by Dick Francis
“Is that an admission of guilt?”
I could imagine Bernard Sims going crazy with me. “No, of course not,” I said.
“My agent says I should take you to the bloody cleaners,” she said. “He says that I should get ten thousand at least.”
I thought back to Mark’s advice and reckoned that it might need more than a hundred quid to buy her off. “I think that your agent is exaggerating,” I said.
“You think so?” she said. “I’ve not just lost out on my pay for the tour, you know. There’s no guarantee that I will be invited back into the orchestra when they get home. The directors can be very fickle. I’ve only just been promoted to principal viola, and now this bloody happens.” She clearly liked to say “bloody” a lot.
“Tell me,” I asked, trying to change the subject, “what’s the difference between a violin and a viola?”
“What?” she screamed over the phone. “Didn’t you hear me? I said that you might have cost me my bloody career.”
“I’m sure that’s not really true,” I said. “You should calm down. It’s not good for your blood pressure.”
There was a pause. “You’re very annoying,” she said.
“So my brother always used to say,” I said.
“He was absolutely right.” She paused. “Well?”
“Well what?” I asked.
“What are you going to do about it?”
“Nothing,” I said.
“Nothing! In that case, I’ll see you in court.”
“OK,” I said. “But do tell me, what is the difference?”
“Difference?”
“Between a violin and a viola?” I said.
“It’s not a viola,” she said, pronouncing it like I had done with the i as “eye.” “It’s a viola.” She said it with the i short, as in “tin” or “sin.”
“So what is the difference?”
“A viola burns longer than a violin.”
“What?” I said.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said, and laughed. “It’s an old joke among musicians. We viola players tend to be the butt of all the worst orchestra jokes. We get used to it, and we don’t really care. I think everyone else is jealous.”
“So what is the difference between them?”
“They’re different instruments.”
“I know that,” I said. “But they look the same.”
“No they don’t,” she said. “A viola is much bigger than a violin. That’s like saying a guitar looks like a cello.”
“No it’s not. That’s silly,” I retorted. “A cello is played upright and a guitar is played horizontally, for a start.”
“Ha!” she said smugly. “Jimi Hendrix played his guitar upright most of the time.”
“Don’t be pedantic,” I said, laughing. “You know what I mean. Violins and violas are both played with a bow, under the chin.”
“Or with the fingers,” she said. “Pizzicato. And it’s not so much under the chin as on the shoulder.”
“Does that mean you have your chin in the air?”
“It might,” she said. I could tell from the tone of her voice that she was smiling. I decided that it might be a good time to get out of this call before she started asking again how I knew her home telephone number and her occupation.
“I’ll call you about dinner,” I said. “It will be probably be Tuesday.” It tended to be one of our least busy nights at the Hay Net, and often the night I would be away, either cooking elsewhere or at some other event.
“You really think you can get a table?” she said.
“Of course I can,” I replied. “No problem.”
I hoped I was right. It might just save me ten grand.
9
W e were seated at a table for two against the wall near the door. Let’s face it, it wasn’t the best table in the place. But Caroline was impressed nevertheless.
“I never thought you would manage to get a table,” she said when she arrived. “To be honest, if I had thought you actually could I wouldn’t have suggested it in the first place. I’m not at all certain that I really want to be here.” And she had a scowl on her face to prove it.
I wasn’t sure how to take that comment, but she had come, and that was all that was important to me at the time. Over the past couple of days, I had tried hard to recall the string quartet at the gala dinner. I could recall that they had all worn long black dresses with their hair tied back in ponytails, but, try as I might, I had failed to remember their faces. However, when Caroline had walked through the front door of the Restaurant Gordon Ramsay I had known her straightaway.
Securing a table had been harder, and very many favors had been cashed in and more still promised. “Sorry,” they had said on the telephone with a degree of amusement at my folly, “tables are usually booked two months in advance.” They hadn’t needed to add that less than two days was in “absolutely no chance” territory.
However, I was not a celebrity chef for nothing, albeit a very minor one. The world of cordon bleu cookery may be as competitive as any, with chefs happily dreaming of using their cook’s knives on the throats of their rivals, but, deep down, we knew that we needed them alive and well, not only to maintain the public interest in all things kitchen but also to be the guests on each other’s television shows.
Having sold my soul, if not exactly to the devil then to the keeper of his kitchen, and having made such promises that may be difficult, if not impossible, to honor, I was rewarded with an offer of “a small extra table fitted in to the already-full dining room at nine o’clock. But it might be close to the door.”
“That’s great,” I had said. On the pavement outside would have been fine by me.
“You must know Gordon Ramsay very well to have got this,” she said.
“Professional courtesy,” I said, smiling. “We chefs stick together.” What a load of rubbish, but better that than to tell the truth. Better than telling her that I had needed to beg for this table. Perhaps the ten-grand lawsuit would have been cheaper?
“Is he nice?” she asked. “He always seems so rude on his program.”
