by Michael Bond
‘He is a nice dog, that one.’ The bell-boy’s face suddenly split open from ear to ear in a wide smile. Pommes Frites had obviously not been idle; he had acquired a new friend. Pommes Frites was good at acquiring friends in the right places. No doubt he had also made his presence known to the kitchen staff and certain of the waiters as well. The boy’s next words confirmed his suspicions.
‘He also has a very good appetite. Pouf! Sapristi!’
‘He can hold his own.’
‘He should take care.’ The bell-boy pointed towards the woods again. ‘That is where the bicots are living. They do not like dogs. They are fouillemerdes.’ Clearly he considered himself a million light years removed from the occupants of a small group of caravans whose rooftops were just visible between a gap in the trees.
Monsieur Pamplemousse looked at him with interest. Fouillemerdes was a word he’d only ever heard used to describe people who leafed through books on the stalls along the banks of the Seine in Paris; for this reason the wares were almost always covered in plastic. As they finally stopped by a door and the boy felt for his keys, Monsieur Pamplemousse glanced uneasily towards the woods. Pommes Frites was well able to look after himself, but all the same he resolved to look for him again at the earliest opportunity.
‘They come here every year?’
‘Every year.’ The boy turned his key in the lock. ‘As soon as the holidays are over.’
‘The same people?’
‘They are all the same, Monsieur.’
‘How long do they stay?’
‘A few days. That is all. Long enough.’
Monsieur Pamplemousse considered the reply. He seemed to have struck a no-go area. Long enough for what? he wondered. The smile on the boy’s face had disappeared and he seemed suddenly ill at ease.
Monsieur Pamplemousse decided not to press the matter further for the time being. Instead, he tried a shot in the dark. As he pushed open the door he felt inside his wallet and took out a note.
‘Thank you for your trouble. I shall be grateful if you would keep an eye on Pommes Frites for me. Make sure no harm comes to him.’
He hoped he hadn’t given too much. The boy had the natural dignity of the Sudanese, and he didn’t wish to cause offence.
But he needn’t have worried. He was rewarded by an even larger display of white teeth. ‘Oui, Monsieur. It will be a pleasure.’
As the door clicked shut, Monsieur Pamplemousse set to work, quickly and professionally. It was quite like old times. He had no idea what he was looking for. He was simply obeying an instinct, fulfilling a need for some kind of action. It had to begin somewhere and he needed to create a picture in his mind of the person he was looking for.
There were three doors, one in each wall. He tried the one on his left. It opened on to a large cupboard. Inside there hung a row of coats and jackets. He looked at the labels; they were predictably expensive – Yves St. Laurent, Pierre Cardin. The shoes laid out neatly on a rack below were equally fashionable; mostly hand-made from Lobb of London. Albert Parfait was right – chefs did indeed enjoy a new status in society. A pair of Rossignol V.A.S. racing skis stood upright in one corner; some ice-skates hung alongside them.
The bathroom was neat and orderly. A Braun Micron de Luxe electric razor was laid out ready for use beside the washbasin. An electric toothbrush, also Braun, was clipped to the dark-blue tiles above it. Everything had its home. A large inset mirrored cabinet contained a selection of sprays and lotions.
The third door opened on to a large living-room, which in turn led into a bedroom. On one side there was a long picture-window. He drew the curtains carefully and then turned on the lights. An open hatch revealed the kitchen area.
The living-room itself was simple, even austere. It was the unlived-in room of a bachelor who spent most of his time either working or out doing other things.
He wondered what Holmes would have made of it. Probably from a few hastily crushed cigarette-ends in an ashtray and signs of pacing to and fro on the carpet, he would have built up a complete picture, astounding Watson and solving the mystery at one and the same time. However, there were no ashtrays and the beige carpet looked as fresh as the day it was first laid.
