Groucho Marx, Master Detective

by Ron Goulart

  She smiled and turned away. “It’s split pea.”

  “That’s too obvious even to comment upon,” he said, leaning back and tapping his pockets in search of a fresh cigar.

  “Well, how nice,” said the man who’d materialized at the booth.

  “Well, Jack Gardella,” he said, recognizing the Monarch Studios troubleshooter. “You’re looking more and more like Eddie Robinson every day. I bet you could get a job as his double, if only you weren’t so tall and had more hair and didn’t have those cauliflower ears and the broken nose.”

  “This is a nice coincidence,” said Gardella, sliding into Groucho’s booth uninvited. “I’ve been wanting to have a little talk with you.”

  “And I’ve been wanting to have a little talk with you. Isn’t this just delightful. Not to mention delicious and delovely.”

  Rubbing his hands together, hunching his broad shoulders, Gardella said in his low, raspy voice, “Eli Kurtzman wanted me to talk with you, Groucho. What sort of setup do you and the boys have with MGM? I mean, has Mayer signed you for more pictures?”

  “Are you making me a business proposition, Jack?”

  “Eli thinks you guys are terrific. If Mayer isn’t going to use you any more, Monarch would love to be the new home of the Marx Brothers,” he told Groucho. “We figure you haven’t even begun to explore the possible locations for further comedies. The opera, sure, and the race track. But how about the fight ring, the baseball diamond, the ice rink?” He framed an imaginary marquee in the air with both hands. “The Marx Brothers in At the Ballgame. The Marx Brothers in At the Prizefights. The Marx Brothers in—”

  “What I wanted to talk to you about, Jack, was—”

  “Wait a minute, Groucho. Aren’t you interested in making more movies?”

  “Actually, I plan to have myself tattooed and then exhibit my body in run-down vaudeville houses and shabby sideshows,” said Groucho, unwrapping a cigar. “I’m leaning toward having myself covered from head to toe with scenes from The Old Curiosity Shop. When people see the death of Little Nell unfold across my lower back, Jack, there won’t be a dry eye in the house. I predict I’ll be the biggest thing since Swain’s Rats and Cats.”

  “Kurtzman will double anything MGM can offer, Groucho.”

  “This wouldn’t be an effort to sidetrack me, would it?”

  “Sidetrack you from what?”

  “Oh, I’ve developed an interest in the circumstances of Peg McMorrow’s death,” answered Groucho evenly. “I understand you knew her.”

  Gardella frowned, shaking his head. “What gossip column did you pick up that bunk in?” he asked. “Naw, Groucho, I never met the lady.”

  “And Kurtzman never offered her a contract?”

  “Are you kidding? She was, as I understand it, a second-rate bit player.”

  “And you have no idea who killed her?”

  “She killed herself, according to the item I saw in the Times.”

  Groucho said, “Newspaper stories, like gossip columns, aren’t always reliable, Jack.”

  Gardella leaned forward, put his hand on Groucho’s sleeve. “Think about our offer,” he advised. “And, for your own good, don’t go poking into things that don’t concern you.” He stood up just as Groucho shook free of his grip, left the booth and went striding out of the restaurant.

  The pretty waitress delivered Groucho’s bowl of soup. “You look unhappy, Mr. Marx.”

  “Yes,” he admitted. “I just realized I wasn’t hungry after all.”

  Thirty-two

  By nine-thirty that evening, my interview with Francesca Sheridan was going to be preceded by both a dancing date with Jane and a dinner meeting with Groucho. The three of us arrived at the vast Ambassador Hotel on Wilshire in one of Groucho’s automobiles. Being with him assured us a much better reception and a much better table than I could’ve commanded.

  As we were going down the wide carpeted steps to the Ambassador’s Coconut Grove nightclub, Groucho, who was decked out in a tuxedo for the occasion, leaned closer to me and said, “Now that I’m a confidential investigator and amateur detective, I’ve turned over a new leaf.”

  “Meaning?” I was wearing the better of my two suits and Jane looked great in a simple black evening dress.

  “I’m going to be unobtrusive and subdued,” he promised. “No use drawing attention to myself while in the throes of an investigation.”

