The Vault

by Peter Lovesey

"At Home? What sort of party is that? Doesn't sound like the kind of bash I enjoy. Who's behind this rave-up?"

  "Assistant Chief Constable Georgina Dallymore."

  "God help us."

  "I didn't know you had a woman boss."

  "She's new. She's got to be new to send out a thing like that."

  "Give her some credit. She's off to a good start if she's throwing a party for the staff," Stephanie pointed out.

  "I'm not sure if you're right about the staff. Nobody nientioned it today." An uncomfortable thought was dawning. "Suppose it's only us."

  "There are sure to be other people. Perhaps it's only senior ranks."

  "That's worse."

  She let him chew on that for a while, and then returned to it. "I know you dread these social occasions, but they always turn out better than we expect. Who knows, we may get champagne."

  He rolled his eyes. "At a police do?"

  "Nice food. Music. Party games." Now she was pushing it to absurd lengths, softening him up, and they both knew it.

  With a reluctant smile, he said, "Hide and seek. They won't see me for dust."

  "Hunt the Chief Constable."

  "Wouldn't know him if we found him."

  "Musical Chairs."

  "The top brass are good at that."

  They continued on this tack, giggling like a couple of teenagers, until Steph quietly said she would send off an acceptance in the morning. He didn't protest.

  They watched the sun setting over the Mendips. "This is how I want to spend my evenings," he confided in a rare outpouring of candour. "With you."

  Steph smiled to herself. This new Assistant Chief Constable had started well, putting the wind up Peter Diamond by inviting him to a party.

  There were other ways of taming the beast. She put her hand up to his neck and found a strand of his sparse hair and curled it around her finger. "Do you know what I'd like right now?"

  His eyebrows lifted.

  Steph looked into the distance. "A ride on one of those swings "

  "They're for kids."

  "Can you see any kids using them?"

  He laughed. "You want me to look the other way?"

  "No, come over and give me a push."

  PROBLEMS NEXT morning. The man in charge at the Roman Baths was the sort of blinkered official who brought out the worst in Diamond. Probably he was low in the hierarchy. It was just bad luck that today he was the most senior in the building. "You can't go through the staffroom. My people won't care for that one bit."

  "No, the idea isn't to go through the staffroom."

  "What do you mean?"

  "We need a place to tip the rubble."

  "The staffroom?" The boss-man practically choked. "That's out of the question. It's fully in use by the guides and the sales staff."

  "So you'll relocate them."

  "This simply isn't on."

  "It's easier than relocating us," Diamond pointed out, as if his team already occupied the place. "You don't want my people shifting barrowloads of rubble through the entrance hall where the public come in. Even if you put down ground-sheets, the dust is hell."

  In tourist attractions, the paying public take precedence over everyone else. Diamond won this round. It was agreed that a temporary staffroom would be found.

  "Another thing, sir. How far back do your records go?"

  "Which records?"

  "Records of building work. At some point in the past twenty years, somebody did some concreting in the vault. I presume they used materials brought in for building projects. Do you follow me?"

  "I'm not optimistic." That scarcely needed saying. The wretched man was looking suicidal after giving away the staffroom. And if he didn't put a gun to his head, the union would tear him to bits.

  "When did the last major excavation take place?"

  "Before my time. About 1982 to 1983, when they opened up the area under the Pump Room."

  "Obviously there was rebuilding associated with the work."

  "I expect so."

  "And it's possible the vaults were used for storage?"

  "I suppose so."

  "And they must have been used on other occasions since? All the contractors and all the dates, then. And I'll need to see the paperwork myself."

  "This is extremely disruptive."

  "Disruptive is my second name, sir."

  With heavy sarcasm, the boss-man said, "Are you sure there isn't anything else I can do for you?"

  It was unwise. The big detective didn't hesitate. "Now that you mention it, there is. You can fix it for me to use the Pump Room for tea breaks."

  Reddening, the wretched man said, "I'm afraid that isn't possible. The caterers are independent of the museum."

  "So how does it work?" Diamond breezed past that obstruction. "Don't tell me you never eat in there."

