Monsieur Pamplemousse on Vacation (3 page)

‘He will go far,’ said Monsieur Pamplemousse. ‘Good hotel concierges are worth their weight in gold. Their importance cannot be over-estimated. For the regular visitor they provide a sense of continuity; of timelessness in an ever-changing world. For those in search of information they have no equal. I must make a note.’

‘More work,’ sighed Doucette. ‘I thought this was meant to be a holiday.’

‘When it comes to hotels and restaurants,’ said Monsieur Pamplemousse, as the lift came to a halt and the doors slid open, ‘there is no such thing as a holiday. The Director will still expect a report. Besides, I have a new laptop to test. It is one of the latest models – on the cutting edge of computer design.’

‘I would have expected nothing less from Monsieur Leclercq,’ said Doucette.

Monsieur Pamplemousse wondered if he detected a
note of irony in her voice, but she was already gazing at her reflection in the dressing table mirror. Women always had so many things to do before performing even the simplest of tasks, like going downstairs to dinner.

His colleague Bernard was fond of saying that his wife even applied fresh make-up before ringing up the butchers to make a complaint.

The terrace was crowded when they arrived back downstairs. All the prime tables nearest the sea had either been taken or had a reserved notice on them, and they were seated in a corner near the bar.

‘It is more romantic,’ whispered the female sommelier by way of consolation as she lit a candle for them. Any complaints Monsieur Pamplemousse might have harboured melted away.

Pommes Frites curled up under the table, his head resting between his two front paws, looking as though his mind was millions of kilometres away on another planet.

Dressed in the clothes he had worn to the concert, Monsieur Pamplemousse felt lost without the notebook he normally kept hidden in a pocket of his right trouser leg. Reduced to relying on his memory, he fell silent while he concentrated on the food. Doucette seemed to catch the mood too and, tired after their long journey, they retired to their room as soon as the meal was over, foregoing their usual
café
in case it kept them awake.

Before he went to bed, Monsieur Pamplemousse
took one last look over the balcony at the scene below. The hum of conversation was a polyglot mixture of French, German, English, Japanese, plus a sprinkling of American voices.

In the distance he could see the twinkling lights of the coast road. An aeroplane drifting low overhead lost height and its landing lights came on as it headed towards Nice airport. Over it all the sound of a piano drifted up from the bar; recalling the days of Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda, whose photographs still graced the walls. He wondered whether it merited an ear plug –
Le Guide
’s symbol for background music, and decided not. From the medley of tunes he picked out Noel Coward’s ‘Room With a View’ and Cole Porter’s ‘Night and Day’. There was a selection of Maurice Chevalier hits. It was really very pleasant.

In the time it had taken them to come up in the lift more people had arrived. Their own table had been cleared and reset, and one of the larger reserved tables overlooking the sea was now occupied by the Russian group he had encountered at the school. Seen from on high with the moonlight shining on it, the father’s head looked more like a tiny
Anglais
Millennium Dome than a warhead.

He wondered what mysteries it might contain and if the family were just passing through or staying in the hotel. Probably the latter, since there was no sign of the daughter. Very likely she was sitting up in bed stuffing herself with whatever Russian children
stuffed themselves with when they played ‘midnight feasts’. In her case it would be a packet of something pretty solid; dried sturgeon on a stick perhaps, with a large bowl of vodka-flavoured ice-cream to follow. With luck it might make her sick.

The sommelier materialised with a bottle and presented it to the father, who nodded his approval, as well he might. Even from two floors up Monsieur Pamplemousse recognised the distinctive label with its host of brightly coloured bubbles.

It was a Côte Rotie La Turque from Guigal. Tasting dispensed with, the girl disappeared, returning a few minutes later with a second bottle. At anything up to 2000 francs a go, they were certainly pushing the boat out. The concierge was right about where all the money came from in that part of the world.

‘Are the people who were at the table behind ours still there?’ called Doucette.

Monsieur Pamplemousse leant precariously over the edge of the balustrade. Once again there was the ubiquitous smell of bougainvillaea. ‘I think not …’

‘There were three of them – an American and another couple. The American caught my eye because he reminded me of Tino Valentino. Remember … he was singing at the dance you took me to at the Mairie last Christmas. He was much shorter than I expected.’

‘Those sort of people often are,’ said Monsieur Pamplemousse, his mind on other things. ‘Remember Tino Rossi?’

‘The woman was definitely English, or I suppose she may have been Scottish – she had that sort of skin. She reminded me a bit of that American film star we used to go and see years ago – Greer Garson. I’m not sure what nationality her husband was. He kept looking at you. Once or twice I thought he was going to come across.’

