Read Bleeding Heart Square Online
Authors: Andrew Taylor
Tags: #Fiction, #Mystery & Detective, #Historical, #General
Bleeding Heart Square (24 page)
"Quick!" Fenella said in her ear. "I can hear them running."
Lydia and the blond man, Fenella and Mr. Goldman almost tumbled into the house. Lydia closed the door behind them and rammed the top bolt home. Mr. Goldman was gasping for breath.
"Damned barbarians," the blond man said. "Are you all right, sir?"
Lydia ignored them. She knelt and opened the flap of the letter box. This gave her a narrow, rectangular view across the road to the chapel. At the far right of the rectangle was the left-hand leaf of the double gates to Bleeding Heart Square. To her horror, she saw Serridge standing in the angle between the gate and the pillar supporting it. He was smoking a cigar and staring placidly down the length of Rosington Place.
They had a witness.
Marcus burst into view, followed by three Blackshirts. They hesitated for an instant on the forecourt. Marcus walked into the road and looked up and down. He saw Serridge.
"I say!" he shouted. "You there! Which way did they go?"
Serridge unhurriedly removed his cigar. "Who are you talking about?"
"Two women and two men. You must have seen them."
Serridge pointed the cigar down Rosington Place toward Holborn Circus and the thin, fussy tower of St. Andrew's beyond.
"But we'd still see them if they'd gone that way."
"No, they went down past the lodge and turned right." Serridge turned his head to his left. "Ain't that right?"
Another man came into view--Howlett, stately in his uniform frock coat, with Nipper at his heels. He touched the brim of his top hat to Marcus. He looked every inch the loyal servant. But whose servant, Lydia wondered, and why?
"That's right, sir," Howlett said. "Went down there like bats out of hell. As if the devil himself was after them."
Y
OU ARE HAUNTED
by the ghosts of what might have happened. If Philippa Penhow had had the sense to run away to the village. If she had hammered on Mr. Gladwyn's door. If she'd run into the Alforde Arms. If she'd stumbled across the muddy fields to Mavering.
Sunday, 20 April 1930
I think he's looking for this diary. He was searching my things this morning. Someone--it must have been him, unless it was one of the maids--prised open my little writing box where I used to keep the diary. They forced the lock. I didn't dare say anything.
Rebecca went away last night. Amy's getting worse. At breakfast, she was positively insolent when I asked for fresh tea. I'm sure she's wearing lipstick too. Joseph told me to stop fussing. He said I was only making the girl nervous. But she's a nasty baggage.
I said to Joseph at lunchtime that they must think us strange in the village because we hadn't gone to church. He said, not at all--he had told the Vicar I wasn't well, that I'd had a breakdown and couldn't stand meeting people or crowds, and that was the real reason we'd come to live in the country.
So I see it all now. He's made them think I'm a mad-woman. And he's made them think that he's a saint, looking after me. I wish I hadn't signed all those papers. "Another one for your autograph, my darling."
So you see she couldn't go to the village or anywhere else because of the shame of it. She believed they already thought her a lunatic. And she and Serridge weren't married. Either way she would have faced ridicule and censure, either way she would be ruined. At the back of her mind was the bitter knowledge that she didn't know what she'd signed over to him during the last few weeks.
Most of all, you believe, she stayed at Morthams because in some small and tender place in her heart there still lived a sickly hope that this was really a bad dream, and that soon her Joseph would change back to the man she knew he really was. Perhaps this was some sort of test, and all she need do was endure. Perhaps she could make him love her, as she did him. She would tear out her heart for him if it would make him happy.
The smell of cats was stronger. The cold seeped from the flagstones and oozed out of the walls. He sat on the table, his back against the rough, whitewashed wall.
It was not entirely dark. As his eyes adjusted, Rory made out a faint rectangle at the other end of the room, which must mark the door. On the other side of the door was the cloister and the fading, gray light of a winter afternoon. But very little sound penetrated the thick walls or the heavy door. It was as if he was entombed. The loudest sound was his own breathing. He was very cold--he had left his hat and his raincoat in the undercroft.
They had taken his notebook, presumably during the fracas. In his mind, he went over the sequence of events, trying to memorize them. He was damned if he was going to let them prevent him from writing this article. First, there had been an interruption to Fisher's speech--the tall old man who looked Jewish, though presumably not orthodox or else he wouldn't have been here on the Sabbath. Then the scrap, when the Blackshirts waded in to remove him. Then Lydia was mixed up with it and then Fenella and Dawlish.
Why the hell had Lydia been there? Surely she wanted to avoid her husband?
When the row started, Rory had stood up without thinking, drawn partly by a journalist's instinct to move toward trouble rather than away from it, and partly to help Lydia. But the Blackshirts were already on him.
The timing was important. It suggested they must have been told to keep an eye on him, presumably by Marcus. Told to pounce when there was trouble in the audience, told to extract him neatly and swiftly as though he were a troublesome tooth, and they were a pair of pincers. He gave them full marks for efficiency. They had frogmarched him out of the undercroft. One of them kept his hand clamped over Rory's mouth. They had been so extraordinarily polite and unemotional about the whole thing.
