by Michael Bond
As it happened, he needn’t have worried, for Pommes Frites wasn’t very far away. His mission completed, he was lying just inside the hotel stable with his nose to the ground watching some ants scurrying to and fro, their pace almost twice its normal rate as they sought urgent shelter.
After a lot of thought, he had reached the conclusion that not only was biggest not necessarily always best, but that he’d had quite enough of being dressed up for one day. Just outside the village he’d met a man with a gun. Fortunately shock had affected the other’s aim, but it had been a nasty moment. It was also extremely hot inside the skin and he couldn’t wait to be rid of it.
All that apart, Pommes Frites had another matter on his mind. Soon after his encounter with the farmer he’d stopped to relieve himself in a most unregal manner through a convenient hole in the skin, and while passing the time by sniffing the ground under the tree of his choice he’d come across a scent which he knew only too well and which meant only one thing – trouble. The trail had led him back to the hotel and there it had petered out, largely because of the difficulty he was experiencing through having a wad of stuffing between the end of his nose and the ground.
For the time being he had decided to stay put, give trail-following a rest, watch points, and await developments.
Some ten thousand metres above Pommes Frites’ olfactory organ, in an area where the temperature was well below zero, the newly elevated air mass had started to cool rapidly and condense, while coincidentally, a mere five or six metres below him, Monsieur Pamplemousse, having adjusted to an ambient cellar temperature of 13°C, stood contemplating the contents of a small hessian bag.
As if savouring the bouquet of an old and classic wine, he passed it gently to and fro beneath the end of his nose. It was a cocktail of smells. He could detect thyme, rosemary, mint, verbena… a hint of lime, but over all there was a scent which was at once strong, heady, aromatic, woody, elusive. It was like hearing a piece of music which had a dominant theme one couldn’t quite place. He loosened a drawstring at the top of the bag, rubbed the contents between forefinger and thumb, then sniffed again. The over-riding smell was now even more pronounced. It seemed to come from some pieces of darkish brown bark, dry and curly like old pencil shavings.
‘How long have you had this?’
‘It’s been there ever since Grandpa’s day. He used to bring it back from Africa. Mama said he had an arrangement with one of the tribes, but I think they’re extinct now.’
Monsieur Pamplemousse couldn’t help but wonder if they had worn themselves out. There were worse ways of becoming extinct. Pommes Frites could vouch for that. He must have drunk well that first night. No wonder he’d been in a bad way.
‘And it hasn’t been used all that time?’
‘No, it’s been lying there wrapped in tinfoil and sealed with wax. Grandpa didn’t come back from one of his expeditions. They say he was eaten by a crocodile. Grand-mère died a little later of a broken heart and after that things were never quite the same. Mama closed the restaurant for a while and by the time she eventually re-opened tisane had gone out of fashion. It’s only recently become popular again. It seemed a pity to waste it and in Grand-mère’s time it was very much in demand.’
‘I bet it was!’ thought Monsieur Pamplemousse. Perhaps the news had spread as far as Paris and that was why the Founder, Monsieur Hippolyte Duval, had journeyed so far on his bicycle. Perhaps, like Bernard, he’d been an innocent victim of his thirst. In his diary he’d mentioned the lapin being over-salty.
‘We … you must have it analysed.’
‘Analysed? Why?’ The Director’s aunt looked genuinely surprised. ‘There’s nothing wrong with it is there? Besides, there’s hardly any left. Only a couple of bags.’
‘All the more reason.’ He looked round the cellar, wondering what his next move should be. Tell the Director? Keep it a secret? Try and find an analyst first? One of his old colleagues in the Sûreté should be able to help, or at least give him an introduction to the right person. Instinctively he knew he was holding in his hands part of the fortune Tante Louise’s Grand-mère had spoken about so often and yet so vaguely. Perhaps in the end she’d wanted the secret to die with her. Perhaps her joy of life had died with her husband. Somehow, he felt the tisane had always been used to give pleasure rather than for any financial gain.
