The Stone Wife (13 page)

“This is your passport into Nathan’s fortress?”

“I reckon.”

“Isn’t there a tiny flaw? He’s not going to let you and your iPhone anywhere near his stately home, sweetie.”

“Oh, come on. You know as well as I do that the male ego knows no bounds. He’ll be chuffed to bits to let the world see him sitting up bare-chested in bed with a stunning little creature like Lee. But if I have to settle for Lee in her bathrobe eating muesli, so be it. The object of all this is to get me under Nathan’s radar.”

“And then what?”

“I’d rather not go into that.”

“I mean what happens when your photo feature doesn’t make it into print?”

“I’ll say the stupid newspapers turned me down. By then I’ll be out of it, anyway.”

“You hope. You’re playing with fire.”

“Not playing. It’s my job.”

“And all you want from me is the intro? What’s wrong with approaching her yourself if she’s going to be as eager to please as you say?”

“You bring credibility. She knows you. She likes you. If Nathan asks who the hell I am, she’ll say I was recommended by the writer of that brilliant interview in
South West
.”

“Greaser.” Sylvie smiled and sighed. “All right, chuck, I’ll call her this afternoon. How much am I allowed to say?”

The hours that followed weren’t easy. Ingeborg could imagine any number of ways her fast-talking, well-lubricated friend could torpedo the plan. So it came as a welcome surprise when Sylvie called early in the evening.

“She swallowed the bait, darling. She wants to meet you first and she’s suggesting—wait for this—tonight at midnight on the promenade deck of the
Great Britain
.”

“Are you serious?”

“Am I ever not? She’ll be there to film her next video,
Seabird
. A night shoot. All very hush-hush in case the fans get to hear of it, so keep it to yourself. The crew have to set up after dark and be out before sunrise. She’ll talk to you between takes. Indulge her. This is her chance to be seen doing something glamorous. Get a few pics with your mobile and you’re under way, aren’t you?”

“I hope so.”

“Come on, be positive. You’re the big-time journo certain to boost her reputation.”

“Is that what you told her?”

“In a nutshell. I’m not going to repeat all the stuff I said in case you get big-headed.”

“Nothing was said about you-know-who?”

“Not a syllable. You’re primed and ready to go and my job is done, right?”

The location and the timing may have been unusual, but the arrangement suited Ingeborg rather nicely. She would establish herself as the hotshot hack and give the appearance of being under way with the project before she had to meet Nathan Hazael.

10

Approaching on the A39, you could easily have mistaken it for a church. Chilton Priory, known locally as Stradling’s Folly, was visible from some distance as a grey tower with battlements and gargoyles, but until you got close you didn’t see the full extent of the building, mostly obscured below the steep banking at the side of the road.

They got out of the car. To Diamond’s eye, this was a perfect setting for a horror film. Extending from the tower were a gothic nave and an oratory that must have been part of the original, housing the antiques collection. More parts had been added at intervals since. Perversely the late nineteenth century two-storey wings were in the Tudor style, but still constructed from the grim, grey lias found locally. So this much-enlarged building now boasted at least four different styles of window—lancet, oriel, stone-mullioned and casement. Turrets and chimneys sprouted from the otherwise flat roofs. On the east side of the building was a twentieth century feature, an integral garage that still managed to look sinister, as though it led directly through the Tudor section into Stradling’s crypt below the tower. And the whole building was topped with battlements in an attempt to salvage some sort of unity from chaos.

“Is it me, or is it a mess?” Diamond said.

“Stradling called it his repository,” Leaman said.

“Sums it up.”

“You may be thinking of something else.”

“Terrific view. I’ll give it that.”

The so-called priory—which had never housed a monk or a nun—stood on Cox’s hill, a high point of the Polden ridge.
The peat moor stretched for miles below them, across the Vale of Avalon to the north where the Mendips made a dramatic blue backdrop. But in reality (difficult to grasp here) they weren’t particularly high up. The flatness of the terrain below made the impression.

“He claimed that when he used a telescope from his tower on a clear day he could see across the Bristol Channel to his other house in South Wales,” Leaman said.

