The Vault Read Online Free

that's where she wrote most of the book. You can read her diaries. You can read letters. She records the progress of the chapters."
    "Are you sure?" said Anne-Lise.
    "Joe is a professor of literature," Marcus reminded her, and then asked Joe, "What made them choose Bath?"
    "Secrecy. Mary's step-sister Claire had been travelling with them. Byron had made her pregnant and they didn't want her parents to find out."
    "Oh, no!" said Anne-Lise, as shocked by Byron's behaviour as if it had only just happened.
    "They were a wild bunch," said Marcus.
    "And how. Mary herself already had two children by Shelley, who was married, with two kids of his own."
    Anne-Lise gasped.
    Marcus, more calm about nineteenth century morals, said, "So there were children in the party?"
    "Only Mary's second baby, William. The first died as an infant."
    "You have researched this," said Marcus.
    "He's like a dog with a bone," said Donna with a sigh.
    "So the set-up was this," said Joe in the same steady, authoritative voice. "Shelley and Mary with their little son William, less than a year old, rented rooms in Abbey Churchyard, and Claire, heavily pregnant, was nearby at number twelve, New Bond Street. Mary passed the time reading the classics, writing Frankenstein and taking lessons in art."
    "With a baby so young, I'm surprised she had any time," said Anne-Lise. "Did they have servants?"
    "A Swiss nurse, called Elise."
    "That would explain. Swiss nurses are very good."
    "And I guess Claire sometimes helped with the baby."
    "Maybe Shelley took his turn," said Marcus.
    "No chance. He was up to his eyeballs in family troubles. First, Mary's half-sister, Fanny, killed herself in Swansea with an overdose of laudanum. Then Shelley's wife Harriet threw herself into the Serpentine in London and drowned."
    "Oh, my God," murmured Anne-Lise. "All in the same year?"
    "All in the last three months of 1816."
    "Quite some year," said Marcus.
    "That wasn't the end of it. Two weeks after Harriet died, Shelley and Mary got married."
    Anne-Lise's blue eyes shone at the first good news in some time. "In Bath?"
    "In London. Soon after, at the end of February, 1817, they moved to Marlow and she put the finishing touches to Frankenstein there. But there's no question that the greater part of it was written in this city. Which is why I was motivated to find the house."
    "And did you find it? Is that where you were this afternoon?"
    "No," said Donna flatly. "This beautiful afternoon we passed in the public library."
    Joe was unfazed. "Checking ancient maps of the Abbey Churchyard. And I can tell you, friends, that I finally got my answer. I know precisely where Frankenstein was written."
    "How exciting!" said Anne-Lise, genuinely enthralled.
    "I found a picture of the house. It was right next to the Pump Room, actually attached. A narrow, three-storey house, one of a group built around 1800. I guess their rooms were upstairs. It functioned as a kind of shop, a lending library, to be precise."
    "Do you know, we were there yesterday and I never even noticed it?" said Anne-Lise.
    Joe nodded. "Unfortunately—"
    "It's gone?"
    "Knocked down when the Pump Room was extended."
    "Too bad," said Marcus.
    "When?" said Anne-Lise.
    "In 1893—a time when all kinds of excavations were taking place behind the house. The City fathers decided to promote Bath in a big way as a spa city. So a row of not very distinguished buildings next door was expendable."
    "Where exactly was the house? That yard in front of the Abbey?"
    "Correct. Numbers two through five originally stood where you now find the entrance to the Roman Baths. You can see where the Shelley house was sited. It's a lower elevation than the rest, a linking block that houses a corridor leading to the extension."
    "Didn't anyone try to save it?"
    "The Roman Baths were bigger news than Frankenstein."
    "Isn't there a plaque on the wall?"
    "Stating that this is the site of the house where Frankenstein was written?" Joe shook his