Elementary, My Dear Groucho

by Ron Goulart

  “Such as?” I asked him.

  “If you intend to fill the vacancy we have for a Trappist monk, Rollo, you are going to have to learn patience,” he advised. “Might be a good idea to learn several other card games as well, because there’s just no telling how long we’re likely to be marooned.”

  “You know something,” accused Jane while measuring out ground coffee into the pot.

  “All in good time, Penelope.”

  “I thought you had a smug expression on your face when we got here tonight,” she said.

  “Please, I beg of you, don’t allude to one of the great tragedies of my life,” he said. “You see, as a youth I was kidnapped by Gypsies and, using mostly rusty surgical instruments, they carved upon my face a permanent smug expression. You may have read of my tragic fate in Victor Hugo’s epic novel The Man Who Smirked. Two seasons ago the tale appeared briefly on Broadway as the musical Hugo Your Way, I’ll Go Mine. Kenny Baker starred, along with Phil Baker, Wee Bonnie Baker, and the Light Crust Dough Boys.”

  Setting the coffee pot on a burner, Jane asked, “Changing the subject, do you have that sample of Erika Klein’s writing handy?”

  “Right here, Scarlet, honey.” He pulled two small sheets of paper from between the pages of his legal pad.

  He held one up and Jane came to look at it over his shoulder. “I think so, yes.” Taking the purloined memo written by Erika, she sat down and opened her folder.

  “I also,” said Groucho, flickering the other slip of paper, “picked up a sample of Denker’s penmanship. It might come in handy, though I can’t for the life of me think how at the moment.”

  “Speaking of Denker’s writing,” I said, “Clair Rickson told us he kept a journal for years. He’d been thinking about having her help him write a book about his years as a movie director in Germany.”

  Groucho’s eyebrows climbed higher. “A thorough, day-by-day journal this would be?”

  “So he told Clair, although she never saw an actual volume,” I answered. “For some reason—and maybe he decided a memoir of those years might annoy Erika and her Nazi bosses—he gave up the idea.”

  “And where, pray tell, are those journals now?”

  “Nobody knows. Or at least Clair doesn’t,” I said. “She doesn’t think Erika does either.”

  “It’s quite possible that Denker made notes in the pages of his journals on all the juicy details of the deal he made to let them pass Dr. Helga Krieger off as Erika Klein.”

  I nodded agreement. “If we can find them, then we’ll have some concrete proof of part of our theory.”

  Groucho, tongue poked into his cheek, was leaning back studying his kitchen ceiling. He then looked across at Jane. “What’s the verdict, Rapunzel?”

  “I don’t think you could prove it to a court’s satisfaction,” she answered, “but I’m pretty near certain that if Erika Klein wrote this note you swiped, then she also lettered every darn one of the threatening notes in our file.”

  Groucho handed me the Denker sample. “Pass this to your spouse, Rollo.”

  I did.

  Taking the note, Jane scanned it briefly. “So?”

  “How difficult would it be to imitate that handwriting of Denker’s?”

  “Not very. It looks like he studied calligraphy at some point.”

  “Could you do it?”

  “Heck yes, it wouldn’t be that much of a challenge. But why?”

  Groucho said, “Oh, it simply occurred to me that if we couldn’t find any of the volumes of the actual journal, why, we might want to produce a few pages on our own.”

  I smiled. “Keep in mind it’s all written in German.”

  “As I understand forgery, young fellow, it can be done in most any language.”

  “I studied German in school,” said Jane.

  “There you are,” said Groucho, rubbing his palms together. “For first-class chicanery there’s nothing like a forger with a college diploma. Of course, there’s always the possibility that the diploma itself is—oops.”

  Someone had started using the knocker on his front door.

  Groucho left his chair. “My, the pilgrims are flocking to the shrine tonight.” He slouched out into the hall.

  Jane said, “This could be the cause of the smug expression arriving.”

  We heard the door being opened and then Groucho exclaimed, “Why, Dr. Watson, as I live and breathe, what a ripping surprise.”

  Randell McGowan said, “Deuced informal this, what? Meeting round the kitchen table is beastly casual, but quite American, don’t you know?”

