The Stone Wife

‘Not at all. I’m hoping you can tell me a little about Matlock and Russell. You worked there, I understand.’

‘For twenty-seven years, typing, filing and occasionally showing people round.’

‘Until when?’

‘Until the manager, Mr. Chalk, decided to retire and died within a matter of days. That was two-thousand and five. It was a difficult time. People weren’t buying so much. Has there been an art theft?’

‘Not to my knowledge, but it’s an item of art I would like to ask you about, a fourteenth century drawing that turned out to be of Thomas Chaucer.’

‘I remember. It was towards the end of my time there.’

‘Two-thousand and four, I believe.’

‘You really are well briefed. Would you join me in a preprandial glass of Courvoisier?’

Not while on duty, Ingeborg realised she ought to say. A lager top would go down a treat, she was tempted to say. ‘How kind — I’d love to,’ was what she actually said. Warming up the witness was a sensible move, even if she wasn’t quite certain what she was letting herself in for.

Two balloon glasses were produced and she remembered what Courvoisier was. ‘I was born and brought up in France,’ Miss Brie volunteered as she poured generously from a cut glass decanter. She went on to open a tin of biscuits and arrange some on a Limoges plate that looked as if it, too, was made of lace. This was evidently a daily ritual. ‘I do insist that you have a Bath Oliver with it. I’ve survived on them for most of my adult life.’

‘They’re hard to find now,’ Ingeborg said, taking one, a hard, bland version of a cream cracker.

‘Not if you know where to shop. It’s a well kept secret.’

‘Are you going to share it with me?’

‘Certainly not. A secret shared is a secret lost.’

This was not promising. ‘We were speaking about the Thomas Chaucer drawing,’ Ingeborg prompted her.

‘I remember because it was so unusual. You don’t see much pen and ink work from such an early period.’

‘I believe it was first thought to be of the poet, his father.’

‘The seller firmly believed so. We kept an open mind and insisted it was authenticated by an expert, a professor who made Chaucer a life study.’

‘John Gildersleeve.’

‘Correct.’

‘Unfortunately, he was shot a short while ago.’

‘I heard on the radio. A dreadful incident. Is this why you’re here?’

‘Indirectly, getting background information.’

Miss Brie took a long sip of brandy and began to talk more freely. ‘When the professor recognised the subject as Thomas, he saved us all, and not least our client — who wasn’t best pleased at the time — from a professional faux pas. Imagine the embarrassment if it had been sold to the nation for a fortune and later turned out to have been incorrectly identified.’