Free Monsieur Pamplemousse and the French Solution by Michael Bond Page B

he still hadn’t answered his wife’s question, he helped himself to a second portion while trying to condense the story into as few words as possible.
    Doucette listened in silence until he reached the point where Monsieur Leclercq delivered his bombshell regarding Pommes Frites.
    She gazed across the table at her husband.
    ‘But can he do that? Surely there are laws …’
    ‘Pommes Frites is not a member of staff,’ said Monsieur Pamplemousse simply. ‘He has no rights.’
    ‘But that is terrible, Aristide. You cannot let it happen.’
    ‘You see my dilemma, Couscous,’ said Monsieur Pamplemousse. ‘And to give the Director his due, I can see his side of the argument. That being the case, I have no alternative but to resign.
    ‘Monsieur Leclercq is paranoid about his work. To him it is the beginning and end of everything. The word “failure” has no place in his vocabulary. Were Le Guide to fail, the disgrace would kill him.’
    ‘But surely,’ said Doucette, ‘things cannot be as bad as all that. Most businesses have their ups and downs. People have short memories. Given time, it will all blow over …’
    ‘You don’t know the half of it, Couscous,’ said Monsieur Pamplemousse sombrely. ‘For whateverreason, someone has it in for Le Guide . Feelings are running high within the company. So much so, cars are being daubed with graffiti. Such a thing would have been unheard of a few weeks ago.’
    ‘It seems to me there are a great many sad people in this world who are out to destroy things merely for the sake of it,’ said Doucette. ‘ Les tagueurs cannot see anything beautiful without wishing to cover it with spray paint, just as there are others who can’t bear to see something that is successful.’
    ‘It is a worldwide problem,’ said Monsieur Pamplemousse. ‘Not made any easier because generally speaking the perpetrators are often hard to catch.
    ‘In Grande Bretagne they have a theory that many of those who indulge in graffiti take pride in their work and want others to admire it, so whenever possible they erase it as quickly as possible, hoping that in the end they will give up.
    ‘In France, we agree with the theory, but feel perhaps the perpetrators should be as it were, privatised, and given a place where they can display their talents to the public in a more civilised fashion; hence the recent exhibition in Paris with a top prize of €1,500.
    ‘In America, science has been brought to bear on the problem. They have invented a device called the Tagger Trap. Strategically placed, it is activated by the fumes from spray cans which triggers off an alarm in the nearest police station.
    ‘But these are relatively minor things. When it comes to big business, especially with an organisation like Le Guide , where accuracy is paramount, the problem is entirely different. Monsieur Leclercq is right. It takes years to build up a reputation, but mud sticks and it can be destroyed overnight.’
    He speared another prawn.
    ‘In many ways Le Guide is not unlike the recipe for this dish; it is the sum of its many parts. Take away one and the rot sets in.
    ‘Currently, Le Guide is suffering from the presence of a suspect crustacea. Such a thing is insidious, for it only takes a single bad one to affect the whole.
    ‘The culprit in this case is not hard to find. It comes in the shape of a so-called business efficiency expert; a person who, it seems, is able to come and go in their own time and is certainly in a position whereby they can put into effect all manner of little changes, many of which threaten to undermine the very foundations of what, until now, has been a happy and successful company.
    ‘These things take root and in no time at all begin to multiply, growing like a cancer unless they are caught and dealt with at an early stage.
    ‘It is what Monsieur Leclercq, fresh from his seminar in the United States, calls the “trickle down” effect.
    ‘Madame Grante’s refusal to come into