Peter Lovesey - The Vault

"Twenty pounds. I, em, rubbed out the price."

"Sensible, in the circumstances. Twenty is about right, going by the state of it. You can probably add several zeroes if you can prove the ownership beyond all doubt. Intrinsically, it's nothing special." He opened the book at the front. "Do you see where some of the fly-leaves have been cut out? Rather neatly, I have to say-but it matters to a collector."

Joe had not noticed before. "Why would anyone do that?"

"Paper was harder to come by in the old days. Expensive, too. Blank sheets had their uses for notepaper, or whatever." He closed the book carefully and handed it back. "I suggest you get that inscription authenticated. There are scientific tests for ink. Then if you want to make a tidy profit I would offer it to one of the London auction houses."

"I don't know if I'll sell it," said Joe.

The blue eyes glittered in approval. "There speaks a true book man."

"Would you remember who you bought it from?"

"You're hoping to trace the provenance?" said Oliver Heath, his eyebrows peaking in surprise. "I don't think that's very likely with a book as old as this, unless it's been in a private library for many years."

"Any chance of that?"

He spread his hands to gesture that he had no answer. "I'm trying to remember who sold it to me. Not one of my regulars, I'm sure of that. I have the feeling he was not a bookish person at all." He tapped the end of his nose with his forefinger as if that might stimulate thought, and apparently it did. "I believe it was Uncle Evan."

"Your uncle?"

"No, no. He's about fifty years my junior. He's the puppeteer."

"Would you mind saying that again?"

"The puppeteer, Uncle Evan. He runs a puppet theatre for children. He's quite well-known in Bath. Very talented. Built the theatre himself, makes his own puppets, paints the scenery, writes the scripts and works the strings as well."

"Is he interested in poetry?"

"I couldn't say. You can never tell with people. He has depths, but I wouldn't have thought he troubled with things like Paradise Lost, unless he was planning to turn it into a puppet show."

Professor Joe Dougan winced at the concept. "But he definitely owned this book before you did?"

"Yes, I'm certain it was Evan, no doubt needing to raise some funds for one of the shows."

"Where do I find this theatre?" Joe asked.

"Lord only knows."

"Doesn't it have an address?"

"It's not a building. It's a mobile thing. Collapsible. He drives it around in a van, doing shows for schools, hospitals, birthday parties and so on. I don't know where you'll catch up with him."

"Do you know his surname?"

"If I did, it's gone. You could ask at the Brains Surgery. He's well known there. I think he gets some of his bookings through them."

There was a long, uneasy pause. "You did say 'Brain Surgery'?" Joe sought to confirm.

"Brains, with an ‘s’."

"That's where I should go to ask for Uncle Evan?" he queried the advice slowly, spacing the words. He was beginning to have doubts about the competence of Oliver Heath's brain.

"Don't look so shocked. It's a Welsh pub. In Dafford Street, Larkhall."

"A Welsh pub in Bath? You wouldn't be putting me on?"

"My dear chap, Brains Bitter is a beer brewed in Cardiff. The pub's name is a play on words."

"I understand now." Joe grinned. "I had a mental picture that was truly bizarre."

"Dare I suggest, professor, that you read a little less of Frankenstein?'

THE ANTIQUES trade is big in Bath. Go window-shopping in any direction and it isn't long before you are looking at Stafford-shire dogs and Japanese fans. Two areas have a concentration of the trade: the streets north of George Street at the top of the town, stretching right up to Lansdown; and Walcot, on the main route out to the east. Walcot cheerfully admits to being the dustier end of the market, its shops co-existing with used clothes outlets and takeaways. Here, on Saturdays, the old tram shed becomes a flea market and hundreds of bargain-hunters jostle among the stalls.

At the far end of Walcot Street stood Noble and Nude, a shop unlike any other, three floors and a basement crammed with bygones, without the slightest attempt to classify them. This hoard was presided over by Margaret Redbird, a formidable little woman known in the trade as Peg the Pull, from her genius for "pulling" or buying cheaply from gullible sellers. Why Noble and Nude? For no extra charge, Peg would tell you that she plundered Swinburne as cheerfully as she plundered everyone else:

"We shift and bedeck and bedrape us,

Thou art nobk and nude and antique."

The shop's name seemed right for Peg. Noble she certainly appeared. She might have been born a duchess, for every syllable she spoke was beautifully articulated. Nude she was not (when in the shop)-but a hint of the erotic was good for business. Her vitality attracted men and she was old enough-close to fifty, if the truth were told-to lavish endearments on males of all ages and get away with it. She was small, energetic and playful, all of which helped her strategies in the antique game.

Peg had been in Bath over twenty years and amassed a collection that was two-thirds junk, but with enough good things among the rubbish to have serious collectors slavering. Finding the treasures was the problem. You went through a confusing series of small rooms connected by stairs that themselves served as display areas, leaving only the narrowest ways up between figurines and candlesticks. Everywhere the display was haphazard. Each surface was crowded with ceramics, glassware and silver, all unclassified. If you opened the drawers in the furniture they spilled out prints, postcards and photographs. From hooks in the ceiling another whole area was put to use. Suspended on strings over the customers' heads were dolls, teddy bears, saucepans, parasols, hats and birdcages. A full-sized waxwork of a woman in a red velvet dress was poised on a swing like a Fragonard beauty, her petticoats wired out to give the impression of movement.

Peg managed her business from a boxed-in position behind the grandfather clocks facing the front door. Hidden, not very cleverly, under her desk was a small safe. In it she kept the cash, and a few precious items such as a silver watch, once allegedly owned by Beau Nash, an eighteenth century pearl necklace and a letter written by Oscar Wilde.

Visitors came through steadily from the time Noble and Nude opened, about ten in the morning. Not all came to look at the stock. Peg kept her finger on Bath's pulse by dispensing gin and tonic to a fair cross-section of local society. Keeping up with the gossip was a professional necessity. When someone died at a decent address, Peg was invariably the first to offer deepest sympathy and expert help in valuing the contents of the house.

Essential to the system, a friend with time to spare was on call to mind the shop when Peg went on a valuing foray. This useful person rejoiced in the name of Ellis Somerset. Ellis knew everything about silver and quite a lot about china, yet his overriding passion was Peg. Her charm enslaved him. Each time she called him Gorgeous or Poppet, he turned pink with pleasure, regardless that she used the same words for the milkman and the bank manager. This morning Peg had summoned him and he was here soon after lunch in his suede shoes and olive-green corduroy suit with the red bow-tie that gave a helpful air of authority. Ellis was not much over forty, slight, well-groomed and red-haired. To borrow a phrase that rather suited him, he was a single man in possession of a good fortune. Pity he had a face like a turnip.

"I shouldn't be more than a couple of hours, if that," Peg was saying. "This is one of the Minchendon family, old Simon, who had that tailor's at the top of Milsom Street at one time. He was gathered last Tuesday. Heart. His nephew asked me to run an eye over the furniture."