by Michael Bond
Mrs. Cosgrove followed him into the bathroom. She looked sceptical. ‘Do you think it will ever fly?’
Monsieur Pamplemousse gave a non-committal shrug. ‘They asked the same question of the Montgolfier brothers when they set off from the Champ de Mars in 1783.’ He spoke with more conviction than he actually felt. At least the Montgolfier balloon had been spherical. Aerodynamically, Pommes Frites’ kennel left a lot to be desired; it was hardly in the forefront of design.
‘And this evening?’
‘This evening I shall be even busier.’ He would need to make a few trial runs with Pommes Frites so that he would get used to the idea of having a miniature dirigeable attached to his collar. He might not take kindly to the idea. Both that and testing the helium-filled kennel would have to wait until after dark. And it would have to work first time; in all probability he wouldn’t get a second chance.
Aware that Mrs. Cosgrove was looking deflated again, he turned to her. ‘Perhaps,’ he said gently, ‘if you were to help, I might get it all done in half the time. And then …’
‘And then?’ She put down her carrier bag.
‘In France there is a saying: “On s’abandonne à son imagination”, one lets one’s imagination run away with one.’
‘In England,’ said Mrs. Cosgrove firmly, ‘we say that too. We also have one which says: “There is no time like the present”.’
As something soft and silky landed on the bathroom floor there came a sigh of contentment from the other room. Pommes Frites wasn’t given to boasting or to blowing his own trumpet, but it was nice to know that his efforts at restoring his master’s equilibrium hadn’t been entirely wasted.
It was dark by the time Monsieur Pamplemousse followed Pommes Frites out through his bedroom window.
‘Good luck!’ Mrs. Cosgrove’s voice came through the darkness, muffled by the bulk of the newly-inflated kennel as she struggled to push it after them.
‘Merci.’ Privately Monsieur Pamplemousse suddenly realised he was going to need it. Or rather, Pommes Frites would need it.
A feeling of guilt came over him as he clipped the end of the line onto the harness and the makeshift balloon rose into the air. Somewhere along the way his calculations must have gone sadly wrong. Perhaps in his ignorance he had grossly underestimated the lifting power of helium. Whatever the reason, he undoubtedly had a problem on his hands.
If only he’d given it a trial run as planned. Instead of which his good intentions had gone for nothing, sacrificed in favour of the more immediate desires of the flesh.
Paying out the line centimetre by centimetre, he watched anxiously as the kennel buffeted to and fro against the side of the building.
Merde! If the camera broke one of the windows en route the game would be up and no mistake.
At his last medical Pommes Frites had weighed in at around fifty kilogrammes, but from the feel of things he was going to need every gramme. The light breeze he’d noticed earlier in the day had freshened and was full of unpredictable upward currents. For a moment or two he toyed with the idea of adding some extra ballast, then dismissed the thought. Getting the weight exactly right would take time, and now that he’d set the wheels in motion speed was of the essence.
That Pommes Frites was beginning to share his master’s anxiety was patently obvious as the end of the line was reached and he began to take the strain. There was a certain lightness to his tread as he set off along the side of the building, a lightness which caused him to gaze skywards more than once as Monsieur Pamplemousse guided him towards his starting position. Much of the time it was hard to tell what thoughts passed through Pommes Frites’ mind – he could, if he chose, be very poker-faced – but for once it was patently obvious. He looked decidedly apprehensive.
‘Avancez!’ Taking advantage of a moment when the moon was temporarily obscured by a cloud, Monsieur Pamplemousse gave him an encouraging pat.
For a full two minutes their luck held. Like a jumbo jet piloted by an inexperienced captain badly in need of a refresher course and using every inch of the runway, Pommes Frites set off, following an unsteady path towards the far end of the building.
