The Vault

thirty-two

JOE DOUGAN WAS ABOUT as livid as a mild Midwestern professor can get at being brought back to Bath. "This is the end," he complained to Diamond. "I should be halfway under the Channel by now. What am I doing here?"

"Helping the police with their inquiries."

"Is that sarcasm?"

"It's only a form of words we use."

"Oh, yeah? Coded words for the third degree?"

Diamond put on a pained expression. "Haven't you been treated with courtesy?"

"By the cops who brought me back? No complaints. My quarrel is with you, sir. You fixed this."

"Did they let you phone your wife?"

Joe gave a nod. "To Donna, it's another day's shopping."

"Don't bill us," said Diamond, trying to defuse the bitterness a little. He preferred dealing with Joe in his good tempered mode. "Coffee?"

"How long do you figure this will take?"

"I wish I knew. I have things to do, the same as you. Would you mind opening your suitcases?" Two vast cases had been brought back with Joe from Waterloo and now lay on a table against the end wall.

This triggered Joe into another protest. "What do you think is in there? For crying out loud, you don't think I have Mary Shelley's writing box in my baggage?"

"The keys, professor."

Muttering, Joe felt in his pocket and handed over a small leather key-case that Diamond passed to the constable brought in to conduct the search.

Joe said he would have a black coffee.

A pink nightie lay folded on top of the other things in the first suitcase, surrounded by glittery shoes padded out with panties. Joe had done a reasonable job of packing Donna's things. Methodically the constable lifted layer after layer of women's clothing and made a stack on the table. Then he started on the second case: more skirts and blouses, the overspill from Donna's shopping and, some way underneath, Joe's things. None of it brought Diamond from his chair.

"Now your hand luggage."

This was a shoulderbag with an array of zips and pouches. "Careful," Joe warned as he lifted it off the back of his chair and onto the desk. "Some of the stuff in here is fragile."

"Empty it yourself, if you like."

Joe co-operated. One of the first things out was the edition of Milton's poems.

Diamond reached for it, but Joe's hand curled over it first. "You know what this is?"

"That's why I want to examine it. The last time I was given a sight of it, you held onto it."

"You bet I did. Would you mind using both hands? The spine is weak." He handed the book across.

After the accident with Councillor Sturr's picture, Diamond was only too willing to take extra care. He glanced at the finely inscribed M.W.G., 5, Abbey Churchyard, Bath on the cover. Tentatively opening the book, he looked for the place at the front where the fly leaves were missing. The job had been neatly done. He would not have noticed unless it had been pointed out. The remnants of three sheets, tucked between the board cover and the title page. The cut was straight, sharp and as close to the hinge as you could get.

"I know all about that," said Joe. "The book is mutilated. If I were looking for an investment, I'd be worried, but the missing endpapers don't bother me. To me the value of this little property is who it belonged to, not the state it's in."

"I appreciate that," said Diamond, transferring the book to his other hand to look inside the back cover. "I see they've been cut from here as well. I was speaking to someone only this morning, an art historian. He was telling me forgers do this. They buy old books and cut out the blank sheets to get paper of the right age."

Joe's eyebrows twitched. "You think a forger damaged the book?"

"I wouldn't bet against it."

"In recent times, you mean?"

"I'd need a microscope to answer that."

Joe's interest in his book was sufficient to ride over all the day's frustrations. "I'm not sure if I buy this theory of yours. When I talked to the bookseller, Mr Heath, he told me something I should have appreciated, but didn't, about the scarcity of paper a couple of hundred years back. It was a valuable commodity. People would use those blank pages as notepaper. So it's quite possible Mary Shelley cut them from the book herself."

The possibility didn't much appeal to Diamond. His theory of the forger held more promise right now. "Maybe."

"She could have used them for sketching," Joe continued to speculate as he removed more things from the shoulderbag. "We know she sketched."

"We do?"

"She was having lessons from an artist while she was in Bath."

"Is that so?" Diamond said with the preoccupied air of someone working to a more significant brief.

"As a matter of fact, Miss Redbird told me a sketchbook was found in the writing box, along with the book and an ink bottle."

Abruptly Diamond's attention was focused again. "You didn't tell me that before."

"You didn't ask. You wanted to know about this book and I told you everything I know. The rest is only something I was told."

"This could be crucial information."

"You think I don't know? Dear God, I'd like to get my hands on Mary Shelley's sketchbook. No chance."

"What happened to it?"

"Sold-a long while back, she said."

"Did she say who bought it?"

"No, sir. You see, at the time she had no idea who it belonged to so it had no special interest," Joe continued implacably. "I'm trying to remember the name of Mary Shelley's art teacher. It began with a 'W'. Wood? No, West. Mr West. She mentions him in letters. She found the drawing tedious. I guess it would have been, the way it was taught at the time. Her imagination ran to more exotic things than still life and perspective."

"This sketchbook couldn't have been all that big," Diamond said. "To have fitted in the writing box, I mean."

