Groucho Marx and the Broadway Murders

by Ron Goulart

  The hefty white-haired producer gave Groucho a nasty smile. “That wouldn’t be a very smart thing to try, Julius,” he said. “Dian?”

  “Soon,” she said.

  “Very well.” He turned on his heel and started off down the swaying train corridor. “Don’t be too long.”

  Leaving the chair, the young woman said to Groucho, “Joan of Arc is a marvelous part. It really will make me a star.”

  “Keep in mind how the real Joan of Arc ended up,” he reminded.

  Eight

  Groucho couldn’t sleep.

  And he wasn’t in the mood for any more T. S. Eliot.

  So around 2:00 A.M., a little while after the speeding Super Chief had crossed into Arizona, he decided to stroll through the train and visit the baggage car.

  Humming a few bars of “My True Love Lies Dead in the Baggage Coach Ahead,” he shed his venerable robe and donned a tweedy sports coat. Groucho had packed an old orange crate with books and was shipping them to his New York hotel. Included in the shipment was a copy of S. J. Perelman’s most recent book.

  It was Groucho’s intention to see if he could get into the baggage car and unpack a few books, including Perelman’s, to bring back to his compartment.

  “If reading Sid’s book won’t put me to sleep, nothing will,” he said to himself as he opened the door.

  The corridor was dim-lit, the only sound the rhythmic clacking of the train wheels on the tracks. Out the windows showed darkness and moonlit desert country.

  Groucho discovered he wasn’t the only one roaming the speeding Super Chief. Before he reached the door at the other end of the corridor, it came sliding open.

  A thin, middle-aged woman entered and made a pleased noise when she recognized him. “Groucho Marx,” she said, reaching into the large imitation-leather purse she was toting. “I’m a great fan of yours.”

  “Too bad you’re not a fan dancer,” he said. “A little hootchie-cootchie exhibition would liven up this long, dreary night.”

  She produced an autograph album from within her purse. “Can you write your name on a moving train?”

  “Depends on how fast the train is moving,” he replied. “This one, for example, is moving too fast for me to trot alongside and inscribe something on its panels. A slow milk train, however, I might be able to keep up with until—”

  “I meant can you sign my book while the train’s moving.”

  Somewhat gingerly, he accepted the proffered album and, producing a fountain pen from a pocket of his jacket, scrawled his name. He returned the book, saying, “And now, dear lady, I must continue my nocturnal mission. Farewell.”

  Two porters and a waiter were playing poker up in the cocktail lounge.

  Further down in the car four members of the Step Right Up troupe, two men and two women, were gathered. The plumper guy was noodling quietly on a clarinet.

  “Do anything for you, Mr. Marx?” asked one of the porters.

  Groucho shook his head. “Pay no attention to me, lads. I’m merely walking in my sleep.”

  As he neared the group, the fellow with the clarinet started playing “Hurray for Captain Spaulding,” Groucho’s song from Animal Crackers.

  Halting, Groucho bowed and then—or so he later told me—executed an extremely graceful pirouette before continuing on his way.

  As he entered the next car, which was given over to the less expensive roomettes, a door opened. A pretty young girl dancer murmured, “Good night, Wally,” and stepped out into the swaying corridor.

  “Ah, romance,” remarked Groucho with a sigh.

  The dancer eased her roomette door open, then glanced over her shoulder at him. “And who are you visiting, Mr. Marx?”

  “I understand they have an educated horse up in the baggage car,” he answered.

  At the quiet end of the car he encountered a dozing conductor. The man was lean, his cap resting in his narrow lap. He sat slumped on a seat in a roomette, his left foot keeping the sliding door half-open.

  Groucho tiptoed by him.

  The lights in the next car, which was given over to double bedrooms, were out.

  It was while making his way gingerly along the dark swaying corridor that Groucho tripped over the body.

  What the heck are you doing up there?” Jane inquired from below.

  “Reading,” I replied.

  “That’s supposed to be a relatively silent pastime.”

  “Having trouble settling into a comfortable position. Sorry.”

