The Stone Wife (7 page)

“Put it any way you like,” Diamond said. “Was he bidding on behalf of the university? Do you have a museum here?”

Poke raked a hand through the spectacular hair. “I’m not Gildersleeve’s spokesman, you know. I was asked to meet you because I saw more of him than anyone else. From all I can gather, his interest was entirely selfish. Quite where he intended to keep the lady he coveted so much, he didn’t ever say. She’s substantial, I was told.”

“He’d have a job carrying her upstairs. So he was bidding with his own money?”

“His wife’s, more likely. She’s comfortably well off. I can’t imagine any bank would have given him a loan.”

“Is there any way he could have sold the carving on? He’d bid twenty-four thousand when the gunmen arrived.”

Each time Poke shook his head, the locks sprang out like solar flares. “I don’t think he had the slightest intention of making a profit. Owning her was the prize. From the way he was boring us all with his raptures about the wretched thing, he would have bought her at any price.”

“What exactly was he saying?”

“How miraculous it was that this amazing relic had been sitting in a small town museum for donkey’s years and no one had appreciated its importance. You’d think it was Tutankhamun’s tomb.”

“But it wasn’t his discovery, was it?”

Dr. Poke laughed. “You’re right. The credit for that went to some sharp-eyed fellow who was working at the museum and is probably blissfully unaware of the curse of the
Wife of Bath
.”

“The
what
?” Diamond felt a creeping sensation down his spine.

“Do I have to explain everything? A clumsy attempt at wit. Another allusion to Tutankhamun.”

“Okay.” Mostly reassured, Diamond said, “I still can’t understand why this lump of stone was so important to him.”

“Possibly he knew something the rest of us didn’t.”

“Such as?”

“A connection to Chaucer himself. It’s old enough.”

“Is there any chance of that?”

This was greeted with an indrawn, cynical laugh. “I can’t imagine how one would find out after so long.”

“What sort of connection?”

Dr. Poke gave a shrug. Having raised this hare, he didn’t want to run with it.

Diamond refused to let it rest. “Is much known about Chaucer’s life?”

“Considerably more than we know about Shakespeare’s. He had a public profile. Diplomat, justice of the peace, customs officer, member of parliament, clerk of the king’s works. The poetry was only a sideline. I can’t help wondering how he fitted in the time.”

“When did he write
The Canterbury Tales
?”

“Towards the end of his life. It was a hugely ambitious project that was not even a quarter finished when he died in 1400. He makes clear in the prologue that each of the pilgrims was to tell four tales, two on the journey to Canterbury and two on the return, making about a hundred and twenty in all.”

“How many did he write?”

“Twenty-odd that we know about—and some of those are incomplete. The tales we have aren’t even in Chaucer’s hand. Nothing has survived that shows us how he worked. They are all copies by fifteenth-century scribes, up to eighty of them, but it’s generally agreed that two manuscripts are the earliest and most reliable, one now in the National Library of Wales and the other in the Huntington Library in San Marino, California.”

“Professor Gildersleeve was an expert on all this?”

“No question of that. He’d written some of the standard commentaries. I expect he visualised the
Wife of Bath
gracing the cover of his next volume.”

“She’s no Gwyneth Paltrow.”

Light-hearted comments from anyone else passed Dr. Poke by. “But the finding of this unknown likeness would guarantee good publicity, especially as it seems to have been carved in the fourteenth century. The international press make hay with a story like this. Hardly a year passes without some report of a new Shakespeare play or an undiscovered portrait of Jane Austen. Why shouldn’t the father of English poetry get his share of the limelight?”

“Why shouldn’t Professor Gildersleeve?”

Dr. Poke got the gist of that remark and appreciated it with a scythe-like smile. He wasn’t without envy.

“So you seriously believe it was a sound investment for him?”

“He acted as if it was. As you just pointed out, he was willing to put up twenty-four thousand of his wife’s money.”

“Were they very well off?”

“Monica came into millions when she divorced. I thought you’d met her. She travelled to Bath to identify him.”

Halliwell cleared his throat. “I should have told you, guv. She was at the mortuary first thing this morning, doing the ID before the autopsy.”

