The Vault

by Peter Lovesey

  "Try."

  "Well, she talked about the subject matter, how it seemed to be straight out of Frankenstein."

  "You're serious?" This added an extra dimension. Diamond was beginning to feel plagued by the wretched monster.

  "Peg was convinced of it and she convinced me. She knew the book, and she'd brought back a copy from the library. One of the pictures was the meeting of Frankenstein and the monster in a Swiss valley and the other was Frankenstein discovering his bride had been killed, with the monster staring through the window. Incidents straight out of the book."

  Diamond said, "I remember seeing a film-"

  "Forget it," Somerset cut him short. "The cinema versions of Frankenstein are a travesty. They make the monster out to be brain-damaged, an unmitigated villain. I've been reading the book again. It's Frankenstein, the creator, who is the true villain. The monster isn't inherently evil. He is driven to cruelty by Frankenstein's neglect and bad treatment. He's deprived of a soul, a friend, a love. It's a very modern story in that sense. A terrible upbringing warps the poor creature's development."

  "He needed a social worker to straighten him out," said Diamond, too flippantly, but Somerset did not react.

  "They even get the make-up wrong. He's said to be grotesque, yes, but not like the Boris Karloff version. Mary Shelley's creature has lustrous black hair that flows, and fine, white teeth. Instead of those dark pitted eye sockets you see in all the films, his were white. True, the lips are said to be black and the skin yellowy, but I'm sure the author wouldn't have recognised most of the screen versions you see."

  "You think she would have recognised the monster in the paintings?"

  "I'm certain of it."

  "Blake and Frankenstein," Diamond mused. "It's a connection I hadn't made."

  Somerset took this as a literary observation. "I was rather caught off-guard myself when Peg showed me the pictures. Think about it, though. The book was published in his lifetime. Writers, poets and people tended to know each other, didn't they, Shelley, Coleridge, all that crowd, or at least take an interest in what was being written? Peg told me that Blake knew Mary Shelley's mother, the Wollstonecraft woman. He illustrated some of her children's stories."

  "And he decided to illustrate Frankenstein?"

  "It seems so, yes, unless these are brilliant fakes. We looked pretty closely at them. Took them apart, in fact. The paper is usually the giveaway. A clever forger can make a fair stab at an artist's style, but he can't fake the paint and the paper."

  "Was it old enough, the paper?"

  "We were convinced of it. In this trade you acquire a sense of how old things are. It's more a matter of experience than science. I reckon that paper could be dated to somewhere between 1800 and 1825."

  "Is it usual, for an artist to illustrate a book?"

  "In the case of Blake, yes. He was an engraver, so it was very much his line of work. Perhaps you're familiar with his series on Milton and Dante?"

  Diamond didn't rise to that. "You were saying you studied these pictures together and she decided she knew of a buyer."

  "She said she had a quick sale in mind, not to a dealer, but someone who would pay-to use one of her expressions-top dollar."

  "And she wouldn't tell you who it was."

  Somerset's lip quivered a little. "She seemed to be relishing the prospect, talked about having her bit of fun. She said this was a rare beast, someone who had no choice except to buy."

  "Those were her actual words?"

  "As near as I can recall."

  Diamond glanced at Leaman. "Did you get them?"

  The sergeant looked up from his notebook and nodded.

  Diamond turned back to Somerset. "Did any of this come up in yesterday's interview with John Wigfull?"

  "It did."

  "And did you give him Mr Sturr's name?"

  Somerset swung to Leaman, appealing for the sympathy he had failed to get from Diamond. "Look here, I don't want this to get back to Councillor Sturr-that I put you onto him. He's a powerful man in Bath. He could make life very difficult for me."

  "That makes two of us," said Diamond.

  twenty-one

  "How CLOSE TO STOW FORD?" Diamond asked over the intercom.

  "Less than a mile across the fields, sir."

  "The field where he was found?"

  "Yes."

  John Wigfull's car had been located in the Wiltshire village of Westwood.

  On the drive out there, the big man treated Sergeant Leaman to his thoughts on the case. "Two people struck on the head."

