by Michael Bond
‘I quote, but apart from the slice of toasted panettone this morning I haven’t eaten anything since this time yesterday at the Gare de Lyon. Which reminds me, I must fill in my report.’
‘Well, you needn’t think you will be getting any pumpkins for today’s lunch,’ said Doucette. ‘It’s macaroni cheese.’
Monsieur Pamplemousse’s good intentions of being a model husband plunged momentarily. Given all the ingredients that were on display he was secretly hoping for something more adventurous. A cannelloni filled with cheese and lemon, perhaps. Or a linguine with saffron sauce.
‘Giovanni said I should start with something simple,’ explained Doucette. ‘He called it learning to walk before I run.’
‘Giovanni?’ repeated Monsieur Pamplemousse. ‘Do I know him?’
‘He was the lovely man who served me in the shop,’ said Doucette.
‘Ah!’ said Monsieur Pamplemousse. ‘There is another Italian saying he might know,’ he added hopefully. ‘“Hunger makes beans taste like almonds.”’
‘In that case I’ll do some borlotti beans to go with the macaroni cheese,’ said Doucette. ‘Giovanni loves Tuscany and apparently Tuscans are addicted to them. He said beans often come in useful, so I bought several tins. If you buy them dried they have to be left to soak overnight and even then they need to be boiled for three hours. It’s a good thing he told me.’
‘I think perhaps I will have it as it comes,’ said Monsieur Pamplemousse dryly.
‘He was a mine of information on pasta,’ said Doucette. ‘Did you know that good-quality pasta made from wholegrain flour not only contains iron and potassium, but magnesium, copper and zinc too?
‘Iron and potassium are good for the blood. Copper is good for the heart, and zinc helps the immune system fight infection.’
‘Let us hope ours never goes rusty,’ said Monsieur Pamplemousse. ‘That’s all I can say.’
‘Don’t tell me you’re jealous, Aristide,’ said Doucette. ‘You had better watch out, it also contains a small quantity of manganese and Giovanni says that produces sex hormones.’
‘He sounds like a walking nutritionist pushing his luck,’ said Monsieur Pamplemousse. ‘If he eats all those things he must be as fit as a fiddle.’
‘Actually,’ said Doucette, ‘he’s shorter than me and rather fat with it. He had a job reaching the top shelf. I had to help him down. He did linger over the last bit.
‘As for the macaroni cheese … it’s almost ready. How would it be if I soufflé it?’
‘Ah,’ said Monsieur Pamplemousse. ‘Now you are talking, Couscous. You can set that to music. Let me lay the table for a change.’
‘While you’re about it you can set that to music too,’ said Doucette.
Removing the macaroni cheese from the oven, she reached for a copper bowl, added some whites of egg, and set about whisking them until they began to form a peak. ‘The cutlery is in the second drawer down,’ she called. ‘In case you didn’t know.’
‘I’m looking for the corkscrew,’ said Monsieur Pamplemousse, rummaging in the first drawer while his wife busied herself adding her mixture to the macaroni cheese before folding it over and returning it to the oven. ‘I thought it would be nice if we opened that bottle of Chianti Classico on the shelf. It’s from Tuscany, so we can’t go far wrong. In the words of the old song … the two will go together like a horse and carriage.’
While Doucette busied herself with the plate warmer, he poured the first of the wine. It was from the house of Radda and at first taste the opulent flavour lived up to its reputation of being like a velvet fist in an iron glove. It boded well.
‘In the meantime,’ he said, ‘what news of Caterina?’
‘She had to go out. Important business. She didn’t say what or where.’
‘So she won’t be joining us for lunch?’
‘It didn’t sound like it,’ said Doucette. ‘She said she had an appointment.’
Monsieur Pamplemousse didn’t know whether to feel pleased or sorry. Part of him had been looking forward to seeing her, but just at that moment in time he was perfectly happy leaving things as they were.
‘It’s good you got on so well yesterday evening,’ he said, as Doucette brought the dish to the table.
