by Michael Bond
‘In that case, perhaps you will join me in a toast?’ Monsieur Pamplemousse went into the bathroom and returned a moment later with a second glass into which he poured the remains of his wine. It was young and crystal clear and he allowed the bottle to drain.
‘You know what they call that final drip? The larme– the teardrop.’
‘You French always have a word for it, right?’
‘Oui, c’est ça.’ He handed over the glass.
‘Your good health, Aristide.’
‘A votre santé.’
Monsieur Pamplemousse sipped a little of the wine, then picked up the jar again. He gazed reflectively at the contents for a moment or two. Then, placing it to his lips, he threw his head back, uttering a sigh of contentment at the thought of the unique pleasure to come.
Conscious that his every movement was being watched, he closed his eyes and allowed the contents of the jar to rest in his mouth for a while, prolonging the experience before slowly beginning to chew, savouring each and every morsel until the very last had disappeared.
‘I guess that was something else again, right?’
Monsieur Pamplemousse opened his eyes and was about to reply when a sudden change came over him. The ecstatic expression on his face changed into a look of agony. His breathing became short gasps. The jar slipped unheeded from his hand as he clutched at his throat. Choking, he turned and clutched desperately at the bedclothes, pulling them with him as he fell to the floor. The convulsions lasted at the most a matter of five or six seconds before he gave one final shudder and then lay still, tongue protruding, eyes wide-open and staring.
The long silence which followed was eventually broken by the faint click of the door being closed.
The sound of footsteps disappearing down the corridor had hardly died away when he heard the rattle of a key in the lock and a moment later felt a faint draught of cool air on his face as the door was opened.
Monsieur Pamplemousse waited a moment or two, then opened one eye tentatively, but he was too late – his second visitor had vanished without uttering a word.
It was several minutes later that the phone rang. He recognised the desk clerk’s voice.
‘Monsieur …’
‘Oui?’
The man sounded taken aback. ‘Monsieur is all right?’
‘Oui.’
‘We received a telephone call a moment ago saying that you had been taken ill.’
‘As you can hear I am perfectly well.’
‘Monsieur has no need of an ambulance?’
‘No need whatsoever,’ said Monsieur Pamplemousse. ‘It must have been a hoax. But thank you for calling.’
He replaced the receiver. A hoax? Or someone with a guilty conscience at having left him to his fate. Harvey, or his second visitor?
Mathematically, the permutations were limited, but emotionally … emotionally, he needed time to think.
8
THE BALLOON GOES UP
There was bright yellow gorse everywhere and fields carpeted with buttercups, exactly as he had promised there would be when they were driving down from Paris. It was another cloudless day and the sun sparkled from a myriad tiny mountain streams. Every so often they rounded a corner and a totally new landscape came into view. Here and there he spotted the remains of a broken-down shepherd’s hut on a distant hillside, but the higher they went the fewer were the signs of civilisation.
After being cooped up in the hotel room for hours on end, the freedom of driving along deserted country roads exceeded all Monsieur Pamplemousse’s expectations. He found himself changing gear just for the fun of it.
Slowing down as they reached a piece of straight road, he opened the car window and took a deep breath.
‘You promised to tell me all about perfume one day. Speaking as an expert on the subject, don’t you think that is the most satisfactory, the most rewarding scent of all?’
‘I wouldn’t argue. It’s also the most difficult to capture and the most expensive, believe you me. You know what they say – you pay through the nose for perfume. Do you realise it takes a ton of rosebuds to make one kilo of essence? That’s a lot of rosebuds.’
‘For us at this moment,’ said Monsieur Pamplemousse, ‘the smell is as free as the air. With all due respect to your last profession, one of the best laws ever passed in France was that which forbade the picking of wild flowers. Left to humanity the countryside would be stripped bare and turned into one enormous car park.’
‘I wouldn’t argue with that either.’
Anxious not to be left out of things, Pommes Frites stood up on the back seat of the deux chevaux and stuck his head out through the opening in the roof, surveying the countryside with a proprietorial air. He, too, gave an appreciative sniff.
