Monsieur Pamplemousse on the Spot (9 page)

There was a long pause. ‘Forgive me, Aristide.’ The Director sounded genuinely contrite. ‘I am under
considerable
pressure at this end, you understand. You are in the battle area, subject to bombardment by long-range missiles, but I am also under fire. Weapons are being held to my head. I have hardly slept all night.’

‘Pardon,
Monsieur,’
Monsieur Pamplemousse broke in before the Director got too far with his emotional flights of fancy; once started there was often no stopping him. ‘With respect, I must be allowed to do things in my own way and at my own pace. I have, I believe, already made
considerable progress. Now there are leads to be followed; there is information to be tabulated and considered. However, it appears that there are others staying at Les Cinq Parfaits who know as much about what is going on as I do – possibly more – and who seem to be aware of my every movement. Not only aware,’ he added with some heat, ‘but only too anxious to report on them with all possible speed. Let these others do the dirty work.’

‘That is not possible, Aristide. I cannot tell you why, but take my word for it, that is not possible. There are, as I said at the very beginning, wheels within wheels. Who knows what is what, or, indeed, who is who? If I were to tell you about some of the machinations which have reached my ears over the last two days you would scarcely credit them.’

Monsieur Pamplemousse rested the receiver under his chin and picked up the bottle containing Pommes Frites’ sample. He held it up to the light. Château Pommes Frites. A direct comparison with the real thing would rank it immediately as from a poor year; there was a distinct orange tinge. Perhaps a ’63? The year of a hard winter followed by a dismal summer, giving rise to poor flowering conditions. But that was only by direct comparison. On its own it would pass muster.

If his chief did but know it, he was preaching to the converted. Monsieur Pamplemousse was only too well aware of things that went on behind the scenes. Lack of communication. Empire building. Parkinson’s Law, which ruled that the appointment of two assistants instead of one meant that jobs could be divided up in such a way that no one person knew enough to become a potential threat to those above. Inter-departmental rivalry. Jockeying for power. Corridors which led nowhere except to closed doors. He’d come across many of those in his time. Blank faces. Denials of the very existence of things one knew only too well existed. Sometimes he wondered how governments functioned at all.

Wondering uneasily if he himself was some kind of pawn in the present game, he reached idly for the cork. It was still lying alongside the ice-bucket where it had been left
the night before. Dried out by the warmth of the room, it went back into the neck of the bottle easily enough, needing only a slight tap with the ball of his hand to drive it fully home. There was only the smallest of holes to show where it had been penetrated by the corkscrew.

He held the bottle up to the light again and as he did so a wicked thought entered his mind. Durelle was no fool, but given that the original label was still intact, he might get away with it.

‘Yes, chief, I am listening.’ He felt decidedly more cheerful now. He couldn’t wait to put his leg-pull into action. There would need to be a short note to accompany the bottle, of course. Something along the lines of: ‘Pommes Frites now on the road to recovery. No need for further action. A small token of my appreciation. Hope you enjoy it. Aristide.’

It was true. Pommes Frites’ eyes now had a decided sparkle. He was growing more alive by the minute. The walk and the consequent chase round the garden must have done him good.

Monsieur Pamplemousse slipped the lead foil over the neck and smoothed it into place. The wine waiter had done a good job. He must be a Capricorn like himself, as well as coming from the Auvergne; a perfectionist twice over. It looked as good as new.

‘
Oui
,
Monsieur.
Rest assured, I will telephone the very moment there is anything to report. Possibly this evening.’

‘And Aristide.’ The Director hesitated, then swallowed hard. ‘Forgive my impatience. It is always worse for those who stay behind. Things get magnified.’

‘Of course,
Monsieur.
Au
revoir,
Monsieur
.’

He opened the refrigerator and stood the bottle in the door-rack alongside its companion. With the capsule in place and in the artificially white light reflected from the interior it was almost indistinguishable from the real thing. If colour were the sole criterion, Pommes Frites would be in line for an award at the annual wine fair in Paris. There would have to be a P.S. to the message, otherwise Durelle would get suspicious. It was too good a gift. ‘Have this one on the house. Madame Grante is paying.’ That would
appeal to his sense of humour too. Madame Grante in Accounts was notorious for watching every franc.

