Monsieur Pamplemousse on the Spot (5 page)

He returned to the living-room and switched on the quartz-halogen lamp on the desk. A larger version of the bedroom lamp, the low voltage bulb produced a brilliant white light. He picked up the blotting pad and held it under the lamp. Jean-Claude was a doodler on the phone. It was covered with black, geometrical shapes, ranging in complexity from mere squares and triangles to complex, ornate patterns – probably depending on the length of the call. Interspersed with the patterns were telephone numbers. He checked with the handset. They were mostly Jean-Claude’s own number, but here and there were others. Taking out his notepad, he jotted these down for future reference.

He turned the blotting pad over. Someone – an executive working for Burns, the big American agency – had once told him that the first thing he did when he was left alone in an office belonging to anyone of importance was to look beneath the blotting pad. In a security-conscious age, when more and more code-numbers had to be committed to memory, people sought refuge by inscribing them on the back of their blotting pads. His friend had built up quite a dossier of useful numbers.

There was nothing on the back of Jean-Claude’s blotting pad.

He drew a blank with the drawers on his right. The large drawer with its suspended files on the left took a little longer, but was equally unproductive.

He riffled through the books on the shelf above the desk. Nothing fell out.

Just as he was about to give up, he leant on the blotting pad, smoothing the rough paper thoughtfully with his fingers as he tried to make up his mind what to do next. It felt thicker than he would have expected. Towards the middle there were distinct ridges. He lifted the top sheet. Underneath it was a glossy black and white enprint of a blonde girl. It was the product of a fashion-conscious studio; all high-key lighting and with the softness of the
subject burnt out. It made her look old beyond her years, but perhaps that was what she had wanted. She looked vaguely familiar and he wondered if he had seen her on television. The picture was unsigned; the back was stamped with the name of a studio in Geneva.

Underneath the photograph there was a thin manila envelope. It was unsealed and to his surprise, when he held it up and shook the contents on to the desk, a selection of words fluttered down. They were of differing type-sizes and faces, each separately stuck to a sheet of dark backing paper. He laid them out in no particular order. They were in English and judging by the texture of the paper had been cut from a
journal
of some kind. Strangely, at least two of the words were misspelt – unless his command of the English language, which wasn’t good, was even weaker than he’d thought.

Monsieur Pamplemousse sat staring at the words for some time, shifting them around, trying to make some kind of sense. Then he stood up and tucked them back in the envelope along with the photograph. It was a task better carried out in his own room.

A few moments later he let himself out quietly through the front door. Cloud from the distant mountains had descended while he’d been at work and it was already dark. Concealed coloured lights made patches of shrubs and flowers stand out like tropical islands. The pool was deserted again. From the car-park he could hear voices and the sound of engines being revved. Doors slammed. He looked in through the dining-room windows, wondering if he should confer with Albert Parfait, but the
patron
was nowhere in sight. He decided against searching him out. It could wait for the time being.

He hesitated for a moment or two, wondering whether to take his things back to his room or look for Pommes Frites first. In view of his previous experience with the silent dog-whistle he decided not to risk using it again. All hell might break loose.

The wood behind the hotel was even darker than he’d anticipated and he began to wish he’d fetched a torch from his car. The paved path ended abruptly and gave way to
gravel, then became softer still in a carpet of pine-needles. The shadows closed in almost at once, enveloping him like a shroud. Through gaps in the trees he could see occasional flashes of light from the caravans and there was a smell of something indefinably aromatic burning.

He stopped for a moment in order to get his bearings, allowing his eyes to accustom themselves to the darkness. As he did so he became aware of a movement a little way ahead and to his left; a glimpse of something white at head-height, then blackness again.

He called out, but there was no reply. Taking his belongings in his left hand, he moved forward slowly and gently with his right hand outstretched, zig-zagging slightly as he went. He could feel his heart beating a little faster and in spite of the coolness of the night air he felt beads of sweat on his brow.

Suddenly he sensed another movement immediately in front of him and heard a stifled gasp intermingled with heavy breathing and a strange, soft, sucking sound. Easing forward he felt warmth too. The warmth of another human being, accompanied by a sweet, almost overpoweringly sickly smell.

