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 good 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.”
“How about the guest list where the bomb went off?” she asked.
“I haven’t managed to get that,” I said. “I think the only person who probably knew the full guest list was the marketing executive of the sponsor company and she was killed in the explosion. It’s pretty easy to find out who was actually there, because they either are on the list of the dead or on the list of the injured. But I am more interested in the names of the seven people who should have been there but weren’t.”
“Surely someone must have the names of those who were invited,” she said.
“I have tried,” I said, “but no luck.” I had spent much of Monday morning trying to acquire the list. Suzanne Miller, at the racetrack catering company, only had “guests of Delafield Industries” in her paperwork, and William Preston, the track manager, had been even less helpful, with simply “sponsor and guests” on his.
“How about the sponsor company?” she asked. “Have you tried them?”
“No,” I said. “I don’t think that they would be very likely to know who was invited, other than their own staff flown over from America. I think that MaryLou Fordham-that’s the marketing woman who was killed-I think she added the UK guests to the list after she was here, and after she knew who would be suitable. I remember that she was very cross beforehand when a couple of trainers from the town pulled out at the last minute. And I think I know who those two were anyway.”
“Can’t you ask them?” she said.
“I did ask one of them yesterday,” I said. I had called George Kealy. “But, as he said, it is difficult to know who else was invited to a party that you didn’t go to.”
“That’s true, I suppose,” she said. “How about the injured people from the sponsor company? One of them might know who was meant to be there.”
“I’ve thought of that too,” I said. “According to yesterday’s local newspaper, two of them are still in intensive care, and the others have already been flown home to America.”
I asked a passing waiter for the bill and winced only a little when it arrived. The same amount would have fed a good-sized family at the Hay Net, and a small army at a burger joint, but neither would have given as much pleasure as that dinner with Caroline had given me.
When I suggested that I should see her home to Fulham, she insisted that she would be fine if I simply put her in a taxi. Reluctantly, I hailed a cab and she climbed in alone.
“Can I see you again?” I asked through the open door.
“Sure,” she replied. “You’ll see me in court.”
“That’s not exactly what I meant,” I said.
“Well, what do you mean, then?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Another dinner? A trip to the races?” I felt like asking her to make a trip to my bed.
“What are you doing two weeks from Thursday?” she asked.
“Nothing,” I replied. Nothing, that is, except cooking sixty lunches and a hundred dinners at the Hay Net.
“I’m due to play a viola concerto with the orchestra at Cadogan Hall. Come and listen.”
“I’d love to,” I said. “Dinner after?”
“Lovely,” she said. She gave me a full-toothed smile with her broad mouth as the door closed and the taxi moved away. Suddenly, she was gone, and I was left on the pavement, feeling somewhat wretched and alone. Was I that desperate, I asked myself, that I would jump at the first girl that came along? Caroline was suing me for ten thousand pounds in damages, and maybe I should have been more careful not to have told her so much. Perhaps she would use what I told her against me. But there had been a certain rapport between us, of that I was certain. Even on Friday evening, on the telephone, I was pretty sure that we would get along, and I think we had. I wasn’t being desperate, I told myself. I was being sensible. But why, then, did I feel such an ache from not still being with her?
I hailed another taxi and reluctantly told the driver to take me to King’s Cross station, rather than to Tamworth Street in Fulham.
I CAUGHT THE last train to Cambridge with less than a minute to spare. I sat and pondered what I had discussed with Caroline, as the train pulled out of the station on the hour-and-ten-minute journey northeastwards.
Somehow, putting my thoughts into words had made them sound rather more plausible. However, I still felt that the authorities would dismiss my theories as highly fanciful. But were they any more fanciful, I wondered, than thinking that a Middle East terror group had attempted an assassination of a foreign royal prince on Newmarket Heath?
I didn’t really believe it. But if I was right in thinking that the dinner had been poisoned to prevent someone being blown up, then I could safely assume that the bomb had in fact hit its intended target. So what made Delafield Industries so special that someone wanted to blow them up on their big day out in England? Who would want to kill Elizabeth Jennings or Brian and June Walters, and why? Or was it the likes of Rolf Schumann and MaryLou Fordham who were the real targets?
I knew Delafield Industries made tractors and combine harvesters, but what else did they do? I resolved to look them up on the Internet in the morning, along with Mr. Schumann.
I lay back against the headrest and thought about more pleasant things like the evening two weeks from now, on Thursday, at the Cadogan Hall. In truth, I wasn’t a great lover of classical music. But I would listen to anything with huge pleasure if I was able to have dinner with Caroline afterwards. Even the thought of it made me smile, although it was more than fifteen whole days away and that seemed a very long time to have to wait to see her again. Maybe I could entice her to Newmarket somewhat sooner than that, like tomorrow.