Groucho Marx, Master Detective

by Ron Goulart

  “That’s what they all keep telling me in my Girl Scout troop, yes,” said Groucho. “Could you direct me to the vicinity of Sally St. Clair. They informed me down in the personnel office that she worked here on the third floor.”

  “That’s right, Mr. Marx,” he answered, giggling again. “I simply must tell you that the stateroom scene in A Night at the Opera is the funniest—”

  “No, Chauncy, what you simply must tell me is how the heck to find Sally St. Clair.”

  “Yes, of course. I’m sorry.”

  “And well you should be, my lad.”

  “Miss St. Clair is in Kitchenware.”

  Shaking his head, Groucho addressed a skinny youth who’d paused to listen. “Wouldn’t you know it? If only he’d said she was in Women’s Underwear, I’m nearly certain I could’ve come up with some pithy rejoinder,” he explained. “Or even if he’d told me she worked in Men’s Hats, I might’ve been able to dredge up a cute saying. But Kitchenware just doesn’t inspire.”

  The young man laughed. “I know who you are,” he said shyly.

  “Too late, sonny,” Groucho informed him. “We’ve already done that routine. Now then, Chauncy, point me toward Sally.”

  “I’ll do better than that, Mr. Marx, I’ll personally escort you to her,” he said. “Just walk this way.”

  Groucho followed, saying to the skinny young man, “I’m not even going to respond to an obvious setup like that.”

  * * *

  Sally St. Clair was pale, blond, thin and weary-looking. She and Groucho were, with the permission of the floorwalker, sitting at a metal-topped patio table in the Outdoor Furniture section. Two imitation potted palms loomed up on Groucho’s right.

  “No,” the thin girl was saying, “Peg would never commit suicide.”

  Resting his elbows on the tabletop, he said, “Okay, we agree about that. What I’m anxious to find out, Sally, is what really happened.”

  She shook her head. “I haven’t, you know, seen much of Peg in the past few months, Mr. Marx. But…”

  “But what?”

  “Well, I did run into her, of all places, at the Farmers’ Market a couple weeks ago,” she said. “Peg looked swell and she was really excited.”

  “She tell you why?”

  “Yes, she was going to sign a long-term movie contract.”

  “I’ve heard about that. Three years with Paragon.”

  “No, no, Mr. Marx.” Sally shook her head again. “She had something in the works with Monarch.”

  “Monarch—you sure about that?”

  “I am, yeah. I’d heard gossip about the Paragon deal and I asked her if she didn’t mean Paragon. She laughed and said that Paragon was a second-rate outfit and that she was going to be working for the biggest studio in Hollywood,” Sally explained. “Peg even told me that old man Kurtzman himself was going to make her the offer.”

  Groucho absently twisted the tip of an imitation palm frond around his forefinger. “Kurtzman was going to do this, huh? But he hadn’t actually made the offer yet?”

  “That’s right, but she seemed awful smug about it. They were going to sign her and soon as they did, she’d see that Monarch found some work for me, too.”

  Letting go of the palm frond, Groucho said, “What about the fellows Peg was friendly with? Do you have any idea who she’s been dating lately?”

  “We didn’t get around to talking about that when I ran into her.” She leaned forward, lowering her voice. “Back when you were seeing her, you know, there were other guys, too.”

  “Yeah, I knew Peg wasn’t especially faithful,” he acknowledged. “That’s only fair really, since Peg wasn’t the only young lady—and that’s not even including my wife—that I was wooing at the time.”

  “You know who Shel Leverson is, don’t you?”

  “A hoodlum,” answered Groucho. “He one of Peg’s beaus?”

  “She never told me that, but somebody else did about six months ago.”

  “Leverson is the right-hand man—or maybe it’s the left-hand man—of Vince Salermo, king of the gamblers,” said Groucho. “Not nice guys.”

  “I think she was pretty much a decent girl,” Sally said. “But, you know, she got a kick out of taking risks. It was fun to her to date a punk like Leverson or to go down to Tijuana and gamble or…” Her voice trailed off. “Well, really, that’s about all I know.”

  “If you remember anything else, give me a call, huh?”

