Ron Goulart - Groucho 3 - Elementary, My Dear Groucho

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ELEMENTARY,

MY DEAR

groucho

by Ron Goulart

Other Groucho Marx Mysteries

Groucho Marx, Master Detective

Groucho Marx, Private Eye

One

It was shortly before Christmas of 1938 that Groucho Marx matched wits with Sherlock Holmes.

The whole business began as an ill-advised Hollywood pub-licity stunt, but before everything was over Groucho and I

be-came a detective team again and found ourselves involved in trying to solve a couple of murders.

"This detective stuff is all well and good," Groucho had conceded, "but the next time you get me on a team, see if you can

make it the Los Angeles Angels. I just know I'd make a delightful shortstop. I've already had several years experience as a

doorstop, but that's not as good exercise."

We initially got tangled up with the case early on a Tuesday morning in December. It was one of those gray, blurry Los

Angeles days, overcast and not quite warm enough. A few stray seagulls were circling up in the morning mist, intermittently

visible, their mournful cries muffled.

I was driving and Groucho was sitting, slightly slouched, in the passenger seat of my new Ford sedan. He was quietly

sing-ing "Jeepers Creepers" in a very bad Swedish accent and keep-ing time on the dashboard with his unlit cigar. "This

vehicle is a considerable improvement over your late Plymouth coupe," he observed, inserting the cigar between his teeth.

"Though I really miss that raccoon tail you used to fly from your radio antenna, Franklin."

I'm Frank Denby, by the way, and I'd been writing Groucho's comedy detective show for radio. That, however, had

been canceled back in October and right at the moment we were collaborating on a script for a screwball movie comedy. It

was about a poor girl who inherits a bus line and the tentative title was Cinderella on Wheels. We were driving, on that

over-cast morning, out to the Mammoth Studios in the valley to talk to a producer about our idea.

And let me mention here, for those of you who've been following these accounts, that I'd been married since June to Jane

Danner, America's best-looking cartoonist. Groucho had served as our best man and also volunteered to sing "Oh, Prom-ise

Me" at the ceremonies. We'd allowed him to do that only after he'd promised he wouldn't accompany himself on his gui-tar

nor throw in the yodels he'd been inserting during the wedding rehearsals.

While my career was momentarily floundering, Jane was doing swell. She'd sold her Hollywood Molly comic strip in

September and as the end of the year approached her syndicate had succeeded in placing it in just under 150 newspapers

around the country. Her salary had climbed to seven hundred dollars a week. She'd already earned enough to buy us this

new car in addition to a new bicycle for herself.

"I sure hope we sell this damn script," I said to Groucho as we neared the Mammoth Studios spread. "I'm enlightened

enough to be able to live off my wife's income for a short spell, but I'd feel a hell of a lot better if my own funds weren't

hovering near zero."

"Look on the bright side, Rollo," advised Groucho, fishing a book of Trocadero matches out of the pocket of his

exuber-antly plaid sports coat but making no effort to light his dead cigar. "As long as you're a kept man, it's nice that you're

being kept by such a bright, attractive young lady as Jane. Now, the last woman who kept me insisted on keeping me in a

very cramped duffel bag. What with me, my salt and pepper shaker collection, and all those stray duffels in there, it was far

from roomy. It was, in point of fact, nearly seventy-seven hot, weary miles from roomy and up hill all the way."

A pair of workmen in coveralls were on a scaffold putting up a new billboard on the high white stucco wall that

sur-rounded the fifteen acres that Mammoth covered. The headline of the big poster read: Miles Ravenshaw IS Sherlock

Holmes in Mammoth Pictures' Production of THE VALLEY OF FEAR! The top third of Ravenshaw had already been

slapped up and you could see his deerstalker cap, his meerschaum pipe, and a profile that suggested that he believed

whoever it was who'd once told him that he looked a lot like John Barrymore.

"Miles Ravenshaw," muttered Groucho as I guided the car up to the gilded wrought-iron studio gates. "I'd call him a ham,

except that would be an insult to all the self-sacrificing pigs who donated their backsides so that the world could have ham on

rye."

