Dead Heat - By Dick Francis & Felix Francis Page 0,50

be able to explain everything. Perhaps I can give you dinner?’

‘I’m not coming to Newmarket,’ she said. ‘I’m not giving you another bloody chance to poison me.’

‘You choose the venue and I’ll pay for the dinner. Anywhere vou like.’

There was a short pause as she thought.

‘Gordon Ramsay,’ she said.

‘At Claridge’s?’ I asked.

‘No, of course not,’ she said. ‘The Restaurant Gordon Ramsay in Royal Hospital Road. I’m free every night this week until Friday.’

The Restaurant Gordon Ramsay, quite apart from being one of the most expensive restaurants in the world, was notoriously difficult to get into. Bookings were taken from 9 a.m., two calendar months in advance, and were often completely filled each day by ten thirty. I would have to try to pull strings with a fellow professional if I was to have any chance of getting a table in the coming week.

‘I’ll call you,’ I said.

‘Right, you do that.’ Was it me, or did her tone imply that I wouldn’t be able to fix it?

‘Why aren’t you in New York?’ I asked, somewhat foolishly.

‘Your bloody dinner did for that,’ she said angrily. ‘I couldn’t make it to the airport last Saturday and was replaced.’

‘Oh,’ I said.

‘Oh indeed. I’d been looking forward to the New York trip for months and you bloody ruined it.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said.

‘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 down 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 as 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 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 1 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 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