The Vault

because one book could be loaned to three different readers at the same time. But library copies are not of much interest to collectors.'

'It wasn't an immediate bestseller, then?'

'Far from it. Out of print for years. They produced a new edition in 183I with some changes to the text, but it didn't really take off until the 1880s, long after the author was dead.'

'You're well up on all this.'

The old man smiled. 'I took the trouble to gen up after having my ignorance shown up the other day. The story is more popular now than it has ever been. I must say, I can't fathom how it has become a set text in university English courses, but apparently it has, here and in America. An article in The Times stated that Mary Shelley is more studied than Coleridge, Byron, Keats and Shelley.'

'Is that surprising? If I was given a choice of Frankenstein or poetry, I know which would get my vote,' said Diamond.

'You might be disappointed. It isn't exactly Stephen King.'

Diamond put the conversation back on track. 'Did Professor Dougan tell you what he was up to?'

'He wanted to find out where the Milton came from, who was the previous owner, and so forth. The provenance, we call it.'

'And you helped?'

'I had to dig very deep in my memory. I recalled buying it quite cheaply from a local man who calls himself Uncle Evan. He must have a more formal name, but that's the one he is known by. Have you heard of him? He runs a puppet theatre and I'm told it's very good entertainment. Does everything himself, makes the puppets, the scenery and writes the scripts. A multitalented young man. He built a stage of some sort that he carts about in the back of a van.'

'You sent the professor to see him?'

'I told him where Evan might be found, and that was the Brains Surgery.'

'The pub in Larkhall?'

Oliver Heath smiled at the recollection. 'My American visitor was somewhat thrown by the name. I have to confess that I didn't immediately say it was a pub. I'm sure he had visions of something like Dr Frankenstein's laboratory.'

'Is the Brains Surgery Uncle Evan's local?'

'It's the one you visit if you want to book his puppet show. I couldn't tell you where he lives.'

'MORE USEFUL than I could have hoped for,' Diamond commented as Leaman drove them out to Larkhall.

'Did we learn anything new, sir?'

'Sergeant, you're beginning to talk as if it's been a long day. Of course we learned something new. We learned that Frankenstein was published in 1818 with only five hundred copies. Did you know that?'

'No, sir.'

'Well, then. Ponder the significance.'

At the Brains Surgery, they were told by the barman that Uncle Evan had not been in for a couple of days. The bob from deep-set eyes around the bar seeming to regard that as a betrayal left Diamond in no doubt that further questions about the puppeteer would not lead to much. Nobody had an address or phone number. Nobody knew his real name.

'If he does come in…' said Diamond, but he knew he was wasting his breath.

THE DRIVE back to Manvers Street was mostly in silence. At one point Diamond muttered something cynical about the great British public, but later he said more philosophically, 'Why should everyone be there when we want them? We drew blanks with Councillor Sturr and Uncle Evan, but we saw a lot of others today.'

To Leaman it sounded encouragingly like a line being drawn at the end of a long day. And that was what Diamond intended- until they took the turn into Bridge Street and he spotted a parked van and someone carrying things from the lighted interior of the Victoria Gallery.

'What's going on there at this time of night? Drive right round and we'll have another look.'

Leaman, to his credit, did not even sigh. He took the car rapidly round the circuit formed by Grand Parade, Orange Grove and the High Street and entered Bridge Street for the second time.

'Pull up here.'

They went to look.

It could conceivably have been a heist in progress. Large objects cocooned in bubblewrap were being carried from the gallery and loaded in the van. But nobody took flight.

'Police,' Diamond announced. 'What's going on exactly?'

A figure he recognized as the gallery caretaker stepped out of the shadows. 'No problem, officer. Everything's in order. They've just dismantled the exhibition and now they're loading it onto the van.'

'From the main gallery?'

'The annexe.'

Diamond became more interested. 'The watercolours?'

'Right.'

'Councillor Sturr's collection?'

'Yes.'

'Now where do they go-back to the owner?'

'You'd better speak to the driver.'

A young bearded man said from inside the van, where he was loading with a young lad as assistant, 'Back to Mr Sturr's house, yes.'

'Is he home, then? We tried to get hold of him earlier and he wasn't there.'

'He went out for a meal. That's why it's a late job. We're unloading at ten at his house.'

'We'll follow you, then,' said Diamond cheerfully. 'Wouldn't want to miss him, would we, sergeant?'

'No, sir,' said Leaman in a hollow tone.

They waited while the remaining pictures were put aboard and roped to the floor. The van with its police escort in trail moved off at 9.50 p.m.

'I'll be interested to find out why this operation had to wait till now.'

Leaman didn't answer. His level of interest was waning by the minute.

Sturr's residence was a Victorian villa the size of a town hall at the lower end of Lansdown Road. Security lights flashed on as they entered the gravel drive. A white sports car was parked under some tall trees.

The driver of the van tried the doorbell and got no answer.

'Where's his Holiness?' said Diamond.

'It isn't ten yet,' said Leaman.

Three minutes later, Diamond said, 'It is now.'

A further seventeen minutes passed before the silver Mercedes swung sedately onto the drive and pulled up next to the van. The tall figure of Councillor Sturr got out and walked around the front of the car as if the removal men and the police did not exist, and opened the door for his passenger. There was a gleam of thighs caught in the glare of the security lamp and out stepped Ingeborg Smith.

twenty- six

'REMEMBER, I AM NOT recording the vision of a madman.'

There used to be a phrase applied to certain murderers that they were 'guilty, but insane'. The gentler version was that they killed 'while the balance of their mind was disturbed'. A comforting phrase in the days when the alternative was a date with the hangman. If you were temporarily unbalanced, you were not responsible for your actions. Instead you were sent to a prison for the criminally insane.

He was not mad.

He was not unbalanced.

He was responsible for his actions. Proud of most of them.