by Dick Francis
“I would have a place like this,” I said. “Traditional yet modern.”
“It can’t be both,” said Mark.
“Of course it can,” I said. “This restaurant has traditional values, with white tablecloths, good service, fine food and wine, and a degree of personal privacy for the diners. Yet the décor is modern in appearance, and the food has an innovative nature, with Mediterranean and Asian influences. In Newmarket, my dining room is purposely more like one you might find in a private house, and my food is very good but less imaginative than I would attempt here. It is not that my clients are less sophisticated than London folk. They’re not. It’s just that their choice of restaurant is fewer, and many come to eat at the Hay Net often, some every week. On that regular basis, they need to be comfortable rather than challenged, and they want their food predictable rather than experimental.”
“Doesn’t everyone?” he said. “I’m having cod. Surely that’s predictable.”
“Wait and see,” I replied, laughing. “I bet you look at it twice and ask yourself if it’s what you ordered. It won’t be a slab of fish in batter with chips that you would get wrapped in newspaper at the local chippie. It comes with a cassoulet, which is a rich bean stew, usually with white haricots, and a purée of Jerusalem artichoke. Would you know what a Jerusalem artichoke looks like? And what it tastes of?”
“Hasn’t it got spiky leaves?” he said. “That you suck?”
“That’s a globe artichoke,” I said. “A Jerusalem artichoke is a type of sunflower, and you eat the roots, which are tubers, like potatoes.”
“From Jerusalem, I assume.”
“Actually, no.” I laughed again. “Don’t ask why it’s called the Jerusalem artichoke. I don’t know. But it definitely has nothing to do with Jerusalem the city.”
“Like the hymn,” said Mark. “You know, ‘did those feet’ and all that. Nothing to do with the city. Jerusalem there means ‘heaven.’ Perhaps the artichokes taste like heaven too.”
“More like a radish,” I said. “And they tend to make you fart.”
“Good,” said Mark, laughing. “I might need my own train carriage home.”
Now, I decided, was the moment.
“Mark,” I said seriously, “I will have absolute discretion in any new restaurant, won’t I? Just like at the Hay Net?”
He sat and looked at me. I feared for a moment that I had misjudged things.
“Max,” he said, finally, “how often have I asked you how to sell a mobile phone?”
“Never.”
“Exactly. Then why would you ask me how to run a restaurant?”
“But you do eat in restaurants,” I said.
“And you use a cell phone,” he countered.
“Fine,” I said. “I promise I won’t discuss cell phones with you if you promise not to discuss restaurants with me.”
He sat in silence and smiled at me. Had I really outflanked the great Mark Winsome?
“Can I have a veto?” he asked at length.
“On what?” I asked rather belligerently.
“Venue.”
What could I say? If he didn’t like the venue, he wouldn’t sign a contract for a lease. He had a veto on the venue anyway.
“If you provide the finance, then you get a veto,” I said. “If you don’t, then you don’t.”
“OK,” he said. “Then I want to provide the finance. Same terms as before?”
“No,” I said. “I want more than fifty percent of the profit.”
“Isn’t that a bit greedy?” he said.
“I want to be able to empower my staff with participation in profit.”
“How much?”
“That’s up to me,” I said. “You get forty percent and I get sixty percent and then I decide, at my sole discretion, to give as much or as little of that as I want as bonuses to my staff.”
“Do you get a salary?”
“No,” I said. “Same as now. But I get sixty instead of fifty percent of the profit.”
“How about during setting up? Last time, you took a salary from my investment for the first eighteen months.”
“But I paid it back,” I pointed out. “This time, I won’t need it. I have savings, and I intend to back myself with it as far as my salary is concerned.”
“Anything else?” Mark asked.
“Yes,” I said. “Ten years is too long. Five years. Then I get the chance to buy you out at a fair price.”
“How do you define ‘fair price’?”
“I can match the best offer, public or private, made by an independent third party.”
“On what terms?”
“The cost of the lease plus forty percent of their valuation of the business.”
“Fifty,” he said.
“No, forty of the business value and one hundred percent of the lease.”
“How about if I want to buy you out?” he asked.
“It would cost you sixty percent of the business value, and I could walk away.” I wondered how much the value of the business might change if the chef walked away. But, then again, I could think of no circumstances in which he would buy me out.
Mark sat back in his chair and looked at me. “You drive a damn hard bargain.”
“Why not?” I said. “I have to do all the work. All you have to do is sign a big check and then sit on your arse and wait for the money to flood in.” At least, I hoped it would flood in.
“Do you know how many restaurants in London close within a year with huge losses?” he said. “I’m taking quite a risk with my money.”
“So?” I said. “You’ve got plenty of it. I’m gambling with my reputation.”
“For what it’s now worth,” he said, and laughed.
“You said to rise above it and have faith in myself. Well, I have. We won’t close in a year, not even in two.”
He looked at me with his head to one side, as if thinking. He suddenly leaned forward in his chair. “OK, you’re on,” he said, and stretched out his hand.
“Just like that?” I said. “We haven’t even found a place and we haven’t started to draw up a budget.”