  “He can’t help talking like this,” explained Groucho in an apologetic tone.

  Chuckling, the actor picked up the cup of coffee that Jane had just served him. “Thought you did a smashing job writing Groucho’s radio show, Denby, old man. It was, yes, decidedly top-hole.”

  “Thanks. We enjoyed you in The Secret Love of Queen Victoria.”

  “Very impressive whiskers,” added Jane, returning to her chair. “If they gave an Academy Award for facial hair, you’d be a shoo-in.”

  “Oh, I say, what a droll young woman,” said McGowan, chuckling again.

  “Before we all succumb to Anglophobia,” suggested Groucho, “you better fill us in on what you alluded to during our recent telephone conversation, Randell, old chap.”

  “As Groucho may have mentioned to you, Miles Ravenshaw is not a particular favorite of mine,” said the actor after sampling his coffee. “I felt from the start that this business about his pretending to solve the murder of Felix Denker was a bit thick, you know.” He drank more coffee. “I happen to be on friendly terms with Ravenshaw’s valet. Chap named Denis Truett, whom I fagged for at Oxford. Denis fell on bad times some years back and went into service. Bloody shame, but there it is.”

  Groucho asked, “This Truett knows where Ravenshaw is hiding out?”

  “Oh, yes, because Denis is with him, you see.”

  “Amplify that statement,” Groucho requested.

  The portly actor leaned back, hooking his thumbs in his waistcoat pockets and thereby increasing his resemblance to Dr. Watson. “Roughly two hours ago Denis telephoned me—without his master’s knowledge, I hasten to add—to let me know he wouldn’t be able to keep his luncheon appointment with me for tomorrow,” he said. “He’d been enlisted to drive Ravenshaw to a cabin he’d rented up near Santa Barbara and then look after him while they hide out there.”

  “Then Ravenshaw is definitely in hiding so he won’t have to announce his solution to the murder tomorrow night at his Christmas party?” I said.

  The actor laughed. “The old boy’s in an absolute fog, a mental pea-souper, don’t you know, so far as the murder goes, my lad,” he said. “Yes, he came up with this spurious kidnapping plot to extricate himself from a sticky situation. According to Denis, Ravenshaw will emerge from hiding sometime next week with a cock-and-bull story he’s hoping the newspapers and the police will accept.”

  “How’s his wife feel about his screwing up her party?” inquired Jane.

  McGowan said, “The lady is in an absolute funk, my dear. She dotes on these extravagant soirees of theirs, you know. You can imagine how scared Ravenshaw is of facing the music when he’ll risk her ire.”

  Groucho asked him, “Where exactly is this woodsy hideaway?”

  “In a rustic area up above Santa Barbara,” answered the actor, rubbing a knuckle across his military mustache. “I can provide you the address, should you need it.”

  “Provide away, old bean,” invited Groucho. “I’m thinking we may want to make certain Ravenshaw is actually stowed away there.”

  “Oh, so?” I said.

  “And,” added Groucho, “we might want to make absolutely sure he remains there until after I have my press conference on Sunday.”

  “Press conference, old chap?” McGowan looked at him with interest. “Is one to assume, then, that you have succeed where Ravenshaw’s failed?”

  “Yes ind
eed, we’ve got the solution to everything,” Groucho assured him.

  “And you have proof?”

  Groucho nodded in Jane’s direction. “By Sunday we’ll have a stack of it.”

  Thirty

  Early Saturday morning Groucho and I were heading up the Coast Highway in my Ford. The day was clear and warm; on our left the Pacific Ocean was growing continually brighter.

  We drove by a fruit juice stand shaped like a giant orange and then one shaped like a giant lemon.

  “When you sight one shaped like a giant cabbage, Rollo, pull over,” Groucho told me. “I want to fill my thermos bottle with borscht.”

  “It’ll have to be purple,” I said, “otherwise all you can get will be sauerkraut.”

  “Speaking of sour krauts, I … no, never mind.” He unwrapped a fresh cigar. “I was going to make a rude remark about Erika Klein. But then I decided it was beneath me. You can well imagine how low something that’s beneath me must be.”