‘I still can’t believe we’re here,’ said Mrs Van Dorman. ‘When I saw you stretched out on my bedroom floor yesterday I’m afraid I panicked. I just ran.’
‘You weren’t the only one,’ said Monsieur Pamplemousse. ‘Harvey Wentworth was convinced he’d poisoned me.’
‘You’re sure you’re all right to drive?’ Mrs Van Dorman seemed nervous and ill at ease. She glanced down at Monsieur Pamplemousse’s wrists. They still showed red marks from the handcuffs.
‘The exercise will do them good.’
All the same, a few minutes later he stopped the car and they got out for a moment to stretch their legs. The only sound came from a stream bubbling its way over some nearby rocks. He wished he’d thought to bring a bottle of champagne. They could have sat and talked while it chilled. Even in early June there was still unmelted snow to be seen on the distant peaks. The water flowing down the mountainside would be ice-cold.
‘I shall miss all this,’ said Mrs Van Dorman. ‘Life will seem very quiet on Fifth Avenue.’
‘Paris will seem quiet too,’ said Monsieur Pamplemousse. ‘It always does. Life in the country is really much busier.’
‘What things do you miss most?’
‘Partly the wildness and the neglect, the crumbling buildings; many of the things which, when I was young, were my reasons for leaving. But France is a big country and each part of it has its own special character and influences. To the south, there is the Italian influence. To the west, that of Spain. To the east, Germany. If I had been brought up in the south I would miss the colour of the roof tiles, or turning a corner and seeing a sun-bleached advertisement for Dubonnet painted on a wall.’
He was glad she had said ‘things’. If the question had been more specific, he might have been tempted to give a more direct answer.
‘I shall miss the Hôtel Thermale Splendide with its bathtubs,’ said Mrs Van Dorman. ‘Tomorrow it’s back to central heating, air-conditioned apartments, and hotels with sanitised toilet seats.’
‘… and Monsieur Van Dorman.’
She shook her head, then hesitated for a moment as though weighing up the pros and cons of what to say next. ‘There is no Monsieur Van Dorman. There never has been.’
‘No Monsieur Van Dorman? Never? How can that be?’
‘I guess in the beginning he was a kind of insurance policy; a protection in what was a man’s world. I still bring him out from time to time and dust him down. In a funny kind of way he’s become part of my life. He’s been around so long now I take him for granted. We even have rows sometimes when I want to let off steam. It’s like the real thing, but without the hassles.’
And also, thought Monsieur Pamplemousse, without the feeling of having someone else to snuggle up to on a cold winter’s night. Perhaps it was part of the price you paid for the benefits of central heating.
‘Why did you not tell me before?’
‘Would it have made any difference?’
Monsieur Pamplemousse considered the matter for a moment, then side-stepped the question. ‘It seems a terrible waste.’
She shrugged. ‘It’s like we said last night – the night before last – whenever – I’ve lost track of time; it’s a matter of priorities. Yo
u can’t have everything you want in life. In the beginning my priority had to do with making a career, not finding a husband. First it was perfume, now it’s the magazine business. It seemed a good idea to acquire a mythical husband and shelve the problem for the time being. The trouble is, it’s the kind of situation that can back-fire. After a certain point if you’re not married men wonder what’s wrong, and if they think you’re married but available, it attracts the wrong sort of person. Anyway, men get frightened by successful women. You can’t win.’
‘I was a little nervous of you at first,’ said Monsieur Pamplemousse, ‘but for other reasons. At first I thought you were a little formidable.’
‘More than a little by the look on your face driving down. And now?’
‘Now?’ Monsieur Pamplemousse went to the car and fetched his camera. ‘Now I see you in a different light.’
Crouching down in order to use a low-hanging branch from a tree as foreground interest and to give the picture depth, he framed Mrs Van Dorman sitting on a rock against a background of snow-capped mountains. Hoping she wouldn’t notice, he zoomed in for a closer shot and checked the focus. The sun acting as a key-light, picking out the highlights in her eyes. Looking away for a moment under the guise of checking the background, he pressed the shutter release.