Monsieur Pamplemousse held his breath. At least one of his calculations was correct. It was hard to tell from where he was looking, but the camera appeared to be almost exactly in line with the centre of the windows. He triggered off the automatic film advance mechanism with the button on the control unit, then began counting the seconds in double rather than single figures in order to keep an accurate time check. One minute, twelve seconds later they were halfway along the side of the building. He glanced down at the control unit. The luminous display showed the figure 18. He breathed a sigh of relief. It meant his allowance of four seconds between shots had been right too.
It was as they neared the end of the building that things began to go wrong. For some reason the camera looked higher than it had at the beginning, rather too near the top of the windows for his liking. Perhaps it was that the ground sloped upwards? He looked down again and saw to his horror that the worst had happened. Pommes Frites was treading air; his front paws had already left the ground and their opposite numbers at the rear were about to follow suit.
Monsieur Pamplemousse made a frantic dive forward, only to pull himself up in the nick of time as he realised he was tottering on the edge of a rocky precipice. In any case he had left it too late. Carrying the analogy with a jumbo jet to its ultimate conclusion, Pommes Frites had completed his takeoff.
Bereft of navigational lights, silhouetted in the ghostly light from the moon, now re-emerged from behind the cloud, it would under other circumstances have been an awesome sight. Any local inhabitant witnessing the event while staggering home after an evening out with the boys, might well have been excused had he crossed himself and taken an immediate header off the cliffs into the valley far below. As it was, Monsieur Pamplemousse could only stand helplessly by and watch as his friend and mentor executed a steep turn to starboard and then, gaining height with every passing second, set off slowly and ponderously in the direction of the Pyrénées-Orientales.
9
A DEVELOPING SITUATION
It was well after midnight before Monsieur Pamplemousse finally got back to his room.
‘Aristide!’ Mrs. Cosgrove reached out to help him over the sill. ‘Are you all right? You’ve been so long I was beginning to think the worst. How did it all go?’
She felt cold to the touch and he realised she’d probably been waiting by the open window ever since they left. He gave her a quick hug as she drew the curtains. ‘I shall know for certain when we have processed the film.’
‘But what happened?’ They both blinked as she turned on the light. ‘You look as if you’ve been pulled through a hedge backwards.’
He glanced at his reflection in the mirror. It was an apposite description. All it needed was the word ‘tree’ to be substituted for ‘hedge’ to be true.
‘Pommes Frites had an unfortunate accident. Through no fault of his own he became airborne and it was nearly the last we saw of each other. Fortunately I was still holding the control box, so I managed to pull him back safely with the cable. It was, so to speak, his umbilical cord. If that hadn’t held – alors…!’ He left the rest to her imagination. It didn’t bear thinking about. Full marks to Leitz for quality workmanship. If the cable had been the product of a lesser manufacturer Heaven alone knew what might have happened.
‘Poor chap.’ Mrs. Cosgrove was rewarded by a grateful wagging of the tail as she bent down to give Pommes Frites a pat. ‘Thank goodness you’re safe.’
‘I’m afraid we lost his kennel in the process. It suffered a puncture when it hit a tree.’
Monsieur Pamplemousse spoke as though the whole thing was an everyday happening, but in reality it had been a terrifying experience, seeing Pommes Frites sail off into the night. He would never have forgiven himself had the worst occurred. Climbing the tree in the dark had been nothing by comparison, although ge
tting his precious cargo down in one piece had been another matter; the memory would probably keep him awake at night for some time to come. In the meantime there was work to be done.
‘Is everything ready?’
‘Just about. I’ve mixed the chemicals and tried to keep the solutions as near thirty-eight degrees as possible. I stood the jugs in a bowl of water and used your portable coffee heater like you said.’
‘Good.’ Monsieur Pamplemousse gave her another appreciative hug. ‘I don’t know what I would have done without you.’
As he rewound the film onto its spool he quickly checked the camera. It had survived its emergency landing with hardly a scratch. The settings were all as he had left them. The film safely back in its spool, he clicked open the back of the camera to remove it. Now for the big moment. It was a long time since he’d last done any processing. To ruin things now through some idiotic mistake would be too galling for words.