"Excuse me, sir, would you let us through? Gentleman needs a breath of air."
Everyone must have known that he was being ejected, Rory thought, but his escorts contrived to do it in such a way that many of the bystanders would have assumed the fault was his, not the Fascists'.
More Blackshirts had been milling around in the cloister, mainly at the far end, near the door to the street. His escorts hadn't waited for orders and they hadn't tried to turf him out. That must be significant as well. They had simply wheeled him round to the right and down into the Ossuary, where they kicked his legs from underneath him and forced him down to the floor.
Rory had forced himself not to cry out, not because he was brave but because he thought if he did he might attract more violence. Mercifully they seemed to lose interest in him: closed the door gently and turned the key in the lock. Darkness fell like a stone. The light switch was outside the door.
When they left him alone, he had stood up and swept his hands over the walls, exploring the Ossuary by sense of touch. All it contained was the table. The chairs had gone. He hooked his hands under one side and lifted. It rose a couple of inches, and then the weight was too much for him. He considered trying to wedge the door with it, but remembered that the door opened outward, toward the steps down from the cloister.
Sooner or later, he told himself, someone would come. This will end. Everything ends. He shied away from the thought that whatever replaced this might be worse. Time passed. At one point he thought he heard distant music on the edge of his range of hearing. Perhaps the meeting was over, and they were playing the National Anthem. The theory was confirmed when he heard the rumble of voices and footsteps, a whole tide of them, in the cloister. All those clerks and commercial travelers and office boys were going home to the suburbs for the weekend. He would have given anything to be one of them. He hammered on the door and shouted, trying to attract their attention.
No one came. Had Fenella and Lydia and Dawlish got away safely? It was quite possible that they didn't realize what had happened to him. It might be hours until he was missed--at the very earliest, not until he failed to turn up at Mecklenburgh Square at half past five.
Everything was now quiet outside. Time trickled slowly away. Rory's mind wandered. He saw sand dribbling through rows of hourglasses, then the hands sweeping round an infinity of dials, all the clocks and watches of London measuring out his life.
At last, the key turned in the lock, the sound jolting him painfully back into his own chilly and uncomfortable body. The door opened, and blinding light streamed into the Ossuary. In the heart of the light was a shimmering shadow.
"They've gone back inside," Lydia said.
"All of them?" said the large, untidy stranger.
"As far as I can see. Serridge and Howlett are still by the gate."
"Barbarians," Mr. Goldman muttered behind her. His face was gray and he was breathing hard.
"Are you all right?" Lydia asked.
He nodded. "Just out of breath. And angry."
"Have you far to go?"
"I have a flat over the shop."
"I say," the other man said, blinking at her. "We should introduce ourselves. My name's Dawlish, Julian Dawlish. This is Miss Kensley."
"How do you do?" Lydia said automatically. "This is Mr. Goldman, who has a shop in Hatton Garden. My name's Lydia Langstone."
"Are you related--" Dawlish began.
Simultaneously Fenella Kensley spoke for the first time: "We've met, haven't we? On Remembrance Sunday in Trafalgar Square."
"That's right. You were with Mr. Wentwood."
"Yes."
"He's in there now, you know," Lydia said. "Did you see him?"
Fenella nodded.
"I think they may be after him."
"Because he's a journalist?"
"Not just that," Lydia said. "There's--there's something else as well."
"Mrs. Langstone," Dawlish said, "forgive me for asking, but it's not a common name..." His voice trailed away before he had actually asked anything.
"Marcus Langstone is my husband," Lydia said evenly. "I've left him."
"Oh. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to pry, but in the circumstances..."
"It really doesn't matter." She bent down and opened the letter box again. "I can't see anyone outside the chapel. And there's no sign of Serridge and Howlett now. If I were you I'd leave while you can."
"Yes," Dawlish said. "Mrs. Langstone, I can't thank you enough." He added, stiffly and absurdly, "We mustn't take up any more of your time."
To her surprise, Lydia realized, she felt quite calm. "We had better leave together but then split up. Perhaps Mr. Goldman and I should go through the gates to the square and you and Miss Kensley out by the lodge."
Dawlish nodded. He was peering at the noticeboard listing the house's tenants. Fenella tugged at his sleeve like a child trying to attract her parent's attention.
"Julian, come on. I don't like it here. Please."
Instantly he was all concern, inquiring solicitously about how she was feeling while blaming himself for being insensitive. Lydia looked at her more closely. Fenella was trembling slightly and her face was gray.
"The thing is," Dawlish said, "what about Wentwood?"
"There's not a lot we can do," Fenella said. "Let's face it, they can't really
hurt
him. Anyway, they don't know he's a journalist, and perhaps they'll leave him alone. You'd think they'd have chucked him out already if they were going to."
Dawlish looked from one woman to the other. "Perhaps we should--"
"Can we go?
Please
, Julian."
"The sooner we leave the better," Lydia said, turning away so neither Fenella nor Dawlish would see the anger in her face. "I'll tell Mr. Wentwood what's happened, if you like."
