“Now that I come to think of it, I am rather hungry. I’ve missed quite a few meals of late.”

THE HOUSE WAS TOO BIG FOR ONE. It would have been too big for a basketball team. Her two sons were grown up and gone away, to university, she said, but my money was on Magda’s cooking. Not that there was anything wrong with it. But any man there for any length of time was taking a big risk with his arteries. I was in that house for only a couple of hours, and I felt as fat as Hermann Goering. Every time I laid my knife and fork together, I was persuaded to have another helping. And if I wasn’t eating food, I was looking at it. All over the place there were paintings of dead game and cornucopias, and bulging fruit bowls, just in case anyone got peckish. Even the furniture looked like they fed it extra beeswax. It was big and heavy, and whenever she sat or leaned on any of it, Angelika Rubusch resembled Alice down the rabbit hole.

I guessed she was in her mid-forties, but she might have been older. She was a handsome woman, which is just a way of saying that she was aging better than a pretty one. And there were several reasons for suspecting she found me attractive, which is just a way of saying I had probably drunk too much.

After dinner I tried to gather my thoughts on what I knew about her husband: “Your husband owned a quarry, didn’t he?”

“That’s right. We supplied a wide range of natural stone to builders all over Europe. But mainly limestone. This part of Germany is famous for it. We call it beige limestone on account of the honey color. Most of the public buildings in Würzburg are made of beige limestone. It’s uniquely German, which makes it popular with the Nazis. Since Hitler came to power, business has been booming. They can’t get enough of it. Every new public building in Germany seems to require beige Jura limestone. Before he died, Paul Troost, Hitler’s architect, actually came down here to look at our limestone for the new chancellery building.”

“What about the Olympics?”

“No, we didn’t get that contract. Not that it matters now. You see, I’m selling the business. My sons don’t have any interest in limestone. They are studying to become lawyers. I can’t run the business by myself. I’ve had a very good offer from another company here in Würzburg. So I’m going to take the money and become a rich widow.”

“But you did bid for an Olympic contract?”