by Dick Francis
“Oh.” I was confused. I knew there were no kidney beans in that dinner. At least, I hadn’t knowingly put any in it. “I’ll have to check the ingredients on the supplier’s invoice.”
“Perhaps you should,” she said. She paused briefly. “In the meantime, I will have to write an official report stating that the poisoning was due to an ingestion of incorrectly prepared kidney beans. The report will be sent to the Food Standards Agency.”
I would have preferred to have been given a criminal record.
“I’m sorry, Max,” she went on, “but I have to warn you that the Forest Heath District Council, that’s the district council for Newmarket racetrack, may choose to send the report to the Crown Prosecution Service for them to consider whether proceedings should be mounted against you under section 7 of the Food Safety Act.” She paused, as if thinking. “I don’t suppose I should really be calling you at all.”
Perhaps I was going to get the criminal record as well.
“Well, thank you for warning me,” I said. “What are the penalties?”
“Maximum penalty is an unlimited fine and two years’ imprisonment, but it won’t come to that. That would be for a deliberate act. At worst, you would get an official caution.”
Even an official caution counted as a criminal record. Maybe enough to put an end to any London aspirations. It also might be the death knell of the Hay Net.
“I’ll write just the facts,” she said. “I will emphasize that no one was really seriously ill, not life-threatening or anything. All those who went to the hospital were either discharged immediately or went home the following day. Maybe they will just give you a written warning for the future.”
“Thanks,” I said.
She hung up, and I sat and stared at the telephone in my hand.
Kidney beans! Every chef, every cook, every housewife, even every schoolboy, knows that kidney beans have to be boiled to make them safe to eat. It was inconceivable that I would have included kidney beans in any recipe without boiling them vigorously first to destroy the poisons in them. It just didn’t make sense. But there was no escaping the fact that I had been ill, and so had nearly everyone else, and that tests on sixteen people had shown that kidney bean lectin was present in them. The situation was crazy. There had to be another explanation. And I intended to find it.
I SAT IN my office at the restaurant and searched the Internet for information on kidney beans. Sure enough, phytohemagglutinin was the stuff in them that made people ill. I discovered that it was a protein that was broken down and rendered harmless by boiling. Interestingly-or not-I also found out that the same stuff was used to stimulate mitotic division of lymphocytes maintained in a cell culture and facilitate cytogenetic studies of chromosomes, whatever that all meant.
I dug around on my paper-strewn desk to find the delivery note and invoice from Leigh Foods Ltd, the supplier I had used for all of last Friday’s ingredients. Everything I had used was listed: the Norwegian cold smoked salmon; the smoked trout and the mackerel fillets; the herbs, wine, cream, olive oil, shallots, garlic cloves, lemon juice and mustard I had used in the dill sauce; the chicken breasts, the cherries, the pancetta and the fresh truffles, wild chanterelle mushrooms, shallots, wine and the cream I had used to make the sauce; all the butter, eggs, sugar, vanilla pods and so on for the brûlées-everything, including the salt and pepper-and not a hint of a kidney bean to be seen. The only ingredient I could think of that I had used and which wasn’t listed was some brandy I had added to the truffle and chanterelle sauce, to give it a bit of zing, and I was damn sure there were no kidney beans floating in that.
So where did the toxin come from? I had brought in rolls for the occasion, but surely they weren’t stuffed full of beans? The wine? But wouldn’t it affect the taste? And how would it get in the bottles?
I was completely baffled. I called Angela Milne. She didn’t answer and so I left a message on her voice mail.
“Angela, it’s Max Moreton,” I said. “I have checked the ingredients list for last Friday’s dinner and there are no kidney beans anywhere. Everything, other than the rolls, was made by me from basic ingredients. I cannot see how any kidney bean toxin could have been present. Are you sure the test results are accurate? Could you please ask whoever did them to have another look? They simply cannot be right.”
I put the phone down and it rang immediately before I had even removed my hand.
