by Michael Bond
‘I am a policeman. I deal in facts. I am also by nature suspicious and I keep an open mind. What do you say, Pamplemousse?’
Monsieur Pamplemousse clasped his hands in front of him and assumed one of his most beatific smiles. Now that he had recovered from the initial shock of the inspector’s revelation a certain something inside him felt he might enjoy the almost unlimited possibilities of his new role.
‘Peace be with you, my son,’ he intoned. ‘For blessed are they who have not seen and yet still choose to believe.’
As the bang from the door echoed and re-echoed down the corridor he relaxed again. The smile faded as he returned to his list. Baiting Banyuls was all very well but it didn’t solve any of his problems; rather the reverse.
Tearing off the top sheet of his note-pad he wrote the words ‘I MUST BE KIND TO BANYULS’ in large letters and attached it to the light on the wall behind his head. In that position it would announce to all the world that deep down his heart was in the right place and yet it would retain the advantage of not being permanently in his line of vision.
9
FRIDAY AFTERNOON
Unbeknown to Monsieur Pamplemousse, his feelings about Inspector Banyuls were being echoed at that very moment by Pommes Frites. If someone had posed the direct question, ‘Hands up all those who wish they had been kinder to Inspector Banyuls,’ Pommes Frites would have lost no time in raising his right paw. Pommes Frites was in a situation where he could have used some assistance. Something in the nature of a fan-out by the local gendarmerie would have gone down very well at that moment in time, for although his early training with the Sûreté had taught him many things, the art of being in more than one place at the same time had not been included in his course syllabus.
Had Pommes Frites been in the habit of keeping a diary, he would undoubtedly have headed the day in large, capital letters: ‘BLACK FRIDAY’. One way and another it had been a fitting follow-on from ‘DARK GREY THURSDAY’, ‘BROWN WEDNESDAY’, ‘OCHRE TUESDAY’ and ‘PUCE MONDAY’.
Not that he was grumbling. On and off, he’d had quite an enjoyable week. The taste of some of the meals at La Langoustine still lingered, and there had been some pleasant strolls round the town itself. But the ratio of good moments to bad had followed a downward curve as the week progressed, culminating in his present dilemma. To paraphrase Shakespeare’s Hamlet, it really boiled down to a question of, ‘To go or not to go? Whether ’twas better to keep a watchful eye on Madame Pamplemousse and suffer the possible slings and bullets of her outraged captors, or, having spent most of a day and a night on the job, hot foot it back to town by the shortest possible route.’
His pursuit of the lorry had got off to a bad start. At first he’d been so taken aback at seeing Madame Pamplemousse take off in the gazebo he’d hardly been able to believe his eyes. Then, when the full import of what was going on finally sank in, he’d stood up too quickly in his excitement and got himself entangled with his kennel.
His state of shock had been compounded when his master had, quite literally, landed at his feet. For the second time in as many days he’d found himself staring at the remains of his house. The only consolation to be gained was that in struggling to free himself from his kennel he’d quite by chance pushed it into exactly the right spot to break Monsieur Pamplemousse’s fall and save him, if not from death, at least from serious injury.
By the time he’d checked things out and assured himself with a few well chosen licks that his master was still breathing, he had lost even more time and the lorry was nowhere in sight.
Pommes Frites was good at trails, but in the absence of any kind of scent he’d had to rely on instinct, and in the end instinct hadn’t let him down.
He knew that the lorry had gone in roughly the same direction as the one he and his master had taken the morning of the attack, so he took a chance. There was certainly a smell of lorries. Not that there was anything unusual in that. There was scarcely a ditch or hedgerow in the whole of France that didn’t bear silent witness to the fact that lorries in one form or another passed by every day of the year, but the smell he chose to follow was unhealthily fresh.
The first part of the journey took him up the same road, past the very same bush which had caused all the trouble. Pommes Frites had given the bush a wide berth, even though it was now lying on its side, its foliage turning brown. He had no wish to repeat the experience.
