or who is J.M.W.T.? Who is Victoria when she's at home? Over to you.'
Diamond reached across the table for the pen and the Guardian, placed ready for Stephanie's daily assault on the quick crossword. He made a note in the margin.
Stephanie remarked, 'You're always telling me puzzles are a waste of time.'
'Crossword puzzles, yes,' he said, tearing off the scrap of paper and pocketing it.
She said, 'About this kitten. I know if you saw it, you'd be captivated.'
He said abstractedly. 'Yes.'
'Then you don't mind if…'
He said, 'Anything you say, my love. Got to get off to work now.'
At Manvers Street Police Station he found a worried John Wigfull in the communications room. The big black mustache was drooping ominously.
'I suppose you've heard,' Wigfull said.
'Depends what you mean.'
'This message about the Turner. It's all over the city. The radio. The papers. People are phoning in.'
'I did catch something on the radio while I was having breakfast. There's no doubt in your mind, then?'
'J.M.W.T.,' said Wigfull. 'Turner's initials. And the mention of the Victoria Gallery. 'I shall shortly come to thee.' I'd say that's pretty conclusive. I'm up against a nutter.'
'Sounds like a poet to me.'
'Same thing.'
'A public relations expert, anyway,' said Diamond. 'He's used the local media to some effect.'.
'Is it just a stunt?' Wigfull asked, as though Diamond in his infinite wisdom might be able to confirm the fact. 'If you're aiming to steal a picture, you don't broadcast it to all and sundry.'
'Is the picture still in place?'
'Yes, thank God. I spoke to Julie Hargreaves a few minutes ago. She's at the gallery. I keep checking with her. Up to now, everything is in order.'
'What's the problem, then?'
'No problem. Just that I'm bloody annoyed. First I get the tip that someone is about to stage a robbery and then, when I put a team in place, this message goes out, all over the city. Someone is doing his best to run rings around me.'
Diamond suppressed the smile that wanted to come. 'No chance you can spare Julie for a couple of hours, I suppose? I'm a bit pushed collecting statements of this Saltford incident. I've got all those bank clerks to interview. Julie does it so well.'
'Sorry,' said Wigfull. 'She was assigned to me.'
'If I went down to the gallery I could look at the security for you. I'm sure you've got it under control, but sometimes another pair of eyes will spot something.'
'Do you think so?' Wigfull's eyes betrayed a flicker of uncertainty.
He parked illegally in Bridge Street under the statue of Queen Victoria that stands in a niche high up in the gallery's facade. For a Georgian city, Bath commemorates Victoria's name quite generously, with a park, a bridge, several streets, a pub and a burger bar, as well as the art gallery. Considering that Britain's longest-reigning monarch shunned the city for the whole of her reign, she scarcely deserved so much. She was brought there for a brief visit as a young girl, before she was Queen, and the story goes that while she was standing on the hotel balcony she was deeply offended to overhear someone remarking how thick her ankles were. Bath was struck off her visiting list forever.
Glancing up at the old killjoy as he got out of the car, Diamond weighed those words he had heard over breakfast: 'Victoria, you challenge me. I shall shortly come to thee.' Did the message mean what Wigfull had assumed, a threat to plunder the gallery of its Turner, regardless of the extra security? Or might it be interpreted another way?
It was not impossible that the cryptic message didn't refer to the owner of the thick ankles at all, but to some living Vicky who had a connection with the Turner. A curator? A gallery attendant? For God's sake, Diamond, he chided himself, it's Wigfull's problem, not yours.
A local journalist he recognized as from the Bath Chronicle was at the corner of Bridge Street, by the entrance, waiting to hear the latest. So much for the puzzle the whole region was supposedly racking its brains to solve.
'Are you on this case, Super?'
'What case?' Diamond rapped on the door, annoyed by that 'Super.' The gallery wasn't open to the public yet, but the security team would be inside.
'The Turner. Has it been knocked off?'
'I've no idea what you're talking about.'
'Come on, Mr. Diamond. I've got my job to do, same as you.'
'Nothing to my knowledge has been knocked off,' said Diamond.
'It's still there?'
'Far as I know.'
'You must be taking it seriously. You must be worried that they mean to have a go.'
'Do I look worried?'
He heard the sound of bolts being withdrawn; One of the great wooden doors opened a fraction, and part of a face was briefly visible, followed by the sound of static from a personal radio. The door opened widely enough to admit him. The reporter said something about cooperation, and then Diamond stepped inside, and the door slammed in the face of the press, if rather more heavily than the constabulary intended.
The last time Diamond had seen the black-and-white marble tiled vestibule was when the lower floor had been in use as the public library. Now both floors were used as galleries, and the permanent collection was upstairs. He was escorted up the stone staircase past some paintings of rustic scenes, most of them featuring sheep, or what were intended by the artists to pass for sheep, but could have been giant, cream-colored rats, or armadillos. Landscape painters, he decided, weren't on the whole successful with sheep.
Not the sort who spent his leisure hours looking at art, he'd never ventured up here before, and it was grander than he expected. At the top of the stairs was a tiled area surrounded by columns supporting the dome of the building, the underside of which was decorated in gilt with the signs of the zodiac. He stepped into the gallery, and was surprised by its size. It was a fine example of Victorian pomp, big enough for a ball-room, some fifty feet high, with a copy of the Parthenon frieze extending right around the walls below the glazed, arched roof that extended the length of the room. There were no windows. The pictures in their ornate gilt frames were attached to maroon-colored walls, and some were displayed on purpose-built units along the center of the room.
'Safe as the Bank of England, I would have thought,' he remarked to Julie Hargreaves, who had got up from behind the attendant's desk to greet him. 'I suppose he could try a Riflfi-styleentry from the roof.'
A look of incomprehension crossed Julie's face, and he realized that the film Rififi must have been made before she was born. Not for the first time, he had to remind himself that his best support in the murder squad was female and not much over thirty. Julie was a colleague he could rely on absolutely. She was as bright as a brand- new coin, and it was a measure of her professionalism that he disregarded her good looks. He hoped it wasn't a measure of his advancing years.
'It was a film,' he informed her. 'Maybe you saw one called Topkapi? Same method of entry… No? Never mind.'
'Two men spent the night on the roof,' she told him.
'Two of ours?'
She laughed. 'I hope so. There are two more up there now.'
'I take it that the picture is still in place?'
'I expect you'd like to see it.' She led him across the gallery to one of the display units in the center. 'It's not so big as I imagined.'
He looked at the fixings before he examined the painting. The Turner was secured to the wooden unit with nails driven through small metal plates projecting from the back of the frame. A thief equipped with a crowbar wouldn't take long to achieve his purpose, but no system has been devised that will withstand that kind of assault. Galleries are better employed installing alarm systems and strong locks.