‘It’s a mess.’ Tante Louise misunderstood the look on his face. ‘I keep telling myself to get down here and sort it all out but somehow there’s never time. I wouldn’t really know where to start. I leave it all to Armand.’
He could see what she meant. In their time the racks lining the walls must have held several tens of thousands of bottles, all in neat and orderly rows, numbered and labelled, entered in a book. Now they were in a state of disarray, covered in cobwebs, old wine mixed with new. He put the bag of tisane back on a shelf with the other one and took out a few bottles of wine at random. 1950s were mixed with 60s and 70s. Dotted here and there were some older vintages. No wonder one took pot luck in the restaurant. He came across a dust-covered Château Latour ’28; its label still intact. Despite being near the river the cellar must be good and dry. He gazed at it reverentially. It was probably still at its peak – the ’28s had needed all that time to come round. Further along he came across a single bottle of Mouton ’29 sandwiched in amongst some bottles of Beaujolais. Someone was still doing the buying, but what a waste to put them away without rhyme or reason. He shuddered to think of all the delights that must have been drunk unregarded and unlauded.
‘Would you care to see Grandpa’s original cellar?’ Tante Louise pointed to a door at the far end, barely visible in the light from an unshaded, but blackened bulb. ‘That’s where he kept what he always called his vins du meilleur.’ She reached up to a crevice high in one of the walls and took out a large iron key. As the door swung open Monsieur Pamplemousse caught his breath. For a brief moment he felt something approaching the awe those who first entered the tombs of the ancient Egyptians must have experienced: awe, coupled with an enormous sense of privilege.
There were precedents, of course. From time to time old cellars were discovered; collections of wine came to light. There was the Dr. Barolet sale of Burgundies in the late sixties. That had really been the start of the high-powdered auctions which were now commonplace. Then there were the great English collections; ancient families who’d come to realise they owned more wine than they would ever drink in their lifetime. But this was something different and personal. Never in his wildest dreams had he pictured it happening to him. With the utmost care he lifted a bottle from its rack; an 1870 Lafite – possibly the greatest vintage before Phylloxera took its toll.
The first flash of lightning entered the cellar through a glass porthole let into a wall of the outer room. It went unheeded by Monsieur Pamplemousse as he held the bottle up for inspection. Full of tannin, the wine would have taken fifty years or more to become drinkable. It was the product of a more leisurely age. Such an investment in time and patience would be unthinkable nowadays, preoccupied as growers were with stainless steel vats, quality control, and quick returns on money invested.
An explosive crack like rapidly falling masonry sounded overhead as the violent expansion of hot air caused by the lightning manifested itself in a shock wave.
Feeling Tante Louise’s hand on his arm he put the bottle gently and carefully back in its place. To drop it would be an unthinkable crime. ‘Don’t worry. We shall be safe down here.’
To his surprise she reached across in front of him and turned out the light, then pulled the door half shut. ‘Ssh! Listen.’
Straining his ears he caught a faint sound from the other end of the cellar. Someone was trying the door at the bottom of the steps leading from the garden; the same steps down which he’d fled the day before. After a brief pause there was another rattle, louder this time, then a thump as whoever was on the other side put their full weight against it, producing a splintering
sound.
‘Who can it be? I got Justine to nail it up last night. The lock was broken.’
Monsieur Pamplemousse squeezed in front of her and peered through the gap into the outer cellar. As the door gave way a second flash of lightning, even more vivid in the darkness than the first, momentarily silhouetted a figure in the opening. The face was in shadow, but the outline was all too familiar; indelibly imprinted on his mind ever since he’d encountered it the night he’d arrived. There was the same shopping bag, but this time with a baguette sticking out of the top.