All the same, it gave him his bearings, and he was able to take a short cut over the brow of the hill until a point in the road where it suddenly branched into two.
It was here that luck deserted him temporarily. Taking the right fork—the one that appeared the most used—he went on up the mountain towards the site of the new solar heating station. There he’d spent a fruitless day sniffing around domes and bits of metal and vast areas of glass and getting hotter and hotter in the process.
Hotter and hotter, that is, until the sun had gone down. After which he’d got colder and colder. The temperature dropped considerably and Pommes Frites spent a sleepless night wondering what to do next.
But all had not been in vain. In fact, if he hadn’t gone off on a false trail and reached his vantage point he might never have seen the flash of morning sun reflected from a piece of glass on a neighbouring hill. It had to be the gazebo.
Pommes Frites made his way back down to the fork and then set off again, happy in the knowledge that what goes up must eventually come down again, and that since the road, which had now become a track, didn’t seem to go anywhere other than up, anything like a lorry would have to pass him if it came back down again. It was a tenuous piece of reasoning, but when you are running hard reasoning comes in short spurts, and Pommes Frites had been running very hard indeed.
It all took much longer than he had expected and it wasn’t until he was almost at the highest point of the next hill that he rounded a bend and suddenly stopped dead in his tracks. There in front of him, large as life and parked outside a small stone building, was the lorry. Crouching down behind a boulder, he surveyed the scene, taking it all in bit by bit and building up a picture in his mind. Somehow or other it wasn’t quite as he had expected.
True, the gazebo had been unloaded from the lorry. It had been manhandled down some planks which still rested on the tailboard, and it was now ensconced on a nearby hillock.
But it wasn’t the lorry or the gazebo that caused Pommes Frites to give the bloodhound’s equivalent of a double-take; it was the sight of its lone occupant.
He could hardly believe his eyes. He’d been prepared for practically anything but what he saw. He tried looking away again and then refocusing his gaze, but it was still exactly the same.
Far from being in a distressed condition, Madame Pamplemousse appeared to be enjoying herself no end. The door of the gazebo was wide open and she was sitting in the middle, basking in the rays of the morning sun as it beat down on her through the glass roof and sides. She even had her coat off which was most unusual. Pommes Frites couldn’t remember ever having seen Madame Pamplemousse out of doors without a coat before. He was too far away to see exactly what she was doing, but if it hadn’t been quite so hard to believe he would have sworn she was knitting. By her side there was a breakfast tray.
While he was watching a man came out of the hut carrying another tray which he took across to the gazebo. He was followed by a second man who hurried on ahead to prepare the way. There was a flurry of movement and then a short scene which Pommes Frites immediately recognised. It was one he’d seen enacted many times before. He knew it off by heart. The straightening of the back, the wagging finger. He could almost hear the sniff which punctuated the monologue. The men were being told off for entering the gazebo without first wiping the dust from their shoes. Even as he watched one of them bent down and began wiping the floor with his handkerchief.
Madame Pamplemousse might have been abducted, but she was quite definitely in charge, and it was equally clear that she was perfectly happy to
stay where she was—at least for the time being.
Taking advantage of the moment, Pommes Frites crept nearer still, wriggling along on all fours, body close to the ground, until he was in a position to get a better view and hear what was going on.
It was hard to know exactly what was being said—a lot of the conversation seemed to be conducted in sign language, but the gist was clear enough: Madame Pamplemousse was being invited to return to St. Castille the way she had come. Equally clearly Madame Pamplemousse had no intention whatsoever of doing anything of the sort. Madame Pamplemousse had had quite enough of travelling on the back of lorries. She was never going to travel on the back of a lorry again. Either they provided her with proper transport or she would not go at all. And if she didn’t go at all then it would be the worse for all concerned.
There was a hurried conference. Lesser beings might well have been left to their fate, but Madame Pamplemousse was not, in any sense of the word, a lesser being. Madame Pamplemousse was not to be trifled with. What Madame Pamplemousse said went.