“Angela?” I answered.
“No,” said a male voice. “Bernard.”
“Bernard?” I said.
“Yes, Bernard Sims,” said the voice. “She’s a musician. Plays the viola.”
“Sorry,” I said. “I’m afraid you’ve lost me.”
“The lady is a musician.”
“Who, Bernard Sims?”
“No, Caroline Aston,” he said. “I’m Bernard Sims, Mr. Winsome’s lawyer.”
The penny dropped at last.
“Oh, I see,” I said. “Sorry about that, I was thinking about something else.” I sorted my thoughts. “So whose guest was Miss Aston at the dinner?”
“No one’s. She was a member of the string quartet that played during the evening,” said Bernard. “She obviously had the same dinner as all the others who were ill.”
I remembered the players, four tall, elegant, black-dressed girls in their twenties. I also remembered being slightly fed up that night that I was working so hard that I hadn’t had a chance to chat them up between their rehearsal and the start of the reception. Odd, I thought, how emotions worked. Far from still wanting to wring her neck, I was sorry now that she had been ill in the first place. I told myself to stop being such a softie, that I was probably perfectly justified in sticking pins in the voodoo doll, and that, anyway, she would almost certainly have a six-foot-six bodybuilding boyfriend who would eat me for breakfast if I went near her.
“Where does she work?” I asked.
“Not entirely sure of all the details just yet. I’m still working on it,” he said. “She seems to play for the RPO, but I can’t work out why she was in Newmarket in a string quartet last Friday.”
“RPO?” I asked.
“Sorry. Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Real professional stuff. She must be good.” I remembered that, to my untrained ear, they had all sounded good, as well as being pleasing on the eye. “Do you want her address?”
“Sure,” I said, not knowing quite what I would do with it.
“She lives in Fulham,” he said, “on Tamworth Street.” He gave me the full address, and her telephone number too. I wrote them down.
“How did you get it?” I asked.
He laughed. “Trade secret.”
I assumed that what he had done to get the information wasn’t entirely legal, so I didn’t push it.
“What should I do?” I asked.
“Don’t ask me,” he said. “And don’t tell me either. I don’t want to know.” He laughed again. I’d never come across a lawyer like him before. All the others I had met had been so serious. “Perhaps you should ask her out to dinner but taste all her food before she eats it.” He guffawed at his little joke. He was clearly enjoying himself hugely, and was still chuckling as he hung up the phone.
I wish I felt like laughing with him.
Gary came into the office. “There’s a bird here to see you. Says you would be expecting her.”
“Did this bird give you her name?” I asked.
“Harding, I think she said. From some newspaper.”
The news editor of the Cambridge Evening News. Since having received the information from Angela Milne, I was not sure if this was now such a good idea. Perhaps a low profile would have been the best approach. If I made too much of how clean and hygienic my kitchen was, would I be setting myself up for an even bigger fall if and when the papers reported that I had been cautioned, fined or imprisoned for “rendering food injurious to health,” as section 7 of the Food Safety Act of 1990 so concisely defined it? Well, it was too late now. If I didn�
��t see her after making the arrangements, then she would probably write something nasty about me or the restaurant and even more damage would be done.
She was waiting for me in the bar, thirtyish, with shoulder-length dark hair tied back in a ponytail. She was seriously dressed in a dark skirt down to her knees, with a white blouse, and she carried a black, businesslike briefcase. I bet she would have just loved to have been referred to by Gary as “a bird.”
“Ms. Harding,” I said, holding out my hand, “I’m Max Moreton.”
She looked at my hand for a moment, then shook it gingerly. Clearly, she believed that her health was in danger anywhere near me or my restaurant.
“Would you care for a cup of coffee?” I asked.
“Oh no, no thank you,” she said with just a touch of panic in her voice.
