Elementary, My Dear Groucho

by Ron Goulart

  “You weren’t stupid because somebody snuck up on you.” Jane joined me on the sofa.

  “Careless, then,” I said.

  Groucho asked, “Any idea who it was that did the deed?”

  When I gave a negative shake of my head, some flashes of sharp pain struck at the back of my neck. “Nope, Groucho.”

  “Even more to the point, where were you exactly when the attack took place?”

  I told him about the love nest in San Amaro and about finding the anti-Semitic books that Marsha Tederow had apparently hidden away there.

  “Dr. Helga Krieger,” he said slowly when I finished. “Never heard of the dear lady, I’ll be sure to inquire after her when I call on Professor Hoffman tomorrow.”

  “It could be the books had some connection with a blackmail scheme Marsha was trying to work,” I suggested.

  Cupping his hand to his ear, Groucho said, “Eh, how’s that? Did I fail to hear the juicy details about a blackmail plot?”

  “Hadn’t gotten to that yet.” I proceeded to fill him in on what I’d learned from my encounter with Victoria St. John. “So if Marsha was blackmailing somebody, then her death probably wasn’t accidental.”

  “Victoria St. John.” Groucho rolled his eyes. “I don’t suppose she was still wearing her skimpy Mullens Maiden uniform?”

  “Nope.”

  “A pity.” Groucho stretched up out of the chair, scratched at his ribs, and commenced pacing in his bent-knee way. “You’re certain it wasn’t the fair Vicky who crept up and slugged you, Rollo?”

  “She’s incapable of sneaking up on anybody, and besides I trust her.”

  Jane sighed, saying nothing.

  “That would seem to indicate that three different people descended on that little hideaway at about the same time,” Groucho pointed out. “Why?”

  “In my case, it was because I only just found out about it.”

  Jane said, “Somebody may’ve followed Frank. Picked him up after he met with his old girlfriend, Mary Jane.”

  “Possibly,” agreed Groucho, unwrapping a Don José cigar as he paced. “Or, like Frank, they just today found out about the joint and rushed there to snoop around.”

  “Far as I can tell, they only swiped those Nazi books,” I said. “Meaning that stuff has to tie in somehow.”

  “There are a couple of possibilities.” He put the cigar in his mouth but didn’t bother to light it. “Those specific copies may be of value to somebody—contain hidden messages in code or incriminating marginal notes. Or Dr. Helga herself is connected with the murders in some way.”

  “Murders plural?” asked Jane. “You agree that Marsha Tederow was murdered?”

  He nodded. “For the moment, yes indeedy,” he answered. “Let’s say she was blackmailing someone linked with the Dr. Helga tomes. They decide to fake her murder to seem an accident and eliminate that threat. They kill her, search her home, and find nothing. Later, upon learning that she also had spent some time in San Amaro, they arrive at that cozy locale just in time to render the intrepid Franklin unconscious and grab the stuff.”

  “You got a brief look at a picture of Dr. Krieger,” Jane reminded me. “What’d she look like?”

  I thought about that. “Well, not like anybody we’ve run into on this case thus far,” I answered finally. “Pudgy lady, probably weighs about two hundred pounds, plain-looking. Dark hair, pulled back in a bun. Spectacles on her nose, nose wide and flat. She’d be in her middle forties or thereabouts now.”

  Groucho sat down again. “Now then, what did you learn out at Mammoth this morning?”

  “Mainly, sir, that we’re personas non grata,” I informed him. “We’re not to be allowed on the studio premises until after Ravenshaw solves the case.”

  “I always get personas non grata mixed up with potatoes au gratin,” admitted Groucho. “Which makes for some unusual moments when it comes time to order my meals. Who barred us from the lot, Lew Number One himself?”

  “Yeah, but Randy Grothkopf in Publicity put him up to it.”

  “One more reason to beat all these other schlemiels to the punch and catch the killer,” he pointed out. “Otherwise we can’t get back inside the lot to sell Cinderella on Wheels to Lew Number Two.”

  Jane looked from Groucho to me. “Okay, any idea so far who did kill Denker or the Tederow girl?”

