Monsieur Pamplemousse Hits the Headlines (11 page)

He felt a hand on his shoulder.

‘Don’t worry,’ murmured the newcomer as he ushered them out of the office. ‘They don’t all work. It’s Randy’s way of terminating a conversation. Never fails.’

He held out his hand. ‘The name’s Julian. Julian House – Head of Production. Or, perhaps I should use the past tense. I’m not sure what’s going to happen now.’

Monsieur Pamplemousse glanced back over his
shoulder
to say goodbye and immediately wished he hadn’t. Mademoiselle Katz was putting her feet up at last.

He followed the other back down the corridor. ‘Sorry to rush you,’ said Julian, ‘but it’s nearly eleven o’clock and all hell breaks loose in her office when the clocks start striking.’

He glanced down at Pommes Frites padding along behind them. ‘If you don’t mind, I think we’d better leave him somewhere safe for the time being. Dogs are strictly
verboten
in the studios. Unless he happens to be carrying a union card.’

‘How did she get to be where she is?’ asked Monsieur Pamplemousse.

‘Ramona? She arrived before my time. She does seem a bit unreal when you first meet her. If you ask me she had something on our late lamented boss. Don’t ask me what or from where, but she had something.’ 

Monsieur Pamplemousse couldn’t help feeling relieved. It meant there was some justice in the world after all.

‘Not that she isn’t good at her job,’ Julian hastened to add. ‘Randy could sell snow ploughs to the Arabian
government
if she put her mind to it. She’s O.K. really. Her breath’s worse than her bite. The trouble is she suffers from an inferiority complex, which isn’t surprising all things considered.’

Stopping by a small lift marked
PRIVÉ
, he inserted a key. ‘I’ll take you up to Claude Chavignol’s old apartment. His “retreat”. Your partner in crime will be safe there.’

As the doors slid open muted strains of the Count Basie trio playing their fast version of “Lady Be Good” emerged. Monsieur Pamplemousse stifled the protest he had been about to make. What was Basie’s famous phrase? Jazz is four beats to the bar and no cheating. He lived by that.

Unsure of which way they were going, he waited until they were inside and Julian pressed the only button. The answer was in the same direction as the music – up.

‘What will happen to the company now?’ he asked.

‘Who knows? It depends what arrangements have been made. It may need more than a smidgeon of creative accounting for a while, but that’s par for the course in this business. Knowing Claude I imagine he will have had it all tied up.

‘After you, chaps.’

As the lift came to a stop and the doors slid open, Julian stood back. Following them out, he crossed to the
windows
and drew the curtains, flooding the room with light.

Monsieur Pamplemousse registered the courtyard before taking in the room itself. Having already sampled the Chavignols’ lifestyle at their home in the 7th, he was expecting more of the same, but it was the very opposite. The walls were hung with framed theatre posters: French, 
American…there was even one from the Holborn Empire in London. They looked as though they were mostly from the immediate post-war years when Music Halls were fighting a losing battle with television.

A huge bowl of fresh flowers occupied a central position on a conference-size table. Beyond it, in a far corner of the room there was a theatrical dressing table, the mirror ringed with lights for make-up. The work surface was
dotted
with silver framed signed photographs of the great and the famous. On the wall to one side of it there was a framed reproduction of
The Conjurer
by Hieronymous Bosch.

It revealed another, more personal side to Chavignol and he wondered who in the end was the more dominant of the two, Claude or Claudette? It wouldn’t surprise him if it were the latter. More dominant, and perhaps more dangerous.

‘Impressed?’ Julian joined him. ‘You haven’t seen
anything
yet. Claude didn’t believe in stinting himself.’

He led the way past a fairground slot machine into a second room that had been converted into a viewing
theatre
. A row of leather armchair type seats, each with a
projecting
ring for holding a carton in one arm, occupied the nearside wall; a popcorn machine in a far corner was matched by a mini bar at the opposite end. Julian selected a button in a console set into one of the chair arms and
curtains
between the two parted to reveal a giant screen. Pressure on a second button sent shock waves of
stereophonic
music through the room.

Beyond the viewing theatre, a marble-floored area was home to Bulthaup steel kitchen cabinets and an Angelo Po oven and hob built into an island unit with a granite work surface.

