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 glass, 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 Monkshill 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 snatch of baby talk-and she comes running back into his arms again. But not long now. You are counting the days.

“Now look here, Byrne. What’s it to you?”

Mr. Byrne, who had been sweeping sawdust, propped his broom against the wall of the Crozier and put his hands on his hips. He scowled at Serridge. “It’s next to my pub. That’s what it’s got to do with me.”

“It’s not there now.”

“But it was. And having that bloody disgusting thing hardly a yard from the door is hardly going to encourage trade, is it?”

Rory waited on the doorstep of number seven.

“I shouldn’t think it would have much effect one way or the other,” Serridge said coldly. “It’s not your pump. It belongs to the freeholders.”

“I’m a ratepayer, aren’t I?” Mr. Byrne had leaned forward, unmistakably hostile. His bald head was like a blunt instrument. “My old woman nearly had a fit when she saw what them birds were pecking at.”

“Don’t see why. She hangs out bacon rind for the bloody blue tits.”

“That’s not the same-anyone can see that. Look, someone round here is off his head. And the label had your name on it, Mr. Serridge-you remember that.”

Serridge stood there, not giving an inch either literally or metaphorically. His overcoat was open and his hands were deep in his trouser pockets; he had a cigar in the corner of his mouth and his hat on the back of his head. He looked like a farmer confronting an irritable porker.

“None of your bloody business,” he said with an air of finality. “You’re just the brewery’s tenant.”

At the sound of Rory’s footsteps, the other men glanced toward him.

But the porker wasn’t so easily put off. “You’ve been having quite a little problem with these hearts, I’m told,” Byrne said to Serridge, and as he spoke he came half a pace closer. “Parcels in the post from what I hear.”

“Who told you that?” Serridge snapped.

“The Captain.”

“And you believed him? I thought you had more sense.”

“I believed him because he was telling the truth, Mr. Serridge. And what interests me is why haven’t you been to the police about it? I mean, somebody’s making a nuisance of themselves. And maybe somebody’s trying to tell you something.”

“Nonsense.”

Rory had reached the corner now and was skirting the two men by the pump. He was on his way to the Central Library, where they had a back file of Berkeley’s. Later, in the afternoon, he wanted to practice his shorthand skills. He wouldn’t have much time in the evening because he was meeting Dawlish for a drink.

“Hey, there-Mr. Wentwood. You know about these hearts, don’t you?”

“Which hearts?”

“The ones that Mr. Serridge here has been getting in the post.”

Serridge turned toward Rory, towering over him, his face impassive. He didn’t need to say anything.

“I’m afraid I can’t help you, Mr. Byrne,” Rory said. “I don’t look at Mr. Serridge’s post. Only my own.”

“Because he knows it’s none of his business,” Serridge said, turning back to Byrne. “He’s not a fool, unlike some I could mention.”

There was a crack as the latch rose on the gate from Rosington Place. The wicket opened and Nipper scampered into Bleeding Heart Square, followed by Howlett.

“Morning, gents. I thought I heard your voices.”

“Mr. Howlett,” Byrne began. “It’s got to stop.”

“What has?”

“We’ve got someone with a nasty mind playing pranks around here. It’s not nice. If my little girl had seen what was left on the pump this morning, it would have given her nightmares.”