The Vault

It was a kids' treasure-house. Along the walls were tea-chests crammed to overflowing with the materials the puppets were made from, rolls of latex, sponge rubber, bright-coloured, glittery fabrics, gauze, coils of wire, balsawood, spray-cans, marker pens, wigs, beards and moustaches. At the far end was an old metal filing cabinet with a basket of golden eggs on top.

Diamond tried the top drawer, hopeful of finding some correspondence. Surely an enterprise like this had to have some organisation. But the drawer had no files. It was filled with cans of paint. And the lower drawers contained only string, newspapers and pots of glue.

'Careful with that, Winnie.' She was swinging on the tentacles of an octopus, stretching them alarmingly. 'I think we'd better leave now.'

'Don't want to.'

'We've had our fun now.'

'Haven't.'

He started walking towards the door. 'I'm going, anyway, and I'll have to shut you in if you're not coming.'

'Don't care.'

By the door, hanging from a nail in the wall, he found something helpful at last. An office-style appointments calendar. Someone had scribbled in the names of places and organizations, with times. He checked to see if there was an entry for Saturday. Bath Rotarians, 11-5, Victoria Park. The day Wigfull had been attacked.

Thursday, the day of Peg Redbird's murder. Blank.

Today, then. Monday. Little Terrors, 11 a.m. What on earth was he to make of that? From Bath Rotarians to Little Terrors in one weekend. Quite a comedown.

'What does it say?'

Winnie was at his side, not choosing after all to be left alone with the puppets.

'I don't know,' he said.

'Can't you read?' she asked.

'I mean I don't know what it is. It says Little Terrors.'

'Don't you know?' said Winnie with a superior air. 'It's a play place in Frome. I been there hundreds of times.'

thirty-one

LITTLE TERRORS.

The old market town of Frome was a mere eight miles south of Stowford. Diamond knew it well-or so he thought. He hadn't heard of Little Terrors.

Neither had Leaman when he called him on the phone. 'What is it, sir-a toyshop?'

'A play place.'

'Like a park, you mean?'

'Don't you know what a play place is?'

'With swings and things?'

It had been easier discussing this with Winnie. 'You're a detective. Find out.'

They arranged to meet on the Frome town bridge. Leaman was to come with clear directions to Little Terrors, whatever it turned out to be.

After this fresh tweak to the investigation, Diamond drove down the A36 with the Muppet tune refusing to go out of his head and his thoughts jigging to it. Who would have expected the violence done to Wigfull to link up with puppets and a play place?

There was a strong temptation to make the connection with Uncle Evan, the puppeteer Joe Dougan had spoken about. But what connection could that be? Uncle Evan was not really in the frame for Peg Redbird's murder or the attack on Wigfull. He was simply one of the people who had once owned Mary Shelley's copy of Milton.

Who was Uncle Evan anyway? His real name had not emerged so far. From Joe's account, he was a fortyish hippie with John Lennon glasses and a pony-tail hairstyle who got his bookings through the Brains Surgery at Larkhall. He'd bought the book at Noble and Nude some years ago and sold it on to Oliver Heath, the old gent with the shop in Union Passage. Heath had called him a multi-talented young man-'young', presumably, from the perspective of eighty years or more.

If it was Uncle Evan's puppet workshop at Stowford, who was it who had crossed the fields towards it some time Saturday afternoon or evening? Wigfull, for sure. But who else? Evan himself, returning from the show for the Bath Rotarians? Why would he approach it on foot across the fields rather than driving straight there as Diamond himself had just done? The footpath route made no sense. He'd have a vanload of equipment with him.

The heat was back on Joe Dougan. It always came back to Joe. Joe had met Evan. Of the other remaining suspects, Somerset and Pennycook, neither had any known link with the puppet man. Joe had sought him out on the day Peg Redbird was murdered.

So where had Joe been on the Saturday? He'd spent the whole of the afternoon doing the rounds of the Bath hotels looking for Donna, or so he claimed. What if-as well as checking hotels-he'd called at the Brains Surgery to find out more about Uncle Evan? The people in the pub could have told him Evan had a workshop out at Stowford. And Joe, being a stranger to the district, could easily have found himself in Westwood instead of Stowford and then spotted the sign for the footpath across the fields.

Why would Joe still be interested in Uncle Evan? Diamond's best answer was this: Evan had learned from Joe that the copy of Milton's poems he had bought and sold cheaply was worth much more. A prize had slipped through his hands. Years before, when he acquired the book from Peg, she may have told him she had found it in an antique writing box. Last week he would surely have reached the same conclusion as Joe: that if the book had belonged to Mary Shelley, so had the box.

Evan would know Mary Shelley's writing box would be worth a bit.

And the box disappeared from Noble and Nude on the night Peg was murdered. If Joe was the killer, it was easy to assume he'd stolen the box. The fanatical desire to own the thing was the reason he'd done it, his motive. There had been a struggle and Peg had been cracked over the head. But what if Evan came to Walcot Street the same night with plans to nick the box? His chance would have come while Joe was dumping the body in the river. Joe would have been appalled to find it gone when he returned. But he was intelligent. With time to reflect, he must have worked out the identity of the one other person who knew the value of the box. Determined to have it for himself, he returned to the Brains Surgery and picked up the trail of Uncle Evan. It was worth risking a trip to Stowford to see what was there.

It was looking as if Wigfull had been right all along about Joe. For Peter Diamond, that was humbling, if not galling. Joe was on a train to London by now. He'd be in Paris before the day was out.

At Frome, he called Manvers Street and said he wanted Joe Dougan stopped at Waterloo and brought back for questioning. A call to the Railway Police should do it.

LEAMAN WAS waiting on the town bridge. He had got the address of Little Terrors, he said. It was up the hill at the top, opposite the church.

'So what is it?' Diamond asked.

'An old factory, or warehouse, so far as I can make out.'

'I mean what is it now?'

'A play place.'

'OK. Be like that.'

Leaman drove ahead in his car, through the town, and most of the way out of it. The church came up on the left and they turned right along a narrow street that presently opened out. And there was the name, bizarre in bold lettering over an innocent-seeming door.

Small children with their mothers were going inside.

Leaman cleared his throat in a way that signalled a problem.