by Michael Bond
‘I expect that accounts for a lot of things,’ said Elsie darkly. She paused and looked across the table at him. ‘Is everything all right?’
‘Non!’ Monsieur Pamplemousse glared down at his plate. ‘Non. It is far from all right.’
He signalled for the waiter. Since they were by the sea it had seemed a good idea to choose turbot sauce messine. Dreams of a freshly caught turbot reposing in a dish of milk and water whilst being baked in a slow oven, then served with a sauce made from melted butter and flour, eggs, cream and mustard, gently stirred the while as leaves from a sprig or two of tarragon, parsley, chervil and chives were added, disappeared.
He prodded the contents of the dish with a knife. A smell of stale fish filled the air. The flesh didn’t simply come away from the bone, it positively fell off as though it couldn’t wait to escape. Pommes Frites took one look at it and then made for the exit.
‘I see what you mean,’ said Elsie. ‘I could do better than that with one ’and tied behind my back.’
Monsieur Pamplemousse braced himself as the waiter drew near. ‘Will you kindly return this dish to the kitchen,’ he exclaimed. ‘Pay my respects to the chef and tell him it is so grossly over-cooked even its own mother wouldn’t recognise it.’
‘And while you’re at it you can tell ’im the plate’s colder than an Eskimo’s bum,’ added Elsie.
‘I am afraid that will not be possible,’ said the waiter.
‘Not possible?’ Monsieur Pamplemousse felt his hackles begin to rise. Once again he reached for his pen – this time in deadly earnest.
‘The patron has disappeared. He went out two days ago to buy some cigarettes and he hasn’t been seen since. Madame Bouet has taken to her bed. And as Monsieur Bouet is also the chef …’
‘I am sorry to hear that,’ Monsieur Pamplemousse looked slightly less aggrieved. ‘But what about the brigade? Can they not take over?’
The waiter raised his eyes to heaven. ‘There is no brigade, Monsieur. There is only old Pierre. He is doing his best, but in the twenty-five years he has been here he has never once been allowed near the stove.’
‘He wasn’t joking when he said they ’ad problems,’ said Elsie as the man disappeared again. ‘I’ll tell you something else. There’s someone got their eyes on you. They keep giving you funny looks.’
Monsieur Pamplemousse grunted. He felt like saying that ever since Elsie entered the room people had been giving him funny looks. If the rest of the diners had anything else in common, other than a lack of food, it was they were all taking an inordinate interest in everything he said or did and he was suddenly filled with an overwhelming desire to escape.
‘Shall we take café elsewhere?’
‘What and miss the sweet trolley?’
‘Another very good reason,’ said Monsieur Pamplemousse. It wasn’t always easy to tell whether or not Elsie was being serious.
Elsewhere resolved itself into a small room which was clearly reserved for breakfast. There were six tables covered with red and white checked cloths. The walls were lined with matchboard, painted brown, and there was an old dresser which seemed to be a repository for a collection of equally ancient magazines. On one of the walls there was a painting of a beach scene. At least it was an improvement on the dining-room where, apart from the still-life, most of the pictures had been of an ecclesiastical nature.
Elsie picked up one of a pair of bronze figures on a shelf and turned it over.
‘You like them?’ asked Monsieur Pamplemousse.
‘You don’t ’ave to like them,’ said Elsie. ‘They’re by Jaquet.’ Without waiting for an answer, if indeed there was one, she picked up a pack of cards.
‘Know any tricks to pass the time?’
Monsieur Pamplemousse thought for a moment. ‘There is Cherchez la femme. If you like I will show you.’
Removing the ace of spades, the ace of diamonds and the queen of hearts from the pack, he laid them face downwards in a row on one of the tables, making sure the queen was in the middle.
‘Tell me where the queen is.’
‘It looks a bit like what we call “Find the Lady”,’ said Elsie, pointing to one of the outside cards.
‘Oh, Glandier, where are you now?’ thought Monsieur Pamplemousse, as he turned it over to reveal one of the aces. By sheer coincidence he’d watched his colleague demonstrate the three-card trick at the Director’s party and the mechanics of it were still fresh in his mind.
