“YOU DIDN’T,” said Bernard Sims incredulously. “I’ve heard of clients sleeping with their lawyers, and jury members sleeping with each other, and even the odd judge or two sleeping with a barrister, but I’ve never before heard of the defendant sleeping with the plaintiff, not even if they were married to each other.” He laughed loudly. I wished I hadn’t told him.
He had called during the early afternoon to say that he had received another letter from Miss Aston’s lawyers giving the grounds for her complaint and inviting our side to make a reasonable offer to Miss Aston for the distress and loss of earnings she had suffered.
I had foolishly told him that I had taken his advice to ask her out to dinner and now a relationship had developed between us.
“But did you sleep with her?” he had asked persistently.
“Well,” I’d said finally, “what if I did?”
Now he was enjoying the situation hugely.
“Did she drop the lawsuit at the same time as she dropped her knickers?” he asked, barely able to contain his mirth.
“Bernard,” I said sharply. “That’s enough. And, no, she hasn’t dropped the suit. Her agent is insisting that she persevere with it. He wants his percentage.”
“Perhaps he’s sleeping with her too.” He was out of control.
“Bernard, I said stop it, that’s enough.” I had raised my voice.
“You’re serious about her, aren’t you?” he said.
“Yes.”
“Well, blow me down,” he said. “What shall I tell her lawyers?”
“Don’t you dare tell them anything,” I said.
“Not about that,” he said. “What shall I tell them about an offer?”
“Let me think about it over the weekend. I’ll speak to you on Monday. She’s away for a week now, so they won’t be able to tell her anything anyway.”
“Is she away with you?” he asked.
“No she isn’t,” I said. “And it would be none of your business if she was.”
“Everything about you is my business,” he said, laughing. “I’m your lawyer, remember?” He was still laughing when he hung up. I wondered if all his clients gave him so much pleasure.
At about half past two, I called Carl to ask him to come and fetch me.
“Thought you had to rest for a few days,” he said.
“I do,” I replied. “I’m not coming in to work. I need to use my computer to get on the Internet.”
“Right,” he said. “I’ll be there in five minutes.”
THERE WERE nearly a million hits when I typed “Rolf Schumann” into the search engine on my computer. Most of the hits were in German. Rolf and Schumann were obviously very common names in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and in Holland, too.
I added “Wisconsin” to my search criteria and was still surprised that the number of hits still exceeded twenty-eight thousand. It seemed that Rolf and Schumann were quite common names in Wisconsin as well.
I discovered that more Germans had emigrated to the United States than from any other nation, including Ireland and England, and that many of them had settled in the state of Wisconsin since the climate and agriculture were similar to those at home. So great was the influx that, according to one Web site I visited, a third of the total population of the state in 1900 had been born in Germany. Milwaukee, the largest city in Wisconsin, and less than thirty miles from Delafield, had even been known as the German Athens during the nineteenth century.
Adding “Delafield” narrowed my search down to just a few hundred, and there he was: Rolf Schumann, president of Delafield Industries, Inc., with his date of birth, education details, family tree, the lot. Good old Internet.
I spent the next hour or so discovering not a great deal useful about Mr. Schumann. He was sixty-one years old, and had been president of Delafield Industries for seven years, having been their finance director before that. It appeared that he was a pillar of society in Delafield and was involved either as a donor to or an administrator of various local charities. I learned that he was a leading light in the Delafield Chamber of Commerce and an elder at one of the local Lutheran churches. There was absolutely nothing I found to suggest that he would be the target of a bomber six thousand miles from his home.
Back in the 1840s, Delafield Industries, Inc., had been established at a local blacksmith’s forge, making hand tools for the new settlers of Wisconsin to work the land and grow their corn. With the coming of the internal combustion engine, the firm had diversified first into tractors and then into every type of agricultural machinery. According to their own Web site, the company was now the biggest supplier of combine harvesters to midwestern farmers, and even I knew there was an awful lot of corn in the American Midwest. Unless huge success and mammoth money-making were motives for murder from jealous competitors, I could glean no reason why Delafield Industries should be a target.
I didn’t seem to be doing very well in my new career as an investigator.
Carl came into the office and handed me a letter. “This came for you the day before yesterday,” he said.
It was the letter from Forest Heath District Council informing me that they intended to prosecute me. I remembered that I had been on my way to collect the other letter from Suzanne Miller when my brakes had failed. I called her office number.
“Hello, Suzanne,” I said, “Max Moreton here.”
“Hello, Max,” she said in her trill manner. “Are you all right? I heard about your accident.”
“I’m fine, Suzanne, thank you,” I said. “Just a little concussion, although my car has had it completely.”
“Oh dear,” she said, “I’m sorry.”
“And I’m sorry that I never made it to you to collect the letter from Forest Heath District Council.”
“Don’t worry about that,” she said. “But it’s still here, waiting for you.”
“They sent another copy to the restaurant,” I said.
“I thought they might have,” she said.
“Have you had any luck with the lists I asked you to get?” I asked, coming to the real purpose of my call.
“I’m afraid I can’t help you with the guest list from the dinner,” she said. “The one you already have is the only one available. Short of calling all the people named on the list and asking them for the names of their guests, I can’t think of anything else to do. But I’ve had a bit more luck with the Delafield Industries list. Apparently, the Special Branch asked for lists of the guests in all the boxes. Something to do with security for that Arab.” She didn’t sound too impressed by the Special Branch. “Fat lot of good it did.”
She still thought, like everyone else apart from me, that the bomb had been aimed at the prince.
“Where are the lists?” I asked her.
“The Special Branch has them, I suppose,” she said. “I only found out about the lists because another of the box holders told me. He was rather indignant at having to tell the police the names of his guests. If you ask me, it was because he had his mistress with him and he wanted to keep her name a secret.”
“Are you sure?” I said.
“Oh yes,” she said. “He told my staff she was his niece, but it was obvious she wasn’t. We had a great time playing them along.” She laughed over the phone.
I wouldn’t have believed it of her. “Who was it?” I asked eagerly.
“I’d better not say,” she said, but then she did. She couldn’t resist it. I knew who it was. Everyone in racing would have known who it was. She then told me the name of his mistress too. How delicious. “But don’t tell anyone,” she said seriously. I didn’t need to. In time, Suzanne would see to that.
“So how do I get the list from Special Branch?” I asked.
“Why don’t you ask them for it,” she said.