Free Bleeding Heart Square by Andrew Taylor Page B

dog."
    "You don't like him much, do you?" Lydia said.
    Her father held open the wicket for her. "It's not a question of liking or not liking. Howlett's a fact of life. You want to keep on his right side. Rosington Place and Bleeding Heart Square count as a private jurisdiction, you see. It's a sort of legal oddity--Fimberry knows all about it. In theory even the police can't come in unless they're invited."
    The door beside the chapel opened. They glanced toward the sound. A tall young man came out. Lydia caught her breath. He smiled and touched his hat to her before walking rapidly down Rosington Place toward the lodge.
    "Who's that fellow?"
    "I think his name's Wentwood, Father. He's interested in the attic flat. Mrs. Renton told him to come back today when Mr. Serridge is here."
    She stepped through the wicket. In Bleeding Heart Square, a man was standing at the entrance to the public bar of the Crozier and shouting at somebody inside. A mechanic working at the garage at the far end whistled at Lydia. There was a little pile of excrement, possibly human, in the angle between the gate and the pillar supporting it.
    Ingleby-Lewis followed her through the wicket and closed it carefully behind him, shutting out the seedy respectability of Rosington Place. "Serridge," he said thoughtfully. "Yes, he'll have to talk to him. And you haven't met Serridge, either, have you?"

    Later that morning, while she was tidying the shelves on the left of the fireplace in the sitting room, Lydia came across an old writing box. It was a portable writing desk, a solid mahogany affair, its corners reinforced with brass. When she lifted it onto the table to dust it, however, she discovered that it was less robust than it looked. The lid slid off and fell to the floor with a crash. At some point in the box's history, the hinges had been broken. The fittings inside had vanished as well.
    But the box wasn't empty. It held a jumble of pens, paper, pencils, envelopes and inks. The paper was no longer white but turning yellow and brittle with age. Some of the nibs were spotted with rust. Lydia's eyes rested on a small sheet of paper, blank apart from seven words at the top: I expect you are surprised to hear --
    She pushed aside the sheet. Underneath it was a sheet of foolscap with more writing on it, a long column of names--all of them the same: P. M. Penhow .
    There was a knock on the door. Lydia dropped the lid clumsily on top of the box. When she opened the door, she found Malcolm Fimberry standing very close to it on the other side. He stared at her through his pince-nez and smiled. His lips were moist and very brightly colored, almost red. He was trembling slightly.
    "Mrs. Langstone. I do hope I'm not disturbing you."
    "What is it?" Lydia said, knowing that she must sound rude. Mr. Fimberry was the sort of person to whom you found yourself being rude without meaning to be.
    "I heard the noise upstairs--I'm just beneath, you see--so I knew somebody was in. I thought perhaps Captain Ingleby-Lewis was here."
    "He's not, I'm afraid." Lydia realized that she was still carrying the cloth she had been using for dusting. "May I take a message?"
    "Yes--no--you see, it's rather delicate. I lent him ten shillings some time ago, and I wondered whether it was convenient for him to pay me back now. He...he said he would pay me at the end of the week--that was last month--but he must have forgotten, and after that when I happened to mention it, it wasn't convenient, but perhaps if you were to have a word with him..."
    He broke off and lowered his eyes. He seemed to be staring at her chest. She registered the fact that he hadn't shaved and that the stubble on his chin was more ginger than the hair on his head. She also saw that the breast pocket of his tweed jacket was in need of repair and that he hadn't changed his collar for some time.
    "It must have slipped my father's mind," she said. "I'll give you the money now."
    "Thank you, Mrs. Langstone, you are very