Leaman couldn’t stop his rant. ‘She could have saved her breath if you’d listened to what I said at the start — that there was no way Beau Nash ended up dying in a poky terraced house in Twerton without anyone knowing.’
Now Halliwell made the mistake of getting involved. ‘She just told us he fell on hard times.’
‘Hard times, my arse,’ Leaman said. ‘Ten guineas a month wasn’t poverty. Scale it up to modern money values and he was well fixed. The so-called smaller house where he ended up wasn’t a hovel. It’s still there. It’s a restaurant, for Christ’s sake.’
‘Next door to the Theatre Royal?’ Paul Gilbert said.
‘You’ve got it. Am I exaggerating? Big grand entrance flanked by two stone eagles. The place is called something else now, even if most people still think of it as Popjoy’s, and if you’ve ever been inside you’ll know the rooms are big. Fine staircase, plenty of sash windows, nice fireplaces.’
‘The point is can we be certain he died there?’ Gilbert asked. Each of them was doing his best to take the sting out of Leaman’s tongue-lashing.
‘Ever looked at the plaque outside?’ Leaman said.
There was a pause. It seemed that Bath’s detective force, trained to miss nothing, didn’t read plaques.
‘Wait a bit,’ Leaman said, taking out his iPhone. ‘There.’ He brandished the image in triumph. IN THIS HOUSE RESIDED THE CELEBRATED BEAU NASH AND HERE HE DIED FEBY 1761.
From their reaction, you could believe the death had just happened.
‘If you knew all along, why didn’t you speak up earlier?’ Halliwell asked.
‘I was waiting for the twist that didn’t come.’
‘John’s right,’ Ingeborg said. She’d been using her tablet again. ‘He died in that house, aged eighty-six, nursed by his mistress, Juliana Popjoy, and he was given a funeral in the Abbey fit for the King of Bath, paid for by the Corporation. Muffled bells, a procession through the streets with choristers and the town band together with his own bandsmen from the Pump Room and six aldermen carrying the coffin.’
If Leaman had been made up to chief constable he couldn’t have looked more jubilant. ‘Enough said?’
3
A summer evening in Paloma’s garden on Lyncombe Hill had done much to restore Peter Diamond’s spirits. They were seated on patio chairs at a white metal table overlooking the sloping lawn. A bottle of good red was uncorked on the table. The scent of stocks wafted to them from a raised flowerbed. The light was fading fast, but on the roof of the house a blackbird was singing its heart out.
The big detective murmured, ‘Sanctuary.’
Paloma raised her eyebrows.
‘A famous scene from The Hunchback of Notre Dame,’ he said. ‘The 1939 version, with Charles Laughton. He rescues the gipsy girl Esmeralda — that’s Maureen O’Hara — from the gallows and scales the front of the cathedral with her in his arms repeatedly shouting, “Sanctuary!”’
‘You and your old films,’ she said. ‘What put that in your head?’
‘Your garden, a place of sanctuary.’
‘Still hurting from that stupid picture in the papers, are you?’
She’d seen it, too. The whole world was enjoying the joke. He took a long sip of wine. ‘Hurting, no. Smarting, possibly.’
‘What’s this talk of sanctuary, then?’
‘Escaping from another day at the office.’
‘Don’t you like it where you are now? Bigger than Manvers Street, isn’t it? Better than the custody suite at Keynsham?’
‘I’m not on about being relocated, not today. No, it’s tensions on the team. We’re getting on one another’s nerves. They’re good detectives, all of them, but there are personality clashes not helped by a case we’re not equipped to take up.’
‘The skeleton?’
‘It grins like it’s enjoying my frustrations.’
‘Come on, Peter. They all look like that with the teeth exposed.’
‘It’s got no teeth and it still manages to grin. Jesus, what was that?’
A large explosion had shattered the idyll.
Diamond was out of his chair.
‘Fireworks, I expect,’ Paloma said, still seated, wine glass in hand. ‘Someone having a party.’
Another huge bang rattled the table. She steadied the bottle.
‘You’re right,’ Diamond said. ‘See? Above the trees. Big shower of green and red. And there goes another. It’s a bit bloody much when you can’t sit in your own garden on a summer evening. Could have been a bomb going off.’
Paloma laughed. ‘Just when you were getting gooey-eyed, talking about sanctuary, too. Shall we go indoors?’
‘I think so. This could go on some time. I was in the Met when the IRA bombing campaign came to London. 1990, just before I got the job here. A massive one went off when we were driving past the Stock Exchange. I’ve been sensitive to sudden blasts ever since.’ He hunched his shoulders. ‘There’s another.’
‘You must have been glad to escape to Bath.’
‘Until now.’
‘Oh come on.’ Paloma stood up and collected the wine glasses. ‘Would you bring the bottle?’
He closed the patio door, still muttering about the fireworks. ‘I’ve brought some photos with me.’
‘Photos of what?’
‘The skeleton.’
‘The skeleton and you together?’ she said. ‘I’ll try not to laugh.’
‘Not that damned press picture. The police photographer took these. We always get a record of the scene.’ He spread them on a coffee table, six shots taken from the cherry picker at various angles.
She faked a disappointed sigh. ‘I was wondering what you had in the envelope. Could it be a travel brochure, I thought. Venice? Florence? Foolish woman.’
‘I want your expert opinion on the clothes he’s wearing, if you can make out what they are under all the dust and debris.’
‘Haven’t you got him out yet?’
‘It’s a tricky job, impossible to do without spoiling the integrity of the scene. He’s covered with a canopy now. A special crane had to be brought in. We’re hoping to lift him out more or less in one piece tomorrow.’
She picked up one of the photos. ‘Mid-eighteenth-century or shortly after, as far as I can tell from the tailoring of the frock coat. The long-skirted, loose-fitting look was on the way out by 1750. Older men might prefer it, but the smart dressers went in for tighter fits like this. I’m interested in the standing collars on the coat and the waistcoat. They would have been called high ton about 1760. This appears to have been a fine brocade once. Rather tattered now. He’s definitely a gent. Pity the shoes aren’t visible.’
‘You think the collar makes it more like 1760. That’s helpful.’
‘The dark wig is unusual for the time,’ Paloma said. ‘White or off-white wigs were almost universal. They powdered them. This is obviously coated in dust, but I’d say it’s black underneath. He may have been eccentric.’
‘Because of the wig?’
‘It’s a strong statement, more than shoulder-length. A rug like that wouldn’t have disgraced King William the third.’
‘Did the kings have dark wigs?’
‘In the 1760s? No. The Hanover kings went for the short white look, George the second and third, at any rate. The first George did sport a brownish wig, but he was dead by 1730.’
‘The reason I asked,’ he said, ‘is that two or three people called in suggesting our skeleton might be Beau Nash, who was known as the King of Bath.’
‘The Beau?’ she said. ‘Are you serious?’
‘When we get a tip like that, we can’t ignore it.’ He could understand her disbelief.
Paloma laughed. ‘Forgive me, Pete. You make them sound like informers. Beau Nash is history.’