  Groucho replied, “Well, it wasn’t Franz Henkel, the Nazi stagehand.”

  “The police seem to think it was Henkel,” I put in.

  “So does the tear-soaked widow,” Groucho said, and went on to give us an account of what had taken place during his visit with Erika Klein at Merlinwood.

  “Threatening letters can be very convincing evidence,” observed Jane when he’d concluded.

  “Okay, Franz Henkel might be somebody’s stooge,” he conceded, “but he doesn’t sound like the sort of lad who’d be getting himself blackmailed because of a supposed connection with Dr. Helga Krieger. And, B movies to the contrary, really first-rate villains don’t often send threatening letters to people they intend to bump off.”

  “Sergeant Norment doesn’t seem to agree,” my wife said.

  “We don’t really know what the sarge thinks about anything,” said Groucho. “He’s not sharing much with the newspapers and even less with us. For example, I’ve heard nary a word about that sleeping authoress we encountered in that quaint little British pub yesterday.”

  “I found out something about Clair Rickson, although I’m not sure I believe some of it,” I said, and filled him in on what I’d pried out of Mary Jane. “I should be able to find out which sanitarium she’s stowed in and sneak in for a chat.”

  “Yes, jot that on your list of good deeds to do, Rollo.”

  “Also be interesting to know what our local Sherlock Holmes is up to,” I said.

  Groucho sat up, smiling. “There I can help out, my dears,” he said, and recounted his adventures at Musso and Frank’s. “Remind me to clip out a copy of that picture for my memory book, when and if it appears.”

  Jane put her hand on my shoulder. “You’re starting to look a little tired, Frank.”

  “I’m okay,” I lied. Actually I was beginning to feel somewhat weary.

  To Groucho she said, “Sounds to me like Ravenshaw isn’t really putting much of an effort into this. It’s probably all bluff and public relations crap.”

  “I’ve always thought the man was a halfwit, but I don’t want to screw up things by underestimating him,” Groucho answered. “Maybe he is only an inch away from the answer.” He shrugged. “I doubt it, however.” He left his chair again. “Tomorrow I’ll call on Professor Hoffman out at Altadena Community College and see where that leads me.”

  “I’ll try to get a copy of the accident report on Marsha Tederow in the morning,” I said. “And I can check with a couple of informants for news of where Franz Henkel may be holed up.”

  “In the afternoon maybe you’ll do that,” corrected Jane. “In the morning you are going to rest.”

  “In the afternoon I’ll do that, Groucho.”

  He wandered in the direction of the door. “I must tear myself away from all this domestic bliss,” he said. “When you’re through with the flowers, Frank, let me know. There’s a kosher meat market I think I can unload them on.”

  Fifteen

  Groucho made rather slow progress across the campus of Altadena Community College the next morning.

  Altadena is a town that lies just above Pasadena and he arrived at the visitors’ parking lot at about ten minutes shy of ten, parked his Cadillac, and started hiking toward the building that housed the German lit department. The college covered roughly fifteen acres and was in the traditional red brick and abundant ivy mold, with winding paths, rolling lawns, and an occasional tree-filled glade.

  Just inside the arched wrought-iron entry gates several card tables had been set up, manned by students representing such organizations as the Young People’s Socialist League, the Cinema Club
, the China Relief Fund, and the World Federalists.

  Groucho stopped for a moment at the WF table to pick up a pamphlet.

  As he was moving away, a young man in sweater and slacks noticed him and exclaimed, “Groucho Marx! What are you doing here?”

  Resting one foot on a pathside bench, Groucho answered, “That’s a most interesting story, young feller. It all began when my mother entrusted me with the selling of the family cow. Well sir, I’d been intending to schlep old Bossy over to a used cow lot in Burbank, but then I ran into a man with a hand full of beans. Yes, I know, that sounds messy, but he—”

  “It’s Groucho!” cried a blond coed in a checkered skirt, cashmere sweater, and saddle shoes as she joined the growing group near the bench.

  “What the heck are you doing at ACC?” asked a husky young man in a letter sweater.

