Elementary, My Dear Groucho

by Ron Goulart

  I nodded, yawned again, and fell asleep in my seat.

  “Hooey,” said Jane.

  We were in the kitchen of our house and it was close to 2:00 A.M. After retrieving her, Groucho had dropped us at our home and driven off to Beverly Hills.

  I was making a pot of cocoa. Jane was standing, arms folded, with her back to the icebox. “It’s a basic instinct,” I resumed, “from primordial times, that the male protects his mate from danger.”

  “And who protects you, ninny? You’ve already gotten yourself conked on the noggin,” she reminded me, “and threatened with death and nearly stomped by a horde of Nazi goons.”

  “That’s no reason why I should have let you come along to Venice, Jane. We didn’t know what we might run into when—”

  “Wait now, Clarence Darrow,” my wife cut in, “you don’t have a case. You and Groucho didn’t get shot at in Venice or, from what you’ve told me, even encounter anybody at all. So I very well could have accompanied you instead of playing whist with Elena Sederholm and her insipid husband and some dull next-door neighbor named Sears Roebuck who—”

  “Nobody’s named Sears Roebuck.”

  “Well, somebody whose name sounds like that the way he mumbles,” she said. “The point being that I was bored for a couple of hours while you guys were rendezvousing with German spies and wading in canals and having a—”

  “Whist was probably a lot more exciting than anything we did,” I told her. “What you have to keep in mind, Jane, is that I love you and I didn’t want you to get hurt.”

  “Hooey,” she said.

  “This is where I came in.” I took the cocoa off the burner.

  Jane asked, “Is that an apology?”

  “Sure, an abject one.”

  “Then I’ll have a cup of cocoa,” Jane said, smiling. “And I’ll even sleep in the same bed with you.”

  “Gosh,” I said.

  Twenty-six

  Groucho, hunched under a saggy black umbrella, was making his way from a parking lot at the Peaceable Woodlands Cemetery toward the Little Chapel of the Wayfarer. It was about fifteen minutes before 10:00 A.M. and heavy rain had been falling for over an hour now.

  The church was small, modeled after something you might have found in an Irish village a century or more earlier. On a stretch of lawn across the street the police had set up half a dozen sawhorses, and five uniformed Glendale cops in rain gear were keeping back a crowd of about a hundred movie fans and tourists who’d come to Felix Denker’s funeral in hopes of catching a glimpse of a star or two. Most of them were carrying umbrellas, although a few were using steepled copies of the L.A. Times to protect them from the hard morning rain.

  Sergeant Norment, wearing a gray trench coat and a wide-brimmed black hat, was standing at the edge of the crowd, smoking a cigarette and watching the front of the church.

  Nearing the Little Chapel, Groucho saw Irene Dunne and Randolph Scott climbing the imitation-marble steps. The crowd across the way made appreciative noises and a teenage boy with a newspaper umbrella tried to climb over a barrier to get a closer glimpse. He was stopped.

  On Groucho’s left now was a small grove of cypress trees. “Groucho, might I speak to you?” called a dapper man with a plaid umbrella.

  It was Conrad Nagel, lurking among the trees.

  Groucho climbed up across the soggy grass. “Conrad, what brings you out in weather like this?”

  The fair-haired actor explained, “I’ve been invited to deliver a eulogy for my dear colleague Felix Denker.”

  “Your mellifluous oration will add to the solemnity of the occasion.”

  Touching Groucho’s damp coat sleeve, Nagel continued, “I sincerely hope you won’t think me overly sensitive, but …” He paused to clear his throat. “In the past, most notably that infamous occasion at Kahn’s Egyptian Palace movie theater last year, you interrupted a presentation of mine.”

  “That was to solve a murder,” reminded Groucho, “and bring the killer to justice.”

  The wind shifted suddenly, sending rain into their faces.

  Nagel asked him, “But you don’t intend to reveal the solution to poor Felix’s murder here this morning, do you? You’re not planning to pop up during my recitation and unmask a—”

  “Conrad, you won’t, I assure you, even know I’m inside the Little Chapel of the Wayfarer,” promised Groucho. “Not until my banjo arrives.”

