Elementary, My Dear Groucho

by Ron Goulart

  “Did Denker really have him fired from Mammoth?”

  Professor Hoffman nodded. “Oh, yes,” he answered. “But not, as has been hinted in the press, because of threats. Felix remembered Henkel from Germany and refused to have the man working on any film of his. He had enough influence at the studio to get the union to agree to removing him.”

  “The only address you have on the guy is the one the police let out,” Groucho observed. “No idea, where he’s presently holed up?”

  “I’m trying to find out, but as of today, no, Julius,” said Hoffman, taking the folder back from him and setting it three inches to the left of the ashtray. “It’s possible that Henkel does know something about who killed Felix.”

  “Okay, why do you think Denker was killed?”

  The professor rubbed his hands together slowly. “Something was bothering him, but he didn’t confide what,” he said. “I saw him for dinner last week and it was evident he was worried about something.”

  “When?”

  “It was Friday evening. We met at a Mexican restaurant down near the Union Station, on Figueroa Street.”

  “Did he talk about Marsha Tederow?”

  The professor said, “You know about that affair?”

  Groucho nodded. “He seems to have set up a little hideaway in the town of San Amaro where they could meet on the sly,” he said.

  “Felix was, quite obviously, very upset over her death,” Hoffman said. “In fact, I believe he asked me to dinner because he had intended to talk about her, tell me something about her death.” He shook his head. “Then he seemed to change his mind—implied he wasn’t ready. He did say that he felt her death was, in some way, his responsibility.”

  “He didn’t kill her, did he?”

  “You suspect it wasn’t an accident?”

  “Seems unlikely that it could’ve been.”

  Professor Hoffman said, “No, his feelings of guilt about Marsha’s death weren’t because he’d actually killed her. He did, however, feel responsible.”

  “How?”

  “That he decided not to talk about.”

  “You knew both Denker and Erika Klein in Germany,” said Groucho. “Were they a devoted couple then or—”

  “I only met Erika once or twice in Berlin,” said Hoffman. “Felix married her only a few months before emigrating. I never felt they were especially close and really …” He made a dismissive gesture and stopped talking.

  Groucho leaned forward. “What? I can use all the background stuff you’ve got, Ernie.”

  After rubbing his hands together again, the professor said, “Felix changed quite a bit after arriving in America. In Germany, for at least two years before he left, he was a very serious gambler. Dedicated to it the way only men who continually lose are.”

  “The guy was in hock?”

  “Quite a bit, yes, Julius. But then, shortly before he married, he was able to settle all this gambling debts.”

  Groucho’s left eyebrow climbed. “You think Erika’s family came up with a dowry for Denker?”

  “I never asked and I don’t even know if her people were wealthy,” he answered. “Yet it did strike me as an interesting coincidence, you know.”

  “Erika wasn’t especially jealous of her husband, from what I’ve heard.”

  “Felix wasn’t killed because he was unfaithful to his wife, no.”

  The phone on the professor’s neat desktop rang. “Yes, Hoffman here.” After listening for a moment, he smiled and handed the receiver to Groucho. “Your secretary, Julius.”

  “Hello, Nanook. Didn’t I tell you never to telephone me when I’m at a bordello or a college?”

  “You just got an interesting phone call.”

  “Really? And how did I react to that?”

  “British actor named Randell McGowan is very eager to talk to you,” explained Nan. “He says he’ll be at the Britannia Club in Beverly Hills from three until five this afternoon. Know where that is?”

  “Indeed I do. I’ve been turned away from their front doors on three separate occasions and twice from the tradesmen’s entrance,” he said, rubbing at his chin with his free hand. “McGowan, if memory serves, is the chap who’s portraying Dr. Watson to Ravenshaw’s Holmes, is he not?”

  “That’s the boy, yeah,” answered his secretary. “Apparently he and Ravenshaw aren’t exactly what you’d call bosom buddies. What he told me was that he just remembered something that has to do with the Denker murder and he’ll be damned if he’ll give it to that rotter Ravenshaw. And he’s too much of a gentleman to deal directly with the police.”

