by Dick Francis
I called Suzanne Miller on her cell.
“Hi, Suzanne,” I said, “Max Moreton here. Sorry to disturb you on a Saturday afternoon. Do you have a minute?”
“Fire away,” she said. “I’m in my office anyway. We’ve had a wedding here today, so I’m still working.”
“I didn’t know you had weddings at the racetrack,” I said.
“Oh yes,” she said. “Most Saturdays during the summer, when there’s no racing, of course. We use the Hong Kong Suite for the ceremony and then, often, the Champions Gallery restaurant for the reception. It works quite well.”
“You live and learn,” I said.
“How can I help you?” she asked.
“I wonder if I could have a copy of the guest list from last Friday night?”
“Sure,” she said, “no problem. I have it on my computer. I’ll e-mail it to you now.”
“Thanks,” I said. “There is another thing. Do you have a list of the names of all the temporary staff that you found through the agency?”
“Not their names,” she said. “The agency just gave me the number that would be there, not their names.”
“But, you remember, some of them failed to turn up, and we had to draft in a few of your own staff at the last minute,” I said. “Do you, by chance, have the names of those that didn’t come, and also the names of your staff that we drafted in?”
“I’ll e-mail the agency’s phone number and you can ask them directly,” she said. “Why do you need to know the names of my staff?”
How much should I tell her? She had been quick to hang me out to dry when the letter from Caroline Aston had first appeared on her desk. Would she now simply think I was looking for a scapegoat?
“I have reason to believe that something may have been put into the dinner that shouldn’t have been there,” I said, “and I am trying to determine the names of everyone who was there and had access to the food so I can find out who was responsible.”
There was a long pause at the other end of the line.
“Are you saying that you think my staff are to blame for making people ill?” Suzanne said rather frostily.
“No,” I replied hastily. “I’m not saying that, and I don’t think it. Your staff were all last-minute replacements, so it is impossible for them to be the ones.” I thought it most unlikely that anyone could buy and prepare a large number of kidney beans on such short notice. “I would just like their names so that I can eliminate them from my inquiry.” I was beginning to sound like a policeman.
“I will look it up,” she said. “But I will have to ask them first if they are happy for you to have their names.”
“That’s fine by me,” I said.
“Do you really think that the food was poisoned on purpose?”
“Suzanne,” I said, “I know it sounds crazy, but I have absolutely no other explanation. Hospital tests have shown beyond doubt that there was stuff in that dinner that I didn’t put in there, so what am I to think?”
“What stuff?” she asked.
“I’d rather not say,” I said. I don’t know why I thought it might be useful to keep some of the facts secret. Perhaps I had hopes of catching out the culprit by him saying “kidney beans” when I hadn’t mentioned it. I was sure that I had once read a detective novel when that sort of thing had happened and the policeman had instantly solved the case.
“All sounds very cloak-and-dagger to me,” she said. “And a bit far-fetched as well, if you ask me. Why would anyone want to poison so many people anyway?”
“I don’t know why,” I said. “Why do so many people have the urge to break things? Perhaps it was just done for kicks. There’s no logic to many things.”
“Are the police looking for whoever did it?” she asked.
“Not that I’m aware of,” I said. “I think the police are preoccupied looking for last Saturday’s bomber.”
“You’re probably right,” she said. “They’re certainly still here at the racetrack, and we nearly had to cancel today’s wedding because of them, but, thankfully, we don’t use the Head On Grandstand. That’s now going to be closed for months. But surely you should inform the police if you have suspicions about the dinner?”
“Maybe I will,” I said, although privately I thought they would believe the same as Angela Milne, that I had simply served undercooked kidney beans and was not prepared to admit it.
“What else do you intend to do?” she asked.
“Probably nothing,” I said. “A bit of food poisoning that didn’t do any permanent harm to anyone is not really important compared to the bombing.” And, I thought, it might be better for my reputation, and for the restaurant, if I were to let the incident slowly fade from people’s memory rather than keep stirring it up.
“Let me know if I can be of any help,” said Suzanne.
“Thanks, I will,” I said. “And don’t forget the guest list and the agency information.”
“On their way to you right now.” I could hear her tapping away on a keyboard. “Gone,” she said. “Should be with you any moment.”
“Brilliant. Thanks.” We hung up, and I turned to my computer.
YOU’VE GOT MAIL, it told me, and, sure enough, with a couple of clicks, the guest list from the gala dinner appeared before my eyes. How did we function before e-mail?
I scanned through the list of names, but I didn’t actually know what I was looking for, or why, so I printed it out and left it lying on my pile of stuff to be dealt with. I logged on to the Internet instead.
