Groucho Marx, Private Eye

by Ron Goulart

  “All right.” Smiling, she leaned back. “I promise never to be serious with you again, Frank.”

  “Yeah, but how can I be sure you’re serious about that?”

  She stood up, touching her fingertips to my cheek briefly. “Come into my studio.”

  Jane was working as assistant, sometimes ghost, to Rod Tommerlin. He turned out the successful rustic comic strip, Hillbilly Willie. At last count, it was running in a little under five hundred newspapers across the country. Days she worked at his house, but she also had a small studio here in her cottage.

  She paused in the doorway, leaned against the jamb. “I haven’t mentioned this project to you before,” she told me. “Mainly because I wasn’t sure if I could bring it off. Well, I did and now I really would like your honest opinion.”

  Nodding, I followed her into the small room. Like all the others, it was neat and orderly. There were two file cabinets along the left-hand wall, a drawing board, desk, and taboret in the center of the room. On three of the walls she’d hung framed comic strip originals. My favorites were the hand-colored Krazy Kat Sunday page George Herriman had given her and a large self-portrait from Milt Gross.

  There was a black leather portfolio resting on the slanted board. Smiling, a bit tentatively, she crossed over and opened it. “Take a look,” she said. “And I really want, Frank, your honest opinion.”

  Jane spread out six original daily strips, then nodded for me to sit in the chair and look them over.

  Each strip had the title Hollywood Molly lettered over the leftmost panel. Her drawings were great, done in a style that was all hers. They weren’t in the broader manner she had to use when assisting Tommerlin on his moonshine extravaganza.

  Molly was a pretty blonde, but smart, who’d just arrived in Hollywood to try to crash the movies. The writing was good, too, and the strip managed to be both funny and at the same time touching.

  Okay, I know that sounds like a blurb provided by somebody who’s in love with Jane. But Hollywood Molly really was a great comic strip.

  I laughed, pushed back from the drawing board, and took her hand. “Jesus, this stuff is absolutely—”

  The telephone rang out in the living room.

  She ignored it. “Absolutely what?”

  “Terrific,” I told her as I hugged her. “Also stupendous, colossal, and not too bad. You can hand Tommerlin your resignation first thing tomorrow morning and—”

  “I think I’ll wait until I sell Molly.” She pivoted and hurried into the next room to catch the phone.

  “The strip is also monumental.” I followed her out of the studio.

  She picked up the phone from the coffee table. “Hello?” She glanced over at me, poked her tongue into her cheek. “Yes, he is here, Groucho. No, that won’t be any need of that, since Frank already has his clothes on.” She held the receiver out at arm’s length.

  “What, Groucho?” I inquired.

  “Didn’t I warn you about cohabiting with a lass who’s as bright and intelligent as this one is, Rollo?” He was obviously puffing on a cigar as he spoke. “I was just recently reading an article in The New England Journal of Medicine that provided the dread news that intelligence may be contagious. So unless you drop her at once you’re liable to lose your moron status, my lad. Think of what a handicap that would be in our business. For one thing, you’d never again be able to communicate with Colonel Mullens on his own level nor—”

  “I neglected to tell you, sir, that I now take all my father-son lectures from Lewis Stone. Did you have any other rational purpose in phoning?”

  “I did indeed,” he continued. “How would you like to resurrect our once thriving detective business?”

  “I wouldn’t mind actually. When do we commence?”

  “This very night, Rebecca,” answered Groucho. “As a matter of fact, I have our newest client right here in the next room.”

  “So who the hell is it?”

  “I’ll give you a hint, Watso. What is it that’s vile, loathsome, and even less fun than a really bad case of bubonic plague?”

  “Surely, Groucho, you haven’t got Polly Pilgrim under the same roof with you?”

  “Bingo,” he said. “If you can curb your lust, I’d like you to speed over to my manse in that lemon yellow rattletrap of yours. Not only is the game afoot, Rollo, but my foot’s a little gamy.”

  Three

  All things considered, my yellow secondhand Plymouth coupé made pretty good time up into Beverly Hills. The harsh night wind buffeted the car, nearly shoving me clean off the road once. The imitation raccoon tail I’d never gotten around to detaching from the radio antenna flapped like a battle pennant all the way there.