  Our compartment had a sort of upper berth-lower berth setup and, after parting for the evening, I’d climbed into the upper.

  The monotonous clicking of the train on the rails didn’t seem to soothe me and I kept waking up every few minutes. Finally, in the vicinity of 1:00 A.M., I clicked on my overhead bunk light, fished out the copy of Dime Detective I’d slipped under my pillow, and made an attempt to read a novelette about a very hard-boiled Hollywood private eye.

  Jane had been comfortably asleep since about midnight, but my thrashing around woke her up.

  “I suppose counting sheep wouldn’t help?” she asked.

  “Tried that,” I said. “But before I could even get up to one hundred, a bunch of cattlemen rode over to warn me not to try counting sheep in cow country.”

  “Would you like to come down here again?”

  “That isn’t going to help me sleep.”

  “Nope, but it’ll maybe help pass the time.”

  “True,” I agreed, swinging out of my bunk.

  As Groucho fell toward the floor of the train corridor, he thrust out both his hands, fingers wide. He hit with a hard jolt that sent pain snaking up his arms and across his chest.

  “Oy,” he exhaled, starting to untangle himself from the sprawled body.

  Groucho struggled himself up to a sitting position, his eyes becoming used to the darkness.

  The train whistle let out a long mournful hoot.

  “I couldn’t agree more,” he muttered.

  When he looked more closely at the body, he discovered that it was Hal Arneson and that he was only out cold and not dead.

  Arneson was lying facedown on the corridor carpeting, breathing in a noisy nasal way.

  Starting to rise, Groucho noticed a faint glow of light to his left.

  The door to a bedroom had slid a few inches open and he saw a small flashlight floating in there a few feet above the floor. The light also caused what might be the blade of a knife to flash once.

  Feeling momentarily foolhardy, Groucho eased closer to the open bedroom.

  At the opening he called out, “Am I correct in assuming that you’re up to no good in there?”

  Suddenly the door snapped full open.

  A dark figure with a scarf wrapped round its face came shoving into Groucho.

  He saw a flicker of a knife in the right hand, then the flashlight in the left hand was shining right into his eyes.

  The hand holding the light pushed him hard in the chest.

  “Oof,” he commented as he was shoved again, this time by a sharp elbow in his middle.

  He gasped out breath, stumbled, fell back, and tripped once more over the snoring Arneson.

  The dark figure ran swiftly down the corridor and was swallowed by the darkness. Seconds later the door at the corridor’s end opened and shut.

  “I should’ve stuck with The Wasteland,” decided Groucho, rising yet again.

  After hesitating in the bedroom doorway for a few seconds, he reached in to click on the lights. “Once more into the fray,” he said and entered.

  Daniel Manheim, clad in candy-stripe pajamas, was lying on his back in the bed.

  The white-haired movie producer was unconscious, snoring profusely. There was no sign that the knife had been used on him.

  The smell of something that was probably chloroform was strong all around him.

  Groucho moved closer to the drugged man. “Time to rise and shine,” he announced loudly.

  Manheim went
on slumbering.

  Moving the rumpled Santa Fe blanket aside, Groucho scanned the hefty man. “Nope, nothing at all to indicate he’s been stabbed anyplace important.”

  Groucho rubbed at his own chest, which was commencing to feel sore. Returning to the corridor, he crouched beside Arneson and tapped him on the arm. “How about you, King Kong?”

  Just as the big man groaned, the beam of a powerful flashlight caught Groucho. “Here now, what’s going on?” asked the lean conductor.

  “We’re giving a wide array of prizes to anyone who can answer that question in twenty-five words or less,” Groucho said, standing to face him.

  Nine

  At about the same time that Groucho was having fun up near the front of the Super Chief, I was returning to a state of wakefulness. Upstairs again in my own bunk, I was fighting an impulse to turn on my light and shift my position again.

  Finally, sighing very quietly, I lowered myself to the carpeted floor of our compartment. Slowly, in the dark and with as little noise as possible, I located my clothes and shoes where I’d neatly tossed them the night before.

