Dead Heat - By Dick Francis & Felix Francis Page 0,34

of lymphocytes maintained in a cell culture and facilitate cytogenetic studies of chromosomes, whatever that all meant.

I dug around on my paper-strewn desk to find the delivery note and invoice from Leigh Foods Ltd, the supplier I had used for all of last Friday’s ingredients. Everything I had used was listed: the Norwegian cold smoked salmon; the smoked trout and the mackerel fillets; the herbs, wine, cream, olive oil, shallots, garlic cloves, lemon juice and mustard I had used in the dill sauce; the chicken breasts, cherries and pancetta; and fresh truffles, wild chanterelle mushrooms, shallots, wine and the cream I had used to make the sauce; all the butter, eggs, sugar, vanilla pods and so on for the brûlées, everything, including the salt and pepper – and not a hint of a kidney bean to be seen. The only ingredient I could think of that I had used and which wasn’t listed was some brandy I had added to the truffle and chanterelle sauce to give it a bit of zing, and I was damn sure there were no kidney beans floating in that.

So where did the toxin come from? I had bought in bread rolls for the occasion but surely they weren’t stuffed full of beans? The wine? But wouldn’t it affect the taste? And how would it get in the bottles?

I was completely baffled. I called Angela Milne. She didn’t answer and so I left a message on her voicemail.

‘Angela, it’s Max Moreton,’ I said. ‘I have checked the ingredients list for last Friday’s dinner and there are no kidney beans anywhere. Everything, other than the bread rolls, was made by me from basic ingredients. I cannot see how any kidney bean toxin could have been present. Are you sure the test results are accurate? Could you please ask whoever did them to have another look? They simply cannot be right.’

I put the phone down and it rang immediately before I had even removed my hand.

‘Angela?’ I answered.

‘No,’ said a male voice. ‘Bernard.’

‘Bernard?’ I said.

‘Yes, Bernard Sims,’ said the voice. ‘She’s a musician. Plays the viola.’

‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I’m afraid you’ve lost me.’

‘The lady is a musician.’

‘Who, Bernard Sims?’

‘No, Caroline Aston,’ he said. ‘I’m Bernard Sims, Mr Winsome’s lawyer.’

The penny dropped at last.

‘Oh, I see,’ I said. ‘Sorry about that, I was thinking about something else.’ I sorted my thoughts. ‘So whose guest was Miss Aston at the dinner?’

‘No one’s. She was a member of the string quartet that played during the evening,’ said Bernard. ‘She obviously had the same dinner as all the others who were ill.’

I remembered the players, four tall elegant black-dressed girls in their twenties. I also remembered being slightly fed up on the night that I was working so hard that I hadn’t had a chance to chat them up between their rehearsal and the start of the reception. Odd, I thought, how emotions worked. Far from still wanting to wring her neck, I was sorry now that she had been ill in the first place. I told myself to stop being such a softie, that I was probably perfectly justified in sticking pins in the voodoo doll, and that, anyway, she would almost certainly have a six-foot-six body-building boyfriend who would eat me for breakfast if I went near her.

‘Where does she work?’ I asked.

‘Not entirely sure of all the details just yet, I’m still working on it,’ he said. ‘She seems to play for the RPO but I can’t work out why she was in Newmarket in a string quartet last Friday.’

‘RPO?’I asked.

‘Sorry. Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Real professional stuff. She must be good.’ I remembered that, to my untrained ear, they had all sounded good, as well as being pleasing on the eye. ‘Do you want her address?’

‘Sure,’ I said, not knowing quite what I would do with it.

‘She lives in Fulham,’ he said, ‘in Tamworth Street.’ He gave me the full address, and her telephone number too. I wrote them down.

‘How did you get it?’ I asked.

He laughed. ‘Trade secret.’

I assumed that what he had done to get the information wasn’t entirely legal so I didn’t push it.

‘What should I do?’ I asked.

‘Don’t ask me,’ he said. ‘And don’t tell me either. I don’t want to know.’ He laughed again. I’d never come across a lawyer like him before. All the others I had met had been so serious. ‘Perhaps you should ask her out to dinner, but taste all her food before she eats it.’ He guffawed at