  His pale eyebrows rising, the actor took a step back. “Banjo?”

  “Ah, apparently you haven’t been informed as yet that it was Denker’s last wish to have what is commonly known as a New Orleans send-off?” asked Groucho. “Therefore, a jazz band has been hired to play him to his final rest and I’ve been, which I find quite flattering, asked to sit in with the boys. Further, they’ve graciously suggested that I take a solo on the banjo, an instrument, I might add, that I only recently mastered thanks to a correspondence school course I took from an estimable institution based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.”

  “You’re telling me a jazz band is intending to play at this—”

  “Miff Mole and his group ought to be arriving at any moment.”

  “Miff Mole? Who or what is—”

  “Miff Mole heads up, not surprisingly, a group known as Miff Mole and His Bourbon Street Stompers.” He consulted his wristwatch, then looked expectantly around. “They ought to being rolling in at any moment.”

  “A brass band is going to spoil—”

  “Tell you what, Conrad, I’ll catch Miff before they go into the chapel and get him to promise they won’t start stomping until you have completely and totally finished your piece. Fair enough?”

  Nodding vaguely, Nagel headed away in the direction of the chapel.

  Groucho noticed that only the hearse itself was parked in front of the little church. That meant the vehicle that had transported Erika Klein to the chapel was parked elsewhere, quite probably out in back of the place.

  While he was making his way up the five slippery steps, somebody in the crowd asked, “Who’s he?”

  “Nobody,” said several of the others.

  Groucho stopped, turned, and walked back down to the sidewalk. Cupping his hand to his mouth, he called, “That’s all you guys know. I happen to be Mary Miles Minter, so there.”

  “Groucho Marx,” cried the teenage boy, making another try to climb over a sawhorse.

  Just before entering the church, Groucho folded up his umbrella and thrust it under his arm. Once inside, he stood at the back and scanned the crowded pews.

  Erika Klein was sitting in the first row with the bald Gunther beside her. She was wearing a simple black dress and touching at her nose with a white lace handkerchief. Groucho headed for her.

  Halfway down the aisle, someone hissed at him. He paused, noticing George Raft sitting there.

  The actor motioned him over. When Groucho had bent close, Raft said, “I love that bus idea, pal.”

  “That’s most gratifying. I’m delighted that you don’t mind doing a whole movie in drag.” He patted the actor on the shoulder and moved on.

  He took hold of Erika’s cold hand when he reached her side. “My deepest sympathies, my dear,” he said in his most sincere voice, noticing that she didn’t seem to have a purse with her. “I didn’t realize until today how much I miss …” He stopped, shook his head sadly, and tugged out a pocket handkerchief. He blew his nose profoundly, made some sobbing sounds. “Forgive me for letting my emotions get the better of me, Erika.”

  Groucho skirted the altar and pushed out a side door of the chapel.

  That put him, as he’d anticipated, close to the small parking lot at the rear of the chapel.

  The limousine that had apparently brought Erika sat alone in the heavy rain. There was nobody anywhere near it.

  Opening his umbrella again, Groucho slouched over to the sleek black vehicle and tried the back door.

  The door opened silently and he peeked inside. “Yreka,” he exclaimed, spotting a lar
ge black purse sitting on the backseat next to a folded copy of the Los Angeles Times.

  When he slipped out of the car five minutes later, he had a memo in Erika’s own hand and, for good measure, a short note written by Felix Denker, folded away in the breast pocket of his coat.

  The door he’d exited from had apparently locked itself and so he had to go back around to the front of the chapel to enter again.

  As he was ascending the steps this time, somebody across the street shouted, “It’s Groucho again.”

  “No, that’s Harpo this time,” said somebody else. “I recognize the walk.”

  Groucho took a seat in the last pew at the rear. He noticed the flower-draped coffin sitting up on its wheeled cart on the altar now. “What a morbid thing to have at a funeral,” he said to himself.

  He scanned the crowd for a few minutes. Surprisingly he didn’t spot Miles Ravenshaw anywhere. He’d expected the ham to be there, possibly dressed in his Sherlock Holmes costume and posing alongside the coffin.

