Dead Heat - By Dick Francis & Felix Francis Page 0,126

to George Kealy. He was irritated. ‘Watch him.’ He pointed at me. ‘If he moves, shoot him in the foot. But don’t hit the explosive or we might all end up dead. You,’ he gestured towards Gary, ‘come with me.’

Komarov and Gary went from the dining room into the kitchen through the swing door that was more often used by my waiting staff than by a gun-toting murderer. I prayed that Caroline would stay hidden.

George stood nervously in front of me.

‘How on earth did you get involved in this?’ I asked him.

‘Shut up,’ he said in reply. I ignored him.

‘Why did you poison the gala dinner?’ I asked him.

‘Shut up,’ he said again. I ignored him again.

‘Was it so you didn’t have to go to the Guineas?’ I asked.

‘I told you to shut up,’ he said.

‘Did Gary add the kidney beans to the sauce?’ I asked him. He didn’t say anything. ‘Now that was really stupid,’ I said. ‘Without that I wouldn’t have worried. I wouldn’t have asked any questions.’ And, I thought, I wouldn’t be here, tied up and waiting to die.

‘Don’t you start,’ George said. I must have touched a raw nerve.

‘In trouble, are you? With the boss man?’ I said, rubbing salt into the wound. He was silent, so I taunted him more. ‘Made a cock up, did you? Was George not such a clever boy alter all?’

‘Shut up,’ he said, waving the gun towards me. ‘Shut up!’

‘What does Emma think?’ I said. ‘Does she know what you’re up to?’

He turned and looked towards the door through which the other two had disappeared. He was hoping for reinforcements and I was obviously beginning to get to him.

‘Was it Emma who prepared the poisonous kidney beans for you?’ I asked.

‘Don’t be bloody stupid,’ he said, turning back to me. ‘The beans were only there to make her ill.’

‘To make Emma ill?’ I said, astounded.

‘Emma was insistent that we go to that bloody box at the races,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t talk her out of it. She and Elizabeth Jennings had been planning it for weeks, ever since we were first invited. I couldn’t exactly tell her why she shouldn’t go, now could I?’

‘So you poisoned the dinner to stop her going to the races?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘That damn Gary was only meant to poison Emma’s dinner and those of the Jenningses. Stupid idiot poisoned the whole bloody lot, didn’t he. He even made me ill, the bastard.’

‘Serves you right,’ I said to him, just as Caroline had said to me.

I supposed it was easier for Gary to poison the whole dinner rather than just three plates and then somehow ensure they went to the correct people. That would have involved a conspiracy with one of the waiters. The mass poisoning also gave him the excuse he needed for not being in the kitchen at the racecourse himself on the Saturday.

‘But Elizabeth Jennings went to the races anyway,’ I said to George. ‘How come?’

‘I didn’t realize she was allergic to mushrooms,’ he said. Elizabeth would have eaten the chicken without the truffle and chanterelle sauce. ‘I was sorry about that.’

Not so sorry, I thought, to have kept him away from Elizabeth’s funeral. Not so sorry to prevent him offering Neil Jennings his bloodied hand in comfort at the church door.

‘You should have just left it,’ he said to me, looking at me in the eye for the first time.

‘Should have left what?’ I said.

‘You seemed so bloody determined to find out who had poisoned the dinner.’

‘Well, of course I was,’ I said.

‘But I couldn’t let that happen,’ said George.

I stared at him. ‘You mean it was you who tried to kill me?’

‘I arranged it,’ he said rather arrogantly. There was no remorse in his voice.

I had liked George. I had always considered him to be a friend and yet he had apparently twice arranged to have me killed. He had caused my car to be written off, he had burnt my home and all my possessions, and here he was standing in front of me with a gun in his hand and murder on his mind. Last week I had told Dorothy Schumann that lots of people were murdered by their friends. I hadn’t expected that fact to be so manifestly demonstrated quite so soon.

‘But you weren’t very good at it, were you?’ I said, again goading him. ‘I bet Komarov wasn’t too pleased with that either, was he? You couldn’t even bump off a country chef, could you?