‘Shall we try again?’ he asked. ‘This time, I want you to watch my hands very carefully.’
Picking up an ace with his left hand, he showed it to Elsie, then he gathered up the other two cards with his right hand, making sure that she could see the queen was underneath the second ace.
Slowly and carefully he laid the cards face down again, placing the queen on his right.
‘I think it’s that one,’ said Elsie, pointing to the middle card.
‘Non.’ Monsieur Pamplemousse tried hard to keep the note of irritation from his voice. The whole object of the preliminary exercise was to make the punter feel over-confident. He could hardly do that if Elsie kept getting it wrong.
‘Ooh, you are clever,’ said Elsie, after she had failed to get it right for the fifth time running. ‘Can we do it properly now? Like me putting a little something on it?’
Monsieur Pamplemousse shook his head. ‘I would not dream of taking your money.’
‘Oh, go on – be a sport.’ Elsie touched his jacket lapel lightly with her hand. ‘Let’s ’ave a bit of fun.’
Faced with Elsie’s round blue eyes gazing imploring into his, Monsieur Pamplemousse felt himself weakening.
‘If you really wish to …’
‘Yes, please,’ said Elsie. She looked round. ‘Oh, dear. Silly me! I’ve left my bag upstairs. Would you mind lending me a hundred francs?’
‘A hundred?’
‘It’s not worth playing for matchsticks,’ said Elsie.
Monsieur Pamplemousse hesitated, then reached for his wallet. ‘On one condition …’ Despite dandier’s theory that there was one born every minute so why not make good use of the fact, it hardly seemed right to take advantage of such childlike innocence. ‘If you win you may keep it. If you lose then you need only give me my hundred francs back.’
‘Sounds fair enough,’ said Elsie.
Monsieur Pamplemousse went through his routine again, picking up one of the aces with his left hand, gathering up the queen and the other ace with his right. This time when he threw the cards on to the table he arranged for the queen to end up on his left. It hardly seemed worth bothering with the subtlety of relying on quickness of the hand to deceive the eye and dealing the top rather than the bottom card first.
‘I think it’s that one,’ said Elsie, pointing to the card on his left.
‘I bet you thought I was going to choose the one in the middle,’ she said cheerfully. ‘Oh dear, now I’ve been and gone and taken your money.’
Monsieur Pamplemousse watched his note disappear into the dark recesses of Elsie’s cleavage. He resolved to ring Glandier in the morning.
‘You could try winning it back,’ said Elsie. ‘I think I’m getting the hang of it now.’
‘I think,’ said Monsieur Pamplemousse, ‘I may take Pommes Frites for a walk.’
He was about to leave the hotel when he heard his name being called.
‘Monsieur Pamplemousse. Monsieur Pamplemousse. Le téléphone.’
Monsieur Pamplemousse hesitated, then signalled Pommes Frites to go on ahead. ‘I will take it in my room.’ He had a feeling in the back of his mind that it might be the Director; a feeling that was confirmed a few minutes later when, breathing heavily from having taken the last few stairs at the double, he picked up his bedside receiver.
‘Pamplemousse!’ The Director sounded equally short of breath. ‘Where on earth have you been?’
‘I am sorry, Monsieur. I came as quickly as I could. Is anything the matter? Are you all right?’
‘No, I am not all right.’ There was a muffled bark from the other end of the line. ‘I cannot keep my head under the bedclothes for very much longer.’
Monsieur Pamplemousse looked at his watch. It was barely twenty-thirty. ‘Monsieur is in bed?’
‘Pamplemousse, I would hardly have my head under the bedclothes were I sitting outside on the lawn.’
Monsieur Pamplemousse stood rebuked. ‘No, Monsieur, but …’
‘I am in bed,’ continued the Director, obviously choosing his words with care, ‘because I am extremely tired. And before you ask me why I am extremely tired, I will tell you.
‘I received your message last night, Pamplemousse. It came through loud and clear, despite my having to hold the receiver under the duvet.’
‘I trust it did not cause you problems, Monsieur.’