  After that, as if no more needed saying, he stared out at the thickly wooded slopes of the Limpley Stoke Valley.

  Leaman didn't know Diamond well enough to pass a comment. As a statement it was not in the Sherlock Holmes class.

  Eventually Diamond added, "One of them dead."

  It was beginning to sound like verse. Leaman couldn't believe that the head of the murder squad was composing rhymes about a vicious assault on a colleague. He knew of the rivalry between his boss and Diamond, and he knew Diamond had a reputation for speaking out, but to hear the tragic events rendered into verse was too awful to contemplate. Something needed to be said.

  "Are they connected, sir, Peg Redbird's death and the attack on Mr Wigfull?"

  "Let's assume it," said Diamond at once, and Leaman was willing to believe the rhyming had been coincidence. "John Wigfull got too close to Peg Redbird's killer and provoked an attack. So who is it? Professor Dougan was his prime suspect and he has to be ours as well. But there are others in the frame. You saw what Somerset is like. He was devoted to Peg Redbird, and she was taunting him that night, talking of a secret meeting with someone else."

  "The picture collector?"

  "Right. Somerset has no alibi. The question is whether he was made jealous enough to kill."

  "And then thrown into a panic when Mr Wigfull got onto him?"

  Diamond gave a nod. "Then there's Pennycook, the guy on the fiddle with the antiques. He could have got panicky, too. It's easy to assume he was in Brighton yesterday, but was he?"

  "We can check," said Leaman.

  "We will. We've got to see him. And we have another dark horse, Councillor Sturr, who happens to collect early English watercolours."

  "Why would he take a swipe at Mr Wigfull?"

  "That isn't the question," said Diamond, making it sound as if taking a swipe at Wigfull was standard behaviour. "The question is: why would John Sturr have killed Peg Redbird? And how could he have killed her, considering he was at the ACC's party that night and spent the rest of it with Ingeborg Smith?"

  "That's what I call a good alibi."

  "But if he did kill her, and CID in the shape of John Wigfull got on his tail, then it's no surprise he went for him with a blunt instrument."

  "In a field out in the country?"

  "That's a mystery we face with each of them. How does an American Professor find his way to a remote spot like Stowford? What's Ellis Somerset doing in a cornfield when he said he was at home with a good book? How does a junkie like Pennycook happen to be there? Let's see if we can find a clue."

  Wigfull's car, now festooned in crime scene tape, stood among twenty or thirty others in the shadow of a tall stone wall that marked the boundary of Westwood Manor, a National Trust property. The iron gate to the church was on the same side of the lane.

  "Plenty of cars," Leaman commented.

  "Visiting the Manor House," Diamond aired his knowledge, having just caught sight of the board that welcomed people inside. "They open Sundays. I'm more interested to know if there were cars here yesterday."

  The constable from the Wiltshire Police guarding Wigfull's car had the answer. "Scarcely anyone was about, sir. The house wasn't open."

  Diamond thanked him and asked if he was just as well informed about the interior of the car.

  "Personally, I haven't looked inside, sir, but I understand nothing of any use was found."

  "I'll decide that fo
r myself. What was in there?"

  "Just what you see, sir. The local paper on the back seat, Friday's edition. There's also a leaflet advertising the Antiques Fair. And a parking ticket on the dash, dated Saturday."

  "That'll be when he called at the Assembly Rooms." Diamond looked at the ticket though the windscreen. It was the kind you buy from a machine, the standard ticket issued by Bath Council, whichever car park you used. Wigfull had paid £1.40 for two hours, and the time would have elapsed at 4.2I p.m. But there was no way of telling the actual time he had left. "I'll look inside."

  "It's sealed, sir."

  "Unseal it, then."

  The constable eyed him in amazement. "Forensic haven't finished yet."

  "Their look-out, constable, not mine. Don't wet yourself. I'll take responsibility."

  He lifted the police tapes enough to open the rear door and remove the newspaper and leaflet. The Bath Chronicle was folded open at a page covering the weekend's entertainments and attractions. The Antiques Fair had both a display advert and an article about some of the items on offer. But Wigfull had gone rooting for information, not bronze cherubs. The fair was an opportunity, and he had kept it to himself. Out for personal glory, Diamond decided.

