Dick Francis - Dead Heat

“Let’s wait and see how many covers we will be doing,” I said. “Richard can help out in the dining room, as he usually does anyway when we’re busy.” I looked at him and he nodded in agreement. “I will call Robert and find out when he will be coming back. Anything else?”

“I spoke to the Whitworths,” said Richard. “They said to thank you for the offer, but they wanted to have the wake at home. And Beryl, that’s Louisa’s mum, said that she will do the food, if that’s all right.”

“Of course,” I said, and wondered if the Whitworths blamed Louisa’s death on her job. I decided that I had better go visit them. It would be the proper thing to do anyway.

“Do you know yet when her funeral will be?” I asked.

“Friday, at two-thirty, at the crematorium in Cambridge.”

Damn, I thought, I’d have to rearrange my lunch with Mark.

“OK,” I said. “We will be closed all day on Friday. You can all have the day off to go to the funeral, if you wish. I will be there.” I paused. “Is there anything else?” No one said anything. “OK, let’s get to work.”

In the end, we did just four lunches, two separate couples who stopped while passing. None of the six still booked actually turned up, and there were three more calls during lunch to cancel for the evening. That left us just twenty-four from what had been a full dining room, and I seriously doubted whether even those twenty-four would show.

I spent some time during the afternoon calling the clients who had made reservations on Friday to tell them that we would be closed and why. Most said they probably wouldn’t have come anyway, but only two said rather tactlessly that it was because they had heard that you could get poisoned at the Hay Net. At one point, I had dialed a number and it was ringing before I realized that it was the Jennings number I was calling. I was about to put the phone down when Neil answered.

“Hello,” he said slowly. “Neil Jennings here.”

“Hello, Neil,” I said. “It’s Max Moreton from the Hay Net.”

“Ah yes,” he said, “Hello, Max.”

“Neil,” I said slightly awkwardly, “I’m so very sorry about Elizabeth. Such a dreadful thing.”

“Yes,” he said.

There was an uncomfortable pause. I didn’t know quite what to say.

“I saw her at the races on Saturday,” I said, “at lunchtime.”

“Really,” he replied, seemingly rather absentmindedly.

“Yes,” I went on. “I cooked the lunch she attended.”

“Didn’t poison her, did you?” I wasn’t sure if he was making a joke or not.

“No, Neil,” I said, “I didn’t.”

“No,” he said, “I suppose not.”

“Do you have a date for the funeral?” I asked. “I would like to come and pay my respects.”

“Friday,” he said, “at eleven, at Our Lady and St. Etheldreda.”

I hadn’t realized that they were Roman Catholics, but, then, why would I.

“I’ll try and be there,” I said.

“Fine,” he said. There was another difficult little pause, and I was about to say good-bye when he said, “I suppose I should thank you for saving my life.”

“Sorry?” I said.

“If you hadn’t made me so ill on Friday night,” he went on, “I would have been in the box with my Elizabeth on Saturday.”

I couldn’t tell whether he was pleased or not.

W ednesday dawned bright and sunny. As a general rule, I slept with my curtains open and tended to wake with the rising sun. However, for a few weeks each side of midsummer I tried to remember to pull them across my east-facing bedroom window to prevent the early brightness from rousing me too soon from my slumbers. I cursed myself for forgetting, as the sun peeped over the horizon at a quarter past five and forced its rays past my closed eyelids and into my sleeping brain. For the first time in nearly a week, I had slept soundly and uninterrupted. That is, until five-fifteen.

As I had feared, Tuesday evening had been a dismal affair at the restaurant. Just five tables had finally appeared, and one of those was from passing street traffic who couldn’t believe their luck that we had space for them. In fact, we had so much space that they had twenty tables to choose from. It felt like the kitchen was working in slow motion. Perhaps I should have been happy to have had a less tiring time after what had happened over the preceding days, but it seemed all wrong, and I could also feel the tension among my staff. They weren’t happy either. They were worried about the security of their jobs and the future. As I was.

Refreshed by a decent sleep and a vigorous shower, I resolved to do something to rectify the position the restaurant found itself in. I decided that it was no good sitting around just waiting for the business to pick up while the Hay Net slowly died. What was needed was positive action. I thought about walking along Newmarket High Street with sandwich boards on my shoulders, stating that Socrates would be safe at the Hay Net, there being no hemlock on the menu. Instead, I looked up the telephone number of the Cambridge Evening News. Use a thief to catch a thief.

I reckoned that an evening paper would start work early, so I sat on the edge of my bed in a bathrobe and called the news desk at a quarter to eight. I waited for some time until Ms. Harding, the paper’s news editor, finally came on the line.

“Yes?” she said. “Can I help you?”

“Would you be interested in an exclusive interview with Max Moreton?” I asked, deciding not to reveal my identity at this stage in case she wanted to do the interview over the telephone. “About both the food-poisoning episode of last week and the bombing of the racetrack on Saturday?”

“What has Max Moreton to do with the bombing?” asked Ms. Harding.

I told her that he was the chef for the lunch in the bombed boxes and that he had been first on the scene immediately after the bomb went off, well before the fire brigade had arrived. She took the bait.

“Wow!” she said. “Then, yes, please, we would love to have an interview with Mr. Moreton.” An exclusive with a witness to the biggest national news stories of the hour was like manna from heaven for a local newspaper.

“Good,” I said. “How about at the Hay Net restaurant, at ten-thirty this morning?”

“Hasn’t that restaurant been closed down?” she said.

“No,” I replied, “it hasn’t.”

“Right.” She sounded a little unsure. “Will it be safe?”

I stifled my irritation and assured her it would.

“And one more thing,” I said. “Don’t forget to bring a photographer.”

“Why do I need a photographer?” she asked.

I thought about saying to her: so she could rephotograph the restaurant sign, this time with OPEN FOR WONDERFUL FOOD stuck across it. Instead, I said, “I am sure that Mr. Moreton would be happy for you to photograph his injuries from the bombing.”

“Oh,” she said. “OK. Tell him someone will be at his restaurant at ten-thirty.”

“But won’t it be you?” I asked.

“No, I doubt it,” she said. “I’ll send one of the reporting staff.”

“I do think that Mr. Moreton would only be interested in speaking with the news editor,” I said. “In fact, I’m pretty sure that he would only speak to the most important person in the newsroom.”

“Oh,” she said again, “do you think so? Well, I might just be able to do this one myself.” Flattery, I thought, could get you everywhere. “OK,” she said decisively. “Tell Mr. Moreton I will be there myself at ten-thirty.”

I promised her that I would do just that, and hung up, smiling.

Next, I called Mark. I knew he was always at his desk by seven-thirty each morning, and sometimes he was still there at eleven at night. To my knowledge, he survived on a maximum of six hours’ sleep a night. All his waking hours he devoted to making money, and I was under no illusions that his plan to bring me to London would include him getting even richer. I was not saying that I wouldn’t get richer too, just that I knew that Mark wouldn’t be contemplating the move out of feelings of altruism or philanthropy. He had pound and dollar signs in his eyes, and he would have already calculated the potential profit in his head.