Peter Lovesey - The Vault

They walked on, and although no more was said about the investigation, it got through to Halliwell-he was seized with the conviction-that Diamond knew everything now. He had worked out precisely what had happened. It was only a matter of nailing his man.

The old tyrant could be a pain to work with, but no detective on the Force had such clarity of mind.

As if he was a mind-reader too, Diamond said with compassion, "You should go home now. You've done enough today."

Halliwell agreed.

OF THE Murder Squad, only Sergeant Leaman remained. Diamond asked him to bring in copies of Joe Dougan's statements.

Predictably, John Wigfull's paperwork was immaculate. He had painstakingly recorded things from the interviews at the Royal Crescent that Diamond would have disregarded. There was the whole chain of contacts that had led the dogged American professor to Noble and Nude.

He asked Leaman, "Did John Wigfull follow up any of this stuff Joe Dougan told him-the bookshop at Hay-on-Wye and so on?"

Leaman shook his head. "Have you ever been to Hay, sir?"

"Never."

"I was there once. I do a bit of cooking and I wanted a book by Fanny Craddock that had been out of print for thirty years. It's incredible, the number of bookshops in a small country town. A whole cinema stuffed with old books. A castle. There's no way you could trace a particular sale."

Diamond studied the notes. "How about these Bath people, Oliver Heath and Uncle Evan?"

"They certainly exist. They're known locally, sir. Mr Heath owned a bookshop in Union Passage for many years and Uncle Evan has a puppet theatre."

"Did anybody go to see them?"

"To check on Dougan's story? It wasn't thought necessary, sir, seeing that he didn't invent the names."

"You didn't bother."

Harsh words that pained Leaman. "Those people were stepping-stones, so to speak. Things only began to happen after he found his way to the antiques shop."

"We need to see them."

"Tomorrow morning?"

"Too late."

Leaman had rashly hoped there was still time for a quiet Sunday evening drink with his girlfriend.

THE RETIRED bookseller Oliver Heath greeted them at the door of his Queen Square apartment, dapper for an elderly man in shirt and cravat, grey slacks and tan-coloured brogues. "I was only listening to the radio," he said, making clear that he didn't at all object to having his Sunday evening disturbed. "Sometimes you get some interesting talks on Long Wave with the Open University, but tonight is not my cup of tea exactly: Feminism in the Third World."

Diamond explained their visit.

"Oh, yes," the old man confirmed. "The professor was here, just as he said, and showed me a copy of Milton that once passed through my hands. I say passed through them; actually it was on my shelves for years. I never regarded it as anything special. It wasn't a first edition or anything. Some of the fly-leaves were missing, I recall."

"The blank sheets at the front?"

"And the back. You often find this with old books. Paper was far more expensive in former times than now. People used the sheets as notepaper. Can't blame them, but it does ruin a nicely bound book. What I failed to notice-or appreciate the significance of-was the inscription on the cover."

"Mary Shelley's initials?"

"And of course the Abbey Churchyard address." Oliver Heath managed an ungrudging smile. "Good spotting on Professor Dougan's part-and good luck to him."

"Was it genuine?"

"The writing on the cover? I've no reason to think it wasn't. But you see I was ignorant of Mary Shelley's connection with Bath. Well, I knew the Shelleys had stayed here at some point, but I didn't know Frankenstein was written here. I've checked since, and he was right. Five, Abbey Churchyard. It's a salutary thought that the world's most famous horror story was penned within a few yards of our great Abbey Church."

"A first edition of Frankenstein would be worth a bit, I imagine?" said Diamond, seeing that Heath was so generous with his information.

"My word, yes. A set in good condition would fetch a huge sum. I think the 1818 edition amounted to only five hundred copies. It was in three volumes, to appeal to the circulating libraries. They liked books published that way because one book could be loaned to three different readers at the same time. But library copies are not of much interest to collectors."

"It wasn't an immediate bestseller, then?"

"Far from it. Out of print for years. They produced a new edition in 183I with some changes to the text, but it didn't really take off until the 1880s, long after the author was dead."

"You're well up on all this."

The old man smiled. "I took the trouble to gen up after having my ignorance shown up the other day. The story is more popular now than it has ever been. I must say, I can't fathom how it has become a set text in university English courses, but apparently it has, here and in America. An article in The Times stated that Mary Shelley is more studied than Coleridge, Byron, Keats and Shelley."

"Is that surprising? If I was given a choice of Frankenstein or poetry, I know which would get my vote," said Diamond.

"You might be disappointed. It isn't exactly Stephen King."

Diamond put the conversation back on track. "Did Professor Dougan tell you what he was up to?"

"He wanted to find out where the Milton came from, who was the previous owner, and so forth. The provenance, we call it."

"And you helped?"

"I had to dig very deep in my memory. I recalled buying it quite cheaply from a local man who calls himself Uncle Evan. He must have a more formal name, but that's the one he is known by. Have you heard of him? He runs a puppet theatre and I'm told it's very good entertainment. Does everything himself, makes the puppets, the scenery and writes the scripts. A multitalented young man. He built a stage of some sort that he carts about in the back of a van."

"You sent the professor to see him?"

"I told him where Evan might be found, and that was the Brains Surgery."

"The pub in Larkhall?"

Oliver Heath smiled at the recollection. "My American visitor was somewhat thrown by the name. I have to confess that I didn't immediately say it was a pub. I'm sure he had visions of something like Dr Frankenstein's laboratory."

"Is the Brains Surgery Uncle Evan's local?"

"It's the one you visit if you want to book his puppet show. I couldn't tell you where he lives."

"MORE USEFUL than I could have hoped for," Diamond commented as Leaman drove them out to Larkhall.

"Did we learn anything new, sir?"

"Sergeant, you're beginning to talk as if it's been a long day. Of course we learned something new. We learned that Frankenstein was published in 1818 with only five hundred copies. Did you know that?"

"No, sir."

"Well, then. Ponder the significance."

At the Brains Surgery, they were told by the barman that Uncle Evan had not been in for a couple of days. The bob from deep-set eyes around the bar seeming to regard that as a betrayal left Diamond in no doubt that further questions about the puppeteer would not lead to much. Nobody had an address or phone number. Nobody knew his real name.

"If he does come in…" said Diamond, but he knew he was wasting his breath.

THE DRIVE back to Manvers Street was mostly in silence. At one point Diamond muttered something cynical about the great British public, but later he said more philosophically, "Why should everyone be there when we want them? We drew blanks with Councillor Sturr and Uncle Evan, but we saw a lot of others today."

To Leaman it sounded encouragingly like a line being drawn at the end of a long day. And that was what Diamond intended- until they took the turn into Bridge Street and he spotted a parked van and someone carrying things from the lighted interior of the Victoria Gallery.