The Vault

He studied the print-out again. 'Some time between three and four Professor Dougan arrives in the shop. This is while Somerset is in charge, right?'

'Yes, sir. He spends some time looking around. He's still there when Peg returns from Camden Crescent about four-thirty in the afternoon.'

'So you now have three people helping you with your inquiries into the murder, so to speak: Somerset, Pennycook and Dougan. Any others?'

'No, sir. Other customers came into the shop, but we don't have their names.'

'We're stuck with the ones on the list, then. Pennycook lives a hundred miles away. Dougan has been put through the grinder several times already. Putting myself in John Wigfull's shoes yesterday afternoon, I'd have Ellis Somerset top of my visiting-list.'

THE ANTIQUES Fair was into its third day at the Assembly Rooms. Diamond and Leaman arrived there thanks to a tip-off from a neighbour of Somerset's in Brock Street. 'Ellis is something to do with the committee,' they were told. 'He'll be there all day, parading up and down. Look for the chappie in the bow-tie and brothel-creepers and a hideous coloured suit.'

True, Ellis Somerset stood out, even among the colourful crowd who tour the country with the antiques fairs. His carroty hair would have made you look twice, regardless of the mustard yellow three-piece.

He said in a carrying voice that half the room must have heard, 'This is over-egging the cake, isn't it? Two visits from the Bill in two days.'

Just what Diamond wanted to know.

'You saw another officer yesterday?'

'He didn't precisely say he was from the police, but you can tell. The fellow stood out like a camel in a horse race. Large moustache-'

Diamond cut him short. 'Was this in the afternoon?'

'Shortly after lunch.'

'In here?'

'We went for a cup of tea.'

'What a good idea.'

'But I'm supposed to be on hand to answer questions,' Somerset mildly protested after being escorted to the tea-room.

'Which you are,' said Diamond. 'First question: do you take sugar? Second: did you smash the policeman's head in?'

Somerset rocked back in his chair, giving the table a kick that spilt tea across it. Any interrogator knows the trick of going straight for the jugular. It gets a reaction. The difficult part is to pick out the signs of guilt.

He was losing most of the colour from his cheeks and the effect did not sit well with the mustard suit. 'What the blazes do you think I am-a psychopath?'

'Would you answer me?'

'No, I do not attack policemen and I protest in the strongest terms at being asked such a question.' A little of the colour seeped back as he went on the offensive.

'Drink some of that tea, sir,' Diamond suggested. 'Did Chief Inspector Wigfull ask you about your employer, Miss Redbird?'

'My 'emphyer'?” He spoke the word as if it was distasteful. 'Peg was a friend, a very dear friend, as it happens. I helped out in the shop from time to time on a voluntary basis. I explained all this yesterday afternoon.' He spread his hands, looking to Sergeant Leaman for a more sympathetic hearing, but Leaman was poker-faced.

'I'm sure you did, sir,' Diamond answered. 'My difficulty is that John Wigfull is lying in the Royal United with his head stoved in. We don't know what you told him because he can't speak to us.'

Ripples appeared on Somerset's smooth facade. 'The man who was here yesterday?'

'He came to talk to you about a murder and now he's critically wounded himself.'

'Surely you can't believe I…?' His voice trailed off as the seriousness of his position sank in.

'Where did you spend the rest of yesterday? What time did you leave the Antiques Fair?'

Somerset clawed at his red hair distractedly. 'When it closed, at six.'

'And then?'

'I had a drink in Shades Wine Bar with a couple of friends for twenty minutes and then I walked home.'

'How did you spend the evening?'

'Reading a book.'

'You didn't go out again? Saturday night and you stayed in?'

'Officer, if you'd spent most of the day on your feet at an antiques fair, you'd be glad of a quiet evening.' Then a thought struck him and he became more animated. 'There was a man he was asking about, an American who came into the shop while I was looking after it. That's who your inspector friend was interested in.'

Diamond heard this without surprise. 'What were you able to tell him?'

Seizing the chance to deflect attention from himself, Somerset answered, 'That the American was with us a long time on Thursday afternoon. An hour and a half to my certain knowledge, and probably longer. Some of the time he was waiting for Peg to come back. He insisted on seeing her personally and would not be put off when I told him she was out doing a valuation. He went off upstairs, rooting around the shop. To tell you the truth, I'd clean forgotten about him by the time Peg finally came back. Rather embarrassing actually. I introduced them and then went out myself to organize some transport. She'd bought a few things up at Camden Crescent and wanted them collected.'

Diamond glanced towards Leaman. 'I wish I had friends like that.'

'I wouldn't do it for everyone,' said Somerset. 'Peg was special.'

'More than just a friend, you said?'

All his colour returned now, and more. 'That is not what I said. I referred to her as a very dear friend. We respected each other.'

His face was making a stronger statement. He had been smitten. Diamond would put money on it. The friendship may not have amounted to an affair, but not through want of passion on Somerset's side.

'So what did you do? Hire a van and collect these antiques from Camden Crescent?'

'Exactly that. Some small bits of furniture and a few pots and pictures.'

'Valuable?'

'Peg seemed well satisfied.'

'That's ducking my question. You're an antiques man yourself, Mr Somerset. Were these items going to make her a tidy profit?'

'Listen, officer, profit is a taboo word in the antiques trade. We talk about everything else under the sun, but we don't mention our mark-up.'

'Was it quality stuff?'

'Peg wouldn't have bought rubbish. The pots were all right. Furniture so-so. She was more excited about the paintings. She insisted on unloading them from the van herself. A couple of watercolours. Not my field at all. You have to specialise. She thought she'd found a pair of Blakes.'

'Sextons?'

'I beg your pardon.'

'Sexton Blakes. Fakes. Rhyming slang. That fellow who became a celebrity on the strength of his forgeries. He called them his Sextons. What was his name?'

'Tom Keating,' said Somerset. 'I'm with you now. No, the Blake I referred to was genuine enough. The mystic, poet and engraver, William Blake.'

Diamond dredged deep into his memory and brought up a fragment from an English class in his grammar school one sunny afternoon when he would rather have been out on the school field. He could hear Mr Yarrow speaking the words: ' 'Tyger.' tyger! burning bright'?

'The same,' said Somerset with a sniff.

'And was it good to find a pair of Blakes?'

'Spectacularly good, if that's what they were, and I can't believe we were wrong. Blake's style was so individual that one couldn't confuse it with anyone else.'