Bleeding Heart Square Read Online Free PDF

have the room for nothing."
    Lydia opened her handbag and found her purse. "Would five pounds do for a start?"
    Her father nodded. He took the money and put it in his wallet. He stood up slowly. "I have to go out for a while. I'll leave you to it, shall I?"
    "I wonder...what about food?"
    "What about it? If you want to buy some, you'll find shops in Charleston Street. Or go across to Fetter Passage." He nodded to her and said, with a ghostly geniality that seemed to belong to a much younger, happier man, "Must dash. Au revoir, my dear."
    Lydia listened to him on the stairs. The door banged. She went to stand by the window. Captain Ingleby-Lewis walked slowly and carefully across the square and into the doorway of the Crozier. She waited a moment. From the windows of her father's room you could see the length of Bleeding Heart Square and, on the corner by the old pump, the alley leading past the pub to Charleston Street. On the right was the bulk of the chapel with its pinnacles dark against a sky the color of dirty cotton wool. If she craned her neck she had a glimpse of Rosington Place beyond, where the long, shabby terraces faced each other, cut off from the rest of London by the railings at the end and the lodge where the Beadle stood guard with his little dog. She shivered with a mixture of cold, fear and excitement.
    As she was about to turn back into the room she caught sight of the figure of a man standing in the alley near the Crozier. She expected him to go into the pub. But instead he stood looking from one end of Bleeding Heart Square to the other with leisurely attention, as though he were a sightseer. Automatically she stepped back so he would not be able to glimpse her face against the glass.
    She wondered idly who he was. Just a young man in a brown raincoat with a flat cap and a muffler round his neck. Perhaps a clerk of some sort or somebody who worked in a shop. One of the army of little people, as Marcus used to say, one of those who needed other people like Marcus to tell them what to do.

    The young man hurried out of the square and into Charleston Street, where he glanced up and down as if wary of pursuit. Half a dozen schoolgirls from St. Tumwulf's threaded their way around him. He began to walk rapidly east. Narton, who had been sheltering from the wind on the steps of the public library, crossed the road and followed. He calculated that he had nothing to lose and perhaps everything to gain.
    He caught up with his quarry in Farringdon Road. Maybe he was heading for the Tube station. Narton touched his shoulder, and the man swung round, alarm flaring in his eyes. He had a long bony face and the tip of his nose was red with cold.
    "Excuse me, sir. Can I have a word?"
    "What about? Who are you?"
    "My name's Narton, sir. Detective Sergeant Narton." He took out his warrant card and allowed the man a glimpse of it. "And you are?"
    "Me--oh, my name's..." He paused, and Narton wondered whether he was nerving himself to come up with a false name. "Wentwood. Roderick Wentwood."
    "You've got proof of that, have you, sir?"
    "Of course I have. Look, what is this about?"
    "Perhaps you could show me."
    Wentwood muttered something under his breath. He unbuttoned his overcoat and produced a worn brown wallet. Inside was a letter, addressed by hand to R. Wentwood, Esq., c/o Mrs. V. Rutter, 43 Plessey Street, Kentish Town, with a Hereford postmark.
    "All right?" Wentwood said. "Satisfied?"
    "No call for sarcasm," Narton said mildly. "Why don't we get out of this wind? I could do with a cup of something, and I dare say you could too."
    Wentwood's eyes darted to and fro. Maybe he wanted to make a break for it. Surely he wouldn't be so stupid?
    "I've done nothing wrong, you know."
    "I'm glad to hear it. Let's go and have that cup of tea, shall we?"
    The cafe was opposite the Dead Meat Market at Smithfield. Most of the other customers were men with bloodstained overalls. Narton ordered two teas, trying not to begrudge the