‘Pictures of Beau Nash?’
‘And that was a challenge. She wanted him young. The ones you see most often are of a pudgy-faced guy in middle age. Calling him “Beau” is laughable. But the early ones — drawings, mostly — give some idea why so many women adored him. It takes an exceptional man to look sexy in lace.’
‘You found what Estella wanted, then?’
‘Yes, and she knew exactly which magazines to search. That was over a year ago. Since then she’s been admitted to the Beau Nash Society.’
‘There’s a society?’
‘Here in Bath. Haven’t you heard of it? Everyone who is anyone is a member. They meet in rooms in the Circus and you can only join by invitation. Estella gave a talk last winter and got the nod — which is more than I did. I talked to them about eighteenth-century costume and all I got for my troubles was a bottle of plonk.’
‘She probably knows more than they do.’
‘So do I, but not about Mr. Nash. To be serious, Estella will get invitations from across the world when she publishes her book. She must have found out heaps more about him since. But your discovery is going to amaze her, him being hidden in some attic all these years.’
‘I don’t want to start with that stuff,’ Diamond said. ‘We don’t know for certain if it’s him. You haven’t told her what this is about, I hope.’
‘All she knows is that you’re a detective on some kind of investigation that touches on Beau Nash. She’ll be so excited.’
‘Let’s soft-pedal on the skeleton in the loft,’ he said. ‘Before we reveal any of that I’d rather get her take on where he ended up.’
‘Do it your way, then. I’ll never understand the finer points of interviewing witnesses.’
Estella liked Mexican, so the meeting had been set up for Las Iguanas in the courtyard in Seven Dials, reached through a passageway from Westgate Street. Paloma and Diamond got there early and found a table close to the window.
‘Are you okay with Mexican food?’ Paloma said.
‘Now you ask.’
‘Actually I asked Estella and she suggested here. It’s not exclusively Mexican. I’d call it Latin American really.’
‘Fair enough.’ Diamond was more of a pub food man: pie and chips. ‘I’m sure I’ll survive. What’s that monstrosity in the yard?’
‘The fountain?’
Whether the rather odd cast-iron structure they could see from the window deserved to be called a fountain any longer was arguable. There was no water spurting from it. The top tier had been adapted for growing plants that overhung three sad black wading birds standing in a stone surround with more vegetation.
‘Little egrets?’ Diamond said from his limited knowledge of ornithology.
‘Glossy ibises, I was told.’
‘Do they have some significance here?’
‘Not to my knowledge. I believe when the developers were creating the yard in the late 1980s they found the piece at Walcot Reclamation and decided it would make a centrepiece. A talking point, if nothing else.’
‘Why — because it ain’t a fountain any longer?’
‘Because of all the actors.’
‘I see no actors.’
‘Come outside and I’ll show you.’
They got up from the table with their wine glasses and he was shown a feature he’d never noticed before, Bath’s mini version of the forecourt of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood — sixteen sets of handprints and signatures cast in bronze and cemented to the top of the low wall around the fountain.
‘They all appeared at the Theatre Royal,’ Paloma said.
He circled it slowly. Derek Jacobi, Peter Ustinov, Susan Hampshire, Edward Fox and twelve others were immortalised there. ‘Joan Collins — what was she in?’
‘Private Lives. They all had to press their palms into some orange gunk to make the moulds. It must have seemed a good idea at the time.’
‘It’s a bit lost here.’
Paloma’s eyes were elsewhere. A young black woman in a pale blue coat with silver frogging had clattered into the yard on the highest heels Diamond had seen in years. ‘Here’s someone who certainly isn’t lost. Estella, meet my friend, Peter.’
It was the kind of meeting that made him wish he’d chosen a better tie, and, on second thoughts, a better shirt, suit and shoes as well. She was immaculate. They shook hands and she said, ‘I’m extremely curious to know what you want from me.’
‘It’s no great mystery,’ he said.
‘I thought mystery was your thing. Aren’t you in criminal investigation?’
Paloma said, ‘Peter’s head of the murder squad.’
Estella’s eyes widened. ‘Murder?’
‘And other local pastimes like armed robbery and abduction,’ he added.
‘And you think I can help?’
‘Shall we go inside and get you a drink first?’
‘A strong one, I think.’
In the restaurant, Diamond tried to lower expectations. He hadn’t planned to start like this. ‘You’re writing a book about Beau Nash, I’m told.’
‘And you think he might have murdered someone — my dear old Beau?’
‘No, no, not at all. Can we rewind and delete all mention of murder?’
She flashed her small, neat teeth. ‘You’re saving that up for the climax, when you assemble us all in the library and tell us whodunit.’
She was being playful when he wanted to get serious. ‘It doesn’t work that way in CID. I borrowed a couple of books about Nash from Paloma. Nicely written, but thin on facts. I gather yours will be more substantial.’
‘More words for sure. That isn’t always a recommendation.’
‘New material?’
‘Every bit I can find. I don’t want to pad it out.’
‘How many biographies are there?’
‘Of Beau Nash? I know of seven. The first, and most useful, appeared only a year after his death. That was by Oliver Goldsmith.’
‘Seven is a lot, but Richard Nash is a fascinating subject, isn’t he?’ Diamond said, wanting to let her know he’d mastered the basics. ‘Welsh boy comes from humble origins and survives a series of setbacks to conquer Bath by force of personality.’
‘His family weren’t all that humble,’ Estella said. ‘They could afford to send him to Oxford University.’
‘But he ended up a pauper, didn’t he, after becoming one of the most famous men in the land? That’s the real fascination for me.’ It wasn’t, but now that they’d started on Beau Nash he was keen to get to the topic of the funeral and what happened after.
Paloma said, ‘Peter’s getting hooked on eighteenth-century history. He’d be enrolling at the university if he wasn’t a policeman keeping us safe in our beds.’
‘Your beds are outside my beat,’ Diamond said.
‘Don’t disillusion us, or we won’t sleep at nights,’ Estella said with a smile at Paloma.
The waitress arrived and the next minutes were taken up pointing at things on the menu. They agreed on tapas for starters but the two women’s choice of a dish called blazing bird flavoured with flaming hot habañero sauce was a step too far for Diamond. He settled for a Cuban sandwich and asked for a large jug of water and three glasses.
More smiles.
‘I don’t suppose Beau Nash ever tasted Mexican,’ he said.
‘Boiled chicken and roast mutton were his favourites,’ Estella said. ‘They ate mainly meat and not many vegetables. He was partial to potatoes and called them English pineapples and used to eat them on their own as a separate course. But please let’s get to the reason we’re here. What is it about the Beau? What do you want to ask me?’
Put suddenly on the spot, Diamond came out with the question he’d planned to slip into the conversation with more subtlety. ‘Where did he end up?’