I made a search for RPO and soon I was delving into the details of concerts and operas of the Royal Philharmonic. Sure enough, the concert program at the Royal Festival Hall was widely advertised, and, if I wished, I could purchase a ticket with just a couple of clicks of my computer mouse. I noticed that tonight, and for most of the next week, the orchestra was performing the works of Sibelius and Elgar at Carnegie Hall in New York City. Lucky Caroline Aston, I thought. I had been to New York in the springtime the previous year and had loved every moment.
I looked at Ms. Aston’s telephone number on the notepad where I had written it on Wednesday morning when Bernard Sims had called. If she was in New York, she wouldn’t be at home now. Three times I punched her number into my phone without actually pushing the button for the final digit. I wondered if there might be a voice message, so I could hear what she sounded like. The fourth time, I completed the number and let it ring twice before I lost my nerve and hung up. Maybe she didn’t live alone and someone would be there to answer after all.
I played with the phone for a while longer and then called the number again. Someone answered after a single ring.
“Hello,” said a female voice.
Oops, I thought, no recorded voice message. A real live speaking person.
“Is this Caroline Aston?” I asked, confident in the knowledge that she was, in fact, three thousand miles away.
“Yes,” she replied. “Can I help you?”
“Er,” I said, sounding like an idiot, “would you like to buy some double glazing?”
“No thank you,” she said. “Good-bye!” She hung up.
Stupid, I thought, as I sat there with my heart thumping in my chest. Really stupid. I put the phone down and it rang immediately.
“Hello,” I said.
“Would you like to buy some double glazing?”
“Excuse me?” I said.
“See. Why do you think I would want to buy double glazing from someone I don’t know who rings me up out of the blue? You don’t like it and neither do I.”
I didn’t know what to say. “I’m sorry.” It sounded ridiculous even to me.
“Who are you anyway?” she said. “You’re not very good at selling.”
“How did you get my number?” I asked.
“Caller ID,” she said. “I didn’t think you people would have a number that was visible. More important, how did you get my number?”
I could hardly tell her the truth, b
ut whatever else I said now was going to get me into deeper trouble. I decided to retreat gracefully.
“Look, I’m sorry, but I have to go now. Good-bye.” I hung up quickly. My hands were sweating. Really, really stupid!
I went out into the kitchen and found Carl trying to explain rather sarcastically to one of the kitchen porters that it was indeed necessary for him to get all the old food off the frying pans when washing up.
In spite of the name, kitchen porters rarely carry things. They mostly spend their lives up to their elbows in hot water washing up the pots and pans. We had two of them at the Hay Net. At least, that was the plan. But all too often a kitchen porter would be there one minute and gone the next. No explanation, no good-bye, just gone, never to return. The current incumbents of the posts included a man in his fifties whose father had come to England from Poland in 1940 to fight with the RAF against the Nazis. He had unpronounceable Polish names, with lots of ps and zs, but he spoke with a broad Essex accent, and was always “tinking.” “I tink I’ll go hame na,” he’d say. Or, “I tink I’ll ’ave a cap o’ tea.” He’d been with us for nearly a year, much longer than the norm, but he mostly kept himself to himself and communicated rarely with the other staff.
The other porter was called Jacek (pronounced Ya-check), and he was now in his fourth week and seemingly not very good at scrubbing the frying pans. He was more typical of those now sent to us by the local job center, in his mid to late twenties, and from one of the newer member countries of the European Union. He knew very little English, but he did manage to ask for my help sending money every week to his wife and baby daughter, who were still in the homeland. He seemed quite happy with life, always smiling and singing to himself, and he had been a positive influence on kitchen morale over the previous week. Now he stood in front of Carl and bowed his head, as if asking for forgiveness. Jacek nodded a lot, and I wondered how much of Carl’s tirade he was actually understanding. I was certain that he was not appreciating the sarcasm. I felt quite sorry for him, so far from home, in a strange environment and separated from his family.
I caught Carl’s attention. That’s enough, I mouthed to him. Jacek was hardworking, and I didn’t really want to lose him at the moment, not least because the current pair appeared to get on quite well together and neither of them was a heavy drinker, generally the bane of all kitchen porters.
Carl stopped almost in midsentence and dismissed the miscreant with a brief wave of his hand. Jacek passed me on the way back to his duties at the scullery sinks, and I smiled at him. He winked at me and smiled back. There was more to this kitchen porter, I thought, than meets the eye.
SATURDAY NIGHT HAD the feel of the Hay Net back in business. Sure, we were only serving at about two-thirds capacity, but the bar and the dining room were humming with excitement, and the horrors of the previous week were forgotten, albeit temporarily.
George and Emma Kealy and their two guests arrived promptly at eight-thirty, sat at their usual table and seemed to enjoy themselves, though quietly. Nothing was mentioned about my discussion with George at the funeral, but, as they were leaving, Emma turned to me and said, “See you next week, then, as usual.”
