The Stone Wife

‘What about the fracas?’

‘Could be the Trojan horse.’

Halliwell looked as if the logic had passed him by.

‘A way of conning Hazael into taking her in,’ Diamond explained. ‘Ingeborg stages a street incident involving this singer. What’s her name?’

‘Lee Li.’

‘And comes to her rescue and is invited back to the Hazael mansion. Mission successful. If that’s where she is, I’m not in the least surprised she hasn’t been texting me.’

‘Let’s hope Paul opens our message, then. Do you want to drive over there?’

Diamond shook his head. ‘Mustn’t put Ingeborg at more risk.’

‘Surely he’ll have the sense to know he can’t do anything alone. If “following up” means putting the house under observation, he can’t cause too much of a problem.’

‘We just have to mark time and stay calm, Keith,’ said the man who a few minutes before had practically torn out his hair — what there was of it.

They drank coffee and updated Leaman on the Marlborough trip. He kept his usual poker face and said, ‘Do I gather from all this that Bernie Wefers is no longer the prime suspect?’

‘Put it this way,’ Diamond said. ‘He had a powerful motive for killing the man who stole his wife, and he didn’t deny threatening him outside the divorce court, but it became obvious his anger was directed mainly at Monica.’

Keith Halliwell added his own observation. ‘And the pilot’s log in the helicopter suggests Bernie wasn’t in Bath on the day of the auction. He’ll have needed to arrange a contract killing.’

Leaman nodded. ‘But that’s what happened. Someone hired a set of gunmen.’

‘Which raises the question whether Bernie would murder by proxy,’ Diamond said. ‘I could be wrong, but my impression is that he’d want to be there to witness the killing. He’s not the sort to take revenge at arm’s length.’

Leaman got up and crossed the room to the whiteboard where the faces of the principal witnesses and suspects were displayed. As the architect and manager of the incident room, he never missed an opportunity to demonstrate its usefulness. ‘So Bernie moves down in the pecking order and Dr. Poke moves up.’

‘Certainly. Until today we had Poke down as a suspect because of professional rivalry, but we didn’t know he’d slept with Monica,’ Diamond said. ‘Neither of the pair said a word to us about the Diphthongs.’

‘They wouldn’t volunteer it,’ Halliwell said. ‘Doesn’t do either of them much credit.’

‘I haven’t met Poke,’ Leaman said, ‘but isn’t he just the sort of creepy guy who would think up an underhand way of removing the professor from the scene?’

‘No question,’ Diamond said, ‘and there would be extra satisfaction from having him killed just at the moment he was bidding for the big prize — the Wife of Bath. We need another session with Poke.’

‘And Monica?’ Halliwell said.

‘Monica, too.’ Diamond’s thoughts returned to the conversation he’d had with Paloma, the wacky theory that Monica had hired the gunmen herself to prevent her husband from acquiring the Wife of Bath and the plot had literally misfired and resulted in Gildersleeve’s death. Too way out to mention to colleagues? He still thought so. ‘She has some explaining to do as well.’

Allowing that it had been a long, stressful afternoon, Halliwell was sharp this evening. ‘How about this? Secretly, Monica was still attracted to Dr. Poke. She discovered she’d made a terrible mistake marrying Gildersleeve. He was boring and locked into fourteenth century poetry. The sex was a disappointment — if it happened at all. We know she has an appetite for sex.’

‘I can see where this is going,’ Diamond said.

‘Doesn’t the auction present an opportunity to get rid of him and also reward Poke with the professorship? She could have hatched the plot on her own or in collaboration with him.’

‘Not bad,’ Diamond said. ‘They were cool about each other under interview and that’s what you’d expect from two killers working together.’

Leaman nodded. ‘I like it. But they’d still need to find the gunmen to stage the hold-up.’

‘She’ll have met all sorts in her time with Bernie,’ Halliwell said. ‘She’d know who to contact.’

Leaman picked up a marker pen and drew a line on the whiteboard linking Monica’s name to Poke’s and adding a question mark. Then he pointed to another name. ‘Shouldn’t we also look at Sturgess, the British Museum man? He was the rival bidder.’

‘When you say “British Museum man,” he was only acting as an agent for the museum,’ Diamond said. ‘His firm is independent. They must get some kind of commission or fee.’

‘They’d be under pressure to acquire the carving for as little as possible,’ Leaman said. ‘When the bidding went way past the valuation, Sturgess must have been worried. It could have gone higher. The gunmen put a stop to that.’

‘You’re not suggesting Sturgess is behind the hold-up?’