you mean by that? Did you knock her around?'
'No. I don't go in for violence.' Jackman glared at him, affronted at the suggestion.
'When was this – Sunday night or Monday morning?'
'Monday, I suppose.'
'You supposed
'I mean it must have been in the small hours. I told you I spent the whole evening looking for the letters.'
'Where did this row take place – in the bedroom?'
Jackman's expression began to take on a hunted look. 'Yes, as a matter of fact. She was already in bed.'
'Asleep? You woke her up and accused her of stealing them?'
'Hold on,' said Jackman. 'She was still awake,'
'You didn't take hold of her and shake her?'
'Absolutely not.'
'A blazing row, you said.'
'There was shouting. I said
'There was shouting. I said she must have taken them to spite me. I demanded to know where they were.'
'Tell me precisely where you were standing when this exchange took place,' demanded Diamond.
Jackman hesitated, frowning. 'I don't know. I moved. I wasn't in the same position.'
'Moved towards the bed?'
'Possibly. I didn't touch her, if that's what you're still on about. I didn't lay a finger on her.'
'Not at that point?'
'Nor later.'
'The next morning?'
'No.'
'Sometimes, Professor, people have blazing rows and don't remember very much of what they said and did.' Diamond had switched to a more measured tempo. Interrogation ceases to be productive after a few minutes at the rhythm he had struck.
'That isn't the case,' Jackmari insisted. 'I remember precisely what happened. We shouted some abuse at each other and she laughed at me, which only made me more angry. She said I deserved to lose the letters for not having locked them away. She was right, of course, but I didn't enjoy the way she rubbed it in when I suspected her all the time of having hidden them somewhere out of mischief or malice. After a while we just stopped talking to each other.'
'Would you describe yourself as a man with a short fuse?' Diamond asked, reluctant to step down as the interrogator.
'What do you mean – a quick temper? No, I don't often lose control.'
'But you did on this occasion.'
'Only in the sense that I spoke my angry thoughts spontaneously. If I'd attacked her physically – which is what you seem to want me to say – do you think I'd be telling you this?'
Diamond gave a benign smile and commented, 'Sometimes it's a relief to talk about it.'
The response to that suggestion was that Jackman's mouth clamped shut, whereupon Diamond withdrew from the skirmish and gestured to his assistant with a lordly extended hand.
There was a pause. Then: 'Did you consider the possibility,' John Wigfull ventured, 'that Dr Junker had taken the letters?' It was as neat a way as any of restoring communication.
After sustaining his silence a moment longer, the professor consented to answer. 'Of course it occurred to me later. Gerry was the obvious suspect, but I couldn't discount Junker. It's an unpleasant fact that academics aren't above stealing. They become so engrossed in a field of study that they consider it their right to acquire original documents and first editions, dishonestly if necessary. Every university librarian has horror stories of light- fingered researchers. To answer your question, yes, I began to believe that Junker couldn't be ruled out.' began to believe that Junker couldn't
'But he'd left your house by then?'
'Hours before. As I told you, I'd driven him to the station in time to catch the 4.12 to Paddington. He was planning to visit Professor Dalrymple at University College on the Monday, and then he was going on to Paris to begin his vacation. The more I thought about it, the more I convinced myself that I should go after him. So after not much sleep Sunday night, I got up early on Monday and caught a train to London.'
'The 8.19, you told us when you first reported her disappearance.'
This small feat of memory by the inspector clearly impressed Jackman, if not Diamond.
'Yes.'
'And that was the last time you saw your wife. Was she awake?'
Jackman tilted his head. 'I told you that, too.'
'What exactly was said?'
'I told her I was going after Junker, to ask about the letters.'
Across the table, Diamond shifted in his chair and said, 'That wasn't the way you put it to us. You said you had to see various people about the loan of manuscripts.' A comment calculated to show that he, too, retained a memory of what had been said before.
Without turning to look at Diamond, Jackman said, 'When I first spoke to you, I didn't think it would be necessary to bring up the business of the missing letters.' necessary to bring up the business of the 'You wanted to keep it to yourself?'
'If possible, yes.'
Diamond commented to Wigfull, 'Worth picking up these discrepancies. Carry on.'
'What happened?' Wigfull asked the professor. 'Did you catch up with Dr Junker?'
'He didn't, after all, visit University College. He missed his appointment with Dalrymple, which made me suspicious. He'd phoned Dalrymple from Heathrow with some excuse about a late change in his flight arrangements to Paris, so I beetled off down to Heathrow with all speed and took the first flight I could to Paris.'
'Did you know where he was staying?'
'No, and I knew he hadn't made a reservation, because he wasn't expecting to leave London before Tuesday, so when I arrived at Charles de Gaulle, I went straight to the Tourist Information Office at the airport and asked for their help. I said I needed urgently to find a colleague. He had called there and they'd sent him to a small hotel near the Sorbonne.'
'Was he there?'
'Not when I arrived, but he had taken a room. I booked in at the same place and settled down to wait for as long as necessary. Finally, about eleven, he came in. He was surprised to see me, but not obviously alarmed. I explained my reason for being there, putting it as delicately as I could that maybe the Jane Austen letters had got among his papers in error – an invitation, in effect, to return them to me, and no recriminations. I'd thought it through. I didn't want to bring charges. I just wanted those letters back.'
'Did he have them?'
Jackman shook his head. 'I'm satisfied that he didn't. If he was deceiving me, he did it brilliantly. He was troubled for me and yet sufficiently shocked that I could have suspected him of taking them. He invited me up to his room and we went through his luggage together. He turned out his pockets, his wallet, everything. I had to admit in the end that Geraldine must have taken them. I flew back the next day, meaning to get the truth from her – and of course she wasn't there.'
'You didn't regard it as a police matter?' i
'The theft of the letters? Who else could have taken them but Gerry? I believed I could get the truth from her without making it public. And I didn't want the donor of the letters to know that they were missing.'
'You haven't given us the name of this generous benefactor.'
'I told you. It's confidential.'
Diamond said, 'Come off it, Professor. This is murder we're investigating, not kiss and run.'
Adamantly, Jackman said, 'I gave my word. That's it.'
'There's such a thing as obstructing the police in the course of their inquiries, you know.'