He drew a blank in the kitchen. It echoed the tidiness of the bathroom. There were more gadgets, a whole battery of them, ready and waiting. Jean-Claude must be a gadget salesman’s dream. A Moulinex juicer stood in pieces on the draining-board, its inside stained orange from carrot juice. He wondered whether the owner suffered from bouts of indigestion like himself, or whether he simply like carrots. Probably the latter. The refrigerator was stocked up with bottles of Evian water. Living where he did he could hardly drink anything else.
He went back into the living-room. There was a notable absence of books apart from a row on a shelf above the desk, mostly to do with work and winter sports. The television was Sony; the video beneath it the latest Betamax. Fixed to the wall was a Bang & Olufsen Beosystem 3000; underneath that a rack of L.P.s. Somewhat to his surprise they were mostly big bands: Basie, Ellington, Buddy Rich, with a sprinkling of older groups – Lionel Hampton, Mugsie Spanier, Benny Goodman.
He found himself warming to Jean-Claude. They were on common ground at last. Perhaps one day they would be able to get together and exchange notes. Doucette didn’t approve of his taste in music and complained when he had it on too loud. He envied Jean-Claude his freedom to turn up the volume when he felt like it. Big bands needed a big band sound.
There was a disc by Ben Webster and Art Tatum already on the turntable. It was one he hadn’t come across before. The remote controller was on a table near the window. Unable to resist the temptation he pressed the switch. The sound of ‘All the Things You Are’ gave him an instant lift.
He skimmed through the bedroom, feeling under the mattress, briefly checking the cupboard drawers. There was nothing worthy of comment. It was all high-tech monastic. On a table beside the double-bed a matt-black Italian Stilnoro lamp illuminated a Nordmende clock-radio. The alarm was set for six o’clock. There was also a cordless telephone – the kind with the dialling buttons in the handset, and a small pile of magazines – mostly to do with food and drink. They looked untouched. There was also a catalogue from Sports-Schuster of Munich showing the latest in skiing equipment and clothing. Several items were marked. Jean-Claude must have been making plans for the coming winter season. He didn’t look like a man with too many problems.
He returned to the living-room and switched on the quartz-halogen lamp on the desk. A larger version of the bedroom lamp, the low voltage bulb produced a brilliant white light. He picked up the blotting pad and held it under the lamp. Jean-Claude was a doodler on the phone. It was covered with black, geometrical shapes, ranging in complexity from mere squares and triangles to complex, ornate patterns – probably depending on the length of the call. Interspersed with the patterns were telephone numbers. He checked with the handset. They were mostly Jean-Claude’s own number, but here and there were others. Taking out his notepad, he jotted these down for future reference.
He turned the blotting pad over. Someone – an executive working for Burns, the big American agency – had once told him that the first thing he did when he was left alone in an office belonging to anyone of importance was to look beneath the blotting pad. In a security-conscious age, when more and more code-numbers had to be committed to memory, people sought refuge by inscribing them on the back of their blotting pads. His friend had built up quite a dossier of useful numbers.
There was nothing on the back of Jean-Claude’s blotting pad.
He drew a blank with the drawers on his right. The large drawer with its suspended files on the left took a little longer, but was equally unproductive.
He riffled through the books on the shelf above the desk. Nothing fell out.
Just as he was about to give up, he leant on the blotting pad, smoothing the rough paper thoughtfully with his fingers as he tried to make up his mind what to do next. It
felt thicker than he would have expected. Towards the middle there were distinct ridges. He lifted the top sheet. Underneath it was a glossy black and white enprint of a blonde girl. It was the product of a fashion-conscious studio; all high-key lighting and with the softness of the subject burnt out. It made her look old beyond her years, but perhaps that was what she had wanted. She looked vaguely familiar and he wondered if he had seen her on television. The picture was unsigned; the back was stamped with the name of a studio in Geneva.
