The Vault

twenty

THE DAY OF REST started restfully enough. Peter Diamond remained horizontal until about nine, when Raffles the cat started hunting in the bed, the quarry being human toes and the toes at serious risk of getting clawed in the process. The Diamonds had invented the game when Raffles was a kitten. They had got some good entertainment simply by wriggling their toes. Raffles was fully grown now, still more than willing to play kitten games with a set of claws that would not have disgraced a leopard. This cat, and perhaps all cats who ever chanced upon a set of bare toes, treated them as separate entities unconnected with the owner. Under a winter duvet there had been some protection, but this was heat-wave weather and the Diamonds slept with a cotton sheet loosely over them. An uncovered foot was irresistible to Raffles.

The man who held Manvers Street in thrall moaned in submission, rolled out of bed, put on his moccasins, padded downstairs and opened a tin of Whiskas.

In twenty minutes, he was showered, dressed and off to the paper shop. Sunday might be a day off, but he was curious to see whether Ingeborg's story had made the front page.

It was there in a banner headline with the word "Exclusive" printed over it in red:

FRANKENSTEIN FRESH BONES HORROR

He scanned it rapidly, not expecting much correspondence with the facts. "Fresh" was hardly the word for those dusty bits of skeleton that had been lying in a box in Chippenham nick since 1986. Broadly, however, the paper had got the story right, dressed up as it was with horror movie trappings and sensational writing. He was styled as "Bath's burly Murder Supremo". He could live with that. Was it Ingeborg's phrase, he wondered, or dreamed up by a sub-editor?

Strolling home in the sunshine, he planned his day. Nothing strenuous in this weather. The garden would benefit from some water after so many days of sun-if he could summon up the energy to unroll the hose. First, he would cook a good breakfast and tempt Steph downstairs with the world's most potent appetizer, the whiff of fried bacon.

But when he turned the corner she was standing at the front gate in her dressing gown, extraordinary behaviour for Steph. Her strained, anxious expression was alarming enough, and she was also signalling to him to hurry. A series of potential disasters raced through his mind: someone in the family had died; the kitchen was on fire; the tank had burst and flooded the house. He ran the last yards.

"What's up, love?"

"They called from Manvers Street. John Wigfull has been attacked."

"Attacked? What? How come?"

"A head injury, they said. Someone found him in a field this morning."

"What-dead?"

"He was alive when they called, but it sounds bad. He's unconscious, in intensive care in the RUH. They need you, Pete."

"They'll get me."

Driving in from Weston, still dressed in his Sunday casuals, he was at a loss to understand, seesawing between anger and guilt. What in the name of sanity had Wigfull been doing, to get attacked in a field? The last he had seen of him was driving out of the nick on Saturday, the cue for some unkind comments that had to be regretted now. "He thinks he's the dog's bollocks." What a tribute to a wounded colleague. What an epitaph, if it came to that.

Because the Royal United Hospital was on his side of town, he drove straight into the Accident and Emergency reserved parking. Inside A &. E, they sent him to another section. He stepped out along the corridor, breathing in the sick-sweet air that you only ever find in hospitals. There was a Sunday morning indolence about the place. No sign of a doctor. Smokers in dressing gowns and slippers stood in the small courtyards between the wards. Then a set of swing doors ahead burst open and a patient on a trolley was wheeled towards Diamond, with nurses walking at speed to keep up, holding containers connected by tubes.

He moved aside, his back to the wall, and caught a glimpse of a dead-white face, half-bandaged, the comical, overgrown moustache caked with blood. It was Wigfull. They rushed him by.

Diamond had not fully believed until this moment. The shock gripped him. He stood rigidly long after the trolley had been hurrried through another set of doors. Someone in a white coat passing the other way asked if he needed help. He shook his head and left the building.

AT MANVERS Street, the desk sergeant told him the Assistant Chief Constable wanted him in her office.

"What for?" he snapped, targeting his troubled emotions on the first hapless person within range. "I know sod all of what's going on."

Georgina, grim-faced, was on the phone when Diamond arrived upstairs. She beckoned him in. He strode across to the window and stared out, knowing he ought to compose himself before saying anything.

From this end of the conversation, he gathered she was getting the latest from the hospital. The back of Wigfull's skull was impacted and more X-rays were being taken. He was still unconscious. The ACC asked what his chances were. Her reaction to the answer was more than Diamond wanted to know.

She put down the receiver. This was a hard emotional test for her as well. She let out a long breath, closed her eyes for some few seconds, then said in a low voice, "We're not to expect anything except bad news."