‘It might have done, had it not been for the fact that on the spur of the moment I made up a story about an itinerant plume salesman. One has to think on one’s feet, Pamplemousse.’
‘Or even lying down, Monsieur.’
The Director ignored the remark. ‘Unfortunately, Chantal chose not to believe me. She has, I fear, a suspicious nature. She spent practically the whole of the night questioning me. As fast as I nodded off she woke me again. Today has been even worse. She hasn’t let me get anywhere near a telephone.’
‘Women, Monsieur.’ Monsieur Pamplemousse sometimes envied the Director’s happy knack of convincing himself of the veracity of his own stories. He couldn’t help but wonder if he would have felt even more outraged had he been telling the truth.
‘I trust you have settled in, Aristide?’ The Director sounded slightly mollified. ‘I did ask that you be given a good room – one facing la mer. Elsie, I understand, had already stated her preference.’
‘Without consulting a compass, Monsieur, it is hard to tell whether my room is facing the sea or not. The highest sand dune in Europe happens to be standing immediately outside my window. The only point in its favour is that at least I am protected from the worst of the elements. Although, having said that, it is the only hotel I have stayed in where it is necessary to empty the sand out of one’s shoes before going on to the beach.’
‘Not worth a detour, Aristide?’
‘Even if one happened to be within a hundred metres, Monsieur, it would not be worth making a detour.’
‘How strange. Elsie was most adamant that she wished to stay there. By the way, how is Elsie?’ Monsieur Pamplemousse thought he detected a note of nervousness in the Director’s voice.
‘Earlier this evening she was talking of changing her sex. Apart from that she is well.’
‘That shows remarkable dedication. Would there were more in our organisation prepared to make such a sacrifice.’
‘I do not think it had anything to do with her wish to be an Inspector, Monsieur.’
‘Nothing you have done, Pamplemousse, I trust?’ said the Director anxiously.
‘Certainly not, Monsieur.’
‘Irrespective of the surgical problems involved – and in Elsie’s case I would say they are considerable – it would not be good news. An added complication …’
‘You were about to say, Monsieur …’ Monsieur Pamplemousse broke in quickly before the Director indulged in yet another flight of fancy.
‘Ah, yes, thank you for reminding me, Aristide. Chantal will be back from the bathroom at any moment. I grant you she spends an inordinate amount of time in there – what she does I have no idea, but there are limits to the amount of time even she can spend in front of a mirror – I rang to warn you … Don’t, on any account …’
Whatever else the Director had been about to say was lost in a rustle of bedclothes. His voice suddenly came through loud and clear.
‘Good. Good. It was kind of you to ring. In that case I will order six kilos of framboises… If you have any problems, let me know at once. Make sure they are in perfect condition. We have important guests …’
Monsieur Pamplemousse replaced the receiver. The Director had obviously added an itinerant raspberry-seller to his list of callers. It was to be hoped it would meet with more success than his previous effort. If it didn’t he could be in for another sleepless night.
Sitting on the edge of his bed mulling over the conversation, Monsieur Pamplemousse wondered what on earth it was he mustn’t do. He was so lost in thought it was a moment or two before he realised someone was knocking on his door. It sounded urgent.
He opened the door and Elsie entered clutching her Polaroid camera.
‘’Ere, you know your dog …’
‘Pommes Frites? Of course I know him. Why do you ask?’
‘Because he’s just gone past my window and ’e ’ad a whatjemecallit in his mouth … You know, a jambon.’
‘A jambon? But I doubt if there is a boucherie within several kilometres of here.’ Monsieur Pamplemousse considered the other possibilities. ‘Unless, of course, he has discovered an out-of-town Super-Marché.’
‘It wasn’t,’ said Elsie meaningly, ‘the kind of jambon you’d find in a supermarket – not even a French one.’ She handed him a print. ‘Just you wait till you see what’s on that.’
4
ENCORE
Monsieur Pamplemousse took the print from Elsie and held it up to the light. The faint image he’d spotted when she first entered his room was already forming itself into a picture.
