimberry was still there, still nursing his beer, when Lydia returned a quarter of an hour later with a cup of tea. He started up again like a jack-in-the-box when he saw her. She told him to sit down. No sooner had she herself sat down at the table, than he leapt up again to offer her a cigarette. Meanwhile Captain Ingleby-Lewis continued to doze, his snoring modulating to a noisy breathing with a squeak in it that reminded Lydia of the creaking stable weathervane at Monkshill.

Without much enthusiasm, she tried to turn her mind towards the subject of what she should cook for supper. Her mind, on the other hand, seemed to have a will of its own: it wanted to think about that hateful scene at Frogmore Place yesterday or, failing that, to wonder whether Rory Wentwood was upstairs and to speculate about what he had been doing during the day. She heard Mr Fimberry laboriously clearing his throat.

‘I–I did enjoy our conversation the other day, Mrs Langstone, about the old legends. You remember? The ambassador’s dance and all those Catholics who are secretly buried here. Of course that story about the devil must be a folk tale of some sort. But it got me thinking about where the name might have come from. Bleeding Heart Square, I mean. I’ve done a little research. There was a story in the last century that the square took its name from the bishop’s slaughterhouse on this site.’

‘It doesn’t sound very romantic.’

‘No. But there are other possibilities. In the old days there were a number of public houses called the Bleeding Heart. So is the name a medieval survival? Perhaps it was originally attached to pilgrim stories, and the heart in question was the bleeding heart of Jesus.’

‘Or I suppose they might have got the spelling wrong,’ Lydia said. ‘They weren’t very good at spelling in the old days, were they? Even Shakespeare couldn’t spell his own name.’

Fimberry blinked but a moment later he followed her train of thought. ‘Yes. I see what you mean. Hart meaning a stag.’ He frowned. ‘A hart is an immature stag, I fancy, to be absolutely precise. Let me see — a hart of grease meant a fat hart and a hart royal of course signified a hart that had been chased by a king. So perhaps a bleeding hart would be a hart that had been run down by the hounds, and torn apart.’ He leant forward, his face pinker than ever, and the muscles of his mouth working as though endowed with independent life. ‘And perhaps the heart of the hart was bleeding, if you see what I mean … It all comes back to the bleeding heart, Mrs Langstone. I saw a bleeding heart once.’ He stared blankly at Lydia. ‘Did you know that?’