  “Subdued and Groucho don’t go together very well,” commented Jane as a very polite waiter showed us to our small table next to a stand of three tall fake palm trees.

  “Didn’t I tell you to toss this woman overboard, Rollo? She’s far too glib.” Groucho waited until she was seated and then plopped down in the chair on her left. “Thank you, Henri.”

  The waiter smiled and bowed. “I’m Maurice, Mr. Marx.”

  “Ah, that’s most unfortunate, most unfortunate,” said Groucho. “I’ve already written you into my will as Henri.” He shrugged. “But then perhaps you aren’t all that interested in inheriting two pairs of roller skates and a sundial.”

  The waiter smiled once more. “Would you like to see dinner menus, Mr. Marx?”

  “I’d rather see the second act of Up in Mabel’s Room, but I suppose we’ll have to settle for your tatty menus, Maurice.”

  I was sitting on Jane’s other side and scanning the large, high-ceilinged room. There were dozens of small, white-covered tables, each sporting a tiny lamp atop it, and quite a few tall imitation palm trees. Up near the fronds in many of them you could see toy monkeys dangling.

  It was still a little early by Hollywood standards and only about half the tables were occupied. The bandstand, which was across the room from us, was empty just now, but the babble and the laughter prevented quiet from closing in.

  Tilting in Jane’s direction, Groucho asked, “Would you like to dance?”

  “If there were music and if it were with Frank, I’d love to.”

  Groucho lit a cigar, then sighed out smoke. “Well, since there’s not going to be any fooling around, we may as well get down to business,” he said. “Let’s compare notes, Rollo, before it’s time for your spurious interview with Fanny Sheridan.”

  “I’ve made some notes on what I’ve come up with today.” I reached into the breast pocket of my suit coat for a small packet of file cards. “We can—”

  “Groucho! It’s wonderful to see you again.” Paulette Goddard, blond at the moment, had leaned over and was giving him an enthusiastic hug.

  After glancing down the front of her low-cut satin evening gown, Groucho scanned the crowd at the Coconut Grove. “Is Mr. Chaplin with you this evening, my dear?”

  “Charlie’s meeting with some banker and I’m on my own.”

  Nodding thoughtfully, Groucho returned the hug. “I notice that the musicians are stumbling back onto the bandstand, Paulette,” he mentioned. “Would you care to glide gracefully over the dance floor? Or, better yet, jig disgracefully with your humble servant?”

  She laughed, kissed him in the vicinity of the ear and said, “I’d love to, Groucho.”

  He managed to rise up out of his chair and remain entangled with Goddard. “I do hope they play a tango,” he confessed. “I’ve been told my tango drives women mad.”

  “I don’t mind being driven mad, but try not to tromp on my feet this time.” She turned her attention to Jane and me. “You won’t be upset, will you, if I borrow him for a while?”

  “Just so you don’t,” said Jane, smiling sweetly, “drag him behind a palm tree and take advantage of him.”

  Laughing again, Goddard took hold of Groucho’s arm. “Come along, Julius.”

  He nodded at me. “This is a simple operation,” he explained, puffing on his cigar. “It’ll all be over in a matter of minutes and then we can get back to business.”

  “Leave the stogie behind,” suggested the actress.

  He reluctantly deposited the cigar in an ashtray and then headed with her to the dance area.
Gus Arnheim’s orchestra had just started playing “Harbor Lights.”

  Jane touched my hand. “Would you like to be dragged to the dance floor?”

  I stood. “I’ll go voluntarily.”

  This was the first time I’d ever danced with her and I became preoccupied with that for a while. When next I noticed Groucho, he wasn’t with Paulette Goddard. He was dancing with Tallulah Bankhead and they actually were doing a tango.

  After that I lost sight of him again. When the band went into a Latin American number, a rumba I think it was, I suggested to Jane that we return to our table.

  “Here he comes,” she said as she sat down and nodded to her left.

  Groucho was heading our way, doing a very enthusiastic rumba with Evelyn Venable. As they danced close by us, I heard him saying, “Evelyn Venable, Evelyn Venable. I could go on reciting that till the cows come home. Of course, if you persist in living with cows, I may not drop in at your place much anymore.”