He glanced at his watch. There was hardly sufficient time for lunch in the restaurant. In any case he had no wish to run the gauntlet of those who had spotted their activities in the bushes, and Pommes Frites might not take kindly to eating by himself twice running. Perhaps a snack by the pool would be the answer. He’d seen a cold table laid out there. A little
charcuterie;
some
saucisses
de
Morteau
et
de
Montbeliard
– cumin-flavoured – a speciality of the region. Some ham from Chamonix – dried in the crisp mountain air. A salad. Then some
Beaufort
or some
Comté
;
perhaps a little of each. If they got a move on there might be time for some bilberry tart to follow – or some more
raspberries
; they wouldn’t be around for very much longer.

If he was lucky they might have some sparkling wine from Seyssel – the most northern of the Rhône vineyards and the nearest thing to champagne. A glass or two would set him up for the rest of the day. He could accompany the rest of the meal with some flinty rosé d’Arbois. It would be light enough not to make him feel sleepy or impede his thought processes.

Pommes Frites rose and accompanied him to the door.

Outside, Monsieur Pamplemousse reversed the card on the handle, changing the sign from one showing a girl in a white dress and old-fashioned bonnet asleep under a walnut tree to one of her hard at work with a feather duster. Halfway along the corridor there was a large trolley laden with sheets and towels, bottles of Evian and packets of soap and perfume. From an open doorway he heard the murmur of voices and some suppressed giggles. The room maids must be getting near.

He glanced down at Pommes Frites as they set off. Pommes Frites looked up and wagged his tail. It was a good sign. One good sign, followed almost immediately by a second, for he licked his lips, and if Pommes Frites was licking his lips it could mean only one thing: life was returning to normal.

It took Monsieur Pamplemousse rather longer than he'd planned to get within striking distance of the Institut des Beaux Arbres, and even longer to find the entrance, which was half-hidden behind a clump of fir trees.

Reflecting that the Institut was well-named (most of the
arbres
were not only
beaux,
they were
très
grands
as well, and badly needed thinning), he pulled in alongside some large wrought-iron gates standing in splendid isolation within a carved stone archway and climbing out of the car he applied his thumb to a bell-push. A disembodied voice emerged from a small grille above the button. He gave his name and almost immediately there was a buzz from the direction of the gate itself as an electric bolt-retainer slid open. There was a click and the loudspeaker was silent, cutting off the apologies he had been about to make for being late. He glanced at his watch. It was almost three o'clock.

Lunch had been a protracted affair. Word must have got around about his extravagance the previous evening, for a second assistant
sommelier
hovered about his table like a solicitous butterfly, the
carte
des
vins
already open at what he clearly considered to be an appropriately expensive page. At the waiter's suggestion he had weakened and succumbed to a whole bottle of Pouilly-Fumé instead of the half-bottle of rosé he'd had in mind; a Baron de ‘L' '82 from the estate of the Ladoucette family in Pouilly-sur-Loire. Totally delicious, it prompted an entry in his
notebook as a reminder to repeat the experience at the earliest opportunity – God, Monsieur le Directeur and Madame Grante in Accounts permitting.

The combination of the wine, food from a cold table positively groaning with temptations, coupled with a somewhat protracted but undeniably thorough survey of such
doudounes
as were on public display around the pool that day, left him in the end with the bare minimum of time to rush back to his room, grab the bottle containing Pommes Frites' sample from the door of the fridge and his Leica from the case, before making an equally wild dash for Evian and the nearest
gare.
He'd been in and out before the maid, busy replenishing the stocks of perfume and unguents in the bathroom, even realised what was happening.

The journey to Evian had been slow; the normally quiet lakeside road busier than usual. Lausanne, on the far side of Lac Léman, was shrouded in autumn mist, the hills beyond barely visible. In one village an unlikely-looking, life-sized painted cut-out of a cow eyed him dolefully as he waited his turn in the traffic which had piled up behind a delivery van parked outside an
épicerie.
It looked decidedly less happy than its real-life counterparts in the fields he had passed on the way down, and he could hardly blame it.

After Evian he headed for the D22 and then turned left in the direction of the mountains, taking a road which grew steadily more narrow and winding. Wooden chalets with tightly shuttered windows dotted the hillside. Alongside them stood piles of neatly sawn logs ready for the coming winter. They were all so similar and so like toy musical-boxes that it wouldn't have been surprising to see a giant key on the outside of each one, to wind them up again in the spring.

Gradually the chalets retreated, to be replaced by isolated farms; the road became steeper, the drop more sheer, making it difficult to overtake anything in front – even the
occasional
cyclists enjoying a last seasonal fling as they pedalled their way laboriously uphill with lowered heads and bulging thighs. Why was it they always seemed to be going uphill rather than down? It looked very painful and unpleasurable, although he had done exactly the same thing when
he'd been their age. There was hardly a hill in the Auvergne he hadn't tackled in his youth, and he must have enjoyed it at the time.

