Monsieur Pamplemousse Stands Firm

by Michael Bond

  Entering the hotel, Monsieur Pamplemousse brightened momentarily as he spotted a large fish tank just inside the door. Anticipation was short-lived. The water looked murky, and there was a dead langouste lying on the bottom.

  There was no sign of a lift. The only area of wall where one might have been was occupied by a large oil painting of a woman on a horse. It looked as though it had recently been cleaned, which was rather more than could be said for the rest of the room.

  A pile of well-thumbed brochures spread out across a counter partly concealed a bellpush. They looked as though they might have been put there for that very purpose. He pushed them to one side and tried pressing the button. Somewhat to his surprise there was an answering ring from somewhere nearby.

  An ageless person of saturnine appearance emerged through an opening behind the reception desk and eyed them without enthusiasm. Welcoming smiles were conspicuous by their absence.

  ‘There are no rooms.’ Bending down, he produced a COMPLET notice and placed it firmly on the counter.

  Monsieur Pamplemousse felt in his pocket for a card.

  ‘We have reservations,’ he said firmly. ‘Confirmed reservations for two rooms with bath. I do not wish to be difficult, but …’

  With a decided show of ill grace the man consulted a list under the counter, then turned to a board behind him and removed two keys. ‘Eleven and twenty-one. They are on different floors.’ He seemed to derive a vicarious satisfaction at the thought.

  ‘Chiens are twenty francs a night extra. Fifteen if you share.’

  Monsieur Pamplemousse gained equal satisfaction as he returned one of the keys. ‘You will find Mademoiselle’s baggage on the back seat of my car. There are six pieces.’

  He turned away from the desk. ‘If eleven is not to your liking, Elsie, let me know.’

  Seeing that Elsie seemed preoccupied with the painting on the wall, Monsieur Pamplemousse repeated his remark.

  ‘Eleven!’ Elsie turned to face him. ‘What do you mean, eleven? I’m supposed to be ’aving twenty-one. It was all arranged.’

  Monsieur Pamplemousse took a deep breath. Initially his sole reason for letting Elsie have the room on the first floor was because there would be fewer stairs for her to climb. However, there was no accounting for the workings of the female mind, and if she was going to be difficult then so be it. Two could play at that game. There were moments in life when authority had to be established; parameters laid down. To his way of thinking this was one of them. If he didn’t do it now he never would.

  ‘I am afraid,’ he said, ‘I have already taken it.’

  He decided to leave Elsie to it. She was well able to take care of herself. Already he could sense the other man was battling against his instincts over the matter of the luggage, and he knew which side would win. Elsie’s pout at being thwarted had already been replaced by her ‘little girl lost’ look.

  Signalling Pommes Frites to follow, Monsieur Pamplemousse made his way up the stairs. As he reached the first landing he came face to face with another picture. It had obviously replaced a larger painting at some time. A lighter patch on the wallpaper showed clearly where the previous one had hung. In the style of the Impressionists, the painting was of a canal in summer time. The poppies in the foreground contrasted strangely with a vase of dead flowers standing on a table further along the corridor.

  Mounting a second flight of stairs he was aware of a familiar smell. It was a smell he had encountered many times in other small hotels: a mixture of heat, dust, and stale air.

  His first impulse on entering his room was to fling open the window. He immediately wished he hadn’t. Although there was only a slight breeze blowing, he could feel the sand stinging his face. Any view there might have been was almost entirely blocked by an enormous dune. It answered the question as to why everywhere felt so airless.

  He closed the window and glanced around the room. Flowered paper covered the walls. The furniture was basic from a pre-war hotelier’s catalogue. He ran his finger along the top of a chest of drawers. As he expected, it was covered with a layer of fine sand; it must have got everywhere during the previous winter’s bad storms.

  On the wall behind the bed there was yet another picture. This time it was in the style of an early Van Dyck. At least someone in the hotel must be making an effort. Whoever it was certainly had catholic tastes. The bedside light worked and there was also a telephone. The bed itself was firm to the touch and the linen looked crisp enough. In one corner there was the ubiquitous refrigerator with a list of its contents and the corresponding prices stuck to the outside. It must be a godsend after a day climbing about on the dunes. It was probably where the hotel got most of its profit as well.

