Monsieur Pamplemousse on Probation (11 page)

‘Sit down.’ Monsieur Pamplemousse pointed to the settee. ‘Let me get you a drink.’ He opened the refrigerator. ‘A cognac will get the circulation going. Or there is wine … champagne if you prefer …’

Leaving the girl to help herself, he went to the bathroom in search of a dressing gown. When he returned he found she had poured two glasses of cognac. Pommes Frites was sitting watching her. It was hard to tell what he was thinking.

‘I hope you don’t mind my coming here like this, but I couldn’t think of any other way.’ She glanced nervously towards the window.

Monsieur Pamplemousse made for the control panel. ‘Would you like me to lower the shutter?’

‘No, I think it is better not. I have been wanting to talk to you, but it isn’t easy. Especially in this place. There are eyes everywhere.’

‘You mean here – in the hotel …’

‘Everywhere.’

She reached inside the top of her dress and took
out a piece of folded paper. ‘Here … this will explain.’

Monsieur Pamplemousse took the note from her. It felt damp as though she had been perspiring, as well she might have been if she had come any distance through the snow.

As he unfolded the paper she began removing her boots. From the look of them she hadn’t come far.

He ran his eyes down the page. It was written on plain, unheaded notepaper and the hand was immediately familiar.

‘It isn’t from you?’ asked the girl.

Monsieur Pamplemousse shook his head while reading the words with growing consternation. It just wasn’t possible. And yet, there it was in black and white, or rather white and the particular shade of Royal Blue much favoured by Monsieur Leclercq, who was particular about such things and bought his stationary supplies from Il Papiro in Florence.

‘I thought not. I’ve seen your writing. It isn’t like that.’

‘When did it arrive?’

‘A few days ago. It came by special delivery. That’s how I got it. Normally it would have been … someone else would have opened it. I do not understand all that it says. About the other things I mean … I was hoping you could tell me.’

Monsieur Pamplemousse shook his head. ‘I am
as much in the dark as you are. It is all a complete surprise to me.’

‘But can you help me? Surely if it is the car and you are driving it you must know where it came from and who it is meant for.’

‘That is a natural supposition,’ said Monsieur Pamplemousse, ‘and it is true I know where it came from. It is also true I was supposed to leave it in Roanne for collection, but …’

‘In the car park near
le gare
?’

‘
Oui.
I was to leave the keys in the exhaust pipe.’ He raised his right hand and extended the fingers. ‘Unfortunately, it wasn’t designed with such things in mind …’

‘But that is no longer a problem. You have the car, and here am I …’

‘The problem,’ said Monsieur Pamplemousse slowly, ‘is that it is not my car and apart from this letter, I have … or had … no knowledge of who it is meant for. And … please forgive me, but I also have no means of knowing for certain that you are that person. I take it you are not carrying your
carte d’identité
?’

The girl shook her head. She looked close to tears. ‘Can’t you telephone? If only I could talk to someone.’

Monsieur Pamplemousse checked with his watch again. ‘It is late,’ he said gently. ‘There may be difficulties.’

Difficulties was putting it mildly. If the contents of the letter was anything to go by he could foresee all manner of possible complications. Monsieur Leclercq might not be best pleased if his wife answered the telephone for a start.

A thought struck him. ‘Perhaps if I were to take your photograph? Then tomorrow I could do the same with your
carte
d’identité
and we will take it from there.’

While he was talking Monsieur Pamplemousse went to the drawer where he had left
Le Guide’
s case and removed the digital camera from its compartment.

He hadn’t had occasion to use it before, but it was no time to be reading the manual and Trigaux in the Art Department had assured him that when it came down to taking pictures, light was rarely a problem.

‘All you need is a candle,’ he’d said. ‘Focus is automatic down to half a metre. Apart from puking on the lens, a babe in arms couldn’t go wrong.’ Now was the time to put his words to the test. In any case the girl had already removed her leather jacket and was standing in the middle of the room waiting for him.

Monsieur Pamplemousse took up a position opposite her with his back to the window. He pressed the start button and a green light came on. Then he framed a
picture in the viewfinder and moved in closer with the intention of taking a head and shoulders close-up. While doing so he became aware of a change in her expression as she put a hand to her mouth and stared wide-eyed in his direction.

‘My dear girl. What is wrong? You are trembling like a leaf.’ Holding the camera with his left hand, Monsieur Pamplemousse reached for her glass. ‘Here, take some more cognac.’

As he held the glass to her lips there was a sudden flash of light. That was all they needed – one of the freak thunderstorms for which the region was renowned. Even so, he was ill-prepared for her reaction.

Her eyes, already wide open, grew wider still. She gave a terrified scream and as her legs gave way, collapsed into his arms.

