Elementary, My Dear Groucho

by Ron Goulart

  She hung up, walked to the doorway.

  Into the hall she shouted, “Dash, you irresponsible bastard. Ray Chandler says you were supposed to meet him and Erle Gardner at the Copper Skillet on Gower for breakfast a full goddamn hour ago.”

  “Screw them,” called Hammett.

  Twenty-seven

  The coffin came rolling down the aisle of the Little Chapel of the Wayfarer and out into the rain. After being loaded into the hearse, it would be driven a quarter of a mile downhill to the Denker gravesite.

  The mourners began to rise and make their way out of the quaint little church.

  Groucho remained standing beside his pew, eyes on Von Esh. The crew-cut informant didn’t join the procession either. After letting the others on his bench step out over him, he went sliding on his backside to the opposite end of the pew.

  Then he hopped up, hurrying toward a side door and out of the church.

  Groucho, crouched slightly, dodged the stream of people leaving the place.

  As he headed for the rear of the church George Raft prodded him in the ribs. “Don’t forget that swell script, pal,” he urged.

  “It’s etched in memory, Georgie.”

  By the time Groucho had worked his way around to the opposite aisle and then out of the chapel, Von Esh was trotting toward the crest of a hill.

  It was Groucho’s intention to catch up with him and persuade him to tell him who’d suggested that he send us to find that fake suicide note last night.

  When Groucho reached the top of the incline, he didn’t see any sign of his quarry. Stretching out below him was one of the more expensive sections of the cemetery. There were ornate tombstones stretched out for over a half acre, and winged angels abounded, as did marble tombs. Dotting the clipped grass were stands of weeping willows.

  The wind caught his umbrella and Groucho was pulled to his left.

  He stumbled, looked around again.

  He spotted Von Esh now, far below and jogging along beside a row of gravestones.

  Increasing his pace, Groucho took off in pursuit.

  He was opposite an especially imposing Angel Gabriel when he heard an odd rushing noise. That was followed by a clinking, and then a chunk of Gabriel’s widespread wing leaped off and whacked against the side of Groucho’s head.

  He flung his umbrella away and threw himself flat out on the wet grass.

  A second rifle shot knocked the nose clean off a cherub who decorated a gravestone not more than three feet from where Groucho had splashed down.

  As we were driving along Bayside Boulevard, heading homeward, the rain started to hit down harder. “Want to stop somewhere for lunch?” I asked Jane.

  “It’s a shame about Hammett,” she said.

  “You still brooding about that?”

  “I read The Maltese Falcon when I was in high school and I loved it.”

  “You should’ve told him that. Maybe it would’ve persuaded him to take the pledge.”

  “Well, it’s a marvelous book.”

  “From time to time a drunk writes a marvelous book. It has something to do with some rule Darwin discovered some years ago.”

  “You’re still angry because he was rude to me.”

  “He was rude to everybody within a mile of him.”

  She was quiet for a moment.

  The rain drummed on the roof of the car, our tires made sizzling noises on the wet street.

  Very quietly she began to cry.

  I asked, “You upset with me for some reason?”

  She shook her head, sniffling. “No, you’re okay.”

  “Good, thanks for the testimonial. So why are you crying?”

  “He reminded me of my father.”

  I glanced over at her. “You’ve never really told me much about your father.”

  “I haven’t, no.”

  “I know he drank some, too.”

  “He drank one hell of a lot. He was an alcoholic.”

  “I didn’t know that,” I mentioned. “Which, when you consider the fact that we’re married, is sort of odd.”

  She took a lace-trimmed handkerchief out of her purse. She wiped at her eyes, blew her nose, wadded the handkerchief up in a tight ball. “Sometime, Frank, I’ll tell you all about my father.”

  “Fine.”

  “But not today.”

  Up ahead the traffic signal flashed to red.

  I hit the brakes and stopped at the corner right next to the big outdoor newsstand.

  Under the slanting green-and-white awning a middle-aged newsboy was hollering something.

  Jane rolled down her window.

  “Extra! Extra!” the chunky man shouted. “Sherlock Holmes disappears!”

