Beau Death

by Peter Lovesey

  “Okay, guv.”

  “Then there’s the Twerton connection. John, you were checking the deeds of the house.”

  “I did,” Leaman said, emphasising that it was a job completed. “I spent a day and a half at the records office.”

  “Getting the ancient history of the terrace? That’s no help now. We’ve homed in on the past fifty years.”

  In this business-like session even Leaman resisted the urge to complain. He’d save his moan for later.

  Diamond asked, “Did you root out anything at all about who lived there?”

  “In recent years? The place was condemned and became a squat. Before that, the owner lived abroad and did the letting through an agency that went bust. I can’t tell you any more because like everyone else I thought the skeleton had been shut in the loft for hundreds of years.”

  “You’ll make enquiries now?”

  “Can do.”

  “Will do. Directly, this morning.”

  Leaman swivelled his chair from side to side and said nothing.

  “Don’t just rely on official records,” Diamond added. “Knock on doors. Visit local shops. Talk to the postman.”

  Knocking on doors wouldn’t come easily to Leaman. Tapping on a keyboard was more to his liking.

  Ingeborg asked, “Is anything being done about the crime scene? I know it’s been levelled, but the murder weapon could be buried in the rubble.”

  The same point had come up at the press conference. “I drove past last night,” Diamond informed them. “Unfortunately, the developers were quick off the mark. All the loose stuff has been loaded on to lorries and driven away to some landfill site. You wouldn’t know a building had been there. I’m not optimistic about finding anything at this late stage, but I’ll ask uniform to do a fingertip search.”

  “Uniform are doing massive overtime already this week,” Leaman said.

  “What for?”

  “The fireworks. Haven’t you heard them going off? The World Fireworks Championships.”

  “Here in Bath?”

  “Two nations put on a display each evening. It has to be policed.”

  So that was why his quiet evening in Paloma’s garden had been ruined. “I did hear something. Bugger it, if I want plods for a search, I’ll get them, fireworks or no fireworks.”

  Halliwell added, “To be fair to Dr. Waghorn, he spent a lot of time sifting through the rubble around the skeleton before it was hoisted out.”

  “Yeah, and missed the hat.” Diamond felt no need to be fair to Waghorn. “He wasn’t doing a search. He was moving bits of slate and masonry from around the chair. He wanted to get the sling in place and lift the whole thing out in one piece.”

  Ingeborg said, “The clothes must be our best lead, and not only the pants. Could the frock coat and breeches come from the theatre? They’ve done a few period dramas in recent years.”

  “Restoration comedies. The Beaux’ Stratagem with the National,” Diamond threw in, surprising everyone.

  Some looks were exchanged.

  He wasn’t telling them he’d pulled this plum from his earlier meeting with Estella. “Would you ask them? I’m sure their wardrobe mistress keeps a record of the costumes they make over the years.”

  “It does seem the victim was dressed as Beau Nash and not just any man from that time,” Ingeborg said. “If there was a play that featured him as a character . . .” She turned to Diamond as the newly revealed theatre buff. “Any thoughts?”

  “Can’t say it rings a bell,” he said. “Is anyone else a theatre-goer?”

  It seemed unlikely and so it proved.

  “Check with them anyway, Inge. Go to it, people. We can crack this.”

  With the team as usefully deployed as the few hard facts allowed, he went to the entrance to meet Paloma. His new workplace didn’t run to a front desk and a helpful sergeant. Anyone who wanted that sort of service went to the One Stop Shop in Manvers Street, where the guardians of law and order were now slotted in with waste and recycling, Age UK, housing benefits, Shopmobility, healthy lifestyle and even a small café. The days of the blue lamp and a central police station were over.

  Paloma was in the building already, business-like in glasses and with her hair back from her face in a French twist, distinctly different from the look Diamond was used to. She was in a grey trouser suit and carrying a leather bag.

  “Heck of a way from Bath,” was the first thing she said.

  “You’re telling me.”

  “It’s like a foreign country out here. I stopped to ask where the police building is, and the locals didn’t have a clue.”

  “I’m responsible for Bristol and South Gloucestershire as well now,” he said. “It’s a bigger empire.”

  “Does the emperor get paid more? I can see from the look on your face that he doesn’t.”

  “What’s in the bag?”

  “My inspection kit. Things you won’t have here.”

  He took her to the section at the back of the building where the evidence sergeants zealously guarded their collection of exhibits waiting to be produced in court. Even though Diamond vouched for Paloma, the Cerberus behind the desk insisted she produced her driving licence and a business card.

  As a riposte she requested two sets of PPE.

  Flummoxed by initials as always, Diamond was too proud to ask.

  The clothes rack with its cover was wheeled out. They were shown into a small room containing an inspection table, shelving and little else.

  “The lighting isn’t great,” Diamond said.

  “I came prepared.” Paloma took out a torch.

  She emptied her bag completely and like a surgeon arranged the things she would use in a row along the shelf: magnifiers, torch, tweezers, calipers, tape measure, camera, pen and paper.

  Overshoes and protective suits contained in plastic film covers had been supplied by the sergeant and one mystery was solved: PPE was personal protective equipment. The protection wasn’t for the people, but the exhibits.