  “Ah, so that leaves me, the lesser of two rotters.”

  “Can you meet him, Groucho? He sounded legit.”

  “Most British actors sound that way. I almost bought a secondhand car off Eric Blore once,” Groucho said. “But, sure, I’ll pop into the Britannia. Anything else new? Any orphans left on the doorstep?”

  “None worth keeping. Bye.”

  “Excuse the interruption,” said Groucho.

  “So you’re really in a competition with this Sherlock Holmes actor, are you?”

  “I am, even though it adds a cheesy aspect to the case.”

  “It’s all right, Julius, so long as you find out who killed Felix.”

  He asked the professor, “Did Denker ever mention a Dr. Helga Krieger to you, Ernie?”

  “How’d you come to hear of her?”

  Groucho explained about the books I’d momentarily found at the love nest. “Was she someone Denker and Erika knew over there?”

  “I don’t believe so, and Felix never alluded to her so far as I can recall,” answered Hoffman. “But I heard quite a bit about her, while I was teaching in Munich.”

  “An anti-Semitic lady, as I understand it.”

  “Dr. Krieger was one of several Aryan scholars, someone who worked full-time to prove that Germans were superior to anyone else and, worse, that the stock had to be kept pure,” he explained, picking up his pen and tapping angrily with it on the blotter as he spoke. “She also lectured at rallies and meetings of political clubs. A Nazi bitch through and through.”

  “What happened to her?”

  “One hopes she’s dead and rotting in a grave someplace in Germany,” he said. “She dropped from sight in the early 1930s. New material from her ceased to appear in the Nazi press and the personal appearances simply ended.”

  “Could she be in America?”

  Professor Hoffman studied the ceiling. “If she is, I’ve never heard a word about it,” he said finally. “And, as you know, I keep up with things like that.”

  “So why would three books by her be so important?”

  The professor gave a negative shake of his head. “I have no idea, my friend. It’s possible they have some other value, something that has nothing to do directly with Dr. Krieger.”

  “That’s occurred to me, too, but I have this hunch that Dr. Helga is more directly tied in with what’s been going on.”

  “Hunches are fine in their place, but what you need to solve this mystery are facts, Julius.”

  Nodding, he stood up. “Thanks for reminding me, Ernie,” he said, backing toward the door. “I’d better go round up some more.”

  Seventeen

  Every surface of the Cutting Room that could be covered with knotty pine was. The small barroom sat on the edge of an unpaved parking lot and its blue-tinted side windows gave you a view of weedy fields and a patch of woodlands. Behind the narrow bar hung a large framed linen movie poster featuring Guy Pope in the part of Ivanhoe. The bartender, a thickset bearded man in a faded UCLA sweatshirt, was absently polishing glasses and watching a buzzing fly avoid getting caught on dangling strip of flypaper.

  Jane and I had barely crossed the threshold and the scents of stale beer and old cigarette smoke had just commenced engulfing us, when three midgets in dark business suits stood up at a table on our left and all waved.

  The midget with the mustache called out,
“Hiya, Janey, honey.”

  The midget wearing the horn-rimmed glasses inquired, “How’s by you, toots?”

  The third midget, who was about six inches shorter than his colleagues, was red-haired and freckled. He came hurrying over and held out his hand to me. “Put her there, pal,” he invited. “You must be Janey’s old man.”

  “It’s the Spiegelman Brothers,” she explained to me as she smiled at them with restrained enthusiasm.

  “The Spiegelman Brothers?” I inquired while shaking hands.

  “We’re better known in the east,” said the one I was shaking hands with. “I’m Leroy.”

  “They’re not really brothers, except for show business purposes.” Jane waved at the two who’d remained at the table with their drinks. “Hi, Edwin. Hi, Mort.”

  “So you guys are in show business, huh?” I said to Leroy.

  “You thought maybe we were a trio of undersized insurance salesmen?”

  “I met the Spiegelman Brothers about a year ago,” explained Jane as we headed for the bar. “RKO was thinking about making some comedy shorts based on the Hillbilly Willy comic strip and the Spiegelman boys were going to play the Moonshine Triplets.”

