Bleeding Heart Square Part 27

"No-she's still at Mrs. Narton's, I presume." Mr. Gladwyn gnawed his lower lip. "She wouldn't want us to wait for her, I'm sure, especially in the circ.u.mstances. You'll need something to sustain you, Mrs. Langstone. As soon as you are ready, we shall have tea." He glided into his study to wait for it.

"This way, madam." Rebecca led Lydia toward the stairs. "I'll see what I can do with the coat while you're having your tea."

"Thank you."

"But I'm not sure there's much we can do with the gloves," Rebecca said as they climbed the stairs.

"Throw them away." Lydia wondered how long she would have to work at s.h.i.+res and Trimble to earn enough for another pair of gloves like that.

Rebecca showed her into a guest bedroom with its own washbasin. Lydia removed her hat and stared at her pale face in the mirror above the taps. How on earth had that smear of mud arrived on her nose? Rebecca brought towels and a flannel. She murmured that the WC and bathroom were next door.

Lydia turned on the hot tap and picked up the flannel. "Rebecca?"

"Yes, madam?"

"I went to the little barn." She watched the maid's face in the mirror. "The one you can see from the lane. Where Amy Narton died."

Rebecca's face remained blank and faintly disapproving, the face of a well-trained servant.

"I didn't fall over," Lydia went on, turning off the tap. "Someone shut me in. They wedged the door closed with a bit of piping. That's how I ruined the gloves, by picking up a brick and hammering on the door."

"Oh, madam," Rebecca said. "Shall I ask Mr. Gladwyn to call the police?"

"That depends. I think I know who did it, you see." Lydia rubbed at a smear of mud that had unaccountably appeared on her cheek. "There was a fresh footprint in the mud underneath where the piping was lying. Someone with small feet. A child, probably." She rinsed the flannel and wrung it out. "So that means it was almost certainly Robbie."

The color slipped away from Rebecca's face. But most of all Lydia noticed her eyes, the way they moved to and fro, looking for something that couldn't be found. It was a miserable business, bullying someone, which was what this came down to.

"What-what do you know about Robbie, madam? You do mean my nephew?"

"Yes. I know that you're fond of him. And I know that the barn is a special place because no one else normally goes there, even Mr. Serridge. Perhaps especially Mr. Serridge."

"Did Mrs. Alforde tell you, madam?"

"Not about Robbie. Mr. Wentwood did. As it happens, he's a friend of mine."

Rebecca let out her breath but said nothing.

Lydia picked up the towel and turned to face her. "It's all right. I don't want to make life difficult for Robbie. Or for you. But I thought you should know what happened. And there's something else: Mr. Serridge said the barn was dangerous. He's going to have it pulled down."

"I'm so sorry, madam. I just don't know what to say. If Mr. Gladwyn hears that-"

"There's no reason why he should," Lydia interrupted.

"You see, he's so funny about that barn and the skulls. Robbie, I mean. They're...they're special."

"His private Golgotha?"

For the first time Rebecca smiled, as one woman to another. "Yes. Mr. Wentwood told you about that."

Lydia turned back to the basin and buried her face in the flannel again. Afterward she said, "You'd better warn Robbie. He'll want to move his skulls."

"There's no harm in them," Rebecca said, as though Lydia had said something quite different. "It's just that they're like toys to him. Or even friends. He was that upset when one of them went. I don't know what he'd do if they all did."

"When he lost the goat's skull?"

The maid nodded. "He thinks it was old Narton."

"Hold on." Lydia dried her face again and sat down at the dressing table. "Sergeant Narton? When?"

"I'm not sure. Robbie's not very good with time. Must have been only a few days before he died."

"Are you sure he meant Narton?"

"Yes. He saw him coming out early one morning. He didn't dare go up to him. Narton hit him once."

Lydia picked up the hairbrush. "Robbie told you all this?"

The maid hovered at Lydia's shoulder. "He can speak more than you'd think, madam. It's just that he doesn't like doing it with strangers and it takes a bit of practice to understand what he's saying." She bent closer. "Are you really not going to do anything?"

"About Robbie this afternoon? Of course not." For a moment she thought the maid was about to burst into tears. "It didn't matter."

"Thank you. He was a bit funny today, you know, a bit over-wrought. That must have been why he shut you in. He probably thought you were after the other skulls."

It occurred to Lydia that at no point had Rebecca questioned Lydia's accusation: she had a.s.sumed that it was perfectly likely, even probable, that Robbie had shut her in the barn.

"I'll take the coat down to the kitchen, shall I, and dry it by the fire. That mud will soon brush off."

"Thank you. Tell me, what was she like? Miss Penhow, I mean."

"I called her Mrs. Serridge, of course. She was all right, quite a nice little thing. I was only with her for a week or two, but we got on fine. She gave herself airs sometimes but there was no harm in it. And you couldn't help feeling sorry for her. She was so unhappy."

"Was that obvious?"

Rebecca nodded. "She wanted to follow him around like a spaniel but he wasn't having any of it. She spent a lot of time crying. Or sulking, or trying to coax him round. She thought-she thought she was, well, attractive to him. That she could win him round that way. But then she found she couldn't."