Underneath the photograph there was a thin manila envelope. It was unsealed and to his surprise, when he held it up and shook the contents on to the desk, a selection of words fluttered down. They were of differing type-sizes and faces, each separately stuck to a sheet of dark backing paper. He laid them out in no particular order. They were in English and judging by the texture of the paper had been cut from a journal of some kind. Strangely, at least two of the words were misspelt – unless his command of the English language, which wasn’t good, was even weaker than he’d thought.
Monsieur Pamplemousse sat staring at the words for some time, shifting them around, trying to make some kind of sense. Then he stood up and tucked them back in the envelope along with the photograph. It was a task better carried out in his own room.
A few moments later he let himself out quietly through the front door. Cloud from the distant mountains had descended while he’d been at work and it was already dark. Concealed coloured lights made patches of shrubs and flowers stand out like tropical islands. The pool was deserted again. From the car-park he could hear voices and the sound of engines being revved. Doors slammed. He looked in through the dining-room windows, wondering if he should confer with Albert Parfait, but the patron was nowhere in sight. He decided against searching him out. It could wait for the time being.
He hesitated for a moment or two, wondering whether to take his things back to his room or look for Pommes Frites first. In view of his previous experience with the silent dog-whistle he decided not to risk using it again. All hell might break loose.
The wood behind the hotel was even darker than he’d anticipated and he began to wish he’d fetched a torch from his car. The paved path ended abruptly and gave way to gravel, then became softer still in a carpet of pine-needles. The shadows closed in almost at once, enveloping him like a shroud. Through gaps in the trees he could see occasional flashes of light from the caravans and there was a smell of something indefinably aromatic burning.
He stopped for a moment in order to get his bearings, allowing his eyes to accustom themselves to the darkness. As he did so he became aware of a movement a little way ahead and to his left; a glimpse of something white at head-height, then blackness again.
He called out, but there was no reply. Taking his belongings in his left hand, he moved forward slowly and gently with his right hand outstretched, zig-zagging slightly as he went. He could feel his heart beating a little faster and in spite of the coolness of the night air he felt beads of sweat on his brow.
Suddenly he sensed another movement immediately in front of him and heard a stifled gasp intermingled with heavy breathing and a strange, soft, sucking sound. Easing forward he felt warmth too. The warmth of another human being, accompanied by a sweet, almost overpoweringly sickly smell.
Stretching out his hand he drew in his breath sharply as it encountered something large and round and hard. He moved it to the right and almost immediately found a second mound, similar in shape, one of a matching pair; equally hard and yet at the same time warm and soft to the touch and covered in the softest down. A mound which even as he touched it rotated as if seeking him out, rejecting and accepting at the same time. A mountain of flesh which rose and fell and became soft and moist before culminating in a peak of hardness the like of which he had never before experienced. The whole effect was so earthy, so basic, so primitively sensual, he felt rooted to the spot, unable to believe his senses.
It could only have lasted a second or two. The next moment he found himself clutching at empty air as the person he’d been touching uttered a second strangled cry, brushed past him and was gone.
Caught off-balance and still recovering from the shock of his encounter, Monsieur Pamplemousse turned and called out. But he was too late.
He started to give chase, but after only a few yards his foot met with something large and unyielding lying directly across his path. He tripped, staggered forward, and in trying to regain his balance toppled over.
As he slowly recovered his wind, Monsieur Pamplemousse opened one eye and peered at the object lying alongside him. Even in his semi-dazed state it had a familiar look about it. Opening his other eye he took a closer look. He needed no light to aid his identification. He knew at once what it was.
Stretched out on a pile of old newspapers, stiff and motionless, cold to the touch, lay the recumbent form of Pommes Frites.
3
A CAUSE FOR CELEBRATION
For a moment or two there was silence as Monsieur Pamplemousse remained where he’d fallen, trying to get his breath back, while at the same time weighing up the pros and cons of applying the kiss of life to Pommes Frites. Finally, having decided to take the plunge, he leaned forward. Desperate situations demanded desperate measures.