  “It all began,” Groucho began again, “when we set sail from Dover in the year of our Lord—”

  “Do you do your own singing in the movies or is it dubbed?” This from a plump redheaded girl who’d bumped the number of surrounding students up to roughly thirty.

  “I do all my own singing, yes,” answered Groucho. “My talking, however, is dubbed by Charles Boyer. Or, on days when he has to work late at the fish market, by Bobby Breen.”

  “I read somewhere,” said a freshly arrived coed, “that you used to be a tenor in vaudeville.”

  “No, my child, I was a tenor with the Metropolitan Opera,” corrected Groucho. “I was, in fact, the first tenor to sing the part of Kate Smith in I Have Madame Butterflies in My Stomach.”

  “What’s Clark Gable really like?”

  “Very much like me. Except his ears are smaller.”

  “Did you ever date Norma Shearer?”

  “No.”

  “What famous actresses have you gone out with?”

  “I once had an interesting encounter with Joan Crawford in a telephone booth in Tijuana,” Groucho answered. “I cannot, alas, share the story with you because I sold the exclusive rights to the Wrestling News just yesterday.”

  “Why doesn’t Harpo talk in your movies?”

  “Harpo does talk, but at a pitch that only dogs can hear. Ask your Saint Bernard friends and see if I’m not absolutely right.”

  “What’s your favorite role?”

  “Now, there, young lady, is a question I can really sink my teeth into. I—”

  “Please, you’re not going to answer, ‘A poppy-seed roll,’ or something dumb like that?”

  Groucho took on a sheepish expression, digging the toe of his right shoe into the sward. “Gosh, I plumb forgot I was trapped in the midst of an intellectual crowd and that my lowbrow japes wouldn’t cut the mustard here,” he admitted ruefully. “I was intending to reply either with ‘a kaiser roll’ or, at the risk of bringing down the wrath of the Watch and Ward Society, ‘a roll in the hay.’”

  The small dark coed asked, “You are capable of giving a serious answer, aren’t you?”

  Poking his tongue into his cheek, Groucho gazed upward into the clear blue morning sky. “Okay, kiddo, here’s a completely straight answer,” he said. “I really get a kick out of pretending to be Groucho Marx.”

  The campus bell tower sounded the hour of ten. By that time there were more than a hundred students surrounding Groucho.

  “I must be going,” he announced, starting to work his way clear of the bench.

  “Are you smarter than Sherlock Holmes?” someone called after him as he headed uphill.

  “That,” he responded, “remains to be seen.”

  While Groucho was delivering his sermon to the multitudes, I was taking a solitary walk along the morning Pacific.

  I’d been able to sneak a few telephone calls, but then Jane had emerged from her studio and caught me in the act of persuading a former L.A. Times colleague to rustle me up a copy of the official report on Marsha Tederow’s automobile accident.

  As soon as I cradled the receiver she said, “You’ve still got several more hours of recuperating to do, remember?”

  “Nope, apparently memory lapses are one of my symptoms.”

  Making an impatient noise, she pointed at the living room door. “Go out and stroll along the beach,” she advised. “It’s rumored to be beneficial.”

  “Sitting on my backside using a telephone isn’t that strenuous or—”

  “Soon as high noon rolls around, you can get back into your gumshoes.”

  “You have a spot of ink on the tip of your nose.”

  “Undoubtedly. Go take a hike.”

  “Mutter, mutter,” I said, rising from the sofa.

  “So you’ve located a copy of that accident report?” she asked as I reached for the doorknob.

  “Should have one by late this afternoon, yeah.”

  “And the whereabouts of Franz Henkel?”

  “Got an appointment to talk to an old informant of mine at three down in L.A.” I stepped out into the bright, warm December morning.

  Our present house was less than five minutes uphill from the ocean.

  Someone had built a pretty impressive sand castle just beyond the furthest reach of the surf. There were six turrets and a drawbridge. Standing alone in the courtyard was a solitary lead soldier in the uniform of the Chinese army.

  Squatting momentarily, I scooped him up and dropped him into my trouser pocket.

  Far ahead of me on the beach a heavyset woman in a long yellow terry cloth robe was standing wide-legged, hands on hips, calling something that sounded like, “Rasputin! Rasputin!”

