The Vault (19 page)
Authors: Peter Lovesey
"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.
"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 for 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.
"...
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.
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. It 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."
"Which hotels?"
"You name it. The Hilton, the Francis, the Bath Spa. You can check. They'll remember me."
"That was in the afternoon?"
"All day, from eleven on."
"Until... ?"
"Until my feet cried out for mercy. Do you have any idea how many hotels there are? I got back around five, I guess. Sat in the bath tub for a long time. Had a meal on room service. Watched television until I was falling asleep in the chair."
"Make any phone calls?"
He shook his head.
"Did you see Chief Inspector Wigfull at any stage yesterday?"
"You don't give up, do you? No, I did not."
"And now you're proposing to leave Bath and join your wife in Paris?"
"Tomorrow. You don't have to sound so grudging. I'm a free agent."
"Where is she staying?"
"The Ritz. Donna doesn't do things by halves."
"Have you made your travel arrangements?"
"Sure. I'm catching the 10.28 to London tomorrow morning. I booked a seat on the Eurostar train."
"Without Mary Shelley's writing box?"
He rolled his eyes upwards. "Don't break my heart. I wish I knew what happened to that."
Before leaving the hotel, Diamond checked on room service to the John Wood suite. An evening meal of asparagus soup, sole
meuniere
and fresh strawberries and cream had been logged at 6.20 p.m. Saturday. "It still leaves him out of the hotel for long enough to attack John Wigfull and get back," he commented to Leaman.
"He'd need transport, sir."
"There and back. Don't say it—the logistics are difficult. If we knew for sure when the attack took place, it would help. My feeling is that it happened in daylight. Wigfull would know there isn't much point in chasing a wanted man across fields after dark."
"Maybe the house-to-house will turn something up," Leaman said.
"Maybe." Diamond hadn't much confidence.
Wiltshire Police were at present knocking on doors to find a witness who had seen someone on the footpath over the fields, or noticed the cars outside the Manor House. There was also a large search-party combing the fields for the weapon used on Wigfull. They had to try.
They returned to Manvers Street, where the police station was like a prison before an execution. The only news of John Wigfull was that he was still unconscious, his condition critical.
AT THE time Avon and Somerset Police acquired their helicopter, Diamond was heard to say it was an expensive toy that he would never use. Like many of his stands against technology, this one was fated to be undermined. Strapped into the seat, staring fixedly ahead, he was being flown over the great expanse of Salisbury Plain towards the South Coast. Privileged views of the ancient sites of Stonehenge and Avebury passed unnoticed. He did not enjoy the sensation of flying.
They touched down on the lawn in front of Montpelier Crescent, Brighton, the address of Ralph Pennycook, the young man who had sold antiques to Peg Redbird on the day of her murder. The journey was done in under an hour. When Diamond looked about him, after stepping down and battling with the draught created by the rotor blades, he had the strange sensation that he had never left Bath. The neo-classical facade of the crescent was, if anything, grander in scale. Each large house with its own pillars and pediment might have been the front of a theatre.
Helicopter travel is convenient, certainly, but not discreet. People had opened their doors to watch and children were running across the grass towards the chopper. "After this puppet-show, let's hope he's at home," Diamond muttered to Sergeant Leaman.
He was—already at the front door—and their mode of travel had impressed him markedly. His hand was at his throat, pinching at a fold of loose skin, and his eyes behind the plastic lenses had the staring roundness of a nocturnal creature.
There was no need to explain who they were. The chopper had Avon
and Somerset Police
in large letters on the outside. Pennycook ushered them in fast—as if the entire Crescent had not noticed the police making a call on him. Diamond's quick assessment was that he had the look of a young man out of step with his generation. His casuals on a warm Sunday afternoon amounted to a thick yellow cardigan over a black T-shirt, with blue corduroy trousers and brown leather slippers. The cardigan had the label showing; it was inside out.
The room they were shown into was nicely-proportioned, and that was all that could be said for it. Beer stains disfigured the wallpaper. The furniture amounted to a chipped and rusting fridge and some wood and canvas folding chairs that belonged to Brighton Corporation. He must have nicked them from around the bandstand in one of the public parks. And this was the heir to Si Minchendon's fortune. He could certainly use some money.