‘Will you promise to send me a copy?’
‘Of course. Although, you may be disappointed. A photograph is the sum of many parts. A split second in time. Often it is the things which are not shown that matter most. The person you are with, where you have just been or where you are about to go.’
‘And where are we going?’
‘Now? Now I shall take you to a place called Thiers and there, over déjeuner, I will tell you everything you want to know. I refuse to talk on an empty stomach. Besides, it is an interesting little town – another side to the Auvergne, and another reason why I left. The people who hanker after the Midi forget the Mistral, just as I often forget that not so long ago, when Thiers supplied France with seventy per cent of its cutlery, the town was full of men who spent their working lives lying flat on their stomachs over the raging streams, their noses literally to the grindstone. They all had a dog lying on top of them. Why? To protect their kidneys from the intense cold. It could have been me; it could have been Pommes Frites.’
‘If I say I can’t wait,’ said Mrs Van Dorman, ‘it’s only because I know I’m going to have to.’
But in Thiers they struck lucky. Feeling saturated from a surfeit of cutlery following a tour of the town, they turned a corner into an alleyway and came across a tiny restaurant. Tucked away behind it they discovered an even smaller courtyard with just three tables set for lunch.
The sun was high overhead and they felt its warmth rising from the paving stones as they took their seats beneath a tree grown tall to escape the surrounding buildings.
Monsieur Pamplemousse ordered a picket of vin rosé and while they scanned the brief menu the patron brought them a plate of home-cured ham cut into thick slices. He returned a moment later with a basket of freshly baked bread, a bowl of butter and a stone jar filled with gherkins.
Monsieur Pamplemousse chose an omelette au fromage and Mrs Van Dorman a quiche. While they were waiting they shared a salade de tomates.
The omelette, when it came, was exactly as it should have been – baveuse in the middle. The quiche was filled with egg and ham. There was a plate of pommes frites, which they also shared.
For a while they ate in silence. Then Monsieur Pamplemousse, having wiped his plate clean with the remains of the bread, felt inside the secret compartment of his right trouser leg and removed a raisin.
‘You’re still a believer?’
‘Now more than ever, but for a very different reason. Yesterday, when I went to your bathroom to fetch another glass, I managed to substitute one for the olive. It got me out of a sticky situation.’
He leaned back in his chair to escape the sun, which had moved round while they had been eating. Recalling the moment, he couldn’t help thinking that Glandier would have been proud of him.
‘As for their efficacy as a cure for indigestion, I am not
sure. Who ever knows if a headache might not have gone
away of its own accord without the help of an aspirin?
Dumas had a penchant for making statements that were as
hard to disprove as they were to prove.’
‘Like the storks?’
‘Like the storks. He also stated categorically that coffee,
far from being the drug we now know it to be, actually
served as an antidote to many poisons. I doubt if Monsieur
Ellis would have benefited very greatly from the theory –
even if he’d had time to test it out.’
‘He certainly wasn’t calling for coffee when he died,’ said Mrs Van Dorman. ‘What do you think he did want?’
‘I asked myself the same question many times over,’ said Monsieur Pamplemousse, ‘and on each occasion I gave up because I came to a route barrée. In the end I telephoned an old friend of mine, a Monsieur Pickering. He is an Englishman who specialises in crossword puzzles. He has helped me several times in the past. They have very devious minds, the English; they adore riddles. He is also a Francophile and he came up with the answer almost straight away.
‘Everyone assumed Ellis had been talking French, whereas Monsieur Pickering’s theory is that it was probably a mixture of the two. What those who were present at the time thought he said was “Bâtard Montrachet” followed by “poisson”.
‘Pickering suggested that Ellis was already fighting for
breath through the effect of the poison and that what he
might actually have said was: “Bastard!” in English. Then,
lapsing into French, he called out “mon trachée” – meaning
“my windpipe”.