  He vanished in the dancing crowd after that, resurfacing a few minutes later up on the bandstand. Arnheim borrowed an instrument from his guitar player and handed it over to Groucho. Groucho did the medley of Marx Brothers favorites he’d performed up at Warren Stander’s mansion the other day.

  “I suppose for him,” remarked Jane, “this is being subdued.”

  “He’s been an entertainer a lot longer than he’s been a detective,” I reminded. “He’ll probably—”

  “Denby?” A thin man in a tux was standing next to me.

  “Yeah.”

  “You’re several minutes late for your interview with Miss Sheridan,” he said. “If you want to talk to her at all, I suggest you come with me now.”

  I got up. “Be back shortly,” I told Jane.

  “I played saxophone in my high school band,” she said. “Maybe I can play some duets with Groucho while I’m waiting for you.”

  Thirty-three

  Barefoot, Groucho was pacing slowly on the sandy midnight beach. His black bow tie was untied, his cigar unlit. It was a warm evening and we were about two hundred yards from Jane’s cottage. She and I were sitting on the plaid blanket she’d brought down from her place.

  Picking up a small flat stone, Groucho sent it skimming across the black water. “Okay, if we put together all the odds and ends of information that we’ve been digging up these past few days,” he said, turning to face us, “we can come up with a plausible scenario. Three weekends ago, Peg goes up to Shadow Lodge with Tom Kerry, possibly for a simple old-fashioned bit of shacking up and mayhap also to try to persuade him to help her get a contract at Monarch. Now Babs McLaughlin is also up there, sharing a cabin with a new lover. We don’t as yet know who the lad was.”

  “But it might be old Eli Kurtzman, the head of the whole Monarch shebang,” I suggested.

  “Might be the old goat, yeah,” said Groucho. “Or it might be Freddie Bartholomew, the Lone Ranger or Evelyn and Her Magic Violin. We haven’t established the identity of who she was domiciled with in that woodland setting.”

  “But we are sure that Babs and Kerry ran into each other and had an argument,” I put in. “Peg’s photos prove that.”

  “Exactly, Rollo,” Groucho said, beginning to pace again. “Kerry had been tossed aside by Babs, but apparently was a sore loser. He encounters her in the woods, pleads with her to take him back. She says ‘Nertz to you, buster,’ or words to that effect. Kerry, like many another ham actor, has a violent temper. He kills the lady and disposes of her body somehow. That explains why she’s been listed as missing ever since that fateful weekend.”

  Jane made a skeptical noise. “Tom Kerry, from all I’ve heard, and from what you two have been coming up with—well, he isn’t an exceptionally tough or forceful guy. Do you really think he’s the kind who could kill a woman?”

  “Anybody,” said Groucho, “can kill anybody, if they’re angry enough and go out of control. Happens all the time.” He lit his cigar, using a book of Trocadero matches he’d taken from his tuxedo pocket. “Let’s just pursue this line of reasoning for a mite longer, lass. Kerry kills Babs, then becomes justifiably upset and nervous. Even in Hollywood, murder can do serious harm to your career. So, he gets in touch with his studio and Kurtzman dispatches Jack Gardella, the trusted troubleshooter, up to Lake Sombra. Gardella tidies things up, maybe even helps hide the body in a nice out-of-the-way spot. It looks very much like Babs actually did drive to Ensenada first, as part of the coverup for meeting whoever it was she was meeting. Gardella probably works at building up the notion that she never left Baja, that something happened to her down there.” He blew cigar smoke in the direction of the moderately phosphorescent Pacific. “Only snag is that Peg, probably suspecting something was up when Kerry snuck away for his woodland rendezvous with Babs, followed him with her handy little camera. She sneaks up and gets some shots of them arguing.”

  “She couldn’t have suspected he was going to kill her,” I said.

  “But, Rollo, she did know that here was a prominent movie star getting together with another man’s wife,” Groucho reminded. “We have to admit that Peg had a blackmailing streak and she probably took the pictures originally just in case she might be able to use them later on to her advantage. Now, subsequently, when she read in the papers that Babs McLaughlin had supposedly disappeared down Mexico way, she realized that there was some kind of coverup going on. She gathers together a set of her snapshots and approaches somebody at Monarch. Maybe Kerry himself, maybe Gardella—could’ve been she got to Kurtzman himself somehow. She says, ‘I don’t want to make trouble for anyone, but it’s not going to do dear Tom or The Pirate Prince any good if I come forth and say that I know he was with the missing woman just before she vanished.”