Diamond’s eyes rolled upwards. The drive from Bath had been a perfect opportunity to mention this. He wondered if Halliwell was losing his grip. He’d never known him so silent. “Did you speak to her?”

“No, guv. She’d come and gone.”

“A resourceful woman,” Dr. Poke said. “Her second marriage. John’s first.”

“How long were they together?”

Dr. Poke said primly, “Only the lady herself could tell you and I doubt whether she will.”

“Why?”

“They had what used to be known as an adulterous relationship
for some time—I would say at least two years—before she obtained her divorce. They only tied the knot last autumn.”

“We’ll need to speak to her.”

“That shouldn’t be a problem. She’s staying in Bath with her sister, getting over the shock. It sounds as if you have her contact details.”

A glance towards Halliwell confirmed this much. “I presume Monica will tell us why the professor put such a high value on the carving.”

“I wouldn’t count on it.”

“If it was her money he was bidding with, she must have wanted a say in the deal.”

Poke released a long sigh, as if in despair at how little these so-called detectives knew. “It was a trifling amount to Monica. She brought a fortune to the marriage. Her ex is a property developer who floated his company on the stock exchange and trousered millions. She made sure she got her legal entitlement when they divorced.”

The high bidding at the auction was more understandable now. “Have you spoken to Monica since the shooting?”

“I sent a sympathy card.” Said without any sympathy at all.

“Is her ex-husband still about?”

“Bernie Wefers? He’s everywhere.”

Diamond blinked at that.

Poke said, as if to a dull first-year unlikely to make it to the second, “You see his name on boards all over the south of England. He’s been scarring the green belt with his affordable housing for years.”

Diamond recalled seeing the surname.

“Was the professor popular with his colleagues here?”

“Popularity isn’t a concept we’re familiar with. The faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Science is not a working man’s social club. We’re academics. He wasn’t overtly disliked, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“Eccentric?”

“Come now, we’re not all like that. I’d call him colourless.”

“But capable of excitement?”

“Admittedly, going by what happened at the auction, but it didn’t manifest itself in his professional life. It was obvious to all of us that the prospect of acquiring the
Wife of Bath
lit some kind of fuse. I’ve seen it with other people. A cloistered existence can be very dull. We need the occasional pick-me-up.”

“Was he sure the piece was genuine?”

“Supremely confident. They’re reputable auctioneers, aren’t they? And he wasn’t the only one prepared to bid high.” He hesitated. “Don’t tell me it’s actually a fake. That would turn a tragedy into a fiasco.”

“It’s real,” Diamond said. “I tripped over the damn thing in my office yesterday and you can take it from me it isn’t polystyrene. It’s solid Bath stone.”

“Fitting.”

“Why?”

“The Wife of Bath in Bath stone.” From the look Dr. Poke gave Diamond, this conversation had become a pain.

“Got you,” Diamond said, unperturbed. “Let’s explore that. We know Chaucer got around a bit. Did he ever live in the West Country?”

“He may have done, but it’s far from certain. I can’t give chapter and verse without checking the textbooks.”

“Let’s do it now. There’ll be some in the professor’s office, won’t there? You said you’d show us.”

“Did not,” Poke said. “You announced that you’d be taking a look. It’s not for me to invite you into a colleague’s office, even if he’s dead.”

“I can’t be bothered with the niceties. We’re on an investigation.”

The office next door was similar in layout to Poke’s, but with more evidence of its user, with poster-size maps of medieval Britain and Europe and behind the desk a small framed print of a figure on horseback reproduced from some medieval manuscript.

“Geoffrey Chaucer,” Poke said with a flick of the coiffure. “The Ellesmere portrait, from the manuscript I mentioned, now in California.”

“Either the horses were small in those days or the artists were piss-poor at proportion,” Diamond said. “This is like the poor old nag in the
Wife of Bath
sculpture, no bigger than a large dog.”

“A miniature pony?” Halliwell suggested.

“The figure of the poet is exaggerated to give him status,” Poke said. “It’s a good likeness.”

“How do you know? You didn’t meet him.”