“My second home is the nick,” Diamond said, “and I thank the Lord I can’t see it from my place. When did you say this was built?”

“1838–9 the same year the book came out.” Leaman as always couldn’t be faulted on his facts.

“So he wrote the book to promote his collection.”

“I suppose.”

“And as he didn’t mention the
Wife of Bath
, we can assume he acquired her some time after?”

Leaman’s eyebrows popped up in tribute. The boss seemed to have grasped the fundamentals now.

“But from where?” Diamond said.

“Some stonemason’s yard, I expect. He found a lot of his pieces lying about when buildings were being renovated. He was on a mission. Victorian restoration, so-called, stripped bits from a lot of churches and great houses and he salvaged whatever he could.”

Diamond was silent, thinking.

Leaman continued to prattle on like an audio guide. “The three pinnacles up there are very old and were originally part of the tower at Langport, which you can see from the other side of the road. He says in his book—he has a good way with words—that they now look down on their tawdry usurpers.”

“What time are we meeting our local contact?” Diamond said, weary of words and gingerbread architecture. “We’d better move on.”

As it turned out, they had time for a coffee in Bridgwater. Diamond ordered a Cornish pasty and a double helping of
chips with his. “One useful tip I learned early on in my police career: never go past a food outlet or a toilet. It might be the last you see all day.”

“I had a good breakfast,” Leaman said.

“So did I. That was two hours ago.” He leaned back in the chair. “I’m thinking when we meet this guy we’ll straight away drop the charade of being writers or researchers, or whatever poppycock you told them. I believe in being honest with people.”

“As you wish,” Leaman said, piqued. “Sometimes they clam up when you tell them you’re police.”

“If you witter on about pinnacles like you do, they will. They can’t get a word in. Let him do the talking, right?”

Leaman tilted his head in annoyance. “I thought you were interested.”

“I was. This guy won’t be. He could be the pinnacle of pinnacle experts. Leave him to me.”

Leaman stood up suddenly.

“What’s up now?” Diamond said, thinking he’d taken offence.

“Nothing. I’m taking your advice, or part of it.”

“Oh, yes?”

“This seems as good a time as any to find the toilet.”

The local contact waiting for them at the entrance of Bridgwater’s Blake Museum appeared to be a woman until they got close enough to tell he was a slightly built man in his thirties with shoulder-length black hair and a white bandana. At home, Diamond sometimes caught a few seconds of
Time Team
when he was flicking through the TV channels and he’d noticed how most of the experts sported an impressive growth of hair. Once, the mark of a serious archaeologist would have been a beard. Not these days.

A friendly smile greeted them. “Mr. Leaman?”

“Detective Inspector, actually,” Diamond said, to get things on the proper footing he’d announced to Leaman, “and I’m Detective Superintendent Diamond.”

“Policemen?” The smile turned to something worthy of a dentist’s chair. “I was told you were writers.”

“You were told wrong.”

“We do a certain amount of writing,” Leaman added to compensate for the abruptness.

Diamond glared at him, but this wasn’t the time to say the only writing they did was filling in endless forms.

“Am I missing something?” their guide asked.

“I don’t know,” Diamond said. “But we’re missing your name.”

“Tim Carroll, of the Bridgwater Archaeology Society.” He continued to look at them as if they were from another planet. “I was told you wanted to be shown some of our local sites.”

“That’s the truth. North Petherton, for one.”

Tim Carroll recovered himself a little. He nodded. “That will be because of the Alfred Jewel.”

This was spoken with such confidence that Diamond enjoyed shaking his head.

Leaman was moved to say, “We’ve heard of it, of course.”

“That’s the reason people come to North Petherton,” Carroll said. “Nothing else of note has turned up for over three hundred years. It doesn’t deter the metal detectorists, who come in big numbers. I doubt if there’s a square foot of ground that hasn’t been checked many times over.”

“We’re not treasure hunters,” Diamond said. “We’re interested in the Chaucer connection. Didn’t the Chaucers have some sort of official role as foresters?”

