Groucho Marx, Master Detective

by Ron Goulart

“Chiefly I was viewing lawn from an entirely new and fresh perspective,” he admitted. “Too damn foggy to see much anyway. How many do you figure there were?”

  “Probably just one doing the shooting.”

  “Yes, I suppose for these small-change assassinations that’s sufficient.” He leaned back in his seat, rubbing at a grass stain on his knee.

  I drove as rapidly but unobtrusively as I could away from there.

  * * *

  The Everlasting Repose Chapel and Mortuary sat dark and silent in the night fog. Even the sedate neon sign mounted above the slanting thatch roof had been turned off. The parking lot was empty except for a lone gray hearse spotted with mist.

  We’d parked across the street, as far from a street lamp as possible, and directly under a forlorn palm tree. Down at the opposite end of the block was a gas station and it, too, was dark and deserted. There was a phone booth planted next to the rest rooms and, while Groucho watched the funeral home to make absolutely certain nobody was still in there, I slipped quietly out of the driver’s seat and jogged down to the phone.

  The overhead light refused to go on when I shut the door. Since the booth gave strong evidence that someone had recently been sick therein, I decided it was better to leave the door open and let in the night air and fog.

  Jane answered on the second ring. “Okay, all right. But don’t call me anymore tonight,” she began in an angry voice.

  “Do I win any sort of prize if I guess what in the hell you are talking about?” I inquired.

  “Oh, sorry. I thought you were somebody else.”

  “Glad I’m not. Who was that meant for?”

  “Never mind,” she said, anger gone. “Although I’m somewhat miffed at you. It is, by my reckoning, already ten-thirty.”

  “I know, that’s why I’m phoning.”

  “Are you planning to arrive here at all tonight?”

  “Yes, if you don’t mind my not getting there till around eleven.”

  “Has something gone wrong?”

  “Well, I could play for sympathy and tell you I got shot at, but I’d rather—”

  “You got shot? Jesus.”

  “No, shot at.”

  “That’s bad enough. What—”

  “I’ll fill you in when I get there. They shot at Groucho, too, but we both escaped injury.”

  “Who did it?”

  “You couldn’t spot anybody in the fog. We were coming out of Peg McMorrow’s cottage when—”

  “I’ve been trying to convince you, Frank, that both of you are messing in something very dangerous.”

  “We’ll thrash this out later. If you’re going to be up that late.”

  “Who can sleep when the man she may well love is out getting shot at?”

  “That’s very flattering. Is—”

  “Go finish up whatever foolhardy thing it is you’re doing. Then hurry over. Goodbye.” She hung up.

  I went hurrying back to the coupe.

  Groucho hopped free of the car. “Appropriately enough,” he announced, “there’s not a sign of life yonder.”

  “Let’s sneak in and look around, then.”

  No one had spotted the matchbook Groucho’d stuck in the side door earlier to keep it from shutting completely and locking. The heavy door made a faint metallic groan as we, carefully and slowly, shoved it open.

  Repose Room 3 was untenanted and smelled, as did just about everything in the mortuary, of dying flowers.

  Tugging out his flashlight, Groucho clicked it on. “When I was prowling this mausoleum earlier in the evening, I noticed a room full of filing cabinets just across from the bathrooms,” he said. “They may have a folder on Peg stashed away in there someplace.”

  We moved, more or less on tiptoe, out into the long, dark corridor.

  “Should somebody succeed in knocking me off later in the evening,” whispered Groucho, “please plead with my next of kin not to ship me to this particular establishment to be processed by Ethan Whitman and his gang of ghouls. Ethan Whitman and his All Ghoul Orchestra? Is that up to my usual standard?”

  “I didn’t know you had standards.”

  “I see. We’ll both count to a hundred and then pretend I never said it.”

  “Best course of action, yes.”

  Groucho led me to an office door, nodded at it. “In here, Sherlocko,” he invited and opened the door wide.

  In the glow from his light I could make out that three walls of the room held rows of green metal filing cabinets. The fourth wall was taken up with a large chart illustrating the wide variety of caskets the chapel was prepared to lay you away in.