‘As Pickering rightly pointed out, Ellis unfortunately got his genders wrong. Had he said “ma trachée” it wouldn’t have mattered. As it was he said “mon”, and to any French people around “mon trachée”, coupled with the previous word “bastard” sounded like Bâtard Montrachet which, as I’m sure you know, is a white wine from Burgundy.
‘Then, when he started calling out “poison”, they naturally assumed he was saying “poisson” because he wanted some fish to accompany the wine.’
‘I don’t see what’s so natural about it,’ said Mrs Van Dorman.
‘You are in France,’ said Monsieur Pamplemousse mildly. ‘Whatever the situation, the thoughts of a Frenchman naturally turn to food. Par exemple, do you know the French term for grilling a suspect?’
Mrs Van Dorman shook her head.
‘It is called to cuisinade. Likewise, the slang for a police van is panier à salade. I could give you many more examples. I think Pickering is right. To a Frenchman, Ellis’s last words probably seemed a sensible request. One might quibble over his choice – that is a matter of personal taste – but one wouldn’t question the sentiment behind it. Besides, until someone has actually died, how is anyone to know they are uttering their last words? To judge from some lines you see quoted, those who speak them must have been polishing and honing them for a long time, and once they have given voice they feel they cannot say another word for fear of spoiling the effect. It is better to be remembered for a stirring phrase like “Not tonight, Josephine” than for something mundane, like “I think I am going to be sick”.’
Monsieur Pamplemousse closed his eyes. ‘You want to know what I think. The truth is, I don’t know, and perhaps no one ever will know the exact truth. Why did someone want to murder Ellis? Who knows? Lots of people probably felt like it. But feeling like it and actually doing it are two very different things.
‘My guess, for what it is worth, is that he was the victim of a trick; an elaborate charade which had been carefully planned in advance and which, once the wheels were set in motion, was hard to stop. Perhaps in planning it, the murderer became so inv
olved in the sheer mechanics of the whole thing he lost sight of the moral aspects. One could argue, and if it comes to court, no doubt a good lawyer will argue, that in the circumstances “death by misadventure” is the only possible verdict, but my belief is that someone virtually handed Ellis a kit of parts to do the job himself.
‘For a while I puzzled over how it could have been done. I pictured a trick glass having being made, one which would have enabled the murderer to conceal cyanide in the bottom, but other than traces of some hard deposit on the inside I could see nothing different about the one you gave me. Besides, having one specially made would have had its dangers, for if whoever did the job got to hear of Ellis’s death, as he quite likely would have done, the chances are he would call in the police.
‘Thinking about it, I decided it needn’t have been as complicated as I first imagined. All the tasting glasses came in the same shape, that is to say they taper towards the bottom. All it needed was a circle of plain glass cut slightly larger than the narrowest point. The poison could be placed in the bottom of the glass – it would require only a minute amount – according to my source less than that needed to cover a postage stamp. The bottom of the tasting glasses is like thick bottle glass, so once the circle was in place any crystals would be scarcely visible to the naked eye. The circular glass could be held in place with something like a sugar solution which, when it set, would be reasonably transparent and yet would dissolve as soon as warm water came into contact with it, thus releasing the glass and the poison.’
‘Ingenious.’ Mrs Van Dorman looked thoughtful. ‘So that’s why you wanted to know the temperature in the Parc des Sources?’
‘Exactement. It also answered another question which had been bothering me. Why a spa? It was the one place where one could guarantee the drinking water would be warm. The deeper the source the warmer it is. I tested my theory while you were out yesterday and it worked.
‘As I see it, the argument which took place in Annecy – the wager as to who would be first to plan a perfect murder – were all part of an elaborate and carefully worked out setup. Once the bait was laid the murderer would have taken Ellis on one side and casually fed him with the bones of the plot, perhaps asking him to treat it as a matter of confidence – which would have been about as much good as asking him to fly. He probably showed him the glass he had already prepared, and then left it lying around anticipating that Ellis wouldn’t be able to resist the temptation of swapping it for his own when he thought no one was watching. He judged well. Once they all arrived in Vichy Ellis couldn’t wait to unpack before he rushed round to the Parc des Sources in order to try it out.’