Read Online The Stone Wife by Peter Lovesey - Free Book Online

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,