The French Confection Read online

  CONTENTS

  1 The French for Murder

  2 Le Chat Gris

  3 Down and Out

  4 Paris by Night

  5 The Mad American

  6 The White Cliffs

  THE FRENCH FOR MURDER

  Everybody loves Paris. There’s an old guy who even wrote a song about it. “I love Paris in the springtime…”, that’s how it goes. Well, all I can say is, he obviously never went there with my big brother, Tim. I did – and it almost killed me.

  It all started with a strawberry yoghurt.

  It was a French strawberry yoghurt, of course, and it was all we had in the fridge for breakfast. Tim and I tossed a coin to decide who’d get the first mouthful. Then we tossed the coin to see who’d keep the coin. Tim won both times. So there I was sitting at the breakfast table chewing my nails, which was all I had to chew, when Tim suddenly let out a great gurgle and started waving his spoon in the air like he was trying to swat a fly.

  “What is it, Tim?” I asked. “Don’t tell me! You’ve found a strawberry!”

  “No, Nick! Look…!”

  He was holding up the silver foil that he’d just torn off the yoghurt carton and looking at it, and now I understood. The company that made the yoghurt was having one of those promotions. You’ve probably seen them on chocolate bars or crisps or Coke cans. These days you can’t even open a can of beans without finding out if you’ve won a car or a holiday in Mexico or a cheque for a thousand pounds. Personally, I’m just grateful if I actually find some beans. Anyway, the yoghurt people were offering a whole range of prizes and there it was, written on the underside of the foil.

  Congratulations from Bestlé Fruit Yoghurts! You have just won a weekend for two in Paris! Just telephone the number printed on the carton for further details and … Bon Voyage!

  “I’ve won, Nick!” Tim gasped. “A weekend for two…!” He stopped and bit his thumb. “Who shall I take?” he muttered.

  “Oh thanks a lot, Tim,” I said. “It was me who bought the yoghurt.”

  “But it was my money.”

  “If it hadn’t been for me, you’d have spent it on a choc-ice.”

  Tim scowled. “But Paris, Nick! It’s the most romantic city in Europe. I want to take my girlfriend.”

  “Tim,” I reminded him. “You haven’t got a girlfriend.”

  That was a bit cruel of me. The truth was, Tim hadn’t been very lucky in love. His first serious relationship had ended tragically when his girlfriend had tried to murder him. After that he’d replied to one of those advertisements in the lonely hearts column of a newspaper, but he can’t have read it properly because the girl had turned out to be a guy who spent the evening chasing him round Paddington station. His last girlfriend had been a fire eater in a local circus. He’d taken her out for a romantic, candlelit dinner but she’d completely spoiled it by eating the candles. Right now he was on his own. He sometimes said he felt like a monk – but without the haircut or the religion.

  Anyway, we argued a bit more but finally he picked up the telephone and rang the number on the yoghurt carton. There was no answer.

  “That’s because you’ve telephoned the sell-by date,” I told him. I turned the carton over. “This is the number here…”

  And that was how, three weeks later, we found ourselves standing in the forecourt at Waterloo station. Tim was carrying the tickets. I was carrying the bags. It had been more than a year since we’d been abroad – that had been to Amsterdam on the trail of the mysterious assassin known as Charon – and that time we had gone by ferry. Tim had been completely seasick even before he reached the sea. I was relieved that this time we were going by train, taking the Channel Tunnel, although with Tim, of course, you never knew.

  We took the escalator down to the international terminal. Ahead of us, the tunnel was waiting: a thirty-two mile stretch linking England and France, built at a cost of twelve billion pounds.

  “You have to admit,” Tim said. “It’s an engineering marvel.”

  “That’s just what I was thinking,” I said.