  I was nearly dressed when Jane asked, in a not-quite-awake voice, “Where you going?”

  “Still can’t sleep.” Balancing on one foot, I tugged on a loafer. “Going to take a walk.”

  “Well, try to stay on the train.”

  “I may run alongside for a while, but that’s as far afield as I intend to go.”

  “Be careful,” she advised and returned to sleep.

  I let myself out into the dimly illuminated corridor.

  Walking toward the rear of the train, I made my way to the last car. Beyond the drawing rooms was the observation car.

  This was done up in what a Santa Fe brochure called Navajo Indian style. It had a turquoise ceiling, the chairs were covered with material bearing what might have been Navajo designs, and there were Indian artworks on the sand-colored walls. The windows showed views of the flat moonlit Arizona countryside. The tall, many-armed cactuses made shadowy silhouettes out in the night.

  The only other person in the car was Willa Jerome. The blonde actress was wearing slacks and a cardigan sweater over a striped blouse. Her legs were crossed, an open copy of the New Yorker steepled over one knee. Gazing out at the night we were rushing through, she was taking a deep drag on a cork-tipped cigarette.

  “Morning,” I said.

  Turning, she exhaled smoke and bestowed a faint patrician smile on me. “Having trouble sleeping?”

  “Yeah. I don’t do well in strange bedrooms.”

  “I’ve slept in a great many strange bedrooms,” she said, “but trains always give me the jitters. You’re the newspaper man, aren’t you?”

  I sat down across from her. “Used to be. Los Angeles Times,” I answered. “But for the past three years—”

  “Then you have absolutely no interest in interviewing me?”

  “I don’t have any yearnings in that direction, no.”

  “And you don’t give a damn about what Tyrone Power is really like?”

  “I know enough about Tyrone Power already to suffice me for a good many years to come.”

  Willa snuffed out her cigarette in a standing ashtray. “Your name is?”

  “Frank Denby.”

  She nodded. “Seems to me I heard you did something unusual with the Marx Brothers.”

  “Actually, Groucho Marx and I have worked together. I wrote his radio show and we teamed up a few times to solve some real-life murder cases.”

  “Oh, yes, it’s the murder part someone was telling me about,” she said. “Does that pay well, that sort of detective work?”

  “Doesn’t pay anything at all,” I replied. “We’re what they call amateur detectives.”

  “And so you do it because … ?”

  “I guess it’s a mixture of altruism and showing off, Miss Jerome.”

  “Are you and Groucho traveling to New York to solve a new mystery, Frank?”

  “Nope. It’s purely a coincidence that we both happened to have business in Manhattan at the same time,” I said. “He’s going to be—”

  “Your wife is quite pretty. That is your wife you’re traveling with, isn’t it?”

  “Jane Danner’s my wife, yes. I know it’s the mark of a yokel to travel with your own wife and not somebody else’s, but—”

  “Oh, here’s Emily. I hope she’s not bringing me more telegrams from the blessed studio.”

  The plain young woman had come, very politely and carefully, into the swaying observation car. She, too, was wearing slacks. “Excuse me for interrupting, Willa,” she apologized as she approached us. “But I thought you might like to see the additions to your Manhattan agenda that Zanuck’s publicity people have been wiring us at various train stops.”

  “Emily Collinson, this is Frank Denby.”

  The secretary smiled politely at me. “It’s a pity that you’re not reporting for the LA Times any longer, Mr. Denby.”

  “I don’t know if pity is exactly the word that applies.”

  Seating herself next to her boss, she handed Willa a typed sheet of paper. “We noticed you and your wife dining at El Perro Undo this evening,” she said across to me.

  “Seems like several passengers dropped in there for a farewell meal. Such as Hal Arneson and—”

  “A very outgoing man,” observed the actress. She took a fresh cigarette from the box of them in her purse and Emily lit it for her. “We don’t have very many people as exuberant as Hal in England, even in the cinema business. And his manner of dressing. Bright red necktie, illfitting suit. Not Savile Row by any means.”

