"Suddenly it was time to do some legwork. Playing a hunch, Pommes Frites and I took the first available train to Arras.

"The rest of that first day was a blank. No one I asked recognised the description of Leibenstrauss, and I began to wonder if we were on the wrong track after all. Then, on the evening of the second day I struck lucky again. I found a taxi driver outside the gare who remembered picking up a passenger just off the train from Paris—un grand bouboule, a real fatso. ‘Poof! I felt for my springs, Monsieur. He seemed excited. Despite the cold weather he was perspiring freely.

"‘He was what he called "travelling light"—but that was about the only light thing about him. He wanted to go to a place called . . .’ The driver mentioned a name that didn’t mean anything to me, but it turned out to be about fifteen kilometres to the north of Arras.

"Yes, he could take me, but there was nothing much open in the area. Not at that time of night. If I wanted somewhere to stay he could give me the names of a dozen better places in the city. But if that’s what I really wanted . . .

"So off we went. By that time it was dark and I had no idea where we were heading.

"Once clear of Arras we went through flat country typical of Picardy and the area around the Somme; small villages punctuating long straight roads lined with poplar trees planted by generations to provide shelter for their soldiers; lines of solid grey stone houses occasionally replacing the trees, with no shops to speak of—only an occasional bar with a few tables and chairs outside during the summer months and almost always deserted at other times of the year. The taxi driver was right. There was nothing to commend the area at all, and once again I began to wonder if we were on a wild goose chase.

"Then we surmounted a small hill—more a rise in the ground level really—the kind of vantage point that tens of thousands, millions perhaps, died attempting to capture during the First World War. Suddenly we entered a small village where the air felt unnaturally cold. There was an atmosphere of sadness, as though life there had stopped at some point and never picked up again. The driver turned up the heat and even Pommes Frites seemed affected; his hackles rose and as he gazed out of the window he let out a howl.

"We pulled up outside a building at the far end of the village. There was no sign outside to show that it was a restaurant. The driver gave me his card. If I wanted to be picked up later that evening he’d be happy to oblige. Just ring the number.

"Inside, the restaurant was tiny, barely room for twenty places at the most. I was the first to arrive and at first I thought the owner was going to refuse entry, but I slipped him a hundred francs and made some excuse about having travelled a long way, hoping he hadn’t seen that we’d arrived by taxi. He had the nerve to pocket the note, then look me straight in the eye and repeat that the restaurant was complet—that others would be arriving shortly. I must admit I saw red at that point and I threw the book at him. I didn’t spend all those years in the Sûreté for nothing.

"It went home. With a great deal of ill grace I was given a place in the ‘no-smoking’ area—a tiny table between the door to the toilet on one side and the door leading to the kitchen on the other. I must admit that suited me as it meant I could keep an eye on things, although Pommes Frites didn’t look best pleased. There wasn’t room to swing a cat under the table, let alone a bloodhound.

"It was a cold night, so I had a glass of some kind of Chinese rice liqueur while I waited. It came out of a plain bottle and it tasted like firewater. I decided not to have a second in case the owner had doctored it out of spite. I wouldn’t have put it past him. There was no sign of a menu, so I decided to sit it out.

"Anyway, it gave me a chance to get the feel of the place and to study the patron. There was something familiar about him, but it was awhile before the penny dropped . . . He was the spitting image of Peter Lorre."

"The film star?" broke in Loudier. "The one who was in all those old Mr. Moto films? Short, dark . . . oriental looking . . . a bit sinister?"

"The very same."

"So he wasn’t a local?"

Monsieur Pamplemousse shook his head. "I doubt if he was born this side of Hong Kong. He wore an amulet on a chain round his neck and he had a droopy moustache—a Viva Zapata type only much longer. It was like something from the past. Take off his old white jacket and put him in a gold robe with his arms folded and he could have been Dr. Fu Manchu incarnate. It would have seemed out of place anywhere in France, but on a cold, dark night in Flanders it was positively bizarre."

