Dead Heat - By Dick Francis & Felix Francis Page 0,37

who contaminated everything and not the ingredients.’

‘No, I’ve thought of that,’ I said. ‘I wasn’t ill beforehand and my symptoms were exactly the same as everyone else’s. I was poisoned in the same way by the same thing. I just don’t know what.’ I poured myself another cup of coffee and held out the jug to her. She shook her head. ‘So will you write a piece for your paper that exonerates my restaurant?’ I asked.

‘Maybe,’ she said. ‘It depends. Will you give me any interesting new angles on the racecourse bomb blast?’

‘Maybe,’ I echoed. ‘If you promise to print it all.’

‘I can’t promise anything without it going through the editor,’ she smiled, ‘but, as he’s my husband, I ought to be able to swing it.’

Damn, I thought, another possible romantic opportunity had just slid past me. I quite liked the feisty Ms Harding. What a shame she was a Mrs.

Carl and Gary needed to get into the kitchen to start preparing for lunch so Ms Harding and I went back to the bar for the rest of the interview, but not until I had insisted on having my photograph taken in the kitchen with as much gleaming stainless steel in the background as I could manage.

I gave her the new angles on the bombing that she had hoped for without fully recounting the graphic details of the blood and the gore. I told her a little about Mary Lou and how horrible it was to have discovered afterwards that she had died. I tried to describe the frustration of not knowing how to cope with the situation without actually admitting to having been a sobbing, shaking wreck.

Finally, she looked at her watch, closed her notebook, and said she had to dash as she had things to finish before the newspaper went to press.

‘This will not make it into today’s,’ she said. ‘Look for it tomorrow.’

‘Fine,’ I said. We shook hands, this time without even the slightest hesitation on her part. ‘Have you ever been here to eat?’ I asked her.

‘No, never.’

‘Then come as my guest. Bring your husband. Any time you like.’

‘Thank you,’ she said, smiling. ‘I’d love to.’

Moreton wins by a knockout.

CHAPTER 7

Angela Milne called first thing on Thursday morning and I could tell at once that she was more than slightly irritated at having received my message. She told me in no uncertain terms that the testing at the hospital was not wrong or mistaken, and that I should look at myself carefully in the mirror and ask ‘Who is fooling who here?’

‘You served kidney beans that hadn’t been properly cooked,’ she said. ‘Why don’t you just admit it?’

Was I going mad? I knew there were no kidney beans in that dinner. Or did I? What I was absolutely sure of was that I hadn’t put any kidney beans in it myself, cooked or otherwise. Could I be so sure that no one else had? But surely, I thought, I would have seen them; red kidney beans are pretty obvious as anyone who has eaten chilli con carne can testify. Perhaps they had been chopped up and added by someone. But why? And by whom?

There had been plenty of us in the kitchen tent that night, not just my usual team. There had been at least five or six temporary assistants plating up the meals, and all the waiting staff had had access as well. Most of these had been from a catering agency but some were friends of my crew, and one or two had been late recruits from the racecourse caterers when others had dropped out. Did someone purposely poison the dinner due to some catering war? Was it jealousy? Surely not. It just didn’t make sense, but I was increasingly steadfast in the knowledge that, as I hadn’t put the beans in that dinner, someone else must have.

It might be difficult, however, to convince anyone else that I was right. They, like Angela Milne, would simply believe that I had made a basic culinary mistake and was not prepared to admit it.

Wednesday evening had been depressing with the dining room far less than a quarter full, although one couple who did come had also been at the racecourse event the previous Friday and had both been ill afterwards.

‘Just one of those things,’ the wife had said. ‘I’m sure it wasn’t your fault.’ I wished all my customers were like them. I had asked them what they had eaten but they couldn’t remember. I had