Free The Stone Wife by Peter Lovesey

deputy forester from 1391. After his death in 1400, his son, Thomas, had succeeded him with the title of forester and had lived in the Park House in Park House Field, currently known as Parker’s Field.
    “This is getting better,” Diamond said. “We have a house.” He was starting to enjoy the hunt for evidence. He could even see some pleasure in using the internet.
    “It tells us the son lived there,” Poke said, “not necessarily the father.”
    “But we now know that being the forester was more than—what was your word?”
    “A sinecure.”
    “Yes, Thomas Chaucer must have taken the job seriously, so why shouldn’t his father have lived in Petherton Park before him? Nothing says he did, but nothing says he didn’t. And if there was a house, it wouldn’t be remarkable if somewhere in the structure they commemorated The Canterbury Tales with a piece of sculpture. Does Park House still exist?”
    “You’re an optimist,” Poke said. “Just as poor Gildersleeve was.”
    Notes from a website called British History Online revealed that Park House had been in place as early as 1336 and may have been renamed The Lodge about 1400. Most of it was dismantled during Queen Elizabeth’s reign.
    “Pieces may have been preserved,” Halliwell said, “particularly anything associated with Chaucer himself.”
    “All of this is tenuous, to say the least,” Poke said.
    Diamond nodded. “But at the end of the day, I have a chunk of masonry in my office that no one disputes is the Wife of Bath . And she must have come from somewhere.”
    With the computer and other items from Professor Gildersleeve’s office stacked into the boot of Halliwell’s car, the two detectives drove home. They agreed on one thing: Dr. Poke was a jealous man as well as a pompous twit.
    “He thought he should have been the professor,” Halliwell said.
    “With Gildersleeve dead, he may get his wish,” Diamond said. “But in case you’re about to say it gives him a motive for murder, let’s keep a grip on what really happened. The professor was shot because he tried to take on the hold-up men. Everyone who was there agrees on that. The mystery is why he was so possessive about the Wife of Bath .”
    “And who hired the robbers.”
    “Exactly. I can’t picture Dr. Poke staging a hold-up himself, even if he thought it would upset his rival to this extent.”
    “He’d be obvious, with a voice like his, and that hair.”
    “They were wearing balaclavas, remember.”
    “Well, he isn’t the gun-toting type,” Halliwell said.
    “Agreed. But I didn’t ask him where he was on the day of the auction. Slipped up, there.”
    “I wouldn’t lose any sleep over that, guv.”
    “One thing he said gave me a bit of a turn. About the curse of the Wife of Bath . I’m sharing an office with her.”
    “He was on about Tutankhamun’s curse, the old story aboutpeople dying during the excavations, supposedly because they disturbed the tomb. Load of balls dreamed up to sell newspapers.”
    They checked in at the incident room at the end of the afternoon and found an email printout from the CSI team. Diamond read it, frowning, and jerked back in disbelief.
    “Something the matter?” Halliwell asked.
    He handed the paper across. “The bullet that killed the professor was more than fifty years old. It was a thirty-eight calibre designed to be used with a Webley Mark IV revolver.”
    Halliwell looked it through. “That’s a name from the past. Webley. The army were using them as standard sidearms in the war.”
    “Both wars.”
    “Long time ago. It says here the Mark IV remained in service until 1963.”
    “When sexual intercourse began.”
    From Halliwell’s dropjaw reaction, it was obvious he missed the reference.
    In a lofty tone, Diamond said, “The Larkin poem. Do I have to quote the lines? And you thought I was just a Chaucer expert.”
    Halliwell was lost for words.
    “Don’t look like that. Let’s stay with guns. You’re going to