Dead Heat - By Dick Francis & Felix Francis Page 0,10

to do the mental arithmetic. First race at five past two, so sit down to lunch at half past twelve. Each pie takes thirty-five minutes. If there are forty pies, less the five people who aren’t coming, that makes… forty minus five pies… if one pie takes thirty-five minutes for the filling to cook and the pastry to go golden brown, how long does it take forty minus five pies…? The cogs in my brain turned ever so slowly and ground to a halt. If five men can build five houses in five months, how long will it take six men to build six houses? Did I care? I was beginning to think that the pies should have gone into the ovens the day before yesterday when Carl saved me.

‘Twelve fifteen sharp,’ he said. ‘Sit down time is twelve thirty, pies on the table at one o’clock.’

‘Great,’ I said again. And my head on the pillow by one thirty. Fat chance.

‘And potatoes on in five minutes,’ Carl said. ‘All under control.’

I looked at my watch. It took me quite a time to register where the hands were pointing. Ten to twelve. What is wrong with me, I thought. I’d stayed awake for longer than this before. My stomach rumbled to remind me that nothing had passed into it for a while. I wasn’t sure that it was a good idea to eat in case it came up again in a replay of the night before and I wasn’t at all keen on that, but perhaps hunger was contributing to my lethargy.

I tried a piece of dry French bread. It seemed to provoke no immediate reaction from my guts so I had another larger piece. The rumblings abated.

The guests would be arriving in the boxes and I was hardly dressed to greet them so I went down to my Golf, stood between the cars, and changed into my work clothes, a pair of black and white, large-checked trousers and a starched white cotton smock top. The top had been loosely modelled on a hussar’s tunic with two rows of buttons in a sort of open ‘v’ down the front. ‘Max Moreton’ was embroidered in red on the left breast below a representation of a Michelin star. I had discovered that to look like a chef was half the battle in convincing customers and critics alike that I really did care about the food they ate, and that I wasn’t simply trying to fleece them.

I made my way back up to the boxes only to find MaryLou stomping around outside the lift looking for me.

‘Ah, there you are,’ she said in a tone that implied I should have been there long before. ‘You must come and meet Mr Schumann, he’s our company chairman.’

She almost dragged me by the arm down the corridor to the boxes which now had large notices stuck to the doors: ‘Delafield Industries Inc. – Main Event Sponsor’.

There were about twenty people already there, some standing around the tables while others had made their way out on to the balcony outside to enjoy the watery May sunshine and the magnificent view down the racecourse.

My role was as guest chef for the event rather than just the caterer. The usual racecourse hospitality company and I had a fine working relationship which was beneficial to both parties. They had no objection to me having ‘special’ access to the racecourse and I would try to help them out if they were short staffed or stretched with a big function. Their managing director, Suzanne Miller, was a frequent client at the Hay Net and she always claimed that it was a benefit for her company to have an association with, as she put it, ‘a local gourmet restaurant’. The arrangement had worked well for more than five years but time would tell whether it would survive Suzanne’s approaching retirement. To be honest, I wouldn’t mind if it didn’t. The growing success of the Hay Net meant that I was finding it increasingly difficult to devote the time and energy needed to my racecourse functions, and I was not good at saying no to long-standing clients. If the new boss of the caterers didn’t want me on his patch, then I could always blame him to get myself off the hook.

MaryLou guided me across the room to the door to the balcony and then hovered next to a tall, broad-shouldered man of about sixty wearing a charcoal grey suit, white shirt and a bright