The Vault

by Peter Lovesey

  The Brains Bitter appeared on the counter. Joe paid, leaned closer to the barman and said he was looking for Uncle Evan, who ran the puppet shows.

  "Evan? He comes in regular." The barman called across to the pool players. "Anyone see Evan today?"

  One of the three came over, cue in hand. "Are you wanting to offer him a job, like?"

  Joe explained that he wanted to talk about a book.

  "What sort of book-an encyclopedia?" The last word was drawn out in a cadenza of disapproval.

  "No, sir, don't get me wrong. I'm not selling anything. I happen to own a book that may have belonged to this gentleman once. I'm trying to find out where it came from originally."

  "Is that it, under your arm?"

  "As a matter of fact it is." Joe was keeping it under his arm for the present.

  "Better show it to me, then. I'm Evan."

  Joe was suspicious. If this was Evan, why hadn't he spoken up before? But the barman gave a confirming nod. "You picked the right time to come in, mister."

  Joe felt at a disadvantage in this setting, among these people talking in their Welsh lilt. He wanted to be sure this was not a try-on. The man claiming to be Uncle Evan was around forty, dressed in jeans and a check shirt, with black hair worn in a pony-tail. His glasses had round metal frames that reminded Joe of John Lennon. Behind them, his deep-set eyes locked with Joe's.

  "I can't hold up the game too long."

  Joe noticed the hand clasping the cue. The fingers were long, the nails shaped. It was not the hand of a labouring man. He thought he could picture those fingers working puppet strings. It might be safe to let him handle the book. "Mr Heath-who used to have the bookshop in Union Passage-says he believes he bought the book from you."

  "Did he now?" Evan-if that was he-rested the cue against the bar-counter.

  With some reluctance, Joe handed over the precious Milton.

  "What's so special about this?" asked Evan, thumbing through it. He paid no attention to the inscription.

  The ultra cautious Joe decided to play the raw American tourist card. "You buy something really old like this, you want to know who owned it before you."

  "Seems to me it's just a book."

  "Dr Johnson's edition."

  "Is that special?"

  "It's going to have a place of honour on my shelves."

  After a pause, Evan said, "You're telling me it's worth more than I sold it for, is that it?"

  "So you did own it?"

  "Yes-and you came here to gloat?"

  "Not at all, sir. I'm just trying to establish a chain of ownership. Do you happen to remember how it came into your hands?"

  Evan vibrated his lips. "It's a bloody long time ago."

  "Would another drink help you to remember?"

  "Thanks. I'm on SA." While the pint glass was being filled, Evan went on, "Far as I recall, and this was the best part of twenty years back, I got it in Bath, out of an antique shop. Don't ask me why. You go into these places and come out with things you never expected to buy. Milton. My God, I must have been trying to impress someone, mustn't I? A girl, I reckon."

  "You wouldn't remember which shop?"

  Evan frowned.

  "I could line up another beer," Joe offered.

  The face lit up. "I do remember. It was in Walcot. It's still there. Noble and Nude."

  THE FIRST phone call came around three in the afternoon.

  "Superintendent Diamond?"

  "Speaking."

  "John Delany, News of the World crime desk. I understand you're in charge of this case concerning the dismembered bodies."

  "What are you on about?" Diamond hedged, wondering what was in this for a national Sunday.

  "The bodies in the vault. A couple of hands. A skull. Have you found anything else yet?"

  " 'Dismembered bodies' is laying it on thick."

  "It's only one body? The same victim?"

  " 'Victim' isn't a word I'm using."

  "Why not?"

  "Look, we found some human bones in a cellar, a skull and a pair of hands, as you said. The cellar happens to be built over a churchyard. We believe the skull is several hundred years old. I wouldn't think this has any news value for a paper like yours."