‘She couldn’t have been nicer,’ said Doucette. ‘Nothing like I expected … not that I thought I wouldn’t like her,’ she added hastily. ‘I must say she was very smartly turned out: a simple black dress, but immaculately cut. Italian design at its best. Matching shoes, a Bottega Veneta sling-bag, necklace, wristwatch … all topped off with a bright red hat. You couldn’t have missed her in a crowd.’
‘Don’t rub it in,’ said Monsieur Pamplemousse.
‘I wasn’t meaning to. It is simply that it was the kind of outfit you normally only ever see in magazines. At least, in our part of the world.’
‘And dream about? Or is it your turn to feel jealous?’
‘Not really,’ said Doucette. ‘You need the lifestyle to go with it. Besides, Paris chic involves breaking the set rules and I wouldn’t have felt at home. Aside from the red hat it lacked the offbeat finishing touch. I didn’t feel in the slightest bit dowdy.’
‘I should hope not,’ said Monsieur Pamplemousse. Thinking about it, Caterina had been wearing a red hat when they first met at Rome station. He wondered if it could possibly be the same one.
‘She could have brought me down to earth quite easily if she had wanted to.’ Doucette broke into his thoughts. ‘But I don’t think it would have occurred to her. And she made her own bed this morning.’
‘Convent training,’ said Monsieur Pamplemousse. He topped up their glasses. ‘It leaves its mark in more ways than one.’
‘All that, and she was as happy as a pig in clover helping with the cooking. I think it took her mind off whatever it was that was bothering her.’
‘I would be willing to bet she couldn’t make anything half as nice as this,’ said Monsieur Pamplemousse, diving into his lunch. ‘Wait until it’s Pommes Frites’ turn to sample it.’
‘The sobering thing is,’ said Doucette, ‘you would lose out. There seems to be no end to her culinary talents. You didn’t warn me she cooks like a dream.’
‘I didn’t know,’ admitted Monsieur Pamplemousse. ‘We have only ever dined together once and she didn’t cook the meal. It was on the train coming up from Rome.’
‘Well,’ said Doucette, rising from the table. ‘Just wait until you’ve tasted the next course. From now on, Aristide, courtesy of Caterina, it will be my pièce de résistance.’
She crossed to the stove. ‘For this I need a double boiler, four egg yolks – it’s lucky I had some left over from the soufflé, and …’ She consulted a sheet of paper. ‘The zest of half a lemon, vanilla essence, granulated sugar, 180g of caster sugar, a little Marsala wine from that bottle you were so sniffy about, and a few minutes to myself.’
‘Nothing would please me more, chérie,’ said Monsieur Pamplemousse.
And while Pommes Frites set about polishing off the remains of the first course, he sat back and watched Doucette busying herself at the stove for the following quarter of an hour.
‘Buon appetito!’ he exclaimed, when she eventually arrived back at the table carrying two dessert bowls, one in each hand.
It was followed a few moments later by ‘Brava! Bene! There is only one word for it, Couscous: Parfait! C’est parfait!’
Doucette flushed with pride. ‘I must confess Caterina went through it with me last night,’ she said. ‘In fact, I have another confession to make. I hope you don’t mind, Aristide, but you left Le Guide’s camera out before you went off to the Gare de Lyon yesterday, and I used it to take a picture of her at work on it. It was the only time I saw her looking cross. I hope I didn’t offend her.’
‘If the picture is half as good as this zabaglione, I promise to have it framed,’ said Monsieur Pamplemousse. ‘It deserves a Three Stock Pot rating in Le Guide. It’s a real dessert of the old
school,’ he enthused. ‘A return to normality. Your Giovanni is right about one thing: Italian cuisine remains basically simple across the board and depends almost entirely on the quality of the ingredients. You could say out of all the cuisines in the world it is the most unchanging.
‘By comparison, French cuisine is very labour intensive; I spend a great deal of my life ordering desserts, without having the faintest idea what they will look like when they finally arrive at the table. Generally speaking, even the most basic of dishes such as a crème brûlée will have been transformed into something Gauguin or Renoir might have aspired to. It comes from being out on a limb, apart from the hustle and bustle of the main kitchen. Pastry chefs these days live in a creative world of their own; a thing apart from the rest of the meal. They feel the need for recognition and it is one of the reasons why our cuisine remains the most creative in the world.’