Stretching out his hand he drew in his breath sharply as it encountered something large and round and hard. He moved it to the right and almost immediately found a second mound, similar in shape, one of a matching pair; equally hard and yet at the same time warm and soft to the touch and covered in the softest down. A mound which even as he touched it rotated as if seeking him out, rejecting and accepting at the same time. A mountain of flesh which rose and fell and became soft and moist before culminating in a peak of hardness the like of which he had never before experienced. The whole effect was so earthy, so basic, so primitively sensual, he felt rooted to the spot, unable to believe his senses.

It could only have lasted a second or two. The next moment he found himself clutching at empty air as the person he’d been touching uttered a second strangled cry, brushed past him and was gone.

Caught off-balance and still recovering from the shock
of his encounter, Monsieur Pamplemousse turned and called out. But he was too late.

He started to give chase, but after only a few yards his foot met with something large and unyielding lying directly across his path. He tripped, staggered forward, and in trying to regain his balance toppled over.

As he slowly recovered his wind, Monsieur Pamplemousse opened one eye and peered at the object lying alongside him. Even in his semi-dazed state it had a familiar look about it. Opening his other eye he took a closer look. He needed no light to aid his identification. He knew at once what it was.

Stretched out on a pile of old newspapers, stiff and motionless, cold to the touch, lay the recumbent form of Pommes Frites.

For a moment or two there was silence as Monsieur Pamplemousse remained where he’d fallen, trying to get his breath back, while at the same time weighing up the pros and cons of applying the kiss of life to Pommes Frites. Finally, having decided to take the plunge, he leaned forward. Desperate situations demanded desperate measures.

Monsieur Pamplemousse yielded to no one in his love for Pommes Frites. Deep down he knew that had the situation been reversed there would have been no hesitation about coming to his aid. Nevertheless, the prospect of mouth-to-mouth resuscitation was not one he relished. Pommes Frites had a generous nature and in return nature had endowed him with lips to match. Even the famous Westmores of Hollywood might have admitted to having met their match had they been called upon to make him up for the part of a canine Scrooge; Max Factor would have had to work overtime.

All that aside, when he finally screwed up his courage and lifted one of Pommes Frites’ lips in order to begin work, Monsieur Pamplemousse discovered that it was not only very large and wet, it also had a most peculiar taste: an amalgam of flavours, some relatively fresh, others obviously deeply ingrained. The overall effect was, to say the least, uninviting, and with a view to tempering necessity with expediency, coupled with a desire to get the whole thing over as quickly as possible, he blew rather harder than he’d intended.

The result was electrifying. Pommes Frites leapt to his feet and gave vent to a long-drawn-out shuddering howl.
At least, to be pedantic and strictly for the record, he opened his mouth and emitted a noise which another member of the family
canidae
would have recognised at once for what it was: not so much a howl as a cry of
surprise
, pain and indignation all rolled into one. It embodied such intensity of feeling that had they been situated higher up the mountains, in the vicinity of Mont Blanc, for example, or Chamonix, it would have caused any St. Bernard who happened to be on night-duty to drop everything and come running with a keg of brandy round its neck at the ready.

Fortunately, only Monsieur Pamplemousse himself was there to hear it, and for a moment he was convinced that he had been a party to, perhaps even the cause of, the early demise of his closest and dearest friend. It was not a happy thought.

For a split second dog and master stared at one another, each busy with his own thoughts. Then Pommes Frites relaxed. To say that he wagged his tail would have been to overstate the case. He made a desultory attempt at wagging. His brain sent a half-hearted message in that direction, but it never reached its destination. Other factors intervened en route; ‘road-up’ signs proliferated,
diversions
abounded. Not to put too fine a point on it, Pommes Frites was feeling distinctly under the weather.

It was a simple case of cause and effect. The cause wouldn’t have needed a Sherlock Holmes to trace, and the effect was there for all to see – or it would have been had low clouds not been obscuring the moon.

Basically it had to do with the nature of Les Cinq Parfaits. Les Cinq Parfaits was many things to many people; the one claim it could not make was that of being the kind of restaurant where the clients made a habit of wiping their plates clean at the end of each course with large hunks of
baguette.
Bread, home-made, freshly baked, and of unimpeachable quality, was dispensed freely at the start of each meal, but sad to relate most of it remained uneaten.