“For six?” I asked.
“Book for six,” she said. “I’ll let you know on Friday.”
“Fine,” I said, smiling at her.
“Have you found out yet what made everyone ill last week?” she asked. George looked horrified that his wife had been so tactless as to mention it.
“Not quite,” I said. “It appears that the dinner may have been contaminated.”
“What with?” asked Emma.
“I’m not quite sure yet,” I said. I wondered if it was simply embarrassment that was preventing me from mentioning anything about undercooked kidney beans. “I’m still trying to work out how something was put into the food.”
“You are surely not saying it was done on purpose,” she said.
“That is my inescapable conclusion,” I said.
“Sounds a bit fanciful to me,” said George.
“Maybe to you,” I said, “but what else can I think? Just suppose, George, you had a horse that ran like the wind on the gallops and then was more like a cart horse when you sent it out to run in a race, and it subsequently tested positive for dope. If you absolutely knew you hadn’t personally given it any substance to slow it down, then you would conclude that someone else must have done so. The same here. I absolutely know I didn’t put anything in that dinner to make people ill, but tests have shown that there was a food-poisoning agent present. So someone else must have put it there. And that, I believe, only could have been done on purpose. And, I can assure you, I intend to find out who was responsible.”
I thought that I probably shouldn’t be telling them quite so much, but they were supporting me when others were deserting, so maybe I owed them.
“Well, it did us a big favor anyway,” said Emma.
“How so?” I asked.
“We were invited to that lunch where the bomb went off,” she said. “We didn’t go only because we had both had such a bad night. How lucky was that! Although, I must admit, on the Saturday morning I was bloody angry with you.” She poked me in the chest with her finger. “I had been so looking forward to that day at the Guineas. Anyway, it turned out to be a blessing in the end.” She smiled at me. “So I forgive you.”
I smiled back and put a hand on her arm. “That’s all right, then,” I said. I always responded positively when flirted with by female customers who were old enough to be my mother. It was good for business.
“Come on, Emma,” said George impatiently, “we must go. Peter and Tanya are waiting.” He waved his hand towards their guests, who were standing patiently by the front door.
“All right, George,” she replied, irritated. “I’m coming.” She stretched up her five-foot-three frame to my six feet for a kiss, and, leaning forward, I duly obliged. “Night-night,” she said. “It’s been a lovely evening.”
“Thank you for coming,” I said, meaning it.
“And you can poison us anytime you like if it saves our lives.” She smiled.
“Thanks,” I said, trying to think of an appropriate response.
George was hopping from one foot to the other. “Come on, my darling,” he said with exasperation. Emma complied with a sigh. I watched through the window as the four of them got into and drove away in a new, top-of-the-line Mercedes.
That made three people that I now knew of who should have been in the bombed box but weren’t because they had been made ill by the dinner. Poor old Neil Jennings had wished he had been there with Elizabeth, but the Kealys certainly didn’t. They were perversely grateful for having been poisoned. Perhaps this particular dark cloud had a silver lining after all.
THE FEWER NUMBER in the restaurant had tended to make the service somewhat quicker than usual, and the last few diners departed just before eleven. On some Saturday nights, we could be still pouring ports and brandies after midnight, and, once or twice, it had been after one in the morning before I had cajoled the stragglers out through the front door and into the night.
I sat at my desk in the office and silently hoped that the worst was over. If I could nip the lawsuit in the bud, and plead ignorance and forgiveness over the poison kidney beans, then maybe normality would return to the Hay Net, at least for a few months, until I was ready to announce a move to the big city. How wrong I could be.
I looked at my watch. Eleven-fifteen. Time to go home, I thought. A nice early night for a change.
The telephone rang at my elbow.
“Hello,” I said into the receiver. “Hay Net restaurant.”
There was just silence at the other end.
“Hello,” I said again. “The Hay Net restaurant. Can I help you?”
“Why did you tell me you were selling double glazing?”
“Er.” I sat there, not knowing quite what to say.
“Well?” she said. “I’m waiting.”
“I don’t know why,” I mumbled.
“Are you a bloody idiot or something?”
Yes, I probably was. “No,” I said. “Can I please explain?”
“I’m waiting,” she said again.
“Not here, not now, not on the telephone,” I said. “Perhaps we could meet?”
“How did you get my number?” she demanded.
“Directory inquiries,” I said.
“I’m ex-directory.”
“Oh. I don’t remember,” I said. “Maybe it was through the orchestra.”
“They only have my cell number.”
I was getting into deeper water, and quickly.
“Look,” I said, “if we can meet I will 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 you 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 nine 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 of a fellow-professional sort 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 took care of 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.