  "Parts of a body under the cellar of the house where Frankenstein was written? You're joking, Mr Diamond. It's going to make front pages all over the world."

  nine

  AFTER YEARS OF STEEPING himself in the story, he felt driven, not precisely as Frankenstein had been, nor with the same objective, but just as powerfully. "My Umbs now tremble, and my eyes swim with the remembrance; but then a resistless and almost frantic impulse urged me forward; I seemed to have lost all soul or sensation but for this one pursuit."

  Driven towards the final killing.

  "The road of excess," wrote the poet, "leads to the palace of wisdom."

  Shortly he would find out.

  ten

  CAMDEN CRESCENT, WHERE PEG Redbird arrived to carry out the valuation, is a flawed masterpiece. In 1788, the architect John Eveleigh sought to emulate John Wood's most famous building with a crescent of his own. The position above Hedgemead was arguably superior to the Royal Crescent, with sensational views to the east across the Avon Valley towards Bathwick Hill. The style was to be classical, the concept more ornate than Wood's. Building got under way at each end and the first houses were in place when problems were revealed at the eastern end. The foundation was unsafe. The exposed strata that had appeared to be sound for building had hidden faults, and slippage occurred. Four of the houses had to be abandoned. Poor Eveleigh was committed to the project and obliged to build the rest of his crescent, leaving an unsightly gap like an old fighter's grin, with the extreme eastern house standing alone for many years, mocking his grandiose ambition.

  The rest of the truncated Crescent has survived two centuries of surveyors' reports, and is regarded as tolerably safe and one of the best addresses in Bath. Peg had hopes of some good finds in old Simon Minchendon's home.

  The nephew who opened the door professed to know nothing about old furniture, but Peg was wary. The death of a relative often brings out the worst in people. She was pretty sure he would have his own ideas which items were the gems. Anything he talked up would get a high valuation.

  His name was Ralph Pennycook, he told her, and he had come up from Brighton for the funeral.

  "Some good antique shops there," Peg commented, trying him out.

  "In the Lanes, you mean? I don't bother with all that crap," he said of the corner of Brighton everyone in the trade found irresistible. "If I go into town, I head for the computer shops." True, he looked custom-built for staring at a screen, with a slight curvature of the spine and deep-set brown eyes behind thick plastic lenses. A young man who neglected to look after himself, Peg decided. He was definitely under-nourished. Possibly that was why he was dressed in the black pinstripe jacket that looked like the top of a suit and made an odd combination with his blue corduroy trousers; he needed to wrap himself up, even in this hot summer.

  "I hope you don't mind me asking. Are you the executor?" Peg enquired. These things need to be established at the outset. Private sellers sometimes offer goods that don't belong to them.

  "What gives you that idea?" he said.

  "Well, how exactly…?"

  "I'm the lucky bugger who inherited this lot, aren't I? Poor old Si ran out of family. Uncle Tod and Aunt Nell were mentioned in the will, but they snuffed it before he did."

  "Then what exactly do you want from me, darling? A full valuation? You can't dispose of anything until the probate comes through, and that can take months." She added, "Presumably."

  "Yeah."

  There was an awkward pause.

  He resumed, "The bank are acting as whatchamacallits."

  "Executors?" Peg supplied the word. Whatever else he had come into, this young man was not blessed with a silver tongue.

  "And they want to make some kind of list."

&nb
sp; "An inventory."

  "Yeah. An inventory." Except he made it sound like "infantry".

  "And a valuation, no doubt?" said Peg.

  "Right. I thought I'd get me own one of them done-to protect me interests, like-and I was told you're the best in Bath."

  "You want the full monty, piece by piece? That's going to take some time," said Peg, her eyes travelling over the contents of the entrance hall, making a snap valuation of her own.

  "That isn't what I said." He cleared his throat. "I'm, er, jumping the gun. You're the first to see the stuff. The geezer from the bank is coming to do the proper job on Monday."

  "So where do I fit into this arrangement?" asked Peg, playing the innocent.

  "You get first sight of what's here." He looked away. He was sweating, in spite of his brash manner.

  There was another uneasy interval.

  "It all belongs to me," he insisted once more, reading Peg's thoughts as she watched him with her bright, miss-nothing eyes. "I need some cash in hand for a project I have in mind."