He had to say something, and it sounded trite to the point of callousness. "He's survived a few hours, anyway."

She added, "There's a grace period, if I've got the term right. The shock to the nervous system puts everything on hold. The real crisis comes after."

Still Diamond found himself taking refuge in platitudes. "In all my time here, we've never had an officer killed."

"Was he investigating the woman found in the river?"

"Peg Redbird, yes."

"Wasn't she beaten about the head?"

"That's right."

"Do you know who John Wigfull was seeing yesterday?"

"No, ma'am." He was going to add, "Your orders," but wisely held back the words.

"We must find out from his team. I suppose he got too close to the truth and panicked the killer."

Diamond said nothing about that. If she wanted to speculate, fine. He would wait a bit.

Georgina was making a huge effort to sound rational, in control. "I don't attach any blame to you, Peter. It was my decision to put him in the front line, though I didn't expect this." She sighed and looked away. Then she turned and prepared to speak to him, folding her arms decisively.

Diamond had a fair idea what was coming.

"I'm going to ask you-instruct you-to drop whatever you were doing and take this on."

"Find the scum who clobbered him?"

:r "Yes. For God's sake, don't take any risks. There's real dangei out there. Don't do anything without back-up. John Wigfull must have been alone when he was attacked."

"Where was he found exactly?"

"In a cornfield near Stowford. Do you know it?"

He knew Stowford, but he did not understand. So far as he could remember, the place was out in the country, a picture postcard setting beside the River Frome, a few ancient farm buildings converted to holiday houses and craft workshops. One Sunday afternoon a couple of summers ago he had driven there with Steph and sat in a rickety chair in the farmhouse garden and put away an unforgettable cream tea. But what could have taken Wigfull out there? Cream teas were not his scene at all. "It's on the A366, near Farleigh Hungerford."

"I couldn't even find it on the map," Georgina admitted.

"There isn't much there. He was in a field, you said?"

"A woman walking her dog across a footpath found him, or the dog did. This was early this morning, 6.30. His warrant card was in his pocket. Trowbridge Police notified us."

"So the scene is secured?"

"Yes, and being searched."

Diamond skimmed through the possibilities. "He had Joe Dougan in the frame for Peg Redbird's murder."

"The American?" This ACC was right up with events.

"You've met this man, haven't you? Did he strike you as dangerous?"

"You can't tell. He's under stress. His wife is missing."

"No reason to attack a police officer."

"Unless John Wigfull is right and he really has something to hide."

"You'd better check his movements yesterday."

He cast his thoughts back. "And there was someone else Wigfull planned to see, someone he didn't rate as a suspect because he was supposedly friendly with Peg. He told me the name. Peg Redbird's assistant. Ellison? No, Ellis. Ellis was the first name. Ellis Somerset. He meant to talk to Ellis Somerset."

"You'll check him, too?"

"Of course."

"The other business, the bones in the vault, had better be given to someone else."

"Keith Halliwell is on it already."

"Can he handle all the hassle from the media?"

"He handles me, ma'am."

He left the room to go down and talk to Wigfull's team, his emotions still churned up. Years of despising the man could not be shrugged off because of the attack. Everyone in Manvers Street knew of the bitterness between them. Yet when a colleague is seriously injured, the entire police force stands together, outraged, committed to finding the attacker. He cared about Wigfull as a brother officer, and there was something more that he would not have admitted until now. For all the feuding, there had evolved a recognition of each other's way of working amounting-on the better days-to something like respect, though sugared by amusement. The image of his old antagonist, bleeding and unconscious, being wheeled past in the hospital, was not amusing. It would stay in his mind.

He found Sergeant Leaman at Wigfull's desk, going through the diary. They wasted no words on the sense of shock they both felt. Diamond said simply that he had been asked to inquire into the incident. "What I need from you is Mr Wigfull's itinerary."

"That's what I was trying to find, sir. There's no entry for yesterday afternoon or evening."

"That's unlike him."

"Yes, he took a lot of care about procedures. I mean he takes a lot of…" The sergeant's words trailed away in embarrassment.

"Didn't he tell you his plans? I saw him drive out of here some time pretty close to two o'clock. He wasn't going home."

"How do you know, sir?"

Diamond backed off a little. He wasn't going to talk about a gut feeling. "We both know he's a workaholic, don't we?"

Leaman gave a faint smile. No one in Wigfull's team ever spent much time in the canteen.

