Andrew Taylor - Bleeding Heart Square

‘You make him sound very ruthless,’ Lydia said quietly. ‘Very calculating.’

‘My dear, he was. Of course he ran through the money in a year or two. I gather he’s a sad case now. Even so, he’s not to be trusted. So that’s why I think you’re better off without him.’

Lydia sat staring straight ahead and said nothing.

‘All marriages have their ups and downs,’ Mrs Alforde went on. ‘Gerry and I — well, I won’t go into details but it hasn’t always been easy. But one soldiers on. I’m sure you and Marcus will soon be rubbing along together perfectly well again. And it would make your mother so happy.’

Lydia looked at her hostess. Mrs Alforde was a nice woman, she thought, and doing her best. It wasn’t her fault that her best had nothing to do with what Lydia wanted, and nothing to do with what was actually happening.

‘Now promise me, dear — you will at least think about it.’

Lydia shook her head. ‘I’m sorry, I’m not going back to Marcus. I wasn’t before and I’m certainly not now, when I’ve seen him and my mother behaving like farmyard animals together.’

She sat back and watched the blood leave Mrs Alforde’s face. All the vitality drained out of the older woman. She looked small, pale and frightened.

By the middle of Tuesday morning Rory had already smoked the third of the three cigarettes which were, in theory, his ration for that day. He was typing yet another letter of application on the Royal Portable and trying to resist the temptation to light a fourth.

He had spent the weekend in Hereford with his parents and his sisters. Here the familiar rituals of his childhood continued to be observed, except all the participants were older than they had been. Despite the comforts of home — despite the freshly laundered sheets, the excellent leg of lamb for Sunday lunch, his father’s Navy Cut cigarettes — there had been something unreal, even stultifying, about the weekend. He had been glad to get away, even though it was only to return to the uncertainties of an independent life with a failed engagement, dwindling savings and no prospect of ever earning a decent income.

He heard the muffled sound of the postman’s knock, and movement in the house below. Then came footsteps on his own stairs and a tap on his door. When he opened it, Lydia Langstone was waiting outside on the landing. She was carrying a parcel and her face was slightly flushed from the exertion of climbing the stairs.

She held out the parcel. ‘It was for you. I thought I might as well bring it up.’

‘Thank you.’

She turned to go, and then looked back at him. ‘Do you remember when you showed me that cufflink the other day? When we had lunch.’

He nodded. ‘Of course.’

‘I happened to hear at the weekend that the Fascists have hired the chapel undercroft for another meeting.’

‘Really? When?’

‘Saturday week. The first of December, I think. Apparently it’s part of a big push to attract businessmen to the movement.’

‘By telling them the Fascists will shoot all the reds under the beds and make sure there will always be a market for British goods?’

‘Something like that. Do you think it was Fascists who attacked you?’

He shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I couldn’t find anything else that supported the idea. The most likely explanation is that somebody just happened to lose a cufflink there and it had nothing to do with me whatsoever.’

He thanked her again and said goodbye. He stood for a moment watching her as she clattered down the stairs. A strange, nervy woman, he thought, all bones and breeding like a racehorse. He went back into his sitting room, pushed the typewriter aside and put the parcel on the table. It was addressed to him at Bleeding Heart Square but he didn’t recognize the writing. He cut the string with his penknife and pulled the brown paper apart. The paper was creased and with jagged edges, part of a larger sheet that had been used before.

There was another layer of darker brown paper underneath. The second layer wasn’t secured in any way. He saw material inside, some sort of tweed. He pulled it from its wrapping and held it up.

It was a skirt made of blue-green Irish tweed, rather worn in places. Part of the hem had come down. A sheet of lined paper fluttered from the folds of the skirt and down to the floor. He picked it up. The enclosure looked as if it had been torn from an exercise book. It was a letter, without date or address at the head, written in round, unformed writing.

Dear Sir ,

This was in Narton’s cupboard. I reckon it belongs to Miss Penhow. I don’t know how to find her or the lady it’s addressed to, so maybe her niece had better have it for her. It’s no good to me. I don’t want it .

Yours faithfully ,

M. Narton

Rory dropped the note on the table and picked up the inner packaging. Nothing was written on it apart from Mrs Renton’s name in neat, familiar handwriting.

Mrs Renton?

Something blue protruded from the waistband of the skirt, an unsealed envelope also with Mrs Renton’s name on it in the same handwriting. Rory removed the single sheet of notepaper it contained.

Morthams Farm

Rawling

Saffron Walden

Essex

April 22nd 1930

Dear Mrs Renton ,

As we arranged, I enclose my winter skirt for alteration. I think it has at least another year in it, perhaps two. Please take in the waist by three quarters of an inch. Would you redo the hem as well — as you will see, it is coming down. If the blouses are ready, please put them in with the skirt and give them to my husband when you see him .

Yours sincerely ,

P. M. Serridge (Mrs)

Rory took out his writing case and compared the letter with the sample of Miss Penhow’s handwriting that he had found in the chest of drawers. There was no reason to doubt that they had been written by the same person.

He sat down at the table and lit a fourth and unlicensed cigarette. Mrs Renton — what on earth had she to do with this? Leaving that aside, nothing in the letter suggested that Miss Penhow was planning to leave Morthams Farm and Serridge. Nothing suggested that there was any strain between the two of them, either. On the other hand, if Miss Penhow had been devious, the letter might have been designed to throw Serridge off the scent. Rory’s mind followed the tortuous logic of this: but perhaps that implied that Miss Penhow expected Serridge to read the letter, and the further implication of that was that she had reason to believe that Serridge no longer trusted her. And then there was the question of how Narton had come to have the parcel. Rory could only assume that it had been taken as evidence when the police were investigating the disappearance of Miss Penhow, and that Narton had removed it for his own purposes after he had lost his job.

He smoked the rest of the cigarette. He folded the skirt and its accompanying letter in the brown paper and carried it downstairs to the first floor, where he knocked on the door of Ingleby-Lewis’s sitting room. Lydia opened the door.

‘Sorry to disturb you, but I wonder if you could advise me about this parcel.’ He shifted his position in order to get a better view, trying to establish whether or not Ingleby-Lewis was inside. ‘That is, if you’ve got a moment.’

‘Yes, of course.’ She stood back, holding the door open.

To Rory’s relief, there was no one else in the room. It looked as if Lydia had been writing a letter. ‘Are you busy?’

‘Nothing that can’t wait.’ She moved swiftly past him, slipped her letter under the blotter and capped her fountain pen.

‘What is it?’ she said, looking at the parcel.