Monsieur Pamplemousse yielded to no one in his love for Pommes Frites. Deep down he knew that had the situation been reversed there would have been no hesitation about coming to his aid. Nevertheless, the prospect of mouth-to-mouth resuscitation was not one he relished. Pommes Frites had a generous nature and in return nature had endowed him with lips to match. Even the famous Westmores of Hollywood might have admitted to having met their match had they been called upon to make him up for the part of a canine Scrooge; Max Factor would have had to work overtime.
All that aside, when he finally screwed up his courage and lifted one of Pommes Frites’ lips in order to begin work, Monsieur Pamplemousse discovered that it was not only very large and wet, it also had a most peculiar taste: an amalgam of flavours, some relatively fresh, others obviously deeply ingrained. The overall effect was, to say the least, uninviting, and with a view to tempering necessity with expediency, coupled with a desire to get the whole thing over as quickly as possible, he blew rather harder than he’d intended.
The result was electrifying. Pommes Frites leapt to his feet and gave vent to a long-drawn-out shuddering howl. At least, to be pedantic and strictly for the record, he opened his mouth and emitted a noise which another member of the family canidae would have recognised at once for what it was: not so much a howl as a cry of surprise, pain and indignation all rolled into one. It embodied such intensity of feeling that had they been situated higher up the mountains, in the vicinity of Mont Blanc, for example, or Chamonix, it would have caused any St. Bernard who happened to be on night-duty to drop everything and come running with a keg of brandy round its neck at the ready.
Fortunately, only Monsieur Pamplemousse himself was there to hear it, and for a moment he was convinced that he had been a party to, perhaps even the cause of, the early demise of his closest and dearest friend. It was not a happy thought.
For a split second dog and master stared at one another, each busy with his own thoughts. Then Pommes Frites relaxed. To say that he wagged his tail would have been to overstate the case. He made a desultory attempt at wagging. His brain sent a half-hearted message in that direction, but it never reached its destination. Other factors intervened en route; ‘road-up’ signs proliferated, diversions abounded. Not to put too fine a point on it, Pommes Frites was feeling distinctly under the weather.
It was a simple case of cause and effect. The cause wouldn’t have needed a Sherlock Holmes to trace, and the effect was there for all to see – or it would have been had low clouds not been obscuring the moon.
Basically it had to do with the nature of Les Cinq Parfaits. Les Cinq Parfaits was many things to many people; the one claim it could not make was that of being the kind of restaurant where the clients made a hab
it of wiping their plates clean at the end of each course with large hunks of baguette. Bread, home-made, freshly baked, and of unimpeachable quality, was dispensed freely at the start of each meal, but sad to relate most of it remained uneaten.
Sauces, on the whole, were not mopped up. They were either consumed with the aid of the appropriate implement or they were left on the plate, along with much of the food they had been intended to complement. The reason was not because the clientèle were any more polite or well-mannered than in lesser establishments; it was simply that a great many of them were past their best as trenchermen. Age had taken its toll, digestive systems ruined by overwork rendered them incapable of taking full advantage of the pleasures they were now well able to afford, whilst in the case of the wives, sweethearts or mistresses accompanying them, they were swayed by vanity and the need to keep a watchful eye on waistlines.
The net result was that each day large quantities of rich food which had taken a great deal of time and energy and manpower to grow and to harvest, to transport and then to prepare for the table, found their way back to the kitchens untouched by knife and fork. Once there, such were the standards set by Monsieur Albert Parfait, it was immediately and unceremoniously consigned to a row of waiting swill-bins for onward delivery next day to a local pig farm whose residents had no such problems.
It was one such bin, overflowing with riches, that Pommes Frites, taste-buds inflamed through watching his master’s antics on the other side of the dining-room window, his pride seriously injured, his stomach echoing like a drum, stumbled across in his wanderings earlier that evening. It had proved to be a veritable cornucopia of a swill-bin.