Joe indicated some modest limits with his hands. "It wasn't so small. If she wanted to work small she could have used those sheets from the book to practise on." The sheets cut from the book had ceased to hold any interest for Diamond. The existence of the sketchbook had set him off on a more promising track.

"You can put the stuff back in the bag now." His brain worked through the possibilities while Joe began the task, sighing like a grounded balloon. Then Diamond said, "On Thursday evening when you returned to Noble and Nude, no one was there. That's what you told me?"

"That's the truth."

"But the place wasn't locked. Did that surprise you?"

Joe weighed the question before replying. "Not at first. It's such a warren, that shop, I took it that the owner was in another room somewhere. Called her name a couple of times and she didn't answer, so I started trying keys in the box. You know how it is. When you concentrate, really put your mind to a job, the time flies by."

"Did you have any suspicion someone else was present in the building?"

"What do you mean?"

"Isn't it clear? If I was in your situation that night, walking into an empty shop, my senses would be primed for someone to come in. If a floorboard creaked, I'd hear it."

"I heard nothing."

"And you estimated you were there from around nine-thirty to when? Almost eleven?"

"That's what I said."

"The writing box was still there when you left?"

"On her desk in the office, where I found it." Joe leaned forward, stressing the next remark with his open hand. "Listen, whatever else you think of me, I'm not stupid. If I'd walked out with the writing box, she would have known right off who took it."

"She was murdered," Diamond pointed out.

Joe, wrong-footed, blinked and frowned. "I didn't know that at the time. How could I have known that?"

Diamond left the question hanging.

Joe stared at him woodenly for a moment, then said, "And another thing. Her colleague, the guy in the bow-tie, knew all about my interest in the box."

"Ellis Somerset."

"He would have blown the whistle on me if I took it."

Diamond nodded. "Now I'll tell you something, professor. You have a way of making everything sound reasonable. Strange things happen to you through no fault of your own. You go down into a vault at the Roman Baths and you're mistaken for a forensic pathologist. Your wife disappears and turns up in Paris. You're trying to do deals with a woman on the night she is murdered. You can explain it all. There's one thing I wish you would explain because I can't see a way round it myself."

"Try me."

"The problem is this: someone stole the writing box on the night Peg Redbird was murdered and I haven't heard of anyone else but you with an interest in it. Only you. You worked out that it once belonged to Mary Shelley. No one else knew that."

Joe frowned. He had no easy solution.

Diamond twisted the knife. "Do you know of anyone else?

Anyone?"

"I told my wife, but she wouldn't…"

"And you wouldn't have let Peg Redbird in on the secret because she would have raised the price."

Joe partially closed his eyes, straining for an explanation. This was desperation point. "At the time I half wondered if the lady figured it out."

"Peg?"

"Right. I was never any use as a poker player. I may not have said anything-no, let's be clear, I didn't say anything-but I couldn't disguise my interest in the writing box. I wanted it badly. She was good at her job. She saw the initials on the cover of that book and she saw the address. Yeah, I reckon she figured it out."

"Letting you off the hook?"

"She could have talked to someone after she saw me."

"I get the drift," said Diamond with a wry smile. "They killed her for it?"

"Listen, I'm trying to help you with your inquiries. Literally. And I have one great advantage over you."

"What's that?" said Diamond, all interest.

"I know I'm an innocent man."

Diamond couldn't help grinning.

Joe was nodding solemnly. "Some other guy must have done these things."

"In the furtherance of theft, you think? Was it really worth killing for? Just an antique somebody famous once owned?"

"People have killed for less. It depends what price they put on a human life."

Sergeant Leaman looked around the door and Diamond beck' oned to him to come over. He had brought Joe Dougan's coffee. He said in confidence to Diamond, "Those phone numbers, sir-the local calls Peg Redbird made on the day she died. We've traced them now. The first was to a pub in Larkhall."

"The Brains Surgery?"

"Right. And the second was a private number, a Mr E. Tanner-Jones. It has to be Uncle Evan, doesn't it?"

"Got the address?"

"One Tree Cottage, Charlcombe Lane."

"Any previous?"

"Nothing known."

"What time is it now?"

"Ten to three."

"We'll pick him up pronto."

Leaman asked after a pause, "Do you mean you want to come, sir?"

"Try and keep me away." He stood up.

Joe Dougan let out a breath that seemed to come from the depth of his soul.

Diamond glared.

Joe said, "I was blowing on the coffee." After some hesitation he asked, "Have you finished with me?"

"For the present," said Diamond. "I'm going to ask one of our people to book you into a hotel for the night. It won't be the Royal Crescent, but it should be comfortable."

ON THE drive, he told Leaman about Mary Shelley's sketchbook. "What a gift for a forger-sheets and sheets of paper dating from the first years of the nineteenth century."

"Is that what happened to it?"

"How would I know? I'm speculating. If they're working in ink or watercolour they need genuine old paper, sheets of the stuff. It was made differently in those days, with rag, or something. No good using modern paper. It has to pass all the dating tests. Larger sheets would be hard to come by. So you can imagine the use a forger could make of an entire sketchbook."

"Peg Redbird?"

