Monsieur Pamplemousse and the Tangled Web

by Michael Bond

  He also couldn’t rid himself of the feeling that he had seen him before somewhere.

  During his time with the Sûreté he had acquired a built-in extrasensory perception about people, and although he had nothing concrete to go on, he wondered if perhaps for once the Director had made a mistake.

  He wasn’t alone when he said that. Véronique echoed his feelings. Apparently something untoward had taken place when she had tried to take a photograph of Barnaud soon after he arrived. Monsieur Leclercq liked to keep a pictorial record of what he called his ‘core staff’, and Barnaud flatly refused to cooperate.

  Detaching a handful of his mixture he set about moulding it into the shape of a bone, dusting it with some flour before laying it out on a sheet of foil to rest. Then, in Doucette’s absence, he took a chance and set the oven to 200°C – a figure he had often heard her mention in conversations with her sister Agathe, who was always phoning for advice on culinary matters.

  He wondered if perhaps Barnaud was the person the immigration people had set their sights on. Although he couldn’t really quantify what was merely a feeling in the back of his mind, it wouldn’t surprise him.

  Returning to his handiwork, he held it up to the light. There was enough dough left over to make several more exactly like it, but for what he had in mind one bone would be quite sufficient. It would either work or it wouldn’t. More would only confuse matters.

  Having made a suitable hole in the side he decided to take the plunge. It would need to cool down before he inserted the homing tag he’d taken from his desk drawer, and certainly before any dog, however hungry, would take it into its head to devour it.

  The need for it to be put into position at an appropriate time was crucial. Not too soon for fear of another dog finding it first, but certainly before they were spotted doing it.

  He glanced around the kitchen. It was in a mess. Somehow or other he seemed to have used far more utensils than he had intended.

  Shortly before 08.00 he went outside in order to find a suitable spot at the side of the road to place the bone where he could keep a watchful eye on it from on high. Settling for a spot near the wall to one side of the square, where a statue of the writer Marcel Aymé’s famous creation The Man Who Could Walk Through Walls appeared to be doing just that, he set to work. Hopefully, being low on the ground, the dog would spot it long before its master did.

  He was only just in time. Even as he bent down to rest the bone in a small pile of leaves, he caught sight of some figures approaching up the hill, so he hurried back inside the apartment block.

  Luck was with him. The lift was still where he had left it on the ground floor and he was back on the seventh in double-quick time.

  He hurried across to the living-room window, and sure enough, on the far side of the Place Marcel Aymé a small black dog was busying itself with the bone, while Doucette’s bête noire stood to one side apparently talking into a handset.

  It seemed a satisfactory outcome after all his labours, but before he had time to dwell on it the phone rang.

  Mr Pickering was a committed Francophile and enjoyed catching up on news from across La Manche no matter what time of day it was, but it was something of a record even for him.

  ‘I got your call, Aristide,’ he said. ‘Comment ça va?’

  ‘I am well enough,’ said Monsieur Pamplemousse after the preliminaries had been disposed of, ‘but we have a problem with a member of staff. It has to do with their passport, or perhaps I should say, passports. The person concerned has two – one French and the other British, and apparently there is something about them that doesn’t tally. The powers that be are dragging their heels about it, but the question is which one is bothering them? I was hoping you could help with the British end. It couldn’t have happened at a worse time. We are coming up to publication and you know how twitchy the Director gets about any kind of scandal.’

  ‘Do you know who the person is?’

  ‘It is purely guesswork, but it has to be someone who joined us recently and I do have someone in mind. The trouble is that although he came to us with impeccable references, I don’t entirely trust him.’

  ‘In what way exactly?’

  ‘He can be somewhat economical with the truth.’ Monsieur Pamplemousse gave a brief rundown of his meeting with Barnaud in the canteen, when he extolled the virtues of Line 14 on the Metro.

  ‘He made it sound as though he used it every day of his life, whereas in retrospect I doubt if he had ever been on it in his life. It was all textbook stuff. Also, alas, he is not a true Frenchman.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘Little things. Par exemple, he doesn’t hold his champagne glass by the stem. While he was talking to me he gripped the bowl in his hot little hands as though there was no tomorrow, which was a dead giveaway.’