  “That number twenty-six matches your eyes, Rollo.” He swung the flashlight beam up to touch the chart. “And that fetching raccoon tail you use to festoon your jalopy would look absolutely stunning hung from one of those gilded handles.”

  Moving over closer to the filing cabinets, I started checking the tags on the drawers. “This looks like M–N here, Groucho,” I said, tugging out a drawer as he came over beside me.

  “There it is,” he said, elated, shining the beam on the folder I was lifting out of the pack.

  I hadn’t expected it to be there, but it was. A manila folder with McMorrow, Peg typed neatly on its bright new label. “So they didn’t destroy everything.”

  “Open it already.”

  “Damn.” There was only a single half sheet of paper inside. No autopsy report, nothing else.

  “Still, this is something.” Holding the light with his chin, Groucho took the slip of pale blue paper in both hands.

  It was a receipt, typed on Eternal Repose Chapel and Mortuary letterhead and acknowledging the receipt of $250. The fee was to pay for transporting Peg McMorrow’s body to the Undying Flame Crematorium in Altadena and arranging for it to be cremated. The bill had been paid by Justin LaSalle.

  “How the devil does that pansy figure in this?”

  “Used to be in pictures, didn’t he?”

  “Briefly, a few years back. Then somebody decided to tote up all the high school boys he’d buggered,” explained Groucho. “Well, it turned out LaSalle had gone way over the quota, even the special quota established for Hollywood. So he was tossed out on his keister by Paramount and they replaced him with three interchangeable new gigolos. LaSalle went into the interior decorating trade and, when last I heard, was flourishing.”

  “Did he know Peg?”

  Groucho tucked the receipt away in another pocket and took the flashlight from under his chin. “She never mentioned him, but that doesn’t prove a damn thing,” he said.

  “We’d better add LaSalle to the list of people we—”

  All the lights in the room suddenly blossomed into life. From the doorway behind us a soft voice said, “Good evening, Mr. Marx.”

  Twelve

  Groucho said, “This is the first time I’ve ever signed an autograph in a morgue.”

  “I really appreciate this, Mr. Marx,” said the lanky young man in the overalls.

  “What was your name again?” asked Groucho, taking the proffered autograph book and fountain pen.

  “Tristan Fahrland, sir.”

  “‘To Tristan,’” muttered Groucho as he scribbled on a page. “‘With the undying respect of’”—he paused, glancing up at the ceiling—“‘Groucho Marx.’” Capping the pen, he handed it and the book back to the young mortuary janitor.

  Tristan scanned the inscription, smiled. “Thank you very much, Mr. Marx,” he said, tucking the book away in the bib pocket. “I’m glad I hung around here in the dark and waited.”

  “And I’m glad you didn’t turn out to be a gunman.”

  “How exactly,” I asked, “did you figure out we’d be returning?”

  The young man answered, “Oh, well, I happened to overhear you talking to Mr. Whitman. So I knew you were interested in the actress who died.”

  “And?”

  “Then I happened to see Mr. Marx job the side door here,” Tristan continued. “Tha
t got me to thinking, you know, that you’d probably be trying to sneak back in here to find out more about her. Because old Whitman sure as hell wasn’t going to tell you much.”

  “Your loyalty to Whitman is not pronounced,” observed Groucho.

  “He’s a jerk,” said Tristan. “And he lied to you. I’ve seen just about all your movies, Mr. Marx, and I like them a lot, except for the parts where Harpo plays the harp. That’s really not very funny.”

  “Try to convince Harpo of that.” Groucho raised his eyebrows and rolled his eyes.

  “By the way, sir, you look a lot funnier with a moustache.”

  “I know,” said Groucho. “But they made me stop wearing it in public because too many people were falling down in fits of laughter. While others were falling down in gutters. At the moment my moustache is being kept in a bird cage at a nonspecific location in Beverly Hills, and as it rocks on its perch it sadly sings, ‘I’m only a beard in a gilded cage, a—’”

  “What,” I cut in, “do you know about Peg McMorrow, Tristan?”

  “I was,” Groucho assured me, “working up to that same question.”

  The young man took an uneasy step back from us. “I’ll try to tell you all I know,” he said in a very quiet voice. “But, you know, I won’t tell anybody else. Not the police, I mean, or anybody like that.”