Having got well and truly stuck behind a laborious sand-carrying
camion.
Monsieur Pamplemousse took the opportunity to run through in his mind the reasons for making the journey at all. It was really little more than the following up of a hunch; a feeling he couldn't have put into words. But that was how it was; how it had always been. How many times in the past had he not set off on a journey with as little to go on? That was what it was all about. You started with a problem. Then you took all the available facts and you placed them in some kind of order. Perhaps, if the worst came to the worst you put them all into a hat and gave them a good shake. Then you played a hunch.

Holmes would have done the same. Except, of course, he would have carried it through with total conviction and from the comfort of his lodging house. He tried to picture what Holmes might have told Watson before despatching him up the mountainside in a pony and trap.

First, there was the fact that Jean-Claude's disappearance had not been premeditated, of that he was sure. Had it been, he would have taken more with him. All his toiletries seemed to be intact. There was no marked absence of clothes or suitcases.

Secondly, he was well-known in the area. If he had caught a train or an
autobus
anywhere someone would have seen him, assuming Albert Parfait was telling the truth – and apart from a disquieting feeling that for some reason best known to himself he wasn't being entirely frank, he couldn't for the moment see any reason why he should be lying. Jean-Claude's car was still at Les Cinq Parfaits – that was a puzzle. If anything, it pointed to his not having gone very far, or to his having gone with someone else.

Thirdly, there was the strange encounter in the wood. Fourthly, there was the collection of words he'd come across under Jean-Claude's blotter. How or why they fitted into the overall picture he hadn't the remotest idea. That the words formed a blackmail note of some kind was
obvious, but how it related to Jean-Claude's disappearance was another matter.

Lastly, there was the picture of the girl he was carrying in his pocket along with the list of telephone numbers. That the girl was the reason for Jean-Claude's visits to the flower shop he had no doubt; that she was a pupil of the Institut des Beaux Arbres seemed more than likely. She was about the right age. She was English. It was the only school in the area.

Hairpin bends, the nearside edge protected by low stone walls or steel safety-barricades – some bent and twisted where previous drivers had tried to negotiate the corners too fast, caused the lorry in front to slow down almost to walking pace. Frustrated, he stopped in a lay-by and consulted his map. The view down to the valley on his right was breathtaking. In a field just below him an old woman was bent double over a mound of freshly dug potatoes. Nearby a man was picking fruit from a tree. The sound of what seemed like a thousand bells, all tuned to a different pitch, floated up from neatly parcelled areas of pastureland as cows and sheep dipped their heads to munch the rich grass. Old white porcelain baths filled with water for the cattle dotted the landscape, bequeathed by owners who had become affluent and exchanged them in the name of progress for brightly coloured suites made of plastic or fibreglass.

As he set off in the car again he fell to wondering if Albert knew of the girl's existence. If so, did he approve? Apart from the question of age, he saw no outward reason for disapproval. If he'd had a son of his own, he would have been more than happy. Come to think of it, if the girl had been his daughter he would have felt equally happy. Or would he? Jean-Claude would be something of a catch. Anyone who married him would have to be fairly special; the life was not an easy one. Nor would Albert wish to see his son diverted from his chosen path – or, more to the point, the one that he had chosen for him. Already his absence had caused unrest, but that was hardly a reason for family jiggery-pokery. Besides, a girl who had been given the added benefit of a spell at a finishing school, versed in the social graces, ought to be ideal.

He tried to picture her again, sitting in the restaurant, an altogether more vulnerable figure than the one in the photograph. Since she had been alone and clearly worried, she was probably as much in the dark as he was. He found himself wanting to help her if it was at all possible.

He began toying with the idea of asking Madame Schmidt outright if he could see the girl. She could hardly refuse. On the other hand, he had probably made it impossible; by a chance word he had burned his boats. Madame Schmidt would hardly believe him now if he came up with a story about being a friend of the family who happened to be in the area.

He saw the sign marking the turn-off for the Institut a moment too late. Reversing the 2CV wasn't easy, especially as Pommes Frites was beginning to show signs of what American astronauts in their quaint jargon called ‘stomach awareness', and insisted on sitting bolt upright with a pained expression on his face, looking neither to the right nor to the left, as if the problem was not of his making – which, in fairness, it wasn't.

The road leading up to the school was narrower still. Unusually, Michelin seemed to have ignored its existence, eschewing even the doubtful honour of awarding it a single dotted black line on their map of the area. The only sign, just before the entrance, had been one warning of danger from falling rock.