  When I turned onto the wide white gravel drive of Groucho’s sprawling Moorish-style home on North Hillcrest Road, I noticed Polly’s peach-colored limousine up near the garages.

  I parked near it and slid free of my coupé.

  Her chauffeur was sitting in the limo smoking a cigarette. He rolled the window a third of the way down, causing sparks to come flickering out into the darkness.

  “Hiya, Frankie.” He jerked a thumb in the direction of the house. “Brat’s inside.”

  I gave him a grunt for a response, then headed for the doorway.

  Groucho himself yanked the door open just as I was reaching for the knocker. “Thank goodness you’re here, Dr. Kildare. We boiled plenty of hot water just like you told us on the phone,” he said as he ushered me inside out of the windy night. “I’m afraid, though, that we got tired of waiting for you and converted most of the hot water into matzo ball soup. Could you, do you suppose, use the water anyway and just ignore the floating matzo balls and the lumps of chicken?”

  “Where’s Polly?”

  “Oh, I know where she is—out in the kitchen.” Groucho was wearing a smoking jacket that might have been in fashion back in the early 1920s and a pair of tweedy, and baggy, slacks. “It’s the present whereabouts of my latest wife and my two adorably cute offspring I’m a trifle vague about. Though I’d guess Arthur is off playing tennis someplace, quite possibly a tennis court.” He went loping off along the wide hallway.

  I trailed after him. “Now would be a good time to tell what exactly is going on, Groucho?”

  “For a fellow who once came this close to winning a Pulitzer for reporting, Rollo, you certainly haven’t been keeping up with the latest news.”

  “I never came anywhere near a Pulitzer Prize all the while I was with the LA Times.”

  “Ah, that may explain why you’re a few murders behind. This story just broke officially about three hours ago. Newspapers haven’t hit the stands with it yet, but I happened to hear it on the radio.” He dived into his big yellow and white kitchen. “Look who’s here, Pollyanna, my sweet. It’s Uncle Franklin.”

  The freckled girl, much subdued, was sitting at the table, both pudgy hands circling a mug of cocoa. She was wearing a pink cardigan and tan slacks. It was obvious she’d been crying. “Good evening, Mr. Denby,” she said in a quiet voice. “I’m awfully sorry to bother you and Mr. Marx like this, except I don’t know anyone else I can…” She trailed off, slumped, and began crying softly.

  I looked from her to Groucho, perplexed, frowning. “I get it,” I said. “This quiet and courteous kid isn’t really Polly, it’s her stand-in.”

  “She’s the true and authentic Polly Pilgrim,” Groucho assured me. “Sit yourself and I’ll explain the situation to you.”

  He took the chair next to hers and actually put a comforting arm around the shoulders of the young singer.

  Still puzzled, I sat opposite the two of them. “Okay, so?”

  “Drink the rest of your cocoa, kiddo,” he advised the sniffling girl as he withdrew a crisp pocket handkerchief from his jacket and passed it to her.

  Polly took it, dabbed at her puffy eyes, and then blew her nose. “Thank you, Mr. Marx.” She held on to the handkerchief, squeezing it into a tight ball.

  “All right, he
re’s the setup,” began Groucho. “Early today Dr. Russell Benninger, the noted Beverly Hills nose job artist, was found murdered in his beachfront mansion in Bayside.”

  Benninger had been a highly successful plastic surgeon and he’d remodeled many a famous aging face, male and female. Acting on an anonymous tip, the Bayside police, including our old antagonist Sergeant Branner, had entered the doctor’s seaside home. They found him, in his pajamas, sprawled on the cream-colored carpet of the master bedroom. Between wives at the moment, Dr. Benninger was, officially anyway, living by himself.

  He’d been shot twice in the head, at close range, with a .38 revolver.

  Less than two hours later they’d arrested Polly’s mother for the killing.