“I thought you said that was your job. I just write the check, remember?”
“How big a check?” I asked him.
“As big as you need,” he said, again offering his hand.
“Fine,” I said. “You’re on too.”
I shook his hand warmly, and we smiled at each other. I liked Mark a lot. Even though his lawyers would have to draw up the contract, his word was his bond and mine was mine. The deal was done.
I COULD HARDLY sit still for the rest of our dinner, such was my excitement. Mark laughed when his cod arrived. I had been absolutely right.
The chef came out of the kitchen and joined the two of us for a glass of port at the end of the evening. The previous year, he and I had been the judges of a cooking contest on afternoon daytime television and we now enjoyed catching up on our friendship.
“How’s that place of yours doing out in the sticks?” he asked.
“Very well,” I said, hoping he didn’t have copies of the Cambridge Evening News delivered daily to his door. I also wondered if he would be quite so friendly if he knew that Mark and I had been sitting in his restaurant planning our move into his territory. “How’s business here?” I asked by way of conversation.
“Oh, the same,” he said without actually explaining what “the same” meant.
The conversation progressed for a while in a similar, noncommittal and vague manner, neither of us wanting to pass on our professional judgment to the other. The world of haute cuisine could be as secret as any government intelligence service.
The need to catch the last train home finally broke up the dinner at eleven o’clock, and Mark and I walked in easy companionship along the Thames embankment towards Waterloo station. We strolled past some of the lively pubs, bistros and pizza parlors that had transformed the south bank. Late on this Friday evening, loud music and raucous lau
ghter spilled out across the cobblestones towards the river.
“Where and when will you start looking for a venue?” asked Mark.
“I don’t know, and as soon as possible,” I said, smiling in the dark. “I suppose I will contact some commercial real estate agents to see what’s available.”
“You will keep me informed?” he said.
“Of course.” We walked past an advertising board. A poster read RPO AT THE RFH in big bold black letters on a white background. Thanks to Bernard Sims, I knew what RPO stood for-the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. “What’s the RFH?” I asked Mark.
“What?” he said.
“What’s the RFH?” I repeated, pointing at the poster.
“Royal Festival Hall,” he said. “Why?”
“No reason. Just wondered.” I looked closely at the poster. The RPO, with, I presumed, Caroline Aston playing the viola, was due to appear next month at the Royal Festival Hall. Perhaps I would go and listen.
Mark and I said our good-byes outside the National Theatre, and he rushed off to get his lonely ride home while I decided to walk across the Golden Jubilee footbridge to the Embankment tube station, north of the river. Halfway across, I briefly leaned on the bridge rail and looked eastwards towards the tall city buildings, many of them with all their windows bright in the night sky.
Among the high-rises, and dimly lit by comparison, I could see the majestic dome of St. Paul’s. My history master at school had loved that building with a passion, and he had drummed some of its facts into the heads of his pupils. I recalled that it had been built to replace the previous cathedral that had been destroyed by the Great Fire of London in 1666. Constructed in just thirty-five years, it had, amazingly, remained the tallest building in London for more than a quarter of a millennium, right up until the glass-and-concrete towers of the nineteen sixties.
As I stood there, I wondered whether Sir Christopher Wren had ever believed that he had embarked on a project that was beyond him. Was I now embarking on a project that was beyond me?
I raised an imaginary glass towards his great achievement and made a silent toast: Sir Christopher, you managed it. And I can too.
8
K idney beans!”
“Yes, kidney beans, probably red kidney beans. According to the tests done on those customers taken to the hospital, there was something called phytohemagglutinin in the dinner and that’s what made everyone ill. It’s also known as ‘kidney bean lectin.’”
It was late Saturday afternoon, and I was having a meeting with Carl and Gary in my office prior to us opening for dinner. We didn’t do lunches on Saturday. Too many of my clientele were away at the races.
“But there weren’t any kidney beans in that dinner,” said Carl.
“That’s what I thought,” I said. “But, apparently, there were samples taken from sixteen different individuals, and this stuff was in all of them.”
Gary and Carl looked at each other. “Beats me,” said Gary.
“Where in the dinner could they have been?” asked Carl.
“That,” I said, “is what I intend to find out. And then I’ll find out who put them there.”
“Surely you’re not saying that someone poisoned everyone on purpose?” said Carl.
“What else can I think?” I replied. “Consider the facts. Loads of those who ate the dinner were ill, including me. Tests on sixteen of them show this phyto stuff in them. The stuff made them ill, and it only comes from kidney beans. Doesn’t take a genius to conclude that there must have been kidney beans in the dinner. I know I didn’t put any in the dinner. So, QED, someone else must have, and it must have been done on purpose to make people ill.”
“But why?” said Gary.
“I don’t know.” I was exasperated. “But it had to be done by someone who had access to the kitchen.”
“Loads of people had access to the kitchen,” said Carl. “We didn’t exactly have a guard on duty. There were all the kitchen staff from the agency, and all the waiters too.”
“And there were others from the racetrack caterers there as well,” I said. “But, believe me, I intend to find out who it was.”
