The Vault Read Online Free PDF Page A

must be costing him a packet, or noticed his second home with no more envious deference than if it had been a one-bedroom flat in Tooting. It was a test that Mike Burdenhad passed with honours, but then Mike had worked for him and with him since Sheila had been a young girl and knew all the circumstances.
    Lucy drove along Fitzjohn’s Avenue, getting caught up in a traffic jam halfway down. Roadworks again. Wexford was daily amazed by the cones and barriers spread out everywhere while holes were dug, pipes exposed and apparently essential work carried out if London were not to break down and come to a standstill. Here temporary lights had been put up, staying red much longer than for a normal traffic-light span.
    ‘Before we start,’ Wexford said, ‘I’ve got something to show you.’ He opened his briefcase and took out the calendar.
‘Marc and Harriet in Orcadia Place
. But perhaps you know about it.’
    Tom Ede took it in both hands. ‘I’ve heard about this, but not seen it. The painter was Simon Alpheton, was it?’
    Wexford was pleased. ‘You can see the date is 1973. Has it changed a lot?’
    ‘A previous owner called Clay Silverman had the Virginia creeper cut down. Who are or were Marc and Harriet?’
    ‘Marc was Marc Syre, a rock musician in a group called Come Hither. The woman in the red dress was his girlfriend. I think her name was Harriet Oxenholme. He died – Marc Syre. I mean, killed himself after taking LSD. I don’t know what happened to her.’
    Tom was silent for a moment, considering. The temporary light turned green and Lucy moved along in the queue of cars and vans and a bus. ‘This Syre must have rented it. A John Walton owned it until 1974 when he sold it to a man called Franklin Merton, who had a survey carried out. That’s important, as you can imagine.’ Tom paused to look at a sheaf of notes he had with him. ‘Merton sold the house in 1998 to Americans called Clay and Devora Silverman. They dispensedwith a survey and relied on the surveyor’s report Merton had had done. Apparently the place was very much in demand and in 2002, as Silverman was suddenly sent back to the United States, he wanted a quick sale. The Rokebys also didn’t bother with a survey, paid cash and moved in within five weeks.’
    Wexford thought about it. ‘This means that three of the bodies, the two men and the older woman were probably put in the vault’ – his first use of the word – ‘during Merton’s occupancy. Is it known how long they’ve been there?’
    ‘The trouble is,’ said Tom, ‘that however long ago it is, it’s a long time. Between ten and fifteen years is the estimate, later narrowed down to between eleven and thirteen – we’ll say twelve years. That would very likely be at the end of Merton’s occupancy, as you say. But Merton is dead. He was in his seventies when he sold the house and he died last year.’
    ‘And the younger woman?’
    ‘That’s difficult. She’s been dead between two and two-and-a-half years. Say two to three. We assume she’s been in the tomb that same length of time but it may have been only two years.’
    ‘I suppose it depends,’ said Wexford, ‘on whether her killer had the vault in mind before he killed her or only thought of it as a possible burial place later on.’
    They were nearly there. Lucy was a good driver, precise and dashing, squeezing through spaces between a bus and a lorry with a skill Wexford was sure he couldn’t have mustered. She directed his attention to the Beatles’ Abbey Road Studios as she pulled up to allow three teenagers to stand in the middle of the pedestrian crossing and have their photographs taken.
    ‘It’s a funny thing, sir,’ she said, ‘that none of the drivers who have to stop for this sort of thing ever sound their hornsor shout or anything even if whole droves of kids cross and do that. It’s a tribute to the Beatles, don’t you think?’
    Wexford laughed. ‘I expect you’re right.’
    She drove