Monsieur Pamplemousse Stands Firm

by Michael Bond

  ‘If ’e doesn’t come,’ said Elsie, ‘you’ll never know whether it’s working or not. You could ’ave got sand in it.’

  In the face of feminine logic, Monsieur Pamplemousse gave in. Employing similar thought processes to the ones that Pommes Frites had used earlier, he decided that perhaps Elsie was right. They needed to play him at his own game. They couldn’t stay where they were for ever, and Pommes Frites was more than capable of finding his own way back to the hotel.

  Given the fact that even as he spoke, Pommes Frites, having also heard the sound of the boat, was making his way slowly and silently down the dune towards the sea, it was a wise decision.

  All good things come to an end, and even though it had been one of the best games he had played for ages, a sixth sense told him that it was time to get back to work again. Good resolutions arrived at on his master’s behalf disappeared like magic. Nostrils open to catch any scent which might be in the air, his long ears – normally hanging loose in deep folds about his head – alert to every stray sound, slowly and with infinite patience Pommes Frites edged closer and closer to his target.

  Patience was a commodity thin on the ground on the other side of the dune. Having not surprisingly drawn a blank in his search for a boucherie, or indeed a purveyor of any known form of comestibles, Monsieur Pamplemousse was reading from a menu posted up on the glass door of a small building they had stumbled across.

  ‘Lundi: laitue, timbale Milanaise, fromage blanc, biscuits.

  ‘Mardi: carottes râpées, rôti de boeuf, riz au beurre, glaces.

  ‘Jeudi: tomate ou concombre, filets de dinde braisés, petits pois et carottes, Camembert, fruits …’

  ‘Do you ’ave to?’ groaned Elsie. ‘I’m starving.’

  Monsieur Pamplemousse shone his torch through the glass. Picasso-like paintings adorned the walls. A large, brightly coloured wooden railway engine occupied the centre of an uncarpeted room. There was a row of coat hooks fixed to the near side of the engine’s boiler. They looked surprisingly close to the ground. He ran his torch along the row and beyond until he reached a row of tiny desks.

  ‘Alors on a compris’ – the penny had dropped. They were standing outside an infants’ school. He looked at the menu again. It was for the week prior to the summer vacances.

  ‘I should think they’d bloody need a holiday after all that,’ said Elsie, when he told her. ‘Poor little buggers. My ’eart bleeds for them, I don’t think. It wasn’t like it in my day, I can tell you.’

  ‘Nor mine,’ agreed Monsieur Pamplemousse. ‘And that was much longer ago. Taste classes are now on the National Curriculum.’

  When they got back to the hotel he made for his car and felt underneath the driver’s seat. Removing a neatly folded sheet of plastic, he attached a small cylinder to a protruding nozzle and pressed a button.

  ‘Blimey!’ Elsie watched open-eyed as a kennel began to take shape. ‘Whatever will they think of next?’

  ‘It is the only one of its kind,’ said Monsieur Pamplemousse proudly. ‘I had it specially made.’ He took it round to the side of the hotel and found a suitably level piece of ground beneath his room window.

  ‘I think if and when Pommes Frites takes it upon himself to return he should do a bit of guard duty. As for myself … I am of the opinion that it is time for bed.’

  It also occurred to him that in the circumstances it might be as well to distance himself from Pommes Frites for a while. With luck, Monsieur and Madame Blanche might think he belonged to the hotel.

  ‘Tell you what,’ said Elsie. ‘How about ’aving a little snack in my room first?’

  ‘You have food?’ said Monsieur Pamplemousse. ‘In your room?’

  ‘Always look after number one,’ said Elsie. ‘That’s my motto. No one else is going to. It’s everyone for theirselves in this world.

  ‘And there’s some champagne in the ’fridge. I checked.’

  Monsieur Pamplemousse needed no more convincing.

  The champagne was a pleasant surprise. It was a half bottle of Billecart-Salmon rosé: light, fruity and extremely elegant. After the time spent on the dune it tasted like nectar.

  ‘I daresay we can put it on expenses,’ said Elsie.

  ‘Have you met Madame Grante?’ asked Monsieur Pamplemousse.

  ‘Who’s she when she’s at ’ome?’ said Elsie.