In the bathroom with the lights out, feeling his way round in the pitch dark, he was acutely aware of Mrs. Cosgrove’s presence.
The film loaded into its lightproof tank, he reached for the switch. Ten minutes alone in the dark with Mrs. Cosgrove would not be conducive to good dark-room practice. He could also hear Pommes Frites sniffing along the bottom of the door.
‘Do you have to go back to Paris tonight?’
He shrugged, trying to concentrate on what he was doing and keep an eye on the time as well. ‘It depends on what’s here. If my suspicions are correct then the answer has to be “yes”. There is a train leaving Carcassonne at four thirty-three in the morning. It gets to Paris in the early afternoon.’
‘I’ll drive you there.’
‘You don’t have to. I can leave the car at the station and make arrangements to have it picked up when I get back to Paris.’
‘Please. I would like to.’
‘In that case I would like it too.’ He couldn’t deny it would be very pleasant. The thought of driving through the night in a strange car while trying to map-read at the same time over perhaps two hundred and fifty kilometres or more of mostly winding mountain roads didn’t exactly fill him full of joy. Pommes Frites would be fast asleep in the back and he wasn’t too sure of his own ability to stay awake.
At exactly twelve seconds before the first five minutes was up he began pouring the developer away, then quickly added the bleach-fix from another jug. Mrs. Cosgrove had done her job well.
After another five minutes he emptied out the second solution and turned on the tap over the basin. Three minutes’ wash in cold water should be sufficient; four to be on the safe side.
‘Will you be back?’
‘It is possible.’ Even as he spoke the words he knew he wouldn’t be. And like the old joke, he knew that she knew that he knew he wouldn’t be. To return would imply all kinds of things from which there might be no turning back.
‘Who knows? It is a small world.’ He turned off the up and began unscrewing the lid of the tank. ‘Did you bring the hair-dryer?’
‘It is in the other room.’ She opened the door and went into the bedroom. Pommes Frites wagged his tail doubtfully.
Monsieur Pamplemousse held the film horizontally between his out-stretched hands, keeping a watchful eye on it in case the dryer came too close. In a matter of moments all traces of wetness had disappeared.
Allowing it to spring back into a rough coil, he held the leader over a piece of white paper on the table beneath the overhead light and began pulling it through his fingers, examining it frame by frame.
The first was half wall, half window. Nothing appeared to be happening behind the latter. The second and third frames were of some kind of lounge area. There were a number of figures, mostly male, sitting or standing around in small groups, all so small as to be unrecognisable without being blown up. It looked as though there was a party in progress.
There was another shot of the tower wall. Pommes Frites must have changed his pace slightly. Momentarily diverted, perhaps, by an interesting scent en route, or an unexpected cross wind.
The next two or three were much more rewarding. Pinsharp and brightly lit, they showed a gymnasium, not dissimilar to the one he’d been in on his first day, full of the kind of equipment one would expect in a place where no expense was spared; parallel bars, rowing machines, weight-reducing vibratory belts, racks of dumb-bells. The sole occupant was an elderly woman in a track suit who was hard at work on a cycling machine; shoulders hunched, head low down until her close-cropped hair almost touched the dial attached to the handlebars. There was something vaguely familiar about her, but without the aid of a light-box or some means of reversing the image it was hard to say exactly what.
Eight and nine were again of the wall. Ten to fourteen were of individual apartments. The main lights must have been out, for they were under-exposed and it was hard to tell what was going on.
Frames fifteen to twenty were again well lit. Clearly they showed a kitchen area; white cupboards lined the walls and in the background there was what appeared to be a row of stainless steel ovens. One picture showed some out-of-focus scales in close-up – they must have been standing by the window; another, a row of bowls clearly containing flour. Nearby was a pile of saucissons. Number nineteen showed Furze, for once minus his clip-board. He was standing in front of a second set of scales peering at a dial. From number twenty on the film was meaningless, recording for posterity Pommes Frites’ journey into space. They might well yield some interesting enlargements, unique in their way, but for the moment Monsieur Pamplemousse had seen enough.
