by Michael Bond
‘Gives me the creeps,’ said Elsie. ‘I wouldn’t like to be shipwrecked on a desert island with ’im, I must say. ’E’d be a right bundle of laughs, I don’t think.’
They ate in silence for a while. Elsie’s mind was clearly elsewhere. He fell to wondering about her and what sort of life she led back in England. It was hard to envisage. Outwardly she was confident and well organised, frighteningly so at times. It was hard to picture her at home doing the dusting. On the other hand, the snack in her room the previous evening had revealed a totally different side to her character. It had made him warm towards her, as though he had been let in on a guilty secret, which in a way he supposed he had.
Elsie was dressed rather more discreetly than had been the case the previous evening. The off-the-shoulder number must have suffered on the dunes. By comparison, her latest outfit, in plain, unadorned black wool, wouldn’t have looked out of place on a nun about to take her final exams. Even so, her habit of leaning across the table whenever she had something important to say would have brought a worried frown to even the most broad-minded of Mother Superiors overseeing her practicals, as would the accompanying waft of quietly expensive perfume. Someone, somewhere, must be keeping Elsie in the style to which she had clearly become accustomed.
Her presence certainly didn’t go unnoticed by the other occupants of the restaurant where they were dining. At the Paris Lido it would have been eye-catching; in Arcachon it was little short of sensational.
Monsieur Pamplemousse wasn’t at all sorry the owners, in ploughing much of their profit back into the business in the form of designer vegetation, had also been fortunate enough to engage the services of someone with green fingers. Ivy formed a screen around their table; passion flowers grew rampant; tradescantia trailed where others failed to grow. From time to time he was aware of eyes peering through gaps in the foliage. It was worse than dining in some South American jungle surrounded by hostile natives who had never seen a white woman before. He regretted not bringing a can of fly spray. Had he done so, he would have been sorely tempted to use it.
The Restaurant Joséphine was as unlike the Hôtel des Dunes as it was possible to be. In fairness, they had a head start; at the current rate of scoring, two heads. The patron was hard at work in the kitchen – every so often he caught sight of a man in a white hat peering round a corner to see how things were going out front. Madame Joséphine, despite Elsie’s disparaging ‘mutton dressed as lamb’, was ever-present and solicitous.
They ordered pâté de foie gras. It came with a glass of chilled demi-sec Vouvray – a perfect accompaniment. To follow, they chose grilled sea bass. It was presented on a bed of dried fennel. A waiter arrived clasping an amber bottle. Flamed in Cognac, the stalks of the fennel imparted a scent which flavoured the whole dish. Inspired by the first course, Monsieur Pamplemousse consulted the carte des vins again and changed his order from a Muscadet to an older Vouvray. There was only a token mention of Burgundy.
The dessert was a toss-up between Iles flotantes, Crème brûlée, Tarte maison and Mousse au chocolat à l’orange. They both chose the mousse. It came with a separate bowl of cream which was left on the table. The chocolate was satisfactorily dark and bitter, and the faint taste of orange gave it a certain distinction, lifting it above the norm.
‘How would you rate the meal?’ asked Monsieur Pamplemousse as Elsie licked her spoon clean.
‘The pâté was all right,’ said Elsie. ‘But it was round. I reckon it came from a tin. The sea bass was great, but then, there’s no reason why it shouldn’t have been. The olive oil on the salad was too cold – probably straight out of the fridge. If it had been warmer it would have brought out the flavour more. I reckon a Wrought-Iron Table and Chair – plus.’
Monsieur Pamplemousse nodded his approval. It tallied with the current entry in Le Guide. It was a cut above a Bar Stool – the symbol for a good place to stop en route. He wondered if Elsie had checked it herself before they came out. Then he dismissed the idea. She had left the booking to him.
‘Some of my favourite restaurants are in that category. They are the backbone of French cuisine.
‘I have never eaten here before, but the owner is in his late fifties – a few years older than Madame. I would guess they have been here most of their lives. The menu has probably hardly changed since they began. They get their fish practically straight out of the ocean. You are right … the patron has probably cooked sea bass so many times he could do it with his eyes shut.’
