‘Would that lot have had a website in 1996? Do they even have one now? I’ve never seen one. It’s not that kind of organisation. I think he’d ask at the library, the ideal place to mug up on Nash. He had to be well in command to give them a lecture on the Beau’s humour, as he did.’ Diamond’s eyes fixed on DC Gilbert. ‘Paul.’
‘Guv?’
‘There’s a book called The Jests of Beau Nash. They should have a copy in the reference section, not for taking out.’
‘Would anyone bother to take it out?’ Halliwell said.
‘I know what you’re saying,’ Diamond said. ‘It’s not Peter Kay, but that’s to our advantage. The book has a rarity value. The library would insist he signs for it, just to have a read. Ask to see their records.’
Paul Gilbert didn’t look convinced. He’d spent most of the previous day fruitlessly going through records at the university to see if Perry Morgan had been a student. He gave a nod.
Ingeborg started reading aloud from her iPhone. ‘“The Jests of Beau Nash, late master of the ceremonies at Bath, consisting of a variety of humorous sallies, smart repartees and bon mots which passed between him and persons of the first distinction...”’ She paused before adding, ‘You can buy it as a reprint on Amazon for £13.99. In paperback.’
Most of the team sniggered, if not chuckled. What had got into them this morning? Not one of them was showing the seriousness Diamond demanded. He could only suppose they were overworked dealing with two murders at once.
For an uncomfortable moment he had a return of that eerie sensation that Beau Nash himself had put the mockers on this investigation and was sitting at the back of the room in his white three-cornered hat and fancy frock coat with a grin spreading across his fat face.
Get a grip, Diamond told himself. ‘We’re not wanting to read the bloody book. We only want to know if Harrod signed for it.’
‘If he did, he likely used another name,’ Halliwell said.
‘We still check.’
‘It will be so much easier when we get a picture of the guy.’
‘Don’t raise your hopes.’ This wasn’t going well. He was out on a limb. After a pause, he said, ‘We also feed the name into the PNC. He may have used the same identity in some other place. Would you see to that, Inge?’
‘If you don’t mind me saying, guv, we’re clutching at straws.’
‘It’s either that, or drown.’
‘When you think about it,’ Ingeborg added, ‘this is the victim we’re trying to identify. We haven’t even started on the killer.’
‘Hold on,’ he said. ‘We’re dealing in probabilities. We’re ninety percent sure Sidney Harrod is the victim and Harry, the tenant in the Twerton house, is the killer. Nothing less than certainty will do, which is why I’m asking for more effort.’
‘Meanwhile,’ Ingeborg said, ‘we’re working our butts off trying to find who shot Perry Morgan.’
Diamond didn’t say any more. He could have threatened them with DCI Charlie Crocker taking over the Morgan case. When he’d mentioned the possibility to Ingeborg before, she’d spooked. He wasn’t sure if she’d alerted the others. But they were at full stretch and they didn’t deserve more grief.
Before returning to his office he stared across the desks and computers and made quite sure no stranger in eighteenth-century costume had been listening in. He’d got the shakes. The team didn’t know he was under more stress than any of them.
That afternoon he and John Leaman drove out to the house on the Warminster Road where Algy Sutton had a ground-floor flat. When the most senior member of the Beau Nash Society came to the door he was in a modern wheelchair called a Blazer, electrically powered, compact and capable of turning on a five-pence coin, a vast improvement on the bath chair. His clothes, too, were more suited to modern life: a turtleneck sweater and black cord pants.
‘We’d like to show you some photos taken at the 1996 and 1997 balls,’ Diamond said after they had been invited into a small front room hung with souvenirs of travel in Africa and Asia. ‘We’re hoping Sidney Harrod is there.’
‘Don’t you worry,’ Algy said, taking reading glasses from his pocket. ‘I’ll spot him if he is.’
Leaman opened the laptop and accessed the file he’d prepared. ‘Bath City Life showed twelve shots of the event in 1996 and fourteen the following year. We know you were there because you’re in both sets.’
‘Standing on my own two feet in those days,’ Algy said. ‘Do you want me to name people?’
‘Only Harrod,’ Diamond said.
The first shot was on the screen, two women either side of a tall man in a white wig and frock coat. Regrettably the quality of the image was poor compared to modern high-resolution photography. The colour brown was dominant.
‘He’d be wearing a wig like this, rather than a black one, I take it,’ Diamond said.
‘Yes, indeed. He was never the Beau,’ Algy said. ‘But that’s not him. That’s Austen Carmichael, God rest his soul.’ He’d already forgotten that names weren’t needed.
Leaman moved the picture aside. Another took its place, this time of two men facing each other and holding drinks.
‘No,’ Algy said.
Quickly he rejected the next few.
‘Wait.’ He leaned forward to examine a shot of six men. ‘Did I really look like that twenty years ago? I was overweight even then.’
‘Say the word and I can zoom in on any of them,’ Leaman said.
‘Don’t zoom in on me, whatever you do. Actually I recognise them all and Sidney isn’t among them.’ If nothing else, Algy’s brain seemed to be up to the task.
Two more went through and Leaman said, ‘That’s all there is from 1996.’
‘Onwards and upwards,’ Diamond said, trying to be positive.
The 1997 pictures featured several people familiar from the previous set. One group included an elderly man in a long black wig. ‘Now that’s David Deganwy,’ Algy said. ‘He looks out of it already, poor old darling.’
‘Is this in focus?’ Diamond said to Leaman. ‘Can you get it any clearer?’
‘It’s about as good as it gets, guv. The pictures in the magazine weren’t the sharpest.’
Squinting at the screen, Diamond tried masking the other figures with his hands to concentrate on Lord Deganwy. ‘The waistcoat he’s wearing looks awfully like the one our skeleton had on, what you can see of it. Do those look like oak leaves to you?’
‘Are you asking me?’ Algy said.
‘Either of you.’
‘I can zoom in a bit,’ Leaman offered, but the picture still wasn’t all that clear. ‘Is that a button or an acorn?’
‘Acorn,’ Algy said. ‘It’s not in line with the other buttons.’
‘If we printed this out, I could look at it under magnification,’ Diamond said. He was trying to think of a circumstance in which Lord Deganwy could have been the skeleton in spite of all the evidence to the contrary.
‘You’d do better looking at the original magazine picture,’ Leaman said. ‘But I think you’re right. They’re oak leaves and acorns.’
‘I thought you were interested in Sidney Harrod,’ Algy said.
‘We are,’ Diamond said, wrenching himself back to the real point of the exercise.
‘And we’re getting to the end,’ Leaman said.
Algy sighed. ‘I’m a dead loss as a witness.’
‘If he isn’t among them, it’s not your fault,’ Diamond said.
The final shot came on screen.
‘Afraid not,’ Algy said. ‘Can I offer you a sherry?’
Diamond could almost hear John Leaman grinding his teeth. Another line of enquiry had come to nothing. ‘Run them through again, John. There are shadowy figures in the background of some. We were concentrating on the ones in focus.’