"They get everywhere," said Guilot. "Last year I came across a Chinese take-away in the hills north of Menton. Doing a roaring trade."

"There are more Chinese restaurants in Paris than there are Italian," agreed Truffert. "Even Michelin has started dishing out rosettes."

"Anyway," continued Monsieur Pamplemousse, "after the first drink he disappeared into the kitchen, so I studied the decor instead. Minimalist wasn’t the word for it. A few old puppets—the kind you find in souvenir shops all over Arras. The tables were bare. They didn’t even run to paper cloths. There was no menu.

"An old crone came in and looked at me. Then she caught Pommes Frites eyeing her from under the table and she went away again.

"Eventually I heard the sound of several cars drawing up outside, as though they had been travelling in convoy. Doors slammed and a group of a dozen men filed in. They were a mixed bunch, youngish but well-heeled. They had driven down from Paris on the A1 autoroute and clearly shared a common interest, as though members of a club. I can’t say they were overjoyed to see me. Very much the reverse.

"They pulled several tables together and settled themselves in the opposite corner of the room as far away from me as possible. For a while they talked in whispers. Then the owner produced some cider drawn from the wood and as tongues began to loosen, so the voices grew louder until it seemed as though they had almost forgotten our presence.

"It seemed they were a group of gastronomic ‘free thinkers’ who met at regular intervals. From the odd snippets I overheard—technical terms bandied about—it struck me they could have been members of the medical profession, but I may have been wrong.

"The talk was mostly of past meals. They were into exotic foods. There was general agreement that fried water beetles tasted like gorganzola cheese; dried termites clearly hadn’t met with universal approval. There was one particularly memorable meal which had consisted of Pig’s lung soup, followed by uteris sausages . . ."

"Do you mind?" said Glandier. "You’re putting me off my spring rolls!"

"Small, handwritten menus arrived for everyone but me," said Monsieur Pamplemousse, ignoring the interruption. "They were treated with great reverence. I managed to catch a glimpse of the heading on the top of one—Les Confrérie des Douze Gastronomes Exotiques, which figured.

"There was an air of mounting excitement, but after all the talk of exotic things, the first course was something of a disappointment—steak, served with a fresh green salad. There was no sign of any frites and once again I began to wonder if I was on a wild goose chase.

"My own steak arrived after the others had been served and I could tell they were waiting for my reaction."

"Which was?" It was Glandier again who chimed in.

"Just as it is an established fact that the terroir of the land affects the taste of wine, so with food products, taste has a great deal to do with what the particular product has been fed on. That and the kind of life it has led—the way it has been treated. The delicate pink of Loire salmon owes everything to the crustacea it feeds on during its long journey to the Arctic and back. Lamb raised in the salt meadows near Le Mont-St. Michel in Normandy is like no other. Ham from the Ardennes, marbled and rich, was at its best when it came from pigs roaming wild and living on a diet of acorns, chestnuts, and fruits of the forest.

"All I can say is that the steak I ate that evening was like no other meat I have ever eaten before. If pressed I would guess that it was pork rather than beef; pork that had spent much of its time marinating in the good things of life.

"Pommes Frites wouldn’t touch it. In fact as I ate he kept giving me uneasy looks, watching my every mouthful, as though he was trying to tell me something.

"Then, just as the first of the party finished his steak so his frites arrived. They were classic Pont-Neuf—one centimetre square and six to eight centimetres long.

"Each time the old crone came through from the kitchen, the door narrowly missed the back of my chair, and once it jammed open and I caught a glimpse of the patron at his stove. Interestingly, he wasn’t double-frying. He was using the Robuchon quick single-fry method . . ."

"You mean starting off cold, with the potatoes lying in the pan alongside the fat, then turning up the heat so that as the temperature rises they begin to cook?"

"Exactement. He was taking immense pains. The whole thing was like a laboratory operation. He used a series of high sided pans—woks, I suppose you would call them—so that each batch was enough for an individual serving and received exactly the same treatment. From the way he was spooning fat from a large plastic container—almost as though it were liquid gold—I would guess there was very little of it left."