Diamond lowered himself cautiously onto one of the chairs; he had a history of bursting through canvas. It creaked, groaned and just held his weight. He considered how to begin. With a helicopter standing on the lawn outside, he was in no position to say what he would normally have said, that this was just a routine enquiry. "You were in Bath a couple of days ago, sir?"
"Yup."
"Would you mind telling us what brought you there?"
"My uncle's funeral." The voice was toneless and barely audible.
"That would be the late Mr Minchendon?"
Pennycook nodded. His fingers were twitchy. He plucked at the sleeves of the cardigan, tugging the cuffs over the backs of his hands.
"Of Camden Crescent?" Diamond said, more to encourage a response than glean information.
Another nod.
"Nice address."
"If you say so." He ran the tip of his tongue around the edge of his mouth.
"When was the funeral—one day last week?"
"Yeah."
This was like chiselling marble. "Which day was the funeral, Mr Pennycook?"
"Dunno."
"Speak up."
Leaman said, "It was Tuesday."
"Tuesday," said Diamond. "And you were there, and you don't remember?"
"I've had a lot going on."
"So you stayed longer."
"Things to see to."
"What things?"
"Papers to sign, and stuff."
"Your legacy?"
"Yeah."
"I understand your uncle left you everything."
"Right."
"Does that make you the owner of the house in Camden Crescent?"
"More or less."
"What does that mean?"
"I have to wait for probate, don't I?"
"So you're not the legal owner yet?"
The pallid face registered pain, as if Diamond had struck him. He blurted out a few inarticulate words that sounded very like a confession. "I don't want no aggro. Needed cash in hand, right? Cash in hand. The stuff was coming to me anyway. Ask them, if you like. If you lay off, I'll square it with the bank."
"You did a deal with Peg Redbird, the owner of Noble and Nude?"
"Is that her name?"
Diamond reacted angrily. "Don't play the innocent. You don't do dodgy deals with people without finding out who they are. You went to some trouble to pick a dealer likely to connive at this fraud. Had you met Peg Redbird before?"
"No, and that's the truth."
The phrase slipped easily from his tongue and added to Diamond's impatience. He leaned forward menacingly. "Young man, every word you say to me had better be the truth. Understand?"
Pennycook understood, and showed it. Beads of sweat were rolling down the side of his face.
"So who put you onto her?"
Now he gathered himself and launched into a stumbling explanation. "I had some time after the funeral, didn't I? Sniffed around like. Antiques markets and stuff. Got talking to the stall-holders."
Hard to imagine you talking to anyone, Diamond thought.
"They gave me the buzz on the trade in Bath. Not the la-de-dahs up Bartlett Street. The other end of it. No questions asked."
"Nod and a wink?"
"Right. Her name kept coming up. Peg Redbird does the business, I was told. She had this shop in Walcot Street full of junk."
This was rich, coming from a man who furnished his room with chairs from the local park. "Didn't you want to use the furniture yourself?"
"Don't go in for fancy gear."
"I can see that."
Pennycook saw fit to add, "In case you're wondering, this here was my gran's place."
Diamond nodded. "Another inheritance? You're a lucky man."
"I took it over at a peppercorn rent, didn't I? I pay peanuts for this."
"But you still have a cash-flow problem."
He glared resentment. "Had to update my computer system, didn't I? Mega expenses."
Diamond rolled his eyes. This was obviously bullshit. Some of Pennycook's initial nervousness had gone. He was beginning to behave as if he felt he had sidestepped the crisis.
Time to turn the screw.
"What are you on?" Diamond asked.
The face drained of what little colour had been there. He drew his arms defensively across his chest. "What do you mean?"
"Come on. Look at the sweat on you. People don't wear cardigans in a heat wave. Show us your arms."
"No way."
"It's back to front, that cardigan. You only put it on when you saw us coming."
"That's no crime."
"Tell you what," said Diamond. "If you're shy about your arms, you can show us something else. Where do you keep this super new computer?"
Pennycook was starting to shake. He remained seated, staring.
"It doesn't exist, does it? We know a smackhead when we see one, Sergeant Leaman and I. Keep your needle marks covered, if you want, but the other signs are pretty obvious. Pinhead pupils, the sweats, your body wasting away. I mean, we've only got to look at the state you live in. I guess this place was furnished when you took it over. Are you a registered addict?"