'I've worked for him for three years.'
'He said you would look this part… and you do.' He sounded more puzzled than pleased, though. 'You seem so polished… I suppose it's not what I expected.'
I said, 'If you saw me in the cheaper sections of a racecourse, you would think I'd been born there, too.'
His face lightened into a smile. 'Right, then. I'll accept that. Well, I've brought you a whole lot of papers.' He glanced at the large envelope that he had put on the table beside the telephone. 'Details about the train and about some of the people who'll be on it, and details about the horses and the arrangements for those. This has all been an enormous undertaking. Everyone has worked very hard on it. It's essential that it retains a good, substantial, untarnished image from start to finish. We're hoping for increased world-wide awareness of Canadian racing. Although we do of course hit world headlines with theQueen's Plate in June or July, we want to draw more international horses here. We want to put our programmes more on the map. Canada 's a great country. We want to maximize our impact on the international racing circuit.'
'Yes,' I said, 'I do understand.' I hesitated. 'Do you have a public relations firm working on it?'
'What? Why do you ask? Yes, we do, as a matter of fact. What difference does it make?'
'None, really. Will they have a representative on the train?'
'To minimize negative incidents? No, not unless…' he stopped and listened to what he'd said. 'I'm using their jargon, damn it. I'll watch that. So easy to repeat what they say.'
A knock on the door announced the drinks in charge of an ultra-polite slow-moving waiter who knew where to find ice and mixers in the room's own refrigerator. The waiter took his deliberate time over uncorking the wine, and Bill Baudelaire, stifling impatience, said we would do the pouring ourselves. When the tortoise waiter had gone he gestured to me to help myself, and on his own account fixed a lengthy splash of vodka over a tumblerful of cubes.
He had suggested to the Brigadier that I should meet him first here in Ottawa, as he had business in that city which couldn't be postponed. It would also, they both thought, be more securely private, as everyone going on the train in the normal way would be collecting in Toronto.
'You and I,' Bill Baudelaire said over his vodka, 'will fly to Toronto tomorrow evening on separate planes, after you've spent the day absorbing all the material I've brought you and asking any questions that arise. I propose to drop by your sitting room here again at two o'clock for a final briefing.'
'Will I be able to get in touch with you fairly easily after tomorrow?' I asked. 'I'd like to be able to.'
'Yes, indeed. I'm not going on the train myself, as of course you know, but I'll be at Winnipeg for the races there, and at Vancouver. And at Toronto, of course. I've outlined everything. You'll find it in the package. We can't really discuss anything properly until you've read it.'
'All right.'
'There's one unwelcome piece of news, however, that isn't in there because I heard it too late to include. It seems Julius Filmer had bought a share in one of the horses travelling on the train. The partnership was registered today and I was told just now by telephone. The Ontario Racing Commission is deeply concerned, but we can't do anything about it. No regulations have been broken. They won't let people who've been convicted of felonies such as arson, fraud or illegal gambling own horses, but Filmer hasn't been convicted of anything.'
'Which horse?' I said.
'Which horse? Laurentide Ice. Quite useful. You can read about it in there.' He nodded to the package. 'The problem is that we made a rule that only owners could go along to the horse car to see the horses. We couldn't have everyone tramping about there, both for security reasons and for preventing the animals being upset. We thought the only comfort left to us about Filmer's being on the train was that he wouldn't have access to the horse car, and now he will.'
'Awkward.'
'Infuriating.' He refilled his glass with the suppressed violence of his frustration. 'Why for God's sake couldn't that goddam crook have kept his snotty nose out. He's trouble. We all know it. He's planning something. He'll ruin the whole thing. He practically said as much.' He looked me over and shook his head. 'No offence to you, but how are you going to stop him?'
'It depends what needs to be stopped.'
His face lightened suddenly to a smile as before. 'Yes, all right, we'll wait and see. Val said you don't miss things. Let's hope he's right.'
He went away after a while and with a great deal of interest I opened the package and found it absolutely fascinating from start to finish.
The Great Transcontinental Mystery Race Train', as emblazoned in red on the gold cover of the glossy prospectus, had indeed entailed an enormous amount of organization. Briefly, the enterprise offered to the racehorse owners of the world a chance to race a horse in Toronto, to go by train to Winnipeg, and race a horse there, to stop for two nights at a hotel high in the Rockies, and to continue by train to Vancouver, where they might again race a horse. There was accommodation for eleven horses on the train, and for forty-eight human VIP passengers.
At Toronto, Winnipeg and Vancouver there would be overnight stays in top-class hotels. Transport from train to hotels to races and back to the train was also included as required. The entire trip would last from lunch at Toronto races on the Saturday, to the end of the special race day at Vancouver ten days later.
On the train there would be special sleeping cars, a special dining car, two private chefs and a load of good wine. People who owned their own private rail cars could, as in the past, apply for them to be joined to the train.
Every possible extra luxury would be available if requested in advance, and in addition, for entertainment along the way, an intriguing mystery would be enacted on board and at the stop-overs, which passengers would be invited to solve.
I winced a shade at that last piece of information: keeping eyes on Filmer would be hard enough anyhow without all sorts of imaginary mayhem going on around him. He himself was mystery enough.
Special races, I read, had been introduced into the regular programmes at Woodbine racecourse, Toronto, at Assiniboia Downs, Winnipeg, and at Exhibition Park, Vancouver. The races had been framed to be ultra-attractive to the paying public, with magnificent prize money to please the owners. The owners of the horses and indeed all the train passengers would be given VIP treatment at all the racecourses, including lunch with the presidents.
It wasn't to be expected that owners would want to run the horses on the train three times in so short a span.
Any owner was free to run a horse just once. Any owner (or any other passenger on the train) was free to bring any other of his horses to Toronto, Winnipeg or Vancouver by road or by air to run in the special races. The trip was to be a lighthearted junket for the visitors, a celebration of racing in Canada.
In smaller print after all that trumpeting came the information that accommodation was available also for one groom for each horse. If owners wanted space for extra attendants, would they please specify early. Grooms and other attendants would have their own dining and sleeping cars and their own separate entertainments.
Stabling had been reserved at Toronto, Winnipeg and Vancouver for the horses going by train, and they would be able to exercise normally at all three places. In addition, during the passengers' visit to the mountains, the horses would be stabled and exercised in Calgary. The good care of the horses was of prime importance, and a veterinarian would be at once helicoptered to the train if his services should become necessary between scheduled stops.
Next in the package was a pencilled note from Bill Baudelaire:
All eleven horse places were sold out within two weeks of the first major announcement.
All forty-eight VIP passenger places were sold within a month.
There are dozens of entries for the special races.
This is going to be a success!
After that came a list of the eleven horses, with past form, followed by a list of their owners, with nationalities. Three owners from England (including Filmer), one from Australia, three from the United States and five from Canada (including Filmer's partner).
The owners, with husbands, wives, families and friends, had taken up twenty-seven of the forty-eight passenger places. Four of the remaining twenty-one places had also been taken by well-known Canadian owners (identified by a star against their names), and Bill Baudelaire, in a note pencilled at the bottom of this passenger
