You do not reply. You want to remind him what he’s done, what he’s made you do.
“And then that skull-you should get your head examined, my girl.”
This jolts an answer out of you: “I didn’t send you a skull.”
“Someone did.” He lunges toward you as if about to envelop you in a bear hug. You force yourself not to step back into the house. He looks down into your face and you stare back at him. The hall light shows the reddening nose and the broken veins.
“I saved your life,” he says. “Remember what would have happened if I’d told them the truth. Even if they hadn’t hanged you, they’d have locked you up and thrown away the key.”
The truth is that you didn’t mean to do it. The truth is that you were trying to save Joseph Serridge. The truth is never enough.
Philippa Penhow no longer looks like herself. Eyes and mouth gaping, arms outstretched, she drops her handbag and rushes into the barn. You scream and topple away from Joseph Serridge. He swears at Philippa Penhow, but the strangest thing of all is that he’s smiling. He is enjoying this: the two women fighting over him.
Philippa Penhow has picked up a brick from the corner of the barn. She isn’t fighting you: she’s trying to hit Joseph Serridge with it. You didn’t think she could be so strong. He’s not smiling anymore. He’s writhing, this way and that, encumbered by the trousers round his knees and the folds of his overcoat. She swings the brick at his face, misses, and hits his shoulder instead. He yelps with pain. She raises the brick again, in both hands. She is standing on a fold of the overcoat and her weight pins down one of his arms and prevents him from rolling away. He tries to raise the other arm to shield himself but he will be too late.
One small woman, one big man.
You throw yourself forward, knocking Philippa Penhow off balance. Her hat falls off. You struggle with her for the brick. She is stronger than she looks, stronger than she should be. You bite down on her hand and she cries out. You wrest the brick from her and raise it in your hands. She is reaching for another brick. You smash your own against the side of her head, into the wispy hair just above the ear. A corner of the brick bites into her, flinging her down onto the pile, onto another brick. You hit her again. The bricks squeeze her head like a pair of nutcrackers squeezes a walnut.
You do it to save Joseph Serridge. You do it for him.
“I saved you,” he repeats. “I dealt with everything. Ever since then I’ve had people whispering about me behind my back.” He grins at you, delighted with his own wit. “I did it all for you.”
“I hate you,” you say.
His smile broadens. “It’s over. Live and let live, eh?”
“Where is she?”
“None of your business. By the way, why the devil didn’t you leave the handbag at Waterloo? That was the plan. Then people would have thought she’d caught a train somewhere. It would have helped.”
“I burned it on the range instead.”
“Was her diary in it? I forgot it had a side pocket. There’s just a chance it was in there. Did you look?”
“No.”
For the first time he looks worried, as well he should. Because anyone who reads the diary will know who was really responsible for Philippa Penhow’s death. Joseph Serridge kills without lifting a hand.
“I’ve looked everywhere at the farm for it.” He stares at you and then shrugs. “You’re sure you burned the handbag?”
You nod.
“Then there’s nothing more to say. It’s over, understand? No more little surprises in the post or anywhere else. If I were you I’d marry that young man of yours and go as far from London as you can.”
“I don’t want to marry anyone,” you say. “Ever.”
He shrugs again and walks away without saying goodbye. Glancing down, you see that your foot has nudged the brown canvas bag holding your father’s upholstery tools. You stoop and take out the long needle, eighteen inches of steel with a champagne cork at either end for safety. Daddy never used it. You remove one of the corks.
You follow Joseph Serridge down the path. He is already climbing into his car. He hears the sound of the latch on the gate behind him and turns, half in and half out of the car.
“What is it?”
You bring the needle up in an underarm blow that catches him under the ribs. It goes in a good four or five inches. But nothing seems to happen. He stands there, frozen, neither in nor out of the car. It is too dark to see his face clearly. You pull out the needle and thrust it in again, this time harder, gripping the end with the cork in both hands. The tip jars against bone, then dives deeper. He sinks back into the car and makes a contented sound, as if he has slumped into an armchair by the fire after a long walk.
You can’t leave him there. You look up and down the road. You look up at the windows of the houses on either side. You lift up the leg that is still outside the car. It bends at the knee. You push it in. You open the opposite door and try to pull him over the seats. But he’s such a big man, so heavy. You haul his head and shoulders into the passenger side of the car but his legs remain on the driver’s side. You take off one of his shoes and manage to get his left leg past the gear lever and over to the passenger side. There’s nothing you can do about the right leg, which remains obstinately in the well below the steering wheel.
You shut the door and leave him there while you return to the house and change your slippers for rubber-soled shoes. You fetch your coat, hat, handbag and Aunt Philippa’s diary. Soon the pair of you are driving down Haverstock Hill. You adjust to the unfamiliar car and its controls very quickly. The spare leg keeps getting in the way of the pedals but somehow you manage. You reach Camden Town and your sense of achievement grows. On and on you go, more or less in a straight line. You know the way because you walked here the other night, mile after mile, when you left Serridge’s heart hanging from the pump by the pub.
As you turn into Holborn, a patroling policeman glances incuriously at you. You thread your way through the streets until at last you see the brightly lit windows of the Crozier. The pub is painted purple, like a slab of meat, like a bleeding heart.
You turn into the alley. When you reach the square, you drive around it, sweeping it with the headlights. No one is out, but there are lights in the two ground-floor windows of number seven.
You park by the pump and put on the handbrake. The engine stalls and the car bucks. You look at Joseph Serridge. The light from the pub reflects in one glassy eye. You get out of the car and reach into the back for your handbag. You open it and take out the diary. You have come to your decision about it. You drop the diary on the driver’s seat and close the car door. You walk toward Charleston Street.
The pub door slams behind you. There are footsteps. You glance back, ready to run.
“Hello-ello,” a man says. “It’s my old friend Joe. Shake a leg, old boy. They’re calling last orders.”
The old man is very drunk. He’s looking at the car. He hasn’t even seen you standing behind him.
He opens the passenger door and pats Serridge’s head. “Come on, old man, rise and shine. I say-you’re a bit squiffy, eh?”
You walk quietly out of Bleeding Heart Square and into the gray sprawl of the city under a sky without any stars.
About the Author
Andrew Taylor is the award-winning author of numerous novels. His first novel won the John Creasey Award, and he has also been shortlisted for the Gold Dagger and the Edgar. The only author to receive the CWA Ellis Peters Historical Dagger Award twice, Taylor lives in England.
