Peter Lovesey - The Vault

Diamond was being unusually considerate. "Is there somewhere else you would rather go?"

"My hotel."

"Fine. We'll go there."

"I'm thinking my wife may have come back."

"Let's find out, then."

From the car, they radioed headquarters that the body taken from the river was that of Peg Redbird and gave instructions for her shop to be sealed as a possible crime scene.

THE ROYAL Crescent Hotel is at the centre of the great terrace from which its name is taken. At the sedate pace of a horse-drawn carriage, they were driven over the cobbles in front. A top-hatted concierge in blue livery automatically started towards the car, saw that it was a police vehicle and hesitated. Joe swung open the door and hailed him by name. "Any news of my wife yet?"

"I haven't heard anything, professor."

"Darn."

The Dougans' suite was on the second floor. The two trim members of the party moved towards the elegant main staircase. Diamond stopped to press the lift button. They looked round for him and came back.

He said with an air of dignity, "If there's such a place as Heaven, and I get the nod from St Peter, he'd better not expect me to use the stairs."

Wigfull passed no comment.

This went over Joe's head. He was still talking about his wife. "She may have come back when the concierge was off duty."

"It's possible."

But when they entered the John Wood suite, nobody was there.

"Hell," said Joe, and he couldn't have been talking about the accommodation. The lounge area in a toning scheme of brown, orange and cream, was bigger than the dining room of some hotels. Padded settee and armchairs, fireplace and huge pelmeted and draped windows with front views across the lawns to the city. Up a couple of steps a white balustrade like a communion rail separated the bedroom from the rest.

It definitely had the edge over an interview room at the nick.

"I'm not paying for this," Joe thought fit to explain, as if affluence would damn him in the eyes of the law. "We ordered a simple bedroom at one-sixty a night, but as this suite wasn't in use they upgraded us for no extra charge."

"Lucky for you."

"My luck ran out last night. So what are you going to do about Donna?"

"A missing person alert has gone out to all our patrols. We can't do more," Diamond explained, "unless there's something else you want to tell us."

Joe's voice shrilled in outrage. "What do you mean? I told you all I know."

"Then you've got to be patient, sir."

"I'm doing my best." He sighed, and made an effort to unwind. "Anyone want a drink?"

The room had its own cocktail cabinet. The guardians of the law shook their heads.

"Well, I'm having a scotch," Joe declared.

"How did you know the woman in the mortuary is Miss Redbird?" Diamond asked him when he had poured the drink.

"Didn't I say? I met her yesterday."

"In her shop?"

"In her shop, right."

"Pure chance, or what?"

"No, I was directed there. You want to know how it happened?" He went to the chest of drawers and took out his precious book, the edition of Milton's poems, and showed them the inscription on the cover and explained why he believed this was Mary Shelley's personal copy. In a dogged account that revealed the persistence of his character, he took them through the various steps of his quest to trace the previous owners: Hay-on-Wye; the Abbey Churchyard; O. Heath, the retired bookseller; Uncle Evan at the Brains Surgery; and Peg Redbird at Noble and Nude.

Diamond was a brooding, restless listener to all this. "You make it all sound reasonable," he responded finally. "The part I don't understand is where you thought this trail was leading. Surely you weren't expecting to trace the book all the way back to Mary Shelley?"

"You never can tell." A faint smile followed, edged with self-congratulation.

"We're listening," said Diamond, becoming intrigued.

So they heard the remarkable story Peg Redbird had given Joe, of the writing box that had once contained the book.

At this John Wigfull cut into the narrative. "This is the box you told me about this morning, the one that was locked, and you went back for?"

"Correct."

"You didn't tell me it belonged to Mary Shelley. You said it was an antique."

"That's the truth."

"No, professor, that's evasion."

Joe Dougan shrugged and spread his hands. "I can't say for certain it belonged to her."

Wigfull was furious. "You went back to the shop at the end of the evening because you believed it was hers. You didn't say a damned thing about Mary Shelley this morning."

"What's your problem?" said Joe. "Donna is gone. That's all that matters to me. Can't you appreciate that?"

Diamond broke up the exchange before Wigfull burst a blood vessel. "Let's move on. Would you mind telling me what happened when you went back to Noble and Nude?"

"Nothing happened. Miss Redbird wasn't there."

"The shop was closed, you mean?"

"No, it was open."

"But unattended?"

He nodded.

Wigfull blurted out accusingly, "You didn't tell me any of this."

"You didn't ask."

"You implied she was there. You said you spent some time trying to unlock the box."

Joe remarked as if to a child, "You got it. I sat down in her office to wait for her. The writing box was still on her desk and so were the tins of keys, so I tried some more. But the lady didn't show up at all. In the end I thought about Donna alone here and I gave up."

Diamond said with more control than Wigfull, "Are you telling us the whole story this time, professor?"

Joe seemed to shrink a little into the thick upholstery. "I'm doing the best I can."

"When you found the shop unattended, did you make any effort to find Miss Redbird?"

"I called her name. There was no answer."

"A golden opportunity to try more keys on the precious box. Did you get it open?"

Joe looked away, out of the window, as if he wanted to be anywhere else but here.

"Did you hear my question?" Diamond pressed him.

"I don't know what she did with the damned key."

"You must have been tempted to force the lock."

"It crossed my mind a couple of times, but I didn't do it."

"The box is still intact, then?"

"Should be. That's how I left it."

"On Miss Redbird's desk?"

"Yep."

"And you say she didn't show up at all?"

"That's the truth of it."

"How long were you there?"

"Hour and a quarter, hour and a half."

"Did anyone see you?"

"No one I noticed."

Diamond continued to probe. If Peg Redbird had been bludgeoned to death that evening and dropped in the river, that hour and a half was crucial.

"When you found the shop open and let yourself in, did you notice any sign of a disturbance?"

"No, sir, I did not."

"Any damage would be obvious in an antique shop, I imagine.

Joe gave him an abstracted look. "What did you say?"

"Things get knocked over if people fight in a place like that."

"You're losing me."

"Everything was as you'd seen it before?"

"I guess so."

"We can assume, then, that she left the shop before you arrived, and nobody forced her to go."

Joe Dougan was a tired, troubled man, and he had reached the limit of his patience. "All you guys want to talk about is this dead woman. She's gone. No one can help her now. You should be finding out what happened to my wife, for God's sake. Don't you have any priorities?"

They left soon after.

" WHAT DID you make of that?" Diamond asked in the car.

Wigfull sniffed. "He spins a good yarn."

"Do you think it's all an act-his concern about the wife?"

"I caught him out over Peg Redbird, didn't I? He changed his story."

"He was pretty uncomfortable about it."

"The man's a killer," said Wigfull. "We should have taken him in."