Monsieur Pamplemousse on Probation by Michael Bond

Author:Michael Bond [Michael Bond]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780749013950
Publisher: Allison & Busby
Published: 2013-09-10T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIX

Monsieur Pamplemousse stayed where he was long after the girl had gone on her way. Sleep was out of the question. His mind was racing in a dozen different directions all at once.

Pommes Frites clearly felt the same way. Having seen her safely back to the front of the hotel, he spent the first few minutes pacing to and fro, breaking off every now and then to peer out of the window as though looking for something, or someone. Perhaps he was hoping she would return.

In the end, to put him out of his misery and because, although he wouldn’t have admitted the fact to anyone else, he was beginning to feel slightly vulnerable himself, Monsieur Pamplemousse reached for the control button and closed the shutter. As he did so his eyes fell on the pager. It was lying on the sofa where he had left it; a black, plastic object no bigger than a match box, barely 3cm x 2.2cm and perhaps another centimetre thick.

What was the world coming to? Nuns with infrared cameras. Hotel staff with noiseless electronic pagers. Mobile phones were bad enough, but to be constantly at someone’s beck and call simply by virtue of being at the receiving end of a vibrator activated by some distant person pressing a button must be purgatory at times. At least with a mobile phone it was possible to respond verbally if need be, or even hang up, or pretend you were stuck in a tunnel. It was no wonder most of the waiters were in a constant state of nervous tension. It also accounted for Shinko’s habit of suddenly taking flight for no apparent reason. At certain times of the day, when guests were arriving or departing, she must be in a constant state of flux.

The case still felt warm to the touch and the smell of Jasmine was ever present. For some reason it must have remained jammed in the on position. Cupping it in his hand he could feel a not unpleasant tickling sensation. Perhaps it had overheated. It would be hardly surprising considering where he’d found it. He gave the device a smart tap on the side of the table and it stopped immediately.

He’d eventually located it taped to Claude’s body just inside the top of her culottes; or rather, to be pedantic, where the top of her culottes would have been had she been wearing any, which patently she wasn’t.

To give her the benefit of the doubt she had probably removed them because of the heat of the kitchen, but it was yet another reason, if one were needed, why he felt she should stick to catering as a career. Such dedication deserved to be rewarded and she was definitely not cut out for life in a nunnery.

For no good reason other than the association of ideas, he recalled Doucette once telling him that the pupils at her Catholic girls’ school had been made to keep their shoes so highly polished the Mother

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