Elementary, My Dear Groucho

by Ron Goulart

  “My civic duty, you mean?”

  She nodded. “And besides, we can use the publicity.”

  While I was examining my conscience, Groucho was barging into his Sunset office with a paper bag from Moonbaum’s tucked up under his arm like a football. “How’s tricks?” he inquired, sliding to a stop in the vicinity of his secretary’s desk.

  Very politely, Nan thumbed her nose. “You’ll be pleased to know that I just started dating a brand-new fellow,” she announced. “And he’s a swell guy, gentle and kind. Unlike certain gargoyles I’ve worked for.”

  Depositing his bag on a clear spot on the desktop, Groucho pressed his palm over his eyes. “No help from the audience, please,” he requested. “I shall now proceed to part the veil of mystery and guess this admirable specimen’s occupation. I see … rabbits, a top hat, a watermelon, a blonde being sawed in half … . No, wait. Scratch the watermelon.” He lowered his hand, opened his eyes wide, and pointed at Nan. “He’s a magician. Am I right, young lady?”

  “Okay, all right, Groucho,” she acknowledged. “I do seem to have an affinity for professional magicians. There isn’t, after all, any harm in that.”

  “It’s better than exclusively dating trunk murderers or scat singers, true,” he acknowledged as he extracted a bagel spread with cream cheese from the bag. “What’s this latest example call himself?”

  “Zanzibar the Astounding.”

  Nodding, Groucho said, “I think Chico, Harpo, Zeppo, and I worked with him back in vaudeville. Irving Zanzibar. About five two, two hundred and sixty pounds, a wart here, and a mole here. That him?”

  “He happens to be suave and handsome, looks a lot like that actor Edmund Lowe.”

  “Nobody looks like Edmund Lowe,” he informed her. “Not even Edmund Lowe. It takes two makeup men three hours to get Edmund Lowe to look like Edmund Lowe. Or possibly it takes three makeup men two hours.” He sighed, took a bite of his bagel, sighed again. “And that ends our fun-filled visit with Miss Lonelyhearts for today, boys and girls. To business.”

  Nan picked up a manila folder and opened it. “I cut the reports on Felix Denker’s killing from the newspapers. Then I typed up a precis of all the information.”

  “I’m touched, Nanook, for no one has ever given me a precis before. I was going to ask Santa for one, but the old duffer keep pushing me off his knee and whacking at me with his candy cane.” Easing around to her side of the desk, he started sifting through the stuff in the folder.

  “I also located Erika Klein,” his secretary said. “She is, according to her, nearly collapsed with grief over her husband’s death. But since you’ve been so supportive of causes that oppose Hitler, she’s willing to grant you a brief audience. Eleven-thirty this morning. That okay?”

  “Hunky-dory,” he answered, nodding. “Where’s young Widder Denker holed up at the moment? I heard she and Felix weren’t cohabiting anymore.”

  “She’s staying up in Bel Air, as a house guest at Merlinwood.”

  He set down the clippings he’d been scanning and raised his eyebrows. “The fabled eyrie of dashing silent swashbuckler Guy Pope and the petite Alma Avon, known in my distant youth as ‘America’s Favorite Tomboy’?”

  ‘That’s the place, yeah.”

  “Supposedly Alma Avon hasn’t set foot out of that castle of theirs since the day after The Jazz Singer opened. They were going to call her a recluse, but they decided she didn’t get around enough to qualify for that.” Frowning, working on his bagel, Groucho returned to his reading. “Why are they putting Erika up, I wonder?”

  “She’s actually living in one of their guest houses. The Popes have seven acres up there, remember?”

  “I’ve never, alas, been a guest of the Popes or so much as set foot on the premises. He’s been insanely envious of me ever since he saw a photograph of me in a pair of tights,” explained Groucho. “And he may also have found out that if I hadn’t put the arrow in the bow backwards during my screen test, I would’ve been the fellow who played Robin Hood in that classic silent film The Rogue of Sherwood Forest.”

  “In 1924, when Pope starred in that movie, you and your disreputable brothers were doing I’ll Say She Is! on Broadway.”

