Peter Lovesey - The Vault

"Yes?"

"There are a couple of pictures, rather lurid watercolours. If you want to remain my bestest friend, handle them with TLC."

"Valuable?

"I don't know, do I, until I get a better look at them?"

"Who's the artist, then?"

"Never you mind, old dear. Just bring the goodies back safely to Peg."

Joe made a sound in his throat to let them know he was approaching. He was glad to have overheard the exchange. He would play a cautious hand with Peg Redbird.

"Oh, I clean forgot," the man said, clutching his red hair in consternation. "This gentleman came in specially to see you. He's been waiting some time."

Joe stepped forward and introduced himself. Peg stood up and shook hands when she heard he was a professor. The prospect of some business with a wealthy academic galvanized her enough to want her colleague to leave. "Ellis, would you be an angel and see about renting a van? I promised you'd collect that stuff from Camden Crescent today."

Left alone with Joe, Peg practically rubbed her hands as she asked if he was a collector.

"Not exactly, ma'am. If I see something I like, I buy it. Books, mostly."

Her disappointment was quick to show. "Books? You're in the wrong shop, precious. I don't go in for books. If I get some in as part of a job-lot, I pass them on to a bookseller."

"That I can appreciate, ma'am. I won't take up much of your time." He took the Milton out of its bag. "I was told you acquired this some years ago and sold it on."

"If you really mean years ago, I did have a book-room when I started," she said, taking the book and opening it. "I stocked anything in those days just to fill up space. There's nothing worse than empty rooms."

"Do you recall this book?"

She turned it over in her hands without opening it. "You're going to tell me I sold it for peanuts, no doubt. Milton isn't exactly a best-seller and it's not in the best of nick."

"I only paid twenty pounds myself, ma'am."

"What's so special about it?"

Joe was determined not to tell her yet. "This is the Dr Johnson edition of Milton. Both of them are on my current Eng. Lit. syllabus. This is a special find for me."

"What I don't understand," said Peg sharply, "is where I come into this. You don't want to sell it back to me?"

"Oh, no. I'm keeping it now."

"Well?" She looked annoyed.

He was in danger of crumbling under the cross-examination. "This is pure sentiment, I guess. This book is going to have an honoured place on my shelf at home. Almost like a friend. I like to know about its past, where it lived, who owned it…" His voice trailed away.

Peg tapped her finger on the cover. "Some Bathonian owned it at one time. 'Five, Abbey Churchyard'. That's local."

"Really?"

A clicking sound came from Peg's mouth. "Someone told me something about Abbey Churchyard today."

Joe attempted to close that avenue. "You must have a memory of how you acquired the book."

"Don't bet on it, professor. I wouldn't have bought it on its own, so it must have come in with some other stuff."

"More books, you mean?"

Peg narrowed her eyes, straining to think about several matters, and raked a hand through her dark-tinted hair. "No, it was part of another purchase. It was in some sort of container, with other things." Suddenly she snapped her fingers. "I do remember. Do you know what a writing box is?"

"Something containing writing paper?"

"Well, yes, but this was a specific item of furniture. A rather clever thing, much used two hundred years ago. I've got one somewhere upstairs, but it would take ages to find it. Look, the best way I can describe one is this. Think of an old-fashioned school desk with a sloping lid and a space inside for all the stuff a kid uses in school. You know what I mean?"

"Sure."

"Well, imagine it without legs."

"Okay."

"You could rest it on a table or on your lap, right? Now a writing box looks exactly like that when it's in use, but you can close it up. The part you write on is hinged halfway down, so that you can fold it back on itself and it makes the shape of a box. Do you follow?"

"I know exactly what you mean, ma'am," said Joe. "I've seen them back home. They're nice pieces."

"That's how I acquired this," Peg said, patting the front of the book. "It was inside a writing box, along with a sketchbook of some sort and a cut glass ink bottle."

A tingling sensation crept the length of Joe's spine. With an effort to sound only faintly interested, he said, "Did you keep any of these items? The sketchbook, for instance?"

"No, I got rid of that. It had a few inept pencil sketches as far as I remember. Nothing anyone would wish to frame."

His stomach tightened. "When you say 'got rid of'…?"

"I unloaded it on someone."

"Sold it?"

"I don't give anything away, my love. I'm in business. I'm just trying to think whether the box upstairs is the one the book was in, or another. It hadn't been looked after, I can tell you that much."

"Could I see it?"

She sighed. "Listen darling, you've caught me on a busy day. I ought to know where everything is, but I don't."

"I won't take up much more of your time, ma'am. Do you happen to remember who sold you the writing box?"

"It was years ago," said Peg. "I don't know why I bothered. Sympathy, I reckon. Some poor soul in need of a few shillings for the gas meter."

"An old person?"

"I couldn't say."

Couldn't, or wouldn't? Joe was getting a distinct impression that Peg was stalling now. She may even have made the connection with Mary Shelley.

He shifted his ground. "I might be willing to offer you a good price for that writing box."

Her eyes glinted. "You haven't seen it, sunshine. It could be riddled with woodworm."

"I know you're busy right now. Maybe I could find it if I go looking."

"Be my guest," said Peg.

"ANYONE WOULD think we'd been sitting on our butts for the past week," Peter Diamond complained to Keith Halliwell.

Halliwell gave him a look long enough for the words to be played back in his mind.

Remarkably, an extra tinge of pink suffused his cheeks and he launched into an elaborate self'justification. "I took my turn with the sieve and shovel. It wasn't all tea and toast in the Pump Room. And you've been slogging away, tracing these bloody builders. I don't like my squad being jumped all over by a pipsqueak straight out of Bramshill. So what have we got, Keith? Are we anywhere nearer to naming Hands?"

"I've got the names of twelve who worked on the site in the early eighties," said Halliwell. "Most of the activity was in the winter of eighty-two to eighty-three. It's a matter of tracing them, to see if they're alive, and what they remember about the others who worked there."

"You want more manpower? It's yours."

"Really?"

"Her Worship has spoken. It gets high priority as long as it stays in the papers, though she didn't put it in quite those terms."

"I'll see to it."

"Good man." In a confiding mood, he propped his elbow on Halliwell's computer monitor and felt it tilt under the weight. "These things move," he said in surprise.

"It's the adjustment. I shouldn't lean too hard on it."

"You know me, Keith. Never leaned too hard. Never will." He got back to the topic he had been about to broach. "There was a question in the press-room that stopped me in my tracks."

"From the Smith woman?"

"No. Some other hack. I couldn't tell you who it was. He asked if we'd considered a hoax as a possibility. I hadn't. Had you?"

"No." Halliwell was clearly puzzled. "What would be the point?"

"Practical joking. We're fair game, Keith. Some con artist gets hold of some bones and buries them in the cellar under the house where Frankenstein was written."

"Who would do that?"