  “We better buy a paper,” suggested Jane.

  Using his elbows, Groucho, still stretched out flat on his stomach, was working his way toward a crypt some ten feet away. He hoped that would offer him some shelter from the rifleman who was intent on plugging him.

  “Although I suppose this is as good a place as any to cash in one’s chips,” he reflected. “They’d only have to drag my lifeless corpse a few dozen yards to toss it into a grave. That would cut way down on expenses and—”

  Another rifle shot came whizzing by overhead. Overhead in this case was about three feet above the ground. The slug hit a tombstone immediately to Groucho’s right and gouged out part of the M in the chiseled word Memory.

  “Usually in shooting galleries it’s only three shots for a dime.”

  He felt very cold and soggy as he inched along.

  A brass urn jumped off the tombstone he was crawling past. The urn leaped free, went spinning into the air, and smacked against the wing of a marble angel.

  “That’s five shots now. But, fortunately, no prize yet.”

  Up to his right someplace, from a totally different direction, two shots sounded.

  Groucho increased the speed of his crawl and dragged himself behind the sheltering wall of the ornately carved crypt.

  He heard running footsteps now and three more gunshots. But nobody seemed to be firing at him any longer.

  “Is that you cringing behind there, Marx?”

  Groucho waited a few seconds and then peeked out. “Sergeant Norment of the Burbank Constabulary, what a jolly surprise,” said Groucho, rising and stepping out into the open. “Did you shoot the chap who was shooting at me?”

  “Nope, he got clean away,” said Jack Norment. “When we heard the shooting I deserted the burial ceremonies and came back here to see what was going on.” He eyed Groucho. “Apparently you’ve annoyed somebody again.”

  “It has to be that, Sergeant, since Marx-hunting season doesn’t open officially for nearly three months yet.”

  Sitting atop a tombstone, Norment asked, “Any idea why somebody would want to kill you?”

  “Besides Room Service, you mean?” Groucho spread his hands wide and shrugged. “No, I lead such a blameless life that, last time I heard, the pope was planning to have me canonized as Saint Julius.”

  “Those Nazis and Boy Storm Troopers you got into a brawl with last night at Siegfried’s wouldn’t have a grudge against you, huh?”

  “Oh, that was nothing more than adolescent prankishness.”

  “And I don’t suppose you’re close enough to knowing who murdered Denker to be dangerous to anybody?”

  “I’m a mere amateur, as you pointed out yourself, Sergeant.”

  “Amateurs get killed, too, Marx,” he warned. “You’ve already missed your chance to toss a handful of dirt on Denker’s coffin. So what say I escort you to your car and you go away?”

  “That’s a jolly suggestion,” said Groucho, linking his arm with the policeman’s. “I don’t know about you, but whenever I’m traipsing around over several hundred buried bodies, I just get the wimwams something awful. Especially after somebody with a rifle tries to bag me.”

  Twenty-eight

  I told the secretary who answered M. J. McLeod’s phone, “This is Richard H
arding Davis of the Denver Post. I’d like to speak with Miss McLeod.”

  “She’s out of the office right now, Mr. Davis.”

  “Any idea when she’ll be back?”

  “I’m afraid not. Would you like to have her telephone you at the newspaper?”

  “I’m out of the office, too. I’ll have to try her again. Thanks.”

  From her studio Jane called, “Isn’t your old sweetie there?”

  “Nope. Guess I’ll have to try her at the heart-shaped love nest I’ve installed her in.” I dialed Mary Jane’s home number.

  On the fifth ring a voice that wasn’t hers answered. “Miss McLeod’s service.”

  “I’d like to get in touch with her.”

  “She should be checking in eventually, if you’d care to leave a message.”

  “Tell her Richard Harding Davis wants to talk to her. She has my number.”

  I hung up, left the sofa, and wandered in to where my wife was working at her drawing board. “No luck yet,” I reported.

  “When you do contact her, Frank, she’s just going to confirm what we already think happened.”

