The Vault

four

A PATCH OF SUNSHINE lingered in one corner of the garden of the Royal Crescent Hotel, where Professor Joe Dougan ordered pre-dinner drinks. He and Donna were with their new friends from Zurich. They had met Marcus and Anne-Lise Hacksteiner in the outdoor heated plunge pool the previous morning. Few situations are more likely to get a conversation going than sitting toe to toe in a small round pool.

The Hacksteiners had been to a matinee at the Theatre Royal. "It was a whodunnit," said Anne-Lise, speaking English as if she had lived here for ever. "And rather well done."

"Did you guess the murderer?" Joe asked.

"Anne-Lise doesn't guess," said Marcus. "She likes to analyse the plot and arrive at the logical solution."

"And did you, Anne-Lise?"

"Oh, yes."

"Get away!"

"But my logic was different from the logic of the writer."

Joe Dougan wasn't sure how seriously to take Anne-Lise. She didn't smile much. "You mean you picked someone else as the killer?"

"She insists her solution was superior," said Marcus. "Probably it was. I don't have that kind of brain. I took a wild guess."

"The least likely person in the cast?"

"Exactly."

"Let me guess. You were spot on?"

"No, I was wrong, too."

"You guys break me up." The more Joe saw of the Hacksteiners, the more he liked them. Rich as they obviously were, they didn't flaunt it. Joe had learned only by chance that they had the top suite in the hotel, the Sir Percy Blakeney, at nearly seven hundred pounds a night.

After the drinks were served, Donna said, "Well, I just wish we had chosen the theatre."

A muscle twitched at the edge of Joe's mouth. He said nothing.

Anne-Lise said graciously, "You were much more sensible. It was too nice an afternoon to spend indoors."

Donna shot a triumphant look at her husband. She had said the same thing to him earlier, and more than once.

As if he hadn't noticed, Joe said to Marcus, "I think you'll like this single malt."

"Come on, Joe," said Anne-Lise. "You can't keep us in suspense. How did you spend the afternoon?"

"Indoors, same as you. You did the whodunnit. We did the wheredunnit."

"The what?"

"The wheredunnit. When I go on vacation I like to seek out the places where creative things happened. It gives some focus to a trip. So in Vienna, we looked up the Mozart house. In Paris, the Rodin museum, and so on."

"And in Bath, Jane Austen?"

"Too easy," said Donna in a downbeat tone that the others did not yet understand.

Joe explained, "My modest ambition in this city was to find the Frankenstein house."

Marcus turned to face him, eyebrows pricked up, prepared to challenge the assumption.

Joe smiled.

"You did say Frankensteinl"

Joe gave a nod. "Where Mary Shelley wrote the book, back in 1816. Simple enough, you might think."

"But you are mistaken," said Anne-Lise in her prim, categorical style of speaking. "It was written in Switzerland. It is well known in our country."

Marcus chimed in, "If you want to see the house it is on the shore of Lake Geneva."

Joe raised his hands, feigning self-defence. "Fine. I'm not going to argue this one with you good folk. I know the story, how Shelley and Mary Godwin, as she was then-she was only eighteen-were entertained at the Villa Diodati by Lord Byron and his physician, Dr Polidori, and how the weather was atrocious and they were housebound, and Byron proposed that they each write a ghost story."

"And of course the woman's was the only good story of the four," said Anne-Lise, with a half-smile at Donna. "It came to her in a dream."

"Not exactly," Joe dared correct her. "It was not the result of a dream. Mary Shelley explained in the introduction that she was lying in bed awake when the images came to her."

"So it was a day-dream," said Donna, rolling her eyes.

"And I have to tell you that Frankenstein wasn't written in Geneva," Joe steadily pursued his point. "It had its conception there, yes. Then they returned to England. Shelley stopped off in London, leaving Mary to find rooms in Bath. She picked number five, Abbey Churchyard, and that's where she wrote most of the book. You can read her diaries. You can read letters. She records the progress of the chapters."

