One of the two he was looking at was squat, overweight and bald. The head definitely wasn’t shaved. His pinstripe suit looked expensive and his whole demeanour oozed self-importance. In fact he wasn’t doing anything other than watching Waghorn’s performance and making occasional comments. His brown-suited companion didn’t give out the same aura at all and seemed to be there in a supportive role, nodding agreement and saying little himself.
“Check ’em out, Keith.”
Halliwell went over and approached the sidekick.
When asked, the man in the brown suit said, “What’s it to you?” Seeing the police ID, he quickly added, “I’m with my boss.”
“And who’s he?”
“Don’t you know him? Sir Edward Paris, Edpari Properties.”
Halliwell had heard of the company, even if he didn’t know the man. Edpari was emblazoned in large letters over developments across the city. “Does he own this?”
A shrug. “If he wants to, he will before long.”
“Do you work for him?”
“Chauffeur mainly.”
“Name?”
“Spearman. Jim Spearman.”
“The car’s nearby, is it?”
“The Range Rover with the others. The clean one. The Bentley is being serviced.”
“And how did you get in?”
“Through the gate like you. Nothing gets in Sir Ed’s way.”
Halliwell returned to Diamond and reported back.
“I’ve seen the name around. How did he say the last part?”
“Like the French say Paris.”
“Makes sense, I suppose, if that’s his name: Ed Paris. Is he French?”
“I didn’t ask.”
“Funny. I would have said it like Campari. That’s Italian.”
“I know,” Halliwell said, and added after a pause, “I do know that much.”
“Shouldn’t be long now,” Diamond said, returning his attention to the work going on in the loft.
How wrong he was. Fitting the huge sling was like herding cats. Each time the straps were swung towards the chair, Dr. Waghorn aborted the attempt. He had his own idea how the job should be done and he wanted perfection. After numerous attempts, he came down from the cherry picker for a consultation with the manager who was nominally in charge.
The two detectives were close enough to hear everything.
“It’s not working,” Waghorn said in his small, clipped voice.
“You’re telling me, mate. It’s never going to work with you,” he was told.
“It’s a disarticulated skeleton. I don’t want to end up with bones flying everywhere.”
“That floor is going to collapse sometime soon and the whole bloody lot will disarticulate and fall through the hole. Don’t hold me responsible if you won’t let us do our job. We’re not without experience. I’ve moved a Bechstein grand from the top of a tower block and it didn’t take a single scratch.”
“This is not a piano.”
“It’s child’s play compared to that.”
“Speaking of experience, I have thirty-seven years of recovering bones from difficult locations,” Dr. Waghorn said through gritted teeth.
“Can you operate the bloody crane?”
“Of course not. I expect your people to do that.”
The manager folded his arms and said nothing. The movement in a telescopic crane is controlled through hydraulics. The boom is made up of many tubes fitted inside each other and the jib at the top works from the tower, swinging the lifting apparatus through wide angles. The hoisting block is heavy and capable of damage if misused.
“Very well,” Waghorn said finally. “Attach the sling your way. I’ll watch from here—if I can bring myself to look.”
Without more fuss the sling was passed under the chair and secured.
The man in the cab had been waiting hours for this. The cables tightened and took the strain and the chair and its fragile burden ascended at a rate that seemed quite shocking after the long wait. There were some cheers and a few laughs at what was quite a comic spectacle.
“Not very dignified,” Diamond said. “I don’t think the King of Bath is enjoying this.”
“He doesn’t have much choice,” Halliwell said.
Looking uncannily like a rider on a chairoplane, the skeleton was swung clear of the building and out towards the deck of an open lorry, where it was lowered and steadied by a couple of assistants and secured to the sides. The skull had shifted position and some finger bones had to be recovered from the sling, but otherwise everything seemed to be in place.
“Job done,” Halliwell said and called out, “Happy, Dr. Waghorn?”
“Hardly the word I’d use,” said the anthropologist. “I’ve aged ten years in the last ten minutes.” He marched over for a closer look.
“A coffee would be good after that,” Halliwell said, unstrapping his hard hat.
Diamond appeared not to hear.
“Shall we go?” Halliwell said.
His boss was gazing at what was left of the terrace. “The demolition men are going to move in soon and finish the job.”
“That’s for sure. Delays cost money in the building trade.”
“I want one more look inside the loft before they reduce it to rubble.”
Halliwell sighed. Coffee would have to wait.
Diamond was pensive. “I wonder if I can do any better with the cherry picker than I did before.”
He stepped across and climbed into the basket. Waghorn had controlled the thing like a professional. Diamond needed to remind himself which of the small levers gave upward movement. The one he chose simply caused a judder. Trial and error, he told himself. Another did the job and he was borne smoothly to the height he wanted. Now it was a matter of finding forward movement.
He managed it without mishap and got his aerial view of the space the skeleton and chair had occupied. More of the boards were revealed, some of them splintered and caved in, and he saw just how unstable the flooring was. Nowhere would it be safe to stand.