"Was she pretty?"

Rebecca shrugged. "She could make herself look well enough. She needed an hour in the morning to get ready. I used to help her sometimes, and she was so fussy. But she dressed quite well, I'll say that for her. And she wasn't bad-looking, either, not when she had her teeth in and she'd had her hair tinted. She was a lady who needed her rouge and powder. Even so, you could see just by looking at them together that he was a good ten or fifteen years younger. And then if you saw her when she wasn't ready for company, you saw how old she really was. I dare say she felt younger than she was."

"We all feel that."

"Anyone with half an eye could see it was pointless."

"What do you mean?"

Rebecca drew herself up and stood primly, her hands clasped together in front of her. "He likes the younger ones, madam. Girls."

Lydia stood up, leaving the towel draped on the end of the bed and the flannel on the edge of the basin. Rebecca folded the coat neatly over her arm and opened the door. It was odd, Lydia thought, and rather unsettling, how quickly one became used to servants again. Or rather to not noticing all the little things they did for you.

"Rebecca? I found something else in the barn."

The maid stopped, her hand on the door handle and her face anxious.

"Nothing to worry about. Something on the ledge with the skulls, right at the end in the corner. An old cigar box. Do you know anything about it?"

"It was Mrs. Serridge's-Miss Penhow's, I mean. I remember Robbie showing it to me."

Lydia blinked. "She smoked cigars?"

Rebecca's face creased into a grin. "Oh no, madam. It must have been Mr. Serridge's once, I suppose. She used it for her diary. She was always writing in it."

"Why on earth did she keep it there?"

"Maybe so it wasn't obvious if Mr. Serridge went looking for it. I caught him looking through her writing desk once when she was having a bath."

"It can't have been very big."

"It wasn't. Just a little green book with hard covers."

That explained the pencil. Lydia said, "Do you know what happened to it?"

"Not seen hide nor hair of it since I left the farm. He'll have got his hands on it after she went, if she didn't take it with her."

Lydia nodded to Rebecca to open the door. As they crossed the landing and went downstairs, normality rea.s.serted itself, and the maid, one step behind Lydia, kept her head modestly lowered and her hands clasped round the coat. The distance between them seemed ridiculous, given the nature of the conversation they had just had in the bedroom.

In the hall, Lydia turned to Rebecca and said in a low voice, partly because things had changed between them and partly because she wanted to show that she had no desire for them to return to their old formal footing, "You'll have to find another Golgotha, I suppose."

Rebecca looked at her and opened her mouth as if about to speak. Then her face changed as if a cloth had been wiped over it.

"Ah," Mr. Gladwyn said, emerging from the drawing room. "There you are, Mrs. Langstone. Fully restored, I hope?"

Lydia turned to him and smiled. "Yes, thank you. Rebecca's been looking after me very well."

"Good, good. Now come and get warm, and Rebecca will bring us our tea." He stood aside to allow her to enter the room. "What was that about Golgotha?"

"No-taffeta," Lydia said swiftly as she pa.s.sed him in the doorway. "I was asking her advice about how to clean a dress."

Mrs. Alforde was sitting smoking by the fire. She said h.e.l.lo but hardly looked at Lydia. She looked tired and also older, as though she had lived too much time too quickly since lunch.

"Sorry I've kept you both waiting," Lydia said.

"Not at all," Mr. Gladwyn said earnestly. "Tea won't be a jiffy now, I'm sure."

"You've been in the wars, I gather," Mrs. Alforde said, tapping ash into the fire.

"No lasting damage except to my gloves. How was Mrs. Narton?"

Mrs. Alforde looked away. "As well as could be expected."

"I shall tell Cook to send her some soup," Mr. Gladwyn announced. "Ah, here is tea."

His ears had caught the rattle of the tea things in the hall. Rebecca shouldered open the door and wheeled in a trolley. It was a generous tea, with hot b.u.t.tered crumpets, two sorts of cake and two sorts of sandwiches, as well as bread and b.u.t.ter. Mrs. Alforde poured and Mr. Gladwyn handed round the cups, the sandwiches and a little later the cake. At first there was not a great deal of conversation. Mrs. Alforde concentrated on eating, and so did Mr. Gladwyn. Lydia picked at a sandwich and drank two cups of tea.

By the time he had reached his third cup of tea, Mr. Gladwyn had time for his conversational duties as a host. "Yes, Golgotha," he said. "A foolish mistake of mine-though I suppose it's natural that a clergyman should hear Golgotha rather than taffeta. Curiously enough-" here he leaned back in his chair and stretched out his legs "-it reminds me of rather a good story that went the rounds when I was up at Cambridge. There was a gallery in the university church, you know, which was where the heads of houses sat. And we undergraduates always called it Golgotha because it was the place of the skulls or heads." He paused and beamed at them, preparing them for the climax. "And of course we young wags used to say that Golgotha was the place of empty skulls."

He glanced from one face to another, clearly expecting a suitable response. Lydia managed a smile, and hoped that her expression implied that she was suppressing with difficulty an almost overwhelming desire to laugh immoderately.