‘You should have said.’ It was the story of his life. Where Doucette was concerned the action was always behind him.

‘I had a feeling it might mean more work for you and we are here on holiday. I think he may have been English too. He knew enough to raise his thumb when he was ordering. Not like so many foreigners who use their forefinger and then wonder why they get two of everything. But then at the end of the meal he left his fork with the tines pointing upwards. It was the kind of mistake that must have happened a lot in wartime. It’s the little things that give you away.’

‘You would have made a very good detective, Couscous,’ said Monsieur Pamplemousse.

‘Do you really think so?’ Doucette sounded pleased as she turned off her bedside light. She gave a yawn. ‘I haven’t lived with you all these years for nothing.’

Monsieur Pamplemousse was about to turn back into the room when his attention was caught by a movement at the far end of a long jetty to the right of the hotel.

A fishing boat had appeared out of the inky
blackness of the bay and was tying up at the end of the jetty. It rocked violently as two shadowy figures struggled to land their catch. He smiled to himself as he caught sight of Pommes Frites hurrying towards it to see what was going on. He wished he had his energy.

‘Would you like me to lower the shutters, Couscous?’ he called.

But in the words of the famous Scottish poet, Sir Walter Scott, ‘Answer came there none.’ Doucette was already fast asleep.

It wasn’t long before Monsieur Pamplemousse was in the same blissfully happy state. His last waking memory was that of hearing a series of three distant howls. Long, drawn-out and mournful, they were reminiscent of the wailing of a North American train crossing the prairie at night. Or so it always seemed to be in Westerns.

Had he been in a slightly less comatose state, he would undoubtedly have recognised it for what it was: the plaintive cry of a frustrated bloodhound making his way homeward to an inflatable kennel.

Though the first was man-made, and the other reflected nature in the raw, they both performed a similar function.

As Pommes Frites settled himself down for the night, he had the satisfaction of knowing that while he might not have brought his master running, at least as far as those on the terrace of the Hôtel au Soleil d’Or were concerned, they couldn’t say they hadn’t been warned.

The day had started well enough. Perhaps, on reflection, a little too well. The high note which had been struck early on would have been hard enough to sustain under any circumstances. But after the football landed in Doucette’s cup of hot
chocolat
it had been downhill all the way.

At the time, the early morning walk along the beach, the combination of the sun, the sea and the sand had acted like a tonic. Pommes Frites had been in his element, dashing in and out of the water at every possible moment; taking pleasure out of presenting them with pieces of unwanted timber, sniffing rocks.

Having stumbled across a likely looking waterside café, they decided to take
petit déjeuner
then and there rather than wait until they were back at the hotel. At the time, as she sipped her freshly squeezed orange juice and helped herself from a basket of brioche still
warm from the oven, Doucette happily agreed that Paradise might well be constructed along similar lines.

It was also a matter of accord that only in France would you find a humble beach café serving drinking
chocolat
made from granules supplied by Weiss of St Etienne; almost on a par with Angelina’s in the rue de Rivoli, back home in Paris; and
they
used a whole bar of chocolate in theirs.

It felt as though it had all been meant, and perhaps it had been.

Seconds later, the ball, propelled by an over-enthusiastic
Sapeur-Pompier
, one of a group playing nearby, sent the contents of the cup flying over her new beach dress, and the euphoric mood took a nose-dive.

All the signs suggested that recapturing it would be a slow and tedious, not to say expensive business, with no guarantee of success at the end of the day.

In retrospect, it had perhaps been a mistake to suggest that she shouldn’t have ordered a
grande tasse de chocolat
in the first place, rather than a
demi
.

Thanking his lucky stars that the liquid had missed the Director’s new laptop by a matter of millimetres had been another error of judgement on his part, but it had been an instinctive reaction.

All that being so, he could hardly blame Doucette for obeying her own instincts. Grabbing hold of the ball, she thrust it into her beach bag, pulled the drawstring tight, and refused to let go.

Consternation reigned, but she wouldn’t budge, and
it was pursed lips all round as names and addresses were exchanged. Pommes Frites looked disappointed too, for he had been hoping to join in the game.

Mortified beyond measure, Monsieur Pamplemousse followed his wife back to the hotel, this time taking a path at the top of the beach, which was quicker than trudging through the dry sand.

In vain did he point out that the
Sapeurs-Pompiers
hadn’t been playing football on the beach for fun. French firemen were members of a para-military organisation and such activities were part of their daily routine. It had to do with rigid discipline and the need to maintain a high standard of fitness in order to cope with anything and everything that came their way.