  No clue as to why he had gone from the Assembly Rooms to a field in Stowford.

  The paper was tossed back onto the car seat. "Forensic are welcome to this. Let's look at the scene."

  The constable pointed across the fields. The two detectives climbed over a stile and started to take the footpath across a chest-high crop of maize. "Keep your eyes peeled," he told Sergeant Leaman. "They must have come this way, John Wigfull and his attacker."

  "Together?" said Leaman.

  "Not exactly arm in arm. My picture of it is that Wigfull is in pursuit. He follows someone in the car from Bath. That part is simple. Then the suspect drives into Westwood, parks, jumps out and heads across the field. Out here you can't follow a man without being noticed. Just look ahead of you. In this stuff you'd spot another man half a mile away, easy. So he knows Wigfull is on the trail. He ducks down somewhere, ambushes him and clocks him one. Then he legs it back to his car and drives off."

  They reached the wall at the far side and climbed over another stile into a small uncultivated area of grass and a few trees. Ahead, under a sycamore's shade, was a lone figure in police uniform having a smoke. Galvanized, the constable dropped the cigarette, slammed his cap on and picked up a clipboard.

  "Are we as obvious as that?" Diamond muttered to Leaman. "It must be the way you walk."

  A large area around the spot where Wigfull had been found was marked with metal stakes and checkered tape.

  "So what did they pick up in the fingertip search this morning?" Diamond asked when the introductions were over.

  "Not a lot, sir," the constable answered. "A horse-shoe, some plastic bottles, a few cigarette butts, all of them looking as if they'd been here for years."

  No mention was made of the fresh butts around his feet.

  They went over to the plastic tent protecting the spot where Wigfull had been found. Soil samples had been taken, but the scene looked unlikely to yield much information. There were no indications of a struggle. The theory of an ambush was the most plausible.

  "What size was the horse-shoe?"

  "Average." The constable made the shape with forefingers and thumbs.

  "Not large enough for a weapon, then?"

  "Don't know, sir."

  "I mean a weapon heavy enough to brain a man. If he had any sense, this bozo, he'll have got rid of the weapon in that cornfield we walked through." The fact that the crop was maize didn't undermine the point; you could have driven a motorbike into the field and lost it among the tall stocks.

  He pursued this question of the weapon. "If, as we were saying, he was running from Wigfull, he's unlikely to have been carrying the thing he used. It's more likely he picked something up, any damned thing that came to hand."

  "A piece of timber?" suggested Leaman.

  "That's the way my thoughts were heading." He looked around for a convenient pile of chopped firewood. Nothing so obvious was in sight. "What's behind us, over there?"

  "A pond, sir."

  He went to see for himself. The pond was outside the staked area, supposedly of limited interest to the scene-of-crime team. Large enough to have floated a rowing boat in it, but you wouldn't have needed oars.

  Sergeant Leaman, at his side, said unwisely, "Are you thinking he might have chucked the piece of timber in here, sir?"

  "Timber would have floated, wouldn't it?"

  Leaman reddened.

  Diamond was examining the ground at the margin of the water. He scraped at the soil with his foot, then crouched and rubbed some on his finger and sniffed. "Bonfire. There's just the possibility that he found something here that he used as the weapon. It's the sort of spot teenagers pick for whatever they get up to over a few drinks. See the ring-pulls? Fag-ends? The cheapest drink is cider. That's the one most kids start with, and cider comes in bottles, thick, heavy bottles. It's speculation, but I'm wondering if our villain picked up an empty and bashed John Wigfull with it."

  "And chucked it in the pond?" said Leaman.

  Diamond gave him a look that said don't push me.

  twenty-two

  "… ONE THOUGHT, ONE CONCEPTION, one purpose. So much has been done, exclaimed the soul of Frankenstein- more, far more, will I achieve, treading in the steps already marked, I will pioneer a new way, explore unknown powers, and unfold to the world the deepest mysteries of creation."