"Are you sure?" said Anne-Lise.

"Joe is a professor of literature," Marcus reminded her, and then asked Joe, "What made them choose Bath?"

"Secrecy. Mary's step-sister Claire had been travelling with them. Byron had made her pregnant and they didn't want her parents to find out."

"Oh, no!" said Anne-Lise, as shocked by Byron's behaviour as if it had only just happened.

"They were a wild bunch," said Marcus.

"And how. Mary herself already had two children by Shelley, who was married, with two kids of his own."

Anne-Lise gasped.

Marcus, more calm about nineteenth century morals, said, "So there were children in the party?"

"Only Mary's second baby, William. The first died as an infant."

"You have researched this," said Marcus.

"He's like a dog with a bone," said Donna with a sigh.

"So the set-up was this," said Joe in the same steady, authoritative voice. "Shelley and Mary with their little son William, less than a year old, rented rooms in Abbey Churchyard, and Claire, heavily pregnant, was nearby at number twelve, New Bond Street. Mary passed the time reading the classics, writing Frankenstein and taking lessons in art."

"With a baby so young, I'm surprised she had any time," said Anne-Lise. "Did they have servants?"

"A Swiss nurse, called Elise."

"That would explain. Swiss nurses are very good."

"And I guess Claire sometimes helped with the baby."

"Maybe Shelley took his turn," said Marcus.

"No chance. He was up to his eyeballs in family troubles. First, Mary's half-sister, Fanny, killed herself in Swansea with an overdose of laudanum. Then Shelley's wife Harriet threw herself into the Serpentine in London and drowned."

"Oh, my God," murmured Anne-Lise. "All in the same year?"

"All in the last three months of 1816."

"Quite some year," said Marcus.

"That wasn't the end of it. Two weeks after Harriet died, Shelley and Mary got married."

Anne-Lise's blue eyes shone at the first good news in some time. "In Bath?"

"In London. Soon after, at the end of February, 1817, they moved to Marlow and she put the finishing touches to Frankenstein there. But there's no question that the greater part of it was written in this city. Which is why I was motivated to find the house."

"And did you find it? Is that where you were this afternoon?"

"No," said Donna flatly. "This beautiful afternoon we passed in the public library."

Joe was unfazed. "Checking ancient maps of the Abbey Churchyard. And I can tell you, friends, that I finally got my answer. I know precisely where Frankenstein was written."

"How exciting!" said Anne-Lise, genuinely enthralled.

"I found a picture of the house. It was right next to the Pump Room, actually attached. A narrow, three-storey house, one of a group built around 1800. I guess their rooms were upstairs. It functioned as a kind of shop, a lending library, to be precise."

"Do you know, we were there yesterday and I never even noticed it?" said Anne-Lise.

Joe nodded. "Unfortunately-"

"It's gone?"

"Knocked down when the Pump Room was extended."

"Too bad," said Marcus.

"When?" said Anne-Lise.

"In 1893-a time when all kinds of excavations were taking place behind the house. The City fathers decided to promote Bath in a big way as a spa city. So a row of not very distinguished buildings next door was expendable."

"Where exactly was the house? That yard in front of the Abbey?"

"Correct. Numbers two through five originally stood where you now find the entrance to the Roman Baths. You can see where the Shelley house was sited. It's a lower elevation than the rest, a linking block that houses a corridor leading to the extension."

"Didn't anyone try to save it?"

"The Roman Baths were bigger news than Frankenstein."

"Isn't there a plaque on the wall?"

"Stating that this is the site of the house where Frankenstein was written?" Joe shook his head.

"Plenty of people would be interested."

"It would increase the tourism significantly," said Anne-Lise.

"Quite possibly."

"So will you be visiting the Mayor of Bath to suggest it?" asked Anne-Lise.

Donna said, "Anne-Lise, my dear, don't put ideas in his head. I don't want my entire trip taken over by Frankenstein."

"Let's go in to dinner, shall we?" said Joe.

"The only good suggestion I heard from you all day," said Donna.