  "When you say you want to protect your interests…"

  "You know what I mean, don't you?" said Pennycook. "I'm offering you a few choice items now, if you want to do business. A few things wouldn't get onto the, em…"

  "Inventory. And you'd save yourself some tax."

  "You got it."

  His cards were on the table, then. Peg's were not. "I wish you hadn't told me, ducky. I don't get involved in anything irregular."

  "It happens all the time," he informed her superfluously. "Look, see me right on this, and I'll see you right later, when I got probate and I can sell the rest of the stuff legit. Do you do clearances?"

  This was not a man who was ignorant of the trade, Peg noted, but she, too, was playing a canny game. "House clearances? I don't bother with them as a rule. It's more trouble than it's worth."

  "So you're telling me to piss off?"

  "Sweetie, the difficulty with what you're suggesting is that serious buyers of antiques-quality antiques-like to know the provenance of the items they acquire. See the bracket clock behind you on the shelf? That's William and Mary. If I were to offer anything as fine as that for sale, they'd want to know who owned it before me. If I said Si Minchendon, you and I could easily land ourselves in trouble."

  He glanced up at the ceiling, as if the plasterwork interested him more than Peg's last remark.

  She added without enthusiasm, "I suppose we could look at some less distinguished items."

  "Want me to show you over the gaff?"

  "Since I'm here, you might as well," she said, "but I can't promise a thing."

  They toured the house and Peg's expert eye missed nothing. Old Si's furniture was collectable, no question, and some of the smaller items such as tripod tables and side-chairs could be removed without anyone knowing they had been there. In the drawing room were some bits of china she rather liked, a pair of Coalport plates by William Cook and a Minton pot pourri vase painted for the Great Exhibition of 1851. She priced them fairly, then said she wouldn't be able to go to such a price if he wanted to sell them prior to valuation. This put Pennycook in the position of reducing the figure and seeing if she would take the risk. With a show of reluctance, Peg agreed to buy them for two-thirds the price she had named.

  The landing upstairs was lined with watercolours, landscapes that she suspected were by minor painters of the late nineteenth century, serene in concept and unremarkable.

  Except two that stood out. Instead of patently English scenes where animals grazed and the only suggestions of humanity were cottages and church towers, these were nightmarish. In one, two figures in a bleak, craggy setting that suggested a theatrical backdrop faced each other like protagonists. The other was an interior, even more melodramatic. A woman lay across a bed in a posture of death, her head hanging down, scarlet marks of strangulation on her neck. A man stood staring at her in horror, while at the open window a fiendlike creature stood grinning and pointing at the corpse.

  Peg immediately thought of William Blake. The theatricality of the settings was an indication; so was the peculiar rendering of the figures, their muscularity showing through the folds of garments that flowed with the composition. If these were by Blake, they were by far the most valuable things in the house. She moved past them without betraying undue interest, wondering how long they had been hanging there. The problem with removing pictures is the telltale patch they leave on the wallpaper. But helpfully this paper looked reasonably new.

  Little else upstairs was both portable and saleable, as Peg pointed out. Si's real interest had been furniture and you couldn't remove large pieces without leaving gaps. Pennycook was forced to agree. Clearly, he was disappointed. They had done less than nine hundred pounds' worth of business.

  "You're looking for cash, no doubt," said Peg.

  "Cash, yes. It's got to be cash."

  "I don't carry large amounts, ducky. It isn't safe."

  "No sweat, lady. I trust you-but you will collect the stuff sharpish, won't you?"

  "Later today?"

  "That'll do."

  "I'll send a man with a van. He's very discreet, is my Mr Somerset. You can call at my shop in Walcot Street if you want the money today. I put some by for this. To be frank, I expected to spend a little more, but you can never tell."

  Pennycook's eyes widened. "There's nothing else you noticed, going round?"

  Peg took her time, and frowned, as if straining to remember anything at all. "There was a slightly chipped chaise-longue upstairs, mahogany, upholstered in blue velvet. Late Victorian, I'm certain."

