Vault

on a difficult case.

The bodies of two women and a man have been discovered in the old coal hole of an attractive house in St John’s Wood. None carries identification. But the man’s jacket pockets contain a string of pearls, a diamond and a sapphire necklace as well as other jewellery valued in the region of ?40,000.

It is not a hard decision for Wexford. He is intrigued and excited by the challenge, and, in the early stages, not really anticipating that this new investigative role will bring him into physical danger.

About the Author

Ruth Rendell has won many awards, including the Crime Writers’ Association Gold Dagger for 1976’s best crime novel with A Demon in My View; a second Edgar in 1984 from the Mystery Writers of America for the best short story, The New Girl Friend; and a Gold Dagger award for Live Flesh in 1986. She was also the winner of the 1990 Sunday Times Literary award, as well as the Crime Writers’ Association Cartier Diamond Dagger. In 1996 she was awarded the CBE and in 1997 became a Life Peer.

To Paul and Marianne with love

CHAPTER ONE

‘A CURIOUS WORLD we live in,’ said Franklin Merton, ‘where one can afford a house but not a picture of a house. That must tell us some profound truth. But what, I wonder?’

The picture he was talking about was Simon Alpheton’s Marc and Harriet in Orcadia Place, later bought by Tate Britain – simply ‘the Tate’ in those days – and the house the one in the picture, Orcadia Cottage. His remark about the curious world was addressed to the Harriet of the picture, for whom he had bought it and whom he intended to marry when his divorce came through. Later on, when passion had cooled and they were husband and wife, ‘I didn’t want to get married,’ he said. ‘I married you because I’m a man of honour and you were my mistress. Some would say my views are out of date but I dispute that. The apparent change is only superficial. I reasoned that no one would want my leavings, so for your sake the decent thing was to make an honest woman of you.’

His first wife was Anthea. When he deserted her he was also obliged to desert their dog O’Hara and to him that was the most painful thing about it.

‘You don’t keep a bitch and bark yourself,’ he said to Harriet when she protested at having to do all the housework.

‘Pity I’m not an Irish setter,’ she said and had the satisfaction of seeing him wince.

They lived together for five years and were married for twenty-three, the whole time in that house, Orcadia Cottage or Number 7a Orcadia Place, London NW8. Owing to Franklin’s sharp tongue, verbal cruelty and indifference, and to Harriet’s propensity for sleeping with young tradesmen in the afternoons, it was not a happy marriage. They took separate holidays, Franklin going away ostensibly on his own but in fact with his first wife, and he came back from the last one only to tell Harriet he was leaving. He returned to Anthea and her present Irish setter De Valera, intending to divorce Harriet as soon as feasible. Anthea, a generous woman, urged him to do his best to search for her, for she couldn’t be found at Orcadia Cottage. The largest suitcase, most of her clothes and the best of the jewellery he had bought her were missing, and it was Franklin’s belief that she had gone off with her latest young man.

‘She’ll be in touch as soon as she’s in need,’ said Franklin to Anthea, ‘and that won’t be long delayed.’

But Harriet never got in touch. Franklin went back to Orcadia Cottage to look for some clue as to where she might have gone but found only that the place was exceptionally neat, tidy and clean.

‘One odd thing,’ he said. ‘I lived there for all those years and never went into the cellar. There was no reason to do so. Just the same, I could have sworn there was a staircase going down to it with a door just by the kitchen door. But there isn’t.’

Anthea was a much cleverer woman than Harriet. ‘When you say you could have sworn, darling, do you mean you would go into court, face a jury and say, “I swear there was a staircase in that house going down to the cellar”?’

After thinking about it, Franklin said, ‘I don’t think so. Well, no, I wouldn’t.’

He put it on the market and bought a house for Anthea and himself in South Kensington. In their advertisements the estate agents described Orcadia Cottage as ‘the Georgian home immortalised in the internationally acclaimed artwork of Simon Alpheton’. The purchasers, an American insurance broker and his wife, wanted to move in quickly and when Franklin offered them the report his own surveyors had made thirty years before, they were happy to do without a survey. After all, the house had been there for two hundred years and wasn’t likely to fall down now.

Clay and Devora Silverman bought the house from Franklin Merton in 1998 and lived there until 2002, before returning to the house they had rented out in Hartford, Connecticut. The first autumn they spent at Orcadia Cottage the leaves on the Virginia creeper, which covered the entire front and much of the back of the house, turned from green to copper and copper to red and then started to fall off. Clay Silverman watched them settle on the front garden and the paving stones in the back. He was appalled by the red sticky sodden mass of leaves on which he and Devora slipped and slid and Devora sprained her ankle. Knowing nothing about natural history and still less about gardening, he was well-informed about art and was familiar with the Alpheton painting. It was one of his reasons for buying Orcadia Cottage. But he had assumed that the green leaves covering the house which formed the background to the lovers’ embrace remained green always and remained on the plant. After all of them had fallen he had the creeper cut down.