“Very nice,” I said. “He just puts on an act on for television.” In truth, I had never actually met Gordon Ramsay, but I wasn’t going to tell Caroline that, not yet anyway.
“So,” I said, changing the subject, “tell me about what you do.”
“I make music,” she replied. “And you make food. So you sustain, and I entertain.” She smiled at her joke. It transformed her face. It was like opening the curtains in the morning and allowing in the sunlight.
“Isn’t music described as food for the soul?” I said.
“The quote is actually about passion,” she said. “‘There’s sure no passion in the human soul, but finds its food in music.’ I can’t remember who said it, or even what it means, but it was carved on a wooden plaque in the hallway at my music school.”
“Which school?” I asked.
“RCM,” she said. “Royal College of Music.”
“Ah,” I said. “And why the viola?”
“That stems from when I was in elementary school. The music teacher was a viola player, and I wanted to be like her. She was great.” Caroline smiled. “She taught me to enjoy performance. It was a gift I will always be grateful for. So many of my colleagues in the orchestra love music, but they don’t really enjoy the performance of it. It seems such a shame. For me, music is the performance. It’s why I say that I make music, not play it.”
I sat and watched her. My memory had not been wrong. She was tall and elegant, not dressed tonight in black but in a cream skirt with a shiny silver wraparound blouse that raised my heart rate each time she leaned forward. Her hair was very light brown, not quite blond, and was tied as before in a ponytail.
A waiter came over and asked if we had decided. We looked at the menus.
“What is pied de cochon?” Caroline asked.
“Literally,” I said, “it means ‘foot of pig.’ Pig�
�s trotter. It’s very tasty.”
She turned up her lovely nose. “I’ll have the lobster ravioli, and then the lamb, I think. What’s a morel?”
“A morel,” I said, “is an edible fungi, like a mushroom.”
“Fine, I’ll have the lamb with the morel sauce.” I was reminded of that previous mushroom sauce, the one that had probably made her ill. I decided not to mention it.
“And I’ll have the pied de cochon and the sea bass.”
“Thank you, sir,” said the waiter.
“What would you like to drink?” I asked.
“I’d prefer red,” she said, “but you’re having fish.”
“Red is fine by me.” I ordered a moderately priced Médoc-at least it was moderate for this wine list, but, at this price, would have been by far the most expensive bottle available at the Hay Net. I would have to get used to London prices.
“So what made me ill?” she asked, getting sharply to the point. “And how did you get my phone number? And how come you know so much about me?”
“Tell me,” I said, ignoring her questions, “how come you were playing in a string quartet at Newmarket racetrack when you normally play for the RPO?”
“I play with the RPO, not for them,” she corrected swiftly. “It’s a very important distinction.”
It reminded me of my father, who always hated people saying that he had fallen off when he maintained that the horse had fallen and he had simply gone down with it. That distinction had been very important to him too.
“So why the string quartet?”
“Friends from college,” she said. “The four of us paid our tuition by playing together in the evenings and on weekends. We did all sorts of functions, from weddings to funerals, and it was good training. Two of us are now pros while one of the others teaches. Jane, that’s the fourth, is now a full-time mum in Newmarket. It was her idea to get us all together last week. We still do it when we can, but, sadly, it’s less and less these days, as we all have other commitments. But it’s fun. Except last week, of course. That wasn’t fun. Not afterwards anyway.”
“Yes,” I said, “I’m really sorry about that. But if it makes you feel any better, I was dreadfully ill as well.”
“Good,” she said. “Serves you right.”
“That’s not very sympathetic.”
She laughed. “Why should I be sympathetic to the infamous Newmarket poisoner?”
“Ah, but I’m not,” I said.
“Then who is?”
“That,” I said seriously, “is the million-dollar question.”
I am sure that Bernard Sims would not have approved, but I told her everything I knew about the poisoning, which, after all, wasn’t that much.
Our starters arrived halfway through my description of the dire effects of phytohemagglutinin on the human digestive system, and I was sure that Caroline looked closely at her ravioli as if to spot any misplaced kidney beans.
Thankfully, my pig’s trotter didn’t actually look like it would walk around my plate, and it was absolutely delicious. I did so love my food, but, because it was also my business, there was a degree of eccentricity about my appreciation of other chefs’ creations. Call it professional arrogance, or whatever, but I perversely enjoyed eating food that I knew I could have prepared better myself. Conversely, I felt somewhat inferior when I tasted something that I knew was beyond me, and this meal was. The pied de cochon, with its poached quail’s egg, ham knuckle and hollandaise sauce, would send me back to my kitchen with increased determination to do better in the future.
“So who do you think did it?” asked Caroline at last, laying down her fork.
“I think the more important question is, why did they do it?” I said.
“And?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “That’s what I have spent most of the past week trying to figure out. At first I thought it must have been someone who was trying to ruin me and my restaurant, but I can’t think who. There aren’t that many restaurants near Newmarket, and none that seem to be going bust because of me.”
“How about your own staff?” she asked.
“I’ve thought of that,” I said. “But what would they hope to gain?”