  Her laugh was brief and dry. “C’mon, Mr. Marx, your servants wouldn’t even put me through to you.”

  He gave her a phone number. “I’m the only one who answers that particular phone, Sally.” He started to get up.

  She caught at his coat sleeve. “Listen, I’m not much of a dancer anymore,” she told him. “But I think I can still do bit parts. If you run into anybody who—”

  “I’ll have Zeppo give you a call.”

  “An agent like him will never phone me.”

  Groucho sat down again and took her hand. “He’ll phone you,” he promised her. “You have my word.”

  She pulled her hand free. “We’ll see,” she said.

  Eight

  I drove by Peg McMorrow’s cottage on my way to pick up Jane late that afternoon.

  All was quiet and it looked just like any other inexpensive beach house. The garage was shut tight.

  On my car radio Knox Manning was doing the news and I turned him off in the middle of something about Great Britain’s latest attempt to appease Hitler so that I could talk to myself uninterrupted.

  “I wonder if her car’s in the garage.”

  If it was still there, we ought to take a look at it.

  “Larry Shell’s pretty reliable. If he says Peg had head injuries, then she did.”

  I reminded myself that it would also be a good idea to talk directly with the Los Angeles Times photographer to make sure he could confirm what May Sankowitz had passed along to me.

  “Groucho’s right about this. Peg wasn’t a suicide.”

  I turned onto Palm Lane, which had only one palm tree, and a woebegone one at that, on its entire seven-block length.

  The final block dead-ended against a scrubby hillside. I parked in front of 1343. Rod Tommerlin had been doing a very successful comic strip for the past three years and his house was large and strived to be impressive. It had a lot of glass and redwood in its makeup and was obviously designed by someone who idolized Frank Lloyd Wright without quite grasping his basic principles.

  As I went striding up the flagstone pathway that curved across the vast green lawn, I heard a crashing sound from inside the house.

  A man shouted “God damn!” and I sprinted for the door.

  The chimes played “She’ll Be Comin’ ’Round the Mountain,” no doubt an allusion to Hillbilly Willie.

  Jane answered the door, her face slightly flushed and a strand of her auburn hair down across her forehead. “Oh hi,” she said, smiling and inhaling at the same time. “You’re a few minutes early.”

  I scrutinized her. She was wearing a short-sleeved white blouse and a tan skirt and there were a few black inky smudges on her bare left arm. “You okay?” I inquired.

  “Fine,” she assured me. “Fine and dandy, in fact.”

  I made a skeptical noise. “What fell over?”

  “Beg pardon?” Jane took a few steps back, beckoning me to cross the threshold into the high-ceilinged foyer of the cartoonist’s house.

  “I heard something crash and then somebody yowled.”

  “Oh, that.” She led me into a very large and very bright glassy living room.

  “Details?” I suggested.

  “Rod fell down.”

  “He do that often?”

  She brushed her hair from her forehead. “He just tripped over some research material.”

  I nodded. “Okay, yes. I’ve heard that’s a common household accident.”

  “Hey, everything is okay,” she said. “So would you like to drive me h
ome or would you prefer to loiter around here and make snide remarks?”

  “Don’t I get to meet your boss?”

  “Not today, Frank. Rod’s trying to finish up a Sunday page so he can get it off on the last airmail plane to New York City.” From the arm of a low white sofa she picked up a cardigan sweater. “Let’s go, huh?”

  We didn’t do much in the way of conversing until she was in the car and heading for her place.

  “How was your day?” Jane asked, watching the bright late afternoon outside.

  “Did that jerk make a pass at you?”

  “Rod’s not a jerk,” she answered, a bit primly I thought. “And no, he did not.”

  “If he did, I think I’d better—”

  “Trust me, please, nothing happened. And if something had, I know how to take care of myself.”

  “All right, okay,” I said. “What can I do to appease you?”

  She smiled. “By the way, I have to work tonight.”

  “Back there?”

  “No, dimwit. In the privacy of my own home, doing some Hillbilly Willie promotion drawings that are overdue,” she explained. “If you’re free after, say, ten tonight, you can drop by and we can have coffee and hold hands.” She turned in the seat, looking at me. “That is, after you’ve searched all the closets and peeked under my bed for rival suitors.”