“But wouldn’t you see red kidney beans in anything?” said Gary.
“I thought that myself,” I said. “But you wouldn’t if they were chopped up very finely.”
“How many beans would you need to poison over two hundred people?” said Carl. “Surely there would be so many it would affect the taste?”
“I looked it up on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration Web site on the Internet,” I said. “It says there that four or five raw beans are enough to make people quite ill. It also says that if the beans are heated to not more than eighty degrees centigrade, they are five times as poisonous as the raw ones. That means just a single bean per person could be enough. And it also says that the attack rate is one hundred percent-that means everyone who ate the beans would be ill.”
“But where were they?” said Gary.
“I think they must have been put in the sauce,” I said. No one, I thought, would taste a single partially cooked kidney bean, especially if it was finely chopped up and mixed with the chanterelle mushrooms, the truffles and the shallots, not to mention the white wine, the brandy, the garlic and the cream.
“But you have to reduce the wine in that sauce,” said Carl. What he meant by “reduce” was that the sauce was boiled to remove some of the excess liquid by evaporation. “Surely that would render the beans harmless even if they were in there?”
“They had to have been added after the reduction,” I said. “That sauce had cream in it to add richness. It wasn’t boiled after the cream was added.” To prevent it curdling in the acidity of the wine.
I remembered back to the dinner. In order to produce enough, I had used four large aluminum cooking pots to produce the sauce, similar to domestic kitchen saucepans only bigger, with handles on each side. The ones that Stress-Free Catering had provided would each hold about six liters of liquid, if full. I had estimated that we would require fifty milliliters of sauce per person. So for two hundred and fifty servings, I had needed twelve and a half liters of sauce. I had made it in four separate batches, just in case a batch curdled. In the end, all four batches had been fine, and there had been plenty left over. I remembered it well, as I loved the sauce and had poured extra on my own dinner. Just my bad luck.
The four half-full pots had stood in the serving area, where we had made up the dinners on the plates with the sliced stuffed chicken breasts, the roasted new potatoes, the snow peas and the sauce, with a sprig of parsley on the potatoes to garnish. The pots hadn’t been directly heated on a range for some minutes, as I had judged that they were hot enough and would maintain their temperature throughout the serving if simply placed on top of the hot stainless steel servers. I had told one of the temporary kitchen staff to stir the sauce to prevent it from separating. He had been of little use for anything else, and I remembered him because it had taken me some time to explain what was required because he didn’t understand English very well. I had assumed at the time that he was Polish or Czech, or from some other eastern European country, as so many staff in the catering business seem to be these days.
I reckoned there had been about a ten-minute window when the beans could have been added to the sauce between being moved from the kitchen and the service. At that time, I mostly had been around the corner in the kitchen or out in the dining area. Either way, I had been out of sight of the pots during that vital time. Due to the positioning between the kitchen and the dining room, almost any of the staff that night could have had the chance to add something to the pots. But it had to have been someone who knew the place, and surely my stirrer or someone else would have seen them. It still made little sense to me.
“So what do you suggest we do?” said Gary.
“Nothing we can do,” I said, “except carry on as before. We have sixty-five booked for dinner, and, so far, no one has called today to cancel.”
The telephone on my desk rang. Why didn’t I keep my stupid mouth shut, I thought, as I lifted the receiver.
“Hello,” I said. “Hay Net restaurant.”
“Max? Is that you?” said a female voice.
“Certainly is,” I said.
“Good. This is Emma Kealy. I understand you saw George at Elizabeth’s funeral yesterday.”
“Yes,” I said, “I did. I’m so sorry about Elizabeth.”
“Yes,” she said. “Thank you. A dreadful thing, especially for poor Neil.” She paused for a moment. “But life has to go on for the rest of us.”
“How can I help?” I asked her.
“Well, George tells me that he canceled our booking for tonight.”
“Yes, he did. He said to leave it for a while.”
“Stupid old fool,” she said. “We still have people staying tonight, and there’s no food in the house. What does he think I’m going to do? Go to the Raj of India?” The Raj of India was a seedy take-out curry place on Palace Street. It would never have crossed my mind that Emma Kealy would have even known about it, let alone thought of going there. “Can you fit four of us in for tonight at eight-thirty?” she said imploringly. “I will perfectly understand if we can’t have our usual table.”
“Of course we can fit you in,” I said. “Look forward to seeing you.”
“Great. See you later, then.” I could hear the relief in her voice. I wondered how much of a row had gone on between her and George.
I put the phone down and looked at Gary and Carl. “Four more bookings for tonight,” I said, smiling. Thank goodness for the Kealys.
The other two went into the kitchen to start preparing for dinner while I sat at my desk to complete some paperwork. I shuffled the stack of already-tidy papers, checking that there were no outstanding bills that had to be paid immediately. I came across the delivery note from Leigh Foods, the supplier I had used for the gala dinner. I looked through the ingredients again, as if I could have missed the kidney beans before. They weren’t there. Of course they weren’t there. I would swear on my father’s grave that I had not put any damn kidney beans in that dinner.