  "In the back bedroom?"

  "Yes. I could probably find a buyer for that, even in the state it's in. Bath is full of rich women with a Madame Recamier fantasy."

  "Anything else?"

  "The tripod table in the front room. It's been repaired, I noticed, and not very expertly. And you have a couple of watercolours on the landing, rather grand guignok. I don't know if you'd call them a pair, but I think they're by the same artist. Throw them in and I could raise the offer to fifteen hundred, on the understanding that I have first choice of the more valuable items when you get probate. Does that sound better?"

  Infinitely better, going by Pennycook's reaction. The deal was done. "Will you be there tonight?" he asked. "Can I collect the dosh tonight?"

  "Any time, darling. I live over the shop."

  Peg hurried back to Noble and Nude to read up on William Blake.

  THE ROMAN Baths were under siege by the media. Nobody was being admitted to the vault. Camera crews and photographers, radio people and reporters, were blocking the main entrance. Bewildered tourists stood in Abbey Churchyard not knowing how to get to the ticket booths.

  It fell to Peter Diamond to try and defuse the problem with a hastily arranged press conference at Manvers Street. If nothing else, it would relieve the pressure at the Baths. He was ill-prepared. He knew nothing about Mary Shelley and little of Frankenstein. All this had blown up just when he was doing his best to tiptoe away from the case.

  They filled the room that was used for sessions with the media. He had to force his way in through the crush. Surrounded, not liking this one bit, he stood with Halliwell at his side watching the scuffles between the camera crews.

  "This will be brief," he began, and was told to speak up, and did. He fairly bellowed, "Do you want to hear this, or not?"

  They listened to his summary, the discovery of the hand in the vault by the security man, the estimate by the pathologist that it had been buried there for up to twenty years, and the decision to look for more remains. He described the unearthing of the skull and stressed that it was much older than the hand bones, and almost certainly from a medieval burial.

  As he spoke of the skull he was aware of intense scrutiny to his right. Turning, he locked eyes with Ingeborg Smith. The reproach in that ambitious young woman's gaze was understandable. Her exclusive had been crushed in this stampede. She blamed him.


  "Forensic scientists are carrying out more tests on the remains," he continued, shifting his look to another part of the room. "I don't expect any results before next week, and then I don't expect much. We already know the salient facts."

  All as downbeat as he could make it. Then the questions hit him like machine-gun fire:

  "What about the Frankenstein connection, Superintendent?"

  "Did you know you were digging in the Frankenstein vault?"

  "Is it just a coincidence, these body parts turning up there?"

  "Have you found any nuts and bolts?" This earned a laugh.

  He had to raise both arms for a chance to reply. "You're going to have to believe me when I tell you I knew nothing about the history of the vault until this afternoon, when I heard it from one of you. It makes a good story, and good luck to you, but I doubt if there's any connection with the remains down there."

  "Isn't it well-known that Mary Shelley lived over the vault and wrote her book there?"

  "Not well-known to me. I've been here some years and never heard a word about it. I imagine you lot will remedy that."

  "When the hand was discovered, didn't you take an interest in the history of the house?"

  "The house you're talking about doesn't exist. It was demolished a century ago, except for the vault. The hand is less than twenty years old."

  "So the answer is no?"

  "Correct."

  "Is this a murder inquiry, Superintendent?"

  "I wouldn't call it that."

  "Dismembered bits of a corpse buried in cement?"

  "There could be an explanation that doesn't include murder."

  "What's that?"

  "No comment."

  "What are you getting at, Mr Diamond? Some kind of hoax? The bones are real, aren't they?"

  "Oh, yes, but I'm keeping an open mind about how they got there. To come back to your question, I'm the murder man in Bath, so you can see that we're taking it seriously."

  "Do you have a theory who was responsible?"

  "Let's be clear. We don't know whose hand bones they are. We don't know how they came to be in the vault. We have no witnesses, no motive, no description of the perpetrator or the victim."