Under other circumstances Pommes Frites might well have enjoyed the sight of his adversaries being so thoroughly cowed, but he had various things on his mind.
Apart from being a bit fed up at having spent a night without food and shelter on the mountain, he was beginning to wonder how his master was getting on. For the time being, Madame Pamplemousse seemed in no great danger, and at least he now knew where she was, which was more than he could say for his master. There was no knowing where he might be.
Something else was beginning to bother him as well, another mathematical problem. Of the two men, he recognised one as the man who had sprung out of the bush at him—the one who had gone off bang so unexpectedly. The second man had been driving the car the night when he had very nearly been run down, of that he was sure. Pommes Frites had a good memory for faces. But one and one made two, and there had been three people in the car. The one who was missing was the man who had appeared briefly as the waiter on their first night. Of the three Pommes Frites trusted him least of all. He had a nasty feeling his absence might have something to do with his master, but first he had to find Monsieur Pamplemousse, and to find Monsieur Pamplemousse he had to get back to St. Castille, and quickly. Pommes Frites’ thought processes might have been slow but they were thorough; they left no stone unturned, and once he’d sorted things out in his mind he was quick to take action. A moment later he was on his way back down the mountain as fast as his legs would carry him.
As it happened, Monsieur Pamplemousse’s thoughts at that moment were occupied by much more mundane matters.
Hardly had Inspector Banyuls left than a trolley arrived bearing his lunch. After an evening and a night without food, Monsieur Pamplemousse was more than ready for it; now he was regretting his haste.
Not even several copious draughts of Vichy water helped to assuage the pain which had settled heavily in the middle of his chest, a pain which was only relieved by getting out of bed and walking around.
He crossed to the window and gazed out gloomily. One day he would have to persuade the directeur to allow him to conduct a survey of food in institutions. One day. It would hardly be a labour of love. The string which had held his poulet together had been better cooked than the bird itself. As for the soup that preceded it … what was it the Prince of Gastronomes, Curmonsky, had said? A good soup should taste of the things it is made of. If the one he had just eaten fulfilled that criterion he shuddered to think what its ingredients must have been.
In the courtyard below him people were hurrying to and fro. An ambulance drew up and disgorged its occupants. There was a sprinkling of nuns. Monsieur Pamplemousse’s gaze softened as he looked at them. They were good people, devoting their lives to others. They always made him feel a trifle inadequate. A car drew up a short distance away from the others and a woman in black got out. The sight of all the comings and goings made him feel restless. The whole thing was quite ridiculous, but having said that the question arose as to what he should or even could do about it.
To walk out of the hospital was one thing. To leave quietly without setting up a great hue and cry was another matter entirely.
He crossed to the door and opened it. A long corridor running the full length of the building stretched out before him. The stairs and lifts were at the far end, on either side of a glass-fronted room inside which he could see the sister busy at her desk. As she looked up, sensing a movement, he dodged back into his room.
Glancing at the crumpled bed with its cage for his legs and the pile of pillows, a thought struck him; memories of childhood pranks and days at summer camps. A momentary diversion was all that was needed and he could be away.
He was on the point of stripping off the bedclothes when another idea occurred to him. A refinement which might make all the difference between success and failure. Once again Poupées Fantastiques could come to his rescue.
Bereft of Pommes Frites’ gas cylinder, Monsieur Pamplemousse had to resort to what amounted to mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and by the time he had finished he was red in the face and panting from his exertions.
All the same, it had definitely been worthwhile. Poupées Fantastiques had excelled themselves. True, they had omitted the wooden legs this time, but in the circumstances that suited his purpose very well. If things carried on at the present rate they must be considering going into mass production. He would have to demand a royalty for the use of his image. He was pleased to see that they had taken note of his complaint and this time they had included the batteries. Twelve, no less! And he could see why. The Mark V differed from its predecessors in details only, but those details had obviously inspired the designers to give full rein to their fantasies. A fact which was readily apparent when he operated the switch.