‘You don’t have to eat what they give you, Aristide,’ said Doucette.
‘But I do,’ he said. ‘It is all part of my job, Couscous, and there is no escaping the fact. Aside from that, as you know, there is not only a part of me that wants to end a meal with a sweet taste, but I also think how awful it would be for a pastry chef if everyone in a restaurant reached the end of their main course and declared they were so full they couldn’t eat any more.’
Monsieur Pamplemousse finished his dessert with a flourish while it was still warm. It was too good to waste and it wouldn’t keep. Then, having offered to help with the washing up – an offer that won him bonus points, but rather to his relief was refused point blank – he retired to his ‘den’; a small room tucked away in a corner of the apartment where he kept various items of computer equipment which enabled him to maintain contact with Le Guide and at the same time keep up with his hobby of photography.
It had been his intention to file the report of Le Train Bleu while it was still fresh in his mind, but what with one thing and another he soon became immersed in technicalities. ‘I still can’t get over what happened,’ said Doucette, when he finally emerged carrying Le Guide’s Fuji camera. ‘I do hope Caterina is all right.’
By way of reply, Monsieur Pamplemousse opened up a compartment in the base of the camera and withdrew a small card.
‘I have made a postcard-size print of your visitor,’ he said, ‘and it’s most impressive. But I thought you might like to see something larger than life.’
Crossing to the television receiver in a corner of the room, he switched it on, slid the card into a tiny slot below the bottom of the screen, and reached for the remote controller. Moments later a head-and-shoulders image of the girl filled the screen.
‘It’s what is known as an SD card,’ he explained.
‘I didn’t even know such things existed,’ said Doucette. ‘It’s uncanny … creepy almost. It feels as though she is still in the room, larger than life and twice as beautiful.’
‘The composition is excellent,’ said Monsieur Pamplemousse. ‘Poetry in motion, you might say. And given it was taken in artificial light, the colour is surprisingly good. A few minutes’ work with an editing programme and it wouldn’t disgrace the front cover of Le Guide’s staff magazine. Only one thing bothers me …’
‘Don’t say it isn’t properly focused,’ said Doucette. ‘I thought it was on automatic.’
‘So it was,’ said Monsieur Pamplemousse. ‘The focus is spot on … it is extraordinarily sharp … the highlights in the eyes are perfect … so much so, they only underline the fact that we have a major problem on our hands. There is no escaping one simple, but very worrying fact …’
‘Don’t keep me in suspense,’ said Doucette. ‘I promise never to use your camera again.’
‘Unwittingly,’ said Monsieur Pamplemousse, ‘you may well have done us all a favour, Couscous. Quite simply, the girl in the photograph isn’t Caterina.’
CHAPTER SIX
Doucette took a lot of convincing the girl wasn’t who she said she was. In the end Monsieur Pamplemousse was forced to produce proof positive.
‘It just so happens that as a precaution and to jog my memory in case she really had changed a lot, I took an old photograph with me.’
Reaching into an inner pocket of his jacket he reluctantly removed his wallet and made a show of looking through it several times as though he couldn’t immediately find what he was looking for. Eventually he located a dog-eared postcard-size picture and having mentally braced himself for the worst, held it up for inspection.
‘Poor girl,’ he said. ‘It was such an embarrassment for her. She had lost the top button of her dress and she hardly knew which way to look.’
Doucette made a grab for it.
‘Two things, Aristide,’ she said, holding it up to the light just out of his reach. ‘Number one. I agree with you it most certainly bears little resemblance to the girl on the screen. The one who was here yesterday. Number two. It bears even less resemblance to your description of Monsieur Leclercq’s niece. You are always telling me the camera cannot lie, so which version do I believe?’
‘You are absolutely right in all you say, Couscous,’ said Monsieur Pamplemousse. ‘Traditionally the camera cannot lie. But there are times when, given the right circumstances, the moment critique as Cartier-Bresson used to say, it can transform the mundane into a positive work of art, as happened with the photograph you took of our visitor at the stove yesterday. That was a Cartier-Bresson moment if ever I saw one.’
‘You didn’t even meet her,’ said Doucette. ‘So how can you be so sure?’
