The Stone Wife (36 page)

“But did he know he was up against the British Museum?”

“I expect so. I imagine even they had an upper limit.”

“Did you discuss what it was worth with him?”

“No. He simply
had
to possess it. You have to remember the background to this, the crushing disappointment of the dig at the Chaucer house in Somerset in two-thousand when nothing except a few worthless shards turned up. John was a broken man. He’d staked his career on finding some proof that Geoffrey Chaucer lived there. So when the
Wife of Bath
piece came up for sale and he realised its provenance, he felt it was fated to be his, a sort of vindication. He planned to publish papers and probably a book.”

“It seems there was a dig in early Victorian times that cleaned out the site. The stone was probably excavated then.”

“I’ve heard something of the sort. John didn’t ever find out about that, certainly not in two-thousand.”

“It was in a local newspaper archive. These days plenty of them are digitised. All you have to do is put the words ‘Chaucer’ and ‘excavation’ into the search engine and it takes you straight to the right paper.”

“John knew about that sort of thing. He did a lot of research.”

“But he didn’t find the 1843 report in the
Bridgwater Mercury
.”

“He’d lost heart.”

“You told me he never returned to North Petherton.”

She shook her head. “Too painful … But he will be going back.”

He raised his eyebrows.

“I intend to scatter his ashes there, at the site of Chaucer’s house,” she said. “It seems symbolic, a recognition that he was right after all and a triumph over the disaster that dogged him for so long. I can’t think of anywhere else he’d rather be. Have you been there?”

Diamond nodded. “It’s only a field now, as you know, but there’s a guy called Tim Carroll who knows exactly where the house once stood. You could contact him through the Bridgwater museum.”

“Or I could ask you, as you’ve been there and it’s down
your way.” The request didn’t come across as heartfelt, more like an afterthought.

Scattering ashes wasn’t strictly in Diamond’s job description, but it was difficult to say a straight no to the principal mourner. “If my other duties allow it and you really can’t find anyone else, certainly.”

“Thanks.” She glanced behind her at the reception still going on. “If we’ve finished, I ought to be going back.”

“Before you do, I haven’t asked if you attended the auction. I didn’t see your name in the list of witnesses.”

“I kept away,” she said. “It was John’s domain.”

“But your money.”

“I’m sure Bernie will have told you I did rather nicely out of our divorce. I wasn’t worried how high the bidding would go.”

“So where were you?”

“On the day of the auction? At home here in Caversham. We hadn’t long moved in. There was plenty to keep me occupied.”

“Is that where you were when you heard the sad news?”

“By then I’d gone out for a walk by the river. They contacted me on the mobile.”

“What time would that have been?”

“I don’t know. I was far too shocked to take note of the time. In the afternoon. Why do you need to know?”

“It’s routine, ma’am. We try to fix where everyone was.”

“But you don’t think I had anything to do with it? I’m the tragic widow. Get that very clear in your head, superintendent.” With that, she rose from the chair and teetered away on her murderous heels.

Diamond emptied his glass and went to look for Dr. Poke.

28

“He’s scarpered.”

“Already?” Diamond said, his voice rising in annoyance. “But I particularly asked you to keep an eye on him.”

“I did,” Leaman said in the obstinate tone he used when he felt he was in the right. “If I’d followed him, you wouldn’t have known where either of us was.”

“I carry a phone these days.”

“But is it switched on?”

The team were taking his old habits for granted. In fact, in the last twenty-four hours the damn thing had not only been switched on, it had been used so much that it would soon need recharging. He ignored the last question. “Are you sure he’s left the pub?”

“As soon as the vice chancellor went, so did Poke.”

“I can’t have that. How long ago?”

“Three or four minutes.”

“He’s probably still in the car park saying goodbye to people. You don’t rush away from funerals.”

But when they looked outside it was clear that Dr. Poke wasn’t the lingering sort. The vice chancellor and his party were still in conversation beside the chauffeur-driven Mercedes, but no one else was in sight.

