CARL DROVE THE van to the racetrack while I took my car, a beat-up VW Golf that had been my pride and joy. I had bought it brand-new when I was twenty, using the prize money from a televised cooking competition I had won. After eleven years, and with well over a hundred thousand miles on the odometer, it was beginning to show its age. But it remained a special car for me, and I was loath to change it. And it could still outaccelerate most others off the traffic lights.
I parked in the staff parking lot, on the grass beyond the weighing room, and I 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 seem to 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’s 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 backwards glances. Nice legs, I thought, as she trotted off 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 aren’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 inquire 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 placed the emphasis on the market while almost swallowing the New. To my ears, it sounded strange.
She turned abruptly and marched off towards the elevators, giving me another sight of the lovely legs. The mass of black curls bounced on her shoulders as she walked. I watched her go, and wondered if she slept in curlers.
“Sorry about that,” I said to Ms. Milne.
“Not your fault,” she said
I hoped nothing was my fault.
She gave me her card. I read it: ANGELA MILNE, ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH OFFICER, CAMBRIDGESHIRE COUNTY COUNCIL. Just as she had said.
“Why have you sealed my kitchen and closed my restaurant?” I asked her.
“I didn’t know we had,” she said. “Where, exactly, is this restaurant?”
“On Ashley Road, near the Cheveley crossroads,” I said. “It’s called the Hay Net.” She nodded slightly, obviously recognizing the name. “It is in Cambridgeshire, I assure you. I’ve just come from there. The kitchen has been padlocked, and I have been told that I would be breaking the law to go in.”
“Oh,” she said.
“Two men said they were acting for the Food Standards Agency.”
“How odd,” she said. “Enforcement is normally the responsibility of the local authority. That’s me. Unless, of course, the incident is termed serious.”
“How serious is serious?” I asked.
“If it involves E. coli or salmonella”-she paused slightly-“or botulism or typhus, that sort of thing. Or if someone dies as a result.”
“The men said that someone has died,” I said.
“Oh,” she said again. “I haven’t heard. Perhaps the police, or the hospital, contacted the Food Standards Agency directly. I’m surprised they managed to get through on a Saturday. The decision must have been made somewhere. Sorry about that.”
“Not your fault,” I echoed.
She pursed her lips together in a smile. “I had better go and find out what’s happening. My cell phone battery is dead, and it’s amazing how much we all now rely on the damn things. I’m lost without it.”
She turned to go but then turned back.
“I asked the racetrack office about your kitchen tent last night,” she said. “You were right. It’s now full of beer crates. Are you still planning to do a lunch service for Miss America up there?” She nodded her head towards the grandstand.
“Is that an official inquiry?” I asked.
“Umm.” She pursed her lips again. “Perhaps I don’t want to know. Forget I asked.”
I smiled. “Asked what?”
“I’ll get back to you later if and when I find out what’s going on.”
“Fine,” I said. “Can you let me know who it is that’s died as soon as you find out?” I gave her my cell number. “I’ll be here until about six-thirty. After that, I’ll be asleep.”
TWO OF MY regular staff had arrived to help Carl and me with the lunch and neither of them had been ill overnight. Both had eaten the vegetarian pasta bake on the previous evening, so, by process of elimination, the chicken became the prime suspect.
For more than an hour, they worked in the glass-fronted boxes while Carl and I set to work in the tiny kitchen across the passageway preparing the pies for the oven. Carl rolled out the pastry while I filled and covered the individual pie dishes. Our Cambridge greengrocer had successfully replaced the asparagus and the new potatoes, both of which were held captive in the restaurant’s cold-room. The potatoes now sat ready in saucepans on the stove, and I began to relax. But tiredness creeps up on those who relax.
I left Carl to finish the pies while I went to check on the others.
They had successfully retracted the divider wall between the two boxes, making a single room about twenty feet square. Four five-foot-diameter tables and forty gold ladder-back chairs had been waiting for us in the boxes, delivered by a rental company contacted by the racetrack, and they had been arranged to allow for easy access around them for serving.
I had originally planned for five staff, other than me and Carl, to work the event, one waiter for each pair of tables, two to provide the drink and wine service and one to help out in the kitchen, but the other three had failed to show. The idea was for one waiter to provide drinks or coffee to the guests as they arrived while the other helped with steaming the asparagus and heating the rolls. In the end, the rolls had been caught by the padlocks, so we had bought some French loaves at the local supermarket in their place. If MaryLou objected to this continental influence, that was too bad.