‘Sacré bleu!’ He saw what she meant. It was a good likeness of Pommes Frites. Although he wasn’t actually smiling at the lens, the camera had caught a certain self-satisfied expression on his face as it recorded him hurrying past some bushes outside the hotel. Fresh details were emerging with every passing moment. Traces of yellow sand were clearly visible on the end of his nose; the colour of his coat – the rich blacks, the reddish tints and the fawns – were all there, along with the green of the foliage in the background. It was a tribute to Dr Edwin Land’s invention which, making use of a sandwich of chemicals and a couple of rollers, enabled a photograph to manifest itself before one’s very eyes in a matter of moments.
All the same, it was not the kind of picture even one of Pommes Frites’ most ardent admirers would have singled out for pasting in the family album. Still less would they have awarded it a place of honour on the mantelpiece, and Monsieur Pamplemousse gave the principal subject hardly more than a passing glance. He concentrated instead on the object Pommes Frites was carrying. In particular his attention was directed towards an ominous red trickle which disappeared out of the bottom left corner of the picture.
There was no denying that Elsie was correct in identifying the object as a jambon, but it was a judgement which would have won her no prizes in a photographic competition; tickets for a holiday for two in the Algarve would not have come winging her way. Even the rawest recruit to the world of boucherie, an apprentice butcher learning his trade or a sausage-maker fresh from a school of charcuterie, would have had little difficulty in deducing the fact that whatever its origins, the jambon in question had never been an integral part of either beast or fowl; comparisons with wall charts would have been a waste of the instructor’s time.
Any lingering doubts as to possible alternatives would have been instantly dispelled by the fact that a good four-fifths of the object was covered, not in caterer’s muslin, but in the tattered remains of some thicker, white material, from the far end of which there protruded a foot. A foot which, in turn, was encased in an old-fashioned wooden sabot of the kind favoured by some older members of the catering trade whose work entailed their spending long hours slaving over a hot stove.
It was no wonder Pommes Frites was looking pleased with himself. Had he still been a member of the élite Division Chiens of the Paris Sûreté he might well have been in line for a commendation.
‘Queer, innit,’ said Elsie soberly. ‘Gave me quite a shock when I saw ’im go past with it sticking out of ’is mouth.’
‘We must find him immediately.’ Removing a f
lashlight from his bag, Monsieur Pamplemousse reached for the door handle. He had a sudden mental picture of Pommes Frites entering the hotel and running round the dining-room, anxious to show off his prize to all and sundry. It didn’t bear thinking about. An even worse possibility was if he happened to bump into Madame Bouet, freshly risen from her bed. It might send her back there, never to rise again.
Although the evidence was purely circumstantial, the conclusion that the object in Pommes Frites’ mouth had once belonged to the missing patron of the Hôtel des Dunes seemed inescapable. Monsieur Pamplemousse’s policeman’s instincts were roused; the scent of the chase was in his nostrils.
Flinging open the bedroom door, he was about to rush into the corridor when he stopped dead in his tracks.
‘Merde!’
He felt an enveloping warmth as Elsie cannoned into him from behind. ‘What’s up?’
‘C’est impossible!’
Impossible was hardly the word for it. Merde upon merde! He could scarcely believe his ill fortune. Coming towards him – halfway between his room and the stairs, were two people he recognised. Not only did they come from Paris – that would have been bad enough; but they lived two floors above him in the same apartment block. Recent arrivals, to be sure, but he had met them in the lift on a number of occasions.
‘It’s them,’ hissed Elsie. ‘The ones I was telling you about. The ones what was staring at you downstairs.’
Monsieur Pamplemousse signalled for her to go back into the room.
He gave an inward groan. It was too late for him to follow suit. The couple were bearing inexorably down on him, the man already had his hand outstretched in greeting.
‘Monsieur Pamplemousse.’
Monsieur Pamplemousse shook his head. Desperate situations demanded desperate measures. On the spur of the moment he decided to brazen it out.
‘Oui. However, I do not think we have ever met.’
The man looked taken aback. ‘You are not Monsieur Aristide Pamplemousse from the septième étage?’
‘Non.’