  “Face-mask first,” Paloma said when Diamond unwrapped the paper suit and prepared to step into it. “There’s a sequence.”

  How did she know this? She didn’t routinely handle evidence. He could only surmise that she’d checked the drill before starting out.

  The complete professional.

  They did the dressing. Mobcap (and hairnet in Paloma’s case), pair of latex gloves, suit, overshoes and a second pair of gloves for disposal after handling items and before touching others.

  Looking the part, however weird they appeared, they set to work.

  “This looks awfully like the real thing,” Paloma said as she eased the thin, heavily stained shirt from the bag with as much respect as you’d give to one of Shakespeare’s first folios. She arranged it on the table and a pungent smell came from it, dust, death and rotting fabric. “It’s in a pitiful state.”

  She began a commentary almost as if she was the voice-over at a fashion show and the shirt was crisp and spotless. “Plainwoven Holland linen, rather than silk. Never silk for shirts. And the design is spot on. Can’t fault it. Men pulled shirts over their heads rather than buttoning them all the way down. There’s just this slit ending at the mid-chest area and the only buttons are high up to fasten the collar at the neck. See how high it is on the throat? Full, generous sleeves, pleated and forming cuffs at the wrists with ruffs. Gussets under the arms and on the shoulders. All hand-stitched.”

  She reached for an LED magnifier from her bag and examined a seam under the intense white light. “With linen thread, which is right.”

  “Rather than cotton?”

  “If this is the work of a modern seamstress, she knows her fashion history. Have you noticed the length of the shirt, Peter? The men of the time used it as an all-in-one garment with the tails tucked into the breeches a
nd functioning as underwear.”

  “All frock coats and no pants.”

  She may have smiled behind the mask.

  “Is it the real deal?” Diamond asked.

  “I was ninety-five percent sure until I saw these.”

  He looked. She was pointing to the two buttons under the dusty ruff on the collar.

  “Pearl buttons?”

  “They can’t be right,” Paloma said.

  “Didn’t they have them?”

  She shook her head. “The history of mother-of-pearl goes back to ancient Persia, but buttons like these weren’t available in the west until the 1890s in America. Then everyone fell in love with them and it was mass production.”

  “Proof the shirt isn’t genuine?”

  “I don’t know about ‘genuine.’ It’s expertly made. But the buttons of a gentleman’s shirt would be fabric-covered, Dorset-style, needle-woven, and these aren’t. I guess they wouldn’t be visible under the ruff. The lace on the collar hides them. Just a detail really.”

  “But a giveaway?”

  Paloma had so admired the tailoring of the shirt that she clearly felt almost disloyal about exposing the flaw. “If you want to call it that, yes. The bloodstain is real enough, isn’t it?”

  “What you can see of it.” Much of the shirt front had deteriorated to threads. Those that remained had a definite brown tinge on the right side—the victim’s left.

  “Will you get DNA?”

  “I hope so. Some bloodstained threads went off to the lab. Now that we’re talking about a more modern murder, DNA could be the game changer. When we believed the killing was in 1761, I couldn’t see it helping us because even if we got a result there was nothing to compare it with.”

  “So even genetic science has its limitations.”

  “And I have a bad habit of running into them. The point of entry of the murder weapon may be clearer on the waistcoat. Shall we look?”

  “I’d like to admire this for a moment longer,” Paloma said. “The workmanship. Exquisite.”

  “But it’s not the full ticket?”

  She inhaled sharply and audibly, as if she’d burnt herself. “Didn’t I just say? Everything except the buttons is genuine. The construction, the materials, the finishing. All the work was handmade then, and there must have been some wonderful shirtmakers in business.”

  “No other modern stuff? Machine stitching?”

  Her eyes opened wide. “Absolutely not.”

  They returned the shirt to its bag and put on fresh gloves before starting to examine the other stained and threadbare things.

  The search became almost as protracted as Waghorn’s autopsy. Paloma confirmed that the waistcoat and frock coat had been made with the same level of skill as the shirt. “Look at the embroidery on the waistcoat. Beautiful work.”

  “What is it, floral?” he asked.

  “Oak leaves and acorns, by the look of it. Pity so much has rotted away.”

  When they examined the breeches, she gave a cry of delight at finding fabric-covered buttons of the sort she’d been talking about earlier. “What’s more, you can see where adjustments have been made. They let out the waist at some stage.”

  While she was admiring the workmanship, Diamond continued to look closely for hairs and other fibres, but found none.

  “I’m certain now. This is mid-eighteenth-century, what’s left of it,” Paloma told him. “Those buttons must have come later, much later, but the clothes are original.”

  He couldn’t share her delight, although he tried to appear interested. She’d given another twist to the tourniquet this case had become.

  “The white tricorne was a rare item,” Paloma said when they took the still-flattened and far from white hat from its bag. Where part of the crown had been torn it flapped open when she turned it over. “Most well-to-do men favoured dark hats and white wigs, but Beau Nash bucked the trend.”

  “We’ve ditched the Nash theory. He’s out of it as far as I’m concerned, and good riddance.”