  “He’s amiable enough,” Emily said.

  “A flack has to be.” Willa turned her attention to the amended agenda. “How in the bloody hell am I supposed to get from this radio interview at NBC on Tuesday morning over to WOR when they’re practically simultaneous?”

  Leaning, Emily tapped the sheet. “There’s a fifteen-minute gap between them, Willa,” she pointed out. “And Twentieth is providing a limousine to take us from spot to spot.”

  The actress was counting the list of interviews. “On that same day I’m scheduled to do eleven other interviews about Trafalgar Square,” she said, shaking her head. “That’s a good dozen too many.”

  “There’s a great deal of interest in you, Willa, so—”

  “Bullshit,” she retorted. “This is just more manufactured flapdoodle that those morons in Hollywood try to inflict on me to—”

  “Excuse my breaking in on your hen party, Frank,” said Jane from the doorway. “But Groucho’s sent word that he’d like to see you.” She’d put on a terry-cloth robe over her nightgown.

  “Something wrong?” Getting up, I started toward her.

  She shook her head, shrugged. “I don’t know for sure. He sent a porter with the message.”

  Turning toward Willa and her secretary, I said, “I’ve got to leave you, ladies.”

  “Another mystery, do you think?” asked the blonde actress.

  “One never knows,” I answered.

  The lanky conductor had slowly lowered the beam of his flashlight from Groucho’s face to the sprawled, and starting-to-stir, Arneson. “I didn’t recognize you right off, Mr. Marx,” he said apologetically. “Probably because you don’t have your moustache.”

  “No, I usually put it in a glass of water at my bedside of an evening,” he said, pointing at the groggy troubleshooter-publicity man. “Looks like somebody conked him on the coco with what is technically known as a blunt instrument.”

  The conductor crouched, checking Arneson’s pulse. “Gave him a nasty bump on the back of his head.” He straightened up. “They smashed the lightbulbs, too.”

  “You better take a look in Manheim’s bedroom,” suggested Groucho.

  “My God, he isn’t dead, is he?” The conductor hurried over to the large room.

  “No, he’s still extant, but somebody seems to have slipped him a mickey.”

 
; “He’s out cold, sure enough,” said the conductor.

  “I’m no expert on how to stupefy movie moguls,” said Groucho, who’d remained beside the fallen Arneson. “But I’d guess they used something like chloroform on him.”

  “Shit,” murmured Arneson.

  “Ah, a sign of life.” Groucho leaned closer to him. “Want to try to rise, Harold?”

  “Got slugged, huh?” said the husky man.

  “That appears to be the case.”

  “Who did it?”

  “Darn, we thought you were going to be able to provide us with that information.” Groucho held out his hand.

  Arneson took hold, pulling himself to a sitting position. He smoothed out his suit jacket, straightened out the red knit tie he’d apparently changed to since Groucho had last seen him. “No, hell no, Groucho,” he said, his speech still slightly slurred, “I have no idea who it was. All I’m pretty certain of is that somebody came up behind me and bopped me good and hard.”

  “What were you doing out here in the corridor?”

  “My bedroom’s next to Manheim’s and … Jesus, is he okay?” He struggled to his feet.

  “He’s all right, though unconscious. Granted many motion picture producers are perennially in that condition, but in Manheim’s case it was probably chloroform that did it.”

  Wobbly, Arneson took a few steps toward the bedroom doorway. The train gave a sudden lurch and he thrust out his hand to steady himself against the wall. “I prowl quite a bit nighttimes,” he explained. “To see that everything’s okay. This time … well, I got knocked out before I realized anything was going on wrong.”

  “Out like a light,” announced the conductor from within the bedroom. “I’m not sure why he was knocked out, Mr. Arneson. You better come in, see if anything was stolen.”

  “I saw somebody bending over him with a knife,” mentioned Groucho, taking a cigar out of his coat pocket.

  “Then possibly you interrupted a murder attempt,” said the conductor. “I’ll notify the authorities to meet us when we stop at Flagstaff. They’ll investigate this whole mess and—”