  “You’re right, that long train ride from New York to Hollywood every day would’ve worn me to a frazzle. Just as well I didn’t get the part,” he conceded. “Although I did look awfully cute in that green Robin Hood suit. Green brings out the sparkle in my eyes and has been known to bring out the militia on occasion when—”

  “Felix Denker’s funeral and burial will take place Friday at ten A.M. It’ll be at the Peaceable Woodlands Cemetery in Glendale,” Nan told him. “You’re invited, but not as a pallbearer.”

  “Just as well. You carry too many coffins and you get typecast. Look what happened to Benny Karloff.”

  “That’s Boris Karloff.”

  “No, I was referring to Benny Karloff. He’s Boris’s cousin and went broke when the fad for pallbearer movies faded. Personally I thought the man was absolutely brilliant in Carry Me Back to Old Virginny. That’s the one where he had to lug a coffin across several states single-handed to—”

  “Judging from the news stories,” Nan cut in, “the cops aren’t any closer to solving Denker’s murder than you are.”

  “They’re hinting that a disgruntled studio electrician is a possible suspect.” Groucho organized the clippings and notes back into a relatively neat stack and closed the folder. “In detective circles that’s known officially as ‘clutching at straws.’”

  “May I give you a bit of advice, Groucho?”

  He bowed, spreading his arms wide. “We’re always open to constructive criticism here at the home office.”

  “Before you go up to Bel Air,” suggested Nan, “you might want to wipe that blob of cream cheese off your chin.”

  Eight

  The high stone walls around the Merlinwood estate were broken by a pair of wrought-iron gates. These were open wide, but a uniformed policeman was standing in the white gravel drive.

  Groucho braked his Cadillac and rolled down his window as the cop came striding over.

  “Can I help you, sir?” The officer was chunky and red-faced.

  “I’ve got an appointment with Erika Klein. She’s supposed to be living here at the moment.”

  “And you are?”

  “Groucho Marx.”

  The cop leaned closer, studying his face. “Yeah, I suppose you must be.”

  “Believe me, Officer, if I had any choice in the matter, I’d be somebody else entirely,” confided Groucho. “For a while I was going to be Father Flannagan of Boys Town, but then they decided my brogue wasn’t up to snuff. On top of that, my snuff wasn’t up to par. From there it went from bad to worse, with a side trip to Idaho.”

  “Uh-huh.” The policeman pointed. “Park your car over there by the garages, then walk around behind and you’ll see three cottages—cottages, hell, all of them are twice as big as my house in Pasadena. Anyway, Erika Klein is in the cottage on the far right.”

  “Who’re you looking out for—Erika?”

  The officer nodded. “Same people killed her husband may make a try for her. Nazi bastards. We’ve got her under an around-the-clock watch.” Waving Groucho on, he stepped over to the side of the wide winding driveway.

  There was about an acre of formal gardens, dotted with gnarled cypresses fronting the estate. Much of the foliage was faded, dry, touched with winter. The house itself was enormous, three stories high, built of gray stone and resembling the sort of castles Guy Pope had swashbuckled his way through during his heyday in the silents. You expected to see archers at the high, narrow windows, maybe a few lackeys up on the slated roof ready to send a cauldron of boiling oil splashing down on you.

  As Groucho parked the Cadillac on the gravel, a dog started baying mournfully inside the twenty-five-room mansion. A large hound from the sound of him.

  “I’ll tell Baskerville you’re looking for him,” m
uttered Groucho, easing out of his car.

  The day was still gray and overcast.

  He rounded the garages and encountered a man clipping the tangles of ivy that climbed high on the gray wall of the imitation castle. He was tanned and in his middle fifties, and he attacked the ivy with an energetic grace.

  “Good morning, Guy,” said Groucho. “Excuse me for trespassing in your domain.”

  The actor stopped trimming, turned, and stared at him. “I know you, don’t I?” he asked, looking somewhat perplexed.

  “I’m Groucho Marx.”

  Pope smiled broadly. “Of course you are, yes,” he said. “Forgive me for not recognizing you. My mind sometimes … Yes, Alma and I saw you and your brothers in The Cocoanuts on Broadway and you were hilarious. Nineteen twenty-eight, wasn’t it?”