Dr. Poke was unamused. He reserved his smiles for his own wit. “It’s one of several portraits in existence. The National Portrait Gallery has another, an oil painting on a panel, a standing figure, without the horse, and there are at least two others in manuscripts.”

Diamond stepped closer to the picture. Chaucer was wearing some kind of head dress. Sharp brown eyes, a straight nose with a strong bridge and a moustache and beard trimmed at the edges to leave the side of his face clear of whiskers. A modern face, intelligent and with a sense of destiny.
If you want to know more about me
, the poet seemed to be saying,
you’ll have to work harder than this. I don’t give up my secrets easily
.

“I can assure you, gentlemen,” Poke added, “that John Gildersleeve knew what Chaucer looked like. He was the leading authority in this country and probably the world on portraits of the poet. A few years ago he was asked by the National Portrait Gallery to authenticate a newly discovered drawing said to have been of Chaucer. They were proposing to buy it for some ridiculous amount. He was able to demonstrate that it was of the poet’s son, Thomas, and thus saved the gallery a great deal of money.”

“I hope they rewarded him.”

“I’ve no idea. He didn’t discuss it with me, but the story was in the national press. The man trying to sell the drawing had some hard things to say. His own reputation as an art dealer was seriously dented.”

“I’m surprised Professor Gildersleeve didn’t discuss it with you. You obviously know about these things.”

“We only spoke when it was absolutely necessary.”

The notion of these two academics obliged to work closely together, yet unwilling to communicate, was puzzling Diamond. Pure chemistry—or had there been some issue between them?

Halliwell said in an awed tone from in front of a wall of books, “Do you think the professor read all of these?”

“Some people still possess books,” Dr. Poke said. His own collection was pathetic by comparison. “Others store them electronically.”

“And others nick them from the library,” Diamond said, taking one down and confirming what he’d suspected from the lettering on the spine by opening it at a date-sheet headed Reading Public Library. It was a life of Chaucer by an American. He thumbed through the pages and found a chronology of the significant events in Chaucer’s life. “This may be helpful.” But presently he said, “Three pages of dates and places and not a mention of the West Country.”

“We can’t expect to strike gold the first time,” Halliwell said.

“How true,” Poke said. He selected a book and turned to the index with obvious confidence of finding what he was looking for.

Diamond went over to the desk and switched on the computer. He was no expert, but he knew the basics these days and after the condescending remark about e-books he intended to demonstrate that he wasn’t out of the Stone Age.

“Should you be doing that?” Poke asked. “It seems disrespectful.”

“He isn’t going to object,” Diamond said. “We’ll be taking it with us, anyway.”

He accessed the emails. A check of the inbox revealed little of interest. It seemed to be monopolised by online booksellers.

“Found it,” Poke said, looking up from the book in his hand. “Towards the end of his life Chaucer was named as deputy forester of Petherton Park in Somerset.”

“
Forester
?”

“Deputy. I expect it was a sinecure,” Poke said. “A way of thanking him for services rendered to the king. He completed diplomatic missions to France and Italy and he was a senior
civil servant, the clerk of the king’s works, with responsibility for the construction and repair of numerous buildings, including all the royal palaces.”

“The Bernie Wefers of his day.”

Poke wasn’t amused. “Hardly. In case you were wondering, I doubt very much whether the clerk of the king’s works practised tree surgery as well.” He raised a finger. “It’s come back to me now. Some years ago, John Gildersleeve spent a whole summer down there under canvas with a group of students on an abortive excavation of a house said to have been owned by Chaucer.”

“Abortive?”

“They found absolutely nothing. He became a laughing stock. I doubt if he ever got over it.”

“This might explain why he got so excited when the
Wife of Bath
came up for sale.”

“A vindication of his wasted summer?” Poke said. “That’s not outside the realms of possibility.”

“Have you heard of Petherton Park?” Diamond asked Halliwell. “I’m damned if I have.”

“There’s a small town called North Petherton on the A38, south of Bridgwater.”

“The same place, but there’s no certainty Chaucer ever went there,” Poke said with a clear desire to undermine them as well as his former colleague. “He was living in London at the end of his life.”