  Groucho nodded. “That’s okay,” he said. “With sufficient information, we can do what has to be done without involving you directly at all.”

  After a careful glance back at the closed door, Tristan inched closer to Groucho and addressed himself mainly to him. “I saw her body,” he told him. “In the newspapers, you know, they said she’d killed herself by locking herself in the garage and leaving her car motor running.” He shook his head slowly.

  “You don’t think that’s what happened?”

  The young man shook his head again. “I’ve been working here near two years,” he went on, “and I’ve seen a lot of dead people. When you die from carbon monoxide poisoning, you know, your face turns really red.” He paused, took a deep slow breath in and out. “Not her, not Miss McMorrow, no. You know, it’s funny, but I saw her in a movie only a week or so ago. It was a cowboy picture and Tex Ritter was the—”

  “What killed her, then?” asked Groucho.

  Tristan glanced back at the door of the filing room once again. “She … damn,” he said, wiping at his nose with his knuckles. “It’s really hard to talk about it, Mr. Marx. I’m not supposed to go around the bodies, but a lot of times I do. I get scared working here alone at night, you know, and I’d quit if I didn’t need the money so bad.”

  Groucho put his hand on his arm. “Take it easy, relax,” he urged. “You think she was murdered? Is that it?”

  He nodded, swallowing hard. “Her head was…” He touched his fingertips to his right temple. The whole hand was shaking. “All along the right side … it was, you know … it was smashed in and you could see—ow!”

  Groucho had tightened his grip on the arm. “Sorry.” He let go, muttering, “Bastards, the bastards.”

  “They must have hit her in the face, too, quite a lot,” Tristan went on, voice husky and dim. “There were bruises on her face … here along the left cheek and down the right side. And, Jesus, I think they burned her, too. You know, with a cigarette or something … because all down the left arm there were these raw … Sorry, sorry.” His head went forward and he start to cry softly. “Sorry, you know, I don’t know why I’m crying.”

  “All right, okay,” Groucho told him, his voice husky now, too. “You don’t have to describe any more, Tristan.”

  The young man gave a grateful sigh and took a wrinkled white handkerchief out of his pocket. “All of that, you know, really upset me,” he said. “It isn’t right to pretend she killed herself, when I know damn well she didn’t. But … you know, I can’t do anything or I’ll lose this job.”

  “You told us,” said Groucho. “That’s sufficient.”

  “Any idea,” I asked the janitor, “who ordered Whitman to fake the death certificate?”

  He wiped at his eyes, then blew his nose. “No, sir, I’m not sure,” he answered. “Sergeant Branner, from the Bayside Police, was hanging around here a lot, but I’m not sure if he’s the one or not.”

  Groucho nodded toward me. “Let’s take our leave. I feel the need of fresh air.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “Thanks, Tristan.”

  “You think maybe you can get them punished for what they did to her?”

  “We can,” said Groucho. “No maybe involved.” He reached out and shook hands with the young man.

  I shook hands next, telling him, “Don’t show that autograph to anybody, okay?”

  “Hell, I live by myself and I don’t have a steady girl just now,” he said. “You can bet I’m not going to show it to Mr. Whitman.”

  When we were outside in the chill night fog, Groucho took a fresh cigar out of his pocket, unwrapped it and then threw it violently away from him. “I always knew Hollywood was a lousy place,” he said quietly. “But not this lousy.”

  Thirteen

  The phone on the bedside table was ringing.

  I sat up, nearly awake, and grabbed the receiver. “Hello?” I said in a somewhat blurred voice.

  After what might be called a pregnant silence, a gruff male voice asked, “Who the hell are you?”

  After yawning, I answered, “I might ask you the same question. You intrude on my sleep, then ask me a—”

  “Honestly, Frank.” Jane’s bare arm reached over from the other side of the bed and, fairly gently, took the phone away from me. “Yes?”

  I leaned against the backboard, remembering finally that I hadn’t spent the night in my own bed. “Sorry,” I said. “I only now realized that I—”

  “Hush,” she advised, making a shut-up gesture with her free hand.

