Dead Heat - By Dick Francis & Felix Francis Page 0,45
of the excess liquid by evaporation. ‘Surely that would render the beans harmless even if they were in there?’
‘They had to have been added after the reduction,’ I said. ‘That sauce had cream in it to add richness. It wasn’t boiled after the cream was added.’ To prevent it curdling in the acidity of the wine.
I remembered back to the dinner. In order to produce enough I had used four large aluminium cooking pots to make the sauce, similar to domestic kitchen saucepans only bigger with handles on each side. The ones that Stress-Free Catering had provided would each hold about six litres of liquid if full. I had estimated that we would require 50 millilitres of sauce per person. So for two hundred and fifty servings I needed twelve and a half litres of sauce. I had made it in four separate batches, just in case a batch curdled. In the end, all four batches had been fine and there had been plenty left over. I remembered it well, as I loved the sauce and had poured extra on my own dinner. Just my bad luck.
The four half-full pots had stood in the serving area where we had made up the dinners on the plates with the sliced stuffed chicken breasts, the roasted new potatoes, the snow peas and the sauce, with a sprig of parsley on the potatoes to garnish. The pots hadn’t been directly heated on a range for some minutes, as I had judged that they were hot enough and would maintain their temperature throughout the serving if simply placed on top of the hot stainless steel servery. I had told one of the temporary kitchen staff to stir the sauce to prevent it from separating. He had been little use for anything else, and I remembered him because it had taken me some time to explain what was required because he didn’t understand English very well. I had assumed at the time that he was Polish or Czech, or from some other Eastern European country, as so many staff in the catering business seem to be these days.
I reckoned there had been about a ten-minute window when the beans could have been added to the sauce between being moved from the kitchen and serving. At that time I had mostly been round the corner in the kitchen or out in the dining area. Either way, I had been out of sight of the pots during the vital time. Due to their positions between the kitchen and the dining room, almost any of the staff that night could have had the chance to add something to the pots. But it had to have been someone who knew what they were about, and surely my stirrer or someone else would have seen them. It still made httle sense to me.
‘So what do you suggest we do?’ said Gary.
‘Nothing we can do,’ I said, ‘except carry on as before. We have sixty-five booked for dinner and, so far, no one has called today to cancel.’
The telephone on my desk rang. Why didn’t I keep my stupid mouth shut, I thought, as I lifted the receiver.
‘Hello,’ I said. ‘Hay Net restaurant.’
‘Max? Is that you?’ said a female voice.
‘Certainly is,’ I said.
‘Good. This is Emma Kealy. I understand you saw George at Elizabeth’s funeral yesterday.’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I did. I’m so sorry about Elizabeth.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Thank you. A dreadful thing, especially for poor Neil.’ She paused for a moment. ‘But life has to go on for the rest of us.’
‘How can I help?’ I asked her.
‘Well, George tells me that he cancelled our booking for tonight.’
‘Yes, he did. He said to leave it for a while.’
‘Stupid old fool,’ she said. ‘We still have people staying tonight and there’s no food in the house. What does he think I’m going to do? Go to the Raj of India?’ The Raj of India was a seedy take-away curry place in Palace Street. It would never have crossed my mind that Emma Kealy would have even known about it, let alone thought of going there. ‘Can you fit four of us in for tonight at eight thirty?’ she asked imploringly. ‘I will perfectly understand if we can’t have our usual table.’
‘Of course we can fit you in,’ I said. ‘Look forward to seeing you.’
‘Great. See you later then.’ I could hear the relief in her voice. I wondered how much of a row had gone on between her and George.