Dick Francis - Dead Heat

“Good,” he said again. “One o’clock, in the bar.”

“Fine,” I repeated, and he hung up.

I sat there for a while, thinking about what the future might bring. There was no doubt that the Hay Net was becoming very well known in the area and, at least until Friday night, had been generally well respected. Indeed, so popular had we become that securing a table for dinner was a challenge and needed considerable forward planning, especially weekends. In the past year, I had been featured in a few magazines, and the previous autumn we had entertained a TV crew from the BBC. The Hay Net was busy, comfortable and fun. Maybe it had become rather too easy, but I loved being part of the world of racing, the world in which I had been brought up. I liked racing people and they seemed to like me. I was enjoying life.

Was I ready to give up this provincial coziness to move to the cutthroat world of restaurants in the metropolis? Could I afford to walk away from this success and pit myself against the very best chefs in London? Could I afford not to?

THE NIGHT WAS slightly less disturbed than the previous one, and with a few new variations of the dream. It was mostly MaryLou pushing the gurney, and occasionally she became a legless skeleton as she pushed. More than once, it was Louisa doing the pushing, and she still had her legs. Thankfully, on these occasions the dream ended peacefully rather than with the endless fall and racing heart. Overall, I slept for more hours than I was awake, and I was reasonably refreshed by the time my alarm clock noisily roused me at a quarter to eight.

I lay in bed for a while, thinking about what Mark had said the previous afternoon. The prospect of joining the restaurant big boys was, at once, hugely exciting and incredibly frightening. But what an opportunity!

I was brought back to earth by the ringing of my telephone on the bedside table.

“Hello,” I said.

“Max, is that you?” said a female voice. “It’s Suzanne Miller here.”

Suzanne Miller, the managing director of the racetrack catering company.

“Hi, Suzanne,” I said. “What can I do for you so early?” I looked at my clock. It was twenty-five to nine.

“Yes, sorry to call you at home,” she said, “but I think we might have a problem.”

“How so?”

“It’s to do with last Friday,” she said. I wasn’t surprised. “It seems that some people who were at the gala dinner were ill afterwards.”

“Were they?” I said in a surprised tone. “How about you and Tony?” Tony was her husband, and they had both been at the event.

“No, we were fine,” she said. “It was a lovely evening. But I always find these big evenings nerve-racking. I get so wound up, in case anything goes wrong.”

And it wasn’t even her firm doing the cooking, I thought, although they had been responsible for the guest list and all the other arrangements.

“So what’s the problem?” I asked innocently.

“I’ve had a letter this morning. It says”-I heard paper being rustled-“‘Dear Madam, This letter is to give you advance warning of legal proceedings that will be initiated by our client against your company to recover damages for distress and loss of earnings as a result of the poisoning of our client at a dinner organized by your company at Newmarket racetrack on Friday, May 4.’ ”

“And who is their client?” I asked.

“It says ‘Ref: Miss Caroline Aston,’ at the top.”

“Was she a guest on Friday?” I asked.

“She’s not on the guest list, but so many of them weren’t named. You know what it’s like, Mr. So-and-So and guest. Could be anyone.”

“You said people. Who else?”

“Apparently, quite a few,” she said. “I mentioned this to my secretary just now when I opened it and she says that lots of people were ill on Friday night. Her husband is a doctor, and she says he had to see quite a few of his patients. And she said there was an article in the newspaper about it yesterday. What shall we do?”

“Nothing,” I said. “At least, nothing yet. If anyone asks, tell them you’re looking into it.” I paused. “Out of interest, what did you and Tony have to eat on Friday night?”

“I can’t remember,” said Suzanne. “What with all this bomb business, I can’t think.”

“It is dreadful, isn’t it?” I said.

“Dreadful,” she agreed. “And I am so sorry to hear about your waitress.”

“Thank you. Yes, it has been an awful blow to my staff. Louisa was much loved by them all.”

“Seems that a bit of food poisoning is irrelevant, really,” she said.

I agreed, and silently hoped that the episode would be soon forgotten. Who was it who tried to hide bad news behind a much bigger story? It had cost them their job.

“So what shall I do about this letter?” Suzanne asked.

“Could you make a copy and send it to me?” I said. “Then, if I were you, I’d just wait to hear from them again. Maybe they’re just fishing for a reaction and will forget about it when they don’t get one.” Or maybe that was just my wishful thinking.

“I think I ought to consult higher,” she said. The local racetrack catering company was just part of a national group, and I suspected that Suzanne was not sure enough of her position to simply sit on the letter. She would want the parent company’s lawyers to see it. I couldn’t blame her. I’d have done the same in her position.

“OK,” I said, “but could you send me a copy of it first.”

“I will,” she said slowly, as if thinking, “but I will send it to you with a covering note officially informing you of the letter, as the chef at the event. And I will also send a copy of that covering note to my head office.”

Why did I suddenly get the feeling that I was being distanced here by Suzanne? Was I the one that the catering company was preparing to hang out to dry? Probably. After all, business is business.

“Fine,” I said. “And if you can remember what you ate on Friday, let me know that too, will you?”

“Tony is a vegetarian,” she said, “so he would have eaten whatever you had for them.”

“And you?” I asked. “Would you have eaten the vegetarian dish?”

“What was it?” she asked.

“Broccoli, cheese and pasta bake.”

“I can’t stand broccoli, so I doubt it. Let me think.” There was a short pause. “I think I had chicken. But I was so nervous about the evening, I hardly ate anything at all. In fact, I remember being so hungry when I got home I had to make myself a cheese sandwich before I went to bed.”

Not really very helpful.

“Why do you want to know?” she asked.

“Just in case it was some of the food at the dinner that made people ill,” I said. “Helps to eliminate things, that’s all.” Time, I thought, to change the subject. “Were all your staff all right on Saturday?”

“Oh yes, thank you,” she said. “Some of them were pretty shocked, though, and one of my elderly ladies was admitted to the hospital with chest pains after having been told by a fireman to run down four flights of stairs. But she was all right after a while. How about you? How did you get out?”

We spent some time telling our respective war stories. Suzanne had been in her office on the far side of the weighing room and she hadn’t even realized there had been a bomb until she heard the fire engines arrive with their sirens, but it didn’t seem to stop her from having a lengthy account of her actions thereafter.

“I’m sorry, Suzanne,” I said during a pause in the flow, “I must get on.”

“Oh sorry,” she said. “Once I start, I never stop, do I?”

No, I thought. But at least we had moved away from talking about food poisoning.

“Speak with you soon,” I said. “Bye, now.” I hung up.