Another roll of thunder and with it the sound of rain, sudden and almost tropical in its intensity, muffled the exclamation of surprise from beside him. He gave Tante Louise’s arm a warning squeeze and drew her back with him, freezing her into silence a fraction of a second before the light in the other room came on. But he needn’t have worried – the intruder had other things on her mind. Going straight to the shelf where he’d left the tisane, she took the two containers from the shelf and slipped them into her bag. Whoever it was, she must have reached the same inevitable conclusion as he had.
It was all over in a matter of seconds. The next instant there was a rustle of skirts, the light went out and there was a creak from the outer door as it swung shut again.
‘But …’
‘Wait here.’ Monsieur Pamplemousse let go of Tante Louise’s arm, switched on the light, and hurried towards the outer door. Halfway along the cellar there was another flash of lightning. The crash of thunder which followed was almost instantaneous, but in the short space of time between the two he heard a familiar and welcome bark from somewhere outside. Pommes Frites was on hand and doing his stuff. Taking the steps two at a time he emerged into the garden and then paused as he absorbed the strange picture that presented itself.
On a bright sunny day Pommes Frites would have presented a fearsome sight; in the middle of the storm he looked positively awesome. The first clap of thunder had nearly made him jump out of his own skin — the second had caused him to split the outer lion’s skin in several places, leaving it as tattered as his nerves. With the rain-sodden mane half off his head, pieces of bedraggled fur hanging in shreds and not one, but two tails, he looked like some strange creature created by a latter-day Frankenstein.
Brandishing the baguette in one hand in an effort to keep Pommes Frites at bay, feeling in her bag as she went, his quarry backed towards the Sanisette.
Almost at the same moment as she reached it things began to happen in the sky immediately overhead. Negatively charged super-cooled ice crystals and positively charged water droplets, falling at different speeds, were building up a vast potential difference; a difference which in turn produced a gigantic discharge of electricity between sky and ground, heating the air in its path to a temperature five times greater than that on the surface of the sun.
The initial strike path of the flash led straight to the Sanisette, justifying as it landed on its target the designer’s foresight in providing an earth return for the protection of anyone unfortunate enough to be taken short in the middle of just such a storm. At the very last moment part of the jagged flash seemed to change its mind and break away in order to complete its journey by another route. A route which took it via the figure trying desperately to unlock the door.
Observers from windows overlooking the square said afterwards, and Monsieur Pamplemousse had no reason to disagree with them, that the baguette seemed to glow momentarily before the body was thrown violently to the ground.
Oblivious to the intensity of the rain and hail he hurried towards it, but even as he did so he knew it was a futile gesture; a reflex action born out of a hopeless inability to think of anything else to do. The body lay forlorn and twisted where it had landed. Beside it the charred shopping bag had burst, its contents disintegrating rapidly in the torrent of water which flowed in all directions.
Reaching down Monsieur Pamplemousse turned the figure gingerly towards him, wondering as he did so if he, too, might receive a shock by the very act of touching it.
The right hand was holding a bunch of keys, the left was clutching the remains of what had once been a brass periscope to which pieces of bread from a hollowed-out baguette still clung.
The body in its long black dress looked like that of an old woman, but the face was that of Armand.
‘Why on earth didn’t you tell me?’
‘About Armand? You didn’t ask.’
Monsieur Pamplemousse gazed at Tante Louise. She was right, of course. Undeniably right. He hadn’t asked and he should have done. When someone registers at an hotel you can’t really expect the owner to say, ‘Yes, of course you may stay, but I have to tell you that the man who does the odd jobs is a little strange – especially when there is a full moon. He has a habit of dressing up in women’s clothes, but it has always been that way and as everyone in the village knows, we don’t talk about it any more.’ On the other hand it would have helped. He certainly wouldn’t have taken all those photographs of the boulanger if he’d known.
‘He kept himself to himself. As far as I know he never did anyone any harm. He was a very simple person.’
Instinctively Monsieur Pamplemousse found himself running his hand over the back of his head. Hitting someone with a brass periscope disguised as a baguette didn’t sound like the action of a simple person. He could still feel the bump.