  But then he inhaled sharply. Sitting about ten rows ahead and across the aisle was Von Esh, the unreliable informer.

  Dashiell Hammett opened the door and scowled out at us. “What the hell do you want?” he asked me. A lean, gray-haired man, he was standing in the doorway of the Tudor-style house in Westwood with a half-empty highball glass in his knobby left hand.

  “This is Roger Connington’s house, isn’t it?” I said.

  “Yeah. So what?”

  “I came to see Clair Rickson.”

  “What makes you think she’s got any great interest in seeing you?”

  “When I talked to her on the phone an hour ago, she invited me to drop by at eleven.”

  Hammett was scrutinizing Jane now, looking her up and down. “Who’s the dame?” he inquired.

  “My wife and—”

  “I also serve as his moll at times,” put in Jane. “And I’m terrific at shorthand. Why don’t you tell Miss Rickson that we’re here, Mr. Hammett, and then fix yourself a cup of black coffee after you do that?”

  He laughed a short barking laugh. “Jesus, a smart-ass broad,” he said. “Thinks she can hold her own with men, tell them what to do. What a pain in the ass she must be.”

  Quietly I told him, “You’re going to have a pain in the vicinity of the solar plexus if you don’t get the hell out of the way and quit—”

  “Dash, you mean-minded bastard, what are you up to now?”

  “Mind your own damn business, Clair. I’m just chasing off a Fuller Brush man and his tootsie.”

  Behind Hammett appeared a fat, dark-haired woman in a bright Japanese kimono. She, too, was holding a cocktail glass but appeared somewhat more sober than her fellow writer. “Hey, good morning, Frank,” she said in her froggy, cigarette-stained voice. “Don’t mind Dash. He’s always nasty when he’s drunk. And since he’s just about always drunk, he’s about as much fun to have around as a bear with a sore tooth. He was a hell of a writer once, though.”

  “I still am, you sow.” Hammett turned on his heel and retreated into the house. “And if you’re going to attempt to insult me, honey, do it with fewer tired clichés, huh?”

  “The Glass Key is the best mystery novel written so far in this century,” Clair said, motioning us to come in. “Since he took up with that Hellman bitch he can’t write a damn thing. I keep telling him to send her back to Arthur Kober, but Dash is too damn stubborn.”

  The living room had a beamed ceiling and a deep fireplace that looked big enough for roasting boars. Three large tapestries depicting religious pilgrimages in Chaucer’s time decorated the stucco walls.

  Hammett, his drink replenished, was sprawled in a wood and leather armchair with his feet up on a coffee table. Stretched out facedown, and apparently asleep, on a low leather sofa was Roger Connington. His right arm dangled over the side of the cushion, and just beyond the reach of his pudgy fingers lay an overturned glass with a splotch of spilled liquor spreading out from it.

  “Poor Roger’s got a touch of influenza,” explained Clair, after sipping her drink. “Rum seems to help.”

  “He’s looking fine,” said Jane.

  “You’re Frank’s wife, dear?”

  “At the moment, but, this being Hollywood, I may move along any day now.”

  Clair smiled, a bit sadly. “I used to be bright and pretty once myself,” she said. “But that—”

  “Are you broads going to stand around cackling all day?” asked Hammett.

  Clair took hold of my wife’s arm. “C’mon, kids, we’ll go into Roger’s den and have our talk.”

  There was a suit of clothes stretched out on the shadowy hardwood hallway floor, looking as though whoever had been wearing it was suddenly sucked out of it magically. In dodging to avoid trodding on it, I nearly stepped on an empty Tanqueray gin bottle.

  The den was a large lofty room with bookcases climbing up three of the walls. There were no books, though, and the only thing occupying any of the dusty shelves was a Betty Boop doll with a missing left ear. The room smelled of a great many dead cigars and also vaguely of fermenting grapes.

  When Clair sat down on the leather sofa, the cushion made a loud plopping sound. “What a life,” she sighed.

  I settled into an armchair and Jane sat on its arm, resting her hand on my shoulder. “As I mentioned on the telephone, Clair, Groucho and I—”

  “How is Groucho?”