He drew the blinds and then, to complete the picture, slipped out of his nightshirt. It was as he was in the act of pulling it over the head of the dummy that he heard voices outside.
Flinging the model on to the bed, he made a dive for the safety of the screen in the corner of the room. No sooner was he behind it than the door opened and he heard the voice of the girl who’d brought the mail earlier in the day.
‘There is a lady to see you, Monsieur Pamplemousse …’
The voice broke off in mid-sentence and he heard a gasp. Peering through a join in the screen he saw the white face of the novice gazing in horror at the figure on the bed. In his haste he must have left the motor switched on.
‘Oh, Mon Dieu!’ Crossing herself, the girl fled from the room, leaving Monsieur Pamplemousse’s visitor to her fate.
A moment later there was a click as the door was gently closed. His visitor clearly didn’t share the novice’s inhibitions. A thought crossed Monsieur Pamplemousse’s mind. Could it be …? He shifted his position to try and get a better view and received an impression of blackness, a black veil, a black hat, and a long black dress reaching right to the ground.
Whoever it was, it certainly wasn’t Sophie; and yet, even as he watched there was a flurry of movement and before his astonished gaze the unidentified visitor picked up the hem of her dress with both hands and began to raise it. Monsieur Pamplemousse crouched rooted to the spot. If it wasn’t Madame Sophie it must be a near relation. An aunt perhaps? It was incredible, the woman hadn’t been in the room more than a minute. He wondered if it had something to do with the mountain air.
But if Monsieur Pamplemousse was expecting to witness an action replay of the occurrences in his own room he was doomed to disappointment. Instead of revealing a set of frilly underwear, the first thing that caught his eye was a matching pair of blue trouser legs, rolled up to calf length and held in place by a pair of clothes pegs. The second thing, dangling from a fastening concealed beneath the dress, was the ominous shape of a Walther 9mm submachine-gun. It was a type Monsieur Pamplemousse had once fired during an attachment to the West German police; he remembered it well.
Slowly and deliberately the owner swung the st
ock into position, cocked the gun, slipped the lever above the pistol grip to fully automatic and pointed it towards the bed.
With a rate of fire of 550 rounds a minute, the full magazine took a mere seventeen seconds to discharge, nevertheless it seemed to last an eternity. It gave Monsieur Pamplemousse time to thank his lucky stars that he was where he was and not still between the sheets. Had he been in the bed … his stomach turned to water at the thought.
Luckily the gun was equipped with a silencer or the noise would have been deafening. Even so it was loud enough for Monsieur Pamplemousse to expect to hear running feet at any moment, but none came. Perhaps, for once, the sister had deserted her post.
The assailant was in no great hurry. If anything he seemed to be acting as if he had all the time in the world. For a full thirty seconds he gazed through the smoke at the remains of the figure on the bed. Although Monsieur Pamplemousse had no means of knowing it, his would-be assailant had just received the answer to a question that had often been a subject for discussion among those who worried about such things. If a man died at what might be called a moment critique, did he or did he not retain his enthusiasm for matters of the flesh. The answer in this particular case was definitely no. He had never seen anyone’s manhood quite so destroyed. It was all very satisfactory. It was a pity the matter had to end this way, but that was life—or, in this case, death. You won one—you lost another. His instructions in the beginning had been to warn, to intimidate, but not to kill. However, there came a time when matters got out of hand, when tidiness was important, This was one of those occasions. He would have to wait a little while longer for his rewards, but he had all the time in the world. Waiting—in the company of ‘a certain person’, would have its compensations.
He smiled grimly beneath the veil, then as slowly and as deliberately as when he’d entered the room, he detached the umbilical-like cord from the gun and placed it on the floor. Walking would be much easier without it—he had no wish to have a hot barrel between his legs. A moment later he crept out of the room as silently as he had arrived.