overnight accommodation.”
“That should be no problem,” Farr-Jones said in some relief, probably thinking that a section house would be available.
“At the Francis Hotel.”
“Is there a reason?”
“I like it there.”
When Julie Hargreaves reported to Diamond in his new office on the first floor she was in a black sweater and white jeans. Her blond hair was trimmed crisply at the back and sides, the choice of a young woman confident in her femininity. “Shall I see if I can find a couple of chairs from somewhere?” she offered.
“Good idea.”
Diamond’s center of operations was a storeroom. Not a converted storeroom; no attempt had been made to convert it. Hundreds of reams of paper and boxes of envelopes lined the walls on wooden stacks. A table and a filing cabinet had been pushed just inside the door.
“I’m not sure why I was chosen,” Julie said when she had returned with two stacking chairs and helped shift the furniture into position. “I know very little about the case.”
“You’ve answered your question. It needs a fresh mind. I could give you my version and it would be partisan. I’d like you to read the files yourself and let me have your opinion.”
“On whether the case was watertight?”
“Nothing ever is. Look for the holes, Julie. I’ll see you about three o’clock.”
He went shopping in Stall Street: two shirts, a pack of three pairs of pants, said to be XL size, and things for washing and shaving. He now regretted failing to mention expenses to Farr-Jones. After ambling to Queen Square he was on the point of claiming his room at the Francis when he thought of the bookshop only fifty yards away in Chapel Row. It didn’t disappoint. He came out with a rarity for his bedtime reading: a volume he didn’t know, published in 1947 and entitled Horwell of the Yard. Already he owned Cherrill of the Yard, Cornish of the Yard and Fabian ofthe Yard —not because he was a collector, but out of his hankering for the great days when the top detectives had some clout.
Having checked in and washed at the hotel, he renewed his acquaintance with the Roman Bar. A pint of Usher’s, the local brew, and then duty called.
“How is it, Julie?”
“Difficult, Mr. Diamond.”
“Difficult because you can’t find anything, or difficult because you can and you don’t know if I can take it?”
She sidestepped. “On the face of it, this is a straightforward case. Mountjoy had his life’s savings invested in this private college in Gay Street.”
“He chose a prime site,” Diamond commented as he tried his weight gingerly on the plastic stacking chair. “A listed Georgian building in the center of Bath. Which may help to explain why he was on the fiddle, enrolling students who just wanted a piece of paper for their embassy.”
She gave a nod. “According to this, at the time of his arrest, there were almost two hundred enrolled full time and paying fees of three grand a year, when the place could only hold eighty at a pinch.”
“Then enter a young Swedish lady with a phrase book in her hand and a juicy expose in prospect.”
Julie smoothly slotted Britt Strand into her narrative. “She signed on for part-time English language classes claiming to be an au pair. Mountjoy enrolled her.”
“He was only too pleased,” Diamond cut in again. “After all, he needed a core of genuine students. Everything I learned about Britt suggested that she was highly intelligent and very professional. For a foreign girl to be working as a freelance in Bath and supplying the international press with major stories is impressive.”
“They don’t have to work out of London these days. The technology makes it so easy.” Julie’s eyes scanned the sheet in front of her. “She had her contacts in the right places. Paris Match, Oggi, Stern.”
“Plenty of contacts here, too. And I doubt if most of them knew they were being used. She was a charmer, able to mix easily with all sorts.
Enid Blyton
Michael Anthony
Isolde Martyn
Sabrina Jeffries
Dean Lorey
Don Pendleton
Lynne Marshall
Madeline Baker
Michael Kerr
Humphry Knipe