As though blaming the forces of nature for his master’s predicament Pommes Frites ran to the window and began to bark.

Monsieur Pamplemousse, conscious that his world, which only a few minutes before had been one of untroubled peace and tranquillity, was now in a dangerous state of collapse, let go of the camera and dragged the girl in the direction of the sofa, trying to recall as he did so all that he had learnt on his recent course. He particularly remembered the part where they’d had to administer the kiss of life
to one of the locals who worked in the orderly office.

To give the girl her due she had given the class full value for their money. It was the one part of the course they had all enjoyed. One or two of the brighter sparks had made a complete hash of it the first time round, and were forced to go through it all over again, some not once, but several times. If there was any justice in the world there was no reason why she shouldn’t live to a ripe old age.

As he made to put theory into practice another flash of lightning lit the room.

‘
Silence! Asseyez-vous!
’ Pommes Frites’ barking was enough to waken the dead, let alone the other guests in the hotel. Any moment now someone would be banging on his door.

The possibility spurred Monsieur Pamplemousse on to even greater efforts. There was not a moment to be lost. Ignoring the fact that his dressing gown was rapidly becoming disengaged from the rest of him, oblivious to the renewed flashes of lightning, he gathered the girl in his arms and began work in earnest.

It was as he drew breath before embarking on his fifth – or was it his sixth? – puff of life-giving oxygen, that he became aware of something very strange.

He could feel a vibration coming from the girl. Had he been trying to describe it in a court of law he
would have been hard put to find words that would have met with universal approval. Its epicentre appeared to be in her nether regions; that part of her which nice girls were enjoined by their mothers to keep a closely guarded secret until such time as it was right and proper in the eyes of the church to reveal them to a stranger.

Steeling himself to the task in hand, closing his eyes in case she woke while he was in the middle of his investigations, ignoring the renewed flashes of lightning, the frequency of which suggested the storm must be reaching its peak, Monsieur Pamplemousse lifted the girl’s dress and embarked on a point to point body search, the thoroughness of which would undoubtedly have stood him in good stead had he been conducting it in Boulogne.

Watching events unfold from his position near the window, Pommes Frites so far forgot himself as to emit a loud howl on his master’s behalf.

It was a mixture of commiseration and resignation, overlaid with more than a hint of
déjà vu
. Then, unable to contain himself a moment longer, he hurried across the room to offer his services. Pommes Frites was not the sort of dog ever to desert his master in his hour of need.

Monsieur Pamplemousse stayed where he was long after the girl had gone on her way. Sleep was out of the question. His mind was racing in a dozen different directions all at once.

Pommes Frites clearly felt the same way. Having seen her safely back to the front of the hotel, he spent the first few minutes pacing to and fro, breaking off every now and then to peer out of the window as though looking for something, or someone. Perhaps he was hoping she would return.

In the end, to put him out of his misery and because, although he wouldn’t have admitted the fact to anyone else, he was beginning to feel slightly vulnerable himself, Monsieur Pamplemousse reached for the control button and closed the shutter. As he did so his eyes fell on the pager. It was lying on the
sofa where he had left it; a black, plastic object no bigger than a match box, barely 3cm x 2.2cm and perhaps another centimetre thick.

What was the world coming to? Nuns with infrared cameras. Hotel staff with noiseless electronic pagers. Mobile phones were bad enough, but to be constantly at someone’s beck and call simply by virtue of being at the receiving end of a vibrator activated by some distant person pressing a button must be purgatory at times. At least with a mobile phone it was possible to respond verbally if need be, or even hang up, or pretend you were stuck in a tunnel. It was no wonder most of the waiters were in a constant state of nervous tension. It also accounted for Shinko’s habit of suddenly taking flight for no apparent reason. At certain times of the day, when guests were arriving or departing, she must be in a constant state of flux.

The case still felt warm to the touch and the smell of Jasmine was ever present. For some reason it must have remained jammed in the on position. Cupping it in his hand he could feel a not unpleasant tickling sensation. Perhaps it had overheated. It would be hardly surprising considering where he’d found it. He gave the device a smart tap on the side of the table and it stopped immediately.

He’d eventually located it taped to Claude’s body just inside the top of her
culottes
; or rather, to be
pedantic, where the top of her culottes would have been had she been wearing any, which patently she wasn’t.

To give her the benefit of the doubt she had probably removed them because of the heat of the kitchen, but it was yet another reason, if one were needed, why he felt she should stick to catering as a career. Such dedication deserved to be rewarded and she was definitely not cut out for life in a nunnery.

For no good reason other than the association of ideas, he recalled Doucette once telling him that the pupils at her Catholic girls’ school had been made to keep their shoes so highly polished the Mother Superior had been able to check for such things simply by giving them the once over during morning prayers; or so rumour had it at the time.

