Dead Heat - By Dick Francis & Felix Francis Page 0,44

decided to walk across the Golden Jubilee footbridge to the Embankment tube station, north of the river. Halfway across I briefly leaned on the bridge rail and looked eastwards towards the tall City buildings, many of them with all their windows bright in the night sky.

Among the high rises, and dimly lit by comparison, I could see the majestic dome of St Paul’s. My history master at school had loved that building with a passion and he had drummed some of its facts into the heads of his pupils. I recalled that it had been built to replace the previous cathedral that had been destroyed by the Great Fire of London in 1666. Constructed in just thirty-five years, it had, amazingly, remained the tallest building in London for more than a quarter of a millennium, right up until the glass and concrete towers of the 1960s.

As I stood there, I wondered whether Sir Christopher Wren had ever believed that he had embarked on a project that was beyond him. Was I now embarking on a project that was beyond me?

I raised an imaginary glass towards his great achievement and made a silent toast: Sir Christopher, you managed it, and I can too.

CHAPTER 8

‘Kidney beans!’

‘Yes, kidney beans, probably red kidney beans. According to the tests done on the customers taken to hospital, there was something called phytohaemagglutinin in the dinner and that s what made everyone ill. It’s also known as kidney bean lectin.’

It was late Saturday afternoon and I was having a meeting with Carl and Gary in my office prior to us opening for dinner. We didn’t do lunches on Saturday; too many of my clientèle were away at the races.

‘But there weren’t any kidney beans in that dinner,’ said Carl.

‘That’s what I thought,’ I said. ‘But, apparently, there were samples taken from sixteen different individuals and this stuff was in all of them.’

Gary and Carl looked at each other. ‘Beats me,’ said Gary.

‘Where in the dinner could they have been?’ asked Carl.

‘That,’ I said, ‘is what I intend to find out. And then I’ll find out who put them there.’

‘Surely you’re not saying that someone poisoned everyone on purpose?’ said Carl.

‘What else can I think?’ I replied. ‘Consider the facts. Loads of those who ate the dinner were ill, including me. Tests on sixteen of them show this phyto stuff in them. The stuff made them ill, and it only comes from kidney beans. Doesn’t take a genius to conclude that there must have been kidney beans in the dinner. I know I didn’t put any in the dinner. So, QED, someone else must have, and it must have been done on purpose to make people ill.’

‘But why?’ said Gary.

‘I don’t know.’ I was exasperated. ‘But it had to be done by someone who had access to the kitchen.’

‘Loads of people had access to the kitchen,’ said Carl. ‘We didn’t exactly have a guard on duty. There were all the kitchen staff from the agency, and all the waiters too.’

‘And there were others from the racecourse caterers there as well,’ I said. ‘But, believe me, I intend to find out who it was.’

‘But wouldn’t you see red kidney beans in anything?’ said Gary.

‘I thought that myself,’ I said. ‘But you wouldn’t if they were chopped up very finely.’

‘How many beans would you need to poison over two hundred people?’ said Carl. ‘Surely there would be so many it would affect the taste?’

‘I looked it up on the US Food and Drug Administration website on the Internet,’ I said. ‘It says there that four or five raw beans are enough to make people quite ill. It also says that if the beans are heated to not more than eighty degrees centigrade, they are five times as poisonous as the raw ones. That means just a single bean per person could be enough. And it also says that the attack rate is 100 per cent – that means everyone who ate the beans would be ill.’

‘But where were they?’ said Gary.

‘I think they must have been put in the sauce,’ I said. No one, I thought, would taste a single partially cooked kidney bean, especially if it was finely chopped up and mixed with the chanterelle mushrooms, the truffles and the shallots, not to mention the white wine, the brandy, the garlic and the cream.

‘But you have to reduce the wine in that sauce,’ said Carl. What he meant by reduce was that the sauce was boiled to remove some