He opened the gates, drove through, then stopped to get out and close them again. The bolt clicked home. Madame Schmidt obviously took good care of her pupils. To one side there was a passing place large enough to
accommodate
a whole fleet of limousines. From the gate the road dropped down again towards a hidden valley and then, a few hundred metres further on, he encountered a junction with a bevy of signs pointing in different directions: to the left, the staff quarters and the delivery area; straight on to the recreation area, students' chalets and visitors' carpark. The main building lay to the right.

There were three other cars parked outside the house: a black Mercedes 220 with a Swiss registration, and two Peugeot 505s – one with a local registration and the other
bearing a Paris 75 on its number-plate. The one from Paris looked as if it had recently been driven through a heavy rainstorm; the sides were flecked with mud almost to window-height and there were clear patches on the
windscreen
where the wipers had been used. Whoever had been at the wheel had been in a hurry.

Madame Schmidt was waiting at the door to greet him. She looked as if she were used to people being late. His apologies were brushed aside as of no great consequence.

Pommes Frites didn't look at all put out at being left in the car; rather the reverse. He assumed his ‘aloof from it all, see you when I see you' expression as he curled up in the front seat to await further instructions. Nevertheless, as the door to the Institut des Beaux Arbres closed behind his master he sat up and automatically registered a quick movement behind one of the windows, the falling into place of a curtain. Having stored the information in the back of his mind in case it was ever needed, he closed his eyes and went to sleep again.

Inside the house, Monsieur Pamplemousse was also busily committing various items to memory. Not only the restrained but undoubted luxury of the furnishings and the depth of the carpeting, but also Madame Schmidt herself. Madame Schmidt wasn't quite as he'd expected her to be and it was hard to say exactly why. He always felt ill at ease with members of the teaching profession; they tended to talk in statements or to ask questions which demanded answers. But it wasn't just that. Following her across the hall he sensed a contradiction in styles. On the telephone she had sounded nervous and abrupt, whereas listening to her now she seemed much more to be mistress of the situation. Perhaps it was simply a case of being on her home ground, but somehow he felt it was more than that.

He guessed she must be in her middle sixties. It was hard to tell with some people, particularly those who were able to keep up appearances. Elderly and benign, she could have been everyone's ‘Tante Marie', had her grey hair not been quite so impeccably coiffeured, her skin so smooth and wrinkle-free. She defied cursory cataloguing. Her silk blouse reflected Paris chic rather than local tastes, which
veered towards spa-town sensible. Heavy jewellery adorned fingers that were long and thin and beautifully manicured. He caught a whiff of expensive perfume as she paused to open the door to her study. Fees at the Institut des Beaux Arbres must either be considerable to keep her in the style to which she was clearly accustomed, or she had independent means.

Motioning him towards an armchair in the centre of the room, she handed him a folder before seating herself behind a desk near the window with her back to the light, making a steeple with her hands. He suddenly felt as though he were back at school, about to be grilled regarding a broken window in the greenhouse.

‘Your friend will find all he needs to know inside the folder – the practical details, that is. Most of it is contained in the brochure; the rest are application forms, details of the various courses we have to offer, term times, fees and so forth. Also items like insurance and accident indemnity forms.'

‘You seem to have thought of everything,' he murmured.

Madame Schmidt inclined her head. ‘We have been established for over thirty years.'

Her accent, although hard to fault, was again hard to place. It was almost too impeccable. He had a feeling that she wasn't French born. It was a feeling that was confirmed almost before he had time to open the folder.

‘I was born in England. My husband is German-speaking Swiss. Between us we are able to supervise the teaching of most European languages. The majority of our pupils have English as their first language when they arrive. In fact many of them
are
English.'

Monsieur Pamplemousse glanced through the folder and then turned to the brochure. Wide-angle lenses did the Institut des Beaux Arbres more than justice; the house itself certainly looked much grander than in reality. But if the photographs gave a false impression, the curriculum more than made up for the deception. He ran his eyes down the list.
Cuisine
–
nouvelle
and
haute
(with the opportunity of learning over one hundred and fifty new recipes per term); the mind boggled. Domestic science included engagement
and control of domestic staff, ironing, washing-up (by hand and machine) – presumably for those who couldn't afford servants – and car maintenance (overalls supplied). Protocol covered
savoir-vivre,
the art of conversation and the theory and practice of baptisms and children's parties – perhaps for those who hadn't learned to say no in enough languages during the first part of their course. Elegance and deportment were catered for as well as flower arrangement (according to season). There were classes on child psychology, typing, bridge, art and clay modelling. The list seemed endless. He thought of Jean-Claude.