Monsieur Pamplemousse and the Militant Midwives (16 page)

Seeing dozens of grey riot police vans parked on the far side of the Place de l’Alma, he turned off to his right down the rue Jean Goujans.

If Beardmore really was heading for Montmartre on a number 80 bus, he wouldn’t have a hope in hell of catching up with it. Even allowing for stops
en route,
buses had the advantage of special lanes for much of the way and the drivers made full use of them.

One passed him at speed soon after he rejoined its route in the avenue Montaigne; another overtook him as he neared the Gare St Lazare, both drivers clearly making up for lost time. By the time he
breasted the hill in the rue Caulaincourt and turned up the avenue Junot on the home stretch he was at his wits’ end.

‘Now you know how I feel when you disappear for hours on end and I have no idea whether you are alive or dead,’ said Doucette. ‘It’s worse now than it was when you were with the
Sûreté
. You seem to attract trouble, Aristide. Sometimes I wonder why I married you.’

‘Listen, Couscous,’ said Monsieur Pamplemousse. ‘It was for your own good that I didn’t say anything before. You would most certainly have been even more worried had I done so.’

With that he gave Doucette a condensed version of everything that had happened since the evening of the storm, until the moment when she had told him of the arrival of the chocolates.

‘Who knows what they contain?’ he said.

‘At least I know where they came from,’ said Doucette.

‘What!’ Monsieur Pamplemousse stared at her.

‘Pommes Frites showed me,’ said Doucette. ‘That’s why I was out when you phoned just now. You really should listen to him more often, instead of playing around with all those toys and gadgets. They don’t tell you anything someone with a
soupçon
of common sense wouldn’t be able to guess anyway.

‘After I phoned you I came back in here and Pommes Frites was going frantic. It wasn’t just the attack of sneezing, he was jumping up and down, trying to tell me something. At first I thought he needed a
pipi
after being stuck in that awful laundry basket, but as soon as we got outside he set off towards Abbesses, literally dragging me behind him. We ended up at that little boutique I was telling you about. The madame who owns it is a Maître Chocolatier and she has a diploma from the Club des Croqueurs des Chocolat of France.

‘She was only too willing to talk. According to her she was commissioned by an American millionaire to supply one hundred small boxes of chocolates to give to his friends on his sixtieth anniversary. Apparently such orders aren’t unusual in the trade, and having not long been open she couldn’t afford to turn it down, especially as he supplied the boxes and the packing.

‘She was in a terrible state. She’d heard the announcement on the radio about there being something wrong with them and she’s terrified about possible repercussions. The integrity of her business is at stake. Being a small artisan, she can’t afford that kind of publicity. It takes years to establish a reputation and you can lose it overnight.’

Monsieur Pamplemousse listened in silence. His mind went back to the night it had all begun. He had assumed Gaston had been coming to see him. Now
it looked more likely that he had been following a trail which had led him to the shop. He might even have tried to call in on them on the way back and found they were out. He would never know. It was a sobering thought. It also explained why Pommes Frites had become a target. Claye must have homed in on his immediate reaction to the chocolates and taken action accordingly.

‘First things first, Couscous,’ he said. Pulling himself together he looked around the room. ‘Where are they? I must send them off to be analysed straight away.’

‘In the refrigerator,’ said Doucette. ‘I couldn’t stand Pommes Frites’ sneezes a moment longer.’

While she was gone Monsieur Pamplemousse’s mobile rang again.

‘You are not going to believe this,’ said Bonnard.

‘Try me.’

‘He’s been arrested for speeding!’

‘On a Segway. Is that possible?’

‘I didn’t tell you,’ said Bonnard, ‘but they come with a selection of keys. Black, yellow and red. Black and yellow are for the lower speeds. The red one takes you up to twenty kilometres an hour. That’s above the legal limit on the pavement. I didn’t mention it because we don’t use them over here for that very reason. Being American he probably knew about their existence and managed to palm one before he left.

‘I thought he was making unusually good progress.’

‘Even so,’ said Monsieur Pamplemousse, ‘surely a warning would have been sufficient?’

‘Not if you’re a policeman and the person you stop draws a gun on you,’ said Bonnard.