“He’s not giving me the slip.” Diamond strode over to the vice chancellor and introduced himself. “I’m investigating the shooting of John Gildersleeve and it’s of some importance that I speak to his close colleague, Dr. Poke, who seems to have left in the last few minutes. Would your office have his mobile number?”

It was swiftly arranged that Poke would receive a call from the vice chancellor’s office asking him to be available for an interview with the police in his own office on the campus at three.

“That should guarantee it,” Diamond said when he rejoined Leaman. “He’s so desperate to become professor that if the vice chancellor asked him to strip to the buff and jump off Caversham bridge he’d do it without a second’s hesitation.”

“I expect he’d prefer that to meeting us,” Leaman said.

“I got on well enough last time. But he bobs and weaves. I’ll be glad of your help to get some straight answers.”

They drove across town to the Whiteknights campus, one of the few partially green areas left in Reading’s urban sprawl. Poke was waiting for them in the corridor outside the Old English suite, arms folded, ready for a confrontation. “Why did you have to involve the vice chancellor?” he asked before he opened his office door.

“He was the obvious person to ask. He’s a human being, not a tin god,” Diamond said.

“Did he recognise my name?”

“Straight away.”

The start of a smile appeared as he allowed them inside.

Diamond added, “I don’t suppose there are too many Pokes in the senior common room.”

After they were waved towards chairs, Diamond introduced Leaman.

“I saw you both at the funeral,” Poke said. “I can’t imagine why you need to speak to me again.”

“You were helpful last time,” Diamond said. “But there are one or two matters we didn’t touch on.”

“Such as?”

“The Diphthongs.”

The face looked suddenly as if it was coated in chilli powder. “You’ve been talking to Monica.”

“Her ex-husband, in fact.”

“Him?” he said with contempt. “I should have guessed. Only a philistine like Wefers would stoop to parading such
a private matter before the police. This has no conceivable bearing on your investigation. Our short-lived liaison ended at least a year before Monica started up with Gildersleeve.”

“But how did it begin?”

“When she joined my university extension course.”

“Extending to the pub afterwards and your bed.”

He caught his breath in annoyance and the fine red hair danced in sympathy. “That is so unnecessary. It’s all in the past.”

“You had a visit from Mr. Wefers after he found out.”

He dismissed Bernie with a flap of the hand. “He came here with all guns blazing, and I treated him with the utmost civility and it spiked his guns, so to speak. Perhaps it was ungallant, but I left him in no doubt that Monica made the first approach—which is true. She felt neglected, and rightly so. He devotes far too much time to his business.”

The emphasis was different, but the facts agreed with Bernie’s own account.

“Were you in love with her?”

“Certainly not. I was a shoulder to cry on.”

“You provided more than just a shoulder.”

“Nothing that wasn’t welcomed at the time. Do we have to dissect everything like this?”

Diamond ignored the last remark. “And did it stop after Wefers complained to you?”

“It did. She didn’t appear at my classes again.”

“When did you learn that John Gildersleeve was having an affair with her?”

“A long time after. I’m generally the last to hear of any gossip from the senior common room.”

“Bit of a shock,” Diamond said.

“Now I see what this is about. You think I was jealous.”

“Weren’t you?”

“Absolutely not. I knew from my own entanglement with Monica that he was playing with fire. He was welcome to her.”

“This wasn’t the reason why you and he had difficulty working together?”

Poke rebutted the suggestion with a sniff. “Not at all. That
went back years. It may seem churlish of me to say so after that toe-curling eulogy we sat through this morning, but the truth is that Gildersleeve was a pathetic figure, unpopular with his students, delivering dull lectures and writing dull books. There, I’ve done it, speaking ill of the dead, but I want to make clear that sexual jealousy didn’t motivate me. The man was a pain in every way.”

“When you say it went back years, was there some incident that caused the falling out?”

“I wouldn’t say we were ever friends. We tolerated each other rather better in the early years than recently. He had this personal crisis you and I discussed before.”

“The dig that didn’t deliver?”

“Yes. The experience soured him. He was never the same after that ridiculous misadventure. You wouldn’t get me under canvas with a bunch of disaffected undergraduates for a single day, let alone a whole summer. Is it any surprise that when nothing was found after weeks of scraping, they took to sitting around smoking weed? He took it personally, stupid fellow.”

