by Peter King
“I’m working closely with Scotland Yard,” I told him. “You can verify that with Inspector Hemingway if you wish. Their orthodox approach with all their facilities and my—well, my approach … Together we’ll crack this case, I guarantee it.”
My impersonation of Dick Tracy worked. François thought for a moment then said, “All right. Two weeks.”
It would have been nice if his gloomy expression had lifted with my brave words but you can’t have everything. I shook his hand and hurried out before he could change his mind or think of other difficulties.
I walked back to Covent Garden where I found a phone and called Mrs Shearer. Yes, there had been a call. Mrs Shearer sounded disappointed that the young lady hadn’t confided in her but she had left a number. I thanked Mrs Shearer and hung up quickly.
When a voice answered “New Scotland Yard”, I was really excited. I gave the extension number and Winnie answered promptly. “I have the autopsy report and some other stuff I can tell you about,” she said.
“What time can you get away?”
“About seven. I’d better meet you right from here—”
I thought quickly. “Look, there’s a new restaurant just opened up in Pimlico. That’s not far from the Yard. I promised a friend I’d check it out and give him an opinion—he’s got money in it.”
“Sounds good. I only had time for a carrot salad and a cup of coffee for lunch. I’m starving.”
“It’s an Italian place,” I said. “I know a lot of people think that Italian restaurants are just places where New York gangsters go to get shot but I have respect for George—especially his financial sense—and he wouldn’t put money into an operation unless it was good.”
“I like it already.”
I gave her the address and agreed to see her there at seven thirty. When I hung up, I breathed a big sigh of relief. So far, so good. I had avoided being fired and maintained my slender but vital relationship with the police. Now all I had to do was make sure that the big-mouthed promises I had made came true.
I turned away from the telephone kiosk and walked into Covent Garden, lamenting as I always did when I came here, the good old days when it was a smelly, untidy, sprawling amalgam of fruit and flower stalls where you expected to run across Eliza Doolittle or some Dickens character any minute. Now it was a neat, orderly array of shops and boutiques selling geegaws to tourists.
Tony Livesey’s health-food shop was busy as usual but Tony found me a corner table where I could enjoy a cup of yerba maté and think. He had trouble believing that I didn’t want any food.
“We’ve got Homity Pies today,” he tried to persuade me.
“No, thanks, Tony.”
“We’ve a Creamy Leek Croustade that is really delicious.”
“No, really, I—”
“The Mushroom and Cashew Nut Paté then—that’s very light.”
“Just the maté at the moment, Tony,” I told him.
“Been stuffing yourself with all those unhealthy starches and carbohydrates, have you?” he said sadly. “Eating flesh, gorging yourself on corpses—”
Fortunately, I knew he was kidding. Tony is a vegetarian himself and loves concocting new and tempting dishes for his restaurant but he is not a bigot.
“Half an ox and a brace of grouse for lunch,” I said. “How can you call that gorging?”
He grinned and brought me another cup of maté, an excellent stimulant for the brain. It wasn’t working too well for me today though and I strolled down Long Acre and took a taxi to Billingsgate which, like Covent Garden, isn’t what it used to be. Many of the fish wholesalers have moved away but some remain and I found a couple where I knew people who had been in the trade all their lives.
We chatted about fish, cleaning and preparing them, shipping them. We talked about instances of people eating fish and suffering ill-effects although this wasn’t a popular topic with the people I was talking to. When I mentioned lamprey, ears pricked up for everybody in London must know about the unfortunate IJ by now. But none of them asked why I wanted to know. They told me all they could but it didn’t add up to a lot.
A visit to Billingsgate is not the ideal prelude to a dinner with an attractive blonde so I took the tube back to Hammersmith and sought refuge in a hot bath-tub with plenty of fragrant bubbles. I put Handel’s Water Music on the CD while I dressed—it’s wonderful mind-clearing music, not too ebullient yet not soporific.
I arrived about fifteen minutes early at La Bordighera so as to have the opportunity to talk to Luigi, the man George had put in charge of the place. George insisted that I was responsible for the idea and had been pressing me to eat there for some time. I had known George when he was head chef with one of the hotel chains and I was asked to seek out some herbs he was having trouble locating. We became friends and in the course of a meal George commented that too many restaurants teetered uncertainly between French cooking and Italian cooking. I agreed and suggested that there was room for a place which accepted this and combined the best of both cuisines. La Bordighera was the result.
Luigi had spent some years in Nice, that Italianised capital of the Riviera and so knew French and Italian cooking intimately and he assured me of his desire to wed the two in accordance with George’s plan. Luigi was a lively, voluble man with all the charm and sparkle of a true Neapolitan.
Being Italian, he listened with the greatest interest when I told him that this was to be the first meal I had enjoyed with my lady guest, arriving shortly. It would be the delight of his heart, he said, to see that we had a meal that would gladden the lady’s senses, satisfy her stomach and make certain that the rest of the evening would be as successful. I forebore to tell him that she was a detective, not wanting to dampen his professionalism.