Pommes Frites joined him, and having sniffed the device with interest, conveyed his findings to that part of his brain which dealt with technical matters, analysed the result, and on receiving the required information gave his master some conspiratorial, not to say worried, looks.

Monsieur Pamplemousse wondered what the range of the pager would be. Once again, it accounted for the girl’s strange behaviour at the school prize-giving, but had it been triggered by someone at the hotel or by someone nearer at hand?

As for the Director’s letter – and despite the fact
that it was unsigned and the writer had fallen over backwards to avoid betraying his identity, Monsieur Pamplemousse hadn’t the slightest doubt in his mind about the authorship – it did put an entirely different complexion on things.

He wished now he hadn’t given it back to Claude before she left, but equally he could hardly have kept it. That she was the rightful recipient of the Twingo seemed clear beyond any shadow of doubt; she had been too genuinely wrought-up for it to be anything other than the truth.

Certain phrases in the letter kept coming back to him. ‘… Now that you have successfully attained your
baccalauréat
and have reached an age when, by law, you are able to drive a car, I feel it is only right and proper that your industry should receive its just reward. It will also, I trust, be of assistance to you when you go on to university, wherever that may be …’ Hardly the letter of a doting father, but then again, it was typical of the Director not to use one word when he could get away with ten.

And as far as he knew, Claude
hadn’t
taken her
baccalauréat
. Mlle Pichot would surely have told him if she had. The implication had been that she had left school at the earliest opportunity. Certainly there had been no talk of her going on to university. Unless, of course, the job at Dulac was only a temporary fill-in. And hadn’t the girl herself
spoken of things she didn’t understand? The more questions that came to mind the more confused he became.

Those things apart, it all slotted into place. Hadn’t Monsieur Leclercq spoken nostalgically of his trip to the Auvergne all those years ago … his first job after he joined
Le Guide
. That would have been at the start of the eighties, which would fit.

It was extraordinary to think that he had managed to keep the matter a closely guarded secret all these years. And in this day and age! But then, in many ways Monsieur Leclercq had an old-fashioned streak to his make-up.

The rest of the letter had been mostly taken up with detailed instructions about where and when to pick up the car in Roanne, all of which Monsieur Pamplemousse knew only too well.

A sudden thought crossed his mind. Before Claude left, and while she was still recovering in an armchair he’d taken a quick shot of her with the digital camera. It would be interesting to see how it had turned out.

Switching on the hotel photocopier, he found the appropriate connecting lead, plugged it into the back of his computer and waited while it was installed. As soon as that had been completed it took only a few moments to unload the image from the camera on to the word processor and once that
had been done he found the ‘print’ symbol with the mouse and pressed the left-hand key. There was a brief pause, then a sheet of paper with a black and white picture began to emerge.

Trigaux was right, it really was child’s play. The magic of it all never ceased to amaze him. Scarcely a week went by without some new development appearing in the shops. It was hard to keep pace with it all.

He might have another go in the morning and try for a colour copy, but for the moment black and white would be sufficient for his purpose.

Removing the printout from the machine he held it up to the light and gazed at it long and hard for a while. Then he rummaged inside his case until he found a black felt-tipped pen. A couple of deft strokes on the upper lip, one either side of the nose, did the trick. Placing one hand just below the hairline emphasised it still further. The resemblance to the Director was uncanny. It was a clear case of ‘like father, like daughter’.

Monsieur Pamplemousse heaved a sigh of relief. He was beginning to wonder if he had done the right thing in giving the girl Monsieur Leclercq’s personal fax number. It had been a spur-of-the-moment decision, but after all, it was ex-directory and there was nothing to connect it with
Le Guide
, or with the Director himself come to that.

All the same, he wouldn’t be best pleased if by some mischance a message by someone purporting to be his long-lost daughter got into the wrong hands.

Making a mental note to contact him as soon as it was practicable, but still slightly at a loss as to what to say, and equally unsure as to whether he should risk telephoning him at home or wait until he reached the office, Monsieur Pamplemousse finally retired to bed.

Perhaps there would be no need to say anything. Perhaps … although he couldn’t see any possible way round it for the moment … perhaps in the meantime Monsieur Leclercq himself would have thought up a scheme that would let him off the hook. Time alone would tell.

Monsieur Pamplemousse closed his eyes. Such decisions could wait until the morning. He was a great believer in allowing the subconscious to work things out for him while he slept.

His last waking thought had to do with the man in the restaurant; the one who’d had his back to him. Often the back view of people was more easily recognisable than the front, and he remembered now where he had seen him before. Despite the fact that he was wearing totally different clothes – dressed for the occasion, in fact – it was the same man he had seen trudging up the hill through the snow the day he had arrived at the hotel.

