Dead Heat - By Dick Francis & Felix Francis Page 0,7

damage is.’ He wiped his forehead with his palm. ‘God, I feel awful. All sweaty and yet cold.’

‘Me too,’ I said. ‘But I suppose we can now take the afternoon off. The tractor makers from Wisconsin are going to have to get their grub elsewhere.’

‘Why so?’ said Carl.

‘Because their pie filling is in the cold-room behind the padlocked doors, silly.’

‘No, it’s not,’ he said. ‘I’d already loaded the van before those men arrived.’ He waved a hand at the Ford Transit we used for outside catering which was parked up near the back door to the kitchen. ‘The summer puddings are in there too.’ He smiled. ‘The only thing I haven’t got is the asparagus and the new potatoes, but we can get some more of those from Cambridge.’

‘You are bloody marvellous,’ I said.

‘So we’re going to do it then?’

‘Dead right we are. We need a successful service now more than ever.’ Silly thing to say, really, but, of course, I had no idea, then, of what was to follow.

Carl drove the Transit van to the racecourse while I took my car, a beaten-up VW Golf that had been my pride and joy when, aged twenty, I had bought it brand new, using the prize money from a televized cooking competition I had won. After eleven years and with well over a hundred thousand miles on the clock, it was beginning to show its age, but it remained a special car for me and I was loathed to change it. And it could still out accelerate most others off the traffic lights.

I parked in the staff car park on the grass beyond the weighing room and walked back to the far end of the grandstand where Carl was already unloading the van. I was met there by two middle-aged women, one in a green tweed suit, woolly hat and sensible brown boots, the other in a scarlet frill-fronted chiffon blouse, black skirt and pointed black patent high-heeled shoes, with a mass of curly dark hair falling in tendrils around her ears. I looked at them both and thought about appropriate dress.

The tweed suit beat the scarlet and black ensemble by a short head.

‘Mr Moreton?’ she asked in her headmistressly manner as I approached.

‘Ms Milne, I presume?’ I replied.

‘Indeed,’ she said.

‘And I am MaryLou Fordham,’ stated the scarlet and black loudly in an American accent.

I had suspected as much.

‘Aren’t you cold?’ I asked her. Chiffon blouses and early May mornings in Newmarket didn’t quite go together. Even on still days a cutting wind seemed to blow across the Heath, and Guineas Saturday was no exception.

‘No,’ she replied. ‘If you want to know what cold is come to Wisconsin in the winter.’ She spoke with every word receiving its share of emphasis, with little harmonic quality to the tone. Each word was clipped and clearly separate, there was no southern drawl here, no running of the words together.

‘And what do you want to see Mr Moreton about when he should be working for me?’ she said rather haughtily, turning towards Angela Milne.

I could tell from her body language that Angela Milne did not take very kindly to being addressed in that manner. I wouldn’t have either.

‘It is a private matter,’ said Angela. Good old Ms Milne, I thought. My friend.

‘Well, be quick,’ said MaryLou bossily. She turned to me. ‘I have been up to the suites and there seems to be no work going on. The tables aren’t laid and there ain’t no staff to be found.’

‘It’s OK,’ I said. ‘It’s only half past nine. The guests don’t arrive for more than two hours, everything will be ready.’ I hoped I was right. ‘You go back upstairs and I will be there shortly.’

Reluctantly, she headed off with a couple of backward glances. Nice legs, I thought, as she trotted towards the grandstand, her high heels clicking on the tarmac.

Just when I thought she had gone, she came back. ‘Oh yes,’ she said, ‘there’s something else I was going to tell you. I’ve had three calls this morning from people who now say they ain’t coming to the track today. They say they are ill.’ She didn’t try to disguise the disbelief in her voice. ‘So there will be five less for lunch.’

I decided under the circumstances not to enquire too closely if she knew what it was that had made them ill.

‘It’s such a shame,’ she said. ‘Two of them are horse trainers from Newmarket who have runners in our race.’ She