  "I might occasionally, when it's necessary to look after an important visitor, but it isn't a regular arrangement. I eat outside."

  "That's your choice."

  "Yes."

  "I won't insist that you join me."

  Down in the vault, the Scene of Crime team had already installed arc-lighting and were taking photographs. The SOCO in charge confirmed that the place had been used at some time by builders. He showed Diamond some sacks that had contained cement. Tests would establish whether it matched the cement found surrounding the skeleton hand.

  "You'll be digging up the rest of the floor, no doubt, looking under the flagstones," he said to Diamond.

  "Personally, no."

  "You'll keep us fully informed of what you find, won't you, sir?"

  "From hour to hour," Diamond promised. "You'll get no rest." He went up to see if the Pump Room was open yet.

  To the strains of Kismet from the Pump Room Trio, he had coffee in there with the security man who had dug up the hand, a Pakistani immigrant refreshingly pleased to be assisting the police. The concrete was crumbly, he cheerfully assured Diamond. It would be easy enough to dig out other bits of the corpse.

  LATE THAT afternoon, sheer bad luck dictated that Diamond and the new Assistant Chief Constable appeared at opposite ends of a corridor in the Police Station. As they approached each other dismay was written in Miss Dallymore's eyes. Oh my God, here is one of my senior officers, and I can't remember his name. I must brazen my way through it. Let him think I recognise him, that I am actually looking for him.

  "Ah, just the man."

  "Ma'am?" Diamond could not avoid this, embarrassing as it was on both sides. Being subordinate to a woman was not the problem; it could have happened with anyone new.

  "You're going to tell me you're terribly busy, I dare say."

  "No more than usual."

  "That's good, because I had you in mind for something."

  "Yes?"

  "The PCCG."

  Sets of initials were his blind-spot. He wasn't sure if the PCCG was some form of honour, or something to be avoided like the plague. "Me in particular, ma'am?"

  "With all your experience…" The ACC smiled, as if the rest could be left unsaid. Georgina Dallymore had a disarming smile. Diamond would probably have thought her a good-looking woman if he could have ignored her shoulder-flashes. "With all your experience…" did begin to sound like recognition.

  "What I've done is nothing exceptional," he said modestly.

  "You'll do splendidly. They're lucky to get you. It's at the Meeting Room in the Victoria Gallery, seven on Wednesday evening. Tell Helen you'll be representing us, and she'll let you have the paperwork."

  These were hammer blows. Meeting Room… evening… and, most alarming of all, paperwork.

  Helen, the ACC's personal assistant, enlightened him. The PCCG was the Police and Community Consultative Group, a talking-shop with representatives of local residents' associations, the Council, the City of Bath College, the Racial Equality Council, Victim Support and similar groups.

  "You'll want an agenda and the minutes of the last meeting," Helen said, opening a drawer
in her desk.

  "Does it say what time they finish?"

  She turned to the back page of the minutes. "No, it isn't mentioned here."

  "Just my luck."

  "Why don't you ask Chief Inspector Wigfull? He's a regular on this committee."

  "Wigfull? That's all I need."

  John Wigfull was the ultimate infliction. A high price to pay for stepping into a corridor at the wrong moment.

  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 extende
d."

  "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.

  five

  TWO DAYS ON, AND there were compensations for Peter Diamond. The Pump Room had definite advantages over the police canteen as an eating place. This room with its tall windows and Corinthian columns, its chandelier and musicians' gallery, was surely one of the finest in Europe. Kate, the winsome, long-legged, black-stockinged waitress Diamond had cultivated as an ally from the beginning, saw that he got the pick of the menu. The trio played I'm a Stranger in Paradise and Keith Halliwell was too over-awed to step inside and interrupt the idyll.

  Down in the vault, the working party was under instructions from Diamond not to rush the job. "We're in no hurry, lads. This poor sod has been lying under the floor for up to twenty years. A week or two more will make no difference."

  The complexity of the case was underlined when the list of building contracts was presented to Diamond.

  "As many as this?"

  "You asked for them all, and that's what you've got," said boss-man with a smirk.