They slipped outside. Rosington Place was deserted. Fenella, clutching at Dawlish's arm, almost dragged him away. He turned and waved to Lydia. She and Mr. Goldman went through the wicket gate into Bleeding Heart Square.
"I can manage by myself now," he said, scowling at her. "Thank you for your help, Mrs. Langstone." He stalked off, leaving Lydia staring after him.
"Mr. Goldman?" she called. "Are you all right?"
He paused by the pump and looked at her. "No, I'm not, Mrs. Langstone. How can I be? I'm frightened."
He raised his hat in farewell and a moment later was out of sight. It was only as Lydia was letting herself into the house that she realized what he had meant. He was not frightened of the uniformed thugs in the undercroft. He was not even frightened for himself. He was frightened of what the uniformed thugs stood for. He was frightened on behalf of all those people who stood in their way. He was frightened of the future.
Slowly the light faded from the afternoon. Lydia sat at the table in her father's flat and looked down at Bleeding Heart Square, at the wicket gate to Rosington Place and at the wall of the chapel beyond. Reckless of expense, she had turned up the gas fire as far as it would go and fed the meter with shillings. Her father was still out. Among the butts in the ashtray beside her were a couple from Pamela's cigarettes. The room felt empty without her.
At last the meeting in the undercroft came to an end. Most of the audience walked down Rosington Place toward Holborn. A trickle came through the wicket into the square, among them Mr. Byrne from the Crozier and one of the mechanics from the workshop at the other end of the square. Mr. Fimberry hurried after them.
But there was no sign of Rory. Lydia didn't want to feel solicitous about him but it seemed she had no choice.
Bloody Fenella didn't give a damn about him
. Anyway, she needed to tell him about the typewriter.
Ten more minutes passed at a funereal rate. There was still no trace of him. She went downstairs and tapped on Mr. Fimberry's door. There were shuffling footsteps in the room. The door opened a crack.
"Mrs. Langstone!" The eyes blinked behind the pince-nez. "What--what can I do for you?"
"Do you know where Mr. Wentwood is?"
"No." Fimberry was in his shirtsleeves. "I've no idea, I'm afraid."
"Was he still at the meeting when you left?"
"Oh no. He left just after you did. Were you all right? I was quite worried."
"Never better, thank you. When you say Mr. Wentwood left, what do you mean exactly?"
"A couple of the Blackshirts escorted him out. I didn't see quite what was happening but I'm afraid he upset them." He peered at Lydia. "In fact I assumed you had all gone together--you and he and those other people."
"No. We got away."
"I--ah--I expect he will turn up." Fimberry swallowed. "They--they were rather rough, weren't they?"
"They behaved like animals," Lydia snapped. "Do you have your set of keys?"
"Eh? Oh--you mean for the chapel? Of course. I shall go in later and make sure everything's shipshape."
"So the Fascists were still there when you left?"
"They were tidying up. They do a very neat job, I must say, unlike some."
"Will you come over there with me?"
"Now?"
"Yes--with your keys." She spoke slowly, as though to a child. "You've a perfect right to be there. After all you're representing Father Bertram. And you need to make sure everything's safe and sound."
"But what about you, Mrs. Langstone? If your husband--"
"That's my affair, thank you."
Mr. Fimberry wilted under her gaze. To her horror, Lydia saw that the eyes behind the pince-nez were swimming with tears.
"I'm sorry," he said. The door began to close. "Really I am. But I'm not a brave man. Physically I--I suppose I'm a bit of a coward." He was trembling now. "I'm so sorry. I've seen too much. I've seen what's under the skin, you see, all the flesh and bone. It was the war, Mrs. Langstone. I was very different before the war."
Shades of dark gray became blinding white. Rory screwed up his eyes against the glare from the lightbulb dangling from the vaulted ceiling. Iron scraped on stone. He slid off the table and stood up. The door opened. Slow footsteps approached.
Three men faced him: two Blackshirts and, standing in the doorway with his back to the cloister, the dapper figure of Sir Rex Fisher.
"Good--not damaged," Fisher said to the two Blackshirts, addressing them with a certain formality as if he stood on a lecturer's podium. "Force should always be proportionate." He abandoned his lecturer's manner and approached Rory, limping slightly. Lips pursed, he stared at him. There was something both fastidious and contemplative about his gaze: he might have been at Christie's, examining a picture which had little obvious merit and which he did not want to buy. He glanced over his shoulder. "And what were your instructions exactly?"
"Mr. Langstone--"
Fisher hissed, a tiny sign of displeasure.
The man recovered swiftly. "This chap was pointed out to us before the meeting began as a likely troublemaker. Believed to be a communist agitator, sir. If there was any sort of trouble, we was to nab him and put him in here. As you see." There was a hint of truculence in the man's voice. "Nipping trouble in the bud, that's what we was told."
"Has he been searched?"
"Not yet, sir."
Fisher's neatly plucked eyebrows rose. He turned back to Rory. "And what is your name?"
"Roderick Wentwood."
"Address?"