‘The answer to your earlier question is “yes”. I must catch the first train to Paris.’
‘What time do you want to leave?’
‘As soon as possible.’ He suddenly wanted to get away from Château Morgue. Sensing her disappointment, he tried to console her. ‘Look, I don’t want to leave. I have to leave.’
It was hard to believe that his expedition with Pommes Frites had gone entirely unnoticed, and if they had been seen word would undoubtedly filter back. There was no time to lose. ‘But first there are things I must do.’
‘Can I help?’
He took her arm. ‘I will pack my belongings and then you can help by taking them to the car. Pommes Frites and I will join you there. When we leave we must do it quietly and quickly.’
Mrs. Cosgrove looked at him thoughtfully. Almost as if she was seeing him for the first time.
‘Are you angry about something?’
‘Angry?’ Monsieur Pamplemousse considered the remark. Yes, he was angry. He always felt angry when he came across an injustice being done, especially when it involved the very young or those who were too old or too tired to defend themselves. In his days with the Sûreté it had been both a strength and a weakness, but he was glad his feelings had never been blunted. He attempted with difficulty to put it into words.
Mrs. Cosgrove looked relieved as she listened to him. ‘I thought perhaps it was something I’d said.’
Monsieur Pamplemousse took hold of her hand. It felt instantly responsive and yet at the same time it was that of a stranger, making him aware that despite everything they hardly knew each other.
‘I don’t think that would be possible.’ He allowed a suitable length of time to elapse before returning to business. ‘There is one other thing you can do.’
‘Tell me.’
‘When Pommes Frites and I leave I want you to go along the corridor to the right. Round the first corner you will find a fire alarm. At the exact time I give you I want you to break the glass. It will clear the building of unwanted people and it will give you an opportunity to leave with the luggage.’
‘No questions?’
‘No questions.’ The fact of the matter was he didn’t as yet have a clear picture of what he intended to do, only the vague outline. He would play it by ear. Events would shape themselves.
Carcassonne station was unrelievedly gloomy and deserted when they arrived. A few faces stared a
t them uninterestedly through the windows of the waiting train.
Apart from one wrong turning crossing the Massif du Canigou, the drive had been uneventful, but the short cut through Molitg-les-Bains via the D84 had been a disaster, adding perhaps an hour to the journey. In cutting one large corner off the map they had added countless smaller ones, with the result that instead of having plenty of time to spare there was a bare ten minutes before the train was due to leave for Toulouse. Perhaps it was just as well. He didn’t like prolonged goodbyes.
‘You will have a long journey back.’
‘That’s all right. I don’t mind the early mornings – once I’m up.’ Mrs. Cosgrove glanced skywards. ‘I shall see the sun rise. I might stop on the way and watch it.’
It was true. There wasn’t a cloud in sight. It was the time of day he liked best and he almost envied her the drive across the mountains. There would be all manner of wildlife at the side of the road, looking startled as they were caught in the headlights, or shooting off in a panic. And peasants out with guns. They, too, would look affronted by the intrusion of their privacy.
He wondered what was happening back at Château Morgue. Soon after they left a fire engine passed them on its way up, followed by an ambulance and several police cars. He’d caught sight of Inspector Chambard in one of them. It looked as though they were going prepared for some kind of siege. A little later there had been another fire engine, this time with a turret ladder so large the driver was having difficulty negotiating some of the bends. They would need it if they wanted to enter the Tower Block. By the time he’d finished with the lift it would take a skilled electrician several hours to get it going again. The occupants of the Tower Block were well and truly trapped. The only other way down he’d managed to find was an emergency staircase which came out into the underground garage. He’d rendered that equally hors de combat. Sophisticated locks serve a very useful purpose if you want to keep people from making an unauthorised entry, but given a little knowledge they can be made equally effective in keeping others imprisoned.