"As the forger? No, she simply found the sketchbook in the writing box and put it on sale."

"Someone else bought it for the paper, to fake pictures on?"

"That's the way I'm thinking. Some clever forgeries have been unloaded on the art market in Bath."

"The Blakes?"

"Or what passed for Blakes. Councillor Sturr owns one and Minchendon had two. There may well be others on the walls of smart houses in the area. I'm hoping to get a sight of an art forger's studio."

"At this cottage?"

"It has to be somewhere. That afternoon when Peg got her hands on the pictures from Si Minchendon's, she spent a lot of time on the phone to galleries and museums and I can only think she was trying to find out if Blake ever painted a Frankenstein series. He didn't. At the end, she phones two local numbers, the Brains Surgery, where Uncle Evan hangs out, and One Tree Cottage. Why? We'll find out presently, I hope."

IT TURNED up unexpectedly in another half-mile-unexpectedly because the building was no cottage in the ordinary sense of the word. Set back at the end of a gravel drive in an isolated stretch of Charlcombe Lane, it was a modern two-storey house in the Georgian style, built the expensive way in the local stone, not the reconstituted sort. Gables, sash windows, portico, coach-lamps, conifers in white tubs.

They saw it through closed wrought-iron gates equipped with an entry-phone. Leaman drew up alongside the grille and put down the car window.

"Do we say who we are?"

"Let's see who we get."

A woman's voice announced, "Mr Tanner-Jones isn't at home."

Diamond muttered an obscenity, then leaned across Leaman and said genially, "That's all right, my dear. We're the police. We'll talk to you."

"I'm only the cleaner."

"But you know how to press the button that opens the gates."

It got them through the gate. She had the front door open before they were out of the car, a nervous-looking young woman wiping her hands on a red overall. "I can't help you."

"You can," said Diamond. "You're just the right person. What's your name?"

"Linda."

"We won't keep you long, Linda. Shall we do this inside?"

The Tanner-Jones residence was as fine inside as out. They were standing on an Afghan carpet in a hall with an antique grandfather clock and a huge celadon-ware vase containing pampas grass.

"Out for the day, is he?" Diamond asked.

"He often is when I come in to do the house," she said. "I'm not supposed to let anyone in."

"But you wouldn't obstruct the police in the course of their duty, would you? That's against the law. Where's the art room?"

"The what?"

"Art room, studio, whatever he calls it. As the cleaner, you should know."

Linda shook her head. "There's nothing like that."

Too easy, Diamond decided. He would have to think in terms of hidden rooms, something in the attic, or outside in the garden. "How does he relax, then? I thought he was a painter."

"I don't know anything about that."

"What's his job?"

"I don't know if he has one."

"How does he live so well if he doesn't work?"

"I couldn't say. He must have been left some money, or won the lottery, or something."

"You don't mind if we look around?" He didn't wait for her answer, but opened a door and stepped into a large sitting room with a tan-coloured leather suite. The pictures on the wall were modern abstracts; nothing remotely resembled a Blake. "What does he look like, your boss?" he asked Linda. "Is there a picture of him anywhere?"

"I've never seen one. He's tall and thin. Mostly he dresses in casual clothes, jeans and things. He has long hair, really long for a bloke, I mean, in a pony-tail, and glasses."

It was Joe's description of Uncle Evan, near enough.

"He hasn't gone missing, has he?" Linda asked anxiously.

"I hope not."

Diamond strolled into another room, a dining-room with walnut chairs and oval table. The taste in art still favoured the twentieth century. The end wall had a huge Frink charcoal drawing of horses. "Does he entertain much?"

"I only come in two afternoons a week," said Linda.

She didn't seem aware of the ambiguity, and he didn't make anything of it. She was too soft a target. "We'll look upstairs."

"I haven't done the upstairs yet," Linda said.

She tagged along while they looked into five bedrooms, each with its en suite bathroom. The most lived-in still told them nothing except that Tanner-Jones owned about twenty pairs of designer jeans and read John Updike and GQ. Halfway along the landing was a hatch to the space under the roof. "Is there a room up there?"

"I've no idea."

"You've never been up to clean it?"

"No. It's not on my list."

Diamond nodded to Leaman, who reached up, released the catch and pulled down the hatch door. A light came on automatically. A folding ladder was attached to the hidden side of the door. With the sense of occasion of an astronaut bound for a new planet, Diamond climbed upwards.

He found himself standing among cardboard boxes, rolls of wallpaper and lampshades. He came down like the manager of the national football team after it has lost six-nil to San Marino.

They went into the garden, opened the sheds and found only tools, deckchairs and grass-seed.

"I've seen all I want of this sodding place."

They returned to the car. "Where to, sir?" Leaman asked as they got in.

"Just get us out of here," said Diamond. "No. Hold it." He stared along the gravel drive. The automatic gates had opened and a black sports car was entering. It braked. There was a moment's hiatus. Obviously the driver had spotted their car in front of the house. Then he reversed with a screech of tyres and headed back along the road.

Leaman didn't need to be told what to do next.