[Celebrity Murder Case 10] - The Humphrey Bogart Muder Case

by George Baxt

  “Don’t be such a fool, Marcelo. My father was seen carrying the cornucopia on board. His intention was to entrust it to the captain for safekeeping in the ship’s vault.”

  Hazel asked, “Are you suggesting the captain might have made off with this treasure?”

  La Contessa said, “The ship’s personnel, you understand, also had access to the vault. The purser, for example. I never met the captain but my father considered him a very honorable man. My father took many voyages with Captain Methot. One of his hobbies was collecting Oriental art.”

  Hazel’s face was slightly screwed. “Captain who?”

  “Methot. Captain Methot.”

  “Really! I wonder if he’s any relation of Mayo Methot. It’s a most unusual name.” She explained, “Mayo Methot is the wife of the movie star Humphrey Bogart. Surely you’ve heard of him in Italy.”

  “Indeed I have.”

  Violetta found her tongue and gushed, “I adore Humphrey Bogart. He is one of my favorites.”

  “This is really such a coincidence. If Mrs. Bogart is related in some way to Captain Methot, I’d be most interested in meeting her.”

  Hazel stood up. “I’ll phone her right now. She just might be at home.” She dug into her handbag for her address book. “Here it is. The Bogarts.” She crossed to a desk on which rested a phone and dialed.

  In the Bogart living room, Hannah kept a tight grip on the plate holding the steaks while making an assessment of the damage wrought by her employers. Mrs. Bogart was so charming when she interviewed Hannah, and then her Mrs. Hyde personality slowly emerged. It was Hannah's personal opinion that Bogart was too good for her. She’d read somewhere he came from a very upper-class New York family. Real high society. Not as high as it could get but impressively high enough.

  Mayo said to the housekeeper, “We’re dining out.” She directed her mouth at Bogart, “Dinner at seven at the Brown Derby with Dash and Lily.”

  “I haven’t forgotten,” said Bogart. He was fond of Dashiell Hammett and Hammett’s lover, the playwright Lillian Hellman who had scored a huge Broadway success in 1934 with her play, The Children’s Hour.

  “I'll save the steaks for tomorrow,” said Hannah. And that was when the phone rang. Hannah answered. “Bogart residence.”

  “Hannah?” chirruped Hazel Dickson at the other end. “It’s Hazel Dickson. Is Mrs. Bogart in?”

  “I’ll see, Miss Dickson.” Bogart groaned on hearing the name. He pantomimed to Hannah that he wasn’t in but Hannah squelched the movement with “It’s for Mrs. Bogart.”

  Mayo snapped, “You keep forgetting there’s another star in the house.” Bogart said nothing. Mayo took the phone. “How are you, Hazel?”

  “I’m just dandy. Mayo, I’m at the Ambassador in the suite of la Contessa di Marcopolo.”

  “Sounds real grand.”

  “Mayo sweetie, was your father a sea captain?”

  “It’s no secret. It’s in my bio on file with my agent.”

  “Oh how marvelous! Hold on, Mayo.” She said to the fat woman on the couch, “It’s her father!”

  La Contessa was delighted. “We must get together!”

  “Mayo, you’ll never believe this. But La Contessa’s father, the Baron di Marcopolo was a friend of your father’s. In fact, he died on one of your father’s voyages in the Orient!”

  Mayo commented wryly, “I’d say that's carrying friendship a bit far, even for my father.” She thought for a moment. “The Baron di Marcopolo. Come to think of it, Jack mentioned him a couple of times. As I recall, there was something about a cornucopia filled with jewels. One of them stories out of the Arabian Nights.”

  Bogart chuckled. “I remember that one. It took your father about half a dozen Boilermakers to tell it all.”

  Hazel persisted. “It’s not a fairy tale. It’s the truth. I think it’s a great story. Won’t you come and meet la Contessa?”

