She began a commentary almost as if she was the voice-over at a fashion show and the shirt was crisp and spotless. ‘Plainwoven Holland linen, rather than silk. Never silk for shirts. And the design is spot on. Can’t fault it. Men pulled shirts over their heads rather than buttoning them all the way down. There’s just this slit ending at the mid-chest area and the only buttons are high up to fasten the collar at the neck. See how high it is on the throat? Full, generous sleeves, pleated and forming cuffs at the wrists with ruffs. Gussets under the arms and on the shoulders. All hand-stitched.’
She reached for an LED magnifier from her bag and examined a seam under the intense white light. ‘With linen thread, which is right.’
‘Rather than cotton?’
‘If this is the work of a modern seamstress, she knows her fashion history. Have you noticed the length of the shirt, Peter? The men of the time used it as an all-in-one garment with the tails tucked into the breeches and functioning as underwear.’
‘All frock coats and no pants.’
She may have smiled behind the mask.
‘Is it the real deal?’ Diamond asked.
‘I was ninety-five percent sure until I saw these.’
He looked. She was pointing to the two buttons under the dusty ruff on the collar.
‘Pearl buttons?’
‘They can’t be right,’ Paloma said.
‘Didn’t they have them?’
She shook her head. ‘The history of mother-of-pearl goes back to ancient Persia, but buttons like these weren’t available in the west until the 1890s in America. Then everyone fell in love with them and it was mass production.’
‘Proof the shirt isn’t genuine?’
‘I don’t know about “genuine.” It’s expertly made. But the buttons of a gentleman’s shirt would be fabric-covered, Dorset-style, needle-woven, and these aren’t. I guess they wouldn’t be visible under the ruff. The lace on the collar hides them. Just a detail really.’
‘But a giveaway?’
Paloma had so admired the tailoring of the shirt that she clearly felt almost disloyal about exposing the flaw. ‘If you want to call it that, yes. The bloodstain is real enough, isn’t it?’
‘What you can see of it.’ Much of the shirt front had deteriorated to threads. Those that remained had a definite brown tinge on the right side — the victim’s left.
‘Will you get DNA?’
‘I hope so. Some bloodstained threads went off to the lab. Now that we’re talking about a more modern murder, DNA could be the game changer. When we believed the killing was in 1761, I couldn’t see it helping us because even if we got a result there was nothing to compare it with.’
‘So even genetic science has its limitations.’
‘And I have a bad habit of running into them. The point of entry of the murder weapon may be clearer on the waistcoat. Shall we look?’
‘I’d like to admire this for a moment longer,’ Paloma said. ‘The workmanship. Exquisite.’
‘But it’s not the full ticket?’
She inhaled sharply and audibly, as if she’d burnt herself. ‘Didn’t I just say? Everything except the buttons is genuine. The construction, the materials, the finishing. All the work was handmade then, and there must have been some wonderful shirtmakers in business.’
‘No other modern stuff? Machine stitching?’
Her eyes opened wide. ‘Absolutely not.’
They returned the shirt to its bag and put on fresh gloves before starting to examine the other stained and threadbare things.
The search became almost as protracted as Waghorn’s autopsy. Paloma confirmed that the waistcoat and frock coat had been made with the same level of skill as the shirt. ‘Look at the embroidery on the waistcoat. Beautiful work.’
‘What is it, floral?’ he asked.
‘Oak leaves and acorns, by the look of it. Pity so much has rotted away.’
When they examined the breeches, she gave a cry of delight at finding fabric-covered buttons of the sort she’d been talking about earlier. ‘What’s more, you can see where adjustments have been made. They let out the waist at some stage.’
While she was admiring the workmanship, Diamond continued to look closely for hairs and other fibres, but found none.
‘I’m certain now. This is mid-eighteenth-century, what’s left of it,’ Paloma told him. ‘Those buttons must have come later, much later, but the clothes are original.’
He couldn’t share her delight, although he tried to appear interested. She’d given another twist to the tourniquet this case had become.
‘The white tricorne was a rare item,’ Paloma said when they took the still-flattened and far from white hat from its bag. Where part of the crown had been torn it flapped open when she turned it over. ‘Most well-to-do men favoured dark hats and white wigs, but Beau Nash bucked the trend.’
‘We’ve ditched the Nash theory. He’s out of it as far as I’m concerned, and good riddance.’
‘Hold on, Pete. You can’t ignore him altogether. Isn’t it obvious this man was a Nash impersonator?’
Another angle. After the episode of the Y-fronts, Diamond wouldn’t care if he never heard of the Beau again.
‘Get with it, man,’ Paloma added, surprising him with the force of the words. She’d become fractious and he didn’t understand why.
With the job completed, he took her to the self-service kitchen everyone shared. Spotlessly clean. Good lighting. Cheerful green and white plastic tables and chairs. He hated it.
He made her a coffee.
‘There wasn’t much you didn’t know already,’ she said when he thanked her for coming in.
‘The pearl buttons.’
‘Those — yes.’
‘Lighten up, Paloma. You helped enormously. They change everything.’
She seemed unmoved. ‘Because they were sewn on later? The shirt was genuine eighteenth-century and some modern person did a repair job?’
‘The buttons are evidence that the skeleton isn’t Beau Nash or any other man of his time.’
‘It appalls me,’ she said, and the reason for her annoyance became clear. ‘An eighteenth-century shirt is fantastically rare, a museum piece, not fancy dress for some rich yuppie to ponce around in.’
‘It didn’t do him much good.’
She dredged up a faint smile.
‘Maybe the owner wasn’t a rich yuppie,’ he added, ‘but the last in line of an old Bath family, a good man who’d fallen on hard times and the costume was all he had left, the heirloom he wouldn’t be parted from.’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘Because I don’t want you losing sleep over it.’
She didn’t seem impressed.
He said, ‘I can think of better ways of losing sleep.’
She gave him a kick under the table.
‘What I was about to say,’ he said, ‘is that I learned today that the fireworks we heard the other evening were part of an ongoing event, the world championships, would you believe?’
‘I heard about that, too. I checked the internet after the bangs all started again the next night. Two cities go head to head each evening and at the end of the week the judges decide the winner.’
‘Would you like to go?’
‘I thought you hated bangers.’
‘Not if I’m expecting them.’
‘Righty,’ she said, raising her thumb. ‘I’m up for it if you are. Tomorrow night, the grand finale?’
‘Where?’
‘The lawn in front of the Royal Crescent. Should be spectacular.’
Back in the CID room, he sat on the edge of Keith Halliwell’s desk and updated him on Paloma’s findings. ‘At one point she called the victim a Beau Nash impersonator. That’s another angle. Why would anyone want to dress up as Nash?’