The Stone Wife

11

‘What I don’t understand,’ Paloma said, ‘is why you had to go there.’

After his stressful day in Somerset with John Leaman, Peter Diamond was restoring his sanity, having an evening in with Paloma at her house on Lyncombe Hill, enjoying a supper of baked salmon and asparagus helped down with Prosecco. He didn’t mind discussing his work with Paloma. She was discreet, and she sometimes threw fresh light on the cases.

‘The object of the visit was to get in the head that’s behind this mystery.’

‘Do you know whose head?’

He smiled. ‘I wish. No, I’m coming at it obliquely, trying to understand why someone was so eager to own the Wife of Bath that they hired a team of gunmen to hold up the auction.’

‘How does a trip to North Petherton achieve that?’

‘By improving my understanding. I needed to find out the history of the stone. I’m certain the person I’m pursuing will have done the research. I’m thinking they learned something I’m still not aware of.’

‘Even after visiting Somerset?’

He managed a wry smile. ‘I’ve barely scratched the surface.’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘I can’t understand why anyone is so eager to own the Wife of Bath. I wouldn’t want her if she was pure gold.’

‘But you’ve got her.’

‘Yes and she sits in my office and reminds me how little I know.’

‘That lump of stone has really got under your skin.’

‘Fair comment. I won’t be happy until I can shift it. I’m dealing with people who put a very high value on the thing. I can understand the victim, because he was a Chaucer expert. But the killer? What does he know that I don’t? The key to all this is the back story and I’m doing my damnedest to root it out. North Petherton was high on my “to do” list.’

‘Did Chaucer ever go there? Some of the experts say he didn’t.’

‘The locals think he did. And there was a house — long gone — where Thomas the son definitely lived. It was in existence in the 1330s, so it’s well possible that Chaucer senior lived there towards the end of his life.’

‘When did he get the job of deputy forester?’

‘1391. He’d been incredibly busy up to then on all kinds of official duties that kept him in London, but with frequent trips to Europe. It’s amazing, the travelling people managed all those years ago: Spain, France, Italy. But in middle age, he seems to have looked for a place in the country — first in Kent, where he was a justice of the peace and MP — but that didn’t last and he came back to London as clerk of the king’s works. Two years on, he retires — so some experts believe — to Somerset. His wife Philippa seems to have died in 1387. It’s a fruitful period of his life when most of The Canterbury Tales are written.’

‘So he was a widower, like you.’

‘Mm.’ He looked away, never comfortable when the spotlight shifted to him.

‘And it turned out to have been the most creative time of his life. Did you find out anything you didn’t already know?’

‘We were taken to the site of the house but there’s bugger all to see now. It’s been ploughed over many times.’

‘Shame.’

‘But what I did learn is that there was an excavation in early Victorian times led by a local vicar. This was 1843. There’s no record of what was found in the dig, but about the same time, the Wife of Bath stone is acquired by William Stradling, the antiquarian.’

Paloma smiled. ‘Someone did a smart deal.’

‘Stradling was the sort of man who missed nothing, a proper scavenger. He lived only seven or eight miles away.’

‘Didn’t he admit where it came from?’

‘I expect it was known locally, but there’s nothing in writing. And after his death, people seem to have lost interest. It eventually got into the museum and was put in storage.’

‘So the theory is that the tablet was originally part of the structure of Chaucer’s house?’

‘It is now, but no one in recent times linked it to the 1843 dig for the simple reason that all news of the dig was unknown until quite recently when an archivist came across a small report in the local paper. When Gildersleeve came along in two thousand with his team from Reading, he thought they had an untouched site to explore and even a possibility of proving Chaucer himself was once the owner. They found nothing of real interest the whole summer they were there.’

‘Quite a blight on the professor’s career, poor man,’ Paloma said.

He nodded. ‘Some cruel things were said by his so-called colleagues.’

‘I can understand how excited he was when the tablet came up for sale. A chance to have the last laugh.’

‘Yep. But who would want to frustrate him?’

‘Some other Chaucer expert?’

‘Another academic?’

‘Depends,’ Paloma said. ‘You may not appreciate the competition that exists between universities and even within departments. I’ve seen it close up. Suppose some equally fanatical Chaucer expert knows he doesn’t have the funds to make a decent bid. I’ve no idea what it would cost to fund a hold-up, but it may be less than Gildersleeve was able to pay for the stone.’

‘True. He’d married into money. But then the rival gets the thing by criminal means and what can he do with it? He can’t write a learned paper or put it on exhibition. He’s stuck with it and has to stay silent. What’s more, if the Old Bill come knocking on his door, it’s a big item to hide.’

‘That holds true whoever planned to steal it.’

He smiled. ‘Dead right.’

‘You obviously have another theory,’ she said. ‘Let’s hear it.’

‘I wouldn’t dignify it by calling it a theory. I simply think if the tablet was going to be taken by force — and wouldn’t be any use to the perpetrator — there must be an element of spite, a personal issue with Gildersleeve, closer to home.’