‘I still do not understand how he could have behaved like that.’ Tante Louise sounded betrayed, as well she might.
Monsieur Pamplemousse shrugged. All his years in the Sûreté had done little to further his understanding of what made some people behave the way they did; rather the reverse. In his experience a person with a lot at stake and protecting his territory was capable of anything. Desperate situations begat desperate actions. Betrayal of the one person who had befriended him would have been of small concern to Armand.
‘There is no such thing as a simple person. In Armand’s case who knows what went on in his mind while he was working away at his bench. No doubt his old mother kept him here because she thought he would be safe from temptation, but being without temptation doesn’t necessarily cure the disease – in some cases it makes it fester and grow.
‘I suspect you will find that the visitors you had from Paris that time – the ones who made you an “offer” – didn’t go away totally empty handed. They didn’t sound the sort who would. They would have tried a different tack. Armand would have come to their notice through a local contact, perhaps even from some establishment in Paris he’d written to over the years who’d kept his name “on file”. Your visitors probably made him an offer too – but one he couldn’t refuse.’
‘What sort of an offer?’ Tante Louise looked confused. ‘He never wanted for anything.’
Monsieur Pamplemousse shrugged again. The preliminary medical report had confirmed his suspicions. Armand had been deeply into drugs; probably brought on initially by the kind of twilight life he’d been forced to lead, and the people he’d associated with in consequence. No doubt in the beginning Tante Louise’s visitors had asked for nothing more than a day to day report on the comings and goings at the hotel – who had eaten what and the effect it had had on them. Hardly an onerous task in return for a regular supply of what had probably become almost a necessity in Armand’s life. It was easy to picture the attraction such an offer would have had for him. No doubt they even provided plans of the Sanisette.
It was when his masters became impatient at the lack of progress that the trouble would have started; the cutting off of supplies would have triggered off a series of desperate measures of which breaking into the pharmacie would have been but one. There was no doubt in his mind that Armand had been responsible.
His own arrival on the scene could only have added to Armand’s feeling of panic, but he decided not to say anything about that to Tante Louise for the moment for fear of further questioning.
‘It is best forgotten about. Anyway, there are
more important things. There is the future to think of.’ As he spoke he allowed his gaze to wander round the office. It was the first time he had been in there. On top of a bureau in one corner he noticed yet another picture of Tante Louise’s grandfather, taken when he was much younger, the game more modest. He was standing outside the hotel holding aloft a brace of pheasants. Alongside him was a well-built, fair-haired girl, wearing a beautifully serene and yet slightly provocative smile. She looked full of the joy of life, like a ripe peach, lusty and full of juice.
‘That was Grand-mère. It was taken soon after they got married. She was on the stage in Paris – a dancer in a cabaret, but she gave it all up to come and live here.’
Lucky grand-père! There would have been great celebrations when he arrived back from the big city with his capture. They must have had many friends visiting them in those days; even more when rumours of the tisane began to spread.
Standing nearby was another, more recent photograph. Black and white instead of sepia. The subject looked very familiar. It was the eyes more than anything. The eyes and the hands.
‘That’s Jean. He owns the boulangerie opposite.’ Tante Louise blushed as she caught his look. ‘It was taken before he grew his beard.’
‘If you ask me,’ said Monsieur Pamplemousse, ‘that is someone else who also behaves strangely. There was a time when I suspected him of being up to no good.’
‘Jean? He wouldn’t hurt a fly. His only problem is jealousy. He is always on at me to marry him and when I say “no” he gets very gloomy. The quality of his bread goes down. You won’t believe this but once, when someone was staying here and he suspected their motives, he let down all their tyres. There was a terrible scene.’
Monsieur Pamplemousse tried his best to look surprised. ‘Why don’t you marry him? It would seem an ideal arrangement and it would make life easier for your guests. It might also improve the cooking. Cooking for love is a sure recipe for success.’