Dead Heat - By Dick Francis & Felix Francis Page 0,46

phone down and looked at Gary and Carl. ‘Four more bookings for tonight,’ I said, smiling. Thank goodness for the Kealys.

The other two went into the kitchen to start preparing for dinner while I sat at my desk to complete some paperwork. I shuffled the stack of already tidy papers checking that there were no outstanding bills that had to be paid immediately. I came across the delivery note from Leigh Foods, the supplier I had used for the gala dinner. I looked through the ingredients again, as if I could have missed the kidney beans before. They weren’t there. Of course they weren’t there. I would swear on my father’s grave that I had not put any damn kidney beans in that dinner.

I called Suzanne Miller on her mobile.

‘Hi, Suzanne,’ I said, ‘Max Moreton here. Sorry to disturb you on a Saturday afternoon. Do you have a minute?’

‘Fire away,’ she said. ‘I’ in my office anyway. We’ve had a wedding here today so I’m still working.’

‘I didn’t know you had weddings at the racecourse,’ I said.

‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘Most Saturdays during the summer, when there’s no racing, of course. We use the Hong Kong Suite for the ceremony and then often the Champions’ Gallery restaurant for the reception. It works quite well.’

‘You live and learn,’ I said.

‘How can I help you?’ she asked.

‘I wonder if I could have a copy of the guest list from last Friday night?’

‘Sure,’ she said. ‘No problem. I have it on my computer. I’ll e-mail it to you now.’

‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘There is another thing. Do you have a list of the names of all the temporary staff that you found through the agency?’

‘Not their names,’ she said. ‘The agency just gave me the number that would be there, not their names.’

‘But, you remember, some of them failed to turn up and we had to draft in a few of your own staff at the last minute,’ I said. ‘Do you, by chance, have the names of those that didn’t come and also the names of your staff that we drafted in?’

‘I’ll e-mail the agency’s phone number and you can ask them direct,’ she said. ‘Why do you need to know the names of my staff?’

How much should I tell her? She had been quick to hang me out to dry when the letter from Caroline Aston had first appeared on her desk. Would she now simply think I was looking for a scapegoat?

‘I have reason to believe that something may have been put into the dinner that shouldn’t have been there,’ I said, ‘and I am trying to determine the names of everyone who was there and had access to the food, so I can find out who was responsible.’

There was a long pause at the other end of the line.

‘Are you saying that you think my staff are to blame for making people ill?’ Suzanne said rather frostily.

‘No,’ I replied hastily. ‘I’m not saying that and I don’t think it. Your staff were all last-minute replacements so it is impossible for them to be the ones.’ I thought it most unlikely that anyone could buy and prepare a large number of kidney beans at such short notice. ‘I would just like their names so that I can eliminate them from my enquiry.’ I was beginning to sound like a policeman.

‘I will look it up,’ she said. ‘But I will have to ask them first if they are happy for you to have their names.’

‘That’s fine by me,’ I said.

‘Do you really think that the food was poisoned on purpose?’

‘Suzanne,’ I said, ‘I know it sounds crazy but I have absolutely no other explanation. Hospital tests have shown beyond doubt that there was stuff in that dinner that I didn’t put in, so what am I to think?’

‘What stuff?’ she asked.

‘I’d rather not say,’ I said. I don’t know why I thought it might be useful to keep some of the facts secret. Perhaps I had hopes of catching out the culprit by him saying ‘kidney beans’ when I hadn’t mentioned it. I was sure that I had once read a detective novel when that sort of thing had happened and the policeman had instantly solved the case.

‘All sounds very cloak-and-dagger to me,’ she said. ‘And a bit far-fetched as well, if you ask me. Why would anyone want to poison so many people anyway?’

‘I don’t know why,’ I said. ‘Why do so many people have the urge to break things? Perhaps