“I’m not quite sure yet,” I said. I wondered if it was simply embarrassment that was preventing me from 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, you had a horse that ran like the wind on the gallops and then was more like a cart horse when you sent it out to run in a race, and it subsequently tested positive for dope. If you absolutely knew you hadn’t personally given it any substance to slow it down, then you would conclude that someone else must have done so. The same here. I absolutely know I didn’t put anything in that dinner to make people ill, but tests have shown that there was a food-poisoning agent present. So someone else must have put it there. And that, I believe, only could have been done on purpose. And, I can assure you, I intend to find out who was responsible.”
I thought that I probably shouldn’t be telling them quite so much, but they were supporting me when others were deserting, so maybe I owed them.
“Well, it did us a big favor anyway,” said Emma.
“How so?” I asked.
“We were invited to that lunch where the bomb went off,” she said. “We didn’t go only because we had both had such a bad night. How lucky was that! Although, I must admit, on the Saturday morning I was bloody angry with you.” She poked me in the chest with her finger. “I had been so looking forward to that day at the Guineas. Anyway, it turned out to be a blessing in the end.” She smiled at me. “So I forgive you.”
I smiled back and put a hand on her arm. “That’s all right, then,” I said. I always responded positively when flirted with by female customers who were old enough to be my mother. It was good for business.
“Come on, Emma,” said George impatiently, “we must go. Peter and Tanya are waiting.” He waved his hand towards their guests, who were standing patiently by the front door.
“All right, George,” she replied, irritated. “I’m coming.” She stretched up her five-foot-three frame to my six feet for a kiss, and, leaning forward, I duly obliged. “Night-night,” she said. “It’s been a lovely evening.”
“Thank you for coming,” I said, meaning it.
“And you can poison us anytime you like if it saves our lives.” She smiled.
“Thanks,” I said, trying to think of an appropriate response.
George was hopping from one foot to the other. “Come on, my darling,” he said with exasperation. Emma complied with a sigh. I watched through the window as the four of them got into and drove away in a new, top- of-the-line Mercedes.
That made three people that I now knew of who should have been in the bombed box but weren’t because they had been made ill by the dinner. Poor old Neil Jennings had wished he had been there with Elizabeth, but the Kealys certainly didn’t. They were perversely grateful for having been poisoned. Perhaps this particular dark cloud had a silver lining after all.
THE FEWER NUMBER in the restaurant had tended to make the service somewhat quicker than usual, and the last few diners departed just before eleven. On some Saturday nights, we could be still pouring ports and brandies after midnight, and, once or twice, it had been after one in the morning before I had cajoled the stragglers out through the front door and into the night.
I sat at my desk in the office and silently hoped that the worst was over. If I could nip the lawsuit in the bud, and plead ignorance and forgiveness over the poison kidney beans, then maybe normality would return to the Hay Net, at least for a few months, until I was ready to announce a move to the big city. How wrong I could be.
I looked at my watch. Eleven-fifteen. Time to go home, I thought. A nice early night for a change.
The telephone rang at my elbow.
“Hello,” I said into the receiver. “Hay Net restaurant.”
There was just silence at the other end.
“Hello,” I said again. “The Hay Net restaurant. Can I help you?”
“Why did you tell me you were selling double glazing?”
“Er.” I sat there, not knowing quite what to say.
“Well?” she said. “I’m waiting.”
“I don’t know why,” I mumbled.
“Are you a bloody idiot or something?”
Yes, I probably was. “No,” I said. “Can I please explain?”
“I’m waiting,” she said again.
“Not here, not now, not on the telephone,” I said. “Perhaps we could meet?”
“How did you get my number?” she demanded.
“Directory inquiries,” I said.
“I’m ex-directory.”
“Oh. I don’t remember,” I said. “Maybe it was through the orchestra.”
“They only have my cell number.”
I was getting into deeper water, and quickly.
“Look,” I said, “if we can meet I will be able to explain everything. Perhaps I can give you dinner?”
“I’m not coming to Newmarket,” she said. “I’m not giving you another bloody chance to poison me.”
“You choose the venue and I’ll pay for the dinner. Anywhere you like.”
There was a short pause as she thought.
“Gordon Ramsay,” she said.
“At Claridge’s?” I asked.
“No, of course not,” she said. “The Restaurant Gordon Ramsay, in Royal Hospital Road. I’m free every night this week until Friday.”
The Restaurant Gordon Ramsay, quite apart from being one of the most expensive restaurants in the world, was notoriously difficult to get into. Bookings were taken from nine A.M., two calendar months in advance, and were often completely filled each day by ten-thirty. I would have to try to pull strings of a fellow-professional sort if I was to have any chance of getting a table in the coming week.
“I’ll call you,” I said.
“Right, you do that.” Was it me or did her tone imply that I wouldn’t be able to fix it?
“Why, aren’t you in New York?” I asked somewhat foolishly.
“Your bloody dinner took care of that,” she said angrily. “I couldn’t make it to the airport last Saturday and was replaced.”
“Oh,” I said.
“Oh indeed. I’d been looking forward to the New York trip for months, and you bloody ruined it.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Is that an admission of guilt?”
I could imagine Bernard Sims going crazy with me. “No, of course not,” I said.
“My agent says I should take you to the bloody cleaners,” she said. “He says that I should get ten thousand at least.”
I thought back to Mark’s advice and reckoned that it might need more than a hundred quid to buy her off. “I think that your agent is exaggerating,” I said.
“You think so?” she said. “I’ve not just lost out on my pay for the tour, you know. There’s no guarantee that I will be invited back into the orchestra when they get home. The directors can be very fickle. I’ve only just been promoted to principal viola, and now this bloody happens.” She clearly liked to say “bloody” a lot.
“Tell me,” I asked, trying to change the subject, “what’s the difference between a violin and a viola?”
“What?” she screamed over the phone. “Didn’t you hear me? I said that you might have cost me my bloody career.”
“I’m sure that’s not really true,” I said. “You should calm down. It’s not good for your blood pressure.”
There was a pause. “You’re very annoying,” she said.
“So my brother always used to say,” I said.