  “You are obviously not accustomed to keeping company with a chivalrous westerner, ma’am,” I observed, slowing down to park in front of her cottage. The little shingled house wasn’t that different from Peg McMorrow’s and, for a moment, that made me feel very uneasy.

  Jane said, “I guess you’re right. Excuse it, please.”

  “Tonight will work out,” I said, sliding out of the car. I trotted around and opened her door for her. “Because I promised to go over to Groucho’s in about an hour so we can compare notes on our day’s activities.”

  “Did your day’s activities include working on the script for the radio show?”

  “That only needs a few minor changes.”

  “Uh-huh.” We sat side by side on the top step of her porch. “You think there really is something to his suspicions about her death?”

  “I do, yeah.”

  We had a fine view of the Pacific Ocean. It was only a few hundred feet downhill and gradually, as we talked and I filled her in on what I’d been up to, the day began to wane and the water turned first a paler blue and then started to darken.

  When I’d finished, Jane tightened her grip on my hand. “You’re going to get hurt,” she warned. “Really, you and Groucho are poking into something that—”

  “I know, we might be going up against some fairly dangerous hoods or some very powerful moguls. Or both,” I admitted. “Thing is, if Peg was murdered, hell, something has to be done about it.”

  “Agreed, but not necessarily by an aging comedian and a chivalrous radio writer. This is what the police are supposed to take care of.”

  “The Bayside cops are part of the coverup, way it looks.”

  “How about the state police or the mayor or the governor or—”

  “California is noted for its mild climate, but not especially for its clean government,” I said. “Hell, I wouldn’t know, at least at this point, who we can trust.”

  “Even so, Frank, you babes in the woods need some kind of professional help.”

  Leaning, I kissed her on the cheek. Then I reluctantly stood up. “I’ll convey all this to Groucho,” I said. “And I’ll see you again around ten.”

  “Be sure you don’t get yourself killed before then.”

  “I shall,” I promised, “make every effort to remain extant.”

  * * *

  Twilight was spreading slowly through Beverly Hills as I swung off Santa Monica Boulevard onto North Hillcrest Road. Groucho was residing in a sprawling tile-roofed Monterey-style house at number 710. It was a big whitewashed place that he’d described to me as trying to look like “something put up by a gaggle of tipsy Spanish missionaries.”

  Parking in the white gravel drive, I went up to the front door and reached for the brass knocker.

  Before I could touch it, the oaken door swung open inward. “Good evening, sir.”

  Groucho, wearing a tatty flannel bathrobe dotted with faded orange sunbursts on a field of washed-out turquoise, was standing there looking vaguely British.

  “Evening, I—”

  “I’m Chives, sir, Mr. Marx’s loyal major-domo,” Groucho explained in a vaguely British accent. “I used to be his major homo but the bobbies put a stop to that. The master is upstairs dallying with the downstairs maid—or possibly he’s downstairs dallying with the upstairs maid.” He shrugged. “Be that as it may, I’ve been instructed to invite you in and inform you that the master will be with you presently. Or if you can’t wait, I can bewitch you on the spot. And you even get to select the spot from twenty-three convenient locations.”

  “Very impressive, Mr. Marx,” I told him, stepping into the large hallway. “But we’ve already cast Eric Blore in the part.”

  “I feared as much,” said Groucho, signaling me to follow him along the hallway. “That Screen Pansies Guild has all the good butler and valet parts sewn up tight. And if you’re going to get sewn up, say, you may as well be tight.” He loped into a big white kitchen, readjusted his robe and seated himself at a round table. “You arrived early, Rollo.”

  “Everybody’s been telling me that.”

  “Best take it to heart.” There was a pastrami sandwich on a white plate in front of him. “You’d think that a society that had invented the wheel, perfected roller-skates and found a cure for hay fever would be able to produce a passable New York-style pastrami on rye.”

  “They haven’t found a cure for hay fever.”