Bombarding her with statistics on the exploits of their Paris colleagues while he tried to catch up with her: 200,000 calls a year, of which a mere 6,000 had to do with fires; the rest involving the rescue of attempted suicides from the Seine, removing wasps’ nests, dealing with drunken husbands and wife-beaters, drug addicts (who called on them because, unlike the police, they took no names), people trapped in lifts, leaking taps, rape, blocked drains. They had even been involved in the recent unsuccessful attempt to reanimate Francis le Belge, one of the last of the Marseilles Mafia Godfathers, who had been gunned down in a Paris betting shop. Admittedly they hadn’t known who they were dealing with at the time, but at least it demonstrated that their services were open to
all, without fear or favour and regardless of his or her place in society.

He might just as well have saved his breath. It all went down like the proverbially lead balloon.

‘If they’re so versatile,’ said Doucette crossly, ‘perhaps they can do something about removing the stains from my dress.’

Sensing his master was fighting a losing battle, Pommes Frites tactfully disappeared, leaving them to their own devices.

On the way they engaged in a fruitless search for a boutique which included in its daily schedule the faintest possibility of being open before ten o’clock in the morning, and having found a maid already hard at work in their room, Monsieur Pamplemousse established two things.

First, he not only had to prepare a report on the Au Soleil d’Or, but also there were various pieces of new equipment the Director had landed him with, and if he didn’t get down to it soon he never would.

Secondly, rather than trek into Nice with him, Doucette was perfectly happy to spend the morning by herself on the hotel’s private beach.

‘Wearing nothing but my bathing costume?’ had been her response to his invitation.

She gazed at her flowered reflection in the long mirror attached to the inside door of the 1920s wardrobe. ‘I suppose I shall have to make do with this old wrap. It’s years since I last wore it. You don’t think it is too short?’

‘It is exactly right, Couscous,’ said Monsieur Pamplemousse.

Doucette looked at him suspiciously. ‘You always say that.’

He stifled a sigh. Some days you couldn’t win. Gathering up his belongings, he beat a hasty retreat.

Back at the café he placed a repeat order for
petit déjeuner
and settled himself down to work. To his relief, the
Sapeurs-Pompiers
were nowhere to be seen, and apart from an occasional drone from a passing boat, all was at peace with the world.

Opening the lid of the computer, he reached for a fresh
croissant
, closed his eyes, and began marshalling his thoughts before starting work.

He had woken early, not so much through the strange surroundings – he was used to that – but because the events of the previous evening were still fresh in his mind. The Capricorn in him disliked having to admit defeat, even over such a comparatively minor problem as taking delivery of the Director’s picture, which was, after all, one of the prime reasons for their visit.

Doucette had no such problems. When he’d pressed the button to raise the electrically operated shutters and sunlight flooded the room, she simply gave a grunt and turned over. There was no need for him to move around on tiptoe, but he had done so as a matter of course.

Hearing the clink of china, he’d looked down from the balcony and found he wasn’t the only one awake by a long way. Several couples were already having
breakfast on the terrace. Sparrows, clearly old hands at the game, gathered in an expectant row along the balustrade waiting for crumbs, and on a concrete area by the water’s edge tables were already being made ready for lunch.

Pommes Frites was also out and about, acting in a supervisory capacity, chasing after a nut-brown beach attendant as he hurried past, bow-legged beneath a pile of blue and white striped mattresses.

The sommelier appeared, carrying a tray-load of glasses. Out of uniform and with her hair down, he hardly recognised her. She looked like a schoolgirl.

A speedboat, negotiating a line of yellow marker buoys, headed towards the pier, executed a sharp turn at the last possible moment and brought an early morning skier safely to rest at exactly the right spot as the driver cut his engine. The girl removed her skis, gave a thank-you wave, then climbed the steps and began sluicing herself down under a fresh water shower.

There was no sign of the fishing boat that had tied up the night before.

On the other side of the bay a matchstick figure rose into the air beneath a parachute, hovered for a moment or two, then pancaked into the sea.

It was the best part of the day; the hour or two before the crowds began to arrive.

He fell to thinking about his report. Recipient of two Stockpots in
Le Guide
and an equal number of rosettes in Michelin, the hotel also enjoyed an entry
in Relais et Châteaux, where it was described as being like a precious jewel set in a ribbon of gold; a statement it would be hard to argue with. In many ways it was a relic of a bygone age; to the days before property developers moved in, gobbling up every available piece of land that could conceivably be built on.

But then the Côte d’Azur was like that. Just as there were times when you felt it was hell on earth and must one day sink beneath the weight of all the concrete development, you turned a corner and found somewhere like Au Soleil d’Or; to all intents and purposes on another planet.