  ‘Oh, là là,’ said Mr Pickering, dryly. ‘What is the world coming to?’

  ‘And,’ continued Monsieur Pamplemousse, ‘when he needed a refill, instead of simply holding up a thumb, indicating a single glass, he used his index finger and then got cross when two glasses arrived, although I have to admit it was to my benefit.’

  ‘Say no more,’ said Mr Pickering. ‘He sounds as if he is what we call a thoroughly bad egg.’

  ‘A bad egg?’ repeated Monsieur Pamplemousse. ‘Je ne comprends pas.’

  ‘Bad eggs are problem people,’ said Mr Pickering. ‘And it’s getting worse all the time. No doubt you French have a word for them.’

  ‘Les sales?’ ventured Monsieur Pamplemousse.

  ‘How splendid,’ said Mr Pickering. ‘I knew you wouldn’t let me down, Aristide. You people have a phrase for most things. In the UK the use of the word “egg” to describe a bad person has been around since Shakespeare’s time. When he was writing Macbeth, he had some murderers say to Macduff’s son: “What, you egg! Young fry of treachery!” while they despatched him.

  ‘Only in recent times have there been good eggs and I fear they are in danger of becoming extinct. During the last war when food was rationed and real eggs were precious, a bad one could be taken back to the supplier in a bowl and replaced with a good one. I sometimes wish that same procedure could be applied to present-day felons.

  ‘Anyway, enough of that. I gather you have a problem.’

  Monsieur Pamplemousse hesitated. Mr Pickering sounded more detached than usual. ‘If you prefer it,’ he said, ‘I can phone back on another day.’

  ‘Forgive me,’ said Mr Pickering. ‘I was taking advantage of a friendly ear. In the past few months my wife and I have experienced a burglary, and along with it the temporary loss of our front door. So we had to address visitors through the letter box when we told them to use the back door. All very inconvenient.

  ‘To quote Shakespeare again, we have been “suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” and it’s entirely my own fault for taking an eye off the ball. I have been left with egg on my face.’

  ‘My turn to ask for forgiveness,’ said Monsieur Pamplemousse. ‘But wasn’t there someone in one of Monsieur Shakespeare’s plays who said: “There is something rotten in the state of Denmark”?’

  ‘Hamlet, and it was a character called Marcellus,’ said Mr Pickering.

  ‘Well, I am currently suffering in much the same way,’ said Monsieur Pamplemousse. ‘Only it isn’t in Scandinavia, it’s right here in Paris, France.’

  ‘I am all ears,’ said Mr Pickering. ‘It sounds just the thing for a “buck-me-up”.’

  Monsieur Pamplemousse wondered if he should burden him with his other fears regarding the truffle, but hearing footsteps approaching he decided against it.

  ‘Time for your early morning coffee and biscuits, Aristide!’ called Doucette, as she went past.

  ‘I didn’t know you were a biscuit man,’ said Mr Pickering.

  ‘I’m not,’ hissed Monsieur Pamplemousse. ‘That’s another problem I have, but I think I may have found a solution …’

  ‘Is it urgent?’ asked
Mr Pickering. ‘I mean the business with the passport.’

  ‘Publication day is on Tuesday,’ said Monsieur Pamplemousse. ‘In three days’ time.’

  ‘Is it possible to have a photograph of your suspect?’ said Mr Pickering hastily. ‘I’ll get on to it straight away and ring you back as soon as possible.’

  ‘I will do my best,’ said Monsieur Pamplemousse. Knowing Véronique, he doubted if she had let Barnaud off without something in her camera.

  ‘What on earth has been going on, Aristide?’ said Doucette, as he made his way into the kitchen. ‘Look at it! I have never seen such a mess.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Couscous,’ said Monsieur Pamplemousse. ‘I was about to clear it all up.’

  Doucette reached for her apron. ‘I’d rather do it myself, thank you very much,’ she said.

  ‘I was making a bone for that dog you keep telling me about,’ said Monsieur Pamplemousse. ‘It was for your benefit. I thought that since he and his master seem inseparable I could make use of my tracking device and it will lead me to where they both live. It’s been lying idle for far too long.