Diamond thought of another angle. "His car. Have the Trow-bridge Police found his car?"

"Not to my knowledge, sir. I don't suppose they know what he drives."

His measured calm hit an obstruction. "It's our bloody business to tell them. What is it? I ought to know. I was in it the other day."

"A red Toyota Corolla, sir."

"Send out an alert, then. Have them check the farm at Stow-ford. That won't take five minutes. The damned car can't be far from the field unless he was driven there by his attacker. Get someone onto it."

While Leaman organized that, Diamond picked up the diary and leafed through it, sifting possibilities at near computer speed.

He said to Leaman when he returned, "This murder case was the biggest thing to come his way this year. He'd have cancelled his weekend. Yours, too, I reckon. How was he using you?"

Leaman said he had been collating witness statements, to get a picture of Peg Redbird's final hours. It had been an absorbing task. Not much had passed between Wigfull and him all morning.

"Didn't he say anything at all before he left?"

"About where he was going? No, sir."

"About anything?"

Leaman frowned, trying to remember. "He looked over my shoulder at the screen and asked if any new names had come up."

"People Peg Redbird met?"

"Yes. I said there was nothing he didn't know already. He asked me to leave a print-out on his desk."

"So he was coming back later in the day?"

"I thought so at the time."

"And you did as instructed?"

"Yes, sir. The print-out is still here."

"So we have this almighty gap between two p.m. Saturday and six thirty this morning when he was found in the cornfield. Let's assume he went to interview a witness, someone who visited Peg the day she died. The names are here, are they?" He picked the print-out off the desk.

"It's chronological," Leaman explained. "Starting Thursday morning. She was seen leaving the shop at ten a.m. by Miss Barclay, a neighbour. At ten oh five, she buys a pint of milk from a shop in Walcot Street."

"Cut to the chase," Diamond said. "Who came into Noble and Nude?"

"The first caller we know about is Ellis Somerset, who helps in the shop."

Diamond was all attentiveness. "Go on."

"He turned up about one thirty, after lunch."

"That's still lunch in my book."

Leaman looked for a hint of a smile and wasn't treated to one. Diamond's humour was difficult to read under any circumstances.

"Do you have a statement from Mr Somerset?"

"Yes, sir. He looked after the shop while Peg went up to Camden Crescent for a valuation. He was there for much of the afternoon. He's our main source."

"Who took the statement?"

"DC Paul."

"Did anyone follow it up?"

"Not yet, unless…"

Diamond gave an approving nod. Leaman didn't need to say it. Wigfull may well have decided on a personal meeting with Ellis Somerset. Perhaps he wanted it off the record, which would explain why it wasn't in the diary. "I'll catch up with Somerset shortly. And what about this valuation? Who was that for?"

"A Mr Pennycook, the nephew of Simon Minchendon, who died recently. It was in the local paper."

"Has anyone spoken to Pennycook?"

"He lives in Brighton."

"Yes, but has anyone-"

"The Brighton police took a statement, sir. It's on the computer if you want to read it."

"Have you?" Sitting in front of the screen was not Diamond's idea of police work.

"Yes, sir."

"Anything startling in it?"

Sergeant Leaman shook his head. "Except that Brighton have him down as a druggie."

"Crack?"

"H."

Diamond vibrated his lips. A drugs-related motive always had to be taken seriously.

He studied the print-out again. "Some time between three and four Professor Dougan arrives in the shop. This is while Somerset is in charge, right?"

"Yes, sir. He spends some time looking around. He's still there when Peg returns from Camden Crescent about four-thirty in the afternoon."

"So you now have three people helping you with your inquiries into the murder, so to speak: Somerset, Pennycook and Dougan. Any others?"

"No, sir. Other customers came into the shop, but we don't have their names."

"We're stuck with the ones on the list, then. Pennycook lives a hundred miles away. Dougan has been put through the grinder several times already. Putting myself in John Wigfull's shoes yesterday afternoon, I'd have Ellis Somerset top of my visiting-list."

THE ANTIQUES Fair was into its third day at the Assembly Rooms. Diamond and Leaman arrived there thanks to a tip-off from a neighbour of Somerset's in Brock Street. "Ellis is something to do with the committee," they were told. "He'll be there all day, parading up and down. Look for the chappie in the bow-tie and brothel-creepers and a hideous coloured suit."

True, Ellis Somerset stood out, even among the colourful crowd who tour the country with the antiques fairs. His carroty hair would have made you look twice, regardless of the mustard yellow three-piece.