  “Probably, sure, but I’d like to get Mary Jane to tell me directly: ‘Yep, it’s only a publicity dodge, because Ravenshaw doesn’t have the vaguest idea of who done it.’”

  “That has to be what’s going on,” said Jane. “He hasn’t got anything to announce at his party, so he’s pretending he was abducted by the forces of evil.”

  “That sounds like the sort of thing Mammoth’s publicity head, Randy Grothkopf, and Ravenshaw would come up with to get off the hook, yeah,” I agreed. “Sherlock will lie low for a few days, then reappear and claim he just managed to escape from his kidnappers. Considering how dangerous investigating the Denker case has turned out to be, he owes it to his family and his public to retire from the case.”

  “You and Groucho believe that Erika Klein is the killer,” said Jane, setting down her pen and pushing back from the board. “But she’s only taken care of people who could do her serious harm. Nobody can possibly consider Miles Ravenshaw a formidable threat.”

  I went around on her side of the drawing board. “Judging by the newspaper story, the whole thing sounds like a plan of Ravenshaw and Grothkopf,” I said. “Ravenshaw left home this morning, telling his wife he was going to attend Felix Denker’s funeral. Seemingly he never got to Glendale and nobody’s seen him since.”

  “Because he drove somewhere else to hide,” said Jane, pointing at the drawing she’d been working on. “What do you think of this?”

  “Hollywood Molly in her underwear?”

  “I’ve been thinking of adding paper dolls to the Sunday page,” Jane explained. “Say once a month or so. How’s that sound?”

  “We’re seeking an honest opinion here?”

  “As opposed to what?”

  “Mindless husband approval.”

  “C’mon, nitwit. I want your opinion, not a publicity release.”

  “Paper dolls are okay for Jane Arden or Toots and Casper,” I said. “But Hollywood Molly is too smart a strip for that kind of stuff.”

  “I always liked paper dolls when I was a kid,” she said. “My Fresno aunt used to bring me books of them and I’d cut out the dolls and dress them up for hours. I especially like dressing them in bridal clothes.”

  “Let’s save that for our next session, Mrs. Denby,” I said.

  “You’re telling me that cute paper dolls are going to cheapen my strip?”

  “Well, basically, yeah, in my opinion, Jane.”

  “Well, in my opinion, you don’t know your backside from your elbow.”

  “I bet I do. When they asked me that question on my state driver’s license test last year, I answered it correctly,” I assured her. “My backside is the one with the flashing red light.”

  “If I added paper dolls, it would broaden my audience. Thousands of little girls would flock to Molly.”

  “It’s already the most popular strip your syndicate’s had in five years, Jane.”

  “Paper dolls are very popular right now.”

  “So are crossword puzzles, but you don’t have those in your comic strip either.”

  “I may stick one in just to spite you.” Jane paused to take a deep breath in and out. “Let’s get back to the vanishing Sherlock Holmes. You sounded like you might actually believe he was abducted.”

  “I don’t, no,” I told her. “But I don’t want to make the mistake of not looking into the possibility that maybe there was foul play. That’s what detectives, and reporters, do. Check all the possibilities.”

  “Well, your former true love can settle that question once you get in touch with her.”

  “Listen, just because I used to frolic naked in mountain meadows with Mary Jane McLeod, you can’t go labeling her my—”

  The telephone rang.

  Jane picked up the extension on her taboret. “Hello?” She listened for a moment. “No, he’s fully clothed at the moment, Groucho. Although he did just return from frolicking jaybird naked in a nearby mountain meadow.” She listened again. “Yes, we’ve heard about Ravenshaw’s alleged disappearance. No, we didn’t know somebody tried to shoot you.” Frowning, Jane handed me the receiver.

  “Who tried to shoot you, Groucho?” I asked.

  “We’re offering a prize of one hundred dollars in cash and two hundred dollars in frilly underwear to the first person to come up with an answer. As usual, neatness, originality, and aptness of theme count. Though not for a hell of a lot.” He then told me about what had befallen him at the Peaceable Woodlands Cemetery while he was attending the Denker funeral. “I did manage, before the target practice commenced, to glom on to some nifty handwriting samples. I’d like to have you and your keen-eyed missus drop over for a powwow. Or you can have a large slice of cheesecake instead of the powwow. It’s up to youse.”