‘You’ve been delving into his private life,’ she said, unable to mask a note of disapproval.

‘We have to. It’s the job. There were people close to him who may have borne a grudge.’

‘Such as?’

‘His wife’s former husband, a property developer with a tough reputation. He’s called Bernie Wefers and he was particularly brutal to Monica — savagely so — when he found she was having an affair with Gildersleeve. The fact that Wefers himself was unfaithful, sleeping with his PA, didn’t seem to register. At the divorce hearing, he issued a personal threat to Gildersleeve — “You’ll pay for this” — and he wasn’t talking about money.’

‘Sounds like your number one suspect, then. Is he under investigation?’

‘Of course. But one thing I’ve learned in this game is never to focus everything on one suspect.’

‘Are there others?’

‘We talked about rival academics. There’s one I met at Reading, a Dr. Poke, who shared an office with the victim. Extremely ambitious. I didn’t care for him at all. He wants to become a professor, but there was no chance while Gildersleeve remained alive. There’s just the one chair in the department and Gildersleeve looked like hanging onto that for the foreseeable future.’

‘Did Dr. Poke tell you this?’

‘No, I got it from Monica Gildersleeve.’

Paloma sat back in her chair and laced her hands behind her head. ‘So she provided you with two suspects? Shouldn’t you enquire into her motive? She could be diverting suspicion.’

‘They’d only recently been married. She’s devastated by the murder.’

‘Are you certain? I notice you called her Monica and not Mrs. Gildersleeve when you started talking about her. Could it be that she appealed to your sympathetic nature?’

‘Me — sympathetic?’

‘You suffered a violent bereavement yourself when Stephanie was murdered.’

‘That’s got nothing to do with it,’ he said, tight-lipped.

‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘Shouldn’t have spoken.’

Suppressing the ache of the old scar, he said, ‘But I see what you’re getting at. And she’s a strange lady in some ways. She’s staying with her sister in Camden Crescent, but doesn’t want the sister knowing she spoke to the police. She said something about walls having ears, so we met in Hedgemead Park, on a park bench.’

Paloma raised an eyebrow. ‘Good thing I didn’t come by and see the two of you.’

‘It was all very proper. I can understand that she doesn’t want her sister listening to her private business. Anyway, she didn’t appear to hold anything back. And when we talked about the auction, she turned bright pink at the mention of the “wretched carving” and said Gildersleeve went on so much about it that she was starting to wonder if he preferred the Wife of Bath to her.’

‘I can understand. If he hadn’t been so keen to buy it, he wouldn’t have got killed.’

‘True,’ he said. ‘But I don’t seriously believe she was so jealous that she decided to have him shot. If she had murder in mind, her previous husband is the one who should have got it.’

‘So Monica is not a serious suspect?’

‘Not until you can find me a motive.’

‘I’ll work on it. Don’t you worry.’ Paloma gave a faint smile. ‘Who else is there?’

‘As suspects? We have to go back to the auction for that. Anyone who was going to be outbid by Gildersleeve had a possible motive for hijacking the auction. There were bidders on the phone from New York and Tokyo, and they dropped out quite early in the process. The main rival was a man called Sturgess, who told me — after I threatened him with a night in the cells — that he was bidding on behalf of the British Museum. Talked down to me in the way these upper-class types often do. I didn’t like him at all, but that doesn’t make him a suspect.’

‘Unless he was lying,’ Paloma said, ‘and wasn’t anything to do with the BM.’

Diamond shook his head. ‘He was telling the truth. The museum was sure to be interested. They get the auction catalogues and go through them and this was a major discovery.’

‘But why the secrecy?’

‘Because everyone knows they can bid high, but they don’t want to be pushed into paying more than necessary. It’s not unknown for the seller to arrange for an accomplice to bid high and gee up the price when a big institution is involved.’

‘And would the British Museum have outbid Gildersleeve?’

‘I’m sure of it.’

‘Well,’ Paloma said. ‘Here’s a long shot. What if some friend of Gildersleeve got to know who he was going to be up against and arranged the hold-up?’

He thought about this. Then his eyes widened. ‘To thwart the museum?’

‘Yes.’

‘That is… Byzantine.’

And now Paloma blinked and looked impressed.

He didn’t explain he’d heard John Leaman use the word the previous day. ‘What a monumental cock-up if the gunmen were doing him a good turn and he didn’t realise and got shot.’

She brought her hands together and laughed. ‘There. I’ve found a motive for Monica. She knew how much her darling husband wanted to win the auction — and found out he would be outbid — so she hired the gunmen. But it all went wrong. Gildersleeve knew nothing of this and panicked and was shot. And now Monica in desperation is doing all she can to point you to other suspects.’

He chuckled too. ‘Clever. It’s wacky, but it’s a new theory, I’ll give you that. And it’s more than any of my team have come up with.’