Monsieur Pamplemousse Aloft (17 page)

There was a movement in the undergrowth and Pommes Frites was back. Without taking his eyes off the scene, Monsieur Pamplemousse reached out and gave him a congratulatory pat. The hair on his neck felt stiff. He was still tense, ready to spring into action at a moment’s notice.

In the event it wasn’t needed. It was all over in a matter of seconds. Although seeing it all unfold before him it felt
almost as though he was watching a carefully rehearsed television drama being replayed in slow motion.

Without a word being uttered, the whole column suddenly threw themselves on the ground. A moment later the menhir rocked under a hail of fire. As the echo of the shots died away two of the nuns jumped to their feet and rushed to either side of it, machine guns at the ready. A door swung open and hung drunkenly on its hinges.

For a brief moment no one moved, then there came the sound of a distant explosion. Instinctively everyone turned and looked towards the sea.

‘Jesus!’ Mr. Pickering crossed himself. ‘I don’t believe it!’

Mr. Pickering removed a bottle of white wine from a large silver bucket alongside the table and poured a little of the contents into his glass. He swirled it round deftly and expertly, then held the glass to his nose. ‘I think we’ll dispense with the services of the waitress,’ he said. ‘I don’t know about you, but I’m dying for a drink.’

After displaying the label for Monsieur Pamplemousse and the Director to inspect, he filled the rest of the glasses and replaced the bottle alongside its twin in the ice-bucket.

‘A Coulée-de-Serrant. It is from the estate of a certain Madame Joly. They’re not easy to find. Even in a good year only a small quantity is made and most are drunk far too young. I happened to come across three bottles in a little wine shop in Nantes soon after I arrived. I’m afraid these are the last two.’

‘In that case,’ said the Director, ‘we are very privileged.’

Mr. Pickering looked pleased. ‘It is a wine with an interesting history. The first vines in Anjou were planted by monks in the twelfth century.’

Monsieur Pamplemousse tested the bouquet. There was a familiar scent of honeysuckle. ‘I remember your first bottle,’ he said. ‘It was discarded by an old
sorcière
outside the Hôtel du Port.’

‘Ah, yes.’ Mr. Pickering didn’t bat an eyelid. ‘The harridan. You resisted her attentions manfully.’ Madame Pamplemousse would have been proud of you, I’m sure.

‘I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw you coming towards me that first night. Having had reports from Interpol of Andreas being somewhere in the area, the last thing I wanted was to be seen talking to an ex-member of the
Sûreté.
He might not have known who you were, but I couldn’t afford to take the risk. We didn’t know at the time that he was with the circus.’

‘You chose a good disguise,’ said Monsieur Pamplemousse. ‘I doubt if anyone would have come within a mile of you.’

‘That’s what I thought, but you’d be surprised,’ said Mr. Pickering cryptically. He shrugged the matter off. ‘I fear I am a frustrated actor at heart and like all actors I get the occasional kick out of being someone else. At school I was known for a while as “The Scarlet Pimple”.

‘Wine happens to be my other weakness. That’s why I could never have become an Olivier. Olivier would have drunk methylated spirits if it enabled him to get inside the character of the old woman.’

Monsieur Pamplemousse was tempted to say Olivier would have chosen a cheaper after-shave as well, but that would have sounded too much like a put-down. Instead, he lifted his glass and smelt the bouquet. Then he sipped a little of the wine and let it flow over his palate. It was flinty-dry and aromatic with the taste of wild flowers. An exceptional wine by any standards. He raised his glass.

‘
A votre santé
, Mr. Pickering!’

‘Your very good health!’

‘Congratulations to you both on a successful mission.’ The Director joined them in clinking glasses.

Monsieur Pamplemousse was conscious of eyes watching them from other tables in the Ty Coz’s dining room. The sight of two nuns and a Mother Superior arriving with their own wine and imbibing it with such obvious enjoyment probably confirmed the worst suspicions of many of those
present.

Mr. Pickering looked at his watch. ‘The airship must have crossed the English coast by now. Their journey will be nearly at an end.’

‘I still find it hard to believe,’ said the Director. ‘I have to confess that when I heard the explosion I thought my worst fears had been realised. I fully expected to see the dirigible coming down in flames.’

‘You were not alone,’ said Mr. Pickering.

Monsieur Pamplemousse inwardly voiced his agreement. It had been a nasty moment, one he wouldn’t wish to repeat in a hurry. ‘And the caravan?’

‘Almost totally wrecked. One side has completely disappeared. Andreas ended up as a kit of parts for someone the world is well rid of.’