  Jane was wearing a simple sort of white sleeveless nightgown and no makeup and she looked great.

  “… a friend of mine who dropped over for breakfast, Rod,” she was saying into the phone. “It’s not the crack of dawn. It’s nearly nine A.M. and … what? Well, the point is I can have anybody over to breakfast I damn well please.”

  “Is that Tommerlin?” I asked her, reaching for the phone. “Is he annoying you?”

  “Everybody is annoying me at the moment. Shoo. Sit there with your hands folded and your yap buttoned tight,” she said. “No, not you, Rod.”

  “Is he browbeating you?” I asked her.

  Narrowing one eye and slapping her hand over the mouthpiece, Jane suggested, “Why don’t you, please, take a vow of silence. This is strictly a business call.”

  I gave an exaggerated shrug, folded my arms and attempted to assume a dignified position. That is not especially easy to bring off when you’ve been sleeping in your underwear.

  “I’m sorry to hear that, Rod,” Jane said into the phone. “Of course, I’m sincere in my sympathy. Look, simply because a dear friend drops in for breakfast, that doesn’t … Well, ‘dear’ means exactly that. No, he’s not laughing at your misfortune. He’s sitting here like a lump on a log, looking soulful. What? Well, in a chair. No, we’re both sorry you have a bad chest cold, Rod.”

  Very quietly, I untangled myself from the blanket and the patchwork quilt.

  “… put about a teaspoon of eucalyptus oil in a pan of boiling water and inhale the fumes. No, it isn’t a joke. My grandmother used to do that whenever we had colds when I was a kid and it works wonders. Clears the lungs right up and … Huh? Well, she happens to be dead, but she lived to be eighty and she never in all her life sounded as clogged up as you do right now.”

  Free of the bed, I hurried over to the chair where I’d neatly left my clothes last night. Gathering them up in a quick bundle, I made my way out of the bedroom and into the breakfast nook.

  “… that’s very thoughtful of you, Rod. Sure, I can finish the rest of the Hillbilly Willie promo stuff at my little studio here and bring i
t all over there tomorrow. What? Or, sure, the day after if you’re not better by tomorrow. But, really, if you try that eucalyptus, you’ll…”

  I dressed swiftly in the narrow breakfast nook, with the venetian blind letting in a striped view of a stretch of morning beach and bright Pacific.

  One of my argyle socks had disappeared overnight. Rather than intrude back into Jane’s bedroom, I slipped my loafer on over my bare left foot.

  There were two framed watercolors on the wall to my left. Very strong work, grim scenes of downtown Los Angeles at night. I leaned closer and, as I’d suspected, the signature was Jane Danner.

  “I’m looking for a patron of the arts,” she said behind me, “if you’re interested.”

  “This one of Pershing Square is terrific.”

  “You sure you don’t mean colossal.”

  I turned, grinning at her. “I never use Hollywood hyperbole to describe the work of those I am infatuated with at the moment,” I assured her.

  “Really it’s just watered-down Reginald Marsh,” Jane said, shrugging one shoulder.

  “No, it’s not.”

  “Well, thanks.”

  “No, it’s more watered-down Edward Hopper. What did Rod Tommerlin want?”

  “He’s got, as you may’ve gathered while eavesdropping, a bad chest cold.” She came into the breakfast nook and raised the venetian blind. “How come you aren’t wearing socks?”

  “I have one on.”

  “So you do. Would you like to do something wholesome today? Like a picnic or a drive up to Santa Barbara or a tour of the Missions?” she asked. “Rod says I ought to stay away from him today.”

  “Sure, fine,” I said. “But I’d better check with my answering service first.”

  “You can use the phone in the living room while I get dressed.”

  There were three more watercolors in the small bright living room, all of them showing downtown L.A. at night.

  I sat on the sofa and dialed my answering service. “This is Frank Denby.”

  “It’s very exciting,” said a slightly nasal voice. “I know I’m supposed to act blasé, because in this particular line of work we’re liable to talk to dozens of celebrities and movie stars in any given day and it won’t do to sound like some gushy tourist. But I’ve been a fan of his since I was this high and my folks took me to see him and his brothers on Broadway in Animal Crackers way back in—”