[Celebrity Murder Case 05] - The Greta Garbo Murder Case

by George Baxt

  “Very wise of her.”

  “Don’t be unkind, Greta. Am I to understand you’re inviting me to lunch?”

  “It will save time, so let’s get to work.” She reached for her script on the dressing table.

  Lottie passed around a tray of appetizers. “Your favorite,” she said, terribly pleased with herself, “skinless and boneless sardines on buttered toasted wheat bread.”

  Garbo popped one into her mouth and the look of pleasure on her face reminded Mercedes of an advertising logo for a milk company’s Elsie the Cow. Garbo asked Lorre, “Do you like the revisions?”

  “Very Brechtian.”

  ‘‘What does that mean?”

  “What do you mean what does that mean?” retorted Lorre, bristling. “Have you never read Brecht?”

  “Salka made me read something he wrote called Mother Courage. She wanted me to play it. I’m too young. It bored me.”

  “Brecht, as a writer, is a law unto himself. He’s very sardonic, very bitter and very witty. I have a print of his movie version of The Threepenny Opera. He wrote that with Kurt Weill.”

  “Lotte Lenya’s husband?” asked Mercedes.

  “Yes,” replied Lorre. “I’ll run the movie for you if you like, Greta”

  “Will it be instructive?” asked Greta.

  “It will familiarize you with the man’s work. On the other hand, it’s very slow and a bit tiresome. It’s better on stage. I was at the premiere in Berlin before I fled to England.”

  “Why haven’t we met Brecht?” asked Garbo.

  “You wouldn’t want to,” advised Lorre. “His teeth are worse then Henkel’s, his breath is deadly and when he decides to bathe, they raise flags from half mast.”

  “Charming,” said Mercedes. “But he’s a damned good writer.”

  Lottie was whipping up individual omelets. The odor was intoxicating.

  Lorre sniffed some cocaine and said, “Greta, let’s get started. I always have trouble with lines on the first day of shooting.”

  “There’s something else that’s bothering you,” the astute actress said.

  “Oh no. Nothing. I didn’t sleep very well last night.” He lit a cigarette. There’s plenty bothering me, he thought. My family trapped in Europe. Guiss’s hold on me. And Lisa Schmidt. Who is she working for? Who?

  Marion Davies and William Randolph Hearst were sitting across from each other on the second-floor veranda eating lunch. Her eyes were slightly bloodshot, a souvenir of some lonely, heavy drinking the previous night. She lifted a glass and drank.

  “What’s in that glass?” Hearst squeaked sternly. His voice was so abnormally high-pitched that whenever he spoke, people looked around in fear that there was a displaced rodent on the loose.

  “Same thing that’s in yours. Vichyssoise.” She always drank vichyssoise from a glass. This one was heavily laced with gin. She held it out to him. “Want a sip?”

  “I’ve got my own. What are you staring at?”

  “There’s two guys fiddling with the front door of that monstrosity next to us. Why don’t you do something about having it torn down?”

  “I have to own it before I can tear it down.”

  “So why don’t you buy it?”

  “Because I don’t want it.”

  “Okay, then I’ll buy it.”

  “No you won’t.”

  “Yes I will. I’ve got plenty of cash of my own.” She wondered if he’d found out she’d bought into the skyscraper on the southeast comer of Park Avenue and East Fifty-seventh Street in New York. She’d bought it in her sister’s name.

  “I don’t want you wasting your money on unprofitable property.”

  “I don’t want to profit from the damned monstrosity, I want to tear it down. By Christ, they’re going into the house. Do you suppose they’re planning to move in?” She made a move to shout at them, but they were already in the house, out of sight, out of earshot.

  Inside the house, Herbert Villon said to Arnold Lake, “We should have brought swimsuits and taken advantage of the weather.”

  “We should have brought gas masks.” A noxious odor permeated the place. Arnold signaled Villon to open the windows. This Villon did with difficulty. The window scams were warped and misaligned from lack of use. The front door led into a huge living room seemingly furnished and decorated in early Caligula. Arnold pried into sideboards and end tables while Villon nosed into closets and behind pieces of furniture. There was nothing to interest them. Arnold opened a door at the far side of the room. “Hey, the library.”