  “It’s possible,” I said, “that Peg actually saw Kerry kill the woman.”

  “Could be,” he conceded. “But if so, why didn’t she take pictures of that event?”

  “Maybe she did,” said Jane. “You fellows only came up with five of the shots from her roll of film, remember?”

  “That’s also possible, Miss Pinkerton,” Groucho allowed. “But all we can be fairly certain of is that she put the bite on somebody at Monarch.”

  “And then Gardella approaches her and pretends to offer her a contract with the studio,” I put in. “That was that night they were spotted having dinner together.”

  “Actually, he’s just stalling her until he can arrange to have her taken care of,” said Groucho, frowning. “They kill Peg, swipe the photos and, with the help of crooked cops like Sergeant Branner of the Bayside force, cover the whole thing up.”

  Jane coughed into her hand. “Where’s Tom Kerry?” she asked.

  “Eh?” said Groucho.

  “Well, from what Frank’s been able to find out—including the information he extracted while wrestling with the lovely Francesca Sheridan earlier tonight and calling it dancing—nobody has actually seen Kerry since that weekend.”

  “I had to dance with her,” I said in my defense. “That was how she wanted to do the interview and—”

  “The young lady raises an interesting point,” cut in Groucho. He walked over and squatted on the edge of the blanket. “Why has Kerry been lying low?”

  “Maybe he’s afraid to face anybody,” I suggested. “Scared somebody’ll ask him about Babs. Or could be he’s afraid that Shel Leverson or some other of Vince Salermo’s boys will want to ask him questions.”

  “It could also be,” added Jane, “that he was hurt himself when Babs McLaughlin was killed. If she was killed.”

  “She has to have been killed,” said Groucho. “Otherwise there’s no reason to murder Peg to keep her quiet and get those photos. The existing pictures themselves, let me remind you, aren’t all that dangerous unless you put them together with what Peg knew.”

  “We better go up to the Shadow Lodge,” I said. “See what can be found out up there.”

  “An excellent notion,” said Groucho, popping to his feet. “We’ll
do that first thing tomorrow. Will you be able to join us, Janey?”

  She shook her head. “Tommerlin’s over his cold and I have to be back at his studio tomorrow—fairly early in the day. Sorry, fellows.”

  “That’s as it must be,” he said. “We’ll forge on alone, side by side, shoulder to shoulder until the flag of our country is again flying atop Fort Sumter. I’ll pick you up at about ten o’clock, Rollo.”

  Thirty-four

  At a little after seven the next morning, Jane appeared in the doorway to her bedroom. “There’s a strange creature scratching at my front door,” she announced.

  I sat up in bed, blinking. “You’re not referring to Groucho?”

  “No, this is a four-footed strange creature. Come take a look.” She was already dressed, wearing a tan skirt and a white blouse.

  I hopped free of the tangle of blankets and sheets, tugged on my pants and worked my way into my shirt. Shoeless, I followed her across her living room.

  The morning was overcast and out over the ocean gulls were making complaining squawks.

  Some kind of claws were scratching at the wooden panels of Jane’s closed front door. And there were also low whimpering, slobbering noises to be heard.

  I opened the door, gingerly, a very few inches. “Who are you?” I asked the mournful-looking hound who was looking up at me.

  He cocked his head to one side, panting enthusiastically.

  “Allow me, suh, to introduce you to Dorgan,” said Groucho, who walked into view from out of the misty morning. “A genuine southern-fried bloodhound.”

  I crouched and held out my hand. “Pleased to meet you, Dorgan.”

  The dog sat and held out a forepaw. “Why are you here, several hours ahead of schedule, Groucho, and accompanied by this cartoon dog?”

  “Let me explain the hound first,” he said. When he lowered himself onto the top step of Jane’s porch next to me, Dorgan waddled over and rubbed against him, licking Groucho’s cheek with a long moist tongue. “Save that romantic stuff for later, mutt.”