The Stone Wife Read Online Free Page B

had joined Ingeborg and appeared to be getting through at a good rate.
    He went over.
    “Any description worth having?” he asked Ingeborg when she’d finished with her latest.
    “Zilch so far, guv,” she told him. “Everyone remembers what the villains were wearing and not much else.”
    “The balaclavas.”
    “And the T-shirts and jeans.”
    He stood with arms folded, listening to the latest witness. Ingeborg was good at this, cutting through any useless prattle to get to the real point of the interview and doing it with charm and precision. But she wasn’t getting much for her efforts.
    It was Paul Gilbert who summoned Diamond by tilting the chair away from the table and saying, “Guv, I think you should hear this.”
    His witness was a small, sharp-featured woman in her fifties with hair streaked red and green and makeup that was meant to tone but hadn’t.
    “This is Miss, em …” Gilbert paused to look at his notes.
    “It doesn’t matter a hoot,” the woman said. “Everyone calls me the glass lady.”
    “Alice Topham,” Gilbert read out. “From Brighton.”
    “Long way to come,” Diamond said.
    “I go to all the sales,” Miss Topham said. “There’s always glass worth buying. Some of the best lots still hadn’t been reached when the interruption came. I suppose I’ll have to wait for another day. But I want it on record that I was the successful bidder for the Jubilee Commemoration dish. In all this chaos, things could easily go astray.”
    “Tell Mr. Diamond what you were saying about the man who stopped the auction,” Gilbert said.
    “Him?” she said with distaste. “It was my bad luck to be right behind him. He was annoying me because he wouldn’t keep still, blocking my view. Twitchy, checking his pockets. You don’t want movement in an auction. All I could see half the time was the back of his neck. This was before he pulled the mask over his head.”
    Gilbert prompted her again. “But what did you tell me about it?”
    “The hairline was uneven. Some kind of scar had stopped it from growing normally.”
    “This is helpful,” Diamond said. “Was there a shape to the scar?”
    “It was roughly circular and concave, like a little crater onthe moon, if you follow me. I expect he’d had a carbuncle removed at one time.”
    “How big?”
    “No more than that.” She made a shape with her thumb and forefinger about the size of a penny. “Most people wouldn’t notice, but I have an eye for detail. It’s my business, you see.”
    “Do you remember anything else about him?”
    “I only had the back view.”
    “Try to remember.”
    “Now you’re asking. The hair was dark and straight and starting to go grey, quite long, almost covering his ears, but I could see where the lobes should have been. There weren’t any. I’m always wary of men without lobes. There’s an old superstition that murderers have no ear lobes.”
    “He wasn’t the killer. He didn’t fire the shot,” Gilbert said.
    “He’s one of the gang, so he’s just as culpable,” the glass lady said and turned to Diamond for support. “Isn’t that so?”
    “We could charge him, yes. What about the others?”
    “I couldn’t see their ears under the balaclavas, could I? They came in wearing them.”
    “I was interested to know if you spotted any other detail.”
    She shook her head. “As soon as they appeared, I ducked behind that harpsichord over there.”
    “You go to all the sales, you said. Have you ever seen anything like the lump of stone they were after?”
    “Anything and everything,” she said.
    “Stone objects?”
    “Bird baths, statues, even a headstone once. If it’s old, it has a value and a price. Personally, I only buy glass. It’s prettier and easier to get home. Have you finished with me, because I’d like to pick up my dish and get on the road?”
    “We may contact you later to identify the scar if we make an arrest.”
    “I hope you will, and soon. I’d like to see them