The Vault

'Want me to show you over the gaff?'

'Since I'm here, you might as well,' she said, 'but I can't promise a thing.'

They toured the house and Peg's expert eye missed nothing. Old Si's furniture was collectable, no question, and some of the smaller items such as tripod tables and side-chairs could be removed without anyone knowing they had been there. In the drawing room were some bits of china she rather liked, a pair of Coalport plates by William Cook and a Minton pot pourri vase painted for the Great Exhibition of 1851. She priced them fairly, then said she wouldn't be able to go to such a price if he wanted to sell them prior to valuation. This put Pennycook in the position of reducing the figure and seeing if she would take the risk. With a show of reluctance, Peg agreed to buy them for two-thirds the price she had named.

The landing upstairs was lined with watercolours, landscapes that she suspected were by minor painters of the late nineteenth century, serene in concept and unremarkable.

Except two that stood out. Instead of patently English scenes where animals grazed and the only suggestions of humanity were cottages and church towers, these were nightmarish. In one, two figures in a bleak, craggy setting that suggested a theatrical backdrop faced each other like protagonists. The other was an interior, even more melodramatic. A woman lay across a bed in a posture of death, her head hanging down, scarlet marks of strangulation on her neck. A man stood staring at her in horror, while at the open window a fiendlike creature stood grinning and pointing at the corpse.

Peg immediately thought of William Blake. The theatricality of the settings was an indication; so was the peculiar rendering of the figures, their muscularity showing through the folds of garments that flowed with the composition. If these were by Blake, they were by far the most valuable things in the house. She moved past them without betraying undue interest, wondering how long they had been hanging there. The problem with removing pictures is the telltale patch they leave on the wallpaper. But helpfully this paper looked reasonably new.

Little else upstairs was both portable and saleable, as Peg pointed out. Si's real interest had been furniture and you couldn't remove large pieces without leaving gaps. Pennycook was forced to agree. Clearly, he was disappointed. They had done less than nine hundred pounds' worth of business.

'You're looking for cash, no doubt,' said Peg.

'Cash, yes. It's got to be cash.'

'I don't carry large amounts, ducky. It isn't safe.'

'No sweat, lady. I trust you-but you will collect the stuff sharpish, won't you?'

'Later today?'

'That'll do.'

'I'll send a man with a van. He's very discreet, is my Mr Somerset. You can call at my shop in Walcot Street if you want the money today. I put some by for this. To be frank, I expected to spend a little more, but you can never tell.'

Pennycook's eyes widened. 'There's nothing else you noticed, going round?'

Peg took her time, and frowned, as if straining to remember anything at all. 'There was a slightly chipped chaise-longue upstairs, mahogany, upholstered in blue velvet. Late Victorian, I'm certain.'

'In the back bedroom?'

'Yes. I could probably find a buyer for that, even in the state it's in. Bath is full of rich women with a Madame Recamier fantasy.'

'Anything else?'

'The tripod table in the front room. It's been repaired, I noticed, and not very expertly. And you have a couple of watercolours on the landing, rather grand guignok. I don't know if you'd call them a pair, but I think they're by the same artist. Throw them in and I could raise the offer to fifteen hundred, on the understanding that I have first choice of the more valuable items when you get probate. Does that sound better?'

Infinitely better, going by Pennycook's reaction. The deal was done. 'Will you be there tonight?' he asked. 'Can I collect the dosh tonight?'

'Any time, darling. I live over the shop.'

Peg hurried back to Noble and Nude to read up on William Blake.

THE ROMAN Baths were under siege by the media. Nobody was being admitted to the vault. Camera crews and photographers, radio people and reporters, were blocking the main entrance. Bewildered tourists stood in Abbey Churchyard not knowing how to get to the ticket booths.

It fell to Peter Diamond to try and defuse the problem with a hastily arranged press conference at Manvers Street. If nothing else, it would relieve the pressure at the Baths. He was ill-prepared. He knew nothing about Mary Shelley and little of Frankenstein. All this had blown up just when he was doing his best to tiptoe away from the case.

They filled the room that was used for sessions with the media. He had to force his way in through the crush. Surrounded, not liking this one bit, he stood with Halliwell at his side watching the scuffles between the camera crews.

'This will be brief,' he began, and was told to speak up, and did. He fairly bellowed, 'Do you want to hear this, or not?'

They listened to his summary, the discovery of the hand in the vault by the security man, the estimate by the pathologist that it had been buried there for up to twenty years, and the decision to look for more remains. He described the unearthing of the skull and stressed that it was much older than the hand bones, and almost certainly from a medieval burial.

As he spoke of the skull he was aware of intense scrutiny to his right. Turning, he locked eyes with Ingeborg Smith. The reproach in that ambitious young woman's gaze was understandable. Her exclusive had been crushed in this stampede. She blamed him.

'Forensic scientists are carrying out more tests on the remains,' he continued, shifting his look to another part of the room. 'I don't expect any results before next week, and then I don't expect much. We already know the salient facts.'

All as downbeat as he could make it. Then the questions hit him like machine-gun fire:

'What about the Frankenstein connection, Superintendent?'

'Did you know you were digging in the Frankenstein vault?'

'Is it just a coincidence, these body parts turning up there?'

'Have you found any nuts and bolts?' This earned a laugh.

He had to raise both arms for a chance to reply. 'You're going to have to believe me when I tell you I knew nothing about the history of the vault until this afternoon, when I heard it from one of you. It makes a good story, and good luck to you, but I doubt if there's any connection with the remains down there.'

'Isn't it well-known that Mary Shelley lived over the vault and wrote her book there?'

'Not well-known to me. I've been here some years and never heard a word about it. I imagine you lot will remedy that.'

'When the hand was discovered, didn't you take an interest in the history of the house?'

'The house you're talking about doesn't exist. It was demolished a century ago, except for the vault. The hand is less than twenty years old.'

'So the answer is no?'

'Correct.'

'Is this a murder inquiry, Superintendent?'

'I wouldn't call it that.'

'Dismembered bits of a corpse buried in cement?'

'There could be an explanation that doesn't include murder.'

'What's that?'

'No comment.'

'What are you getting at, Mr Diamond? Some kind of hoax? The bones are real, aren't they?'

'Oh, yes, but I'm keeping an open mind about how they got there. To come back to your question, I'm the murder man in Bath, so you can see that we're taking it seriously.'

'Do you have a theory who was responsible?'

'Let's be clear. We don't know whose hand bones they are. We don't know how they came to be in the vault.