Andrew Taylor - Bleeding Heart Square

Close to, the building proved to be not so much a barn as a tumbledown shed of brick and timber. Its roof had lost its tiles at one end and been patched with corrugated iron. The big double doors were held in place by a heavy bar secured to the wall with a padlock. The boy darted through a gap in the hedge beside the building and beckoned. Rory hung back. The boy vanished round the corner of the barn.

Rory scrambled reluctantly through the hedge and followed. Set in the wall opposite the double doors was another, much smaller door, and it was ajar. Beside it stood a woman wearing a headscarf and a long brown raincoat. She was smoking a cigarette with quick, impatient movements. She stared without smiling at Rory. The boy ran up to her and nuzzled against her. She patted his head as though he were a dog.

For a moment Rory didn’t recognize her. She threw away the cigarette.

‘Rebecca, sir,’ she said. ‘Rebecca Proctor. Mr Gladwyn’s parlourmaid at the Vicarage.’

‘Of course. Hello.’

Without her uniform, she looked completely different — tough and competent, entirely at home with herself.

‘Thank you for coming. I had to send our Robbie. He’s my sister’s boy. Not quite, you know.’ One hand was still resting on the boy’s head. With the other she tapped the side of her own head. ‘He’s a good lad, aren’t you, Robbie?’

He gave her a gap-toothed smile, responding as much to the tone as to the words.

Rory said, ‘What’s all this about? Why couldn’t you have said something at the Vicarage if you wanted to see me?’

‘Mr Gladwyn said we weren’t to talk to you. More than my place is worth if he sees me with you. He’s a good master too, not like some, but he’s that strict, you wouldn’t believe. I can’t afford to lose my job because if I do, this one and his ma won’t be able to live. Won’t be able to eat, won’t have a roof over their heads. And if that happens they won’t be together any more because they’ll put the boy in a home and my sister in a loony bin.’ The woman stared at Rory. ‘I’m sorry to go on, sir, but it’s better you know where I stand. I don’t want it coming out that you’ve talked to me.’

‘All right.’

‘We’ll go inside,’ she said. ‘Otherwise somebody passing might see us or hear us, and if that happens it will be all over the village before you can say knife.’

Robbie pushed the door fully open and led his aunt inside. Rory followed. There was more light than he expected, some from the doorway, some from holes in the roof and some from two window openings, one in each gable wall, which had been roughly boarded over. There was an earth floor under their feet, quite dry, and a pile of straw in the corner. The place smelled of must and stale tobacco.

‘This is on Mr Serridge’s farm,’ Rebecca Proctor said. ‘Morthams. Did you know that?’

Rory shook his head.

‘Don’t worry. Serridge won’t come here. No one comes here any more. That’s why Robbie comes, see — it’s safe. They bully him something terrible in the village. Bleeding kids.’ As she spoke, her voice was becoming rougher, more countrified, as if she had abandoned the smooth, respectful tones of her profession along with its uniform. ‘Anyhow, I wanted you to see this place. It’s where it happened, you see.’

‘Where what happened?’ Rory said with a touch of irritation because he disliked the idea that the woman had thought him frightened of Serridge.

‘Where that poor girl died. That’s why nobody comes here. They’re a superstitious lot. They think her ghost walks. Anyhow they’re scared of Serridge. Not that he wants to come here either. You wouldn’t think it to look at him but I reckon he’s scared.’

‘Of what?’

‘Ghosts. Like the rest of them.’

Robbie tugged at his aunt’s arm and pointed up into the shadows.

‘Do give over,’ she said. ‘You can show the gentleman later if there’s time.’

‘What does he want?’ Rory asked.

‘To show you his bones. Nasty dirty things.’

‘Who died here?’

‘Why, Amy Narton, of course. In those last months, when she was living at home, she used to spend most of her time just walking around. She didn’t like being in the house. Her parents were angry because of the baby on the way. She wouldn’t say who’d got her into trouble. That made it worse. And nobody else wanted to give her the time of day.’ She glanced down at Robbie. ‘They can be like that round here. Anyhow, Amy was like a dog with a litter of puppies inside her. She wanted to find somewhere quiet and private and dark when her time came. So she came here. But she didn’t tell no one. So nobody missed her at first, not for hours, because she was always going off, like I told you. And when they found her at last, it was too late, for her and the baby. They were over there.’ Rebecca nodded towards the straw. ‘It was Serridge, of course.’

‘Who found her?’

‘No.’ Rebecca stared at him, silently reproving his stupidity. ‘Who put her in the family way.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Amy’s not the first maid he’s got into trouble and she won’t be the last.’ Rebecca opened her handbag and took out a small, creased photograph, which she gave to Rory. ‘Robbie found it in the straw. Afterwards. After they took her away. Look at it in the light.’

Rory took the photograph to the doorway and studied it in the daylight. It was a small sepia-toned snapshot of a girl astride a bicycle. Behind her, a field sloped up to some trees and the chimneys of a house. A scrappy little dog was sitting on the grass beside her and scratching its ear. The girl was smiling broadly and proudly at the camera. She looked very young, fifteen or sixteen perhaps. There was nothing strange about the photograph except that it was a man’s bicycle and the girl was wearing no clothes.

‘That’s Amy,’ Rebecca said.

‘She’s in the meadow between the footpath and Morthams Farm, isn’t she?’

‘Yes. The way you came this morning. He’s taught two or three girls how to ride a bicycle there.’

‘Without any clothes on?’

‘Serridge could make them think black was white if he set his mind to it. He tells them it’s how all the smart ladies up in London are taught to ride. He tells them it’s healthier. More hygienic.’

Rory gave her the photograph. ‘And Miss Penhow?’

‘She was a nice lady.’

‘Not a young one, though.’

‘Serridge just wanted her money, and that was clear enough to anyone except her, poor thing. And she wanted a husband so badly that she’d do anything for him. I used to work for them, you see. Not for long, just a few weeks. When they moved into Morthams Farm, they took me on as a maid of all work, living in and all found. They hired Amy to help me. The idea was I’d train her up. That was a laugh. The only person who gave her any training was Joe Serridge.’

‘So he was actually carrying on with her while Miss Penhow was living at the farm?’

Rebecca hesitated. ‘Yes and no. I saw him touching her, accidentally on purpose. And I think he kissed her in the larder once because she came out all pink and giggling and then he came out with a smirk a mile wide on his face. But it didn’t get serious till after I went.’

‘When was that?’

‘A few days before Miss Penhow left. Couldn’t stand it any longer. He was a surly brute most of the time, and he made Miss Penhow’s life a misery. It was worse when he was at the brandy, and after she’d gone he drank even more.’

‘And that was when he and Amy …?’

‘Yes. He had someone else before that, I think — not a local girl. Used to go off to see her and come back the next day looking like the cat who’d got the cream. Amy said she came to the farm once, when Miss Penhow was here — the girl, I mean. Just a girl, Amy said, no better than she should be. Reckon Amy was jealous.’