Bleeding Heart Square by Andrew Taylor

Author:Andrew Taylor [Taylor, Andrew]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Tags: Fiction, General, Mystery & Detective
ISBN: 9781401310141
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 2008-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

RAWLING MAN DIES

On Monday evening, police were called to a house in Rawling following an unexpected fatality. The dead man is believed to be Herbert Narton, the house’s owner.

Rory unfolded what was left of the newspaper on the flagstones. The masthead was still intact: The Mavering Advertiser & Weekly Herald. Serridge must have brought it back after his last visit to Rawling.

He sat back on his heels and whistled. Narton dead? It didn’t seem possible. The poor devil had seemed well enough on Saturday in that tea shop near the British Museum. He tore out the stop-press item and dumped the rest of the newspaper in the bin.

The poor bloody chap. He was sorry that Narton was dead, even though he hadn’t much liked the man. It must have been very sudden. A heart attack, perhaps. What would happen now? Would one of Narton’s colleagues get in touch?

It was then that the idea came into Rory’s mind. He emptied the contents of his own pail into the bin and went back up to his flat. He smoked a cigarette and thought about the idea and its implications.

Why not? What else had he got to do?

By the time he reached the fork in the path, it was nearly lunchtime and Rory was growing hungry. Instead of turning right, as he had before, he turned left onto the path that would bring him more quickly to the village and the Alforde Arms. The fields on either side were three or four feet above the level of the path and bordered with lank hedgerows. After a few hundred yards, he glimpsed roofs through a gap in the right-hand hedge. He stopped to look. A field sloped gently up to a huddle of trees. On their right was a group of farm buildings. The chimneys of a house were visible above the trees.

Morthams Farm?

Movement caught his eyes. He was just in time to see a boy running along the hedge bordering the field. How long had the boy been there? Was someone watching the watcher?

Unsettled, Rory continued along the path and came eventually to a narrow road with large, muddy fields on either side. He turned right, in the direction of the village. Almost immediately he saw the cottage, which stood by itself in an overgrown garden; the gate from the road had fallen from its hinges and was lying on the verge, and the roof of a small lean-to building at the end had lost many of its slates. But a trickle of smoke rose from somewhere behind the house.

He paused by the gateway. Behind the strip of garden was a neglected orchard. A tall, gaunt woman was standing with her back to him among the trees, tending a bonfire. Despite the cold, she was wearing only a long, thin cotton dress with a faded floral print, covered with a stained apron.

‘Good morning,’ he called.

For a moment he thought the woman hadn’t heard him. He was about to repeat the greeting when she turned away from the fire.

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