A little to the left of where the chair had been was what he first took to be some sort of mould. On closer inspection he saw it was a piece of dust-covered fabric.
Curious, he manoeuvred the basket a short way to the side and then forward and leaned over cautiously for a better view.
Now he could see what it was, flat as a dried cowpat but distinctive in shape.
A white three-cornered hat.
The Archway café was the only choice for coffee in Twerton. Located under the railway embankment arches on the Lower Bristol Road, it was more spacious inside than the temporary-looking shopfront suggested. On entering and catching the whiff of fried bacon, the two detectives remembered how hungry they were and ordered the full English.
The place was busy and they were lucky to find a table for three against the wall on the far side. Not wishing anyone to join them, Diamond put a claim on the spare chair with the flattened tricorne belonging to the skeleton. Before leaving the demolition site he had borrowed a useful tool resembling a litter picker and fished the hat out of the loft with that.
“Will it be all right there?” Halliwell said.
“Best place,” Diamond said. “I’m not putting it on the floor.”
“It’s a bit spooky.”
“Why?”
“Like Beau Nash left his hat on the chair and is coming back for it.”
“Maybe we should order him a breakfast.”
“You’re freaking me out, guv.”
Two mugs of coffee were put in front of them.
They had barely taken a sip when someone from behind Diamond said, “What’s your opinion, then, officer? Is it really Beau Nash?”
He didn’t recognise the voice. As a film buff, he thought it resembled Alfred Hitchc
ock’s ponderous delivery, trying to sound grand but with a touch of cockney in the vowel sounds. And when he turned, the large-bellied figure standing over him was not unlike Hitchcock. Sir Edward Paris, with Spearman the chauffeur a little to the rear.
“Were you listening to our conversation?” Diamond said without getting up or even making eye contact. He was annoyed at being waylaid like this and he didn’t give a toss for titled people.
“Not at all,” Paris said. “I happen to take an interest in Beau Nash, that’s all.”
At the mention of the name, Diamond turned to face him. “What’s your opinion, then?”
“I’m just a humble rate-payer who helps to fund your salaries,” Paris said. “You’re the investigators.”
“We investigate crime.”
“Is that his hat on the chair?”
“I can move it if you want to join us.”
“No, we just had our coffee. We’re on the way out. I didn’t want you to think we had a guilty conscience and were trying to avoid you.”
“We hadn’t even noticed you,” Diamond said.
“You noticed us at the demolition site. Bloody trespassers, you thought, what do they want? We got through the security, no problem. I’m well known for that.”
“And for other things, no doubt,” Diamond said.
“We won’t go into that,” Paris said. “But if you have a decent-sized piece of land you want to sell, I’m your man.” He nodded to his chauffeur and made for the door.
After watching them leave, Diamond said, “Pompous twit. I’m glad they didn’t stay. I’ve had enough of him already.”
“What were they doing at the site?” Halliwell asked.
“I thought you asked the chauffeur that. Getting a close view, so Paris can boast about it to his friends.”
“How would he have known?”
“About the skeleton? Come on, it’s in all the papers, much as I wish it wasn’t.”
“About Nash.”
“He isn’t the first to come up with that. People have been calling since yesterday.”
“Is the hat the clincher?” Halliwell asked.
“Not unless we can think of a reason why he ended up in that loft. But there are strange coincidences. Nash owned a white hat and wore a black wig. Unusual in both cases. Paloma told me the clothes are right for 1761, the year he died. There were no teeth left in the skull, which is what you’d expect of an old man. He lived to eighty-six. That ticks a lot of boxes.”
“They can estimate someone’s age at postmortem, but not with much accuracy.” No one in CID was better qualified to speak about postmortems than Keith Halliwell.
“We’ll see what Waghorn comes up with. He may discover something else that ties in with what we’re thinking.”
“Would DNA prove it? Can it be extracted from bones?”
“Yes, even old bones. But it’s no use having a DNA profile if you’ve nothing to match it against.”
“His descendants?”
“He didn’t marry, so there’s no official bloodline. I expect there were offspring, because he put himself about, but where do you start? No, I can’t see the DNA thing helping us.”
“It’s new territory for us, trying to work out what happened more than two hundred years ago. What was Twerton like in those days?”
“Before the railway came? Very different. Mainly cloth mills and weaving. The industry went on for centuries. The terraced houses would have been workmen’s dwellings. Not the class of place Beau Nash was used to. I doubt if he came here very much at all.”
“He was doing his MC bit, lording it over the Assembly Rooms.”
“Right. But that’s beside the point if he was brought here after his death.”
“Is that what you think happened?”
Diamond sighed. He was forced to get serious about the Beau Nash thing. “Someone else would have moved the body here. If they wanted a secret place to put him, Twerton in 1761 was a smart choice.”
“But why? Why would they move him?”