‘I have no need to meet her,’ said Monsieur Pamplemousse. ‘It is a gut feeling. We all of us see the world through different eyes, as I learnt to my cost many times during the years when I was with the Sûreté. Take a dozen different people who have witnessed a crime and ask them for a detailed description of the villain. You will get a dozen different versions of the same person, and you end up wishing you hadn’t asked. The memory plays strange tricks.
‘As for the picture you are holding, it has a lot to do with the lighting. Remember, it was taken at night on an express train. The lighting, such as it was, rendered a quasi-romantic air which would be hard to replicate in a studio. It had a great deal to do with the arrangement of the shadows. I went to a great deal of trouble in finding, not only exactly the right angle but, if I say so myself, exactly the right moment when we were on a straight stretch of line. I was standing in the corridor with my back hard against the window. I remember the occupants of the next compartment gave me some very funny looks.’
It was the best he could manage on the spur of the moment.
‘Pull the other leg,’ said Doucette. ‘It’s got bells on it.
‘That’s what my father used to say,’ she added hastily, as she caught sight of the expression on Aristide’s face.
‘I forgive you,’ said Monsieur Pamplemousse. ‘Did the girl tell you what time she would be back when she went out this morning?’
‘No, but she did say we ought not to wait up,’ said Doucette. ‘She didn’t know herself.’
‘Suppose she can’t get in?’
‘I gave her the entry code for the building along with a spare key to our apartment in case she was very late back,’ said Doucette. ‘Old Lourbet hates being woken up. You know what he can be like if someone he doesn’t know turns up out of the blue, especially if it’s late at night. He usually pretends he didn’t hear the bell.’
‘You gave her a key to our apartment?’ repeated Monsieur Pamplemousse. ‘You didn’t tell me that,’ he added, accusingly.
‘You didn’t ask,’ said Doucette. ‘I gave it to her for the simple reason that if she was going to stay with us for any length of time she would most likely be coming and going a good deal, so she would be needing her own key.’
Monsieur Pamplemousse was only half satisfied with the answer, but he did his best to conceal the fact. He was wary of entrusting spare keys to other people at the best of times, however well he knew them. In the circums
tances, lending them to a complete stranger was asking for trouble. Keys could be lost or stolen; and there was no knowing what might happen to them once they were out of their possession. Even if they were eventually returned, they could have been duplicated, and changing locks as a precautionary measure was a tedious business, particularly in an apartment block.
‘It is possible, of course, that Caterina is up to her old tricks and whoever turned up was acting as a stand-in for her,’ he said. ‘I had been thinking the wearing of a red hat, which stands out in a crowd, was a deliberate act on her part, since that was what she was wearing on the last occasion. But it may simply have been a coincidence. It could even be that Caterina travelled on another train, or even flew to Paris. Red hats are part of the uniform of her old school and her stand-in might be an old classmate who is doing her a good turn.
‘In which case I am the only one who could give the game away. Perhaps knowing that and never having met me, the girl panicked when she found out I was coming back.’
‘How about the Director?’ said Doucette. ‘Wouldn’t he recognise her?’
‘To the best of my knowledge they have never met,’ said Monsieur Pamplemousse. ‘His wife, Chantal, probably might have done at some point, seeing she is part of the family. But she is in Switzerland. The only mental picture of her Monsieur Leclercq has to go on are some shots I reeled off on her first trip when she was still in school uniform.’
‘And you don’t carry those around with you, of course,’ said Doucette.
Ignoring the implication, Monsieur Pamplemousse shook his head. ‘My wallet is full enough as it is.’
‘Do you think it has anything to do with the fact that the fashion shows are in full swing?’ suggested Doucette. ‘If her father is so against the whole idea she may be trying to rustle up a few contacts on the quiet. She may even have stayed in Milan for a day or so while she had the chance and is planning on coming to Paris when she has finished.’
Monsieur Pamplemousse listened to Doucette’s reasoning with only half an ear. In many respects it made sense, and it might well be the case, but hadn’t Caterina’s father put in a late plea for someone from Le Guide to meet her at the Gare de Lyon, and hadn’t he suggested who that person should be? In the Director’s eyes a suggestion from Caterina’s father would be as good as a command.