No point in concealing it: they would find out soon enough if they searched him. But would Fisher know that Lydia Langstone was living under the same roof?
"Seven, Bleeding Heart Square."
"And why are you here, Mr. Wentwood?"
Rory rubbed his cheek where a bruise was coming up. "As an interested member of the public, Sir Rex. Finding out what British Fascism has to offer the British businessman." He leaned back against the table, hoping to conceal the fact that his legs were trembling. "I want to leave now."
Fisher's face was unsmiling but not hostile. "I'm sure. But I don't think you should leave, Mr. Wentwood. Not just yet. It might be rather amusing to find out what you had to say about us first."
"I don't understand what you mean."
"Of course you do." Fisher removed Rory's notebook from the pocket of his own overcoat. "I understand you were writing in this before you felt obliged to join the rowdy elements in the audience and try to disrupt the meeting." He flipped through the pages. "I don't read shorthand myself. But many of my colleagues do. And I see that you have thoughtfully written some words
en clair
, as it were.
Berkeley's
, for example. I wonder whether that might be the weekly magazine? Rather strange you didn't think to mention that you're a journalist."
The door leading to the cellar was open. Lydia heard Serridge's voice below, and Howlett replying to something he had said. They were moving furniture around down there. Serridge intended to sell the better pieces.
She tapped again on Mr. Fimberry's door, which he had shut in her face five minutes earlier. She heard scuffling on the other side.
"Who is it?"
She did not reply. She waited, her body tense, just outside the door. The men's voices continued in the cellar, backward and forward like a long rally in a tennis match. It was all nonsense about women being gossips, she thought--men were just as bad.
There was stealthy movement in Fimberry's room. Almost simultaneously Lydia heard the clatter of claws on the cellar stairs. Nipper appeared at the end of the hall.
The key turned in the lock. The door began to open. Nipper yapped and launched himself down the hall. Lydia flung her weight against the door and pushed her leg into the gap between it and the jamb. Fimberry's pink, sweating face appeared, only inches away from hers.
"Please go away, Mrs. Langstone."
She pushed harder. "If I scream, Mr. Serridge will hear me."
Fimberry stood back. The door swung open, banging against the edge of his washstand. Nipper shot through the gap. Lydia followed. The dog ran round the room, sniffing vigorously.
"Please, Mrs. Langstone," Fimberry whimpered, "please leave."
"Serridge and Howlett are in the cellar," Lydia said firmly. "In a moment or two, I'm going to go and see them. I'm going to tell Mr. Serridge that I saw you buying offal at Smithfield. That I saw you buying
hearts
. Do you understand what I'm saying, Mr. Fimberry? If necessary I will also say I've seen you posting them."
"But, Mrs. Langstone, I didn't. You
know
that's untrue. You know--"
"I don't care what is true or untrue," Lydia interrupted, magnificent in her ruthlessness. "The only way you can stop me is by letting me borrow the chapel keys for five minutes."
"I've already explained--"
"And I've explained what will happen if you don't let me have them. You don't have to come with me."
Nipper sniffed Fimberry's ankles. Fimberry edged away from him, his eyes still fixed on Lydia's face.
"Oh, and by the way," Lydia added, deciding that she might as well be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb, "I shall also tell Mr. Serridge that you tried to kiss me."
Fimberry backed over to the bed, sat down and put his head in his hands. For a moment she felt a terrible urge to comfort him.
"Please, Mrs. Langstone. Please."
"None of this need happen," Lydia said gently. "Not if you're sensible. Where are the keys?"
"In the top drawer. On the left."
She knew she had broken him. She felt ashamed. She opened the drawer and took out the keys. "Which is which?"
"The small modern one is the door into the cloisters from the road. The Yale keys are for the storeroom and the vestry." His voice was muffled because his head was still in his hands. "The others, the big iron ones, they fit the Ossuary, the undercroft and the chapel itself."
Lydia glanced round the room. His overcoat was on the back of the door. She lifted it off and dropped the keys in the left-hand pocket.
"I'm going to leave your overcoat on one of the hooks in the hall. Then I shall take the keys from your pocket. So if anyone asks, you're in the clear. You happened to leave your coat in the hall, and the keys happened to be in the pocket. And somebody happened to come along and take them. But nothing is going to go wrong, is it? No one's going to ask you anything."
He raised his face to her. His eyes were puffy. "Mrs. Langstone, it's already gone wrong."
Nipper followed her out of the room and ran down the hall toward the door to the cellar, toward the sound of footsteps on the stairs. Hurriedly she took out the keys, dropped them in her own pocket and hung up the overcoat. The door on the other side of the hall opened a crack. Mrs. Renton looked out.
"That dratted dog again," she said to Lydia. "I wish he wouldn't bring it in the house."
She shut the door. Serridge came into the hall, followed by Howlett.
"Ah--Mrs. Langstone." Serridge's heavy features rearranged themselves into a smile that was the next best thing to avuncular. "And how did you enjoy the meeting this afternoon?"