  The bathroom contained no surprises.

  Monsieur Pamplemousse unpacked his bag, then looked at his watch. It was past six o’clock.

  As he started to undress he fell to wondering what had made Elsie choose such an out-of-the-way hotel to begin her apprenticeship. Perhaps, despite her outward air of confidence, she was intimidated by large, glossy establishments, just as he had been when he was her age. Except that things were different now. Elsie’s generation took everything in their stride, behaving as if the world owed them a living.

  He wondered what she would make of the plumbing. Was she, even now, standing in the bath on the floor below him trying to operate the shower? If so, he hoped she was having better luck than he was. It took him a good five minutes of fiddling to fathom out the workings; another five to empty the bath, which in the meantime had become almost full to overflowing. The whole thing wasn’t helped when in the middle of it all he heard someone trying his door handle. By the time he’d got out of the bath, wrapped himself in a dressing gown and reached the door, whoever it was had disappeared.

  Monsieur Pamplemousse returned to the shower. Somewhere in France there must be a man with a grudge against society; a man who took enormous pleasure in designing bathroom fittings which effectively concealed their means of operation.

  The occupants of the adjoining room seemed to be having similar problems. Snatches of German filtered through the wall; first a woman’s voice raised in anger, then a man’s. It was some minutes before the argument subsided, gradually merging with the sound of running water.

  Although it was only a few minutes past seven when Monsieur Pamplemousse finally left his room, bathed, shaved, and wearing a change of clothing, the sun had already disappeared and the corridor was in semi-darkness. The dune must effectively advance lighting-up time in the hotel by a good hour or more.

  As he fiddled with the key in the lock he felt rather than saw a momentary flash of light coming from somewhere behind him. For a split second he took it to be a flash of lightning. It was sultry enough for a thunderstorm. Then, as he reached the stairs and looked down, he saw Elsie disappearing towards her room. She was carrying a Polaroid camera.

  Mentally Monsieur Pamplemousse awarded her bonus points. If she was already at work taking pictures of the inside of the hotel she must be serious about wanting to be an Inspector. It made up for her earlier behaviour. All entries in Le Guide were accompanied by a photograph. In the filing room back at Headquarters there was a whole library of references – several million of them – painstakingly built up over the years. He made a mental note to let Elsie have a go with his issue Leica. It might inspire her.

  Monsieur Pamplemousse paused on his way down the stairs and took a longer look at the picture of the canal. Interestingly, someone had bothered to install a security alarm. Whoever it was had done a good job; the wire was barely perceptible to the naked eye. He couldn’t help reflecting that if the picture was that special the owners might have chosen a better place to hang it; one where it would be possible to view it by something other than the light from a minuterie. Perhaps the simple explanation was that its predecessor had been stolen and the new one was simply a cheap replacement.

  As he reached the entrance hall he glanced at the fish tank. The la
ngouste was nowhere to be seen. An elderly battle-scarred lobster with bandaged claws had taken its place. It eyed him mournfully through the glass as though realising it might be next on the list.

  For no good reason save that it was a matter of contrasts, it reminded Monsieur Pamplemousse of an incident which had occurred on the journey down from Paris. Returning to his car after lunching at an autoroute restaurant, he had encountered two men in white coats pushing a trolley. He’d naturally assumed they were delivering fresh supplies. It wasn’t until he drew level with the trolley that he realised the truth. Lying beneath a sheet was a little old lady. Presumably she was being transported between two hospitals and didn’t want to miss her déjeuner. She had smiled at him as they passed.

  At the time he had found the brief episode immensely cheering; a sign of the indomitable spirit of human beings. Truly, a reversal of the saying that in the midst of life we are in death; a good omen in fact. Now, with the memory of the lobster fresh in his mind, its days clearly numbered, he wasn’t quite so sure.

