Monsieur Pamplemousse Aloft

by Michael Bond

  Following on behind, Pommes Frites wore his resigned expression. He knew the signs. His master was smitten.

  When they reached the harbour it became clear that all the action was at the other end of the promenade. The circus was located on a patch of scrubland a little way back from the beach. The ‘big top’, shielded from the prevailing wind by a group of caravans and lorries, was festooned with coloured lights. A low-pitched continuous grinding sound interspersed with the spasmodic crack of rifle-fire could be heard from the fairground alongside it. He wondered how many other parts the girl played. Perhaps even now she was already drumming up custom for the hoop-la. It was a hard life.

  The Quai Jules Verne was as he remembered it, except it was now called Quai Général de Gaulle. In fairness, the latter had a better claim. Jules Verne had only once in his life been to Port St. Augustin, and that only on a school outing from his home town of Nantes.

  The old cobbled street leading back to the centre of town now had a ‘No Entry’ sign. It had been turned into a shopping precinct. The cobbles had been re-laid and everywhere there were concrete tubs filled with flowers. It was lined on either side with expensive-looking boutiques displaying the latest Paris fashions. There was even a bookshop.

  Benches were dotted along the promenade, sandwiched between waste bins whose black plastic liners peeped out from beneath garish orange lids.

  Three nuns came towards him. It was a good omen. To meet one or more was supposed to bring good fortune, provided you didn’t see their backs. Three was especially lucky. It would make up for the earlier episode. He let them go past.

  Much to his relief, the garage was still there. And it was open. Apart from a row of modern pumps, it had hardly changed. In the old days they had been worked by hand.

  ‘Pas de problème, Monsieur.’ The owner seemed only too pleased at the prospect of an evening job outside the town. He would finish what he was doing – ten minutes at the most – then he would take Monsieur to his hotel, go and collect the car before it got dark and deliver it later that night. Yes, he had heard good reports of the Ty Coz, but it was not for local people. It was for the tourists.

  Monsieur Pamplemousse was tempted to stroll along to the end of the promenade in order to have a quick look at the circus, but he decided instead to spend the time looking round the tiny port. Tomorrow evening would be soon enough.

  A new car-park had been built and was chock-a-block. There were also many more yachts in the harbour than he remembered, the smaller ones moving gently on the swell from the incoming tide. In the old days it had been full of fishing boats. The local florist must do well. The larger the yacht, the bigger the investment in flowers. Some of them looked too immaculate and lived-in ever to put to sea.

  The waitresses in the Hôtel du Port were getting ready for dinner, their starched coiffes bobbing up and down as they bent over the tables. There would probably be a rush of early diners wanting to go to the circus afterwards. The Hôtel now boasted an enormous electrically operated blind to protect those facing westward from the setting sun. The bathrooms would have expensive tiles and the latest plumbing. At least the dark, solid, old-fashioned Breton furniture was still there. It was probably too heavy to move and no one else would want it anyway. It summed up modern France in a way. One foot firmly planted in the twenty-first century, the other deeply rooted in the past. In Paris uniformed men riding Caninettes searched the pavements for evidence of canine misdemeanours – Pommes Frites led a hunted life these days: he could hardly call his merde his own – while their colleagues looking after the gutters still used rolls of old carpet tied up with string to divert the water which gushed down every day from the heights of Montmartre, for the very simple reason that no one had come up with a better idea. It was the same here. The old public wash-house was still intact and looked well used, but the pissotière had been replaced by a concrete and steel Sanisette. Its predecessor had smelled to high heaven in August – worse than the fish market – but at least it had been free. Not that financial considerations seemed to make any difference these days. As he strolled past it a man carrying a small brown valise slipped a coin in the slot and stood waiting. There was a brief snatch of music as the door slid open and then closed behind him. Everything was done to music these days. Even Le Guide had been forced to introduce a symbol for piped music in restaurants, a loudspeaker rampant.

