two.”
He looked at me with his head to one side, as if thinking. He suddenly leaned forward in his chair. “OK, you’re on,” he said, and stretched out his hand.
“Just like that?” I said. “We haven’t even found a place and we haven’t started to draw up a budget.”
“I thought you said that was your job. I just write the check, remember?”
“How big a check?” I asked him.
“As big as you need,” he said, again offering his hand.
“Fine,” I said. “You’re on too.”
I shook his hand warmly, and we smiled at each other. I liked Mark a lot. Even though his lawyers would have to draw up the contract, his word was his bond and mine was mine. The deal was done.
I COULD HARDLY sit still for the rest of our dinner, such was my excitement. Mark laughed when his cod arrived. I had been absolutely right.
The chef came out of the kitchen and joined the two of us for a glass of port at the end of the evening. The previous year, he and I had been the judges of a cooking contest on afternoon daytime television and we now enjoyed catching up on our friendship.
“How’s that place of yours doing out in the sticks?” he asked.
“Very well,” I said, hoping he didn’t have copies of the Cambridge Evening News delivered daily to his door. I also wondered if he would be quite so friendly if he knew that Mark and I had been sitting in his restaurant planning our move into his territory. “How’s business here?” I asked by way of conversation.
“Oh, the same,” he said without actually explaining what “the same” meant.
The conversation progressed for a while in a similar, noncommittal and vague manner, neither of us wanting to pass on our professional judgment to the other. The world of haute cuisine could be as secret as any government intelligence service.
The need to catch the last train home finally broke up the dinner at eleven o’clock, and Mark and I walked in easy companionship along the Thames embankment towards Waterloo station. We strolled past some of the lively pubs, bistros and pizza parlors that had transformed the south bank. Late on this Friday evening, loud music and raucous laughter spilled out across the cobblestones towards the river.
“Where and when will you start looking for a venue?” asked Mark.
“I don’t know, and as soon as possible,” I said, smiling in the dark. “I suppose I will contact some commercial real estate agents to see what’s available.”
“You will keep me informed?” he said.
“Of course.” We walked past an advertising board. A poster read RPO AT THE RFH in big bold black letters on a white background. Thanks to Bernard Sims, I knew what RPO stood for-the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. “What’s the RFH?” I asked Mark.
“What?” he said.
“What’s the RFH?” I repeated, pointing at the poster.
“Royal Festival Hall,” he said. “Why?”
“No reason. Just wondered.” I looked closely at the poster. The RPO, with, I presumed, Caroline Aston playing the viola, was due to appear next month at the Royal Festival Hall. Perhaps I would go and listen.
Mark and I said our good-byes outside the National Theatre, and he rushed off to get his lonely ride home while I 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 nineteen sixties.
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.
8
K idney beans!”
“Yes, kidney beans, probably red kidney beans. According to the tests done on those customers taken to the hospital, there was something called phytohemagglutinin 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 clientele 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 racetrack 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 U.S. Food and Drug Administration Web site 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 one hundred percent-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 of the excess liquid by evaporation. “Surely that would render the beans harmless even if they were in there?”