  “Ah, then that explains this sandwich.” He pushed the plate a few inches away from him. “My family—whom I like to refer to as One Man’s Family because it’s much catchier than, oh, say, the Kate Smith Show—is not at home,” he informed me, gesturing vaguely at the kitchen walls. “Arthur, my only-begotten son, is off playing tennis somewhere. Tennis is his passion, as it was mine until I discovered jellybeans. My sweet little daughter, Miriam, is attending a pajama party with a coven of equally giggly girls. And my wife … well, she’s out and about. So what do you think, Mr. Anthony? Can this marriage be saved? And if it can, what precisely would you save it in? A bucket, a cardboard box or … But I seem to have strayed from the point.”

  “Oh, so? I hadn’t noticed.”

  Groucho poked the top of his sandwich and narrowed his left eye. “You come perilously close, Merriwell, to being a wiseass.”

  “I only need five more credits and I get my certificate.” I sat across from him. “Shall we talk about Peg McMorrow now?”

  Groucho sighed what sounded like a genuinely sad sigh. “Yeah, let’s move on to that.” He suddenly jumped up, motioning me to stay put. “Sit, Rollo, I want to get something to show you.”

  I sat and in just under five minutes he was back with a somewhat wrinkled manila envelope. “I keep these hidden,” Groucho explained, returning to his chair. “Souvenirs of the lost past are, as Marcel Proust reminds us, hunky dory. However, there’s no need to leave them lying around where jealous mates can find them.”

  “These are pictures of Peg?”

  Nodding, Groucho reached into the envelope and drew out three snapshots and two glossy portraits. He spread them out, facing me, on the tabletop. “The snaps were taken down in a little out-of-the-way Mexican resort town. The studio shots are what Abe Bockman uses—used—to peddle her flesh around town.”

  The girl in the snapshots was very pretty, slim and dark-haired. She looked relaxed and happy, both feistiness and vulnerability showing in her high-cheekboned face. Wearing a two-piece sunsuit, she was leaning against a stretch of adobe wall in two of the pictures. Groucho was in the third with her, one arm around her, grinning, looking happy, too.

  The Peg in the formal portr
aits was somebody else, guarded and calculating.

  “Being with you improved her,” I told him, looking up.

  “Mostly I knew the Peggy in those snaps,” he told me. “A nice kid with a sense of humor and, yes, very affectionate. But that other Peg…” He turned both of the portraits face down, shaking his head. “You understand, Frank, that I don’t mind helping a beginning actress get a start in this lousy business. Peg, though, got to be too obvious about it, about using me. That was the reason I quit seeing her.” He gathered all the pictures up and put them away in the manila envelope again.

  “Which Peg prompted someone to kill her?”

  He said, “Let’s talk about what we came up with today. Then we can draw up an agenda for tonight’s activities.”

  “Tonight’s activities?”

  “Of course, Philo, the game’s afoot.”

  “It better not be afoot after ten,” I mentioned. “I got a date with Jane.”

  Nine

  The gaunt undertaker shot his starched white cuffs, leaned forward and rested both sharp elbows on his desk. “It’s time, Mr. Marx,” he suggested in his deep, slightly droning voice, “that you started thinking about your own eternal rest. We here at the Everlasting Repose Chapel and Mortuary have several satisfying plans that will assure those who love you that once you’ve shuffled off this—”

  “Actually, Whitman,” Groucho informed the pale, thin man from our side of the desk, “you’d get a bigger, and a better behaved and dressed, crowd if you concentrated on those who loathe me. However, I’m not ready for eternal rest.” He extracted a fresh cigar from the breast pocket of his avocado-colored sport coat. “Though maybe a series of short naps might not be bad.”

  Ethan Whitman allowed himself to frown. “Perhaps you’d better explain exactly why you’re paying me this rather late visit, then.”

  “I’ve been, quite pithily I thought, working up to that, Whitman.”

  I glanced again at my wristwatch. Nine o’clock was drawing nearer. “This has to do with Peg McMorrow’s body,” I put in.

  Whitman’s frown deepened and he turned to look directly at me. “Peg McMorrow?” He gave a brisk, negative shake of his pale head. “No, I don’t believe we’ve processed anyone of that name through the chapel.”