Mrs. Alforde merely set down her cup on the table and reached for her cigarettes again. Lydia realized that she had not been listening to a word that Mr. Gladwyn was saying.

Neither of them spoke much on the drive back to London. Lydia was glad of this for several reasons, not least because it was dark and both Mrs. Alforde's driving and her temper had become even more erratic. They reached Bleeding Heart Square a little after seven o'clock. Mrs. Alforde stopped the car outside the house.

"Would you like to come in for a drink?" Lydia asked, glancing up at the facade of the house, at the lighted windows on the first floor; the top-floor windows were dark. "It looks as if Father's in."

"No, no, thank you," Mrs. Alforde said, too baldly for politeness. "I must get back to Gerry."

Lydia was relieved, partly because she wasn't sure what state either her father or the flat would be in, and of course finding something to drink might be difficult. She thanked Mrs. Alforde, who in turn thanked Lydia for keeping her company and hoped that she had not found Rawling too dreary. She murmured something about getting in touch soon and drove off rather quickly.

That night Lydia slept badly, skimming on the surface of unconsciousness, moving in and out of dreams which never made sense enough to be frightening but which left her profoundly uneasy. There was too much to think about. Sometimes she thought she heard dance music, and at other times a woman crying and the sound of Mr. Gladwyn's measured voice as the mourners cl.u.s.tered around Narton's open grave. And what had happened to Mrs. Alforde? She had seemed almost hostile on the way home. She badly needed to talk to Rory. If only he had been at home. And that in itself was a thought that made her restless because it took very little to imagine him with Fenella Kensley instead.

By half past five, she had given up trying to sleep. She lay in a huddle, to conserve warmth, while her mind roved among the events of yesterday. Everything has an explanation, she told herself, and somewhere in the world is the one that fits all this.

At half past six, cold and thirst drove her out of bed. It was still dark. She washed sketchily in cold water from the jug, dressed, put on the kettle and went into the sitting room. The curtains were still drawn from the previous evening. She pulled them aside because the room caught the best of the morning light when at last it came. She lit the gas fire and went back to make the tea.

When she returned, the room was warmer. The sky was very slightly lighter toward the east now. She lingered at the window, warming her fingers on the cup. A heavy bird fluttered past and glided toward the old pump on the corner by the Crozier. There were other birds there already, perching awkwardly on the pump handle and pecking at something. When the new arrival joined them, there was a great flurry of wings as though the newcomer were not a welcome guest.

Lydia huddled over the fire, drank her tea and smoked the first cigarette of the day. What on earth were the birds doing? She had never seen them there before. When she had finished the tea, she went back to the window. The birds were still outside by the pump.

She put on her coat and hat, went downstairs and opened the front door. As she approached the pump, the birds scrambled into the air. They were big, black crows and not in a hurry to leave. She glanced over her shoulder at the house behind her. All the windows except her own were still in darkness. But she thought she caught a movement at Mrs. Renton's window on the right of the front door, the merest glimpse of gray smudge behind the gla.s.s, a possible face.

She drew nearer the pump. A rusty nail protruded from one of the supports of its dilapidated wooden canopy. Hanging from it was a long and slightly twisted metal meat skewer with a ring at one end. The skewer had been driven through a lump of matter the size of a misshapen tennis ball. Or an overripe orange from Covent Garden with Hitler's picture on the label, or a russet from one of the old trees in the Monks.h.i.+ll orchard, or a very large egg from a bird or reptile.

The ring had been looped over the head of the nail, and tied to it was a brown luggage label. Lydia touched the label gently with her finger. There was only one word on it and, as the nausea rose in her throat, she knew what it would be before she made out the letters: Serridge.

20.

YOU NOTICE that the entries near the end look different from those near the beginning. All the London ones are written in ink, as are the first few entries at Morthams Farm. And the very first ones are much more neatly written than those that come later. At the start, Philippa May Penhow is writing to impress an invisible posterity. Then she writes for herself, because she wants to. These last entries are in pencil and the handwriting wobbles all over the place. Those were the ones she wrote after she moved the diary from the house.

Finally, at the end, where in places the words are almost impossible to make out, she writes in a rapid, almost illegible scrawl because she has no one else to talk to, and she's desperate.

Monday, 14 April 1930 Last night was a full moon & it kept me awake. Joseph didn't come up. As the sun rose, I slept & did not wake till after nine o'clock. When I came downstairs Joseph had left the house. Rebecca said that he had told them to wait until I was down before clearing away the breakfast things. On the table was a bunch of daffodils in a vase, and on my plate a little envelope with my name on it in my darling's hand. "My sweet love, forgive your little boysie for upsetting you. I tiptoed out of the house this morning so as not to wake you. Your loving Joey." Oh how could I have doubted him? He came back for lunch with little Jacko at his heels & two dead rabbits. He had shot them himself this morning. Jacko was smelly and dirty after his morning's fun, and I told him he could not come into the house until Amy had washed him under the tap in the scullery!

A bunch of daffodils and a s.n.a.t.c.h of baby talk-and she comes running back into his arms again. But not long now. You are counting the days.