Having beaten the others to it, Pommes Frites looked 
round expectantly as they entered. Tongue hanging out, he was eyeing his reflection in the mirrored doors of a vast American General Electric fridge-freezer with built-in water and ice dispensers.

‘He’s welcome to some water,’ said Julian, ‘but I doubt if he’ll find anything worthwhile to go with it.’ Opening the door he pointed to a half-eaten pizza and a pack of Soothing Eye Masks. ‘Take your pick!

‘I’m afraid it does make a bit of a mockery of Claude’s standing as a gourmet. The trouble was he had no
taste-buds
, and no sense of smell either. Which I suppose is why he didn’t notice anything wrong with the oyster until it was too late.

‘He had a Japanese chef who did the cooking here whenever he was entertaining – hence all the equipment. No mean hand at it either by all accounts.’

Monsieur Pamplemousse didn’t let on he knew only too well. Instead, while the other went about filling a water bowl for Pommes Frites, he glanced at some of the labels on a hundred or so bottles behind a glass-fronted
temperature
controlled wine cabinet.

‘For someone with no taste buds he didn’t exactly stint himself.’

‘He was guided entirely by the right hand column of the price lists,’ said Julian. ‘Which makes life easy if you can afford it.’

Pommes Frites looked up at the others. He had no idea what they were on about. Had they been engaged in a game of hunt the slipper they couldn’t have been further off the scent. In fact – he gazed, glassy-eyed at the bowl of water in front of him – they were getting colder by the minute.

‘Claude may not have been in the same league as Britney Spears,’ said Julian, leading the way back to where 
they had started. ‘Who else is on this side of the Atlantic? In fact, compared with most Hollywood film stars he was a non-starter, but in his own immodest way he didn’t do too badly. Fresh flowers every day. A new suit from Cerruti before every show – they have his measurements on computer – all courtesy of the budget.’

Apart from making a mental calculation of what that would add up to over a thirteen-week series, Monsieur Pamplemousse listened with only half an ear as he ran his eye along the bookshelves. Books could say more about a person than almost anything else.

Unlike the ones in Chavignol’s house they looked well used. Yellow marker tabs protruded from the pages and as with the posters, they appeared to be in an assortment of languages. Most had to do with illusions and the art of conjuring in one form or another; an English edition of Dunninger’s
Complete Encyclopaedia of Magic
, and various other titles which meant nothing to him, apart from
The Expert at the Card Table
by someone called S.W.Erdnase. He wondered why that rang a bell. Perhaps Glandier had mentioned it at some time.

‘The card sharp’s bible,’ said Julian. ‘And therein lies the biggest mystery of all. Who actually wrote it? The theory is that S.W. Erdnase is a part-inversion of Andrews, who was a Massachusetts gambler, but that’s as far as anyone has ever got for certain. He’s another one who came to a sticky end. Except his was self-inflicted. When the San Francisco police finally caught up with him he shot the woman he was with, then committed suicide.’

‘Never play poker with a professional,’ said Monsieur Pamplemousse.

‘I certainly wouldn’t have wanted to take on Claude. He was never without a pack of cards. That’s what it’s all about. Practice, practice, practice. It’s the Martina 
Navratilova syndrome. They say she has tennis balls all over her house so that any time she goes into a room she can pick one up and squeeze it. Claude was the same with cards.

‘Anyway, dealing from the bottom of the pack was only one of his many talents. When he first started out he worked with people like Kellar and Hermann in America before going solo. In his day he was a class act. Then, when magic went out of favour, he adapted his skills to new ends.’

‘How old was he?’

Julian shrugged. ‘Older than you think! Look, I don’t want to disillusion you any more than you probably are already, but in this business age is no barrier. There are people who get wheeled on simply because their main, perhaps their only qualification, is the ability to move around a set without bumping into the furniture.

‘Claude didn’t come into that category – he knew
exactly
what he was doing. Every move was calculated to the nth degree. He also had most of the qualities that go with being a successful television presenter. He was
unflappable
and never at a loss for a word – even when there was nothing to say. In short, he was a born television host. The job could have been made for him.