“They did, but there’s nothing to see. Sorry to disappoint you. We don’t have any Chaucer relics in the Blake.” He stopped and raised his hand as a thought came to him. “Now I know why this interests the police. It’s to do with that shooting at the auction, isn’t it?”

“Spot on.”

“Yes, I’d put it out of my mind and I don’t know why, because there’s been a lot in the papers lately. There
is
a Chaucer relic, or was, and it’s the very thing they fought over.”

“The
Wife of Bath
.” Leaman was going out of his way to be helpful.

“You know about this, obviously.”

“We’d like to hear your take on it,” Leaman said.

“It was put up for auction by this museum. It had been in storage and unrecognised for God knows how long. When it came to light and the trustees grasped how valuable it might be, they decided to sell it and spend the proceeds on some refurbishing.”

All this was familiar to Diamond. After more than two hours in Leaman’s company, he wasn’t sure if he could endure another anorak. To add to the discomfort, his stomach was hurting. The pasty had been undercooked. “Where was it stored?” he asked. “In a back room somewhere?”

“Not in this building at all. There just isn’t the space. In a basement below the Arts Centre in Castle Street with a whole lot of other bulky items that weren’t on display because they were thought to be of little interest.”

“Take us there, would you?”

“The carving has gone now.”

“I know that. I’m sharing an office with it,
pro tem
. I want to see where her ladyship was living before she moved in with me.”

“Right now?” Surprise, if not annoyance, dawned on Tim Carroll’s face. He’d not expected the awkward squad.

“Tomorrow’s no use to us,” Diamond said.

“We’ll need a torch. I don’t think the lighting works.”

“They’ll have one at the place. Lead the way.”

Castle Street wasn’t far off, so they walked.

“I don’t see any castle,” Leaman said, still doing his best to ease the tension.

“There isn’t one.”

After that, there wasn’t much else to say except, “How come?”

Carroll seemed to be deciding whether he really needed to humour these pushy policemen. He walked some distance before saying, “There was a fine one built in the thirteenth century, everyone’s idea of a castle with walls fifteen feet thick and a thirty-foot moat, but it was pulled down after the Civil
War. Castle Street was built over the site. Bridgwater people are rather proud of what we got in its place.”

A handsome residential street it proved to be, of eighteenth century brick buildings glowing warm orange in the late morning sun. Distinctly different in material from Bath’s honey-coloured blocks, the row of houses still had the pleasing Georgian proportions.

“What a location for an arts centre,” Leaman felt moved to say. “They’re usually on the outskirts, in buildings nobody wants to live in.”

“Like Manvers Street nick,” Diamond muttered. He knew for sure that the pasty had been a mistake. His belly-aching was real.

Carroll said, “It’s Bridgwater’s pride and joy, in use for the arts since just after the war. A theatre, art gallery, meeting rooms and bar. The council purchased it in the sixties, in more affluent times, and it’s now leased at a peppercorn rent, but the upkeep has to be paid for. I used to work here until we were all laid off when the recession bit, and now the place is run by volunteers.”

“You lost your job?” Diamond said.

“That’s tough,” Leaman said.

“It was, but you can’t let the buggers grind you down, if you’ll pardon my French.” Carroll was sounding more confident now he was in guide mode.

“What do you do now, apart from showing visitors round?” Diamond asked.

“I get my hands dirty working for my brothers, doing house clearances. A change from arranging concerts and exhibitions, but it tides me over until I find something more to my liking.”

Leaman said, “We appreciate you giving up time to see us.”

“Local history is my hobby. Shall we go in?”

They’d stopped outside a three-storey building that Carroll entered as if he owned it. Inside, he greeted a volunteer by his first name and said they needed to go down into the basement.

“I wouldn’t if I were you,” the man said. “It’s become a glory hole since you left. Everything gets shoved down there.”

“These gentlemen came especially from Bath to see it,” Carroll said.

“Watch your step, then. I don’t think we’re insured for anyone breaking a leg down there.”

They borrowed a flashlight and picked their way down a set of steep steps. The door at the bottom creaked when Carroll pushed it open. He passed the light beam over the interior, whistled, and said, “See what he meant? Do you really want to go on with this? The museum stuff is on the far side, not easy to reach.”