  “Yes. It’s a fantastic escalator. And so much faster than going down the stairs…”

  We had two seats next to each other right in the middle of one of the carriages. The train was pretty full and soon we were joined by two other passengers opposite us. They were both travelling alone. The first was from Texas – you could tell just from his hat. He was chewing an unlit cigar (this was a non-smoking compartment) and reading a magazine: International Oil. The other passenger was a very old lady with white hair and skin so wrinkled I was amazed it managed to stay on. I wasn’t sure if she had huge eyes or extremely powerful spectacles but every time she looked at me I thought I was about to be hit by a pair of grey and white golf balls. I looked out of the window. The platform was already empty, sweeping in a graceful curve beneath the great glass canopy. Somewhere a door slammed.

  The train left exactly on time at ten minutes past ten. There was no whistle. No announcement. I wouldn’t have known we had moved if it hadn’t been for the slight shudder – and even that was Tim, not the train. He was obviously excited.

  About an hour later there was an announcement on the intercom and we dipped into the tunnel carved out underneath the sea. That was a non-event too. A car-park, a sign advertising hamburgers, a white cement wall and suddenly the outside world disappeared to be replaced by rushing blackness. So this was the engineering miracle of the last century? As far as Eurostar was concerned, it was just a hole in the ground.

  Tim had been ready with his camera and now he drew back, disappointed. “Is this it?” he demanded.

  I looked up from my book. “What were you expecting, Tim?” I asked.

  “I thought this train went under water!” Tim sighed. “I wanted to take some pictures of the fish!”

  The other passengers had heard this and somehow it broke the silence. The old lady had been knitting what looked like a multicoloured sack but now she looked up. “I love taking the train,” she announced, and for the first time I realized that she was French. Her accent was so thick you could have wrapped yourself in it to keep warm.

  “It sure is one hell of a thing,” the Texan agreed. “London to Paris in three and a half hours. Great for business.”

  The Texan held up his magazine. “I’m in oil. Jed Mathis is the name.”

  “Why do you call your oil Jed Mathis?” Tim asked.

  “I’m sorry?” Jed looked confused. He turned to the old lady. “Are you visiting your grandchildren in Paris?” he asked.

  “Non!” the lady replied.

  Tim dug into his pocket and pulled out a French dictionary. While he was looking up the word, she continued in English.

  “I have a little cake shop in Paris. Erica Nice. That’s my name. Please, you must try some of my almond slices.” And before anyone could stop her, she’d pulled out a bag of cakes which she offered to us all.

  We were still hurtling through the darkness. Tim put away his dictionary and helped himself. At the same time, a steward approached us, pushing one of those trolleys piled up with sandwiches and coffee. He was a thin, pale man with a drooping moustache and slightly sunken eyes. The name on his badge was Marc Chabrol. I remember thinking even then that he looked nervous. A nervous traveller, I thought. But then, why would a nervous traveller work on a train?

  Jed produced a wallet full of dollars and offered to buy us all coffee. A free breakfast and we hadn’t even arrived. Things were definitely looking up.

  “So what do you do?” Erica Nice asked, turning to Tim.

  Tim gave a crooked smile. It was meant to make him look smart but in fact he just looked as though he had toothache. “I’m a private detective,” he said.

>   The steward dropped one of the coffee cups. Fortunately, he hadn’t added the water yet. Coffee granules showered over the KitKats.

  “A private detective?” Erica trilled. “How very unusual!”

  “Are you going to Paris on business?” the Texan asked.

  Now of course the answer was “no”. We were on holiday. Tim hadn’t had any business for several weeks and even then he had only been hired to find a missing dog. In fact he had spent three days at Battersea Dogs’ Home where he had been bitten three times – twice by dogs. The trouble was, though, he was never going to admit this. He liked to think of himself as a man of mystery. So now he winked and leaned forward. “Just between you and me,” he drawled, “I’m on a case.” Yes. A nutcase, I thought. But he went on. “I’ve been hired by Interplop.”

  “You mean Interpol,” the Texan said.

  “The International Police,” Tim agreed. “It’s a top-secret case. It’s so secret, they don’t even know about it at the top. In other words…” He gestured with his almond slice, spraying Jed with crumbs, “…a case for Tim Diamond.”

  The steward had obviously heard all this. As he put down the first cup of coffee, his hands were shaking so much that the liquid spilled over the table. His face had been pale to begin with. Now it had no colour at all. Even his moustache seemed to have faded.