Sauces, on the whole, were not mopped up. They were either consumed with the aid of the appropriate implement
or they were left on the plate, along with much of the food they had been intended to complement. The reason was not because the clientèle were any more polite or
well-mannered
than in lesser establishments; it was simply that a great many of them were past their best as trenchermen. Age had taken its toll, digestive systems ruined by
overwork
rendered them incapable of taking full advantage of the pleasures they were now well able to afford, whilst in the case of the wives, sweethearts or mistresses
accompanying
them, they were swayed by vanity and the need to keep a watchful eye on waistlines.

The net result was that each day large quantities of rich food which had taken a great deal of time and energy and manpower to grow and to harvest, to transport and then to prepare for the table, found their way back to the kitchens untouched by knife and fork. Once there, such were the standards set by Monsieur Albert Parfait, it was immediately and unceremoniously consigned to a row of waiting swill-bins for onward delivery next day to a local pig farm whose residents had no such problems.

It was one such bin, overflowing with riches, that Pommes Frites, taste-buds inflamed through watching his master’s antics on the other side of the dining-room window, his pride seriously injured, his stomach echoing like a drum, stumbled across in his wanderings earlier that evening. It had proved to be a veritable cornucopia of a swill-bin.

Pommes Frites had lost no time in getting down to serious work. The niceties of menu-planning went by the board, the ambience of his surroundings passed unnoticed. Rules for following fish by meat rather than vice versa were disregarded. There was no dilly-dallying between courses. International preferences concerning the priority of cheese over sweet were solved by the simple expedient of eating both together. Coffee was taken ad hoc.

Alphabetically, but otherwise in no particular order, he consumed in a remarkably short space of time:
Andouillette
;
Boeuf
prepared in a variety of ways;
Boudins,
black and white;
Caviar
(white, from the roe of the albino sturgeon);
Coq
au
Vin
and
Coquilles
St.
Jacques
followed by
Crêpes 
Suzettes
.
D’Agneau
sur
le
grill
rapidly became
d’Agneau
dans
le
Pommes
Frites,
along with
Ecrevisse;
Estouffade
(cooked in the local manner with red wine, bacon and mushrooms);
Foie
gras;
Fraises;
Fromages
too numerous to list;
Glaces
in profusion;
Gratinées;
Homard
– both lukewarm and cold;
Ile
flottante;
Jambon;
Journaux;
Knackwurst
(ordered in advance by a guest from Alsace who was celebrating his birthday not wisely but too well);
Lapereau;
Loup
en
croûte;
Mousse
au
chocolat;
Noisette
de
Chevreuil
served with
morilles;
Oeufs
from many different sources;
Omble;
Pâté;
Pâtisseries;
pieces of plastic;
Pigeonneau;
Pommes;
Poulet;
Quenelles
Nantua;
Queues
d’écrevisses;
Ris
de
veau;
Rouget;
Salade
which had once been green but was now a greyish brown;
Sorbets
in a
panaché
to end all
panachés
;
T
ruffes
;
Truite
;
Ursuline
;
Vacherin
;
Veau
Waffelpasteta
(another indulgence of the guest from Alsace, most of which he’d left for fear of not living to celebrate another birthday);
Xavier
soup;
Yaourt
and
Zébrine.

He was now suffering the after-effects of this gargantuan meal; a meal which would have caused even the great Escoffier, accustomed as he must have been to preparing vast banquets for Kings and Queens and Princes the world over, to turn in his grave and reach for the indigestion tablets.

Presented with a break-down of the contents of Pommes Frites’ stomach, no self-respecting vet would have given overmuch for his chances of surviving the night, let alone of making an early recovery; a medical opinion with which the patient would have wholeheartedly concurred.

Pommes Frites couldn’t remember ever having felt quite so full before, or so under par. And it was at that moment in time that Monsieur Pamplemousse, concerned by the expression of unrelieved woe on his friend’s face, unwittingly administered the unkindest cut of all. Feeling inside his jacket pocket, he produced what in normal
circumstances
would have been the panacea for all ills, and held the object to Pommes Frites’ nose.

The effect was as devastating and immediate as had been his attempt a few moments earlier to administer the kiss of life.

Pommes Frites stared at the bone-shaped biscuit as if he could hardly believe his eyes and then, having lifted up his head and given voice to a howl which was, if possible, even more desolate than the first, tottered round in a barely completed half-circle, gazed up at his master with a look of mute despair, and then collapsed in an untidy heap on the
journal
at his feet.