She stared at him. He was probably unaware that she had seen him, and therefore he did not realize that she knew he had sent Marcus and his Blackshirts on a wild-goose chase for her sake. "I found it very interesting, thank you, Mr. Serridge. But I had to leave halfway through."
"They certainly had a good turnout, ma'am," Mr. Howlett said, bending to scratch Nipper. "Mind you, I don't know how much use it all is. The world goes on turning, whatever we try and do about it."
"They get some rough types there, though," Serridge went on. "I hope you're all right."
Lydia nodded, smiling like an idiot, and said goodbye. Nipper tried to follow her outside. She shut the front door in his face, remembering as she did so the little dog Rory had seen in the photograph of a naked Amy Narton astride a bicycle. That was the reality, she thought, not this amiable old chap like Father Christmas in mufti: Serridge was a middle-aged man who had a taste for vulnerable girls without any clothes on, and preyed on elderly spinsters with more money than sense.
And if Nipper's the same dog, does Howlett know where he came from? Are we all Serridge's creatures in this house? Or his victims?
She ran across Bleeding Heart Square.
Marcus Langstone was alone, and that was something Rory had not been expecting. Langstone was cautious, though: he switched on the light, opened the door and then stood back.
Fisher and his men had left perhaps twenty minutes earlier. Langstone looked at Rory leaning against the wall near the table at the far end of the Ossuary. Rory felt sick in the pit of his stomach. But there was relief of a sort that the waiting was over.
Langstone slipped a bunch of keys into his pocket. A short rubber cosh was looped over his right wrist, swinging like a pendulum in a clock case. He was a big man, Rory thought, not just tall but surprisingly broad. His face looked so misleadingly wholesome--the pink and white complexion, the fair hair, the baby-blue eyes.
The cosh swung to and fro. Langstone didn't speak. There was an element of calculation in all this. Rory felt an extra spurt of fear which mysteriously converted itself into something like anger. The man was being so bloody childish. This was how bullies behaved in the school changing room or the corner of the playground. Standing there in his uniform he looked more than ever like a sinister Boy Scout, his emotional and intellectual development doomed to remain forever somewhere between thirteen and fourteen years old.
"I hope you've come to let me out," Rory said. "And an apology would be nice too."
Marcus actually raised an eyebrow--a single eyebrow, just as though he were a villain in an old-fashioned melodrama. He thwacked the cosh against the palm of his left hand. "I don't think so."
"You can't really think it's a good idea to go around treating members of the public like this. Surely it's bad for business?"
"You're not a member of the public. You're a dirty little journalist and a lying cheat."
"For all you know I could be a dirty little journalist who supports Fascist principles."
Langstone shrugged. The black shirt and dark trousers flattered his figure but there was a distinct thickening around his middle. "In my book, all journalists are dirty," he said. "It's not a job for a gentleman, is it? But you'd be dirty whatever you were. And that's why I'm going to teach you a lesson." He walked slowly toward Rory. "I've known about you for a long time. You live in Bleeding Heart Square. You've got the room on the ground floor on the left of the front door."
"You're mistaken," Rory said. "I--"
"You can't lie your way out of this. I've seen you there." He added with an air of triumph, "You even admitted it to my colleague."
Rory swallowed. "You've done more than see me, haven't you? The other weekend--that was you, wasn't it?"
Langstone smiled. "My people. Not me."
"Your tame Biff Boys?"
"You wouldn't have been able to get up off the ground if it had been me."
"And how are you going to explain this? You can't hope to get away with what you're doing."
"Why not?" Marcus had stopped about three feet away from Rory. "Unfortunately we've had a great deal of trouble with left-wing agitators at our meetings. Communists, Jews, foreigners, people who have the morality of the gutter. They bring all sorts of weapons and try and stir up trouble. Bicycle chains, knuckledusters, knives--you name it, they've got it."
"Whereas you go in for rubber coshes?"
"My mechanic advised me to buy one of these. Know what they call them, Mr. Wentwood? The motorist's friend."
"It's an offensive weapon."
"Defensive, please. We have to do our best to cope with this wicked violence, don't we? For the sake of the public, for the sake of democracy. We Fascists stand for free speech and free debate. We can't let you people interfere with that. It just wouldn't be right, would it? And of course you end up getting hurt. I'm about to act in self-defense, in case you were wondering, and later on there will be witnesses to confirm it. They will also confirm that you were armed." He smiled. "In point of fact I'm looking ahead: there aren't any witnesses just at present. So you can squeal as loudly as you like."
"That's the trouble with you lot," Rory said. "You start off thinking the end justifies the means. And then you don't bother justifying anything at all. You just do what you bloody want."
The last word came out like a bullet on a rush of air as Rory kicked Marcus's left kneecap. Marcus shouted and lunged forward, his face contorted, and brought the cosh down in an over-arm blow. Rory ducked to the left and the cosh hit him like a brick on his right arm, just below the shoulder.
An instant later, Marcus's left fist caught him full on the mouth. Driven backward, Rory fell against the table, the corner jabbing into the soft flesh between his rib cage and thigh. Marcus lashed out with his boots, aiming for Rory's crotch.