“This is just a theory,” Diamond said, airing the knowledge he’d gleaned overnight from the books he’d borrowed. “He was a hero for much of his life. He made Bath the most fashionable town in the land. Grand buildings went up, fine streets. You know all this. I don’t have to labour it. But in his last years he was a sad case, old and decrepit and running up debts.”
“I expect he was still well known.”
“For sure. He was master of ceremonies to the end of his life. Visitors wanted to catch a sight of him even while he was being carted about in a sedan chair. The great days were gone, but Beau Nash was a name everyone knew. You only have to read accounts of the funeral procession. People filled the streets, watched from upstairs windows and even the rooftops. After a show like that, every seat taken in the Abbey, can you imagine them burying him in a pauper’s grave? I can’t.”
“Is that true—about the pauper’s grave?”
“I heard it from Paloma last night. It’s treated as a fact in the books she lent me. Hard to disprove.”
“But was it the law?”
“If someone didn’t leave enough to pay for his funeral, you mean?”
“Wasn’t there something called the Poor Law?” Halliwell said. “The state bears the cost.”
“I’m sure you’re right and this is my point. Nash had run up debts and was officially a pauper and the law had to be observed.”
“You’d think they’d have started a fund.”
“Funds take time to organise. They had a body ready for burial. The city paid for the funeral but they weren’t going to take on his debts. My theory is this. A few of his friends decided there was no way the great Beau Nash would end up in an unmarked grave, so they secretly took him out of his coffin.”
Halliwell’s face formed a slack-jawed expression of disbelief.
Diamond wasn’t stopping for anything. “The burial went ahead, but without the corpse. The coffin was weighted with sacks of earth. Under cover of darkness the body was moved to the house in Twerton and hidden in the loft.”
“Sitting up in a chair?”
“That’s weird, I agree. I expect it looked more dignified than laying him out on the floor. Obviously he was going to decompose, so they left him there for nature to take its course, intending to remove what was left of him at a later date and bury him somewhere more fitting. I can’t believe they meant the loft to be his final tomb, but in the meantime they would have sealed the access hatch and made the loft appear inaccessible.”
“And then what? They forgot about him?”
Diamond shook his head. “Unlikely. We’re talking about loyal friends, maybe as few as two or three, who took a big risk for him. Something went badly wrong. There’s always a leader in a conspiracy like this. It’s possible he was struck down. Sudden illness, or an accident. Anyway, when the main man was out of it, the others couldn’t think what to do. They delayed and delayed. In the end they did nothing at all.”
“Did you think of all this while we were at the site?” Halliwell asked, impressed, and not for the first time, by his boss’s ability to find a rational scenario for extraordinary events.
“It’s been a couple of days,” Diamond said. “That’s just one hypothesis. Do you want to hear another?”
“Not right now, guv. I can see our breakfasts coming this way.”
“That was quick,” Diamond said to the waiter who put a well-filled plate in front of him. “We’re going to enjoy this.”
“Is there someone with you?” the waiter asked, seeing the third chair.
“I hope not,” Halliwell said. “I do hope not.”
“You ordered two breakfasts, I thought.”
“And you’re right,” Diamond said. “Thanks, but our friend Beau didn’t show up. He doesn’t know what he’s missing.”
When the waiter had left, he said, “Will it put you off eating if I go on?”
Halliwell shook his head.
“The second scenario, then.” Diamond was already into his breakfast. “This is unbelievably good bacon. There’s a woman involved.”
“With the funny name—Popjoy?”
“Juliana Popjoy, yes. All the women liked him, but Popjoy was the one who came back when he was well past it. On his deathbed he told her he was in debt and would die a pauper and he couldn’t bear the thought of an unmarked grave. She promised she would never allow it to happen. She was thinking she’d give him a decent burial by selling off bits of his furniture. But she had no conception how much he owed until after he was dead.”
“This sounds good,” Halliwell said, “and I can see where it’s going.”
“She’d made a promise, and she kept it,” Diamond went on. “She went to the city authorities and did a deal with them. She’d pay off as many of his outstanding debts as he could afford. In return, she’d be given his body to dispose of. Officially, he’d be buried according to the law as a pauper and this would be announced. In reality, she’d find a final resting place for him.”
“Definitely more believable.”
“What happened after that is not so clear, but it may have gone like this. She was skint herself so she moved into the humble little place in Twerton.”
“With the body?”
“Exactly. She hadn’t enough left to buy him a burial plot. But it soon became obvious that cohabiting with a corpse isn’t practical, so she got someone she trusted to move him up to the loft and seal it. She had every intention of bringing him down later and carrying out his dying wish, but something went wrong. She may have died herself, or turned senile and forgot what she had upstairs. The upshot was that poor old Beau was stuck in the loft until the wrecking ball disturbed him.”
“Or how about this?” Halliwell said. “She was a bit of a weirdo and she liked going up to the loft and talking to him.”
“You read too many horror stories.”
“It’s not impossible. People who live alone—”
Diamond stabbed a finger at him. “Don’t go there.”
“Sorry, guv. My big mouth.”
Beau Death Page 4