'A bolt-hole.'
'Well, yes.'
'Jackman's term, not mine,' Diamond explained. 'He told me last night that she wasn't short of bolt-holes. That's the reason he gives for taking so long to report her disappearance. He assumed she was still alive until he heard about the body in the lake.'
Dalton remarked, 'The sixty-four thousand dollar question is what happened after the Platos gave Mrs Jackman the brush-off. None of the other friends appears to have heard from her.'
'Unless one of them is lying,' said Croxley.
Diamond screwed his face into a look that overlaid curiosity with a glare. 'What is that supposed to mean?'
'Well, sir, that the next person she called on the phone was her murderer. Someone who offered her sanctuary and then killed her.'
'What for?'
Croxley seemed unable to supply a plausible motive, so the irrepressible Halliwell suggested, 'For the Jane Austen letters. She must have taken them with her.'
'Killed her for a couple of letters?'
'They were worth a bit.'
'Over ten thousand, by Jackman's estimate,' Diamond admitted. 'But these people Geraldine was keeping company with weren't complete idiots. They would know the dangers involved in trying to sell letters as rare as these. I don't buy it.'
'Even so,' Wigfull quietly put in, 'it might be sensible to alert the dealers in antique letters. There can't be so many.'
He was rewarded with a glacial stare from Diamond and the terse instruction, 'Action it, then.'
'If it were me, I'd take them to America,' said Dalton. 'Get a better price.'
Diamond was shaking his head. 'I'm not convinced that the letters provide a credible motive. I'm not even totally convinced of their existence.'
'You think the professor is lying about them?'
'He was evasive.'
'About where they came from?'
'Yes.'
Dalton shrugged. 'So let's put the heat on him.'
Diamond flapped his hand dismissively. 'Too late for that.'
'There is another way of checking whether these letters exist at all,' Croxley was emboldened to say, 'and that's by getting a statement from the American, Dr Junker. Isn't he supposed to have examined them?'
'Junker.' Diamond snapped his fingers. 'Yes – I'd written him off, thinking he was still touring in Europe. He should be back in America by now. We'll try and raise him. Which university does he teach in?'
'Pittsburgh,' answered Wigfull.
'We'll call him at once.'
'I wouldn't, sir,' said Wigfull.
'Now what's the problem?'
He'd taken out a pocket calculator. 'The problem is that now is 5.10 a.m. over there.'
Chapter Seven
DIAMOND'S CALL TO DR LOUIS Junker was connected shortly after 3 p.m. He was using an amplifying phone so that Wigfull and Dalton, who had joined him in the office, could hear the responses.
'Who is this?' the voice from Pittsburgh asked.
'Detective Superintendent Peter Diamond, from Bath, in England. You won't know my name, sir.'
'That is correct.'
'I'm enquiring into the death of Mrs Geraldine Jackman, of' Brydon House in Bath.'
There was an understandable pause. The three detectives waited.
'Mrs Jackman – she's dead?'
'Sadly, yes.'
'Greg Jackman's wife? Dead?'
'Her body was recovered from a reservoir. It appears that she was murdered.'
'Murdered?' The voice climbed an octave. 'You can't possibly mean this.'
'She was last seen alive on Monday, 11 September. I understand that you were a guest of Professor Jackman at Brydon House at about that time.'
'September 11? Let me collect my thoughts a moment, will you? No, I left for Paris on the previous day… Now listen, Mr, em…'
'Diamond.'
'Mr Diamond. I know nothing about this, nothing. It's a total shock to me.'
Diamond boomed reassurance down the transatlantic cable. 'Dr Junker, there's no suggestion that you are implicated in Mrs Jackman's death. I am simply hoping that you can help me to piece together the events of that weekend. Do you mind?'
There was a silence sufficient for Dalton to murmur flippantly to Wigfull, 'He's calling his lawyer on the other phone.'
Junker's voice started up again. 'If you really think I can help, I'll do what I can. I'm still trying to comprehend this. Is Greg okay?'
'Professor Jackman is fine.'
'The last time I saw him was in Paris. He flew out to talk to me. Which day did you say she was killed?'
'I said she went missing on Monday, 11 September.'
'That Monday? Oh my God… that was the day he met with me in the hotel – late. It must have been around eleven in the evening. He told me he flew out in the afternoon. Look, if you're putting the heat on Greg Jackman, I think you should tell me. He was very good to me. They both were.'
Junker was a fast talker, and disembodied words in an unfamiliar accent can be difficult to take in. Diamond had a tape-recorder running and he could analyse the responses later. He still needed to conduct the interview effectively, to a structured pattern of question and answer.
'Dr Junker, nobody has been charged with this murder, if that's what you're suggesting. I'm simply asking for your help to establish some facts about the weekend prior to Mrs Jackman's disappearance.'
'Whatever you want.'
'Thank you. Let's take it from when you first got in touch with Professor Jackman.'
'That was back in July. We hadn't met before this summer. I wrote him when I heard about the Jane Austen exhibition he was putting on in the city of Bath. The nineteenth-century novel is my principal field of study. It so happens that I'm currently writing what I hope will become the definitive biography of Jane Austen. Do you need to know my background?'
'Not at this stage, sir. So you decided to come over?'
'In point of fact, I was coming to Europe on vacation. I adjusted my schedule to take in Bath to visit the exhibition, and Greg Jackman was kind enough to invite me to his home for the weekend.'
'I believe he was at Heathrow to meet you.'
'That's correct. This was on that Friday. Unfortunately there was some technical trouble with the airplane and the flight was delayed for hours. It was heroic of Greg to wait so long. I recall that we landed at 4.10 in the afternoon, almost seven hours late, and I didn't expect to see him, but he was there to shake my hand as if it was still only nine in the morning. Then we drove along the freeway to Bath. We stopped someplace for a sandwich. I couldn't tell you where.'
'Doesn't matter.'
'The trip took about two, two and a half, hours and we talked about his work and mine, as I recall. My