  Monsieur Pamplemousse suddenly paused in his musings, hardly able to believe his eyes. On one of the benches further along the promenade, deeply immersed in a journal, sat a familiar figure. It hardly seemed possible, and yet, come to think of it, why not? Brittany was very much a home from home for lots of English families, some of whom took their holidays there year after year. It had always been that way. He well remembered their strange habit of marking the level of wine left in the bottle before they went upstairs to bed at night. He’d always thought of it as ‘the English habit’, although he’d since learnt it was far from typical.

  A feeling of excitement came over him and he quickened his pace. Although they had spoken on the telephone several times – notably when he’d been involved in the case of the missing girls at the finishing school near Evian – it was a long time since they last met. Three years? Four?

  He almost broke into a trot as he covered the last few metres, his hand extended.

  ‘Monsieur Pickering. How good to see you! Comment ça va?’

  The figure on the bench glanced up from his journal, then looked briefly at his wrist-watch.

  ‘C’est dix-sept plus cinq minutes.’ It was said in a flat monotone, almost devoid of expression. Having imparted the information, the owner of the voice pointedly returned to his crossword.

  ‘But …’ Monsieur Pamplemousse hardly knew what to say. ‘It is Monsieur Pickering, n’est-ce pas? Surely you remember me?’

  ‘Look, piss off, there’s a good chap.’ This time the words came through clenched teeth and were said with such feeling Monsieur Pamplemousse practically reeled back as if he had been hit.

  As he made his way slowly back along the promenade he felt totally shattered; rejected on all sides. First there had been the accident with his car, then the girl. Now, Mr. Pickering – someone he had always looked on as a friend – had denied him.

  So much for entente cordiale. Anything less cordiale than Mr. Pickering’s reception would be hard to imagine.

  Feeling Pommes Frites nuzzle up against him, he reached down and patted his head. At least, come rain or shine, you knew where you stood with Pommes Frites. His was no fair weather friendship.

  He directed his thoughts towards Ty Coz. When they got there they would have a good meal to make up for it. It would be a meal to end all meals; no expense spared. There would be no stinting. Madame Grante would have a fit when she saw l’addition. He could picture it all.

  But as he crossed the road towards the garage, something else happened which gave him cause for thought. He was not unfamiliar with the workings of Sanisettes. Indeed, following his experience in St. Georges-sur-Lie when for a brief period he had been incarcerated in one while inspecting an hotel belonging to the Director’s Aunt Louise, he’d become a walking mine of information on the technicalities of their workings.

  Efficient, they might be. A minor miracle of electronics as applied to public facilities, yes. Sanitised, certainly. But fast, no. The cleaning cycle following each operation alone took exactly forty seconds, so there was no question of one out, the next one in.

  And therein lay the nub of the matter. His encounter with Mr. Pickering had been brief and to the point; it had certainly taken not longer than a minute or so. And yet he’d been barely halfway across the road when the door to the Sanisette slid open and out came a nun. Moreover, she was carrying a small brown valise.

  Clearly, the undercurrents in St. Augustin were not restricted to rocking the boats in the port. Some were hard at work on land as well.

  3

  TRUFFLE TROUBLE

  Removing
a box bearing a large red cross from the leather case provided by Le Guide as standard issue to all its Inspectors, Monsieur Pamplemousse opened it and began looking for a tube of antiseptic ointment and a plaster. For the latter he needed one which was both generous in its measurements and in its powers of adhesion, for Pommes Frites’ nose was, to say the least, not only large but usually very wet, and he wouldn’t be at all happy if the plaster fell off into his breakfast. Not that the thought of breakfast at the Ty Coz was uppermost in either of their minds at that moment. If their experience of the previous evening was anything to go by, their fast would best be broken elsewhere.

  In designing the original case, which had changed very little in its basic concept over the years, the founder of Le Guide, Monsieur Hippolyte Duval – a perfectionist in all that he did – had sought to provide for any emergency likely to be encountered by members of his staff whilst in the field.