  ‘The problem is not when she is at home,’ said Monsieur Pamplemousse. ‘It is when she is in the office. I think perhaps I had better help you with your P39.’

  The thought of Elsie doing battle with Madame Grante was an interesting one – he wasn’t at all sure who would emerge the victor; the only certainty was that if Madame Grante lost she wouldn’t forget. In the end it was he who would be made to suffer.

  Elsie opened the fridge door again and removed two packets. The first packet was labelled ‘chocolate fingers’. The second, which was covered in translucent plastic material, contained what looked like a selection of small white ceiling tiles edged with brown.

  ‘Good thing I came prepared, innit.’ She took a knife and a third packet from the dressing-table drawer.

  Monsieur Pamplemousse watched while Elsie spread some butter over one of the tiles.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked. ‘And where did you find it?’

  ‘It’s bread. I brought it with me, dinna I? And am I glad I did!’

  Monsieur Pamplemousse wasn’t sure whether the last remark was a question or a statement. The English habit of putting an inflection at the end of a sentence, going down in tone rather than up was hard to get used to. Not that Elsie was as big an offender as most. On the whole her voice tended to be on one level. He decided she had made a statement.

  ‘You mean, it is not of today’s baking?’

  Elsie gave a hollow laugh. ‘Today’s? Blimey! I doubt if it’s last week’s. English sliced loaf lasts for ever – just so long as you remember to scrape the green off. That’s its strong point.’

  ‘There are others?’ inquired Monsieur Pamplemousse. It reminded him of a television documentary he had once seen on the phenomenon of English bread. There had been shots of men squeezing loaves, then standing stop-watch in hand, timing how long it took them to regain their original shape. Taste had not figured largely in the findings.

  ‘It takes all sorts,’ said Elsie. ‘Just ’cause you don’t like sliced loaf don’t mean to say it’s wrong.

  ‘When I was small,’ she continued, ‘I used to like granulated sugar on bread and butter. I suppose you get more sophisticated as you grow older.’

  Monsieur Pamplemousse couldn’t help thinking that despite Elsie’s prowess in the kitchen and her undoubted knowledge of certain areas relating to matters of food, she was not Inspector material. No one could possibly like sliced bread coated with sucre. He watched while she took one of the chocolate fingers from the packet, laid it on a slice of buttered bread, then rolled it up to form a baton. It was hard to imagine what kind of symbol they might use in Le Guide to denote a restaurant specialising in such things. If it looked at all like the one Elsie was holding, the chances were it might give potential customers the wrong idea.

  ‘Does it have a name?’ he asked politely.

  ‘It’s a chocolate-finger sandwich, innit,’ said Elsie. ‘I mean, what else would you call it?’

  ‘It looks very sustaining,’ said Monsieur Pamplemousse. He took a tentative bite. Although he was loth to admit the fact, it tasted much nicer than he had expected. The second bite was even nicer.

  ‘When I was small I used to enjoy eating raw croissant mixture dipped in confiture.’

  ‘There you are,’ said Elsie. She handed him a third baton.

  ‘I think perhaps I will take it back to my room for later,’ said Monsieur Pamplemousse.

  ‘You’re a poppet,’ said Elsie unexpectedly. As he stood up to leave she planted a large, wet kiss on his forehead. ‘Nightie, night, sweet repose. All the pillow, all the clothes. See you in the morning.’

&n
bsp; Outside in the corridor, clasping the chocolate-finger roll like a weapon in his hand, the inevitable happened. He heard voices in the hall. His timing couldn’t have been worse if he’d tried. A moment later Monsieur and Madame Blanche came into view, returning from their walk. Monsieur Pamplemousse gave them a good-night wave with his free hand as they followed him up the stairs.

  It occurred to him that he had ways of making Madame Blanche sniff.

  Back in his room he gazed at his reflection in the mirror. He had chocolate round his mouth and lipstick on his forehead.

  Hearing more voices outside and the sound of a door slamming he crossed to the window and looked out. He was just in time to see what must be old Pierre – the newly incumbent chef – leaving the hotel. His back was bent and he was walking slowly, lurching slightly from side to side as though in a dream. As he mounted his bicycle and wobbled off into the night he looked a broken man.