‘There were no other casualties?’

‘None, fortunately. If it had happened later in the evening when everyone was arriving for the circus it could have been a disaster area.’

‘But why? I still do not understand why.’ The Director pointedly made play with his empty glass. ‘Did he have more explosive stored there? If so, what caused it to go off?’

Monsieur Pamplemousse exchanged a quick glance with Mr. Pickering and received the go-ahead.

‘I think,
Monsieur,
it was partly to do with fate and partly to do with Pommes Frites.’

‘A formidable combination.’ Mr. Pickering took the hint and reached across the table in order to recharge the Director’s glass. ‘A case of the proverbial irresistible force teaming up with an immovable object.’

‘Pommes Frites found the explosive in the first place. He picked up the scent the day I travelled on the airship. It was hidden in one of the bags of ballast.’ Monsieur Pamplemousse reached down and felt under the table for the subject under discussion. He received an affectionate lick in return. ‘One tends to forget that he is a dog of many talents. Long before he and I met he attended a sniffer course in Paris. I
understand he was top of his class for that year. He won the Pierre Armand trophy.

‘Fate then stepped in and decreed that I put the bag in the waste bin outside Andreas’s caravan.’

Fate, or was it pre-ordained? If it was the latter, then it had been operating from the moment his car ended up in a ditch the day he arrived, perhaps even before that. It was an interesting point. On the same basis, the fate of two leading heads of state in the western world had been largely determined by his spearing the end of Pommes Frites’ nose with a ball-point pen. It was a sobering thought. The manufacturers would probably love to be able to quote the fact in their literature.

He looked around the room. Strange unidentifiable agricultural implements adorned the walls; the whole area surrounding the huge stone fireplace was taken up with an unlikely mural of the Camargue. Wild horses were dashing towards the exit – probably trying to escape the ghastly food at the Ty Coz. He couldn’t for the life of him understand why the Director had insisted on dining there in the first place.

Sitting at a nearby table was a young English family; mother, father and three children, all red from the sun and wind. The children kept looking across and giggling. A scattering of Germans and a few French families, very casually dressed, were eating noisily; the prime window seat was occupied by an elderly English couple – probably the Bentley owners. They looked as if they owned the table as well. The man was wearing a cravat, his one concession to their being on holiday. He would probably dress for dinner even if they were in the middle of the African jungle, resolutely refusing to ‘go native’. A young couple, both wearing headphones, jiggled to different rhythms over a bowl of
moules.
Perhaps everyone was taking part in some pre-ordained plan. Given the abysmal food, he couldn’t picture any other reason. What
had
they all done to deserve such a fate? The strangest part of all was the fact that they actually seemed to be enjoying themselves. It made a mockery of his job with
Le Guide.

‘I was explaining to
Monsieur le Directeur
,’ Mr. Pickering broke into his reverie, ‘the one thing we hadn’t bargained for was Andreas not actually being inside the artificial menhir, but simply using it as a relay station. The main control for detonating the explosive was safely inside the caravan. Given his background and knowledge of electronics it wasn’t a difficult thing to set up. It turned the whole thing into an arm’s-length transaction as it were, and it also had the advantage that he could keep an eye on the airship from his window and give himself an alibi at the same time if things went wrong. No doubt when the experts search the wreckage of the caravan they will find all the evidence, but he must have had some warning device to let him know if the menhir was being tampered with. As soon as that sounded he took the decision to blow up the airship and in doing so blew himself up instead. It was, in many ways, not unjust, even an elegant solution to many people’s problems.’

The Director broke in. ‘But how did he manage to get the explosive on board the airship in the first place?’

‘It probably wasn’t all that difficult. As Aristide will tell you, security was fairly lax in the beginning. All he would have had to do was turn up carrying a brief-case and clip-board. You can go anywhere if you carry a clip-board.’

Mr. Pickering was saved any further explanations by the arrival of his first course:
coquilles St. Jacques
– cooked the Breton way, in cider. The Director had chosen the sea-food platter which arrived on a vast oval tray placed on a stand in the centre of the table. On a bed of crushed ice lay a montage of winkles and mussels, baby shrimps, oysters, pink
langous
tines
, crabs and other delicacies, nestling amongst dark green sea-weed and yellow halves of a lemon.

On the grounds that it might have been bought outside rather than made in the Ty Coz’s kitchen, Monsieur Pamplemousse had ordered a portion of pork
rillettes.
It looked rather lonely on its over-large plate. Glancing at the other dishes, he almost regretted his choice, but it was a case of being better safe than sorry.

