Питер Ловси - The Stone Wife

Leaman was a credit to health and safety. He had locked the door to Diamond’s office and pinned crime scene tape across it. The top and bottom were sealed with wet tissues. He’d contacted the fire service. Their decontamination squad would go in overnight and remove all traces of the toxins.

From the CID room Diamond phoned his friend and sometime lover, Paloma Kean. Everyone could hear his end of the conversation. He couldn’t ask them to empty the room and he wasn’t going to step outside where other people would see him in the paper suit.

‘Me,’ he said to Paloma. ‘Got a big favour to ask. Any chance you could call at my house in the next hour and collect a set of clothes for me?’

Fortunately Paloma worked from her home in Lyncombe, running her business supplying antique artwork for costume designers. From what was said next she must have asked what had happened. A reasonable question.

He said, ‘I’d rather not discuss it over the phone.’

Pause, for another question.

‘Everything,’ he said. ‘Shoes, socks, pants. Picture me naked and you won’t go wrong.’

The team was enjoying this. They all had their heads down, but some of them were shaking uncontrollably.

‘In the bedroom, most of it. I’d better warn you. It’s not all that tidy.’

He glanced over his shoulder.

‘If you can’t find the underwear, don’t worry. I could manage without on this occasion, until I get home, that is.’

Behind him, Ingeborg was in tears of mirth. Paul Gilbert had covered his face and was emitting a muffled cooing sound like a pigeon.

‘In a black plastic sack would be best,’ Diamond said, ‘preferably knotted at the top and labelled personal, with my name. You could hand it in at the front desk and tell them it’s urgent. I’ll call you tonight and give you the whole sorry story.’

The paper suit wasn’t made for warmth. Temporarily positioned close to a radiator, he had time to reflect while waiting for his clothes to arrive. ‘The fire service, you said? They’d better treat the place with respect. I don’t want anything destroyed. I’ve got personal things in there, the photo of my wife, my coffee mug, my cactus.’

‘Not sure about the cactus,’ Leaman said, still exerting his authority. ‘It may have to go.’

‘It’s on the filing cabinet, well out of range.’

‘Plants absorb things from the air. It could wilt.’

‘I brought that cactus with me from London. I had it when I was in the Met.’

‘Difficult to clean.’

Keith Halliwell said, ‘We may need to have a whip round and get you a replacement. The least we could do, really.’

Ingeborg said, ‘There’s one good thing about this.’

‘What’s that?’ Diamond asked.

‘The Wife of Bath will benefit. A good cleaning can only improve her.’

Paloma treated Peter Diamond to a superintendent-sized ham and pineapple pizza and several beers at her house the same evening and listened in sympathy. She offered to smear arnica ointment on his bruises, but he was quick to thank her and say the soreness was just a memory now. He didn’t want her getting the idea he was too damaged to go to bed with her. She’d learned about the shooting and said it was hard to understand how people could get so violent. From all she’d read in the papers, Professor Gildersleeve had been respected in academic circles.

‘Yes, it’s hard to understand,’ he said. ‘If he’d stayed calm he’d still be alive. He lost his cool when the robbers tried to grab the piece of so-called sculpture he was bidding for. Obviously he’d set his heart on buying it.’

‘What’s it like?’

‘The Wife of Bath ? Unappealing.’

‘There speaks the man who tripped over her.’

‘Truly. It’s a chunk of dirty old limestone with some carving you can barely make out. A figure on horseback and some broken lettering underneath that they say identifies her.’

‘And now she’s sitting in your office?’

‘She’s taken it over.’

‘Smart gal, not moving until her case is solved.’

His jaw jutted. ‘We’ll see about that.’

‘Better not let it get personal, Peter.’

‘Don’t you worry about that. My feet are firmly on the ground.’

A ripple of laughter greeted the second statement and presently he remembered why and joined in the amusement.

‘Like her or not,’ he said, trying to sound impartial, ‘my job is to find out more. If I’m going to understand the professor’s reaction I’ll need to brush up on my Chaucer.’

Paloma rose from her armchair and looked along her shelves of books.

‘Don’t tell me you have a copy.’

‘I once did the costumes for a revival of the musical.’

‘A Wife of Bath musical?’ he said in disbelief.

‘ The Canterbury Tales . You must have seen it.’

‘Theatre-going isn’t my thing, if you remember.’

‘Gotcha,’ she said, picking out a paperback and handing it to him. ‘This is the Nevill Coghill modern English version, much easier to follow than Chaucer’s original. Coghill also wrote the lyrics for the show. He was an Oxford professor.’

He opened the book at random and read a few lines. ‘I recognise this. We used it at school. Even a peasant like me can follow it.’

‘Keep it. I doubt if I’ll need it again. The musical was a romp, quite naughty by the standards of the time, not long after censorship ended. Before that, everything had to be vetted by the Lord Chamberlain’s office.’

‘Naughty in what way?’

‘Simulated sex, four-letter words.’

‘Which ones?’

‘Read your translation. They used three or four of the tales in the show, including the Wife of Bath’s. It’s about one of King Arthur’s knights — a right bastard he is — who rapes an innocent girl and is condemned to death. But the queen, who should have known better in my opinion, asks for him to be spared and sends him on a quest for a year and a day to discover what it is that women most desire.’

‘Some quest.’

‘I can see how your mind is working and you’re wrong. Actually the tale itself isn’t as bawdy as some of the others.’

‘More of a tease, then?’

‘Yes, basically it’s the frog prince story. After much travelling and asking for help, the knight finds an ugly old woman who makes him promise to marry her if she gives him the answer to the question. He’s desperate by now and agrees. Then he returns to court and tells the queen the answer and wins his pardon, but of course the old crone insists on the marriage.’

‘And he does the decent thing?’

‘Without much grace. In bed the first night he calls her loathsome. For this she gives him a dreadfully long lecture on the meaning of gentility that seems to wear him down. Eventually she offers terms. Either she’ll stay ugly and be an obedient wife or she’ll become young and beautiful and he can take his chance on what happens. He’s so beaten down by now that he says it’s her choice. She’s pleased. Basically, she’s now the boss and asks him to kiss her, whereupon she magically turns into a young beauty.’

‘And what was the answer?’

‘What do women most desire?’ She widened her eyes. ‘If you haven’t discovered by now, I’m surprised.’

‘The same as what men most desire?’

She shook her head.

‘Shoes?’

‘Actually, no. Women want sovereignty over their men.’

‘Girl power?’

‘It sounds modern, but it goes back to the medieval notion of courtly love, the noble man devoted to his lady and willing to suffer all manner of trials and tribulations even to approach her.’

‘Worship from afar?’

‘Something like that. She is perfection and he perpetually desires her and performs deeds of valour in a vain attempt to win her favour.’