The Vault (29 page)

"Each of those two young blokes felt he had a claim. As often happens with easy pickings, they argued, and it turned to violence. I don't suppose we'll ever know precisely what happened, except that they fought with the spades they used and Tarrant was killed. Manslaughter, I would guess, rather than murder. Sturr, to his horror, found himself down in that vault with a dead body. In one way he was fortunate. Nobody else had reason to go in there, so he had time and opportunity to dismember the corpse, removing the head and the hands. He buried the hands in cement in the vault and drove the torso some miles off and buried it in the soft earth beside the River Wylye. Where the head ended up, only Sturr knows.

"He waited some years before cashing in on the writing box. Sold it—with contents—to Peg Redbird without realising who it had once belonged to. Neither did she. Sturr's secret seemed to be safe. Nobody had raised alarm bells about Jock Tarrant. Casual workers come and go in the building trade. Tarrant had come and he'd gone." By way of illustration, Diamond took a long drag of lager, crushed the can and dropped it into a waste-bin.

"Fast forward to last week. The security guard finds the hand bones in the vault and brings them to us. After a hiccup or two, we know we're dealing with bones from about twenty years back. Someone tips off the press that Mary Shelley once lived in the house above the vault and suddenly we're in the news. And this is when John Sturr has a double shock, because he hadn't the faintest idea until then that the vault where he'd buried the hands was part of the house where Frankenstein was written. You see the problem? He sold the writing box and its contents to Peg Redbird. On the pretext of keeping up with developments—" Diamond avoided eye contact with Georgina "—he learns from a high-ranking source that the book he sold to Peg has turned up again, and it once belonged to Mary Shelley. An American professor is touting it around Bath and asking questions. Sturr does his proverbial nut. He's certain Peg Redbird will remember him selling her the box and its contents and work out where they came from. TV and radio are already putting out bulletins about the mystery bones in the Frankenstein vault. A police inquiry is under way.

"He looks for a way out of this. He believes Peg is the only person alive who can finger him. He's a pillar of society now, a city councillor, on any number of committees, not least the Police Authority. He reckons if he can dispose of Peg, his problem disappears. So he makes a plan. He's been invited to a party at the ACC's. Could you think of a better cover than that?"

Over by the door, Georgina flushed to the tips of her ears and said nothing. To her credit, she stayed to hear Diamond out.

Diplomatically, he shifted the attention elsewhere. "At the party he makes a pitch to a blonde charmer. Where's Ingeborg?"

A hand was raised coyly to shoulder level.

"It happens that this blonde charmer is looking for a chance to get into the police, and this interest from a member of the Police Authority is not the kind you turn down. It's a mutually helpful arrangement. He keeps her tanked up all evening. She won't mind me saying she's well bevvied by the time they leave together. He takes her home, opens another bottle of champagne, puts on some music and then makes some excuse about a phone call to New York.

"The only call he made that evening was to Peg Redbird at ten past six, arranging to meet her later. He used a false name on the phone, of course, and—this is only my theory, I have to say—offered to give her a prior look at some mouth-watering antique on offer at the antiques fair starting next day in the Assembly Rooms. Unknown to Sturr, Peg had a prior engagement. She was putting the screws on a forger called Uncle Evan. That's a story for another time. All that matters here is that Evan told me Peg was most particular about getting back to the shop by eleven.

"So, at eleven or soon after, he calls at Noble and Nude, where the first thing he sees is the writing box sitting on Peg's desk. She's surprised to find that her mystery caller is John Sturr, but not alarmed. He says he has something of exceptional interest outside in the car. Ever alert to a bargain, but not her own safety, Peg thinks he must be about to offer her another of Mary Shelley's possessions. She goes with him round the back of the shop to the car. He bashes her over the head, killing her, and moves the body the short distance to the river and drops her in, confident it will look like an accident, the injury caused by the fall. Then he goes back into Noble and Nude, picks up the writing desk and drives home. It's not much after eleven-thirty and Ingeborg is still where he left her, listening to the same CD. Is that fair, Police Cadet Smith?"

Ingeborg spoke up clearly. "It may not be fair, sir, but it's true."

"What happened after?"

She looked up in surprise. "Do you really want to know?"

"You were there," said Diamond. "You can tell it better than me."

"All right. It was like that famous quote from Sherlock Holmes about the curious incident of the dog in the night-time. Watson said, 'But the dog did nothing in the night-time' and Holmes said, 'That was the curious incident.' "

"You mean ... ?"

"My date did nothing in the night-time. I should have known something was up—because he wasn't."

There was laughter. Police Cadet Smith was a definite addition to the strength at Manvers Street.

JOE DOUGAN and the luggage finally arrived at the Paris Ritz the next afternoon. He was tired. The Bath police had kindly driven him to the train station early that morning, but the last forty-eight hours had been stressful. Relieved to have the bell-captain take charge of those enormous suitcases, he stepped over to the check-in.

The young woman on duty asked him his name and he gave it, adding, "My wife arrived at the end of last week."

"Yes, sir," she said in the delightful way Parisiennes have of speaking English, "I 'ope Madame Dougan enjoyed her days shopping."

"I'm sure she has. Now, if you tell me the number of our suite.. ."

"One minute, if you please, professor." She picked a note from the rack behind her. "A little note for you."

Sighing, Joe opened the envelope and took out a short letter in Donna's handwriting:

Joe, Baby,

I finished shopping here. The bell captain has charge of the two suitcases I bought here, cosmetic case and hatboxes. Would you be an angel and pick them up for me? I figured you were sure to want to make the trip to Switzerland to look up the place where Frankenstein was first thought of, so I booked us in at the Intercontinental in Geneva. I'm told the Swiss jewelry shops are something special.

See you as soon as you can fix a flight. Don't forget the baggage, will you?

Your ever loving,

Donna XXX