  “Where are you staying in Paris?” the old lady asked.

  “It’s a hotel called The Fat Greek,” Tim said.

  “Le Chat Gris,” I corrected him. It was French for “grey cat” and this was the name of the hotel where Bestlé Yoghurts had booked us in for three nights.

  The name seemed to have an electric effect on the steward. I’d been watching him out of the corner of my eye and actually saw him step backwards, colliding with the trolley. The bottles and cans shook. Two packets of gingerbread biscuits rocketed onto the floor. The man was terrified. But why?

  “Paris is so beautiful in the spring,” the old lady said. She’d obviously seen the effect that Tim was having on the steward and perhaps she was trying to change the subject before the poor man had a heart attack. “You must make sure you take a stroll on the Champs Elysées … if you have the time.”

  “How much do I owe you for the coffee?” the American asked.

  “Thirty francs, monsieur…” The steward reached down and picked up the biscuits. The way he took the money and moved off, he could have been trying to get to Paris ahead of the train. I guessed he wanted to get away from us as fast as he could. And I was right. He didn’t even stop to offer anyone else in the carriage a coffee. He simply disappeared. Later, when I went to the loo, I saw the trolley standing on its own in the passageway.

  Twenty minutes after we’d entered the tunnel, the train burst out again. There was nothing to show that we’d left one country and entered another. The French cows grazing in the fields looked just the same as the English ones on the other side. An official came past, looking at passports. Erica Nice looked at Tim as if puzzled in some way and went back to her knitting. Jed returned to his magazine. We didn’t speak for the rest of the journey.

  We arrived at the Gare du Nord about an hour later. As everyone struggled with their luggage, Tim gazed at the name. “When do we arrive in Paris?” he asked.

  “Tim, this is Paris,” I told him. “The Gare du Nord means north station. There are lots of stations in the city.”

  “I hope you have a lovely time,” Erica Nice said. She had an old carpet-bag. It was big enough to hold a carpet – and maybe that was what she had been knitting. She winked at Tim. “Good luck with the case, mon ami!”

  Meanwhile, the Texan had grabbed a leather briefcase. He nodded at us briefly and joined the queue for the exit. Tim and I retrieved our two bags and a few moments later we were standing on the platform, wondering which way to go.

  “We’d better find the Metro,” I said. Bestlé had given us some spending money for the weekend but I didn’t think it would be enough for us to travel everywhere by taxi.

  Tim shook his head. “Forget the metro, Nick,” he said. “Let’s take the tube.”

  I didn’t even bother to argue. I knew a little French – I’d been learning it from a little Frenchman who taught at our school – and I knew, for example, that Metro was the French word for tube train. On the other hand, I didn’t know the French for idiot, which was the English word for Tim. I picked up the bags and prepared to follow him when suddenly we found ourselves interrupted.

  It was Marc Chabrol. The French steward had reappeared and was standing in front of us, blocking our way. He was terrified. I could see it in his bulging eyes, the sweat on his cheeks, the yellow and black bow tie which had climbed halfway up his neck.

  “I have to talk to you, Monsieur,” he rasped. He was speaking in English, the words as uncomfortable in his mouth as somebody else’s false teeth. “Tonight. At eleven o’clock. There is a café in the sixth arrondisement. It is called La Palette…”

  “That’s very nice of you,” Tim said. He seemed to think that Chabrol was inviting us out for a drink.

  “Beware of the mad American!” The steward whispered the words as if he were too afraid to speak them aloud. “The mad American…!”

  He was about to add something but then his face changed again. He seemed to freeze as if his worst nightmare had just come true. I glanced left and right but if there was someone he had recognized in the crowd, I didn’t see them. “Oh mon Dieu!” he whispered. He seized Tim’s hand and pressed something into the palm. Then he turned and staggered away.

  Tim opened his hand. He was holding a small blue envelope with a gold star printed on the side. I recognized it at once. It was a sachet of sugar from the train. “What was all that about?” Tim asked.