He said in a carrying voice that half the room must have heard, "This is over-egging the cake, isn't it? Two visits from the Bill in two days."

Just what Diamond wanted to know.

"You saw another officer yesterday?"

"He didn't precisely say he was from the police, but you can tell. The fellow stood out like a camel in a horse race. Large moustache-"

Diamond cut him short. "Was this in the afternoon?"

"Shortly after lunch."

"In here?"

"We went for a cup of tea."

"What a good idea."

"But I'm supposed to be on hand to answer questions," Somerset mildly protested after being escorted to the tea-room.

"Which you are," said Diamond. "First question: do you take sugar? Second: did you smash the policeman's head in?"

Somerset rocked back in his chair, giving the table a kick that spilt tea across it. Any interrogator knows the trick of going straight for the jugular. It gets a reaction. The difficult part is to pick out the signs of guilt.

He was losing most of the colour from his cheeks and the effect did not sit well with the mustard suit. "What the blazes do you think I am-a psychopath?"

"Would you answer me?"

"No, I do not attack policemen and I protest in the strongest terms at being asked such a question." A little of the colour seeped back as he went on the offensive.

"Drink some of that tea, sir," Diamond suggested. "Did Chief Inspector Wigfull ask you about your employer, Miss Redbird?"

"My 'emphyer'?” He spoke the word as if it was distasteful. "Peg was a friend, a very dear friend, as it happens. I helped out in the shop from time to time on a voluntary basis. I explained all this yesterday afternoon." He spread his hands, looking to Sergeant Leaman for a more sympathetic hearing, but Leaman was poker-faced.

"I'm sure you did, sir," Diamond answered. "My difficulty is that John Wigfull is lying in the Royal United with his head stoved in. We don't know what you told him because he can't speak to us."

Ripples appeared on Somerset's smooth facade. "The man who was here yesterday?"

"He came to talk to you about a murder and now he's critically wounded himself."

"Surely you can't believe I…?" His voice trailed off as the seriousness of his position sank in.

"Where did you spend the rest of yesterday? What time did you leave the Antiques Fair?"

Somerset clawed at his red hair distractedly. "When it closed, at six."

"And then?"

"I had a drink in Shades Wine Bar with a couple of friends for twenty minutes and then I walked home."

"How did you spend the evening?"

"Reading a book."

"You didn't go out again? Saturday night and you stayed in?"

"Officer, if you'd spent most of the day on your feet at an antiques fair, you'd be glad of a quiet evening." Then a thought struck him and he became more animated. "There was a man he was asking about, an American who came into the shop while I was looking after it. That's who your inspector friend was interested in."

Diamond heard this without surprise. "What were you able to tell him?"

Seizing the chance to deflect attention from himself, Somerset answered, "That the American was with us a long time on Thursday afternoon. An hour and a half to my certain knowledge, and probably longer. Some of the time he was waiting for Peg to come back. He insisted on seeing her personally and would not be put off when I told him she was out doing a valuation. He went off upstairs, rooting around the shop. To tell you the truth, I'd clean forgotten about him by the time Peg finally came back. Rather embarrassing actually. I introduced them and then went out myself to organize some transport. She'd bought a few things up at Camden Crescent and wanted them collected."

Diamond glanced towards Leaman. "I wish I had friends like that."

"I wouldn't do it for everyone," said Somerset. "Peg was special."

"More than just a friend, you said?"

All his colour returned now, and more. "That is not what I said. I referred to her as a very dear friend. We respected each other."

His face was making a stronger statement. He had been smitten. Diamond would put money on it. The friendship may not have amounted to an affair, but not through want of passion on Somerset's side.

"So what did you do? Hire a van and collect these antiques from Camden Crescent?"

"Exactly that. Some small bits of furniture and a few pots and pictures."

"Valuable?"

"Peg seemed well satisfied."

"That's ducking my question. You're an antiques man yourself, Mr Somerset. Were these items going to make her a tidy profit?"

"Listen, officer, profit is a taboo word in the antiques trade. We talk about everything else under the sun, but we don't mention our mark-up."

"Was it quality stuff?"

"Peg wouldn't have bought rubbish. The pots were all right. Furniture so-so. She was more excited about the paintings. She insisted on unloading them from the van herself. A couple of watercolours. Not my field at all. You have to specialise. She thought she'd found a pair of Blakes."

"Sextons?"

"I beg your pardon."

"Sexton Blakes. Fakes. Rhyming slang. That fellow who became a celebrity on the strength of his forgeries. He called them his Sextons. What was his name?"