  “Hold on, Pete. You can’t ignore him altogether. Isn’t it obvious this man was a Nash impersonator?”

  Another angle. After the episode of the Y-fronts, Diamond wouldn’t care if he never heard of the Beau again.

  “Get with it, man,” Paloma added, surprising him with the force of the words. She’d become fractious and he didn’t understand why.

  With the job completed, he took her to the self-service kitchen everyone shared. Spotlessly clean. Good lighting. Cheerful green and white plastic tables and chairs. He hated it.

  He made her a coffee.

  “There wasn’t much you didn’t know already,” she said when he thanked her for coming in.

  “The pearl buttons.”

  “Those—yes.”

  “Lighten up, Paloma. You helped enormously. They change everything.”

  She seemed unmoved. “Because they were sewn on later? The shirt was genuine eighteenth-century and some modern person did a repair job?”

  “The buttons are evidence that the skeleton isn’t Beau Nash or any other man of his time.”

  “It appalls me,” she said, and the reason for her annoyance became clear. “An eighteenth-century shirt is fantastically rare, a museum piece, not fancy dress for some rich yuppie to ponce around in.”

  “It didn’t do him much good.”

  She dredged up a faint smile.

  “Maybe the owner wasn’t a rich yuppie,” he added, “but the last in line of an old Bath family, a good man who’d fallen on hard times and the costume was all he had left, the heirloom he wouldn’t be parted from.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because I don’t want you losing sleep over it.”

  She didn’t seem impressed.

  He said, “I can think of better ways of losing sleep.”

  She gave him a kick under the table.

  “What I was about to say,” he said, “is that I learned today that the fireworks we heard the other evening were part of an ongoing event, the world championships, would you believe?”

  “I heard about that, too. I checked the internet after the bangs all started again the next night. Two cities go head to head each evening and at the end of the week the judges decide the winner.”

  “Would you like to go?”

  “I thought you hated bangers.”

  “Not if I’m expecting them.”

  “Righty,” she said, raising her thumb. “I’m up for it if you are. Tomorrow night, the grand finale?”

  “Where?”

  “The lawn in front of the Royal Crescent. Should be spectacular.”

  Back in the CID room, he sat on the edge of Keith Halliwell’s desk and updated him on Paloma’s findings. “At one point she called the victim a Beau Nash impersonator. That’s another angle. Why would anyone want to dress up as Nash?”

  “People enjoy dressing up.”

  “Yes, but what for?”

  “Fancy-dress parties.”

  A shake of the head. “This wasn’t fancy dress. Paloma is sure it was an authentic eighteenth-century outfit with some modern alterations. Pearl buttons, the breeches let out a bit. An antique costume is worth serious money. I can tell you I wouldn’t wear it to a party and run the risk of beer being spilled on it.”

  “Or the breeches splitting when you danced,” Halliwell said.

  There were times when Diamond thought his deputy would benefit from a course on respect in the workplace. “I might wear it for a more serious occasion, a ceremony, let’s say.”

  “A wedding? They do weddings in costume, don’t they?”

  “Something bigger, a national celebration like the millennium, or the golden jubilee when the city needs to put on a show.”

  “And did it?”

  “That’s
what I’m asking. Do you remember?”

  “All I can recall about the millennium was the hoo-ha over the new spa bath not being finished on time. And even when it finally opened six years late I don’t think Beau Nash was part of it. Jumping in for the first swim? No, I don’t see it.”

  “What did we do for the Queen’s jubilee?”

  “I’m not the best person to ask, guv. I’m more interested in football.”

  “Think of another key year. When was Nash born?”

  Halliwell shook his head.

  “Paul Gilbert wrote it on his noticeboard. Go and check?”

  “Right now?”

  “We need to know.”

  With a shrug, Halliwell got up and headed for the meeting room. He was back in a short time to find Diamond had taken over his chair. “1674, in Glamorgan.”

  “Okay. Was anything special laid on three hundred years later in 1974—a street procession, a commemoration ball, an exhibition? I can’t believe the year went by unnoticed.”

  “Are you thinking our skeleton was playing the Beau? They wouldn’t want an old man as the main character, would they? They’d want some young fellow.”

  “They might feature both. All the pictures you see are of him as an old guy. I’m simply trying to make sense of this person going to all the trouble of kitting himself out in a real frock coat and breeches from the eighteenth century. Where would he have got them? Can you buy them?”

  “You can buy anything on the internet.”

  “Come on. The bloody internet had barely started in 1974.”

  Halliwell was unimpressed. “Antique clothes have been bought and sold for much longer than the internet. If you had a load of money and really wanted to impress your friends, you might decide to pick something up at auction.”

  “Money comes into it for sure. But then this rich old guy ends up dead in a small terraced house in Twerton.”

  “Lured there by his killer.”

  “In costume? I can’t begin to explain it, Keith. Maybe we’ll get some answers as the day goes on. Check the Chronicle archive for those key years we’re talking about. 1974, 2000 and 2002.”

  He liked 1974 now he’d thought of it. The tricentenary of the Beau’s birth couldn’t have passed unnoticed by the city.