The Stone Wife Read Online Free PDF

knew exactly how to beat the security. This heist was three years in the planning. They stole other works from the Louvre before they went for the big one. The glazier went in with two accomplices dressed in workmen’s clothes on a day the gallery was closed for cleaning, hid in a storeroom and walked out next morning with the painting.”
    Ingeborg shrugged. “The cleverest ever? I dispute that. Anyway, it wouldn’t be possible in the twenty-first century with modern security.”
    “But do you know the motive?” Leaman said. “That was the brilliant part.”
    “Give it to us, then,” Ingeborg said in a bored voice, well used to being trumped by the team know-all.
    “The whole thing was masterminded by a crook called Valfierno who’d worked out this method. He’d used it before in Argentina and Mexico. He would hire an insider—in this case, the glazier—to steal the original. News of the theft would get into the papers. Then—this is the brilliant part—he would sell copies to rich collectors who believed they were buying the real thing. They were clever forgeries painted by his accomplice, a skilful artist called Chaudron. In the two years the Leonardo was missing, Valfierno sold six Mona Lisa forgeries to rich American collectors at three hundred thousand dollars a go. Big money in 1911. The fall guys each believed they secretly owned the most famous painting in the world.”
    “How was it detected?” Gilbert asked.
    “All this time the glazier had kept the original rolled up under his bed. Stupidly he tried to cash in by offering it to an art dealer in Florence. He was caught and jailed and the painting was returned to the Louvre, putting an end to Valfierno’s clever scam. They could have gone on indefinitely selling fake Mona Lisas to rich mugs.”
    “There’s always a reckoning,” Ingeborg said.
    “Not in the art world, there isn’t,” Diamond said. “Fewer than ten percent of art thefts are ever detected.”
    “We’re on a loser, then,” Leaman said.
    You didn’t say that kind of thing in Diamond’s CID meetings.
    There was an uncomfortable silence before the main man said, “I’m going to take the last remark as a joke. A few minutes ago you were all supplying theories. Come on.” He snapped his fingers.
    Leaman said, “I thought my Mona Lisa story was a good example.”
    “It can’t teach us much about the present case. They’d be hard pushed to sell forgeries of the Wife of Bath .”
    “The theft of the Stone of Scone was closer to what we’re talking about,” Halliwell said.
    “Stone of what?” Gilbert said.
    “Before your time. And mine, come to that. The ancient coronation stone nicked from Westminster Abbey in the 1950s.”
    “Political,” Ingeborg said. “That was all about Scottish nationalism.”
    “The practical problem of shifting a bloody great rock was the same.”
    “True. But there the resemblance ends.”
    “So, what’s your theory?” Halliwell asked Ingeborg.
    “It’s about single-minded people, collectors, who covet great works of art. They don’t want them in public galleries being enjoyed by everyone. They want the thrill of having the stuff all to themselves. Thousands of precious artefacts have been stolen over the years and never recovered. Theycan’t be sold on. They’re too well known. Van Goghs, Picassos and Rembrandts. It’s possible our mystery man is a secret hoarder.”
    “With an Aladdin’s cave piled high with stolen treasures?” Leaman said with a curl of the lip.
    “Doesn’t matter where he stores it. Collector’s mania is a recognised condition.”
    “You think he has a stack of stone carvings at home?”
    She sighed and spread her hands. “Listen, guys, all I’m suggesting is that we focus our investigation on the brains behind this operation.”
    “Ingeborg is right,” Diamond said, before anyone else chipped in. “The paymaster is our main target. We’ll investigate everyone with a conceivable interest in