“You poisoned everyone with phytohemagglutinin.”
“Phyto…What?” I said.
“Phytohemagglutinin,” she repeated. “And, yes, I did need to look up how to pronounce it.”
“But what is it?” I asked.
“Kidney bean lectin.”
“And what’s that when it’s at home?”
“It’s the stuff in red kidney beans that makes them poisonous,” she said. “You gave your guests kidney beans that hadn’t been properly cooked.”
I thought back hard to last Friday’s dinner. “But I didn’t serve any kidney beans.”
“You must have,” she said. “Maybe in a salad or something?”
“No,” I said confidently, “there were definitely no kidney beans in that dinner. I made everything from scratch, and I swear to you there were no kidney beans, red or otherwise, in any of it. The tests must be mistaken.”
“Samples were taken from sixteen different individuals at the hospital and all of them contained phyto what’s-its-name.” She didn’t actually say that it was me that must be mistaken and not the tests, but the tone of her voice implied it.
“Oh.” I was confused. I knew there were no kidney beans in that dinner. At least, I hadn’t knowingly put any in it. “I’ll have to check the ingredients on the supplier’s invoice.”
“Perhaps you should,” she said. She paused briefly. “In the meantime, I will have to write an official report stating that the poisoning was due to an ingestion of incorrectly prepared kidney beans. The report will be sent to the Food Standards Agency.”
I would have preferred to have been given a criminal record.
“I’m sorry, Max,” she went on, “but I have to warn you that the Forest Heath District Council, that’s the district council for Newmarket racetrack, may choose to send the report to the Crown Prosecution Service for them to consider whether proceedings should be mounted against you under section 7 of the Food Safety Act.” She paused, as if thinking. “I don’t suppose I should really be calling you at all.”
Perhaps I was going to get the criminal record as well.
“Well, thank you for warning me,” I said. “What are the penalties?”
“Maximum penalty is an unlimited fine and two years’ imprisonment, but it won’t come to that. That would be for a deliberate act. At worst, you would get an official caution.”
Even an official caution counted as a criminal record. Maybe enough to put an end to any London aspirations. It also might be the death knell of the Hay Net.
“I’ll write just the facts,” she said. “I will emphasize that no one was really seriously ill, not life-threatening or anything. All those who went to the hospital were either discharged immediately or went home the following day. Maybe they will just give you a written warning for the future.”
“Thanks,” I said.
She hung up, and I sat and stared at the telephone in my hand.
Kidney beans! Every chef, every cook, every housewife, even every schoolboy, knows that kidney beans have to be boiled to make them safe to eat. It was inconceivable that I would have included kidney beans in any recipe without boiling them vigorously first to destroy the poisons in them. It just didn’t make sense. But there was no escaping the fact that I had been ill, and so had nearly everyone else, and that tests on sixteen people had shown that kidney bean lectin was present in them. The situation was crazy. There had to be another explanation. And I intended to find it.
I SAT IN my office at the restaurant and searched the Internet for information on kidney beans. Sure enough, phytohemagglutinin was the stuff in them that made people ill. I discovered that it was a protein that was broken down and rendered harmless by boiling. Interestingly-or not-I also found out that the same stuff was used to stimulate mitotic division of lymphocytes maintained in a cell culture and facilitate cytogenetic studies of chromosomes, whatever that all meant.
I dug around on my paper-strewn desk to find the delivery note and invoice from Leigh Foods Ltd, the supplier I had used for all of last Friday’s ingredients. Everything I had used was listed: the Norwegian cold smoked salmon; the smoked trout and the mackerel fillets; the herbs, wine, cream, olive oil, shallots, garlic cloves, lemon juice and mustard I had used in the dill sauce; the chicken breasts, the cherries, the pancetta and the fresh truffles, wild chanterelle mushrooms, shallots, wine and the cream I had used to make the sauce; all the butter, eggs, sugar, vanilla pods and so on for the brûlées-everything, including the salt and pepper-and not a hint of a kidney bean to be seen. The only ingredient I could think of that I had used and which wasn’t listed was some brandy I had added to the truffle and chanterelle sauce, to give it a bit of zing, and I was damn sure there were no kidney beans floating in that.
So where did the toxin come from? I had brought in rolls for the occasion, but surely they weren’t stuffed full of beans? The wine? But wouldn’t it affect the taste? And how would it get in the bottles?
I was completely baffled. I called Angela Milne. She didn’t answer and so I left a message on her voice mail.
“Angela, it’s Max Moreton,” I said. “I have checked the ingredients list for last Friday’s dinner and there are no kidney beans anywhere. Everything, other than the rolls, was made by me from basic ingredients. I cannot see how any kidney bean toxin could have been present. Are you sure the test results are accurate? Could you please ask whoever did them to have another look? They simply cannot be right.”
I put the phone down and it rang immediately before I had even removed my hand.
“Angela?” I answered.
“No,” said a male voice. “Bernard.”
“Bernard?” I said.
“Yes, Bernard Sims,” said the voice. “She’s a musician. Plays the viola.”
“Sorry,” I said. “I’m afraid you’ve lost me.”
“The lady is a musician.”
“Who, Bernard Sims?”
“No, Caroline Aston,” he said. “I’m Bernard Sims, Mr. Winsome’s lawyer.”
The penny dropped at last.
“Oh, I see,” I said. “Sorry about that, I was thinking about something else.” I sorted my thoughts. “So whose guest was Miss Aston at the dinner?”
“No one’s. She was a member of the string quartet that played during the evening,” said Bernard. “She obviously had the same dinner as all the others who were ill.”
I remembered the players, four tall, elegant, black-dressed girls in their twenties. I also remembered being slightly fed up that night that I was working so hard that I hadn’t had a chance to chat them up between their rehearsal and the start of the reception. Odd, I thought, how emotions worked. Far from still wanting to wring her neck, I was sorry now that she had been ill in the first place. I told myself to stop being such a softie, that I was probably perfectly justified in sticking pins in the voodoo doll, and that, anyway, she would almost certainly have a six-foot-six bodybuilding boyfriend who would eat me for breakfast if I went near her.
“Where does she work?” I asked.
“Not entirely sure of all the details just yet. I’m still working on it,” he said. “She seems to play for the RPO, but I can’t work out why she was in Newmarket in a string quartet last Friday.”
“RPO?” I asked.
“Sorry. Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Real professional stuff. She must be good.” I remembered that, to my untrained ear, they had all sounded good, as well as being pleasing on the eye. “Do you want her address?”
“Sure,” I said, not knowing quite what I would do with it.
“She lives in Fulham,” he said, “on Tamworth Street.” He gave me the full address, and her telephone number too. I wrote them down.
“How did you get it?” I asked.
He laughed. “Trade secret.”
I assumed that what he had done to get the information wasn’t entirely legal, so I didn’t push it.
“What should I do?” I asked.