  Let me give you some background on Polly’s parents, since that had a lot to do with why she was there in Groucho’s kitchen crying. Polly’s mother was the screen actress Frances London. A blonde in the Joan Blondell-Jean Harlow tradition, she had considerable success in the early thirties. For Paramount she starred in such box-office hits as Blonde Tramp, Singapore Lady, and Bitter Bargain. After that one, Frances went into a decline. Mostly it was drinking and, some said, drugs that did her in. She would fail to show up at the studio for filming, insult her directors, stumble on her lines over and over. And she got herself into several public scrapes, including one hit-and-run, a couple of shoplifting attempts, several disorderly conduct, and driving while under the influence of alcohol charges. The studio dumped Frances in 1934 and nobody else would hire her. She dropped from sight the next year, lived in a rooming house in the Bunker Hill area of LA and, again according to rumors, did just about anything to keep alive.

  But about a year ago, after voluntarily committing herself to a church-run rehabilitation program, the actress reappeared. She no longer drank and, with the help of a second-string agent, got back into movies by the way of bit parts. A few weeks earlier she’d successfully auditioned for the role of the wife in MGM’s upcoming series, Dr. Dunn and Family.

  Polly had been born out of wedlock, but when Frances married Roger Pilgrim in 1930, he had legally adopted the girl. Pilgrim, a husky man in his fifties, came from a rich and conservative old California family. In recent years he’d become a partner in a public relations firm that specialized in the handling of the campaigns of some fairly conservative political candidates.

  Pilgrim divorced Frances in 1934 and easily got custody of Polly. The child had an impressive singing voice and her father pushed her into an entertainment career. Polly got her first movie part when she was eleven. A gruff and distant man, Pilgrim didn’t especially like his adopted daughter, but he treated her about as well as he treated anybody.

  “My mother didn’t kill that man,” insisted Polly now, looking across at me.

  “Why’d they arrest her then?”

  Groucho said, “It’s mostly circumstantial stuff, Frank.”

  The only fingerprints on the murder gun were those of Frances London. And most of the police departments in Greater Los Angeles had collected her prints in the days when she was a flamboyant drunk about town.

  When the cops went to her small house in Manhattan Beach, they found the blond actress unconscious on the floor. She smelled strongly of booze and a subsequent test determined that her bloodstream contained considerably more than the legally allowed limit of alcohol. Polly’s mother claimed she’d never been near Benninger’s place, hadn’t seen him for weeks.

  “Wait now,” I put in. “What was her relationship with him?”

  “They were an item for several months,” explained Groucho. “But Frances was certainly not the only lady in his busy social life. He seems to have been what is technically known as a tomcat.”

  “She quit seeing him,” insisted Polly, grip tightening on the cup.

  Groucho took out a fresh cigar and absently unwrapped it. “Unfortunately, Frances ran into Dr. Benninger by chance at the Trocadero a couple weeks ago. A shouting match followed and, according to those who were still sober enough to witness anything, there was physical violence on both sides. Some of them swear Frances threatened to bump the sawbones off because he’d jettisoned her.” He shrugged.

  “That’s just not true,” insisted the young singer, sniffling and rubbing at her nose with the borrowed handkerchief.

  I asked her, “Have you seen your mother since she was arrested?”

  She nodded, snuffling. “I made my father let me go see her,” she answered. “They’ve got her in a holding cell at the Bayside Police Department.”

  “What does she say about the cops finding her drunk?”

  Polly took a slow deep breath. “She got a phone call last night from her agent,” she said. “He told her a producer who was considering her to star in a series of B-movies about a girl reporter wanted to see her. She was supposed to go out to a private home over in Pasadena. But when she got into the hallway, someone hit her on the back of the head and she passed out.”

  “And?”

  “That’s all she remembers, Mr. Denby, until she woke up back in her house with the darn police standing all around her. She swears she hasn’t taken a drink since she quit and she can’t explain why she appeared to be drunk.”

  “It doesn’t look good,” I told Groucho.

  “Gets better,” he assured me. “Frances showed them a bump on her head, where she was bopped. Branner, of fond memory, said she wasn’t sapped. She simply bumped her noggin when she fell down drunk.”