“Monica told me one of them was sent down.”

“For a later offence on the university premises, yes. The last straw, as far as Gildersleeve was concerned.”

“The final spliff.” Dr. Poke’s high-handed manner was bringing out the jester in Diamond.

“Do you remember the name?” Leaman asked.

“Of the student? It’s difficult enough to hold in one’s head the names of all one’s present intake.”

Becoming more flippant by the minute, Diamond couldn’t resist saying, “Jack Flash?”

Poke looked out of his depth, and was.

“Rhyming slang for hash.”

“Oliver Reed,” Leaman said, taking up the theme.

“Not now, John.” Two jokers on the team was too much. “You said the professor was a pain in every way, as if there were other defects we haven’t covered.”

“How much time have you got? Personal habits, lack of professionalism, dangerous driving.”

“Let’s do the driving.”

“The man was a menace on the roads. He drove as if he was drunk, frequently having minor collisions. I don’t think he was capable of giving proper attention to the task.”

“Did he injure anyone?”

“He wouldn’t have told me if he had, and I’m certain he wouldn’t have informed your lot. But I saw him once attempting to park in Redlands Road, shunting back and forth. He owned a thing like a tank, known as the Defender.”

“Land Rover,” Leaman murmured.

“He dented the cars either side of the space and then got out and walked away as if nothing had happened.”

“Wouldn’t it have been obvious to the other owners?”

“They would have noticed the damage to their own cars, but the Defender was already a mass of dents. He’d deny any memory of it.”

“Did he drink?”

“Not to excess. He drove badly because his head was filled with more important matters.”

“Such as Monica?”

A shake of the head. “Some trivial point from
The Canterbury Tales
, more likely.”

“With the damage he did to other cars, he must have had a reputation around the university.”

“And in the town. Whenever he was caught, he paid up. He preferred to cover the damage himself. No insurance company would have done business with him if he’d claimed every time.”

All this was new information, to be followed up. “I wonder if he had a record,” Diamond said to Leaman.

“For his driving? I doubt it,” Poke said. “He didn’t speed. He poodled along, but with his mind on other things.”

Leaman had his phone out and was checking the police computer. “He poodled over a pedestrian crossing with people about to step on it, three penalty points, and a set of traffic lights, three more points.”

“Didn’t I tell you?” Poke said, hands outstretched.

Diamond prised himself out of the chair. “I need another look at his office.”

“There’s nothing in there,” Poke said. “It was emptied, ready for the new professor—whenever he may be appointed.”

“Emptied?” Riled, Diamond asked, “On whose authority?”

“Mine. Nobody said we should preserve the room as a morbid shrine. You took away the items you were interested in, the computer and some of the books. I had the rest boxed and put in storage for Monica, when she gets back from her sister’s.”

“We should have sealed the place,” Diamond said to Leaman as if it was his fault.

“I wasn’t here, guv. This is my first visit.”

“I’d still like to look at it,” Diamond said, advancing on the connecting door.

“As you wish,” Poke said in a world-weary way, becoming used to Diamond’s cussedness.

Emptied it was. Not a stick of furniture remained. Even the carpet tiles had been taken up. The void seemed to affirm Poke’s triumph over his old adversary. Although the shape of the office was identical to his own, he planned to shift his things inside as soon as he got the go-ahead.

“It’s in need of some redecoration,” Diamond said.

“That’s been arranged.”

“I’m sure.” He stepped closer to a cream-coloured oblong on the wall defined by the fading emulsion around it. “This was Chaucer on the stunted horse, the Ellesmere portrait.”

“You have a good memory,” Poke said.

“I need it. When we talked before, you told me about another portrait, a drawing thought at first to be of Chaucer, but identified by Professor Gildersleeve as Thomas, the son.”

“What of it?”

Quite a coup for Gildersleeve, I imagine, being consulted by the National Portrait Gallery.”

“It’s not unusual to be asked for our professional opinion.”