Rory squirmed. A toe cap thudded into his leg. Cold stone grated like sandpaper against his cheek. He curled himself up and tried to roll away from the kicks. He collided with a table leg. His mouth filled with liquid. He spat, and saw a fine red spray in front of his face. His left ankle exploded with a pain like an overwhelming flash of electricity. He screamed and wriggled farther under the table, scrabbling to escape the kicks and blows. He pushed himself into the corner where the two walls met.
Stone on two sides. All that solid mahogany above. There was a instant of calm, unutterably sweet.
Langstone's breathing changed tempo. The table trembled. Rory stared between Langstone's legs, thick and as solid as an elephant's, at the half-open door to the cloister. The table grated on the floor. The bastard was trying to drag it away from the wall. Automatically Rory threw his weight against the table leg behind him.
There was a grunt. Then the side of the table nearer the door began to rise. Langstone was lifting it up. Rory's hands scrabbled for purchase.
And he touched something.
Something that wasn't made of stone or mahogany. He laid his hand over it. Something dry, angular and hard, equipped with extraordinary jagged edges, ridges, holes and protuberances. This part here, he thought, which was almost straight, was like the teeth of a saw blade.
Like teeth.
Fimberry's skull. The goat's head that had come in the post for Mr. Serridge, which Fimberry, governed by some strange sense of propriety, had deposited in the Ossuary, the place of the bones.
The table reared up and went over on its side with a thump that seemed to shake the foundations of the chapel. As it rose, Rory uncoiled his body and launched himself like an exploding jack-in-the-box at Langstone. Langstone gave ground, lifting the cosh as he did so.
Rory rammed the goat's skull into Langstone's face. The points of the two horns dug into the sockets of his eyes, tearing into soft tissue, jarring on bone.
Langstone shouted. He reeled back, slapping his hands over his face. Rory curled his right hand round one of the horns, raised the skull again and this time brought it down in a sweeping backhand arc. The other horn snapped on impact. Jagged fragments of bone raked through the skin of Marcus's cheek and ripped into the flesh beneath. Something pattered on the flagstones, like a flurry of sleet.
Goat's teeth?
Rory ran for the door. There was no one in the cloister. The electric lights were on and the windows were black mirrors. He stumbled over the uneven floor, pain shooting up his left leg from the ankle Langstone had hit with the cosh. He was only halfway down the cloister when he heard footsteps, boot heels slamming against the stones.
He glanced back. Langstone's face was a blur of blood, with a single eye and white flashes of teeth. Rory staggered on. From behind him came a laugh.
"It's locked," Langstone said.
Rory looked over his shoulder again. Langstone was swinging the cosh, breathing hard in a series of rhythmic snarls, blood trickling down his face and bubbling beneath his nostrils.
He heard another sound: metal moving on metal, a key turning in a lock.
The door to the outside world swung open. A current of cool air flowed through the cloister. Lydia Langstone was standing on the threshold. Her eyes widened when she saw him.
Rory gaped at her, his mouth open. "Run," he whispered. "Run."
She stepped closer to him, reached up and grabbed his tie. She yanked it as if it were a lead and he a reluctant dog. He plunged through the doorway and sprawled in a huddle of bruised limbs on the forecourt. He was still holding the remains of the goat's skull.
As if from a great distance he heard the sound of the key turning in the lock of the door.
For the second time that afternoon, Lydia hurriedly unlocked the door of 48 Rosington Place and pushed it open. She retrieved Rory, who was holding on to the railing beside the door and swaying gently, and towed him into the hall. She shut the door and slipped both bolts across. She turned to look at him.
He had propped himself against the wall; his eyes were closed and he was breathing fast and noisily through his mouth. He had a split lip and perhaps he had lost a tooth or two. Blood trickled over his chin and there were drops of it drying on his tie, his collar and shirt. Just below the left eye, the cheek glowed an angry red. She wondered what had happened to his raincoat and cap.
Lydia stooped and opened the letter flap. No one was within her range of vision. There was just enough light to see that Fimberry's keys were where she had left them, in the lock of the door to the cloister, preventing Marcus from unlocking the door from the inside. Marcus would have to find another way out or somehow raise the alarm--though in that case he might face awkward questions.
She stood up and looked again at Rory. His eyes were open now. He tried to say something but his words mingled with blood and spittle and emerged as an indistinguishable mumble.
"There's a lavatory with a basin at the end of the hall," Lydia said.
He tried his weight on his left leg, and winced. "Ankle," he said.
She knelt down in front of him and rolled up the trouser cuff. He grunted as she eased down the sock and probed the ankle with her fingers. She lifted the leg and moved the foot to and fro and from side to side.
"I think it's a sprain or bruising," she said, hoping she was right. "You'll have to lean on me and sort of hop if necessary."
"Second time," he muttered.
"What?" As she spoke, she realized he was trying to smile.
"Second time you've done this."
Come to the rescue?
She smiled. "We mustn't let it become a habit."
"I don't know." He paused, gathering energy. "You're rather good at it."
