Monsieur Pamplemousse Aloft by Michael Bond Read Free Book Online

certainly. But fast, no. The cleaning cycle following each operation alone took exactly forty seconds, so there was no question of one out, the next one in.
    And therein lay the nub of the matter. His encounter with Mr. Pickering had been brief and to the point; it had certainly taken not longer than a minute or so. And yet he’d been barely halfway across the road when the door to the
Sanisette
slid open and out came a nun. Moreover, she was carrying a small brown valise.
    Clearly, the undercurrents in St. Augustin were not restricted to rocking the boats in the port. Some were hard at work on land as well.

3
T RUFFLE T ROUBLE
    Removing a box bearing a large red cross from the leather case provided by
Le Guide
as standard issue to all its Inspectors, Monsieur Pamplemousse opened it and began looking for a tube of antiseptic ointment and a plaster. For the latter he needed one which was both generous in its measurements and in its powers of adhesion, for Pommes Frites’ nose was, to say the least, not only large but usually very wet, and he wouldn’t be at all happy if the plaster fell off into his breakfast. Not that the thought of breakfast at the Ty Coz was uppermost in either of their minds at that moment. If their experience of the previous evening was anything to go by, their fast would best be broken elsewhere.
    In designing the original case, which had changed very little in its basic concept over the years, the founder of
Le Guide,
Monsieur Hippolyte Duval – a perfectionist in all that he did – had sought to provide for any emergency likely to be encountered by members of his staff whilst in the field.
    Monsieur Pamplemousse couldn’t help but reflect as he discarded first one and then another plaster as being either too small or the wrong shape, that Monsieur Duval had probably never envisaged the need to come to the rescue of a bloodhound who had suffered injury to his proboscis from the business end of a ball-point pen, or indeed any sort of pen –given the fact that the ball-point wasn’t invented until long after the Founder had passed on.
    Monsieur Pamplemousse felt terrible. He would far sooner have speared his own nose than wound Pommes Frites’ in the way that he had. Had he been brought up in court by an animal protection society, his excuse would have sounded very lame indeed. His head bowed in shame.
    The previous evening had been an unrelieved disaster. The only good thing that had happened was the retrieval of his car, looking none the worse for its adventure. One more tribute to a design which in many respects was hard to fault.
    The food in the hotel restaurant had turned out to be unbelievably bad. How the other diners could get through their meal, some with every appearance of enjoyment, was beyond him. Not even several measures of a particularly vicious Calvados had entirely taken away the salty taste. Since the bottle had been without a label he strongly suspected the chef must make it himself during the long winter evenings.
    In the end he and Pommes Frites had retired to bed early armed with a large supply of Evian, the seals of the bottles unbroken to make sure the contents hadn’t been tampered with. After a long drive he had hoped they might both get a good night’s sleep. But hunger proved to be a poor bedfellow. Apart from which he had many things on his mind.
    Mr. Pickering’s strange behaviour kept him occupied for quite a while; he couldn’t for the life of him think what he might have said or done to cause his old friend to act the way he had. The goings-on in the
Sanisette
were something else again. Coupled with the behaviour of the nuns in the car earlier in the day, he began to wonder whether he wasn’t witnessing the total decline of the Catholic Church; the Pope must be a very worried
homme.
Thinking about the girl who had given him a lift only added to his restlessness – he couldn’t get the sudden change in her behaviour out of his mind; one moment so cool and