"The Chinese tend to use a minimum of fat," said Truffert. "They are very health conscious."

"As I say, it was carefully measured as though it were the most precious thing in the world. To avoid breaking it down, sea salt wasn’t sprinkled on the frites until after they had been removed from the pan and drained on paper. I was the last to be served and I could feel the others passing envious glances in my direction, for by then they had all finished theirs.

"Afterwards there was a lengthy discussion, carried on in undertones. It was almost like a religious experience."

"And?"

"I would be hard put to name the variety of potato used," said Monsieur Pamplemousse. "Although from the texture I would say probably Charlotte de Bretagne."

"But how did they taste?" chorused the others impatiently.

Monsieur Pamplemousse fell silent as he sought for words to describe his experience. "They were golden brown. Once again I can only describe them as being like liquid gold. They had a crispness that comes from using animal fat, and a lightness which goes with cooking them in small batches. There was a hint of rosemary, which had probably been used to stop the cooking medium from going rancid. They were served with Dijon mustard."

"What did Pommes Frites make of them?" came a voice from the other end of the table. Monsieur Pamplemousse hesitated. "That was the odd thing. As you know, he is something of an expert. It is how he first came by his name. It was something of a joke at the time. It may have been the mustard, but he wouldn’t go near them.

"Something of his unease began to communicate itself to me. Considerably outnumbered as I was, it wouldn’t be going too far to say that, but for him, I might not be sitting here tonight. I heard a noise that sounded like the owner locking the front door and at the same time I sensed a change in the atmosphere. Luckily I had my mobile with me. First of all I rang the number the taxi driver had given me and ordered him to pick me up. Then I made a fake call, saying in a loud voice that we were about to leave and wouldn’t be very long.

"On the way back to Arras I asked the driver if he had taken his fat passenger back to la gare. The answer was in the negative. He’d sat around waiting for a call. Then in the end he’d given it up as a bad job and went to bed. Anyway, the last train back to Paris is at 21.28., some half an hour before the Director had last had word."

"If Monsieur Leibenstrauss hadn’t caught that train, what then?" asked Guilot.

"Perhaps he was given a lift back by someone?" suggested Duval. "Or maybe he found a hotel to stay in."

"My feeling," said Monsieur Pamplemousse, "is that he never went anywhere."

The others fell silent as they let their imaginations run free.

"You mean he was rendered down for his fat and you helped eat what was left?" It was Glandier, going straight to the point as usual, speaking everyone else’s thoughts.

Monsieur Pamplemousse combined a shrug with a classic comme ci, comme ça motion of his right hand. "Your guess is as good as mine. If I did, it certainly wasn’t intentional."

At that moment a silver-domed dish arrived at their table and was reverently placed across two plate warmers. The removal of the dome revealed a plate of pommes frites. If they had been cued in they couldn’t have arrived at a more apposite moment. They looked spectacularly good. The waitress allowed herself a moment of pleasure. The Golden Duck had never seen its like before, and probably never would again.

"I bet the Director was upset when he heard," said Allard, as soon as she was out of earshot.

"Not as much as Monsieur Leibenstrauss must have been," said Monsieur Pamplemousse drily, awarding himself a generous helping from the dish. "Pommes frites anyone?"

There were no takers.

"I suppose," said Bernard, to no one in particular, "working in the Paris Sûreté for any length of time must blunt your sensibilities."

"You were right about the pork," said Truffert. "Someone once told me that human flesh tastes much like that American processed ham that comes in a tin."

"I read the other day that they want to market cannibal chutney in Fiji," said Allard, trying to strike a cheerful note. "But the tourist office there thought it might give them a bad name."