  Mayo would have preferred to wipe the smirk off her husband’s face. Bogart and her parents didn't like each other. Bogart referred to Evelyn as the Empress and to the captain as Captain Bligh. Jack Methot was dead of a heart attack shortly after the Bogarts married and Evelyn rarely visited them. It was the way Bogart liked it. He heard Mayo say, “Sure I’d like to meet her. Then I can drop in at Magnin's and run up some bills.” Bogart winced. Hannah had departed for the kitchen after handing the phone to Mayo. In the kitchen she gently lifted the phone extension and heard the rest of the conversation between Mayo and Hazel. Hannah and the other housekeepers in the neighborhood met daily for coffee, cake, and gossip in somebody’s kitchen while their employers were engaged at their studios. This was how, as Hannah put it, they remained au courant. She’d learned the expression from Charles Boyer’s housekeeper.

  Bogart said to Mayo as he straightened his tie without needing a mirror, “Go easy at Magnin’s.”

  “Why? Are we poverty-stricken?”

  “Let’s not get into another battle. As far as I’m concerned we’ve had ours for today. We’re not poverty-stricken but you’re going a little too heavy on the shopping sprees.”

  “I’m Mrs. Humphrey Bogart!”

  “Well, I ain’t!” snapped Bogart.

  “I have to keep up appearances. If we’re so hard up for money why don’t you help me get some jobs!”

  “Why doesn’t your agent get off his ass and get you some jobs?” He raised his hands defensively. “Don’t you throw that book!”

  She slammed the book back on the table. “You know, with a little more practice, I could really loathe you.”

  “Naw, Slugger. You could never loathe me. Like I could never loathe you. Be patient, babe, one of these days you might meet Mister Right.”

  “Go to hell.”

  “I’m going to rehearsal. I don't know how long it’ll be, so let’s meet at the Brown Derby at seven. And when you get there, try to be on your best behavior. No pushing your food on the fork with your fingers.” The book flew past his head and landed in the foyer. Laughing, he left the house and went to the driveway where his car was parked. He reflected upon his wife as he started the ignition, put the car into gear, and set off to the Warner Studio in the valley.

  Mayo.

  When did he fall in love with her and why? It was when he saw her on Broadway in Torch Song. She’d gotten great reviews and everybody was talking about this exciting new actress so he decided to check her out. She’d gotten the reviews but the play hadn't, so it was playing to half houses, forcing the management to paper performances with free passes. Bogie got himself one for a matinee. It was Saturday, and Bogart recognized and acknowledged many of his fellow actors who were also unemployed and seeing a show for free. Mayo was no great beauty but she could act. Her technique was good and the way she underplayed the rest of the cast was something she might have learned from his second wife, Mary Phillips. Mary was no great beauty cither, but she was a superb actress. She was memorable in Kaufman and Hart’s Merrily We Roll Along in a part based on Dorothy Parker, the Algonquin wit and character assassin. Bogart’s first wife, Helen Menken, was a true star given to frequent bouts of indigestion from chewing so much scenery, though she held her own opposite Helen Hayes in Mary of Scotland.

  Mayo was something else. But her features were mismatched. She had the body of a star but the face of a character actress. It didn’t matter in the theater but was a detriment on screen, where the face was magnified over a hundred times. Still, Harry Cohen brought Mayo to Hollywood when her play folded and gave her the lead at Columbia in The Murder of the Night Club Lady with Adolphe Menjou as Detective Thatcher Colt. Unfortunately, Mayo didn’t have enough footage in which to make much of an impression because as the nightclub lady in question, she was dispatched in reel one which gave audiences plenty of time to forget her.

  When the Bogarts met, they had heavy drinking as well as acting in common. They laughed a lot together and were incredibly lonely. So booze, laughter, and loneliness led to marriage, and the marriage soon evolved i
nto disillusions and recriminations. As Bogart became more successful, Mayo felt herself slowly but surely shunted to the background. As Bette Davis had told her when they were filming Marked Woman, “There’s nothing more unnecessary than a Hollywood wife.”

  Mayo had repeated the line to Bogart after they were married. Bogart remembered his response, “A Hollywood wife carries more weight than a Hollywood mistress”—this at a time when Mayo was dieting strenuously, which won him his first bruised chin and a begrudging respect for his wife’s right uppercut.

  At Warners, he found Mary Astor reading the script of The Maltese Falcon aloud to herself in one of the conference rooms occasionally used for rehearsals. Most directors rehearsed on the set and then ordered a take, but John Huston was taking no chances with his first film. The script was an ensemble piece, and he had pleaded with Jack Warner for extended rehearsal time. Warner gave it to him because the film’s budget was half that of other “A” features. Warner referred to this one as a nervous “A”. Almost everyone in the cast was under contract and those who were not contracted were hired on daily rates that were usually cheap. There was a comparatively short shooting schedule; Bogart knew Huston was planning to shoot at a fast clip to give the picture the kind of pacing the previous versions lacked. “Hello, beautiful, where’s the rest of the company?”

