‘Are you certain of that? Did you notice a tall man in a leather jacket and jeans?’
‘I wasn’t looking much at the other people there. I was watching her.’
‘Try and remember. It’s important.’
Paternoster frowned. ‘How tall do you mean?’
‘Really big. Well over six foot. Large hands, wide shoulders.’
‘No. I don’t remember anyone like that.’
‘Do you remember anyone at all, any of the guests who stood out?’
‘There was a black lady, but she was talking to people as if she belonged there.’
‘You’re probably right about that. Sally Allardyce is black and she lives in the top flat. You said she was talking to people. Can’t you picture any of them?’
‘No. They must have been friends. They seemed to know each other.’
‘Perhaps she was with the Treadwells, from downstairs.’
‘Not Mrs Treadwell. I know her and she wasn’t with them. I saw her downstairs. She was definitely downstairs.’
‘You know Mrs Treadwell?’
‘I’ve seen her in our shop.’
‘She’s a detectorist?’
He smiled. ‘No. I know all the people in Bath who do it seriously. She came in out of interest one afternoon and looked at some books and magazines. A lot of people drop in just to see what it’s about. I think they expect us to have some treasure on view.’
‘How did you find out her name?’
‘Saw a picture of her in the paper almost the next day with her husband. In the business section. Something about a supermarket they designed. I remembered her face.’
Diamond returned to the more pressing matter of Hildegarde Henkel. ‘You were telling me how you watched the German woman.’
‘Yes. She was there some time, getting on for half an hour, I’d say, and I was trying to pluck up the courage to go over to her.’
‘I know the feeling.’
He was unsettled by Diamond’s comment. ‘Oh, but I was only wanting to let her know that not everyone in the place was unfriendly. I kept trying to catch her eye and smile or something, only she didn’t look my way. Like I said before, she didn’t seem to be looking at people. Then I got distracted – someone dropped a glass, I think – and when I looked up, she’d gone. I knew she hadn’t left the flat, because I was by the door and, believe me, I would have noticed if she’d come that close.’
‘I believe you,’ Diamond said. ‘So what did you do about it?’
‘Well, there was a small passageway at the end with two doors leading off it. One was the bathroom. I’d heard the toilet flushing as people came out. The other room had to be the bedroom. I assumed she’d gone to the bathroom. I waited some minutes to see if she would come out, but when the door opened, it was a man. So…so I guessed she’d gone into the bedroom.’
‘Did you follow?’
He eased a finger between his collar and his neck. ‘In the end, I did.’
Diamond was almost moved to remind this wimp that he was not his mother and didn’t give a damn whether he followed a woman into a bedroom at a party.
The confession resumed. ‘It was dark inside. I couldn’t really see much, just the shape of a large bed, and I could hear people on it. From the sounds it was obvious that they were…’
‘Hard at it?’
‘Yes. Me being there didn’t make any difference to them. I was amazed.’
‘That they ignored you?’
‘No. What surprised me was that it happened so fast. The man must have been in there waiting for her. I haven’t the faintest idea who he was.’
He had put the wrong construction on this altogether. Diamond said, ‘So what did you do?’
‘I came out. Left them to it. That’s all I can tell you, because I walked downstairs and out of the house at that point’
Having made the first bold decision of his life by stepping into that bedroom, the boy had been cruelly disillusioned. Humiliated, he had quit the scene. It was easy to imagine, and it rang true.
Diamond had heard all he needed. He could have thanked young Paternoster and arranged for someone else to take the statement. But some inner prompting, the memory, probably, of his own adolescent rebuffs, made him merciful. ‘I think you should know that there’s a second door in that bedroom. It’s on the far side. You wouldn’t have seen it unless you were looking for it, but I know it’s there because I’ve seen it. You said the German woman wasn’t looking at people. She’d worked out that there was an extra room – the attic room – upstairs. She looked everywhere else, and decided that the access to the attic had to be from the bedroom. I believe she found it and went up the stairs and eventually onto the roof.’
‘But… the people on the bed.’
‘Some other couple. You and I know what parties are like, Gary. We wouldn’t choose someone else’s house for a legover, but there’s always some randy couple who will.’
‘She wasn’t there?’
‘When you came in, she’d already found the door and gone up to the attic.’
Diamond’s statement acted like a reprieve. The boy’s posture altered. His face lit up. ‘That never occurred to me.’
Diamond nodded. ‘I’m going to get you a beer, son. A regular beer.’
He remained with the lad for some time, talking of the high expectations of women and how even a man of his experience could never hope to match their dreams. ‘That’s their agony, Gary, and ours. We’re all trying to make the best of what we’ve got. They have to accept that you’re not Elvis, or Bill Gates, or Jesus Christ, and if you keep talking, make them laugh a little, show them you’re neither a rapist nor a rabbit, you may find one willing to stretch a point and spend some time with you.’ The boy said he lacked confidence. Talking more like a best mate than the father he had not been, Diamond pointed out that the party hadn’t been the personal disaster it seemed. To have faltered at the bedroom door would have been a failure. The lad had proved to himself that he was man enough to go in. Now it was just a question of some fine tuning. Trendy clothes. A different haircut. Drinking beer was a good start.
The time had not been wasted.
Twenty-three
‘John, I’m setting up a murder inquiry.’
Wigfull stiffened and pressed himself back in his chair. ‘This German woman?’
‘No.’
‘Who, then?’
‘The farmer.’
In a pacifying gesture, Diamond put up his palms. ‘It was your case, I know, and you had it down as a suicide.’
Wigfull snatched up a manila folder. ‘It’s here, ready for the coroner.’
There was a moment’s silence out of respect for all the work contained in the manila folder. ‘As you know,’ Diamond resumed, ‘I was out at Tormarton the afternoon you were there. I’ve been back since.’
The Chief Inspector’s face turned geranium red. ‘You had no right.’
Diamond went on in a steady tone, neither apologetic nor triumphant, ‘The first test of suicide is to make sure that the death wound was self-inflicted. I’ve looked at the shotgun, in its wrapper. I measured it. Have you seen it? The length, I mean. I tucked it under my chin and tried the position he is supposed to have used to blow his own