  “That’s a lie, Mr. Marx. You can’t go saying—”

  “I’m just recounting the police view, kiddo,” he explained. “While the sarge was there he got a call telling him that his men had found two witnesses who’d swear they saw Frances, staggering pretty thoroughly, approach the good doctor’s door and pound on it. She yelled for him to open, promising if he didn’t she’d toss a brick through his goddamned window.”

  Polly tugged at his sleeve. “I know something else important,” she said. “I saw a needle mark, red and inflamed on my mom’s arm. Right here.” She tapped a spot a few inches above her wrist.”

  “I know, you and your mother believe she was drugged and then somebody forced liquor down her,” he said. “Trouble is, the cops will simply say she’s using drugs as well as drinking.”

  Polly shook her head forcibly. “No, that’s a damned lie, Mr. Marx,” she insisted. “Since she stopped drinking—and stopped for good—my mother has never lied to me. She knows she’s an alcoholic and can’t take a drink for the rest of her life.” She paused to inhale and exhale. “And the stuff about her ever taking drugs is just so much Hollywood bullshit.”

  “How often do you see her, Polly?” I asked.

  “Since she got better, my father lets me visit her once a week,” she answered. “I’ll tell you this, too, I’ve been to her little house lots of times and there’s never been a trace of liquor or anything else bad there. She hardly even smokes anymore, really.”

  Groucho lit the cigar with a wood match, took a few thoughtful puffs while contemplating the high white ceiling. “She got a lawyer?”

  “Yeah, my father hired that oily shyster Ethan Cardwell.”

  “Caldwell is not only a shyster, dear child, he’s the shyster’s shyster,” Groucho said. “But he’s got a pretty good courtroom record.”

  “He wants my mother to plead innocent by reason of insanity.”

  Groucho pointed his cigar at me. “What do you think? Did Frances do it?”

  “Her alibi is so lousy,” I told him, “it’s probably God’s truth.”

  Groucho asked the girl, “Powder burns?”

  Polly looked at her hands. “Yes, they did a paraffin test and it was positive,” she admitted quietly. “But, don’t you see, that has to be part of the frame up. I know it.”

  I said, “You haven’t exhibited any especial fondness for Groucho or me, Polly. So why come to him now?”

  “I read all about how you solved the murders of Tom Kerry and that little starlet last yea
r,” she said, using the handkerchief once again. “And, well, it’s my opinion that you did clever job.” She moved her cup a few inches forward across the tabletop, watching it. “All right, I suppose I’m still not all that fond of either one of you. But … well, okay. Maybe you don’t know this, but I don’t have a heck of a lot of friends. And nobody I can trust or confide in. Not even my father. I don’t imagine you much like me either, but I really need your help.”

  “We’ll help you, Pollyanna,” Groucho promised. “Frank, am I speaking for you?”

  “Sure, I think it’d be a good idea to help Frances London.”

  “And me, too?” asked Polly.

  After a few seconds I answered, “And you, too, sure, Polly.”

  “One of the more fascinating aspects of this case is the participation of our old chum, Sergeant Branner of the Bayside constabulary,” said Groucho after puffing on his cigar. “I thought we’d be able to dump that lad into the hoosegow for his part in what happened to Peg McMorrow.”

  “He’s slicker than we figured.”

  “Let’s make sure we net him for good this time,” he said. “Yes, Rollo, I think we’d best find out who really knocked off this chin-lifter and thereby throw a spanner in the works for Branner. Of course, before we do that we’ll have to stop by the public library and find out what a spanner is.”

  “You mean you will help?” asked the girl, sitting up and smiling at him.

  “You have the word of Groucho Marx, for whatever that’s worth,” he told her. “The last quote I saw was twenty-three dollars and fifty-seven cents, but we’re expecting a rally.”

  “Thank you.” Polly caught him by the shoulders and kissed him on the cheek.

  “That’ll be enough of that.” He extricated himself from her grateful grip and stood up. “When we solve this mess, we’ll pass the hat, but until then no more smooching, my child.”

  She said, “You know, Mr. Marx, I just realized you’re nowhere near as nasty as you pretend to be.”