  “Louella Parsons and Johnny Whistler never mentioned that, so I was unaware of—”

  “You still out of work?” asked Leroy, who’d stuck with us.

  “I’m between pictures.”

  “You have to have written a picture first, buster, before you can be between them.”

  “I’m between scripts, then.”

  “That radio show you did with Groucho wasn’t too terrible,” conceded Leroy.

  Jane tapped him on the shoulder. “It’s been nice running into you boys again, but right now—”

  “You’d appreciate it if I did a scramola?”

  “We’re actually sort of here on business and—”

  “No need to apologize, Janey.” Reaching up, Leroy patted my wife on her left buttock and, smiling up at me, went trotting back to rejoin the other Spiegelman Brothers.

  “They took a liking to me.” Jane perched on a stool at the bar.

  “Don’t let those little peckerheads annoy you,” advised the bearded bartender. “This is their favorite hangout at the moment. Soon as they get work again things’ll get back to normal.”

  There were no other customers in the place.

  “They think it’s funny to order Napoléon brandy,” he said. “What’ll you folks have?”

  I glanced at Jane, who shrugged one shoulder. “Couple of beers,” I said.

  “Care which kind?”

  “Not especially.”

  “Myself, I’m partial to Rainier.”

  “That’ll do, sure.”

  After he brought the bottles and glasses and I’d paid him, I fished out the copy of my expired Los Angeles Times press card that I still carried around with me. Then I took out the picture of Marsha Tederow and Felix Denker I’d borrowed at the love nest the day before.

  After providing the bartender a very brief look at the defunct card, I placed the photo on the bar facing toward him. “Doing a follow-up story,” I explained. “Ever see these people?”

  He picked up the photograph, brought it up close to his face. “Sure, yeah.”

  “When were they in here last?”

  He shook his shaggy head. “Far as I know they’ve never been in the Cutting Room.”

  “But you know them?”

  “Not the dame, no. The guy, though, is Felix Denker, the director who got bumped off yesterday,” he answered. “I had a bit part in his Lynch Mob. I was one of the rowdies carrying a coil of rope in the scenes where—”

  “What about the girl?” asked Jane. “Sure she wasn’t in here last week one night?”

  He looked at her and not the photo. “You with the Times, too, sister?”

  “Matter of fact, I am, yeah,” she replied. “Right now I’m his girl Friday. So?”

  “I only work weekend nights and I don’t remember—”

  “Who would’ve been on duty last Thursday?” I asked.

  “That the dame got herself killed in that car wreck last week?” Leroy had come back over from the Spiegelman Brothers’ table. He was climbing onto a stool as he made his inquiry.

  “Who got killed?” asked the bartender.

  Leroy plucked the picture out of the bartender’s hand, then studied it. “Sure, she was here Wednesday or Thursday. Hold on a mo.” Keeping tight hold of the picture, he carried it over to the others. “Remember this dame?”

  “Nervous broad,” said Edwin, nodding as he tapped Marsha’s face with his forefinger. “Sat by herself at that table next to the jukebox.”

  Jane and I had followed Leroy. She sat in the spare chair; I put my hand on its back. “Which night was this?” I asked them.

  Mort was studying the picture now. “It must’ve been Thursday, pal, because Wednesday I went ice skating and I wasn’t here.”

  “Thursday, yeah,” agreed Leroy. “She came in right after you got into that fight with the sailors about their playing ‘Jeepers Creepers’ eleven times nonstop on the juke.”

  “Thirteen times,” corrected Mort.

  I asked, “What time did she come in?”

  Edwin answered, “Little after ten.”

  “And she was alone?”

  Leroy said, “Until the cowboy got here.”

  “Somebody met her?”

  “This dame was alone, but she kept looking at her watch,” Mort told me. “The way you do when you’re expecting somebody to show up. About ten minutes after she arrived, the cowboy showed up.”

  “Cowboy how? An actor?”

