a day from Sunday to Friday, and dinner for up to a hundred every night. At least that’s what we’d served last week, pre-poisoning.
‘I wonder how many of the other staff are affected,’ said Carl, bringing me back to the present. My restaurant had been closed for the evening and all eleven of my regular employees had been working the dinner at the racecourse, together with twenty or so casuals who had assisted in the kitchen and with the waiting at table. All the staff had eaten the same food as served at the function, while the guests were listening to the speeches.
‘I’ve arranged five to do the job at the racecourse today,’ I said. The thought of having to prepare lunch for forty of the sponsor’s guests sent fresh waves of nausea through my stomach and caused a reappearance of the sweat on my brow.
I was due to provide a three-course meal in two of the large glass-fronted private boxes in the grandstand. Delafield Industries Inc., an American tractor-manufacturing multinational from Wisconsin, were the new sponsors of the first classic race of the year, and they had offered me more money than I could refuse to provide their guests with fresh steamed English asparagus with melted butter, followed by traditional British steak and kidney pie, with a summer pudding for dessert. Thankfully, I had talked them out of fish and chips with mushy peas. MaryLou Fordham, the company marketing executive who had secured my services, was determined that the guests from ‘back home’ in Wisconsin should experience the ‘real’ England. She had been deaf to my suggestions that pâté de foie gras with brioche followed by a salmon meunière might be more appropriate.
‘I’ll tell you right now,’ MaryLou had declared. ‘We don’t want any of that French stuff. We want English food only.’ I had sarcastically asked if she wanted me to serve warm beer rather than fine French wines but she hadn’t understood my little joke. In the end, we had agreed on an Australian white and a Californian red. The whole meal had ‘boredom’ written all over it but they were paying, and paying very well. Delafield tractors and combine harvesters, it seemed, were all the rage in the American Midwest and they were now trying hard to grab a share of the English market. Someone had told them that Suffolk was the prairie country of the UK, so here they were. That the ‘Delafield Harvester 2000 Guineas’ didn’t have quite the right ring to it didn’t seem to worry them one bit.
As things stood at the moment they would be lucky to get anything to eat at all.
‘I’ll call around and get back to you,’ said Carl.
‘OK,’ I replied. He hung up.
I knew I should get up and get going. Forty individual steak and kidney pies wouldn’t make themselves.
I was still lying on my bed dozing when the phone rang again. It was five to eight.
‘Hello,’ I said sleepily.
‘Is that Mr Max Moreton?’ said a female voice.
‘Yes,’ I replied.
‘My name is Angela Milne,’ said the voice formally. ‘I am the environmental health officer for Cambridgeshire.’
She suddenly had my full attention.
‘We have reason to believe,’ she went on, ‘that a mass poisoning has occurred at an event where you were the chef in charge of the kitchen. Is that correct?’
‘Who are “we”?’ I asked.
‘Cambridgeshire County Council,’ she said.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘I was the chef for a gala dinner last night, but I am unaware of any mass poisoning and I would seriously question as to whether my kitchen would be responsible for one, even if it existed.’
‘Mr Moreton,’ she said, ‘I can assure you that a mass poisoning has occurred. Twenty-four persons were treated overnight in Addenbrooke’s hospital for acute food poisoning and seven of those were admitted due to severe dehydration. They all attended the same function last evening.’
‘Oh.’
‘Oh, indeed,’ said Ms Milne. ‘I require that the kitchen used to prepare the food for the event be closed immediately and that it be sealed for inspection. All kitchen equipment and all remaining foodstuffs to be made available for analysis, and all kitchen and waiting staff to be on hand to be interviewed as required.’
That might not be as easy as she thought.
‘How are the seven in hospital doing?’ I asked.
‘I have no idea,’ she said. ‘But I would have been informed if there had been any fatalities.’
No news was good news.
‘Now, Mr Moreton,’ she sounded like a headmistress addressing a miscreant pupil, ‘where exactly is the