  Monsieur Pamplemousse closed the shutters. Worn out by the combined effect of the long drive from Paris and by the evening’s exertions, he decided to leave telephoning the police until the morning. He wasn’t sure what he was going to tell them anyway and he simply couldn’t face the thought of long explanations.

  But despite feeling tired, sleep eluded him – he had far too many things on his mind; Elsie … Pommes Frites’ strange behaviour … the Director’s warning, cut off in mid-sentence … his own new identity …

  He wondered how he and Elsie would spend the rest of the week … tomorrow they could drive into Arcachon … he would have to go there anyway to report Pommes Frites’ find …

  Once, when he had almost dozed off, he was nudged awake again by the sound of a car back-firing in the distance – a sudden sharp crack like a gun going off.

  It took him a while to settle down again. He wondered if Madame Blanche would say anything to Doucette. If she had half a chance she would. He would meet that problem when it happened. In the meantime he had to admit there was a certain attraction about his new role.

  It was perhaps half an hour or so later that he heard a car arrive at the hotel. He groped for the torch and checked the time on his watch. It was a little after one o’clock. Doors slammed, followed shortly afterwards by footsteps on the stairs. He guessed it must be the Americans returning from a night out.

  They paused outside his door and he heard whispering. He was beginning to wish he’d let Elsie have his room after all. For some reason the top floor of the hotel far outweighed the first in the popularity stakes. Perhaps everyone was hoping for a view of the sea.

  Monsieur Pamplemousse couldn’t have put a time to when he finally fell asleep, but it seemed only a matter of moments before he was woken yet again, this time with a vague feeling of unease. It took him a moment or two to force himself properly awake. He switched on the light. A quick glance at his watch showed him it was now two-twenty. He was about to sink back on to his pillow when he heard a whining noise from somewhere outside his window.

  Jumping out of bed, he flung open the shutters intending to remonstrate in no uncertain terms about dogs who stayed out late without their master’s permission, when he paused. The moon was hidden behind some trees, but even in the shadow there was something familiar about the way Pommes Frites was standing.

  Returning a moment later with his torch, Monsieur Pamplemousse trained it on the area below his window and pressed the switch. As he did so he caught his breath.

  It was, in many respects, a duplicate of the scene Elsie had captured earlier in the evening; a scene which he had already irreverently labelled in his mind as ‘Pommes Frites with jambon’.

  Bidding Pommes Frites to remain exactly where he was, Monsieur Pamplemousse disappeared from the window. He returned a moment later with Elsie’s photograph. It needed only a simple comparison between Pommes Frites’ latest find and that shown in the picture to confirm his worst suspicions.

  In all but one respect the salient features of the jambon were remarkably similar; in size, shape, and by virtue of being encased in a white, cotton material. However, unless Monsieur Bouet had been a singularly careless dresser, or had by some unfortunate quirk of nature been endowed with two right feet, then the inescapable conclusion was that Pommes Frites had discovered yet another jambon, for the end of his latest find was encased not in a wooden sabot, but in a rope-soled canvas pump.

  5

  THE SEVENTH DWARF

  ‘Cheer up,’ said Elsie. ‘It may never happen.’

  Monsieur Pamplemousse broke off a morsel of bread from a slice of baguette and eyed it through eyes weary from lack of sleep. There was a certain lack of crispness in the crust which summed up his own state of mind.

  ‘I’m afraid it already has. You can hardly call finding two dead bodies in one night a non-event.’

  ‘They weren’t your actual bodies,’ said Elsie. She leaned across the table and patted him consolingly. ‘Only bits and pieces like, and you haven’t even got those any more. Well, not until Pommes Frites finds them again. If he ever does. No wonder he looks gloomy. He’s worse than you are.’

  ‘Pommes Frites often looks gloomy,’ said Monsieur Pamplemousse defensively, ‘but that doesn’t mean to say he is unhappy. Although he may well be so at the moment. I think he is suffering from a sense of failure.’

  ‘I’m not surprised,’ said Elsie. ‘Fancy not being able to find his jambons. Fine bloodhound ’e is.’

  ‘It is hardly his fault that a wind sprang up during the night,’ said Monsieur Pamplemousse. ‘Any trails there might have been disappeared in the sand. I defy anyone to find them. Also, he is probably unhappy because he thinks I have been avoiding him and he is at a loss to understand why.’