  “Drugstore cowboy,” said Leroy, nose wrinkling. “Maybe does extra work in Gene Autry movies. He was wearing Levi’s, a checked work shirt, and a leather jacket. Had a new pair of boots and a tan low-crown Stetson, dirty-blond hair. Hat was new, too.”

  “You ever see him before?” Jane asked them.

  “Nope,” said Leroy. “Not here and not at the studios.”

  I said, “Did it look like the girl knew this cowboy?”

  Leroy said, “She was meeting the bastard for a drink, wasn’t she?”

  “Maybe it was a blind date,” I said. “When he first walked in, did she seem to recognize him?”

  Mort said, “Here’s what I think, buddy. No, she didn’t know him before, but he’d told her something like he’d be dressed as a Gower Gulch cowpoke. So she recognized him that way, see?”

  “And did he recognize her?”

  “That wasn’t too tough to do, since she was the only good-looking young skirt in the joint alone that night.”

  Jane asked, “So was it a date?”

  All three of the brothers shook their heads. Edwin said, “The cowboy sat with her maybe fifteen, twenty minutes. They had a very serious, very sotto voce conversation.”

  Leroy added, “Then he gets up, bids her a very chilly adios, and ambles out in his new boots. The guy didn’t look any too happy.”

  “How’d she look?” I asked.

  “Pleased with herself.”

  “Like maybe there’d been some kind of business deal negotiated?”

  Leroy shrugged his narrow shoulders. “Maybe, but it wasn’t movie business, I don’t believe,” he said finally. “And she wasn’t a hooker either.”

  “The cowboy didn’t threaten her?”

  “Nope, he just wasn’t very cordial.”

  “How long did she stay after he left?”

  “Around ten more minutes, something like that.”

  I said, “How much drinking was done?”

  Mort said, “She had one shot of bourbon with water on the side. The Lone Ranger had a beer. So neither one of them left here drunk, if that’s what you want to know.”

  “Could he have stayed outside, waiting until she came out?”

  “Hard to tell, buster,” said Leroy. “We lost interest once he walked out of here. You figure it wasn’t an accident that killed that girl
?”

  “I’m keeping an open mind,” I told him.

  Eighteen

  It wasn’t until he’d turned off Roxbury Drive in Beverly Hills and gone slouching onto the side street leading to the Britannia Club that Groucho, as he later told me, realized that he was going to have to run a gantlet of tourists.

  A party of about fifteen of them, middle-aged and of both sexes, was scattered along both sides of the narrow street. They were peering into shop windows, watching the awning-covered entrance of a currently fashionable little French restaurant known to be frequented by movie stars, snapping pictures, and alert for passing celebrities. Down at the far end of the block a small tour bus was parked.

  A thin woman in a fur-trimmed cloth coat assaulted him first. Thrusting a thick blue autograph album at him, she asked, “Can you write your name?”

  He clattered to a stop. “Ah, I knew that sooner or later they’d catch up with me and I’d have to pass a literacy test,” he said, sadly accepting the book. “And in Hollywood of all places, the mecca for illiterates the world over. I’m not sure whether to sing a snappy chorus of Mecca Whoopee or quote from H. L. Mecca’s American Mercury. All I know is that we always use American mercury in all our thermometers because it’s so much nicer than that foreign stuff.” Scribbling his name, he returned the album and moved on.

  Groucho managed to cover only another ten feet when a heavyset man in a brown double-breasted suit and polka-dot bow tie stepped into his path. “I know who you are,” he announced.

  “Sorry, that contest ended last week,” Groucho informed him, “and we’re no longer giving away prizes to people who identify me on the street. We are, however, handing out trophies for the Silliest Ties West of the Pecos and you’re definitely going to be in the running for that.”

  Dodging the man, Groucho resumed his journey.

  He was next assailed by a short blond woman who laughed, looked him up and down, and said, “You’ve got to be Groucho Marx.”

  “Oh, no, I don’t. You’re not going to pin that rap on me,” he assured her. “I have no less than six reliable witnesses who’re prepared to swear that I am actually Anne of Green Gables. Plus, I might add, five pretty irresponsible witnesses, who’re ready to claim I’m Anne of Green Bagels.”