Once again Monsieur Pamplemousse ignored the interruption. "Monsieur Leibenstrauss’ search for the perfect pommes frites had clearly become an obsession," he continued, "just as it had with the Confrérie des Douze Gastronomes Exotiques. It was perhaps inevitable that in time the two should come together, and it is equally possible that when they did, the writing was on the wall. Having sampled cannibalism once, and in so doing discovered the perfect cooking medium, they probably found it all too easy to rationalize, and the proprietor looked the sort of person who would do anything for money.

"One look at Leibenstrauss, his size and the fact that in all probability he would give away their secret—probably set the wheels in motion for a second time. Who knows what went on that night behind closed shutters?"

"A few days later, when I returned to the restaurant, the windows were boarded up. I suspect something about me may have said ‘police’ to the owner when I first went in, or maybe it was Pommes Frites—or even the two of us together.

"In an outhouse at the back I found traces of certain activities more applicable to the trade of master butcher, or laundress, than to the chef of a small restaurant—a large old-fashioned chopping table and alongside that an industrial-size mincing machine and a copper boiler of the kind my mother used to use on wash days.

"As for Mortimer K. Leibenstrauss, he has never been seen or heard of since."

"Hoist on his own petard," broke in Allard.

"Or cooked in his own fat?" suggested Glandier.

"So the owner could still be plying his trade elsewhere?"

Monsieur Pamplemousse nodded. Then, while the others sat quietly digesting the notion, he took one of the frites, surreptitiously amalgamated it with a Sichuan peppercorn he had discarded earlier in the meal because of its heat, then passed the result under the table.

He felt a tug. It was followed almost immediately by a loud splutter, then a mournful howl—outshining by many decibels the baying sound Pommes Frites had perfected for a performance he had once given as the Hound of the Baskervilles in a Christmas show at the Quai des Orfèvres, which at the time had brought the house down. It sent shivers through the assembled diners. A moment later, jowls still quivering with shock, Pommes Frites emerged from beneath the folds of the tablecloth and gazed reproachfully at his master through bloodshot eyes.

Monsieur Pamplemousse gave him a pat, trying to temper his action with heartfelt apologies and reassurances that it would never happen again, then glanced at his watch. It showed a few minutes after midnight. The timing was admirable.

"You are looking thoughtful, Aristide," said Bernard. "Not going already?"

"Doucette will be getting restive. She isn’t one for staying up late."

Monsieur Pamplemousse looked round the assembly. "As I said earlier, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was ‘tomorrow.’ Now it is today. Good luck to you all, and if in your travels you chance upon the perfect pommes frites, double lock your bedroom door when you retire to your room for the night."

"Thanks a heap!" said Truffert. "You know where I’m off to tomorrow . . ."

"I imagine Picardy will be the safest place in France," said Monsieur Pamplemousse, rising to his feet. "If our man has gone to ground anywhere it will be in a big city like Paris where he can get lost in the crowd. In a small village everyone is aware of everyone else’s every movements."

Excusing himself, he headed for the corridor to retrieve his coat but as soon as he had turned the corner, changed direction and made for the kitchen where the chef was waiting for him.

Monsieur Pamplemousse gave him the thumbs up sign. "Everything has gone according to plan." He reached into the pocket of his overcoat and withdrew a manila envelope. "You will find all you need in here—moustache, glue, an amulet to wear round your neck . . . Bonne chance. Now don’t forget—it is important you ask them how they enjoyed the sweet and sour pork and if the pommes frites were to their liking. I suggest you could try rubbing your hands together with invisible soap while you wish them ‘bon promenade’ and to ‘have a nice day.’"

"Oui, Monsieur Glapefruit. Then, like you tell me, I say in loud voice, ‘Les poissons de Avril’!"

"Parfait!" said Monsieur Pamplemousse. "It is what our Anglo-Saxon friends call April Fool’s Day. After that, I suggest that, as with a Chinese cracker, once you have lit the fuse you should retire immediately.

And now, if I may, I will use your back door so that we can be on our way. It was a lovely meal and I thank you, but I have a feeling Pommes Frites can’t wait to get back home to his water bowl."      

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