  Like Frankenstein, he was treading in steps already marked, but only to reach new territory. The way was dangerous, better travelled in darkness. More than ever now, he needed to cover his tracks. He was a hunted man.

  twenty-three

  JOE DOUG AN APPEARED MORE calm than he had at any point up to now. "Nice timing, superintendent," he said, rising from a chair in the garden of the Royal Crescent Hotel. "Why don't you gentlemen join me? I just ordered afternoon tea."

  Tea in the Royal Crescent was something special and a waiter was approaching the table, but Diamond waved him away. This was not a twenty-year-old murder he was investigating now. The time of leisurely tea-breaks was well past. He sat opposite Dougan and sent Sergeant Leaman for another chair. "I'd better say at once we have no news of your wife," he told the professor.

  "No problem," said Joe with a serene smile.

  Diamond widened his eyes.

  Joe said, "Donna is fine."

  Fine? Diamond had to play the statement over in his mind before fully taking it in.

  Joe added, "She called me at lunchtime. She's in Paris, France."

  "Paris?"

  "It surprised me, too. She just needed time out, she said. Things got a little heavy for her, my fling with Mary Shelley, as she calls it. Yeah, that's the way Donna saw it. She felt neglected. When I went back to the antiques store on Thursday evening, Donna went looking for sympathy. She knocked on the door of some people we met here, a Swiss couple, the Hack-steiners. They had the best suite in the hotel and they took pity. They let Donna spend the night in a spare bed in their suite. The next day she picked her moment to leave the place without being seen and travelled to France with them."

  "Without luggage?"

  "It's only a train ride."

  "Passport?"

  "She has it with her. And credit cards." He gave the long suffering smile one man shares with another when talking about the ways of women. "She wants one more day in Paris. Not many shops are open Sundays over there."

  "Why didn't she get in touch before this?"

  Joe shrugged. "To pay me out, I guess. I'm so happy to know she's alive and well that I didn't ask her."

  "You're positive it was your wife?"

  "Are you kidding? I know that voice. In twenty-four years I've heard plenty of it."

  Heart-warming news, apparently. Diamond was not convinced. He would not believe until he had seen Donna himself. I
t was all so convenient just when the heat was on Joe. He couldn't produce her because she was in another country.

  "So when is she coming back to Bath?"

  "She won't. I'll travel out there tomorrow."

  Like hell you will, Diamond thought. Suspicion of Joe was driving him now, just as it had driven Wigfull. "Let's talk about yesterday. How did you spend the afternoon and evening?"

  Joe's manner changed abruptly. He drew back in the chair, gripping the arms. "Hey, what is this? More dumb questions? I've taken more than my share from you guys in the past two days. I'm going to get onto my embassy if you don't let up. Police intimidation. We don't take that stuff."

  "It's not intimidation, professor."

  "And what if I refuse to answer?"

  "Why should you?"

  "Because I'm sick of your questions, that's why. You had co-operation from me all the way, you and that other cop with the mustache. You tell me something: who identified the woman who was found in the river? I did. I'm supposed to be on vacation, not looking at dead bodies. The other evening your people searched my room, treating me like a goddam criminal. I'm standing in my boxer shorts, the Dodge Professor of English, watching two cops go through my possessions."

  "Who was that-Chief Inspector Wigfull?"

  "With the mustache."

  "This was when-Friday?"

  Joe nodded. "They didn't find a thing."

  "Do you know what they were looking for?"

  "You'd better ask the mustache."

  "I can't," said Diamond. "John Wigfull is lying unconscious in hospital. Somebody caved his head in."

  Joe was silent for a time. "And you're thinking I'm the somebody?"

  "It will help us to know your movements yesterday, sir."

  Joe flushed. "I'm not a violent man. I'm an academic, for God's sake." His outraged innocence was worth an Oscar nomination if he was acting.

  "Yesterday afternoon?" Diamond pressed him, while Leaman waited with notebook open.

  With a sigh, Joe capitulated. "What was yesterday… Saturday? I went around the hotels, asking about Donna. It was a long shot, but I wanted to satisfy myself that she wasn't still in Bath. I carry a picture of her and I showed it to the reception people, concierges, bellmen, anyone I could."