Diamond would not allow himself to be deflected. 'Look, the object is to gei at the truth.'
'Yes, and the truth is that she was besotted with Jackman and murdered his wife.'
To Wigfull, it was all so obvious.
'You could be right, but there's still another dimension to this,' Diamond told him.
'The sob story, you mean?'
'I can't say. There's definitely more to come, if we give her a chance to tell us.'
'In other words, you want me to button my hairy lip.'
The note of self-mockery was a concession, a step back from cold-eyed hostility, and Diamond acknowledged it with a grin. 'The chance of that has gone. She's dug a bloody trench for herself. We've got to move in, but to a purpose. In my judgement, she won't respond to threats.'
'Okay, I said I'll shut up.'
'No, I want you to chip in. I need your command of the details. That's how we'll tackle her, with the truth, testing her story with the facts we know to be true, you and me, John, working as a team.'
This earned a grudging nod from Wigfull, and a sharp enquiry as to what line the questioning was to take.
Diamond was equal to it. They would begin by suggesting to Dana Didrikson that she had been at the Jackman house on the day of the murder. Whatever her response, they would commit her to an account of her movements on that Monday. Only when they had got a full picture of her day would they probe her motives or point out inconsistencies. It was the structured interview so beloved of training school instructors, and Wigfull couldn't fault it. Diamond added, to bring a human dimension to the exchange, that all this would be at great personal cost, because his wife Stephanie was using the late nights as ammunition in her campaign to have her kitchen modernized. She was serving him burnt offerings nightly.
'You should get her a microwave oven,' Wigfull advised him.
'I don't trust them.'
'They're part of the new technology. I wouldn't be without ours.'
That figures,' said Diamond, prepared to believe that Wigfull's home was indistinguishable from an electricity showroom.
'Maybe you saw me on the phone just now,' Wigfull went on. 'I wasn't calling my wife. I don't, now that we have a microwave.' While Diamond was pondering the cause and effect behind that, Wigfull added casually, but with a note of archness. 'As a matter of fact, I was phoning Mrs Didrikson's employer, Buckle.'
'What for?'
'I told him she wouldn't be in to work tomorrow.'
'Wasn't it a bit late for that?'
'I got him at home.'
'I see.' Slightly put out, but wary, Diamond started walking towards the interview room. 'She'll be grateful, I'm sure.'
Behind him, he heard Wigfull raise his voice to say, 'I didn't do it out of the goodness of my heart, Mr Diamond. I asked him if she reported for duty on Monday, 11 September.'
He wheeled around.
Wigfull was looking as smug as a cat in the best chair. 'And she didn't. Buckle checked his diary. She took the day off. She wasn't at work on the day of the murder.' He spaced the words like an actor in a radio serial rounding off an episode. It demanded a burst of music.
Diamond wasn't moved to supply any. He merely nodded his head.
'You knew already?' Wigfull piped in disbelief.
Diamond answered in throwaway style, 'The statements are in from the door-to-door lads. I've just been through them. A woman in a black Mercedes was seen turning into the drive of John Brydon House shortly after 11.15.'
It was a much better pay-off.
She had her back to the door when they returned, and the tension was evident in her stance. A slight figure staring out of the window at the lights of Bath, arms crossed in front of her. Diamond was moved to think how little he'd learned of this woman's character in the two or three hours of question and answer. Part of the difficulty was that she'd obviously rehearsed her story in her mind, knowing that sooner or later the police would catch up with her. The smoothness of the performance had given few insights, save for those bursts of waspishness at Wigfull's interruptions towards the end. Admittedly she had projected a strong sense of moral obligation, whether towards her disagreeable son, her dodgy boss or the knight in shining armour, Professor Jackman, but how much of that was window-dressing remained to be discovered. One other pointer Diamond had noted: the still-potent sense of triumph in her account of the quest for the Jane Austen letters – the letters that looked increasingly like the spur to murder.
'Shall we resume?' he said.
'I've nothing else to tell you.' She need not have spoken. He could read the defiance in the set of her shoulders.
He nodded to Wigfull to run another tape and speak the preliminaries. When it was done, he reminded her of the formal caution before saying, 'We've just had some information about you, Mrs Didrikson.'
All this had no appreciable effect.
'We know you visited Geraldine Jackman on the day she was murdered. You were seen.'
This time a tremor of shock went through her, which she tried to convert into the action of rubbing her arms.
Diamond concluded his statement. 'So there must be something else to tell.'
Wigfull said, in his new, non-aggressive guise. 'Why don't you sit down?'
She half-turned and looked over her shoulder, in two minds, and then walked to the table and took her place opposite Diamond, her eyes glazed, as if too much was going on in her brain for it to interpret what she was seeing.
'You do admit going to the house?' Diamond put to her.
She dipped her head in what may have been meant as a positive response.
'Why?' Diamond asked, already departing from the structured interview he had proposed. 'Why did you go there?'
She spoke in a whisper too low to register on the recording equipment, 'To ask her to hand over the letters.'
'Geraldine?'
She nodded, and said in a slightly louder voice, 'I was sure she had them hidden in the house.' Her eyes began to function intelligently again. 'It was obvious that she must have taken them.'
Wigfull asked, 'How did you know they were missing?'
'Greg phoned me early that morning, about half past seven. He believed Dr Junker had taken them. He was going after him, on the train to London.'
'But why should he have told you about it?'
'He was sure Geraldine would call me out of spite, just to gloat. He didn't want me to hear it from her.'
On rapid reflection Diamond decided that this explanation was plausible. It was reasonably consistent with Jackman's suspicions of his wife.
'And did Geraldine call you?'
'No.' Mrs Didrikson leaned forward, her dark eyes suddenly in strong focus again. 'Which makes it even more certain that she had the letters herself. Greg was mistaken. I was positive she had them.' She used the word 'she' with unconcealed contempt, with a passionate dislike that had not been expunged by the killing. The animus between the two women must have amounted to more, far more, than the events so far described had justified.
Diamond knew he was in danger of being sidetracked, and this time he kept to the record of what had happened on the fatal Monday. 'So what did you decide to do about it?'
'I didn't do anything at first. I waited some hours. It really got to me, that she could be so bloody-minded. I was in such a state that I phoned my boss and made some excuse to get off work. About eight-thirty I drove Matthew to school and did some shopping in Bath. Had a coffee in one of those places by the bus station and did