“Ms. Harding,” I said with a smile, “my coffee is quite safe, I assure you. Perhaps you would like to see the kitchen to satisfy yourself that it’s clean. I assure you, it is. But don’t take my word for it. Ask the local authority. They inspected it on Monday, and the inspector told me it was the cleanest and most hygienic kitchen he had ever visited.” It was a little bit of an exaggeration, but so what?
She didn’t seem totally reassured, but she did reluctantly agree to come with me into the kitchen.
“Did you bring a photographer?” I said over my shoulder as I led her through the swinging door from the dining room.
“No,” she said. “There wasn’t one available on such short notice, but I brought a camera. These days, all our reporters carry their own digital cameras. If they take enough shots, then one of them usually turns out to be good enough to print.” She looked from side to side as we went past the serving station, where the plated meals were kept under infrared lamps to keep warm before being collected by the waiters and waitresses and taken out into the dining room. She walked with her free hand up near her face, as if she might touch something and be contaminated if she let it down.
Oh dear, I thought, this is going to take more persuasion than I had imagined.
“This is the point at which the kitchen and dining room meet,” I said. “Kitchen staff on one side, waiters on the other.”
She nodded.
“Perhaps you might want to take a picture,” I prompted.
“No,” she said. “It’s fine. But what I really want to do is talk to you about the bombing.”
“OK,” I said, “we will. But I want that coffee first.” I could have made the coffee in the bar, but I was determined to take her through to my kitchen even if she wouldn’t take a picture.
We went on right to the back, where I had purposely placed the coffee machine that usually sat on the sideboard in the dining room. “Are you sure you won’t have a cup?” I said. “It’s freshly brewed.”
She spent a moment or two looking around her at all the shining stainless steel. The work surfaces were so bright she could have fixed her makeup in them, and the cooktops around the gas burners positively gleamed. I noticed her relax a fraction.
I held out a mug of steaming coffee. “Would you like milk and sugar?” I asked.
“Just a little milk,” she said. “Thank you.” I smiled. Round one to Moreton.
“Is all this stuff new?” she asked, putting her briefcase on the floor and taking the mug of coffee.
“No,” I said. “Most of it is six years old, although that stove”-I pointed to the one at the end-“was added a couple of years ago, to make life a little easier.”
“But it’s all so shiny,” she said.
“It has to be to pass the health inspection. Most domestic kitchens wouldn’t be allowed to cook food for a restaurant. There would be far too much dirt and grease. When did you last clean the floor under your refrigerator?” I pointed at the kitchen fridge we used exclusively for raw poultry.
She shrugged her shoulders. “No idea.” Round two to Moreton.
“Well, the floor under that fridge was cleaned yesterday. And it will be cleaned again today. In fact, it is cleaned every day except Sundays.”
“Why not on Sundays?” she asked.
“My cleaner’s night off,” I said. What I didn’t tell her was that I was the cleaner and I never worked on Sunday evenings. Carl ran the kitchen then, as I went home and rested after the busy Sunday lunch service.
She relaxed a little more and even rested her left hand on the work top. “So how come,” she said in an accusing tone, “if everything is so clean, you managed to poison so many people and had this place shut down for decontamination?” Round three to Harding.
“The food wasn’t cooked here, for a start,” I said. “The event was at the racetrack, and a temporary kitchen was set up there. But it was still as clean as this.”
“But it couldn’t have been,” she said. I didn’t respond. She pressed the point. “So why did all the guests get food poisoning?”
I decided not to mention anything about the elusive kidney beans, so I said nothing at all and simply shrugged my shoulders.
“Don’t you know?” she said in apparent amazement. “You poisoned upwards of two hundred people and you don’t know how?” She rolled her eyes. Round four to Harding. But we still were all square.
“I prepared that meal from basic ingredients,” I said, “and everything was fresh, clean and thoroughly cooked. I made everything myself, except the rolls and the wine.”
“Are you saying it was the bread that made people ill?”
“No, I’m not,” I said. “What I am saying is that I don’t understand how the people were made ill, and I stake my reputation on the fact that I would do exactly the same if I was preparing that dinner again tonight.” First knockdown to Moreton.