  “Oh goody,” said Villon, trying desperately to ward off suffocation, “let’s hope there’s a wall safe. I love cracking wall safes, especially if they’re hidden behind a framed print.”

  There were no books in the library. There was a big desk and an assortment of furniture that defied description. Nothing matched. Villon gurgled happily when he found the wall safe behind a poorly framed print of "Whistler’s Mother.” While Arnold rummaged about in the desk drawers, Villon worked on cracking the safe. Over his shoulder he asked Arnold, “Find anything?"

  “So far a dog-eared paperback of the collected works of Schiller …”

  … Whoever that is … ”

  … Some grocery receipts, a rotted half-eaten pear …

  … Somebody was a slob …

  "… A dead roach … rigor mortis must have set in weeks ago … He opened the last drawer, … a jock strap …”

  “… In a desk drawer of all places?”

  “Somebody was a lousy housekeeper or had a perverted sense of humor. Where the hell is that stench coming from?”

  “Maybe from the cellar.”

  “The house doesn’t have a cellar.”

  “Maybe from the attic.”

  “No attic either.”

  “Well somebody was a cheapskate. Voila!” The safe door swung open. Arnold joined him at the safe. Villon murmured, “Just like Old Mother Hubbard. When she got there, the cupboard was bare.” He moved away from the safe with disappointment. He crossed to a door and opened it. “I have found the kitchen.”

  “Chalk one up for you.” They entered the kitchen and attacked the cupboards and the refrigerator. “Cheap dishes, dime-store pots and pans, cutlery handed down from some forgotten dynasty …” Arnold continued the inventory, to include frayed dishcloths, tasteless tablecloths and napkins, while Villon examined the interior of the refrigerator.

  “It’s just as discouraging in here,” said Villon. “Some old piece of what might have been cheddar, a half-empty jar of peanut butter, likewise apple jelly, some blob on a dish that defies description and I’m not up to the challenge …”

  Arnold said with disgust, “Whoever these Wolheims were, Mrs. Wolheim was a lousy housekeeper.” He opened a door. “This is a pantry. Do you hunger to examine the pantry?”

  “Well as long as we’re here, it shouldn’t be a total loss.” They entered the pantry. It did not elevate their spirits. It also revealed nothing of importance or interest other than a shelf that held several brands of laxatives. Villon commented, “Somebody has problems.” The door next to the pantry led outside to an enclosed garden. There they saw a marble birdbath, a variety of garden furniture that ranged from wicker to iron grillwork, and what looked like the remains of either a dog or a coyote.

  Arnold asked, “Are coyotes known to come down from the hills and invade the beach?”

  “Only when they’re longing for a dip.” Villon led them back into the house. “The animal isn’t the reason for the smell. It must be upstairs. I better warn you in case you’re unfamiliar with the odor. There’s every probability there’s a corpse up there.”

  “Oh please. Not before lunch.”

  They found her in what they assumed was the master bedroom. She was laid out on the bed, her eyes open with what was either fear, horror or just plain old-fashioned surprise. Villon studied the corpse while a nauseated Arnold forced windows open. Villon said, “She was probably in her fifties. Just ab
out five feet in height, very very plump and she mistreated her hair. It’s sort of a dung-brown color. She’s wearing a thin, very cheap wedding ring and the wristwatch is a Farber.”

  “German make,” said Arnold, who reluctantly joined Villon at the bed.

  “I don’t know why I’m thinking this is probably Mrs. Wolheim.”

  “She looks like a forgotten German potato dumpling. Do you suppose with any luck that phone works?”

  The phone was on an end table on the opposite side of the bed. Arnold lifted the receiver, listened and smiled. “Allah is good. The operator to get your team?”

  Villon took the phone from him. “That would be very naughty. This is Santa Monica’s territory. But I’m feeling very wicked today. This stench is causing my senses to reel.” He called his precinct and requested a photographer, a forensic team and the coroner.

  “What will you do if the Santa Monica cops turn up before your boys get here?”

  “I’ll feign amnesia.”