As for
dîner
. That had been hard to fault. The
pistou
with which they had begun the meal was a reminder that the great joy of being in Provence was the quality of the produce, and one of the main reasons why the hotel’s restaurant enjoyed two Stockpots in
Le Guide
.

For the main course they had chosen
canette laquée au miel de lavande
– fillets of duck breast brushed with lavender honey, simmered in a vegetable and herb stock, then browned, caramelised, and served with braised tomatoes and red peppers. The accompanying salad, the freshly picked raspberries that followed, had all been beyond reproach. With it they had drunk local wines; a Côtes de Provence white, and a robust Domain Tempier red from Bandol, served chilled. Both complemented the food in a way which greater wines would have been hard put to match.

It was high time he recaptured the essence of it all
on paper. With over 500 questions on the standard report form to be answered, he needed to make a start while everything was still fresh in his mind. But before that, he had other matters to report on.

Creeping back into the bedroom, he went to
Le Guide
’s travelling case and carefully removed the first of the Director’s latest toys – a sub-miniature laptop. Half the depth of a normal one, it even had a tiny video camera built into the lid.

Returning to the balcony he placed the computer and its accompanying accessories on the table, opened the lid and having pressed the start button, began to read through the instructions.

In the early days, when
Le Guide
’s founder had first introduced the case, it had been a modest affair, containing just a few basic items. An austere man, and with only Paris and its environs to cover on his Michaux
bicyclette
, Monsieur Hippolyte Duval had deemed a few tins of emergency rations, a bottle of iodine, some bandages and a notepad more than sufficient for his needs. In the fullness of time, with the arrival of the pneumatic tyre, a puncture repair outfit had been added, but for many years there matters had rested.

It was only after he retired and handed over the reins to Monsieur Leclercq that things began to change. What had started out as a simple cardboard attaché case small enough to slip into a wickerwork basket attached to the handlebars of his bicycle, grew into a sizeable piece of luggage made of thick leather.
And as it grew in size, so it grew in complexity and weight.

A recent article in
L’Escargot, Le Guide’
s staff magazine, had raised the subject. An unattributed pen and ink drawing (although everyone knew it was the work of the editor – Calvet) showed an Inspector toiling up a mountain pass followed by two Sherpas carrying the case between them. Rubbing salt into the wound, an anonymous writer in the letters column had suggested adding a wheel to all four corners.

As ever, Monsieur Leclercq had risen to the bait; and gone over the top. Miniaturisation was now a key element in his thinking, and science hadn’t let him down: indeed, science showed it had every intention of keeping one step ahead for many years to come.

The new laptop was a good example. Although he wouldn’t have admitted it to Doucette, Monsieur Pamplemousse couldn’t wait to try it out.

The set-up complete, he used the tracking button in the centre of the keyboard to manoeuvre the arrow over the Smart Capture icon and pressed the Enter key.

A second or so later the image on the screen reminded him forcibly that he had yet to shave. He could practically count the whiskers on his chin.

Having transferred the image onto the computer’s memory, he tried rotating the tiny lozenge-size camera through 180 degrees so that its lens was facing out to sea. A large motor vessel swam into view, heading towards a landing stage further along the
coast. The maroon and blue stars and oblong blocks of a Panamanian flag of convenience were crystal clear against the background of the sky.

He felt tempted to call his wife before recording it, then changed his mind. Doucette valued her beauty sleep and she wouldn’t thank him.

The tip of his index finger having grown numb through using the tiny button, Monsieur Pamplemousse turned his attention to another of the Director’s purchases; a miniature handheld dictating machine – half the size of the new mobile phone – but with voice-recognition facilities.

Connecting it to the laptop, he added a CD player attachment, inserted a disc and reached for the instruction manual. At least its five different languages were separated; the very worst scenario was having five different languages for each paragraph. Once again though, as with the laptop, he couldn’t help wondering why Monsieur Leclercq had chosen to purchase the English model. Perhaps it was simply that both being new on the market, a French version wasn’t yet available. Being a leader of fashion had its disadvantages. All the same, it struck him that ‘Please write to Mr Wright right now,’ must be a bit of a tongue twister for an English person, let alone anyone unaccustomed to the language.

‘What are you doing, Aristide?’ Doucette appeared in her dressing gown. ‘I thought I heard voices.’

‘It is the very latest in voice-operated software, Couscous,’ said Monsieur Pamplemousse proudly. ‘In
future, instead of typing in my report I shall be able to speak it. But first it has to become accustomed to my voice.’

‘It would be nice if other people had the chance to get accustomed to it once in a while,’ said Doucette pointedly.