He had some extra flowers put on the table which was in a secluded corner as I had asked. Luigi naturally drew his own conclusions from this and equally naturally, I did not tell him that I was making the request because I didn’t want waiters or other diners to hear us discussing a death in a restaurant.
A smiling waiter brought me a tall glass of Prosecco, the sparkly Italian dry wine to which a few drops of peach juice had been added. It was a good sign that La Bordighera was genuinely trying for the cross-culture effect as this drink was a compromise between a Kir Royale, as loved by the French and a Bellini, as served at Harry’s Bar in Venice.
Winnie walked in at 7.35 and I gave her full marks for promptness. I also gave her full marks for appearance and more than one male head turned as the beaming Luigi conducted her between the tables. She looked crisply attractive in a navy-blue suit, cut slightly severely but softened by a warm red blouse. I wondered what would have happened to Luigi’s beam if she had entered in uniform.
The waiter appeared with her aperitif at once and after I had welcomed her, I told her about George and the conversation that had launched La Bordighera.
“It was a good idea,” she agreed. “I think the reason that restaurants have that problem is that they’re trying to accommodate English tastes. French cooking tends to be traditional and Italian cooking rather more casual. Combining all those three ambitions isn’t easy.”
“Very true.”
“I like the name too,” Winnie said. “Calling the place after a town almost on the border between the two countries reminds all concerned of their objectives.”
She looked serenely radiant and I told her so though I toned it down to “very nice”.
“I keep a couple of changes at the office. They come in handy when we’re on a case like this.”
“I like the idea of Scotland Yard being called ‘the office’,” I told her.
“I got myself into the habit of calling it that whenever I can. It startles some people when they hear ‘the Yard’.”
“I can understand it. How’s the drink?”
“Delicious.” She smiled that friendly smile and I remembered my first order of priority with difficulty.
“I asked that we don’t ge
t a second aperitif or even the menu until I ask for them.”
“Sounds like blackmail,” Winnie said sweetly.
“An ugly word, blackmail—or so they always said in B movies. Maybe it’s whitemail in this context but I really am bursting to know what the autopsy showed.”
“Understandable curiosity.” She opened the leather tote bag which she had kept on her lap till now. She took out a plastic folder and set the bag on the floor. “I’ll give you the headlines first so you won’t starve me. Then we can go into more detail later. Okay?”
“I hang on your every word.”
“IJ died from poisoning—by Tintilinum botulinum …” she began.
“Go on,” I urged. “Enlighten me.”
“You’ve heard of one of its cousins—Clostridium botulinum. It’s the bacterium that causes the fatal food poisoning known as botulism.”
“I thought that was found only in cured meats that have been kept too long,” I said.
Winnie shook her head. “It is known for that—but it also occurs in fish and in vegetables. At room temperature, the spores germinate into the active bacteria and produce a nerve toxin which usually causes death.”
“And this Tintilinum—?”
“Occurs principally in fish which has been kept too long before cooking.”
“Ah,” I said and Winnie nodded.
“Exactly. Cooking temperatures don’t destroy it—even boiling water doesn’t affect it. In those respects as well as others, it’s similar to botulism. The main difference is that Tintilinum is much faster and much more powerful. It can kill in an hour—or less.”
“And where did it come from? You already said it occurs mainly in fish so I presume—”
“Right. The autopsy indicates that it was in the lamprey.”
“Oh dear.”
“Just a minute—there’s more.”
I was startled. “More? How can there be more?”
Winnie consulted one of the sheets of paper from her plastic folder.
“You know that many shellfish and some other fish have a poisonous vein running down their back. It’s removed when preparing the fish for cooking.”
“Yes.”
“That poison was found in IJ’s stomach too. It’s the type that’s found in eels.”
“And lamprey is an eel.”
“Correct.”
She set the papers down on the table. I sat back and looked at her. Just for the moment, her blue eyes, red lips, blonde hair and neatly chiselled features didn’t register. I was thinking only of the inevitable conclusion from what she was telling me. I hoped I was wrong.
“What does the Yard deduce from this?” I asked.
“The facts suggest sloppy preparation of food—”
“Not removing the poison veins thoroughly.”
“Yes—and bad housekeeping in having the lamprey around too long at room temperature before cooking.”
“In other words, the worst possible deductions as far as Le Trouquet d’Or is concerned.”
Winnie sighed. “I’m afraid so.”
“You have more to tell me—” I started to say and then waited until she said, “Yes, I—” then I held up a hand.
“I promised progress food-wise after the initial bad news.”
Winnie smiled enticingly. It was probably hunger pangs. I waved at the waiter and he arrived quickly with a tray. From it, he placed on the table two more of the house cocktails. “Compliments of Signor Luigi,” he said. He put down a tray of tiny bouchées, crisp-looking circles of pastry—“Gratinéed Shrimp,” he explained. From under the tray, he whipped two menus and placed them in our hands and laid a wine list on the table.
“Good service so far,” Winnie said. “Your friend George is determined to earn your approval and he’s impressed it on the staff.”
“I hope he’s impressed on them the need to give all their customers this kind of service,” I told her.