  Long before I reached her vicinity, I found a large twist of driftwood that looked suitable for sitting. I seated myself, staring out to sea.

  I was still there fifteen minutes later when Jane tracked me down.

  “I figure that if we sail in that direction,” I told her, pointing toward the hazy horizon, “we should be able to establish a new trade route to the Orient.”

  “That’s the same darn thing Marco Polo told me the last time we had dinner.”

  “I don’t like dining with that bozo anymore. He only wants to go to chop suey joints.”

  “You just got a phone call from Victoria St. John.” Bending slightly, she held out her hand to me.

  I caught hold and pulled myself upright. “Something important?”

  “Sounded so to me, yes,” she replied. “Victoria says that when she was cleaning house this morning, she came across a memo slip that had gotten lost under a throw rug. She’s pretty certain it’s the note Marsha made about where she was supposed to go the night she was killed.”

  “Great—who was she scheduled to meet?”

  “According to your erstwhile Mullens Maiden, there’s nobody’s name listed,” Jane explained. “And keep in mind that what I’m giving you is based on my having to winnow a substantial, circumlocutious conversation, replete with footnotes and asides, from Victoria. The gist is—Marsha was heading for a bar over in Sherman Oaks. Place is called the Cutting Room and she was to meet somebody there at ten P.M. that Thursday night.”

  “Never heard of the place.”

  “Neither had Victoria, but she looked it up in the telephone book and provided us with an address.”

  Nodding, I took hold of Jane’s arm as we started uphill toward our beach house. “I’ll drive over there this afternoon.”

  “I’d like to tag along, Frank.”

  “You caught up on your comic strip deadlines?”

  “I am. Fact is, I’m even ahead on my Sunday page schedule.”

  I eyed her. “You simply want to help out on this—or is this a move to keep me from getting together with Victoria?”

  “Both,” she admitted.

  Sixteen

  Professor Ernst Hoffman was a small, neat man in his middle fifties. His office was small, neat, and devoid of clutter. Most of the books on the shelves that covered two of the walls were in German and a bust of Goethe sat atop the wooden filing cabinet.

  As Groucho settled i
nto a straight-back chair next to his rolltop desk, Hoffman leaned to plant a heavy cut-glass ashtray on his knee. “For your cigar, Julius.”

  “It’s not lit, Ernie.”

  “Should you, my friend, decide to light it.”

  Removing the unlit cigar from between his teeth, Groucho dropped it into a side pocket of his sports coat. He returned the ashtray to the professor. “Now, what I’d—”

  “That’s not sanitary, stowing that cigar butt in there like that.”

  “It’s okay, Professor. The pastrami sandwich is wrapped in wax paper, so the stogie won’t contaminate it. Although, now that I think about it, the kosher dill may get a little fragrant.”

  Hoffman frowned for a few seconds. “Ah, I keep forgetting that you’re a comedian,” he said, chuckling and placing the ashtray two inches to the left of his fountain pen.

  “Millions of people had the same problem while witnessing Room Service.”

  “I rarely go to the movies these days. In Berlin it was different and I found the films made by people like Fritz Lang and Felix Denker were—”

  “When did you talk to Denker last?”

  The professor straightened up. “You actually are investigating his death?”

  Groucho nodded. “The police have indicated they think that a disgruntled stagehand named Franz Henkel may have killed Denker,” he said. “Did Denker ever mention him to you?”

  Pushing back from his desk, Hoffman crossed to the filing cabinet to tug out the middle door partway. “Henkel is active in the German American Bund, Julius, and he was a Nazi bullyboy in Munich until he came to America something like three years ago.” Extracting a manila folder he handed it to Groucho. “I like to keep up with people like Henkel.”

  There was a small photograph of a thickset man, crew cut and wearing a tight-fitting black suit, clipped to the two pages of typed information about Franz Henkel. After skimming the material, Groucho closed the folder. “Henkel sounds like an errand boy to me,” he said. “Not the sort of lad to plan and carry out an assassination.”

  “He might have beaten up Felix on a dark street someplace, but no, he hasn’t the nerve or the brains for murder.”