  3

  POMMES FRITES SPRINGS A SURPRISE

  On entering the dining-room Monsieur Pamplemousse found the atmosphere was, to say the least, morgue-like.

  ‘M’sieur’ dame.’ Taking his seat at a table near the window he gave a courteous nod to an English couple and two young children sitting nearby. The wife pretended not to have noticed. The man was eyeing a langouste with disfavour. Monsieur Pamplemousse wondered if it was the one which was missing from the tank. Time would tell.

  The woman glared at Pommes Frites as he took his place alongside Monsieur Pamplemousse. It was yet another example of popular misconceptions. The English were supposed to be fond of animals and yet they wouldn’t dream of sharing a meal with their pets, preferring to leave them outside in their car and risk possible asphyxiation.

  In the far corner of the room a group of three men were seated round a table poring over a map. From the way they were dressed and the cut of their clothes, he guessed they were Americans.

  There was no sign of the German couple who’d had been having a row in the next room. Perhaps they were still making it up under the shower. He hoped the hot water lasted out.

  In another corner a solitary diner – he guessed it might be a passing rep – sat turning the pages of a book in a desultory fashion. He had already consumed the contents of a bread basket and the best part of a bottle of red wine, and was no further advanced with his meal.

  The rest of the diners looked as though they had been there for so long they were part of the furniture and fittings.

  It struck him that apart from the English family, who had probably come down early because of the children, the one thing the guests all had in common was that none of them was eating.

  He glanced around the room, automatically registering the decor. Wood-panelled walls – much too dark in the circumstances. More paintings. They looked as though they’d been hung without any rhyme or reason. Although having said that, he’d seen worse in many an art gallery. There was a still life near the door – a bowl of fruit alongside a vase of flowers – which particularly caught his eye and he longed to straighten it. The flowers certainly looked in better shape than the plastic ones on his table, which resembled no known species he had ever come across. He blew on them and a small cloud of fine sand rose into the air.

  Unlike the bed linen, the table cloth felt soft to the touch. He suspected it had been there for some time. On the other hand – he picked up the salt cellar – the cruet was solid silver.

  Monsieur Pamplemousse’s musings were brought to an abrupt halt by the arrival of Elsie.

  His own entrance had elicited no more than the usual covert glances and the kind of whispered remarks that any group of people make when they spy a stranger in their midst; their prior arrival having given them a certain proprietorial interest in the comings and goings of others who had yet to learn the ropes.

  Elsie’s appearance, however, produced a kind of stunned silence.

  In marked contrast to the other guests, whose garb was not only casual, but in the case of the Americans verging on the al fresco, she was wearing a transparent off-the-shoulder evening dress which somehow managed to reveal far more than it concealed. Her progress across the room was punctuated by a series of ‘Pardonnez-moi’s’, ‘Please don’t move,’ and ‘Oh, dear – silly me – I should have gone the other way – I do ’ope it comes off,’ as she squeezed her way in and out of the tables.

  In his role of waiter, the receptionist, revealing himself to be a man of many parts, followed closely behind, only darting on ahead at the last moment to ensure her seat was properly in place when she reached the table.

  Menus and the wine list arrived with a flourish. Their order was taken; the wine – a Sancerre – arrived with embarrassing speed. Monsieur Pamplemousse tested it and nodded his approval. It had a characteristic ‘gunflint’ aroma and at least it was suitably chilled.

  ‘Maurice is ever so nice really,’ said Elsie, as the waiter departed. ‘He helped me with the bath taps. I got in such a tizwaz with the shower, you wouldn’t believe.’

  Monsieur Pamplemousse surreptitiously felt below the tablecloth.

  ‘’Ere, what are you up to?’ asked Elsie in a loud voice.

  ‘I wish to make notes about the wine,’ he whispered, reaching for his pen.

  ‘That’s your story,’ said Elsie. ‘Pull the other one – it’s got bells on. I’ve met your sort before.’

  ‘Comment?’

  ‘Tell me what you’re really up to.’

