Dead Heat - By Dick Francis & Felix Francis Page 0,48

to retreat gracefully.

‘Look, I’m sorry but I have to go now. Goodbye.’ I hung up quickly. My hands were sweating. Really, really stupid!

I went out into the kitchen and found Carl trying to explain rather sarcastically to one of the kitchen porters that it was indeed necessary for him to get all the old food off the frying pans when washing up.

In spite of the name, kitchen porters rarely carry things. They mostly spend their lives up to their elbows in hot water washing up the pots and pans. We had two of them at the Hay Net. At least, that was the plan, but all too often a kitchen porter would be there one minute and gone the next. No explanation, no word of goodbye, just gone, never to return. The current incumbents of the posts included a man in his fifties whose father had come to England from Poland in 1940 to fight with the RAF against the Nazis. He had unpronounceable Polish names with lots of ps and zs but he spoke with a broad Essex accent and was always ‘tinking’. ‘I tink I’ll go hame na,’ he’d say. Or ‘I tink I’ll ‘ave a cap o’ tea.’ He’d been with us for nearly a year, much longer than the norm, but he mostly kept himself to himself and communicated rarely with the other staff.

The other porter was called Jacek (pronounced Ya-check) and he was in his fourth week, and seemingly not very good at scrubbing the frying pans. He was more typical of those now sent to us by the local job centre, in his mid- to late-twenties and from one of the newer members of the European Union. He knew very little English but he did manage to ask for my help to send money every week to his wife and baby daughter, who were still in the homeland. He seemed quite nappy with life, always smiling and singing to himself, and he lad been a positive influence on kitchen morale over the previous week. Now he stood in front of Carl and bowed his nead, as if asking for forgiveness. Jacek nodded a lot and I wondered how much of Carl’s tirade he was actually understanding. I was certain that he was not appreciating the sarcasm. I felt quite sorry for him, so far from home in a strange environment, and separated from his family.

I caught Carl’s attention. ‘That’s enough,’ I mouthed to him. Jacek was hardworking and I didn’t really want to lose lim at the moment, not least because the current pair appeared so get on quite well together, and neither of them was a heavy drinker, generally the bane of all kitchen porters.

Carl stopped almost in mid-sentence and dismissed the miscreant with a brief wave of his hand. Jacek passed me on the way back to his duties at the scullery sinks and I smiled at him. He winked at me and smiled back. There was more to this kitchen porter, I thought, than meets the eye.

Saturday night had the feel of the Hay Net being back in business. Sure, we were only serving at about two thirds capacity, but the bar and the dining room were humming with excitement and the horrors of the previous week were forgotten, if only temporarily.

George and Emma Kealy and their two guests arrived promptly at eight thirty, sat at their usual table, and seemed to enjoy themselves, albeit quietly. Nothing was mentioned about my discussion with George at the funeral but, as they were leaving, Emma turned to me and said, ‘See you next week then, as usual.’

‘For six?’ I asked.

‘Book for six,’ she said. ‘I’ll let you know on Friday.’

‘Fine,’ I said, smiling at her.

‘Have you found out yet what made everyone ill last week?’ she asked. George looked horrified that his wife had been so tactless as to mention it.

‘Not quite,’ I said. ‘It appears that the dinner may have been contaminated.’

‘What with?’ asked Emma.

‘I’m not quite sure yet,’ I said. I wondered if it was simply embarrassment that was preventing me mentioning anything about undercooked kidney beans. ‘I’m still trying to work out how something was put into the food.’

‘You are surely not saying it was done on purpose,’ she said.

‘That is my inescapable conclusion,’ I said.

‘Sounds a bit fanciful to me,’ said George.

‘Maybe to you,’ I said, ‘but what else can I think? Just suppose, George, that you had a horse that ran like the wind on the gallops and