Dead Heat - By Dick Francis & Felix Francis Page 0,22

the kitchen inspected quickly and that we would be back in business as soon as possible. ‘Louisa would have wanted that,’ I said. I thought it was true, and they all nodded in agreement.

‘So,’ I said, ‘you can all go home now and come in again at ten tomorrow. I can’t promise that we will be back in business by then but I will try. When we find out when Louisa’s funeral is, we will close so we can all attend. How about if we offer the restaurant to her parents and ask them if they want to invite everyone back here after the funeral?’

They all nodded again.

‘I’ll do that if you like,’ said Richard.

‘Yes, please,’ I said. ‘Tell them it’s also fine if they don’t want to have it here, but we will do the catering for them wherever, free of charge.’

Richard smiled. ‘Thanks, I will.’

The phone rang and Carl went and picked it up from the desk in the corner. He listened for a bit and then said, ‘Thank you for letting us know.’ He hung up.

‘A cancellation,’ he said. ‘For tonight.’

‘Just as well,’ I said.

‘I’ll call the other bookings,’ said Carl. ‘We should have their numbers.’

‘Good,’ I said, trying to sound upbeat and businesslike. ‘OK everyone, the meeting’s over. If anyone wants me, I’ll be in my office trying to get us back up and running.’

I called it my office but it was used by everyone. Martin was in charge of the bar and was responsible for the ordering of all the drink, including for the restaurant, although it was me who actually decided which wines appeared on the list. Carl dealt with all the food and equipment ordering. The office had one wall with three rows of seven hooks each. On each hook was hanging a large bulldog clip. Each of the seven hooks in each row represented a day of the week, Monday to Sunday. The top row was for notes of things to be ordered. The middle row was for orders placed and the bottom row for delivery notes of orders received.

On Thursdays and Fridays, my part-time bookkeeper, Enid, came in to check delivery notes against orders made, and invoices received against both. Cheques were then written against invoices, receipts from sales were counted and banked, and salaries and other costs were paid. The system was very low-tech but it seemed to work well and we rarely, if ever, ran out of ingredients or napkins or the like, and, since the first year, receipts from sales had far exceeded both the values of the cheques written plus the cost of salaries and the rest, so we made a profit. A handsome profit, in fact.

I sat at my desk and shuffled the paperwork to make some space. I had been working on new menu items and there were notes and recipes strewn about. We kept basically the same menu each day as my regular customers didn’t like it if their favourite dish was unavailable, but we generally added a special or two. I didn’t want the specials to be recited aloud by the waiters, as happens so often in American restaurants, so we printed new menus daily with any specials highlighted in bold type.

I dug in my pocket and pulled out Angela Milne’s card.

‘Angela Milne,’ she answered on the first ring.

‘Hello, Angela,’ I said, ‘Max Moreton here.’

‘Oh good,’ she said, ‘I was going to call you.’

‘Who died?’ I asked.

‘What, from the poisoning?’ she said. I wish she wouldn’t use that term.

‘Of course,’ I said.

‘Well, it appears now that the death in question may not be connected with the event on Friday.’

‘Explain,’ I said.

‘As you might expect, everything is rather chaotic at the moment with the bombing at the racecourse. Dreadful, isn’t it? I understand that the local coroner’s department has been somewhat overwhelmed. There’s a backlog of post-mortems to be done. A refrigerated truck has been commandeered by the hospital to act as a temporary mortuary.’

It was more information than I really wanted.

‘So,’ I said, ‘what about the death on Friday night?’

‘It seems it may have been due to natural causes and not food poisoning.’

‘What do you mean?’ I asked her rather irately, thinking about my sealed kitchen.

‘A patient presented himself at the hospital accident and emergency department on Friday night with abdominal pain, nausea and severe vomiting, consistent with having been poisoned.’ She paused. ‘He arrived at the hospital alone but at the same time as several other cases, and it was assumed that,