With her supporting him, he hobbled down the hall. He paused at the newel post to draw breath. She was surprised how heavy the weight of his arm over her shoulders became, and surprised at the racket they made in the silent house. He smelled of tobacco and faintly of mothballs, as though his clothes had been hanging too long in a wardrobe somewhere, as perhaps they had. The tweed of his sports jacket felt rough and stiff; off-the-peg stuff.
Once again they moved forward like a wounded crab, his arm still draped over her shoulders.
"Are you all right?" he said, his voice much clearer now.
"It's you I'm worried about."
"I didn't mean to--"
"Save your breath."
Rory was flagging badly. Step by step, they struggled onward. Lydia kicked open the lavatory door. She maneuvered him inside, lowered the cover over the pan, and sat him down. His breathing began to quieten. She turned on the Ascot and filled the basin with hot water. There were two damp hand towels on the rail. She used one as a flannel to bathe his face. The water in the basin turned a darker and darker shade of pink. He kept his eyes closed, and she examined the blue veins on the lids. It occurred to her with a little jolt of surprise that this was the first time in her life that she had ever washed anyone other than herself.
"How does your mouth feel?" she asked.
The eyes flickered open. "Like a battlefield."
"Have you lost any teeth?"
"I don't think so." He ran his tongue around the inside of his mouth. "One's chipped."
"You're going to have some bruising on your face. I'm not sure what to do about the ankle. Assuming it's a sprain, we take off the shoe, bandage it up and raise it on a stool or something. The trouble is--"
"No bandage, no stool," he said. "Also, if I take the shoe off I'm not sure I'm going to get it on again. Where are we? Is this where you work?"
"Shires and Trimble are two floors up. I think I'm going to have to get help. You can't walk out of here. You'll need a taxi. The problem is we don't want to get you out while Marcus might still be around."
He nodded. "And I'd better not go back to the flat."
"The others were going to Mecklenburgh Square."
"I know," he said absently. Then he looked sharply at her. "But you were with them, weren't you--Fenella and Dawlish? And that old chap who stood up and started shouting."
"Mr. Goldman. He's a jeweler in Hatton Garden."
"What happened?"
"We hid in here. The Biff Boys thought we'd had time to get away." She didn't mention Serridge, and how he and Howlett had lied to save them. It was an odd circumstance; it needed more thought.
"I think they planned to get me from the start," Rory said. "As soon as the row started at the back of the hall, a couple of them near the front made a beeline."
"I was afraid of that."
He glanced up at her, and his eyes were bright with intelligence. "Is that why you came? To warn me?"
"My sister told me Marcus was after you."
"I thought you wanted to avoid your husband."
She tried to ignore the embarrassment she felt. Rory was fiddling with a patch of grazed skin on his knuckles; perhaps he was embarrassed too. For a moment neither of them spoke.
At last he lifted his head. "Thank you. He arranged the attack outside the house the other night too." He hesitated. "A case of mistaken identity."
"I don't understand."
"I gathered from something your husband let slip that he thought I'd been--pestering you. He thought I was Fimberry."
"Poor Mr. Fimberry," Lydia said automatically. "But why?"
"He must have seen me in Fimberry's room when I was helping Mrs. Renton with the curtains. Has he always been like that? So--so possessive?"
"Yes." Lydia thought of the shocked and bloody face of the amorous subaltern at the hunt ball and Marcus's smirk when he threw the boy out of the house in front of Lydia and the servants. Desperate to change the subject, she said, "The other reason I wanted to see you was because of the typewriter." She was talking too quickly, and he was looking puzzled. "That's why I've got the key to this house. There's a cupboard on the landing upstairs outside our office, with an old typewriter inside. If you needed to use one over the weekend for your article, I thought you could use that. I know where they keep the key."
Rory stared at her as though seeing her for the first time. "You're very kind," he said slowly. "Thank you. But listen--there's something I need to tell you. I'm worried about your husband. He attacked me with a cosh."
"You're safe here."
"No--I'm worried about
him
. I had to fight back however I could. I used the goat's skull as a weapon. What happened to it?"
"It's still outside the chapel as far as I know. You dropped it. So you actually
attacked
him with it?"
"I jabbed it in his face. I may have poked it in his eye. Possibly both eyes."
"He didn't seem too badly damaged," Lydia said. "Judging by the way he was coming after you."
"I've never gone for anyone like that. Do you understand? It was like sinking down to their level. I--I didn't feel quite human anymore."
Lydia bit back the retort that Marcus had often had that effect on her too. "If it's any consolation, I doubt Marcus is worrying about the damage he did to you. What Marcus does has to be right. That's article one of his personal code."
He was staring at her. "You're a strange mixture."
"What you're thinking is that I'm bitter," she said. "I know it's not a very endearing trait but believe me that's what living with Marcus does to you."
At that moment it struck her that this was the strangest conversation to be having at this time and place, and with a man like Rory Wentwood. But she didn't care anymore, not about that sort of thing. She felt that she had earned the right to speak her mind. She thanked Marcus for that at least.