  “What time?”

  “I’m currently languishing alone here at the Chateau d’If, because my family has scattered to the four winds,” he replied. “And since there are only three of them, one of the winds is going to get short shrift. But, as Benjamin Franklin so wisely put it, better a short shrift than something I intend to think of later in your shorts.”

  “An hour?”

  “I’ll instruct one of the serfs to let down the drawbridge, Rollo,” he promised. “I could add that it’ll probably be Bennett Cerf, but lately I’ve come to realize that these literary allusions seem to go right over your head. And another thing that’s been going over your head is that wool cap I knitted for you back during the—”

  “Good-bye, Groucho,” I mentioned and hung up.

  Twenty-nine

  The rain had diminished to a fuzzy drizzle by the time we arrived at Groucho’s home on North Hillcrest Drive in Beverly Hills.

  Before Jane and I reached the front door, it was yanked open. “I’m afraid you’re too late to tune the harpsichord,” said Groucho. “It passed away just minutes ago.”

  “Well, at least we can see it gets a decent burial,” I said as Jane and I went into the hosue.

  Groucho was wearing one of his ancient bathrobes and a pair of shaggy bunny rabbit slippers. “Good evening, Lady Jane, you’re looking extremely presentable,” he said. “I must warn you, however, that your reputation will suffer if you continue to be seen in public with rustic yokels such as the one you have in tow this evening.”

  “I know, yes,” said Jane, who was carrying a file folder in her left hand. “Just before we left home we got a phone call from the Rockefeller attorneys informing me I’ve been disinherited.”

  “Think how much worse it would’ve been were you related to the Rockefeller family in some way.” Making a follow-me gesture, he headed for the kitchen.

  Once inside his big yellow-and-white kitchen, we sat around the table.

  Groucho had a legal tablet, two stubby pencils, and a pewter mug at his place. “This contains eggnog,” he explained, tapping the metal cup. “In my native P
etrograd we believe anything with a stiff shot of brandy in it will ward off chills, fever, and ague. We believe this, mind you, even though we haven’t the vaguest notion what ague is and aren’t even sure how to pronounce it.”

  “Frank said you were crawling around a damp cemetery,” said Jane, “while they were shooting at you.”

  “Like Napoléon’s army, I was traveling on my stomach.” He drank some of his spiked eggnog.

  “It wasn’t Von Esh who was doing the shooting, huh?” I said.

  “Our old drinking companion was functioning much like the mechanical rabbit that gets greyhounds to trot around the track,” he said. “Someone else was doing the shooting.”

  “But you didn’t see who?”

  “Unless it was a marble angel, no.”

  Jane stood up. “Forgive me for behaving like your typical Beverly Hills matron, Groucho, but would you mind if I fixed a pot of coffee?”

  “Ah, excuse me, child, I should’ve brewed a pot while awaiting your arrival,” he apologized. “But I got so wrapped up in playing a one-handed game of honeymoon bridge that I quite forgot. Next week, by the way, I’m going to get wrapped in the prettiest Christmas paper you’ve ever seen. My stationer’s a bit deaf and originally he thought I’d ordered Christian paper and he sent over six back issues of the Christian Science Monitor.”

  “I’ll make coffee.” Jane went into the pantry and emerged with a can of Orem Bros. coffee, left over from the supply the original sponsor of our defunct radio show had given Groucho the year before.

  “I haven’t been able to get through to Mary Jane McLeod,” I said. “But I’m pretty sure she’ll confirm that Ravenshaw’s disappearance is a fake.”

  “Precisely, Rollo. The poor hambone hasn’t come up with a solution, so he’s going to remain incommunicado until wiser heads solve the mystery.” He tapped a few bars of something that sounded like “Jeepers Creepers” on the side of his mug with the eraser end of one of his pencils. “I hope to have some important information on that very topic before the evening is very much older.”