A large
faux-filet
steak, already partly cut-up, arrived in a separate dish and was placed on the floor beside his feet. Pommes Frites eyed it non-committally from beneath the table-cloth. Like his master, he had his doubts.

As the waitress wished them ‘
bon
appétit
’ and withdrew, the Director tucked a napkin into his shirt collar and helped himself to a shrimp. ‘Explosives, sabotage, hijackings, terrorism, fibreglass menhirs … what
is
the world coming to?’

‘What indeed?’ said Mr. Pickering. ‘Mind you, I may go into business manufacturing fibreglass menhirs myself when I retire. I’m sure there are lots of people in England who would like one at the bottom of their garden. They would make very good sheds – or homes for gnomes.’

‘There must be many people in Brittany,’ said Monsieur Pamplemousse, ‘who wish they
hadn’t
got one in their garden.’

‘The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.’ Mr. Pickering reached for the second bottle of wine. Under cover of the sea-food platter the Director surreptitiously drained his glass and applied a napkin to his mouth.

‘I congratulate you on your choice, Pickering. I must make a note of the vineyard. The wine has an uncommon potency.’

Mr. Pickering acknowledged the compliment. ‘It is an anomaly of your otherwise excellent French wine laws. When the
appellation
was first created the vineyards mostly produced a sweet white wine so they were allowed only a very small yield per hectare and the alcoholic content had to be a minimum of 12.5 degrees. Although many of them have now turned to making a much drier wine they still have to retain the same high degree of alcohol. It is a handicap to the growers, but an enormous bonus for the rest of us …’ He broke off as a series of bleeps sounded from somewhere under his scapular. ‘Please excuse me. I think I am needed. Perhaps, if you catch the eye of the waitress, you could ask for the condiments. That is my only complaint so far – a definite lack of salt in the cooking. It does help to bring out the flavour, you know.’

Monsieur Pamplemousse shook his head as Mr. Pickering disappeared. ‘A strange race the British. Their knowledge of wine often exceeds our own, but when it comes to food …’

‘Perhaps, Aristide, your tastebuds have become jaded over the years by too much good living,’ said the Director. ‘You have yet to try the
rillettes
.’

Feeling rebuffed from an unexpected corner, Monsieur Pamplemousse broke off a piece of toast, reached for his knife, cut off a wedge of chunky paste, added a gherkin, set his taste buds in motion with a black olive, then sat back to contemplate the result. It was, he had to admit, better than he had expected.

The olive was jet-black and plump; the
rillettes
had clearly been made from prime meat, he could taste goose as well as pork; the gherkin had been pickled in a delicately spiced mixture of wine vinegar and dill.

Hearing a rattling noise at his feet he looked down. Pommes Frites had finished his steak and was licking his lips with relish.

‘Well, Aristide?’

‘I have tasted worse,
Monsieur
.’ His reply was suitably guarded.

‘Good. Madame Grante will be pleased.’

‘Madame Grante?’ Monsieur Pamplemousse paused with another portion of toast halfway to his mouth. A delicately balanced gherkin fell off and landed on the floor. Pommes Frites eyed it with interest. ‘What does Madame Grante have to do with it?’

‘Ah, Aristide.’ The Director regarded him unhappily from behind a pair of nutcrackers which he had been about to apply to a lobster claw. ‘I am very glad you asked me that. Very glad indeed.’

Monsieur Pamplemousse waited patiently while the Director busied himself with the inside of the claw. For someone who had professed himself eagèr to answer a question, he was being somewhat tardy.

‘My reasons for suggesting you stayed here, Aristide, were
several-fold.’

‘
Several
-fold,
Monsieur
?’ Monsieur Pamplemousse eyed the Director suspiciously. ‘Are you saying there is another fold to come?’

‘That is one way of putting it.’ The Director looked, if anything, even more unhappy.

‘Madame Grante is a good woman, Aristide, a good woman. Much maligned by other members of staff, but a good woman for all that. However, I fear she took extreme umbrage over my intervention during the little argument you had with her recently concerning your last lot of expenses. Storm clouds were gathering over the Pare du Champ de Mars. In the end for the sake of peace I had to strike a bargain.’

‘A bargain,
Monsieur
? I’m afraid I do not entirely understand what you are saying.’

‘The Ty Coz, Aristide, belongs to a distant relative of Madame Grante. She approached me some while ago with a view to its being inspected for inclusion in
Le Guide.
I said to her that although she could expect no favoured treatment – which, in fairness, she never sought – I would arrange for an early visit. Then, when she heard you were coming to the area she brought the matter up again, knowing she could rely on your judgement and honesty.’