  “Nineteen twenty-six.”

  “You were all marvelous fun, you especially—though somewhat too raucous for my Alma,” said the actor. “I’d love to take you in and have you meet Alma again, but she’s ailing.”

  “Sorry to hear that,” he said. “But actually I’m here to visit with Erika Klein.”

  “A terrible tragedy, what happened to her poor husband. I never cared much for Felix Denker’s films—much too pompous for my tastes—but I keep hearing the man was a genius.” He shook his head sadly. “A dreadful thing that he was murdered on the set of his own movie.”

  “It was thoughtful of you to take in his widow.”

  Pope rubbed a forefinger across the bridge of his nose. “The least we could do,” he said after a few seconds. “I wasn’t actually the one who invited her, though.”

  “Oh, so?”

  “No, it was …” The actor paused, frown lines deepening across his tanned forehead. “I’ll think of it eventually, but I’m certain I wasn’t the one. Not that we’re not happy to lend a hand.”

  “Your wife maybe?”

  “Wasn’t my Alma, no. She’s not strong enough to issue invitations these days.”

  “I must be going,” said Groucho.

  “Certainly pleasant running into you like this, Groucho,” said Pope, smiling again. “We haven’t seen each other for quite some time, have we?”

  “If not longer.”

  After trotting along a red flagstone path and through a wooded area, you came to a clearing that contained three extremely rustic thatch-roofed cottages in a mossy glade.

  “The seven dwarfs don’t seem to be at home this morning,” he said to himself, heading for the quaint house on the right.

  The oaken front door creaked open and a tall, wide man stepped out into the gray late morning. He wore a navy blue double-breasted suit, his head was shaved to a glistening smoothness, and he had a Luger dangling from his right hand. “Stop right there, if you would, sir,” he requested, pointing the gun at Groucho.

  Things didn’t go very smoothly for me at the Mammoth studios.

  The main problem was that they wouldn’t allow me to set foot on the lot.

  When I rolled up to the gates at a few minutes shy of eleven that morning, a uniformed guard came over to my Ford. It wasn’t Oscar from the day before. “Do you have business here, sir?”

  “Yeah, I’m supposed to see M. J. McLeod.”

  The long, skinny guard, who appeared to be wearing the uniform of a somewhat shorter and fatter colleague, asked me, “What was your name, sir?”

  “Was and is Frank Denby.”

  Nodding briefly, he returned to his guard shack. He had a slight limp in his left leg.

  When my car radio started playing “Jeepers Creepers,” I clicked it off.

  The guard returned with a clipboard. “Frank Denby, you said?”

  “That’s right, yeah. Eleven o’clock appointment with M. J. McLeod.”

  He brought his clipboard up close to his face, studying the list of names attached to it. “Oaky doaks, here it is,” he said eventually.

  “Fine.”

  “The reason I didn’t spot it right off, sir, is that it’s been crossed out.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Your appointment has been canceled, Mr. Denby.”

  “Why’d that happen?” I’d phoned Mary Jane McLeod at her home the night before to set this up.

  “Well, if I’m interpreting these little scribbles in the margin correctly, Mr. Denby, the order to cancel came from the chief of security himself,” he explained, tapping the page with his forefinger. “Oh, and it also says you’re to be denied access to the studio until further notice. I wasn’t on duty when this came down this morning, so I wasn’t aware—”

  “Can I use your telephone to call Miss McLeod?”

  “No, I don’t think so, sir.” He gave me a negative shake of his head along with a sympathetic smile. “You’ve apparently gotten yourself on somebody important’s shit list, sir, if you don’t mind my saying so. No access means no access at all. I wouldn’t even risk taking the lady a note.”

  “Ravenshaw,” I muttered.

  “How’s that, sir?”

  “Just an old Armenian curse,” I told him, and backed out into the gray late morning street.

  The nearest public phone was in a bar down the block from the Mammoth spread. The place was called the Hawaiian Hideaway and when I stepped into its whiskey-scented dimness, the jukebox was playing a selection by Harry Owens and His Royal Hawaiians.