Monsieur Pamplemousse was late arriving at a meeting convened several days later in the Director’s office. Having tendered his apologies, he took stock of the others.

Monsieur Leclercq was there, as was only to be expected, along with Mr Pickering and Véronique. Also present, rather to his surprise, was Elsie, looking bronzed and fit, along with a tall, elegant figure standing with his back to the light, exuding the kind of diplomatic charm suggestive of time well spent at
les Grands Corps de l’Etat
in his younger days.

They were all dressed for the occasion, and he wished now he’d given Pommes Frites a bath before leaving home – he was still looking bedraggled after his journey in the laundry basket, but it had been at the Director’s insistence that he brought him along too.

‘Firstly,’ said the visitor, ‘I am instructed to convey congratulations all round. In doing so I must point out that this meeting is strictly
sub judice
and is not to be discussed outside these four walls, now, or at any time in the future. As far as the outside
world is concerned the events you were a party to never took place.’

He turned to Elsie. ‘I shall be most grateful if you would pay my respects to your partner, along with our deep appreciation for the part he played, not only in the run up to the whole affair, but in regard to the vital information he subsequently passed on, which undoubtedly helped bring it to a happy conclusion.’

‘I still don’t understand how you came to be involved,’ said Monsieur Leclercq.

‘Ron sent me, din ’e,’ said Elsie. ‘There’s not much on the grapevine passes ’im by. Proper walking information service ’e is. As soon as ’e got wind of what was going on ’e sent me over to check up.

‘All it needed was a photo on the email to confirm what ’e already suspected. I don’t know the name of the one who was passing ’imself off as Mrs Beardmore, but according to Ron ’e’s as crooked as a corkscrew.’

‘We were on a state of high alert, by then,’ said the visitor. ‘There was a lot of information coming in. Almost too much.’

Monsieur Pamplemousse caught Mr Pickering’s eye.

‘Ron says ’e was born behind a roulette wheel and ’e’s been going round and round ever since.’

‘He was correct in many respects,’ agreed the visitor. ‘We have since learnt that he was born
in Las Vegas. He began his working life as an electronics engineer cum spare time drag artist at one of the big casinos in the days when the Mafia ruled the roost. Having a foot in both camps, as it were, led him in the fullness of time to a job with the FBI. Always a cross-dresser, his activities came to the attention of J. Edgar Hoover and he received favourable reports, which stood him in good stead later on when he was taken on by the CIA. Unfortunately, he turned out to be the proverbial bad apple.’

‘Like Ron said,’ remarked Elsie, ‘’E was as crooked as a corkscrew.’

‘I have no doubt that the authorities will look kindly on your partner’s contribution,’ continued their visitor, ‘and perhaps even bring about a review of his present sentence. We intend to make suitable representations.’

‘’E won’t like that,’ said Elsie. ‘’E won’t like that at all. Ron’s very ’appy where ’e is, thank you very much. Rent free and all mod cons.’

‘Perhaps,’ murmured Mr Pickering, ‘he could have his sentence extended.’

If the speaker was at all fazed by the interruptions, he didn’t show it. He was already commending Véronique on the part she had played.

‘And now,
Mesdemoiselles
…’ an elegant bow indicated their presence was no longer required.

The Director, still basking in the reflected glory
of those around him, rose to open the connecting door for them.

‘It has been a great pleasure, Elsie,’ he said, giving her a fond peck on both cheeks. ‘I must say you are looking extremely well.’

‘I’ve been playing boules, in I,’ said Elsie.

‘I reckon it’s something Ron could take up. It would do ’im good to get more exercise in between visiting days. Might put a bit of lead in ’is pencil.

‘You might not believe this,’ she gave Monsieur Pamplemousse a meaningful glance, ‘but I won my first ever game ’ands down and I ’aven’t looked back since.’

Having got to know Bonnard, Monsieur Pamplemousse guessed what was coming.

‘There’s this rule that says whoever is on the winning team gets their backside kissed by the losers.’

‘I always thought that was what you English call an old wives’ tale,’ said Monsieur Pamplemousse.

‘More like an old French ’usband’s, if you ask me,’ said Elsie. ‘According to the other team they’ve mislaid the dummy they’re supposed to use, so they ’ad to make do with the real thing. They’ve all been at it. They’re worse than Pommes Frites. Some days it feels like I’ve been sitting in a puddle.’