She came up punching “But there’s no doubt that people were ill. Fifteen were admitted to the hospital and one person died. Don’t you feel responsible for that?” It was a body blow, but I countered.
“There is no doubt that people were ill. But your paper was wrong to report that someone died as a result of the dinner. They didn’t. And what’s more, only seven people were admitted to the hospital, not fifteen.”
“Fifteen, seven-it doesn’t matter exactly how many. It doesn’t change the fact that some people were made so ill they needed hospital treatment.”
“Only as a result of dehydration.” I knew as I said it that it was a mistake.
“Dehydration can kill very quickly,” she said, pouncing. “My great-uncle died from kidney failure brought on by dehydration.” Second knockdown, this one to Harding.
“I’m sorry,” I said, recovering. “But I assure you, no one died from being ill due to my dinner. Perhaps I could sue you for writing that.” Moreton lands a right hook.
“Then why did a source at the hospital say that someone had?”
“It seems that a man did die on Friday night from something that was originally thought to be the food poisoning but turned out not to be. He hadn’t been at the dinner. He died from something else.”
“Are you sure?” she said suspiciously.
“Absolutely,” I said. “You should check with the hospital.”
“They wouldn’t tell me,” she said, “due to their damn privacy policy.”
“Then you’d better ask your unofficial source,” I said. “It was because of that same incorrect and damaging information that the Food Standards Agency shut down this kitchen, in spite of it not being where the dinner was even cooked. You can see for yourself how clean it is.”
“Mmm,” she mused. “I have to admit that it doesn’t seem very fair.” Another round to Moreton.
I pressed home my advantage. “And I was ill too. Do you really think I would have eaten the food myself if I had any thoughts that it might contain toxins?”
“How about if you were ill before you cooked it. It may have been that it was you that contaminated everything and not the ingredients.”
“No, I’ve thought of that,” I said. “I wasn’t ill beforehand, and my symptoms were exactly the s
ame as everyone else’s. I was poisoned in the same way by the same thing. I just don’t know what.” I poured myself another cup of coffee and held out the pot to her. She shook her head. “So will you write a piece for your paper that exonerates my restaurant?” I asked.
“Maybe,” she said. “It depends. Will you give me any interesting new angles on the racetrack bomb blast?”
“Maybe,” I echoed. “If you promise to print it all.”
“I can’t promise anything without it going through the editor,” she said, and smiled. “But since he’s my husband, I ought to be able to swing it.”
Damn, I thought, another possible romantic opportunity had just slid past me. I quite liked the feisty Ms. Harding. What a shame she was a Mrs.
Carl and Gary needed to get into the kitchen to start preparing for lunch, so Mrs. Harding and I went back to the bar for the rest of the interview, but not until I had insisted on having my photograph taken in the kitchen with as much gleaming stainless steel in the background as I could manage.
I gave her the new angles on the bombing that she had hoped for without fully recounting the graphic details of the blood and the gore. I told her a little about MaryLou, and how horrible it was to have discovered afterwards that she had died. I tried to describe the frustration of not knowing how to cope with the situation without actually admitting to having been a sobbing, shaking wreck.
Finally, she looked at her watch, closed her notebook and said she had to dash, since she had things to finish before the newspaper went to press.
“This will not make it into today’s,” she said. “Look for it tomorrow.”
“Fine,” I said. We shook hands, this time without even the slightest hesitation on her part. “Have you ever been here to eat?” I asked her.
“No, never.”
“Then come as my guest. Bring your husband. Anytime you like.”
“Thank you,” she said, smiling, “I’d love to.”
Moreton wins by a knockout.
7
A ngela Milne called first thing on Thursday morning, and I could tell at once that she was more than slightly irritated at having received my message. She told me in no uncertain terms that the testing at the hospital was not wrong or mistaken, and that I should look at myself carefully in the mirror and ask who is fooling who here.