  ‘And have you?’

  ‘In a way, yes. But only because I think the less we are seen together the better. I doubt if Madame Blanche would accept that my twin brother also owns an identical bloodhound. Several times I have had to send Pommes Frites on his way in case I got caught with him. This morning, when I heard the Blanches approaching, I had to push him out of the window before he had finished his croissant. He was most upset. I should have taken petit déjeuner in my room.’

  ‘I’m glad I’m not married if that’s the way you ’ave to carry on,’ said Elsie. ‘It sounds to me as though you’re up the creek without a paddle.’

  ‘That is one way of putting it,’ said Monsieur Pamplemousse. ‘In France we say “être dans le pétrin”.’

  It had not been the happiest of nights. No sooner had he got back to bed than he’d heard a scream coming from Elsie’s room. Others had heard it too, but he had reached her first – rather to his regret. Clearly the worst of interpretations had been placed, not only on his presence, but on what he appeared to be doing. Disentangling high-heeled shoes which had become deeply enmeshed in the seat of a wicker-work chair was no easy task – particularly at three o’clock in the morning. It was a wonder Elsie hadn’t gone straight through and done herself permanent damage.

  He glanced across at her. She must have a thing about standing on chairs. It was curious how someone who was able to take the earlier events in her stride should go into a state of collapse at the sight of a spider. That was her story anyway.

  In the end he had done the decent thing and let her have his room for the remainder of the night.

  It had not been the happiest of days either. The Police had been less than grateful when he bid them adieu that afternoon. A day spent tramping up and down the dunes had left no one in the best of tempers, least of all the contingent of ‘volunteers’ from the local gendarmerie. Their hearts had never been in it, and viewing the Dune du Pilat by daylight and at close quarters it was easy to see why. Pommes Frites had not been high in their popularity stakes. The fact that other dogs brought in from Bordeaux had fared no better counted for nothing. Scepticism had been rife among the rank and file; their plastic bags had gone back to Headquarters unopened. Only Elsie’s Polaroid picture saved them from total ignominy, providing as it did the
one shred of evidence that the whole thing had not been part of a bad dream on Monsieur Pamplemousse’s part.

  The fact that it also provided the Police with the first positive clue as to the fate of what must by now be regarded as the late Monsieur Bouet, counted for nothing. That it had been a genuine part of him was confirmed in no uncertain manner by Madame Bouet, whose decline when she saw the photograph and identified the sabot reached a new low and was audible far beyond the confines of her apartment adjoining the Hôtel des Dunes.

  Circumstantial evidence provided by Monsieur Pamplemousse himself pointed to Pommes Frites’ second find as being an equally essential part of Monsieur Bouet’s underling, Pierre. Really, the Police had no cause to grumble at receiving such an unexpected bonus, but that hadn’t stopped them. Congratulations on a job well done were not forthcoming. Murmurs of appreciation for Monsieur Pamplemousse’s public spiritedness in volunteering the information were muted to the point of inaudibility.

  He was also having doubts about the wisdom of not revealing his true identity. On the spur of the moment, seeing a glint of recognition in the eyes of the officier in charge of the investigation at the name Pamplemousse, it had seemed a good idea to take advantage of his newly acquired identity. Warming to the idea, he’d tended to over-embroider the part of a twin brother rather than play it down. Signing the statement had set the seal on his folly. There was no going back. In the old days, if their positions been reversed and the truth had come to light, he would have thrown the book at the other party.

  ‘You could take him to a dog parlour and ’ave him dyed black,’ said Elsie, breaking into his thoughts. ‘That’d kill two birds with one stone. The Blanches wouldn’t recognise ’im and he’d really ’ave something to look gloomy about then.’

  ‘Bloodhounds always look morose,’ said Monsieur Pamplemousse. ‘In repose it is their natural expression. It simply happens to be worse than usual at the moment.’

  As if to reinforce his statement, a deep sigh issued from beneath the table. It was Pommes Frites’ way of pointing out that a), in an ideal world conversation ought to take place after a meal rather than before it, and b), in his humble opinion too much emphasis was being placed on eating in restaurants where fish predominated.