‘No Stock Pot?’
‘Non.’ Monsieur Pamplemousse shook his head. ‘The menu is too limited for that. Besides, to award a Stock Pot to a restaurant such as this would do the patron a grave disservice. Here he is, happy in what he does, wanting no more than to earn an honest living. He has his faithful band of regulars. They come here because they know what to expect and would doubtless go elsewhere if they didn’t get their soupe de poisson on Thursdays or their lobster cassoulet on Saturday evening. If he had a Stock Pot his costs would treble or even quadruple overnight. He would have to take on more staff, particularly in the kitchen. People from outside the town, from Paris, from other parts of the world, would seek him out. He would need to appoint at least one assistant chef and train him in his ways, otherwise he could never afford to be ill or take a day off. He would have to find accommodation for them. Then he would need to invest heavily in wine. The present list is much too short and parochial. Life would never be the same. And once having been awarded a Stock Pot, he would live in fear of losing it.
‘In the case of a three-Stock-Pot restaurant the problem is much worse. It is one of the reasons why so many chefs branch out into other areas - to make the whole thing pay. I know chefs who would sooner not have the award. Success in life is a mixed blessing. Often you find you have mounted a treadmill from which there is no escape.’
Elsie looked at him curiously. ‘What made you become an Inspector?’
Monsieur Pamplemousse shrugged. ‘Fate. I resigned from my previous post and quite by chance, on the very day that I left, with no idea of what I was going to do – or even could do, I happened to bump into the Director.’
‘Funny thing, fate,’ said Elsie. ‘I mean – like us being here this evening. In fact, everyone being here come to that.’
‘It is the same with the hotel,’ said Monsieur Pamplemousse. ‘I often wonder what brings people to a certain spot at one particular moment in time.’
‘Yeah. Well … like I said, it’s fate. I suppose …’ Elsie looked for a moment as though she was about to develop her thesis, but then Madame Joséphine arrived with the coffee and a plate of tuiles dentelles.
Monsieur Pamplemousse waited until she had departed before continuing the conversation.
‘What do you think of it? The hotel, I mean. You will need to make out a report. It will be difficult in the circumstances, but it will be a good exercise. I will go through the form with you tomorrow. There are categories for everything, from the car-parking facilities to the quality of the bed linen, from ease of access for those who are incapacitated to the view from the room. It is several hours’ work.’
‘I know one thing,’ said Elsie. ‘The Hotel’s not like what it said in the brochure.’
‘They often aren’t,’ said Monsieur Pamplemousse drily. ‘A wide-angle lens and a good imagination can work wonders.’
‘’Alf a kilometre to the sea,’ said Elsie bitterly. ‘They didn’t say nuffin’ about there being a bleedin’ great pile of sand in the way. You can’t see it even if you stand on a chair.’
‘An unfortunate oversight,’ said Monsieur Pamplemousse. ‘Why did you choose this hotel? I’m surprised they even have a brochure.’
‘It was Reginald’s idea,’ said Elsie.
‘Reginald?’
‘My boy friend. He’d heard it was interesting down ’ere. Only he couldn’t come ’isself.’
‘He is a food Inspector?’
‘Reginald?’ Elsie gave a hollow lau
gh. ‘He wouldn’t know one end of a sausage from the other.’
She looked around the restaurant as though anxious to change the subject. ‘I wouldn’t mind being in this business.’
Memories of the one meal Elsie had cooked the night he and Doucette had dined with the Director came flooding back. It had definitely been Stock Pot material.
‘I am sure you would be very good at it.’ Monsieur Pamplemousse helped himself to a tuile. ‘I’m sure you’d do better than these. They are much too soft to the touch. Another reason for not recommending a Stock Pot.’
‘They were probably made this morning,’ said Elsie. ‘Can’t say as I blame him. You can’t do everything at once. That’s the trouble. If Reginald and me opened a restaurant I’d be stuck in the kitchen all day long, slaving over a hot stove while ’e did the chatting up. I can picture it all.’