  “Tip-top. He’s attending Felix Denker’s funeral and—”

  “What a farce that is,” said the heavyset writer. “Erika never gave a shit about him and they weren’t even living together anymore. People get so taken up with the goddamned proprieties that they—”

  “You’ve talked to the police, to Sergeant Norment?”

  “Sure, but I couldn’t tell him one hell of a lot, Frank.” She took a long swig of her drink. “But at least I don’t think I’m a suspect. Do you and Groucho have any idea who killed Felix?”

  “We’re working on it,” I said. “Why were you there on the set, Clair?”

  When she shrugged, the ice cubes rattled in her glass. “Damned if I know,” she answered. “I’d had a quarrel with Roger and, well, I got angry and then tipsy. Next thing I knew I was sitting in that London pub with my bottle of scotch.”

  “What time’d you get there?”

  “That’s exactly what your cop pal wanted to know,” Clair said. “Must have been two, three in the morning.”

  “Meaning Denker was long since dead.”

  “I didn’t see his body, I didn’t hear anything, didn’t see a damn thing,” she said. “I wandered onto that set, maybe because it reminded me of a saloon. Sat around feeling very sorry for myself until I drank myself into a stupor. Came the dawn, a police doctor was sticking smelling salts up my nose.”

  “You wrote the Sherlock Holmes script,” said Jane. “Were you around the set much?”

  “A few times,” she replied. “I was supposed to be writing some piece of tripe called Curse of the Zombies, so I had to pretend to be in my office most days.”

  “Friend of ours is going to be the voodoo priest in that,” I mentioned.

  “Enery McBride,” she said, smiling. “A nice guy and a swell actor.”

  Jane asked, “Did Erika Klein visit her husband much during the filming?”

  “Only once or twice while I was around.” She frowned at me. “Do you and Groucho think dear Erika did her hubby in?”

  “She’s on our suspect list,” I admitted. “What sort of conversations did they—”

  “I never heard her say, ‘I’m going to shoot you dead some night, dearest,’” Clair assured me. “Usually she’d complain that he hadn’t sent her a check for her expenses or tell him his jacket needing pressing. Mild nagging, they call that.”

  “Did you talk much with Denker?”

  “Quite a bit, sure,” she answered. “But after he shelved our project, I didn’t see him much.”

  “What project—another movie?�
�

  “No, Felix had the notion he wanted to do a book of memoirs,” Clair explained. “Dealing with his life and career back in Germany. A Movie Director in Nazi Germany was our working title. With all the interest in Hitler and the impending World War, it would’ve sold, I’m sure.”

  “He wanted you,” asked my wife, “to help him write it?”

  “Yeah, because poor Felix didn’t feel exactly comfortable in English. He was going to dictate stuff to me, a lot of it based on his journals.”

  I sat up. “Denker kept journals?”

  “So he told me. Made an entry every blessed day from about 1925 to 1933.”

  “Did you see them?”

  She shook her head. “Nobody saw them, Frank,” she said. “I only heard about them. Whenever I asked Felix if I could take a gander at these fabled books, he told me he wasn’t ready to let anyone see them. There was a lot of personal stuff in there that he didn’t want to put into his public memoirs. Even when I told him that I don’t read German all that well, he refused.”

  “Where are those books?”

  “God only knows.”

  “Didn’t he keep them at his house?”

  Clair said, “No, because I don’t think he wanted Erika to get her hands on them. He had them stored someplace, but I never found out where.”

  “But Erika knew about them?”

  “She must have if the guy was making entries in them every day.”

  I glanced up at Jane. “There’d be details of any sort of deals he made in Germany in those journals,” I said.

  “They’d make interesting reading, yes.”

  “Why,” I asked Clair, “did he abandon the idea of writing his memoirs?”

  “I’m not sure,” she said. “He just told me one day that he’d decided it wasn’t a good idea to continue. My impression is something scared him off, but I have no idea what. Too bad, because it would’ve made an interesting—”

  The telephone on Connington’s desk started ringing.

  With a grunt, Clair rose off the sofa and caught up the receiver. “Top of the morning,” she said, and listened for a couple of minutes. “Yeah, that’s typical of him, Ray. I’ll pass along the message. Bye now.”