  “I think they’re out scrounging cocaine for Peter Lorre. The war seems to have played havoc with his European connections. How’d you bruise your eye?”

  He sank into a chair. “Need you ask? Another scuffle with my bitter half.”

  She liked and admired Bogart and was sympathetic to his domestic difficulties, having suffered a plethora of her own. “Bogie, sometimes I think there’s a touch of madness in you.”

  “If there is,” he said while lighting a cigarette, “there’s Methot to my madness.”

  She smiled. “This is a terrific script. There isn’t a poor line of dialogue or a superfluous one. John’s done a terrific job with it.”

  “Let me let you in on a little secret. He stuck to the book.”

  “I know. I read the book. Hammett is brilliant.” She crossed her legs. “He hasn’t written anything in a long time. I wonder why.”

  “I’ll ask him tonight. We’re having dinner with him and Lily Hellman at the Brown Derby. I’d ask you to join us except I'm hoping Mayo will be on her best behavior and she’s already accused me of having an affair with you.”

  “Christ. About the only actor I haven’t been suspected of having an affair with is Alfalfa Switzer and I’m wondering if he’s terribly hurt about that. I read that article on you in this month’s Photoplay magazine. I’m terribly impressed.”

  “Oh, yeah? What does it say? I never read that crap.”

  “I’m really impressed your mother was Maude Bogart, the famous illustrator.”

  “Well, how about that? Yeah, when I was an infant, I was her favorite model. Mostly because she didn’t have to pay me anything.” Mary smiled. “I was the Mellon's Baby Food baby. Is that in the article?”

  “Yes, and that you were Baby Dimple in Sleepytime Stories.”

  “Christ, I forgot about that one. Yeah, Maude was pretty good with illustrations. She was pretty lousy with her husband and her kids. I had two sisters. Kay died young. Pat had a mental breakdown so maybe there’s something to your madness theory.”

  “Oh, please, come on,” she demurred as a blush came to her cheeks.

  “My mother could make an iceberg seem like an oasis. What a cold and unfeeling bitch.”

  “And yet she gave birth to three children?”

  “Mary, I get the feeling all three times she wasn’t looking. You should have met my father. Doctor Belmont DeForest Bogart. How’s that for a fancy mouthful? Mary, I don’t know how I got to be a product of that union. I was a real mean kid.”

  “Stop being so hard on yourself.”

  “I was! I was a real mean kid.” He was warming up to himself, usually his least favorite subject. “I went to this very exclusive private school. Trinity. It was so exclusive, I think it didn’t have an address. The kids used to beat me up.” He laughed. “I suppose I wasn’t exactly a charmer, what with my kind of parents and my poor sisters terrified of both of them. Poor Pat. How she suffered. I think her breakdown was a blessing.”

  Mary shook her head from side to side. “Isn’t there anyone in this town who loves their mother?”

  “Yeah. Ginger Rogers.” He was on his feet with impatience. “Say, where the hell are the rest of them? We’re supposed to be rehearsing. Otherwise I might have gone with Mayo to meet this Contessa di Marcopolo.”

  “A contessa, no less. Mayo’s moving up in the world. Sounds like one of Hazel Dickson’s trophies.”

  “Right on the nose. Sayyy …”

  “What?”

  He snapped his fingers. “I thought that cornucopia sounded familiar. First cousin to The Maltese Falcon.”

  “Come off the wall, Bogie. What cornucopia?”

  “Listen to this.” He sat down again. He told her what little he knew of the Baron di Marcopolo’s cornucopia and the involvement of Mayo’s father. He knew he’d get the rest from Mayo, but what he told Mary she found fascinating.

  At the conclusion, she said, “Say, that is the Maltese Falcon’s twin brother. Bogie, do you suppose Hammett knew the cornucopia story and refashioned the cornucopia into the statuette of the falcon?”

  “It’s a possibility. Aren’t writers supposed to write what they know about?”