‘Does he have any particular interests?’
‘Interests? Reginald’s interested in anything that makes money. Buying and selling mostly. Import and export. This, that and the other.’
‘What sort of things?’ Monsieur Pamplemousse found himself growing more and more intrigued. It was like playing some kind of guessing game.
‘Well … let’s say he’s got ’is finger on what people want and he knows where to get it. But not in the kind of way your Paris friend would be interested in.’
‘My Paris friend?’
‘You know. That art dealer you was spinning a yarn to yesterday evening.’
‘Monsieur Blanche? How do you know he is an art dealer?’
‘Well – whatever. He was standing in front of that painting on the landing this morning making notes. And he ’ad his camera and a magnifying glass with him. I reckon he’s got ’is eye on it.’
‘Do you now?’
‘’Course, it’s not like dealing in jewels. Reginald always says that jewels combine the maximum wealth in the smallest possible space.’
‘Madame Chanel said much the same thing,’ said Monsieur Pamplemousse drily.
‘Well, she would, wouldn’t she? It’s all right for some. She probably didn’t ’ave much trouble going through customs.
‘That’s where jewels have the advantage. There’s all sorts of places you can stick them so as other people won’t see - not unless they’re poking their nose into places where they shouldn’t be, if you know what I mean. Not like a painting, unless it’s a miniature of course.’
Monsieur Pamplemousse was beginning to feel a little out of his depth. A sudden thought struck him.
‘Monsieur Blanche is not the only one to have taken a photograph of the picture.’
The blue in Elsie’s eyes took on a metallic tint; momentarily more cobalt than azure. ‘Well, it’s nice innit.’ Helping herself to another tuile, she bent it almost double between her fingers and thumb. ‘I see what you mean. Still, the coffee’s all right. I always think there’s nothing worse than a bad cup of coffee at the end of a meal. Spoils the whole evening.’
Taking the hint, Monsieur Pamplemousse withdrew his notepad and took the opportunity to jot down a few notes.
‘So where did you get your know-how from?’ asked Elsie.
‘I have always been interested in food. I was lucky enough to have a mother who was a born cook. Then I spent some time attached to the Paris food fraud squad while I was with the Sûreté. It gave me an insight into what can be done if you are that way inclined. Putting margarine into croissants au beurre; using walnut juice to dye Moroccan white sand truffles black and then passing them off as the real thing; butchers fiddling their scales and selling short weight …’
Monsieur Pamplemousse broke off and looked across the table with some concern as Elsie started to choke. ‘Let me get you some water.’
‘While you were doing what?’ gasped Elsie.
‘Did Monsieur le Directeur not tell you? I was with the Paris Sûreté for many years. I joined them soon after I left school.’
‘You’re not still with them, are you?’ demanded Elsie. ‘I mean … like … attached as it were.’
Monsieur Pamplemousse shook his head. ‘After I resigned I severed all my connections.’ It was the short answer and the simplest.
Elsie looked relieved.
‘What made you do it? Resign, I mean.’
‘I had a little trouble with some girls at the Folies …’
‘You mean there was more than one?’
‘Fifteen,’ said Monsieur Pamplemousse.
‘Blimey!’ Elsie looked at him with renewed interest and something akin to respect. ‘I can’t wait to ’ear more.’
‘There is nothing much to hear,’ said Monsieur Pamplemousse. ‘It was literally a case of my being caught with my trousers down. Someone gave me a knock-out drop and left me locked in a cupboard above the chorus girls’ dressing room. When I came round my clothes had been stolen and there was a cine camera … with some exposed film … someone had bored a hole through the ceiling. It was what is known as a “put-up job”.’
‘Of course,’ said Elsie.
‘You do not have to believe me,’ said Monsieur Pamplemousse stiffly.
‘I believe you,’ said Elsie simply.
‘Merci. No one else did at the time, and I had little recourse but to resign. That is how Pommes Frites and I met - he had just been made redundant following a cut-back and they gave him to me as a farewell present.’
