'That's not what you're there for.'
'I'll do my best not to enjoy it.'
'Insubordination will get you a firing squad,' he said firmly, and put down his receiver forthwith.
I put my own receiver down more slowly and the bell rang again immediately.
'This is Bill Baudelaire,' my caller said in his deep-down voice. 'So you arrived in Toronto all right?'
'Yes, thank you.'
'I've got the information you asked for about Laurentide Ice. About why his owner sold a half-share.'
'Oh, good.'
'I don't know that it is, very. In fact, not good at all. Apparently Filmer was over here in Canada at the end of last week enquiring of several owners who had horses booked on the train if they would sell. One of them mentioned it to me this morning and now I've talked to the others. He offered a fair price for a half-share, they all say. Or a third-share. Any toe-hold, it seems. I would say he methodically worked down the list until he came to Daffodil Quentin.'
'Who?'
'The owner of Laurentide Ice.'
'Why is it bad news?' I asked, taking the question from the disillusionment in his voice.
'You'll meet her. You'll see,' he said cryptically.
'Can't you tell me?'
He signed audibly. 'Her husband, Hal Quentin, was a good friend of Canadian racing, but he died this time last year and left his string of horses to his wife. Three of them so far have died in accidents since then, with Mrs Quentin collecting the insurance.'
'Three!' I said. 'In a year?'
'Exactly. They're all been investigated but they all seem genuine. Mrs Quentin says it's a dreadful coincidence and she is most upset.'
'She would be,' I said dryly.
'Anyway, that is who has sold a half-share to Julius Filmer. What a pair! I phoned just now and asked her about the sale. She said it suited her to sell, and there was no reason not to. She says she is going to have a ball on the train.' He sounded most gloomy, himself.
'Look on the bright side,' I said. 'If she's sold a half-share she can't be planning to push Laurentide Ice off the train at high speed for the insurance.'
'That's a scurrilous statement.' He was not shocked, however. 'Will you be at Woodbine tomorrow?'
'Yes, but not at the lunch.'
'All right. If we bump into each other, of course it will be as strangers.'
'Of course,' I agreed; and we said goodbyes and disconnected.
Daffodil Quentin, I reflected, settling the receiver in its cradle, had at least not been intimidated into selling.
No one on the business end of Filmer's threats could be looking forward to having a ball in his company. It did appear that in order to get himself on to the train as an owner, he had been prepared to spend actual money. He had been prepared to fly to Canada to effect the sale, and to the return to England to collect the briefcase from Horfitz at Nottingham on Tuesday, and to fly back to Canada, presumably, in time for tomorrow's races.
I wondered where he was at that moment. I wondered what he was thinking, hatching, setting in motion. It was comforting to think that he didn't know I existed.
I spent the rest of the afternoon doing some shopping and walking and taxi-riding around, getting reacquainted with one of the most visually entertaining cities in the world. I'd found it architecturally exciting six years earlier, and it seemed to me now not less but more so, with glimpses of its slender tallest-in-the-world free-standing tower with the onion bulge near its top appearing tantalizingly between angular highrises covered with black glass and gold. And they had built a whole new complex, Harbourfront, since I'd been there before, a new face turned to Lake Ontario and the world.
At six, having left my purchases at the hotel, I went back to Merry amp; Go's warm pale office and found many of the gang still working. Nell, at her desk, naturally on the telephone, pointed mutely to her client chair, and I sat there and waited.
Some of the murmurers were putting on coats, yawning, switching off computers, taking cans of cold drinks out of the large refrigerator and opening them with the carbonation hissing. Someone put out a light or two. The green plants looked exhausted. Friday night; all commercial passion spent. Thank God for Fridays.
'I have to come in here tomorrow,' Nell said with resignation, catching my thought. 'And why I ever said I'd have dinner with you tonight I cannot imagine.'
'You promised.'
'I must have been mad.'
I'd asked her after she'd shown me the train's sleeping arrangements (which perhaps had been my subconscious making jumps unbeknown to me), and she'd said, 'Yes, all right, I have to eat,' and that had seemed a firm enough commitment.
'Are you ready?' I asked.
'No, there are two more people I positively must talk to. Can you… er… wait?'
'I'm quite good at it,' I said equably.
A few more lights went out. Some of those remaining shone on Nell's fair hair, made shadows of her eyes and put hollows in her cheeks. I wondered about her, as one does. An attractive stranger; an unread book; a beginning, perhaps. But there had been other beginnings, in other cities, and I'd long outgrown the need to hurry. I might never yet have come to the conventional ending, but the present was greatly OK, and as for the future… we could see.
I listened without concentration to her talking to someone called Lorrimore. 'Yes, Mr Lorrimore, your flowers and your bar bottles will already be on the train when it comes into the station… And the fruit, yes, that too… The passengers are gathering at ten-thirty for the reception at the station… Yes, we board at eleven-thirty and leave at twelve… We're looking forward to meeting you too… goodbye Mr Lorrimore.' She glanced over at me as she began to dial her next number, and said, 'The Lorrimores have the private car, the last car on the train. Hello, is that Vancouver racecourse…?'
I listened to her discussing entry arrangements for the owners. 'Yes, we're issuing them all with the special club passes… and yes, the other passengers from the train will be paying for themselves individually, but we're offering them group transport…' She put down the receiver eventually and sighed. 'We've been asked to fix moderate-price hotels and bus transport for so many of the racegoers that it's like duplicating the whole tour. Could you wait for just one more call… or two?'
We left the darkened office almost an hour later and even then she was still checking things off in her mind and muttering vaguely about not forgetting scissors and clips to go with the bandages for Ricky. We walked not very far to a restaurant called the Fluted Point People that she'd been to before and whose menu I had prospected earlier. Not very large, it had tables crammed into every cranny, each dimly lit by a candle lantern.
'Who are the Fluted Point People,' I asked, 'in general?'
'Heaven knows,' Nell said.
The waiter, who must have been asked a thousand times, said the fluted point people had lived on this land ten thousand years ago. Let's not worry about them, he said.
Nell laughed and I thought of ten thousand years and wondered who would be living on this land ten thousand years ahead. Fluted points, it transpired, described the stone tools in use over most of the continent: would our descendents call us the knife and fork people?
'I don't honestly care,' Nell said, to those questions. 'I'm hungry right now in Toronto today.'
We did something about that in the shape of devilled smoked salmon followed by roast quail. 'I hope this is all on your expense account,' she said without anxiety as I ordered some wine, and I said, 'Yes, of course,' untruthfully and thought there was no point in having money if one didn't enjoy it. 'Hamburgers tomorrow,' I said, 'to make up for it. 'Nell nodded as if that were a normal bargain she well understood and said with a galvanic jump that she had forgotten to order a special limousine to drive the Lorrimores around at Winnipeg.
'Do it tomorrow,' I said. 'They won't run away.'
She looked at me with a worried frown of indecision, and then round the comfortable little candlelit