‘If television hadn’t been invented it’s hard to picture what he might have become. A card sharp perhaps, or a magician down on his luck, reduced to doing children’s parties at Christmas. As it was he took to the small screen like a duck to water and he never looked back.’

‘What was he like to work for?’

‘The scene boys call him “the big cheese” behind his back.’

‘
Le grand chavignol
? I know that syndrome too,’ said Monsieur Pamplemousse, with feeling. ‘The trouble is 
everyone thinks they are the only one to have thought of it.’

‘In Claude’s case it wasn’t meant as a compliment. Think over-ripe Roquefort stinking to high heaven instead.’

‘And you? What was your opinion?’

‘Try poisoned honey. The fact is his whole life was devoted to the art of illusion. With most people what you see is what you get. With Claude it was the opposite. He was a product of his own invention. Being with him when he was at the wheel of his car was something else again. Beaming out at pedestrians in case anyone recognised him, and at the same time doing his best to mow them down. No one was safe.’

‘Talking of which…’ Monsieur Pamplemousse related his narrow escape on the way to the studios.

‘That would have been Pascal,’ said Julian. ‘He’s as bad behind the wheel, except in his case it isn’t deliberate. He just isn’t a very good driver. It’s a bit ironic really. Only the other day Claude half jokingly promised to leave him his Facel Vega when he died.’

‘Half?’

‘More than half I would say. They’ve been together for years. Pascal is part of the fixtures and fittings you might say.’ He pointed to one of the photographs on the dressing table.

Monsieur Pamplemousse took a closer look. Even given the fact that the person in the photograph was as bald as a coot and sported a toothbrush moustache, the likeness was uncanny. The only physical difference he could see lay in the hands, which were more those of a workman than a magician.

‘That’s him.’

‘All part of the service,’ said Julian, catching the look on 
his face. ‘I’m not surprised you were thrown. In the
beginning
I was caught out more than once. When he’s wearing a hat it’s hard to tell the two apart. It’s like the old saying about pets and their masters growing to look like each other…present company excepted, of course, although rumour has it they were distantly related.’

‘So he might have been here this morning?’

‘Could be. He came and went all the time. Apart from being Claude’s
coursier de production
– his “gofer” as it’s known in the trade – “go for this – go for that”, Pascal was his stand-in during camera rehearsals. It isn’t unusual for a star to have someone do all the tedious work. It’s what they call “saving themselves” for the night.’

‘Why would he have come back?’

‘He probably had things to pick up. It’s a kind of home from home for him.’

‘Presumably he would have checked in at the gate?’

‘Not necessarily. The lift isn’t the only way in. Fire
regulations
. There’s a back entrance leading out to the Rue Tholozé. It came in useful the other night, I can tell you. There was quite a crowd waiting outside the main entrance.’

That explained why the
Sapeurs-Pompiers
had been heard but not seen; the ambulance and the police too.

‘And Pascal would still have a key?’

‘Almost certainly.’

‘And the use of a company
camionnette
?’

‘There’s no reason why he shouldn’t still be using it. As I say, he was Claude’s Man Friday. All these things will need to be sorted out. It’s early days yet.’

‘It would be good to see him.’

‘I don’t have his number, but I’ll get my secretary to tell him you called.’

‘Did the two of them get on together?’ 

‘Claude and Pascal? If they didn’t it never showed. Although I didn’t see much of them together.’

‘And Madame Chavignol?’

‘Between you, me and the gatepost, she wore the trousers. I wouldn’t trust her any further than I could throw her. They were well matched.’

Julian looked as though he could have said a great deal more, but he changed his mind.

‘Listen; let me take you down on the floor. They’ll be rehearsing
Montparnasse Bienvenue
…’ he named a
twice-weekly
soap opera, which Monsieur Pamplemousse had to admit he had never seen. ‘It’s our other bread and
butter
show. It’ll be a different director, but the crew will be the same.’

The atmosphere and layout of the studio had changed completely since his last visit. The theatre with its
proscenium
arch and stage had disappeared, as had the audience rostra. The space was now completely taken up by sets – mostly three-walled rooms with one side left free for the technical staff to operate in. Through the window of one he could see the Montparnasse Tower painted on a
backcloth
; through another there was a view of the cemetery.