  Out of the water a glaringly white yacht was sailing by, headed south. A gaggle of seagulls was flying in its wake, diving and swirling.

  “Let that be a lesson to you,” observed Groucho. “If you want to draw a crowd, scatter a little garbage around.”

  “You still planning to have your press conference tomorrow?”

  “At precisely high noon, when all the decent citizens of Hollywood are getting up for breakfast.”

  “Where?”

  “Two-twenty-one-B Baker Street strikes me as an appropriate location.” He lit his cigar, rolling down the window on his side to blow a swirl of smoke out into the brightening morning.

  I grinned. “How are we going to get back on the Mammoth lot?”

  “That’s being arranged.” He puffed on his cigar, leaning back in the seat.

  “Okay, so tell me how.”

  “As rosy-fingered dawn was tiptoeing in on little fairy brogans, I put in a call to none other than my brother Chico, also known as the fun-loving Rover Boy,” he explained. “Chico, I realized, often plays bridge with Lew Goldstein, and Lew Number One happens to owe my ne’er-do-well sibling a favor. Chico will get the embargo lifted.”

  “Okay, but then—”

  “Zeppo will team up with Nan to see that everyone on the guest list we concocted last night at the Marx hacienda accepts an invitation to attend. Oh, and I also called Sergeant Norment to inform him he’d be wise to see to it that we get a full house.”

  “And Norment’s going to cooperate?”

  “He apparently hasn’t run the killer of Felix Denker to ground and, since I implied we’d likely be doing that come Sunday, he went along with my scheme,” said Groucho. “He did, however, speak to me harshly at times and used words that I haven’t heard since I left the convent.”

  I said, “Meanwhile Jane should be able to do her part of what’s needed.”

  “Of that I have no doubt.”

  We’d dropped Jane off at Elena Sederholm’s again, since I didn’t feel it was safe for her to be home by herself. She was reluctant to do that, but together Groucho and I succeeded in persuading her that she had to work on her project. I also pointed out that most people don’t play whist until after sundown and that we intended to gather her up long before that.

  “The last couple of times a case called for exploring the wilderness,” I said, “Jane and I did that together. So there’s another reason she’s somewhat annoyed.”

  “Any woman who knowingly marries you, Rollo, has to be prepared to spend at least part of her life in a state of annoyance.”

  “And we got to use Dorgan to help us in our tracking,” I added. “Jane really likes that dog.”

  “Ah, yes, Dorgan, the renowned bloodhound and motion picture performer,” said Groucho, puffing on his cigar. “One of the nicest fellows in the movies.”

  “Not that I don’t enjoy working with you, Groucho,” I assured him. “But with Dorgan there’s that—”

  “No need to continue; I fully understand the bond between a boy and his dog,” he said. “I myself have seen every Rin Tin Tin movie and serial ever made. In fact, I attended so many dog movies that they had to have me sprayed for fleas.”

  The morning grew warmer and by the time we reached the outskirts of Santa Barbara, we were enjoying the kind of December day that people move west from Illinois for.

  “You know where to turn off?” inquired Groucho.

  “We want the next road on the right, yeah.”

  After I made the turn and we were driving up through unsettled wooded acres, Groucho said, “The other night at Siegfried’s Rathskeller.”

  “An unsettling experience.”

  He nodded slowly. “There are quite a few people like Jack O’Banyon in Hollywood, although they don’t, most of them, wear uniforms advertising it,” he said. “That’s why the Hillcrest is the only country club I can belong to.”

  “It’s not going to change, not for a long time,” I said. “There are just too many assholes in the world.”

  “So far the Silver Shirts haven’t taken over out here,” he said. “Otherwise I’d have to go around with a star pinned to my coat and tip my hat to the likes of O’Banyon.” He grimaced. “There are terrible things happening in the world and …” His voice trailed off. “I don’t know, Frank, you can join the Anti-Nazi League and support all the liberal causes and go to rallies and make a speech now and then, but a whole lot of Jews are going to get killed anyway.”