  ‘I have a secret compartment in my right trouser leg,’ hissed Monsieur Pamplemousse. ‘It is where I keep my notebook.’

  ‘If I get a job as an Inspector,’ said Elsie, ‘I could keep a notebook up my knickers. ’Cept I don’t always wear any and even if I did it might fall out, if you know what I mean.’

  Monsieur Pamplemousse was conscious of a lull in the conversation around him. The English family were staring in his direction; the man twirled his moustache thoughtfully as he eyed the back of Elsie’s dress. His wife was telling the children to eat up and not ask questions.

  The smaller of the two asked why not. The mother asked why it kept on asking questions. The child asked why she wanted to know.

  It was a no-win situation for the mother.

  He caught the word ‘disgusting’ as a platter of oysters resting on a bed of fresh ice and seaweed arrived at their table. He wasn’t sure whether it applied to the food, to him personally, or the hotel in general.

  ‘One of the chief rules an Inspector working for Le Guide has to obey,’ said Monsieur Pamplemousse, ‘is that of anonymity. Total and absolute anonymity.’

  ‘What, no free meals?’ exclaimed Elsie.

  ‘No free meals,’ said Monsieur Pamplemousse firmly, ‘on pain of instant dismissal.’ He made an entry in his notebook.

  ‘What you writing?’

  ‘I was making a comment on the huîtres. I think seven out of ten for presentation, don’t you agree?’

  Elsie helped herself to one. ‘I’ll tell you something for nothing. I wouldn’t give them much for “you know what”. Anyone what was expecting them to do the trick would ’ave another think coming. I don’t feel a bit randy, do you?’

  Monsieur Pamplemousse couldn’t help but be aware that the rest of the dining-room was hanging on his answer. Even Pommes Frites looked interested.

  ‘They are not at their best at this time of the year,’ he said. ‘It is the breeding season and they have a certain milkiness.’

  ‘They’re no more fines de claires than what I am,’ continued Elsie, warming to her subject. ‘I bet if they ’ad a “sell by” date stamped on their shells you wouldn’t be eating them. I only ’ope they didn’t come out of the same tank as that dead langouste.’

  Out of the corner of his eye, Monsieur Pamplemousse saw the man at the next table stiffen, his fork poised halfway to his mouth.

  ‘To give them the benefit of t
he doubt,’ he said, ‘they are old enough and large enough to be called huîtres raptures. They would have been better roasted and served with a little garlic butter and lots of bread.’

  ‘My mum’, said Elsie, ‘used to simmer them in their own juice, wrap them in bacon, grill them, then serve them on toast – “Angels on Horseback”.

  ‘Funny things, oysters,’ she continued dreamily. ‘I wonder what it’s like changing sex every now and again?’

  ‘Confusing, I would imagine,’ said Monsieur Pamplemousse.

  ‘It wouldn’t ’alf give some people a shock if you picked the right moment to do it.’

  They sat in silence for a while, each busy with their own thoughts. Monsieur Pamplemousse found it hard to picture Elsie as being anything other than what she was, although from some of the tales he’d heard from Loudier about the nightly goings on in the Bois de Boulogne anything was possible. Loudier was near to retirement and did the Paris area.

  ‘You have oysters in Angleterre then?’ he remarked politely as the waiter removed the dish. ‘I thought you mostly ate fish and chips wrapped in newspaper.’

  ‘Do we ever. Mind you, it’s not like it was. According to my old dad, Royal Whitstable natives bred on London clay used to be the best in the world. Where I was brought up there was whelks and cockles and mussels every Saturday evening as well. I used to eat them out of a paper bag on the way ’ome from the flicks.’ Elsie was clearly her old self again. Her enthusiasm was infectious, and Monsieur Pamplemousse found himself discoursing on the many and varied habits of crustacea, large and small.

  While they were talking the waiter arrived with their second course. Monsieur Pamplemousse gazed at the plate as it was put before him.

  ‘The annual consumption of oysters in France is over eighty thousand tons,’ he continued.