"Tom Keating," said Somerset. "I'm with you now. No, the Blake I referred to was genuine enough. The mystic, poet and engraver, William Blake."

Diamond dredged deep into his memory and brought up a fragment from an English class in his grammar school one sunny afternoon when he would rather have been out on the school field. He could hear Mr Yarrow speaking the words: " 'Tyger.' tyger! burning bright'?

"The same," said Somerset with a sniff.

"And was it good to find a pair of Blakes?"

"Spectacularly good, if that's what they were, and I can't believe we were wrong. Blake's style was so individual that one couldn't confuse it with anyone else."

"You seem knowledgable."

"A specialist wouldn't think so."

With that satisfying sense of things slotting into place, Diamond remembered meeting a specialist only a day or two before. Councillor Sturr had boasted of owning one of the best collections of English watercolours. Hadn't a Blake been the main attraction of those insipid daubs on the wall of the Victoria Gallery?

He returned to the main business. "You told all this to John Wigfull yesterday, right?"

"I believe I did, yes."

"Was there anything he asked in particular? Anything we haven't covered?"

"He kept on and on about the American professor. By the time we finished I was wrung dry."

"Did you tell him anything useful?"

"I haven't the faintest idea."

"Fair enough. Dumb question. Have you told me everything you told him?"

"Just about."

"When you got back from Camden Crescent on Thursday evening, was Professor Dougan still there?"

"No, he'd left by then."

"What time was this?"

"About eight, I suppose. Peg was expecting him back, though. There was this early nineteenth century writing box on her desk that he was extremely keen to buy. I don't know why. It had been gathering dust in the shop for donkey's years. The key was missing-or so Peg claimed." A thin smile fleetingly surfaced.

Alerted, Diamond leaned forward. "What are you saying- that she had the key all the time?"

"You can't blame her. She wanted to get the best price she could for the goods."

"Are you telling me she unlocked the box after Dougan left?"

"It was open when I first got back. I expect she wanted to see what was inside. A private look, while the professor was away. If he was so keen, there could have been something valuable inside, couldn't there? She'd have been daft to part with it without checking."

"And was there anything in it?"

"Nothing she was telling me about."

Diamond digested this. If Joe Dougan could be believed, the box had been locked when he returned to the shop after having dinner with his wife. In Peg's absence, he had spent more time fruitlessly trying keys. If he could be believed. This part of his story could so easily be a cover-up.

Suppose, instead, Dougan had returned to Noble and Nude and found Peg there, with the box open, its secrets revealed. Here was a scenario for violence: Peg setting an impossibly high price, or even refusing to sell. Dougan, crazed by the prize being snatched away, striking out.

"Did you tell Chief Inspector Wigfull what you just told us, about the box being open?"

"Yes, that came up in the questions."

"You said the box was open when you first got back. Did it get locked again?"

"It was still open when I left."

"What time was that? Before Dougan returned?"

"Oh, yes," said Somerset. "I finished unloading the van by nine and then I was off."

"Off where?"

He frowned, not liking the shift in the questioning. "To Brock Street, where I live."

"In the van?"

"Yes. It was due for return by eight the next morning."

"So you parked it overnight. Where?"

"In Brock Street. There are spaces by that time."

"Did you speak to anyone? Is there a neighbour or someone who can vouch for you being home at that time?"

"Did you make any phone calls?" Leaman sensibly asked.

Now Somerset gave a nervous, angry sigh. "No, I don't have an alibi. You'll just have to take my word for it. I was Peg's devoted friend. I wouldn't have harmed her in a million years." Just to confirm it, a tear rolled down his cheek and made a dark spot on the yellow suit. "I'm sorry. This is all too much."

Diamond would be the judge of that. He was not finished yet. "You left by nine, you say. She was still in the shop, is that right?"

"Yes."

"Expecting a second visit from Professor Dougan?"

"Not only him. She had other business to attend to."

"Other business?" Diamond repeated the words in a more animated tone. Somerset had spoken them like a dirge.

"She already had a buyer for those watercolours I mentioned. She'd been on the phone and expected an offer the same evening."

"Who from?"

"She wouldn't say. She was being mysterious about it. To tell you the truth, I was more than a little upset. She made it sound like an assignation."

"A what?"

He hesitated, needing to swallow before the words would come. "As if she was meeting a… lover. She was being mischievous, trying to make me jealous. Her exact words-I remember them clearly-were 'I'm expecting an offer tonight, if that doesn't sound indelicate.' "

"How did you react?"