For years the ignominy had followed him around. ‘Doing a Pamplemousse’ had become a synonym in the force for scandalous behaviour. For a time he had even thought of changing his name. It was one of the reasons for his prevarication at the gendarmerie that morning; the certain knowledge that revealing his true identity would have given rise to nudges and winks and barely suppressed guffaws.
‘I thought you French were supposed to be broad-minded.’
‘It is true that we are perhaps less hypocritical about these things than some.’ Monsieur Pamplemousse avoided the phrase ‘two-faced’. ‘But there was another factor. One of the girls had been got at and was prepared, if necessary, to swear that certain acts of a bizarre nature had taken place. I wished to spare my wife that.’
‘Dear, oh dear,’ said Elsie. ‘Well, I never. I don’t know what Reginald will say when I tell him. It’s a bit “them and us” as far as ’e’s concerned.’
‘Is it necessary that he should know?’ asked Monsieur Pamplemousse.
‘I suppose not,’ said Elsie dubiously. ‘It’s just that Reginald’s a dab hand at getting things out of me and he gets upset if I don’t tell ’im everything.’
‘And he would consider me one of “them”?’
‘Once a copper – always a copper – that’s what Reginald says.’
Monsieur Pamplemousse refrained from replying that in his opinion the reverse was also true. Instead he called for the bill.
All the same, he had to admit there was a certain amount of truth in the saying. As they left the restaurant and began walking down the street towards the boulevard de la Plage where he had left his car, he found himself automatically looking around with a policeman’s eye, making a mental note of shop windows, the way people walked and dressed, vehicle registrations.
The white exterior of the Casino de la Plage came into view and he pointed to a car parked just inside the gates. It had a Hertz sign stuck to the windscreen.
‘We are not the only ones in Arcachon from the hotel. The Americans are also here.’
‘Ooh, can we go in too?’ Elsie slipped her arm into his and gave it a squeeze. ‘Please. I don’t know when I last ’ad a flutter.’
Monsieur Pamplemousse hesitated. Chiens would not be admitted. There was no doubt in his mind that he would incur further opprobrium from Pommes Frites if he consigned him to the car for the rest of the evening. His emergency biscuits were back at the hotel, and leaving the radio on would be no compensation. On the other hand … He wondered if Elsie had the ability to change the colour of her eyes at will. They were now the lightest of blue: a
s light as the touch of her thigh against his.
Avoiding Pommes Frites’ gaze, Monsieur Pamplemousse opened the car door and ushered him into the back seat.
The interior of the Casino was a duplicate of all casinos everywhere. He could have described it without going inside. The marble staircase, the thick carpet, the chandeliers, the staff who looked as though they spent their entire lives in evening dress.
Having registered, he waited while Elsie went through the formality of producing her passport. As soon as she had received an entrance card she disappeared into the toilette to put on her ‘war paint’. When she came out he noticed she was wearing a thin gold chain round her neck with a single diamond set in a horseshoe-shaped mounting. She also had on a pair of matching earrings.
Entering the gaming room was like taking a step back into the thirties. Dark corners were non-existent. Doubtless there were hidden television cameras monitoring their every movement – the ‘eye-in-the-sky.’ Video recorders would be in operation. He caught the familiar sound of the ivory ball against the spinning roulette wheel, punctuated every so often by the sharp riffling of cards. In the restaurant he’d been the only one with a tie and he’d felt out of place, now he was glad he had worn one. Less chic than Deauville – where the Director was probably ensconced at that very moment and where jackets and ties would be de rigueur – it was still a place where people dressed as for an occasion.
As he escorted Elsie towards the bar Monsieur Pamplemousse glanced around the room. Most of the tables were already crowded. There were several small groups of Japanese men present, their faces as expressionless as those belonging to the card dealers themselves. He wondered where they went to in the day-time – he couldn’t remember seeing any parties of Japanese when he and Elsie had driven through Arcachon the day before.