  Monsieur Pamplemousse couldn’t help but reflect as he discarded first one and then another plaster as being either too small or the wrong shape, that Monsieur Duval had probably never envisaged the need to come to the rescue of a bloodhound who had suffered injury to his proboscis from the business end of a ball-point pen, or indeed any sort of pen – given the fact that the ball-point wasn’t invented until long after the Founder had passed on.

  Monsieur Pamplemousse felt terrible. He would far sooner have speared his own nose than wound Pommes Frites’ in the way that he had. Had he been brought up in court by an animal protection society, his excuse would have sounded very lame indeed. His head bowed in shame.

  The previous evening had been an unrelieved disaster. The only good thing that had happened was the retrieval of his car, looking none the worse for its adventure. One more tribute to a design which in many respects was hard to fault.

  The food in the hotel restaurant had turned out to be unbelievably bad. How the other diners could get through their meal, some with every appearance of enjoyment, was beyond him. Not even several measures of a particularly vicious Calvados had entirely taken away the salty taste. Since the bottle had been without a label he strongly suspected the chef must make it himself during the long winter evenings.

  In the end he and Pommes Frites had retired to bed early armed with a large supply of Evian, the seals of the bottles unbroken to make sure the contents hadn’t been tampered with. After a long drive he had hoped they might both get a good night’s sleep. But hunger proved to be a poor bedfellow. Apart from which he had many things on his mind.

  Mr. Pickering’s strange behaviour kept him occupied for quite a while; he couldn’t for the life of him think what he might have said or done to cause his old friend to act the way he had. The goings-on in the Sanisette were something else again. Coupled with the behaviour of the nuns in the car earlier in the day, he began to wonder whether he wasn’t witnessing the total decline of the Catholic Church; the Pope must be a very worried homme. Thinking about the girl who had given him a lift only added to his restlessness – he couldn’t get the sudden change in her behaviour out of his mind; one moment so cool and sure of herself, the next moment clearly afraid. But afraid of what? Magnified as such thoughts always are in the hours of darkness, he began to wish he’d gone to the circus after all, picturing himself in the role of rescuer from whatever it was that was troubling her.

  He tried counting sheep, but that only made matters worse. They all wore frilly white collars, the kind used to decorate roast crown of lamb. He pushed the thought aside.

  Last, but not least, there was the task which had brought him to Port St. Augustin in the first place: catering for the inaugural flight of the airship. Switching on the bedside light, he reached for his pen and pad. For one reason and another he hadn’t even begun to think of a possible menu and time wasn’t on his side. Neither as it happened, was inspiration. One thing was certain, he wouldn’t find it by staying at the Ty Coz. Why on earth the Director had insisted on his going there he would never know.

  In desperation he sought refuge in a game popularly known to himself and his colleagues on Le Guide as ‘The Last Supper’. It was one they played on those occasions when they were able to meet up en masse as it were; the annual staff outing at the Director’s weekend retreat in Normandy perhaps, or when things were comparatively slack after the March launch and they were all in the office getting ready for the next edition.

  Over the years they had played it so many times the result was a foregone conclusion, but it was no less enjoyable for all that, giving rise to much smacking of lips and to reminiscences which often went on far into the night.

  Monsieur Pamplemousse’s own choice on such occasions was clear and uncompromising. Simplicity was the keynote. Truffle soup at Bocuse’s restaurant just outside Lyon. A simple grilled filet steak – preferably from a Charolais bull – accompanied by a green salad, at any one of a hundred restaurants he could have named without even stopping to think; followed, if heavenly dispensation made it possible to arrange, by pommes frites cooked by the patron of a little hillside café he’d once come across on the D942 west of Carpentras; light, crisp, golden, piping hot, and always served as a separate course, for they were perfection in their own right. The wine would be an Hermitage from Monsieur Chave, and after the cheese – the final choice would depend on the time of the year – a tarte aux pommes légère, wafer thin, and topped with equally thin slivers of almond.