  Groucho snuffed his cigar in the ashtray, threw it out into the sunshine.

  After a moment he tugged out his pocket handkerchief and blew his nose.

  “Shit,” he said quietly.

  Thirty-one

  We parked the car about a quarter mile beyond the dirt road that led down to the cabin where Ravenshaw was avoiding the public, leaving it off the roadway near a stand of pepper trees.

  Trudging back through the warm morning, Groucho and I cut into the woods while we were still several hundred yards from the trail to the cabin.

  Once in among the trees, we attempted to move as quietly as possible.

  A loud thrashing sounded off on our right as we descended.

  “Do mountain lions,” inquired Groucho, “inhabit this part of the country?”

  “Don’t they pretty much restrict themselves to mountains?”

  “The newspapers are continually running accounts about how a mountain lion wandered into a garden party in Bel Air or Beverly Hills and gobbled up the hostess and several dress extras.”

  “Well, I doubt a mountain lion would find either one of us palatable.”

  “Myself, I’m a mite fuzzy on the culinary habits of mountain lions,” admitted Groucho as he slouched downhill through the brush. “I was only a wee lad when last I perused Wild Animals I Have Known. Although recently I’ve been contemplating turning out a book of memoirs to be entitled Wild Animals I Have Married.”

  We continued in silence for a while.

  I put out a restraining hand, saying quietly, “That’s the cabin down through the trees there.”

  “Smoke coming out of the chimney,” observed Groucho. “Plus a yellow Duesenberg convertible coupe in the garage. It’s unlikely that a group of forest-dwelling rustics would drive a Duesenberg.”

  “No, we’re obviously dealing with upper-class rustics here, Groucho.” I nodded toward our right. “If we cut over that way and then go skulking through the woods, we ought to be able to come up pretty close to the side of the cabin without being spotted.”

  “Lead on, Dan Beard.”

  We heard the thrashing again, but it sounded farther away.

  The cabin was large, built of logs, with a slanting tar paper roof. It didn’t look exactly like an authentic woodland cabin but more like something a crew from a movie studio had put up. There was a screened porch running along the front of it and a sizable wooden bin for holding garbage cans on the side we were surreptitiously approaching.

  While we were still about ten feet from the cabin,
we started hearing a voice talking loudly. Hunching low, we worked our way closer.

  “ … bloody hell did you allow that to happen, Randy?”

  “Bingo, that’s the ham himself,” whispered Groucho.

  “Yeah, talking to Randy Grothkopf, Mammoth’s publicity chief.”

  Like all hideaways that catered to Hollywood, this one came equipped with a telephone.

  “ … going to make me look like an absolute ass,” the Sherlock Holmes actor was complaining. “How the devil could Lew Number One have given Groucho permission to set foot on the studio grounds tomorrow and use mysets to stage some shabby … Well, then, I’m not especially pleased, old man, that they think more of Groucho’s vulgar imitation-Italian brother than they do of me. The Valley of Fear is, after all, a big-budget production that … Well, a middle-budget production. Keep in mind, dear boy, that it was your bloody idea that I make all those outrageous claims about solving … Yes, yes, I know what the original plan was, Randy. I stay out of sight until the police do the actually work of clearing up the murder. Then I pop up, give them the ridiculous story that I was kidnapped but actually knew the solution even before they did. Why in the name of …”

  Close to my ear, Groucho said, “Well, Sir Rollo, that confirms our worst suspicions.”

  “It does, yeah,” I agreed. “So let’s wend our way back to the car and—”

  “That Duesenberg sitting in the garage.”

  “What about it?”

  “Could you incapacitate the vehicle in some quick and simple way?”

  “That wouldn’t be a problem, but—”

  “In case Ravenshaw, who now knows about my press conference of the morrow, decides to return to civilization and try to screw things up for us,” Groucho explained, “it would be jolly comforting to know that he was stranded here with a car that might take a couple days to fix.”

  “All right,” I agreed. “We’ll work our way around the back of his cabin, sneak silently into the garage, and while Ravenshaw is still squabbling on the telephone, I’ll remove the distributor cap.”