“Maybe they want your job.”
“But I own the restaurant,” I said. “If they put me out of business, there won’t be any jobs to have, mine or theirs.”
“Maybe someone is jealous of your success,” said Caroline.
“I’ve thought of that too, but I can’t think who. It just doesn’t make any sense.” I took a sip of my wine. “I have another wild theory, but it sounds so daft.”
“Try me,” she said, leaning forward and giving my heart another lurch. Keep your eyes up, I told myself.
“I have begun to wonder if the poisoning at the dinner and the bombing of the racetrack are in some way linked,” I said. “I know it sounds stupid, but I am simply searching for anything that might explain why anyone would purposely poison the food of more than two hundred and fifty people.”
“How do you mean they are linked?” she asked.
“Well,” I said, “and I may be crazy, but suppose the dinner was poisoned so that someone wouldn’t be at the races on the Saturday afternoon so they wouldn’t get blown up by the bomb.”
“Why does that make you crazy?” she said. “Sounds eminently sensible to me.”
“But it would mean that, contrary to all accepted opinion, the bomb hit the target it was meant to. It would mean it was not aimed at the Arab prince, and all the newspapers are wrong.”
“Why does it mean that?” she said.
“Because if someone was prepared to poison the food the night before the bombing, they surely would know by then that the occupants of the box to be bombed had been changed several days earlier. Also, I don’t think that anyone who was at the dinner would have been scheduled to be in the prince’s box, since the newspapers say that his entire entourage flew in on the morning of the race. However, seven people who were meant to be in the bombed box for lunch didn’t turn up on the day, and I know for a fact that at least three of those were missing due to being poisoned the night before.”
“Wow!” she said. “Who else have you told this to?”
“No one,” I said. “I wouldn’t know who to tell. Anyway, I would be afraid they would laugh at me.”
“But why would they?”
“Haven’t you read the papers?” I said. “The reports all week have been about the Middle East connection. Even the television reports assume that the prince was the real target.”
“Perhaps they have some information you don’t,” she said. “The security services must have something.”
“Maybe,” I said. “But according to the Sunday Times, no group had yet claimed responsibility.”
“But would they if the attempt failed?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
Our main courses arrived, and we chatted for a while about more mundane subjects, such as our families, our schools and our favorite films and music. Without actually asking her outright, I deduced that she didn’t have a current boyfriend, let alone the six-foot-six bodybuilder I had feared would eat me for breakfast. It seemed that, just like being a chef, playing the viola every evening did not assist in the search for romance.
“I’m sorry to say it,” she said, “but most of the orchestral musicians I’ve met are pretty boring, not really my type.”
“What is your type?” I asked her.
“Aha,” she said. “Now, that is a good question.”
Indeed, it may have been, but, as she failed to give me an answer, I changed the subject. “Is the lamb good?” I asked her.
“Delicious,” she said. “Would you like a taste?”
We swapped mouthfuls on forks, her lamb and my fish. As we did, I looked closely at her face. She had bright blue eyes, high cheekbones and a longish, thin nose above a broad mouth and square-shaped jaw. Maybe she wasn’t a classic beauty, but she looked pretty go
od to me.
“What are you staring at?” she said. “Have I got morel sauce down my chin?” She wiped her face with her napkin.
“No,” I said, laughing. “I was just taking a close look at this person who is suing me so that I will recognize her in court.” I smiled at her, but she didn’t really smile back.
“Yes, that now seems rather a shame.”
“You could just drop the suit,” I suggested.
“It’s my agent who’s insisting on suing you. He doesn’t like not getting his commission.”
“Does he get a share of everything you earn?”
“Absolutely,” she said. “He gets fifteen percent.”
“Wow,” I said. “Money for old rope.”
“Oh no, he deserves it,” she said. “He negotiated my contract with the RPO, for a start, and he got me much more money than many agents would have managed. Also, I do solo work when I’m not playing with the orchestra, and he handles all my bookings and contracts. All I have to do is turn up and play.”
“He keeps you busy, then?”
“He certainly does,” she said. “I’m only free this week because I was meant to be in New York. To tell the truth, it’s been fantastic having evenings at home to veg on the sofa, watching the telly.”
“Sorry I disturbed your vegging by asking you out.”
“Don’t be silly, I’m loving this.”
“Good,” I said. “So am I.”
We ate for a while in contented silence. I really was loving this. A pretty, intelligent and talented female companion, a wonderful dinner and a passable bottle of Bordeaux. What could be better?
“So who are you going to tell of your crazy theory?” Caroline asked over coffee.
“Who do you suggest?” I said.
“The police, of course,” she said. “But you need to get your facts straight first.”
“How so?” I asked.
“Do you have the guest list from the gala dinner?”
“I do,” I said. “But it’s not really very helpful since it doesn’t list everyone individually. Quite a few tables were groups of ten, and only the host is named on the guest list, the others as guests of so-and-so. I obtained a copy of the seating plan too, but it’s the same thing. Only about half of the guests are actually named.”