  “They’re supposed to, but they don’t always.”

  Bogart was chain-smoking. “You know, I’m going to spring this on Hammett at dinner. If Lily Hellman lets me get a word in edgewise.” He lowered his voice. “Who’s the fat guy? Is he playing Casper Guttman?”

  Mary smiled at the huge, white-haired man in his sixties who approached them with a delightful smile. “Sidney, come meet Bogie.”

  “Ah, Bogie. At last!” He and Bogart shook hands. “I’m Sidney Greenstreet, the villain of the piece. I believe in a previous incarnation the part was written for a woman. Perhaps I’ll use a subtle touch of effeminacy.”

  Mary Astor said, “You’ll have a hard time getting that past the censors.”

  Said Bogart, “Sure, it’ll pass. It’s already in the script. Huston’s used it the way Hammett wrote it in the book. The kid traveling with Greenstreet and Joel Cairo, Lorre’s part. He’s obviously Guttman’s lover.”

  “But he's a killer!” exclaimed Mary.

  “But aren’t most lovers?” asked Greenstreet.

  “Sidney,” said Mary, “you are a card.”

  “Oh, my dear,” said Greenstreet aware of the actress's scandalous past and possibly a scandalous future, “no offense intended, I assure you.”

  “No offense taken,” she said with a laugh. “Bogie, tell Sidney about the cornucopia. I’m sure he’ll be fascinated.”

  “Cornucopia? A horn of plenty?” He had sat on a hard-backed chair after testing two canvas director’s chairs which seemed too risky for his tremendous weight. “Am I about to be regaled with a tale of adventure and intrigue?”

  “Well, frankly, Sidney, it depends on how you swallow it. Now then …”

  THREE

  FOR HER MEETING WITH LA CONTESSA, Mayo changed into a diaphanous dress with a flowery print and wore a Lily Dache hat that would have been more appropriate to a garden party. Hazel Dickson thought she should have carried a tasseled parasol in her left hand, and her right hand holding two leashes at the end of which were a pair of borzois. Mayo and la Contessa didn’t quite outdo each other in the gushing department though each gave it her best effort. Marcelo almost succeeded in drowning her in Mediterranean charm and sexy innuendo while Mayo accepted Violetta’s excessive admiration of Bogart’s persona with a polite smile and a suppressed sneeze.

  “So our fathers were friends,” said Mayo as she refused an hors d’oeuvre and accepted a gin and grapefruit juice. After some chitchat which was the
usual time waster and made Mayo wonder if she should consult a psychiatrist (as Bogie so frequently urged her), la Contessa with exquisite timing said, “There is the letter my father entrusted to yours shortly before he died.”

  “What letter?” asked Mayo with sincere innocence.

  “The letter that tells who was in possession of the cornucopia,” insisted the Contessa while dabbing at beads of perspiration on her upper lip.

  “Search me,” said Mayo with an expressive shrug, little knowing la Contessa wished they could. “Why was a letter necessary if the cornucopia was nowhere to be found when the ship docked?”

  “My theory is that my father assigned someone to smuggle the cornucopia ashore.”

  “Why would he have done that?”

  “Perhaps it was a matter of distrust.”

  Mayo’s voice hardened. “You mean for some reason he'd grown to distrust my father.”

  “Oh no no no,” said la Contessa so musically Hazel Dickson feared she was about to break into song. “But you see, my dear Miss Methot, in the past people have been killed for this treasure.”

  “Do you think your father was murdered?”

  “I’ll never know. He was buried at sea.”

  Mayo said, “Well, that’s what’s usually done when someone dies aboard ship in midocean.”

  “It wasn’t in midocean. It was a little over a day away from port.”

  “Have you any idea how intense the heat is on the Orient run?” Mayo sipped her drink. “My father’s ship wasn’t equipped with the proper refrigeration for a corpse. So your father presumably wrote a letter to you identifying the possessor of the cornucopia and entrusted the letter to my father whom he no longer trusted.” She said to Hazel Dickson, “This one should star Laurel and Hardy.”

  Marcelo interjected. “I still don’t think there was a letter.”

  “You hush!” said the countess sharply. She told Mayo, “I received a phone call from someone who said he had been on board the ship and my father confided in him the letter existed and to call me to make sure I got the letter from Captain Methot.”