The Vault

'Could I see it?'

She sighed. 'Listen darling, you've caught me on a busy day. I ought to know where everything is, but I don't.'

'I won't take up much more of your time, ma'am. Do you happen to remember who sold you the writing box?'

'It was years ago,' said Peg. 'I don't know why I bothered. Sympathy, I reckon. Some poor soul in need of a few shillings for the gas meter.'

'An old person?'

'I couldn't say.'

Couldn't, or wouldn't? Joe was getting a distinct impression that Peg was stalling now. She may even have made the connection with Mary Shelley.

He shifted his ground. 'I might be willing to offer you a good price for that writing box.'

Her eyes glinted. 'You haven't seen it, sunshine. It could be riddled with woodworm.'

'I know you're busy right now. Maybe I could find it if I go looking.'

'Be my guest,' said Peg.

'ANYONE WOULD think we'd been sitting on our butts for the past week,' Peter Diamond complained to Keith Halliwell.

Halliwell gave him a look long enough for the words to be played back in his mind.

Remarkably, an extra tinge of pink suffused his cheeks and he launched into an elaborate self'justification. 'I took my turn with the sieve and shovel. It wasn't all tea and toast in the Pump Room. And you've been slogging away, tracing these bloody builders. I don't like my squad being jumped all over by a pipsqueak straight out of Bramshill. So what have we got, Keith? Are we anywhere nearer to naming Hands?'

'I've got the names of twelve who worked on the site in the early eighties,' said Halliwell. 'Most of the activity was in the winter of eighty-two to eighty-three. It's a matter of tracing them, to see if they're alive, and what they remember about the others who worked there.'

'You want more manpower? It's yours.'

'Really?'

'Her Worship has spoken. It gets high priority as long as it stays in the papers, though she didn't put it in quite those terms.'

'I'll see to it.'

'Good man.' In a confiding mood, he propped his elbow on Halliwell's computer monitor and felt it tilt under the weight. 'These things move,' he said in surprise.

'It's the adjustment. I shouldn't lean too hard on it.'

'You know me, Keith. Never leaned too hard. Never will.' He got back to the topic he had been about to broach. 'There was a question in the press-room that stopped me in my tracks.'

'From the Smith woman?'

'No. Some other hack. I couldn't tell you who it was. He asked if we'd considered a hoax as a possibility. I hadn't. Had you?'

'No.' Halliwell was clearly puzzled. 'What would be the point?'

'Practical joking. We're fair game, Keith. Some con artist gets hold of some bones and buries them in the cellar under the house where Frankenstein was written.'

'Who would do that?'

'A medical student,' said Diamond as if it were screamingly obvious. 'They have to buy a skeleton, don't they? They used to, one time. They need them in their studies, anyway. All he has to do is remove the hand, plant it in thin cement and wait for it to be discovered. He'll be laughing his bloody head off tomorrow morning when he reads the papers.'

'You think so?' Halliwell said, unimpressed.

Diamond backed off a little. 'It's not impossible.'

'It's a bit far-fetched, isn't it? For a start, he'd need to know about the Frankenstein link. Not many people did until this afternoon. You didn't, and nor did I.'

'Someone made sure the press got onto it, didn't they?' Diamond said with more animation. 'If there is a hoaxer, he must have tipped off the press. I got it from the News of the World, some wiseguy called Delany. John Delany. Who was his source, I wonder? It's got to be followed up.'

Halliwell nodded and said almost apologetically, 'If he spoke to you personally…'

'I know,' said Diamond with a martyred air. 'It's down to me.'

But before he could do anything about it, he was called to the phone. The BBC wanted to know if he was willing to be interviewed on Newsnight, on BBC2 at 10.30 p.m. It could be prerecorded, if necessary.

He said he had nothing to add to the press statement he had already made.

There were two more requests for television interviews in the next half-hour. 'You'd think I'd won the bloody lottery, wouldn't you?' he said to the woman on the switchboard. 'They only want me to talk about a monster who never existed. Tell them I'm on a flight to the Bahamas, love, or washing my hair tonight. I leave it up to you. Anything to get them off my back.'

'Like going to the ACC's party?'

'God, I am, too. It never rains but it pours.'

eleven

ONLY A MAN OF Joe's dogged determination would have continued. Hands filthy from shifting furniture, breathing passages coated with dust, he progressed steadily through the rooms of Noble and Nude. He had long since lost a sense of where he was in the building. He ignored the other people browsing through the rooms. Just occasionally he would check his watch. Surely Donna would forgive him being late for dinner if he brought back Mary Shelley's writing box. Unfortunately he had not located it yet. Time had moved on to the point when he could not very well face Donna without some substantial find. So he continued to rummage.

There was another pressure. Peg Redbird's antennae were twitching. That remark about Abbey Churchyard meant she would not be long in making the connection with the Shelleys, if she had not already done so. No question: the writing box had to be found at this visit and carried away tonight.

Where was it, then?

A shock awaited him in the room where the wax woman sat on her swing. He actually nodded and was about to say, 'Hi.' So who's the dummy here? he thought. You, or me? Shaking his head, he got on with the search. Some time later he glared at the wax woman and moved on.

This was getting desperate. The light was going. He was tired, hungry and dispirited.

Then he struck gold. He might so easily have gone past. Folded up and covered in dust, the wooden box would not have attracted the attention of anyone who was not looking specially. It was in use as a plinth for a monstrous black vase big enough to have contained one of the Forty Thieves. To have supported such weight it must have been stoutly constructed. One glance at the side, where the hinged top section met the bottom in a diagonal, convinced Joe. Opened out, it would make the shape of a desk.

Unfortunately there was a problem. The vase. He couldn't get his arms around the thing. Shifting it even an inch was difficult.

He didn't want assistance. His plan was to examine that box in private. The only way of moving the vase was by tipping it on its edge and turning it. He would have to hope it didn't smash in the process.

Placing the copy of Milton on a window ledge behind him, he collected two large cushions from a settee in the next room and arranged them beside the box.

He grasped the rim of the vase, braced himself and hauled it towards him. There was movement. An ominous creak came from the box as the vase shifted off its base. He managed to stop it tipping too far and applied enough force to get it moving sideways. The task now was to drop the thing onto one of the cushions without either