  Hearing steel guitar music and tropical drumbeats at that hour, especially after you’ve been given the heave-ho by a motion picture studio that was supposedly considering buying a comedy of yours, is not a cheering experience.

  Three bit players dressed as pearl smugglers were drinking Regal Pale beers at the warped bar and a seriously fat woman in her fifties sat alone at the only occupied table telling her own fortune with a bedraggled deck of tarot cards.

  I hunched into the phone booth, which smelled strongly of recent illness, half shut the door, dropped in my nickel, and dialed the Mammoth number.

  “Mammoth Pictures. How may we help you?” inquired a young woman through her nose.

  “Publicity Department, please.”

  A moment later a girl with the voice of a failed actress answered, “Publicity. How may I help you?”

  “M. J. McLeod, please.”

  I sensed a slight flinch and her next question showed a trace of wariness. “Who’s calling?”

  Deepening my voice some, I told her, “Richard Harding Davis of the Denver Post.”

  “Please hold on, Mr. Davis.”

  “Hello?” came Mary Jane’s uneasy voice.

  “This is Richard Harding Davis, little lady. I’m hoping you remember the golden days we spent together side by side at the Los Angeles Times. My own memories are evergreen and—”

  “Frank?” She lowered her voice to a near whisper.

  “Hey, Mary Jane, why the hell am I barred from the—”

  “Why do you think? Miles Ravenshaw went to Lew Number One right after his stupid press conference yesterday and told him it would be a nifty idea if you, Groucho, and any of your next of kin were kept out of here until after Ravenshaw cleared up the mystery of Felix Denker’s murder.”

  “Looks like I’m doomed for all eternity, then, because that half-wit will never—”

  “I didn’t find out about Lew Goldstein’s ultimatum about you until a few minutes ago, Frank. Too late to head you off.”

  “Will you suffer if you meet me off campus?”

  It took her close to a full minute to think about that. “Okay, there’s a little Mexican joint over on Nolan Drive, about six blocks south of us,” she told me in a low, cautious voice. “Nobody from the studio ever eats there because the food is so dreadful. It’ll be a safe place for us to meet. Twelve?”

  “Shall we work out a series of passwords?”

  “Still an idiot,” she said, and hung up.

  Nine

  Groucho said to the man with the Luger, “Have you by any chance seen a motion picture entitled Room Service?”

  “Nev
er heard of it,” answered the hairless man, somewhat perplexed.

  “That’s a relief, since it lessens my chances of being shot down like a dog. Of course, if I were going to be shot down like a dog, I think I’d prefer to be shot like a Saint Bernard. That way we can all have a snifter of brandy afterwards and—”

  “Ah, you must be Groucho Marx.” He slipped the gun away in his shoulder holster. “Miss Erika is expecting you, but I didn’t immediately recognize you. You don’t look like Groucho Marx.”

  “Why thank you, that’s the nicest thing anybody’s ever said to me.” He approached the cottage doorway.

  “Groucho, I’m terribly sorry.” A slim, sternly pretty blond woman in her early forties appeared next to the large, wide man. She was wearing dark blue bell-bottom slacks and a black cashmere sweater. “Gunther can be overzealous at times. But considering that my husband was brutally murdered, I don’t blame him for being cautious and protective.”

  “You think whoever killed Felix is also planning to kill you?”

  “They’ve already threatened her,” said Gunther.

  “Oh, so?”

  Erika smiled sadly. “Come inside, Groucho, and we can talk,” she invited. “I’m afraid it can’t be a long visit, since I’m far from over the shock of Felix’s death.” She retreated into the shadowy parlor.

  Gunther stepped aside and nodded at the doorway.

  The parlor was gloomy, the drapes drawn, the only light coming from a parchment-shaded floor lamp. The furniture was heavy and from the Victorian era. On the walls hung several large gilt-framed oil paintings of Alma Avon in some of her most famous movies, including Tomboy, Little Nell, and Granny’s Girl. There were several large vases holding bunches of brittle dried flowers.

  “Cheery.” Groucho walked over to the empty fireplace and held out his palms toward it.

  “It is somewhat somber,” Erika acknowledged, settling into a purple Morris chair. “Right now, however, it suits my mood.”