I was desperately anxious to hear what else Winnie had to say but I forced myself to study the menu. George was living up to his intention of blending Italian and French cuisine and the choice wasn’t easy.
“How does it look?” I asked Winnie.
“I could ask for almost anything on here,” she murmured, still reading but after a couple more minutes she said, “I think I’ve decided.”
The waiter was hovering nearby and came over as soon as I looked up. Winnie ordered the Soufflé Stuffed with Crab followed by the Veal Sweetbreads. I ordered the Terrine of Salmon and Rascasse and the Leg of Lamb Provençale.
“I’ll order the wine then you can tell me what’s in the rest of that folder,” I said. “Do you have any preference?”
It has been my experience that women ask for white wine more often than red but Winnie surprised me.
“On this occasion, a full-bodied red,” she decided and I ordered a Gattinara. It is not perhaps quite as deep and strong as a Barolo but usually more subtle.
When the waiter had gone, I gave her my full attention which was not at all difficult.
“The other five people who complained of not feeling well at the dinner. What did you learn from them?”
“The Poison Unit at St Cyril’s Hospital found small amounts of one or the other of the two bacteria in them.”
“Small amounts, you say?”
“0.1 to 0.25 International Units. The level of fatality is over 1.2.”
“And IJ had how much in him?”
“Over 3.5.”
We tasted the bouchées. I didn’t remind Winnie that they were shrimp and she didn’t comment. They were hot and very tasty—the shrimp in a mixture as near as I could tell of onions, curry, Tabasco and cream.
“I talked to Tarquin Warrington too.”
“Ah, yes. I wanted to ask you about him.”
“He said he didn’t feel well after eating the lamprey. He left and went straight to his own doctor. Said he didn’t want to make any fuss at the Circle.”
“Very laudable—if true.”
“Well, it was true as far as going to his doctor was concerned. The doctor verified it. The symptoms that Warrington described were consistent with Tintilinum botulinum.”
“Did the doctor diagnose it as that?”
“No. But then he wouldn’t be able to without tests. He wanted Warrington to go to a hospital but he said he’d see if he felt better in the morning.”
“And he did?”
“Yes.”
“Is that probable?”
“Yes. He could have got a very minor dose.”
“Convenient,” I suggested.
Winnie stopped, a bouchée poised to enter her opened mouth.
“You suspect him of not telling the truth?”
“Not really. I suppose I’m prejudiced because he’s so curt and rude.”
Winnie completed the eating of the bouchée and I enjoyed watching her enjoy it. The waiter arrived with the first course. Winnie said the soufflé was outstanding and my terrine was light, fresh and tangy.
The main course was just as good and the Gattinara was rich and powerful. I let Winnie reach the last of her sweetbreads before I asked the question:
“What are your next moves?”
She finished chewing, wiped her mouth daintily and asked:
“My next moves?”
“In the investigation.”
“Oh.” She cleaned her plate carefully. I like to see a girl enjoy her food. “We’re checking now on IJ’s relatives and friends. He doesn’t seem to have anyone really close. We’re talking to his co-workers but he didn’t confide much there either. He wasn’t popular though—and we’re following up on that. We’ve talked to most of the guests at the Circle of Careme. Only two or three of those exchanged any conversation with him and they don’t have anything useful to offer.”
“What about his neighbours at the table?” I asked.
“Nothing there either.”
“Did he eat the same as the other guests?”
“Oh
yes. Just the same.”
“So it’s odd how he ingested much more toxin?”
“It is.”
“No sign of any poison in any of the food other than the lamprey?”
“None at all.”
“The brandy … you’ve heard what happened when IJ recovered after being apparently dead? Someone handed him a glass of brandy and he drank it before the inspector could stop him.”
“Yes.” Winnie nodded, her expression wry. “Bizarre. We’ve heard several versions but they all amount to the same story.”
I leaned forward, interested in this point as I had been so close to it.
“The brandy glass … It dropped from IJ’s fingers after he had emptied it. Then he died only minutes later. What happened to the glass?”
Winnie smiled. “The inspector slipped it into his pocket.”
I laughed. “The sly old dog!”
“He can be—he can be. No trace of any toxin on it though.”
“H’m,” was the best comment I could make.
The waiter poured the rest of the Gattinara. “Dessert?” I suggested.
“No, thanks. I yield once in a while but just coffee will be fine right now.” She flashed that wonderful smile again. “It was a superb meal.”
“I’ll let you congratulate Luigi yourself. He’ll appreciate that.”
“Before I do,” Winnie said, “I must ask you—what are your next moves?”
“Well, I thought we might—”
“In the investigation.”
“Ah—well, I’ve been thinking—and the more I do, the more I want to talk to Raymond.”
Her eyebrows raised. “Raymond?” she asked surprised.
“You’ve heard the stories of the feud between him and François?”
“Yes but what reason do you have for supposing that it goes any further than professional rivalry?”
“I don’t have anything. Just a feeling—and I want to explore it.”
She considered for a second. “I don’t see why not. It’s certainly more relative to your investigation than ours. Let me know what you learn.”