  ‘I would have followed it up straight away, but I had an important phone call from Mr Pickering. Anyway, all is not lost. If the dog has eaten all the bone it must have swallowed the homing tag, so I can still pick up the signal the next time it passes.’

  Doucette began her tidying up. ‘If you used all these things to make a dog’s bone, I would hate to have you around when you cook a three-course dinner.’

  She picked up the tin marked SUCRE.

  ‘What were you doing with my mother’s old tin?’

  ‘I thought the dog might have a sweet tooth,’ said Monsieur Pamplemousse.

  ‘Sweet?’ Doucette gave a hollow laugh.

  ‘Is that a problem?’ asked Monsieur Pamplemousse.

  ‘Only the fact that it isn’t sugar.’

  ‘What is it then?’

  ‘It is a very strong laxative,’ said Doucette.

  Monsieur Pamplemousse stared at her. ‘So why is it marked sucre?’

  ‘Because my mother had nowhere else to put it,’ said Doucette. ‘She would have known what was in the tin and to her way of thinking that would have been sufficient. I hadn’t the heart to throw it away when she died. It reminds me of her funny little ways.’

  ‘But …’ Monsieur Pamplemousse was suddenly at a loss for words.

  ‘How long is it since we got married, Aristide?’ said Doucette. ‘She died two years before that.’

  Monsieur Pamplemousse didn’t answer for fear of getting it wrong.

  ‘She used it on me when I was small,’ said Doucette, nostalgically. ‘One teaspoonful before I went to school on a Monday went a very long way. It saw me safely through the week.’

  ‘How about four or five tablespoonfuls?’ said Monsieur Pamplemousse, in dismay.

  ‘You haven’t …’ said Doucette.

  ‘I thought it was funny-looking sugar,’ he admitted.

  ‘Thank goodness you don’t do the cooking,’ said Doucette. ‘I would say if it still does its stuff the explosion will give us a good idea of where they live. It will be in all the journals. On the other hand, since it must be well past its sell-by date that may never happen. If you want my opinion, Aristide, I suggest for the next few days it will be a case of watch this space.’

  CHAPTER TEN

  It was the following day before Mr Pickering phoned again.

  ‘Sorry to call you so early on a Sunday morning,’ he said, ‘but needs must.’

  ‘It’s that time of the year,’ said Monsieur Pamplemousse. ‘There are no weekends before publication day.’

  ‘Quite right, too,’ said Mr Pickering. ‘People tend to take their utilities for granted, so why should Le Guide be an exception. Tell me, do you French use the word scam?’

  ‘Scam?’ repeated Monsieur Pamplemousse. ‘I don’t even know what it stands for.’

  ‘The Oxford English Dictionary has it down as meaning “a trick or swindle, a fraud”,’ said Mr Pickering.

  ‘I think we have our share of all three,’ said Monsieur Pamplemousse. ‘Even on a Sunday. But we don’t make use of that word.’

  ‘Then you should,’ said Mr Pickering. ‘In England it is common currency.’

  ‘In France,’ said Monsieur Pamplemousse, ‘these things take time. It has to go before a panel of forty académiciens known as the Immortels to receive their approval before it can enter the dictionary. They publish a list of acceptable words every three months.’

  ‘Three months!’ echoed Mr Pickering. ‘I’m talking about the next day or two.’

  Monsieur Pamplemousse gave a shrug. ‘C’est normal. I’m not sure what they will think about a word like “scam”. It doesn’t sound very nice.’

  ‘It isn’t very nice,’ said Mr Pickering. ‘And the reason why I’m phoning so early is because I have a feeling one might be heading your way right now and there is no time to lose if you are to nip it in the bud.’

  ‘Did you get the photograph of Barnaud?’ asked Monsieur Pamplemousse.

  ‘I did indeed, thank you very much,’ said Mr Pickering. ‘And therein lies the rub. In the English passport his name is down as Barnard, which was his mother’s maiden name.