  “Say Willie.” Marion Davies was at the railing of her veranda, now wearing a sailor hat and carrying in her right hand a glass of cold sharv laced with a healthy infusion of vodka.

  “What, honey?” he tweeted while trying to read Louella Parsons’s column.

  “There’s something going on at that house. For chrissakes will you come over here and look? You’re supposed to be a newspaperman, aren’t you curious? Those cars are unmarked but if them ain’t cops swarming into the place then Greer Garson’s my mother.”

  Hearst stood behind her, saw a number of men get out of a Ford and a Chevrolet and enter the house. “Well,” he finally said, “that certainly looks like it might be police activity.”

  “Well it sure ain’t a meeting of the local B’nai B’rith.”

  Hearst left her and went inside to phone his managing editor. Marion went to her bedroom to use her private phone. She called the Goldwyn Studios and asked to be put through to Greta Garbo’s dressing room.

  Lottie Lynton took the call. “Oh hello, Miss Davies. Miss Garbo is on the set. I don’t know how long she’ll be. It’s the first day, you know, and everyone’s nerves are on edge. Mr. von Stroheim slapped an extra who punched him in the jaw, you know, little incidents like that … but wait … wait … here she is…

  Garbo came storming through the doorway, a dangerous tornado. “That son of a bitch. That hideous Hun. How dare he tell me how to play comedy. His idea of hilarious is dissecting a cat while it’s still alive!”

  Lottie had her hand discreetly across the mouthpiece of the phone. “I have Miss Davies here.”

  “I can’t talk to anyone now. I’m too upset.”

  Lottie repeated Garbo’s words efficiently. Then she listened and, eyes wide with excitement, reported, “She says … er … the place is swarming with the fuzz …”

  “Fuzz? What fuzz?” Garbo was lighting a cigarette and puffing it ferociously.

  “The police!”

  “What place? What are you talking about?”

  “Where the Wolheims lived!”

  Intrigue quickly replaced anger. Garbo took the phone and asked, “Marion? What’s going on?”

  She heard Davies saying, “I saw two guys go in there about an hour ago. Then all of a sudden a couple of cars show up …” In the distance she could hear the wail of an ambulance siren. “… With what certainly were more cops, plainclothes guys, and one carrying a little black satchel so he had to be the sawbones … you know … um … uh yeah … the coroner. So they’ve probably found a stiff in the joint.” Marion was enjoying herself immensely. “How about that! Murder right next door! Oh Christ, Willie’s phoning his editor and that means reporters and photographers and they’ll be questioning me and I look like shit warmed over! Ethel! Ethel!” she shouted for her maid, “Come in here and make me look young! There’s going to be photographers! Greta? I’ll keep you posted!”

  Marion Davies slammed the phone down and hurried into the room she’d had refitted as a beauty parlor. Ethel had preceded her and was mixing magic potions in pharmacy bowls. “And get the clamps to pull my skin back behind my head. I’ll wear a gold brocade turban, that’ll hide them.” She shouted at another maid who had entered the room. “Get over to the house next door and try’ and find out who was murdered.” The ambulance had arrived and the shrieking siren was abruptly choked off. “The meat wagon’s here! I haven’t been so excited since I got screwed by Charlie Chaplin!”

  The police photographer photographed the corpse from every angle while the forensic team went to work on the room. The coroner, with a practiced eye, took one look at the texture of the dead woman’s skin and said she’d probably been dead anywhere from five days to a week.

  "Any idea what killed her?” asked Villon while Arnold Lake stood next to him, hands in his pockets, foreseeing that the woman’s murder would soon lead to a large-scale explosion of international intrigue. If she was the putative Mrs. Wolheim, and if the Wolheims were German agents, then her murder could possibly trigger a string of killings confined to the family of agents.

  He heard the coroner saying, “If you’ll look at her head, you’ll notice there are patches on the skull where she’s lost clumps of hair.” He cleared his throat. “There are certain blood disorders that can cause that. But in this case, I’ll put my money on thallium nitrate. That’s a highly toxic metal.” They stood to one side as the meat wagon orderlies entered with a stretcher and prepared to remove the body. “It’s rarely used in one dose. It’s usually served a little at a time, like cyanide, so it takes the victim a few weeks to die. The symptoms, in addition to the loss of hair, include a painful burning in the feet. I’ll know more when I’ve cut into her.” He watched the corpse being carried out of the room and then said to Villon admonishingly, “Herbie, aren’t you being a bad boy? Doesn’t she belong to the Santa Monica boys?”

