Free The Vault by Peter Lovesey

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."
    "You're in for a treat," said Ellis, quite as well-briefed as Peg about Bath's recently departed. "Old Si didn't buy rubbish. When I was up at Bartlett Street one afternoon a couple of years ago, he picked up a set of Queen Anne spoonback chairs, a four and two. They cost him two-fifty apiece, but they'll be worth twice that now."
    Peg was giving a crocodile smile. "Not this afternoon, ducky."
    Ellis raised an eyebrow. "You'll get us a bad name, Peg."
    "Tell me something new." She reached for the black straw hat she wore for funerals and valuations.
    "All right. I will. I know you don't bother much with antiquarian books—"
    "Each to his own, blossom. Old farts with elbow-patches trade in books."
    "Yes, but listen to this, straight off the grapevine. Remember an old boy by the name of Heath, who owned that antiquarian bookshop in Union Passage?"
    "Of course I remember him. He's still alive, I think."
    "He certainly is. He was in Shades at lunchtime telling this story to a crowd of us, and now the trade is buzzing with it."
    "Buzz it to me, then," Peg said indifferently.
    "It seems he had an unexpected visitor this morning, a professor from Ohio, or Oregon, or somewhere in the colonies, wanting an opinion on a book of poetry by John Milton. Nothing special about the edition, except this little American reckons it once belonged to Mary Shelley."
    Peg wriggled her little nose in disbelief. "Oh, yes? And how does he know?"
    "It carried her initials, I was told, and the address—five, Abbey Churchyard—and that, apparently, was where Frankenstein was written. Did you know that?"
    "I'll own up. I did not," Peg said without the slightest stirring of enthusiasm. "Now, if anyone is serious about the furniture, ask them to come back later, when I'm here, right? Anything else, you can deal with."
    "I haven't told you the interesting bit," said Ellis.
    "Snap it up then, sweetie."
    "This professor found that number five was knocked down years ago. It was where the entrance to the Roman Baths is now. But he doesn't give up easily. He discovered that the original vaults are still there, and he managed to go down and have a look."
    "Is this going to take much longer, Ellis, because I'm expected at Camden Crescent ten minutes from now?"
    "Hold on. It's worth it. He reckons the police were down there digging, and they'd just found a human skull—in the vault of the house where Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein. Spooky, isn't it?"
    "What do you mean—'the police were down there digging'? What for?"
    "I don't know. Looking for something, I suppose. Stolen goods? Your guess is as good as mine."
    "And they dug up a skull?"
    "It makes your blood run cold, doesn't it?" Ellis breathed some drama into his piece of gossip, frustrated that Peg had missed the point. "In the place where this great gothic horror story was written, the monster put together from bits of old bodies, they actually discover this."
    "But what about the book?" she said.
    "Frankenstein?"
    "Milton's poems."
    Ellis stared back.
    "Did the American part with it?"
    "I didn't ask." Ellis gave up. Peg's only interest in the matter was whether a transaction had taken place.
    After she had left for Camden Crescent, he picked up the phone. He knew someone in the newspaper business who would appreciate the story.
    TRYING TO sound normal, Joe bent his head to a taxi window and asked, "Do you know the Brains Surgery?" Back home, any driver faced with a question like that would push down the door-lock and look the other way. But it made no problem here. He was allowed into the cab and they drove out of the centre to the part of Bath