The Vault

wires crossed. I visit the pub, yes, but I'm not Uncle Evan.'

'That's the truth,' said the woman.

'Annie and me, we're filling in for him. Couldn't you tell from the crap show we just did?'

This, more than anything, made Diamond hesitate. It had been a godawful show, even though the puppets were beautifully constructed and painted. He would have expected something more classy.

'We had to wing it,' said Annie. 'We haven't seen Evan's show. There wasn't time.'

The man who called himself Paul Anderson said, 'He only asked us yesterday. We used to have our own show, right? We got fed up. Everyone wants you to do it for peanuts.'

'It's not worth it. It's bloody expensive, setting up the gigs,' Annie said in support.

'So Evan asked you to fill in. What's he up to?'

'God knows. Well, he did say something about a family crisis,' said Paul Anderson. 'I've never heard him talk about his family before. Didn't know he had one. We don't know him all that well. It's just that with all our experience…'

'When somebody's in a spot, you help them out, don't you?' said Annie.

They had convinced Diamond. He was disappointed and elated at the same time. Uncle Evan's behaviour was deeply suspicious and his 'family crisis' looked like a flimsy excuse to avoid being traced and questioned. He was behaving like a guilty man. Diamond continued to question the couple, but they said nothing more of substance. They claimed not to know Evan's real name, or where he lived. He had handed them the keys of the van containing everything they needed for the show and they had driven it away from the pub the previous afternoon. He didn't want it back for a week.

'That's handy,' said Diamond, 'because we're going to take it over.'

LEAVING LEAMAN to arrange for forensic to pick up the van, he set off to keep an appointment in Mells, a few miles west of Frome. He sang a little in the car, something he only ever did when alone, and feeling upbeat. The Queen number, Another One Bites the Dust. The words were right, even if he had to strain to get the notes.

He didn't know Mells. Driving through the village looking for a particular cottage, he quickly understood how an expert on English art fitted in there. The ambience was orderly, understated, timeless and redolent of decent living. Personally, he would not have lasted there a week. Many of the gardens were surrounded by high walls, but what you could see through the gates was as clean as a cat's behind, and a pedigree cat at that.

Stuart Eastland was one of the team of specialists who advised Avon and Somerset Police on stolen property. Diamond had met him only a couple of times before, and then briefly; others dealt with thefts of art and antiques. 'This isn't the usual problem,' he explained, setting the bubble-wrapped parcel on a round oak table in Eastland's thatched cottage. 'I have it on loan from the owner. I'd like an opinion.'

'On what, precisely?' Eastland had a pair of half-glasses lodged at the top of his forehead. He flicked them downwards with his little finger on the bridge. All his movements were elegant.

'I'll show you.' Diamond grappled ineptly with the first knot in the string.

'May I?' Eastland had it open almost at once, smoothing the bubble-wrap to reveal Councillor Sturr's watercolour. 'What happened here, then?'

'The glass? My fault. An accident in the kitchen.' Diamond didn't mention the cat. His admission that a work of art had been taken into a kitchen was shocking enough.

'A Blake,' said Eastland, more to himself than Diamond. 'What sort of Blake? William-or Sexton?'

Diamond waited.

'Am I permitted to touch?'

'No problem.'

He picked up the picture and turned it over, and a chip of glass fell on the table.

'Sorry,' said Diamond. 'Thought I'd got it all out.'

'Since it will have to be repaired,' said Eastland, 'presumably it won't matter if we remove the painting?'

'I don't see why not.'

After some deft work with a knife and pliers, Eastland eased the paper from the frame and held it close to an anglepoise lamp. 'The thing about Blake is that his style is so mannered. In one sense, he's a gift to a forger. I mean, the Blake hallmarks are well known and very persuasive, the pen and wash technique, the detailed musculature, the statuesque effect, the rather ineptly drawn background. He took immense trouble over the figures and then got bored with his backgrounds. You get some laughable trees.' He put a jeweller's magnifier over his right eye and bent close to the painting. 'This is all very suggestive of Blake. On the other hand, he's devilishly difficult to copy. Well known forgers like Tom Keating and Eric Hebborn left him well alone. It's one thing to mock up a Samuel Palmer, quite another to tangle with Blake.'

'So is this genuine?'

'I'm not sure yet. If it's a fake, it's an exceptionally skillful one, I'll tell you that for nothing.'

Diamond chose not to say at this point that he would be telling him everything for nothing. The murder squad was well over budget this year. Good thing Eastland was so obviously enjoying this.

'Dear old Blake was one of the most prolific of all artists. He never stopped. The list of works runs into thousands. As an engraver by training, he worked in series, you see. He would take a subject like the poems of Thomas Gray or the Book of Job and produce scores of pictures. This one, I can't place. The solitary figure in what looks like a frozen landscape with mountains.' He turned the sheet over and held it at an angle, studying the grain. 'Very old paper. A Whatman, I would think. No watermark, unfortunately.'

'Old enough to be by Blake?'

'Oh, yes. The paper can so often be the giveaway when a work is not authentic. The poor old faker has a double problem. First he has to find a sheet of paper of the right age and quality. That's difficult, but not impossible. A favourite trick is to remove the fly leaves from the fronts of old books. And occasionally scrapbooks, sketchbooks, even stacks of unused paper turn up in attics. But old paper deteriorates. This would have been given a coat of size, or glue, when it was first manufactured, to provide a surface. Without it, you'd get an effect like writing on toilet paper. The paper is absorbent. You can't produce a fine line. So they apply this coating of size. In time, as I was saying, the size breaks down and the paper loses its surface. Result: the faker or restorer has to apply a fresh coat of size, preferably several thin coats, before the damned paper is workable.'

'More trouble than it's worth, I should think,' said Diamond.

'Not at all. The rewards are considerable if you get away with it. There are old recipes for these glues, just as there are recipes for the ink they used. It can be done.'

Now he took a larger magnifying glass from a drawer and studied the edges of the paper. 'This has not been cut recently. The size of the work is about right for Blake, but you would expect nothing else in a piece of this quality.' He held the picture at arm's length again. 'What are you expecting me to say-that it's not authentic?'

Diamond hoped to God he would. His entire case rested on it. 'You said you didn't recognise the subject?'

'Correct.'

'You also said he did his work in series.'

'I did.'

'Have you ever heard of a series based on Mary Shelley's Frankenstein?'

Eastland shook his head at once.

'There are two other watercolours of scenes from the book,' Diamond went on. 'Two, at least. I can't show them to you, but they exist. The tall, long-haired figure in this picture appears in the other two.'

Eastland glanced down at the painting again. 'This is Frankenstein's monster?'

'The original monster, yes, not the Hollywood version.'

'Can you describe these other works?'

'One is a meeting in the mountains between this figure and a man of normal size who must be Frankenstein. The other is a death scene. A woman lies strangled on a bed. The Frankenstein character is beside her in despair while the monster leers through a window.'

'It's a long time since I read the book, but I remember that scene vividly enough.'

'The story was published in 1818, when Blake was sixty-one, still active as a painter,' said Diamond, sounding like an expert himself.

'Indeed, he was painting on his deathbed, nine years later,' Eastland topped it, 'but I've never heard of a