  His salivary glands working overtime, Monsieur Pamplemousse lay awake for a long time after that. If he were to expire during the night – and the way he felt, such an event was not entirely outside the bounds of possibility – it would not be as a happy man.

  And so it came to pass that with food uppermost in his mind, he fell into a fitful sleep, dreaming, perhaps not unsurprisingly in the circumstances, of what might have been.

  However, as he settled down to enjoy the meal of his dreams something very strange happened. A ton weight seemed to have settled on his stomach, pinning him to the bed. The more he struggled the harder it became to move, and panic set in.

  Then, just as he was about to give up all hope of rescue, a waiter appeared bearing not the expected bowl of soup, but what could only be described as a kit of parts; a platter of pastry, a jug containing chicken stock, and a plate on which reposed a single black truffle – a magnificent specimen to be sure, the biggest he had ever seen – twice the size of a large walnut. Madame Grante would have had a fit if she’d seen it.

  He reached forward to pick it up. But the surface was moist and as soon as his fingers made contact it shot out from between them and rolled across the table cloth, hovering for a moment or two before settling down again. He tried a second time then a third, but on each occasion the result was the same. The truffle seemed to have a life of its own.

  Stealth was needed. Glancing over his shoulder to make sure no one was watching, Monsieur Pamplemousse clasped his pen. Then he made a lightning stab at the object in front of him.

  Alonzo T. Cross, inventor of the world’s first propelling pencil – a forerunner of Monsieur Pamplemousse’s present weapon – would have been well satisfied with the result, for it was a tribute to the sharpness of his products.

  Not even a banshee, that spirit of Celtic superstition reputed to howl beneath the window of a house where the occupant is about to die, could have surpassed the cry which rent the air as the finely engineered point of the pen made contact with its target.

  Monsieur Pamplemousse woke with a start and found himself lying half on and half off his hotel bed, with Pommes Frites eyeing him dolefully, not to say fearfully, from the other side of the room. He wore an expression, as well he might in the circumstances, of a dog who has just suffered the ultimate betrayal of a love which he had always assumed would last forever. To make matters worse it had happened at the very moment when he’d been in the middle of showing his affection for his master with a morning lick. St. Hubert – the patron saint of bloodhounds – would have been outraged had he been present at
the scene.

  As Monsieur Pamplemousse looked at the end of his pen and then at Pommes Frites’ nose, he realised for the first time that the latter bore a distinct resemblance to the Tuber menosporum of his dreams and remorse immediately set in. Pommes Frites’ proboscis, once the pride and joy of the Sûreté, follower to the bitter end of many a trail, sometime winner of the Pierre Armand trophy for the best sniffer dog of his year, was not something to be trifled with. Its impairment would be almost as hard to bear for those who in one way or another depended on its proper functioning as it would be for Pommes Frites himself. Reports for Le Guide would suffer. Tastings in restaurants across the length and breadth of France would lose their authority.

  As he applied a generous helping of ointment to the end of Pommes Frites’ olfactory organ and then pressed a plaster firmly into place, anger filled Monsieur Pamplemousse’s soul. One look at the expression in his friend’s eyes confirmed in him the need for action no matter what the consequences.

  Replacing the first aid box in the case, he reached for the tray containing the camera equipment, then paused for a moment. It was tempting to take a picture of his patient for use in case there were any arguments later. But that would be unkind; it would be rubbing salt into the wound, and salt was the one culinary item any mention of which was strictly taboo for the time being.

  Monsieur Pamplemousse came to a decision. Enough was enough. In this instance, more than enough. He picked up another, much larger case and placed it on the bed.

  Recognising the signs, Pommes Frites wagged his tail. The possibility of spending any more time in their present surroundings was not something he could enthuse over either. Normally he had great faith in his master’s ability to turn up trumps when it came to finding places to stay, but that too had undergone a severe shaking.