  Villon said with an innocent look, “Finders keepers.”

  At the studio, Martin Gruber made it his business to encounter Lisa Schmidt on the set. “Ah Miss Schmidt. Just the person I’ve been looking for.”

  “Mr. Gruber? How can I help you?”

  He walked her out of earshot of the personnel setting up for the next scene. “Guiss has ordered me to find out everything I can about you.”

  “So he’s still suspicious?”

  “He’s tenacious. And very thorough. So I thought we might meet and concoct a biography for you that will satisfy all of us. Nothing too outrageous, mind you. But something that will tell him something but will really tell him nothing. And then he’ll be satisfied and compliment me for a job well done. He might even give me a raise.”

  “Shall we meet and do it together? What do you suggest?”

  “Why don’t I draw up a rough treatment, and then you can add or subtract or embellish. You’re twenty-four, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Orphaned early in life and raised by a cruel spinster aunt?”

  “No, it was actually a cruel maternal grandmother who claimed I was illegitimate.”

  “That bothered you?”

  “Oh not at all. I remember mother used to introduce me to a wide variety of uncles at breakfast frequently. They came in all shapes and sizes and a variety of denominations and I adored almost all of them, especially the ones who’d give me some money if I’d let them cop a feel. All kidding aside, I was born in Cleveland, my parents were Bavarian immigrants, and they were killed in a train crash about three years ago.”

  Gruber thought for a moment. “Nah, too mundane. Let me work on it and I’ll soon have a rough draft for you.”

  In an exaggeratedly loud voice she said, “I’ll have those notes typed up for Mr. Guiss, Mr. Gruber. I’ll get to it immediately.” Von Stroheim had come upon them unseen by Gruber. “What notes?” he growled.

  Gruber took over. “Mr. Guiss wants a daily progress report.” The director’s eyes narrowed. “Why?”

  “Why, to know how you’re progressing. Isn’t it usual for the dir
ector’s assistant to keep a daily report on how many minutes have been filmed each day?”

  Von Stroheim’s skin turned purple with rage as he exploded, “I will not be persecuted! We have only just begun shooting today and already the vultures are gathering to plague me!”

  “Please, Mr. von Stroheim,” placated Gruber.

  The director shouted, “If you wish to please Mr. von Stroheim you’ll keep to hell away from my kingdom! This set is my kingdom! I am the absolute ruler. If Mr. Guiss wants a daily progress report, tell him it cannot be provided with any degree of accuracy because from one day to the next I’m never sure what I have accomplished until I have studied the rushes and decided what is usable and what needs to be reshot and I am a very slow study! Now get the hell out of here!”

  Gruber fled.

  Von Stroheim took Lisa by the arm and hustled her to one side. “What’s going on between you and Peter Lorre?”

  She felt the blood draining from her face. “Nothing,” she managed to say.

  “He’s very upset. He’s giving a very poor performance. I’m told there was a confrontation with you last night that led to circumstances that have left him upset and nervous and unhappy, and I will not tolerate that.”

  Lisa told him about the previous evening’s confrontation and then Lorre’s apology earlier that afternoon. “That’s all it was,” she said in conclusion, “an innocent case of mistaken identity.”

  Von Stroheim was just about her height, about five feet four or five. They were standing almost nose to nose. ‘Tell me the truth, young woman. Are you involved in an undercover activity? Are you a spy for Hedda Hopper?”

  She collapsed with laughter and von Stroheim smiled. She’s a good girl, he thought, a very good girl. I must lure her to a nondescript motel in Laguna Beach and ravage her.

  TWELVE

  When it seemed a small war was about to erupt between Herb Villon and the Santa Monica Police Department, Arnold Lake arranged for his superiors to come to Villon’s assistance, which resulted in an uneasy truce. The Santa Monica police smarted from the illegal invasion and threatened revenge.