He was woken by the sound of a telephone bell; loud, shrill and insistent. Or rather, what he thought was a telephone bell, but in reality must have been part of a dream, for when he opened his eyes, although there was a red light on the bedside telephone indicating there was a message on the voicemail, all was quiet.

Switching on the reading lamp he reached for his watch. It showed a few minutes past two o’clock; a non-time if ever there was. That was one thing against shutters. It was hard to tell the difference between night and day.

Pommes Frites had no such problems. Opening one bloodshot eye, he checked to make sure all was well, then went straight back to sleep again.

Monsieur Pamplemousse reached across the bed, picked up the receiver and pressed the appropriate button. Shinko’s voice came on the line.

‘The message from “below stairs” is: “
They
should look in the cemetery.” Whoever
they
are.
Dormez bien.
’

She was a past mistress at cryptic messages. As for
dormez bien
… He was now so wide awake sleep of any kind was out of the question.

Another thought struck him. Who could possibly have called Claude on her pager while she was in his room? From the way she was dressed she hadn’t been on duty. And something fairly major must
have put her into a state of shock, causing her to faint clean away. She didn’t look the sort of girl who would normally be prone to such things; rather the reverse.

It was a strange twist of fate that she should be working for Dulac. That had to be something else the Director wouldn’t have bargained for.

Monsieur Pamplemousse found himself wondering if he even knew she lived in the village. Claude had to be over eighteen if she was old enough to drive a car. Eighteen years was a long time and Monsieur Leclercq must have written many times over the years. And if he didn’t know, then how had he communicated in the past? Through a third party? Perhaps via the
poste restante
? That could be it;
poste restante
, to be collected from the PTT in Roanne. There had to be a reason why the Director had suggested a rendezvous in Roanne. He wished now he had seen the envelope, or asked a few more questions. It was also typical of Monsieur Leclercq that he should assume a girl of that age would be able to drive.

Monsieur Pamplemousse set the alarm for 07.30 and turned out the light. These things could wait until morning.

But it was one of those fatal ‘I’ll just think about one more thing before I go to sleep’ nights, when one problem leads inevitably to another, so that by
the time he did eventually nod off it seemed only a matter of minutes before he was woken again, this time to a fanfare heralding the early morning high-speed news broadcast.

Breakfast, when it arrived, was every bit as good as the first morning’s; or it promised to be, and doubtless would have been had he been allowed to make a start on it. As it was, he barely had time to reach for the butter in order to embark on his first
croissant
of the day when the telephone rang.

‘Pamplemousse, for the second time in as many weeks I have hardly slept a wink all night.’

Monsieur Pamplemousse resisted the temptation to say ‘that makes two of us’. The Director might ask why, and he wouldn’t know where to begin. ‘My own night has not been entirely without incident,
Monsieur,
’ he said simply.

It was like water off a duck’s back.

‘Words fail me …’

Monsieur Pamplemousse’s heart sank. Whenever the Director used that phrase it usually meant quite the opposite. Preparing himself for the worst, he wasn’t disappointed.

‘Something strange has happened, Aristide. I have received some very peculiar communications via my personal fax machine. Fortunately, because I was unable to sleep I came into the office early, so I was able to intercept them before Véronique
arrived, otherwise the poor girl’s sensibilities might have been blighted for ever more.

‘They are of a most unsavoury nature. I haven’t seen anything quite like it since I was last in New York. Coincidentally, that was another occasion when I was unable to sleep. I switched on the television receiver during the early hours and engaged in what I believe is known over there as “channel surfing”. I happened to alight on Channel 35. Some of the items left little to the imagination. In one of them there was a housewife doing her vacuum cleaning without so much as a stitch of clothing on. It transpired that her husband was a long distance lorry driver, away for weeks at a time, and she was feeling lonely …’

‘I have always understood it does get remarkably hot in New York during the summer months,
Monsieur
. People make constant use of the fire hydrants.’

‘This was in mid-winter, Pamplemousse. There was three feet of snow on the ground. It was a case of bring your own shovel and she clearly had things other than clearing her front driveway on her mind.’

‘You mean the items you have received are of a similar nature,
Monsieur
?’ Monsieur Pamplemousse hazarded a guess as to what the Director was leading up to. ‘A lot of unsolicited mail comes through on the fax machine these days.’

‘They are in like mould,’ said the Director grimly, ‘but far in advance of anything our American cousins might have dreamt up. They make Channel 35 look like a trailer for
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
Furthermore, they are accompanied by what I can only assume is some kind of threat: “There are plenty more where these came from, so lay off, or else …”