"I was too hurt to speak. I know she was only playing with words, but they were meant to wound, and I didn't care for that one bit."

"You don't have any idea who she meant?"

"You're not expecting me to point the finger at someone?"

"Come on, Mr Somerset," Diamond said, his patience snapping. "This isn't junior school. Your friend was murdered and dumped in the river."

He was still reluctant to speak. He swallowed deeply and took a look around the room. "I could be mistaken. The only serious collector of English watercolours I know in Bath is John Sturr. But he's a well respected figure in the city. He's on the Council."

Diamond heard this without surprise. He had got there five minutes before, from personal knowledge. But it was still an intriguing link-up. "Would you cast your mind back and tell me exactly what Peg said about this deal she was setting up?"

"I just did."

"You repeated one sentence that you found hurtful. I want to know what else she said, about the paintings and the client."

"That's not easy."

"Try."

"Well, she talked about the subject matter, how it seemed to be straight out of Frankenstein."

"You're serious?" This added an extra dimension. Diamond was beginning to feel plagued by the wretched monster.

"Peg was convinced of it and she convinced me. She knew the book, and she'd brought back a copy from the library. One of the pictures was the meeting of Frankenstein and the monster in a Swiss valley and the other was Frankenstein discovering his bride had been killed, with the monster staring through the window. Incidents straight out of the book."

Diamond said, "I remember seeing a film-"

"Forget it," Somerset cut him short. "The cinema versions of Frankenstein are a travesty. They make the monster out to be brain-damaged, an unmitigated villain. I've been reading the book again. It's Frankenstein, the creator, who is the true villain. The monster isn't inherently evil. He is driven to cruelty by Frankenstein's neglect and bad treatment. He's deprived of a soul, a friend, a love. It's a very modern story in that sense. A terrible upbringing warps the poor creature's development."

"He needed a social worker to straighten him out," said Diamond, too flippantly, but Somerset did not react.

"They even get the make-up wrong. He's said to be grotesque, yes, but not like the Boris Karloff version. Mary Shelley's creature has lustrous black hair that flows, and fine, white teeth. Instead of those dark pitted eye sockets you see in all the films, his were white. True, the lips are said to be black and the skin yellowy, but I'm sure the author wouldn't have recognised most of the screen versions you see."

"You think she would have recognised the monster in the paintings?"

"I'm certain of it."

"Blake and Frankenstein," Diamond mused. "It's a connection I hadn't made."

Somerset took this as a literary observation. "I was rather caught off-guard myself when Peg showed me the pictures. Think about it, though. The book was published in his lifetime. Writers, poets and people tended to know each other, didn't they, Shelley, Coleridge, all that crowd, or at least take an interest in what was being written? Peg told me that Blake knew Mary Shelley's mother, the Wollstonecraft woman. He illustrated some of her children's stories."

"And he decided to illustrate Frankenstein?"

"It seems so, yes, unless these are brilliant fakes. We looked pretty closely at them. Took them apart, in fact. The paper is usually the giveaway. A clever forger can make a fair stab at an artist's style, but he can't fake the paint and the paper."

"Was it old enough, the paper?"

"We were convinced of it. In this trade you acquire a sense of how old things are. It's more a matter of experience than science. I reckon that paper could be dated to somewhere between 1800 and 1825."

"Is it usual, for an artist to illustrate a book?"

"In the case of Blake, yes. He was an engraver, so it was very much his line of work. Perhaps you're familiar with his series on Milton and Dante?"

Diamond didn't rise to that. "You were saying you studied these pictures together and she decided she knew of a buyer."

"She said she had a quick sale in mind, not to a dealer, but someone who would pay-to use one of her expressions-top dollar."

"And she wouldn't tell you who it was."

Somerset's lip quivered a little. "She seemed to be relishing the prospect, talked about having her bit of fun. She said this was a rare beast, someone who had no choice except to buy."

"Those were her actual words?"

"As near as I can recall."

Diamond glanced at Leaman. "Did you get them?"

The sergeant looked up from his notebook and nodded.

Diamond turned back to Somerset. "Did any of this come up in yesterday's interview with John Wigfull?"

"It did."

"And did you give him Mr Sturr's name?"

Somerset swung to Leaman, appealing for the sympathy he had failed to get from Diamond. "Look here, I don't want this to get back to Councillor Sturr-that I put you onto him. He's a powerful man in Bath. He could make life very difficult for me."

"That makes two of us," said Diamond.