  I took the sugar and examined it. I thought he might have written something on it – a telephone number or something. But it was just a little bag of sugar. I slipped it into my back pocket. “I don’t know…” I said. And I didn’t. Why should the steward have left us with a spoonful of sugar? Why did he want to meet us later that night? What was going on?

  “Funny people, the French,” Tim said.

  Ten minutes later, we were still at the Gare du Nord. The money that Bestlé had given us was in English pounds and pence. We needed euros and that meant queuing up at the Bureau de Change. The queue was a long one and it seemed to be moving at a rate of one euro per hour.

  We had just reached the window when we heard the scream.

  It was like no sound I had ever heard, thin and high and horribly final. The station was huge and noisy but the scream cut through the crowd like a scalpel. Everybody stopped and turned to see where it had come from. Even Tim heard it. “Oh dear,” he said. “It sounds like someone has stepped on a cat.”

  Tim changed thirty pounds, and taking the money we moved in the direction of the Metro. Already a police car had arrived and several uniformed gendarmes were hurrying towards the trains. I strained to hear what the crowd was saying. They were speaking French, of course. That didn’t make it any easier.

  “What’s happened?”

  “It’s terrible. Somebody has fallen under a train.”

  “It was a steward. He was on the train from London. He fell off a platform.”

  “Is he hurt?”

  “He’s dead. Crushed by a train.”

  I heard all of it. I understood some of it. I didn’t like any of it. A steward? Off the London train? Somehow I didn’t need to ask his name.

  “Tim,” I asked. “What’s the French for murder?”

  Tim shrugged. “Why do you want to know?”

  “I don’t know.” I stepped onto the escalator and allowed it to carry me down. “I’ve just got a feeling it’s something we’re going to need.”

  LE CHAT GRIS

  Le Chat Gris was in the Latin quarter, a dark, busy area on the south side of the River Seine. Here the streets were full of students and the smell of cheap food. It was a small, narrow building, wedged bet
ween an art gallery and a café. A metal cat, more rusty than grey, hung over the main entrance and there were brightly coloured flowers in the front windows. On closer inspection they turned out to be made of plastic.

  The reception area was so small that if you went in too quickly you’d be out the other side. There was a receptionist standing behind the desk which was just as well as there wasn’t enough room for a chair. He was an old man, at least sixty, with a crumpled face and something terribly wrong with his eyes. When he looked at our passports he had to hold them up beside his ear. He took our names, then sent us to a room on the fifth floor. Fortunately there was a lift but it wasn’t much bigger than a telephone box. Tim and I stood shoulder to shoulder with our cases as it creaked and trembled slowly up. Next time, I decided, I’d take the stairs.

  The truth was that Bestlé hadn’t been too generous with the accommodation. Our room was built into the roof with wooden beams that sloped down at strange angles. It made me think of the Hunchback of Notre Dame. You needed a hunched back to avoid hitting your head on the ceiling. There were two beds, a single window with a view over the other rooftops, a chest of drawers and a bathroom too small to take a bath.

  “Which bed do you want?” I asked.

  “This one!” Tim threw himself onto the bed next to the window. There was a loud “ping” as several of the springs snapped. I sat down, more carefully, on the other bed. It felt like the duvet wasn’t just filled with goose feathers, but they’d also left in half the goose.

  We dumped our luggage and went out. This was, after all, Thursday morning and we only had until Sunday afternoon. Back in the reception area, the receptionist was talking to a new arrival. This was a square-shouldered man with narrow eyes and black, slicked-back hair. He was wearing an expensive, charcoal grey suit. Both of them stopped when they saw us. I dropped the key with a clunk.

  “Merci,” I said.

  Neither of the men said anything. Maybe it was my accent.

  There was a mirror next to the front door and but for that I wouldn’t have noticed what happened next. But as Tim and I made our way out, the man in the grey suit reached out and took my key, turning it round so that he could read the number. He was interested in us. That was for sure. His eyes, empty of emotion, were still scrutinizing us as the door swung shut and we found ourselves in the street.