She turned away from Rory and examined her face in the mirror over the basin. After the events of the last few hours, she was surprised how respectable she looked. A trifle pale and a trifle shabby, she thought, but you could take me almost anywhere. Aloud she said, "I'd better go and tell Mr. Dawlish and Miss Kensley where you are. What's the house number in Mecklenburgh Square?"
"Fifty-three. You'll probably have to go down to the area door."
It was a relief to be dealing with practicalities again. Lydia warned Rory about the danger of showing a light. She gave him a cigarette and left him smoking it forlornly on the lavatory.
At the front door, she knelt to look through the letter box. The street lamp on the other side of the road was already alight. The muddy golden aura around the bulb holder was streaked with rain, and the roadway glistened with moisture. No one was about.
She let herself out of the house and ran over to the wicket gate in Bleeding Heart Square. On the way, a puddle caught her unawares, soaking her shoes and ankles. In the square there were lights in the windows of her father's sitting room and of the two ground-floor rooms--Mrs. Renton's and Mr. Fimberry's. As she approached the door of number seven, Mrs. Renton's curtain twitched.
Upstairs, the sitting-room door was ajar, and she heard her father's voice. He had a visitor.
Marcus?
She slipped across the landing and into her bedroom, where she opened the wardrobe as quietly as possible. She changed her stockings and shoes, found her umbrella and tiptoed back toward the stairs.
The sitting-room door opened.
"Lydia, my dear," Captain Ingleby-Lewis said. "There's someone else to see you. We're having quite a day, aren't we?"
The heartiness in his voice made her instantly suspicious.
Marcus? Please God, not now, not ever
. Her father's articulation was clearer than it usually was at this time of day, which suggested that he hadn't had as much to drink as usual.
"Mrs. Alforde dropped in. Come along."
Reluctantly, she allowed herself to be drawn into the room. Mrs. Alforde was sitting in the armchair near the fire, bolt upright, prim and respectable, still wearing her hat.
"There you are." She held up her cheek, inviting a respectful kiss. "And how are you?"
Lydia said she was very well but unfortunately she had to go out on an urgent errand. While she was speaking, she remembered the letter for her father this morning. So that was why the envelope and the handwriting had seemed familiar: the letter had been from Mrs. Alforde. In other words, there had been nothing accidental about this visit; it was by appointment. But what reason had Mrs. Alforde to get in touch with her father?
"Now, sit down, dear," Mrs. Alforde said firmly, as though addressing a recalcitrant retriever. "I know you're in a hurry but this won't take a moment."
"I really can't stay long." The oddities were adding up in her mind: the letter to her father, the cheek offered for a kiss, Mrs. Alforde's abstracted, even unfriendly behavior on the drive back from Rawling the other afternoon.
"Captain Ingleby-Lewis has been very worried," Mrs. Alforde said serenely. "He came to see me this afternoon and we put our heads together."
"The thing is, old girl," Ingleby-Lewis began, patting Lydia's arm, "one has to think of what's right and proper, eh? A woman's reputation is above rubies. Isn't that what they say?"
Mrs. Alforde quelled him with a glance. "The point is, dear, the Captain's very worried about your staying here. He feels quite rightly that it's not a suitable neighborhood for a lady."
"I'm not going back to Marcus," Lydia said. "My solicitor will be contacting him on Monday about a divorce."
Mrs. Alforde's eyes widened. "You don't let the grass grow under your feet. Neither Captain Ingleby-Lewis nor I are saying that you should go back to your husband, even though let's not rule out the possibility that perhaps in the long run you yourself may feel--"
"If I'm sure of one thing," Lydia interrupted, "it's that I'm not going back to Marcus. Ever. I thought I'd made that clear. And why."
She stared at Mrs. Alforde until the older woman looked away.
"Seems a nice enough chap to me," her father said. "Mind you, I'm not married to him, so I suppose I can't say." He smiled approvingly at Lydia. "You must do as you please. I like a girl who paddles her own canoe."
"William," Mrs. Alforde said quietly but with unmistakable menace. "Would you mind if I finished, as we discussed?"
"Of course not. Mustn't let my tongue run away with me, eh?"
"We are agreed that your living here is simply out of the question," Mrs. Alforde went on, with a hint of regality attached to her choice of personal pronoun. "But we accept that you don't want to go back to your husband. However, there is a simple solution. You must come and stay with Gerry and me while this tiresome legal business is sorted out. There's a perfectly good spare bedroom at the flat. It would be so much more--more comfortable for you. It's not as if we're strangers. After all, Gerry is your godfather and a sort of cousin too so it's quite suitable."
"But I'm living with my father," Lydia said. "Surely that's even more suitable?"
Mrs. Alforde stared at Captain Ingleby-Lewis, who sat up sharply, as though she had prodded him with a stick.
"My dear Lydia, Hermione--Mrs. Alforde--is quite in the right of it, I'm afraid. Much as I like having you here, it's not really ideal for either of us." He ran his finger around his collar. "I'm sorry, my dear--it's all agreed: you have to go."
Lydia stood up.
"What are you doing?" Mrs. Alforde asked.
"I'm going out," Lydia said. "I'm not sure when I'll be back."