Unaware of the cause of this strange behaviour, Monsieur Pamplemousse sprang into action. Clearly he couldn’t leave Pommes Frites where he was. Equally clearly, Pommes Frites was in no condition to do anything about the matter himself, even if he’d wanted to.

He looked round desperately but unavailingly for help. Room service at Les Cinq Parfaits was impeccable. Pool service could not be faulted. Call for a Kir Royale and it was on the table by your side, ice-cold and with an assortment of nuts and other goodies, before you had time to call for the sunshade to be adjusted. He had a feeling though that wood service, in particular the discreet removal of a large Bloodhound to a place of comfort, might be stretching things a little too far. Bell-pushes for summoning aid were conspicuous by their absence from nearby trees.

It was then that he remembered the wheelbarrow. He’d seen it soon after his visit to Jean-Claude’s room. Large, pneumatically tyred, propped against a wall alongside a bale of hay; it would be ideal.

Fetching it took only a minute or two; getting Pommes Frites inside a great deal longer. Pommes Frites was not in one of his most co-operative moods. In fact, quite the reverse. A disinterested spectator, one with no particular axe to grind, could have been forgiven had he or she jumped to the conclusion that Pommes Frites was positively against the whole operation. Not that he showed any active sign of resistance. It was simply that he did nothing to help. Even the vast amount he had eaten that evening didn’t account for the fact that he suddenly felt twice his usual fifty kilograms. Limbs which normally propelled him with ease about his daily rounds became weak and useless, unable to support his weight. His head, normally erect and with a certain nobility about it, lolled from side to side,
eyes rolling in their sockets, tongue hanging loose, as if he was suffering from some dreadful and incurable mental affliction.

Three times Monsieur Pamplemousse nearly succeeded in his task, and three times when he tried to turn the barrow upright Pommes Frites rolled out the other side, landing heavily on the ground with his paws in the air.

Fourth time lucky, conscious that sartorially speaking he was far from looking his best, Monsieur Pamplemousse set off at long last on the journey back to his room. As he turned a corner leading to the final stretch he heard voices and paused. Doubling back on himself he tried another route which took him past the dining-room again. Adopting a shambling, crab-like movement so that he could keep his back towards the windows, he swallowed his pride and touched the brim of his hat in a suitable servile acknowledgement of the interest his activities were arousing on the other side of the glass before hurrying past as fast as his load would permit.

Reaching the door to his room he uncovered yet another deficiency of Les Cinq Parfaits. In
Le
Guide
, alongside an impressive list of symbols showing the various facilities which ranged from pool-side telephones to coin-operated vibro-mattresses (on request), was one which denoted easy access for those who had the misfortune to be confined to a wheelchair. After struggling for several minutes to enter his room, Monsieur Pamplemousse came to the conclusion that any further projects designed to attract canine customers who wished to arrive in a wheelbarrow would have to remain in the pending tray for a while. Structural alterations of a major kind would be needed; doorways would have to be widened, L-shaped corridors straightened out.

His mission completed, Pommes Frites finally and safely parked in the middle of the room, Monsieur Pamplemousse collapsed on to his bed and lay where he’d fallen for some minutes while he contemplated the air-conditioning inlet above his head. At length, duty calling, he reached for the local telephone directory.

There were three
vétérinaires
listed. The first failed to
answer. The second announced by means of a recorded message that he was on holiday. The third call produced in the fullness of time the sleepy voice of someone who didn’t sound best pleased at being woken.

Monsieur Pamplemousse looked at his watch. He had totally lost all track of time. The hands showed a little after eleven o’clock.

He listened as patiently as possible while he was given a run-down of the other’s problems, followed by a list of priorities in which attending to ailing and unregistered dogs after six o’clock in the evening appeared to enjoy low priority against ministering to any local cows who happened to have acquired inflammation of the udders.

‘
Monsieur
,’ he said at last. ‘I do know about the
vaches
d’abondance.
I realise their importance to the local economy. I know that they are gentle, brown and white creatures who enrich our lives immeasurably. I have heard the sound of the bells they wear around their necks. They have often kept me awake at night when I have been staying in the mountains. I know that without them France, indeed the whole world, would be deprived of some of its finest cheeses; the
Gruyères
of
Comté
and
Beaufort
,
Emmental,
the
Tommes
de
Savoie,
Reblochon
…