Monsieur Leclercq looked aghast at the thought. ‘You don’t mean … don’t tell me, Elsie, you have been lowering your
culottes
in public …!’

‘That’s always assuming I ’ad any on,’ said Elsie darkly. ‘You’ll ’ave to come to the Luxembourg Gardens one day and find out, won’t you. I’ve been told it’s my best bit!’

Turning to Monsieur Pamplemousse, she handed him a large brown envelope.

‘Ron asked me to give you this. He says it’s very rare, but you might like to have it to put under your pillow at night.’

With that, and a final flourish of her ‘best bit’, Elsie followed on after Véronique. Monsieur Leclercq hastily closed the door behind her.

‘A one-off,’ he said, breaking the silence.

After a suitable pause the anonymous visitor took up the conversation again.

‘You could say our quarry was handed the whole thing on a plate while he was working on the Al-Qaeda problem. Violence begets violence. He happened to intercept a news item on the AZF bomb threats to French Rail and the idea came to him. Forget railways; why not strike at the very underbelly of France? Once the plan had been conceived, everything began to fall into place. A coded message to our security people set the ball rolling. Through his work, he already had his contacts in the milieu over here, and following 9/11, security forces the world over have been leaning over backwards not to put a foot wrong, so he was in business on both fronts as it were.

‘His passport allowed him special privileges when he was travelling, and since very few people on this side of the Atlantic knew what Claye Beardmore looked like, posing as her was something of a master-stroke. It enabled him to throw up the idea of creating a so-called “think tank”, partly as a smokescreen, but also as a means of providing him with a valuable source of information regarding the current thinking.’

The speaker directed his attention to Monsieur Pamplemousse. ‘Thanks to Pommes Frites’ and your own quick action, a major tragedy has been averted. Out of the one hundred boxes of chocolate that were sent out, a high percentage have been intercepted. The courier firm which, in all innocence, was employed to deliver them has provided us with valuable information and we are already homing in on others involved.

‘For your information the contents of the boxes have been analysed and each chocolate had been injected with a small quantity of Ricin. As I am sure you know all too well, Ricin is one of the most deadly of poisons. It is stable and unaffected by changes in temperature. Also, it is relatively easy to obtain and there is no known antidote.

‘Once again, injecting it into chocolates was a simple idea, but a good one. They not only look innocent; the vast majority of people find them irresistible.’

Monsieur Pamplemousse thought wryly of the way he had accepted one without so much as a second’s thought. It had been a demonstration of how easy it is to succumb to temptation. All unwittingly he had provided an expert’s opinion. He also remembered the medicine chest he had seen in the bathroom; fully equipped with syringes and all that was necessary to carry out the task.

The visitor turned to Pommes Frites.

‘In normal times he would receive the highest award, the animal equivalent of a
croix de guerre
perhaps, but these are far from being normal times. Instead,’ opening a dispatch box, he withdrew a parcel, ‘we have a small present for him.’

‘I think,’ said Monsieur Pamplemousse, having seen the label on the side of the package, ‘it will be more to his liking than any medal.’

‘Finally …’ Before taking his leave, the visitor turned back to Monsieur Pamplemousse. ‘You may be interested to know that not all of the chocolates were injected with poison. One box was left untouched; the one which was sent to your home address. Make of that what you will.’

‘Perhaps he fancied you, Aristide,’ said Mr Pickering when they were alone.

‘I think it was more likely a thank you for my advice,’ said Monsieur Pamplemousse. ‘After all, I did say what an excellent product they were.’

While he was talking he opened the unsealed
envelope Elsie had given him and withdrew a faded photograph.

‘Don’t tell me …’ said Mr Pickering.

‘The genuine Mrs Beardmore,’ said Monsieur Pamplemousse, holding it up for the other to see. ‘And it is signed! She looks rather nice, although I doubt if Doucette will appreciate my having her picture under my pillow. I am happy to say she is certainly nothing like her understudy.’

‘I can’t picture him drawing a gun like he did,’ said Mr Pickering. ‘Surely he could have talked his way out of trouble and got away with a warning?’