  ‘He was born into a mixed family – a French father and an English mother, and at some point in his early life there was a major break-up when his father, Monsieur Dupois, was sent to prison2. His mother, presumably unable to cope on her own, sent her son to England to stay with a relative while he completed his schooling. It was then that he adopted her old surname, probably to avoid the disgrace hanging over him. It may even have been her idea.’

  ‘How about the change to Barnaud on his French passport?’ asked Monsieur Pamplemousse.

  ‘That must have crept in some years later when he completed his education at a technical college in Grenoble,’ said Mr Pickering. ‘Such things were much easier to bring about in those days.

  ‘Anyway, to cut a long story short, at Grenoble he seems to have taken to the world of computers like a fish to water. So much so, on his return to the UK, he was in big demand.

  ‘Unfortunately he must have inherited some of his father’s ways, because he seems to have blotted his copybook while he was working for a bank. Until that date he had been getting good reports. Then he suddenly left under a cloud.’

  ‘Have you any idea what the reason was?’

  ‘Who knows?’ said Mr Pickering. ‘Banks can be very unforthcoming when they choose. They dislike any publicity that reflects on their probity. At one time anyone kicking over the traces or engaged in minor fraud …’

  ‘Such as?’ broke in Monsieur Pamplemousse.

  ‘Getting old ladies to press harder with their ballpoint pens on trumped-up documents, so that their signature could be accurately forged with a view to making tiny withdrawals from their account. If the amount was very small it usually escaped notice, but over a period of time it could mount up – and it was tax free!

  ‘If they were caught they were quietly shown the door, never to be seen again.

  ‘Times change, and money being the root of all evil so did the size of the scams. When it started to involve thousands of pounds, or in some cases millions, it no longer came under the heading of “inappropriate behaviour” and the police were called in. Result? The culprits hit the headlines and end up doing time.

  ‘Barnaud escaped the ignominy of the first. He wasn’t doing counter work. Instead, he was behind the scenes glued to a computer, which probably gave him much more scope for nefarious practices before he was made redundant. As I say, we shall never know.

  ‘All we do know is that being “made redundant” was probably a euphemism for something shady because he wasn’t given a reference. As a consequence he dropped out of the computer world altogether for a while and tried his luck in other fields.

  ‘He didn’t stick at anything for very long. For a while he even found work as an upmarket carpet layer; whi
ch is when he first came to the notice of the police.’ Mr Pickering paused for breath. ‘Stop me if I am boring you.’

  ‘Not at all,’ said Monsieur Pamplemousse. ‘I am all ears. I hear bells ringing in all directions.’

  ‘His work took him to some wealthy homes,’ continued Mr Pickering. ‘Homes which in many instances housed valuable works of art. Works of art that from time to time caused burglars to pay a visit not long after the carpet layers had departed …

  ‘Surprise! … Surprise! The upshot of that was the police, as is their wont, began putting two and two together and started asking questions.

  ‘Incidentally, those sunglasses Barnaud wears … they may look trendy, but the frames contain a high-definition camcorder able to record up to ninety minutes of video, both sound and vision.’

  ‘What will they think of next?’ said Monsieur Pamplemousse. ‘That answers another question.’

  ‘I had a pair myself once,’ said Mr Pickering. ‘Very enlightening they were too, until Mrs Pickering sat on them.’

  ‘Not while you were wearing them I trust,’ said Monsieur Pamplemousse.

  ‘Perish the thought,’ said Mr Pickering. He paused. ‘By now you may well be wondering what all this is leading up to.’

  ‘I must admit,’ said Monsieur Pamplemousse, ‘I hold no great brief for Barnaud, quite the reverse in fact, but he does seem to have found his niche at last. What bothers me is that before being taken on it was his suggestion that Monsieur Leclercq should first of all check his credentials thoroughly, and to that end he even provided the telephone number of a professor at his old college. It was a direct line, so the Director got through straight away and after suffering some difficulty in establishing his own credentials, he received a glowing report on Barnaud’s achievements.’

  ‘And no doubt,’ broke in Mr Pickering, ‘having given him a glowing report, the professor insisted on passing him on to someone higher up. The dean, perhaps?’

  Monsieur Pamplemousse fell silent.

  ‘I could write the script, Aristide,’ said Mr Pickering bluntly.