"They say that Ravenshaw was a Scotland Yard inspector before he became an actor."

Groucho expressed his disbelief with a rude noise. "Of course, for religious reasons I can't have anything to do with a

ham of any sort," he said. "I'm even forbidden to drop in on the Three Little Pigs, nor can I so much as huff and puff and

blow any of their houses down." He waggled his unlit cigar. "I'm sorely tempted to mention an attractive miss I once

en-countered in a Baja California bordello who could not only huff and buff but... but, no, some things are best left unsaid."

I stopped a few feet from the closed gates. "That'd make a good motto for you," I suggested.

"It would indeed, Rollo, and I may well use it in my forth-coming B movie, Think Fast, Mr. Motto."

Just outside the gates was a tile-roofed guard shack with a single palm tree rising up beside it. A plump uniformed guard

in a dark gray uniform came shuffling out and walked over to the car, his hand resting casually on the holster at his right side.

"How can I help you, gents?" he inquired, looking in at Groucho.

"I'm deeply hurt, Oscar," said Groucho. "After we served three years in the Foreign Legion together, I hoped you'd never

forget me."

The heavyset Oscar chuckled, shaking his head. "Sorry, I didn't recognize you right off, Mr. Marx," he told him. "You

know, because you don't have your mustache."

"I don't?" He touched his fingertips to his upper lip, then turned to scowl at me. "As soon as we send for a matron, Rollo,

you'll be thoroughly searched. Mustache snatching is a serious thing and, if my vast knowledge of the law doesn't play me

false, I am almost certain it's a capital crime. It may well also be the capital of North Dakota, but we won't be certain of that

until the returns come in from the outlying provinces. Lord knows how long that'll take, since they've been out lying with ...

but, enough. You get my point, I'm sure."

Oscar took off his visored cap to scratch at his thinning blond hair. "I hear your last movie was a flop, Mr. Marx."

"You hear? Didn't you have the nerve to go see Room Service?"

"Well, I'd like to see all your Marx Brothers pictures," he assured Groucho, "but my wife just can't stand you. In her

opinion you never play anything but a sex-crazed lecher in any of your movies."

"That's because I am a sex-crazed lecher," he responded. "But I'm struggling to make a living despite such a handicap.

Isn't that the American way? Yes, a man may work to over-come his handicaps and make a name for himself. The name I

wanted to make for myself was Edgar Rice Burroughs, but they told me it was already taken. I then selected Tarzan and it

turned out some nudist over at MGM had dibs on that. Grou-cho Marx was just about all that was left, except for the Marx

of Zorro and I thought that sounded too foreign for an actor who specializes in playing ice-skating ingenue parts."

"We've got an appointment with Lew Marker," I told the chuckling guard.

"Lew Number Two, huh?" The guard shrugged and shook his head. "Somebody of your stature, Mr. Marx, ought to be

seeing Lew Number One."

Lew Goldstein, the head of the whole Mammoth operation, everybody called Lew Number One. Marker had the

nickname Lew Number Two.

"I'm working my way up the ladder," Groucho assured Oscar. "Why only last year I wasn't able to see anybody higher

than Lew Number Four-oh-six."

Chuckling once more, he said, "Park in Visitors' Lot A, folks," and went trotting back to his hut.

A moment later the gates shivered and then rattled open inward.

Giving the guard a lazy salute, I drove onto the studio grounds.

"I don't think all that much of Lew Marker myself," ad-mitted Groucho. "Yet my esteemed brother, Zeppo, assures me

that the fellow is greatly interested in talking to us about Cin-derella on Wheels."

The buildings were all of the popular cream-colored stucco and red tile roof school. There were several stretches of

bright green lawn and rows of assorted kinds of palm trees. "Marker's produced a string of screwball comedies," I reminded

him, stopping to let a starlet decked out as an aviatrix cross the street. "Crazy About You, This One's on Me, That Was My

Wife. Irene Dunne came near getting an Academy Award nom-ination for one of them."

"The best of the bunch," said Groucho, lighting the cigar and exhaling smoke, "contained, and I'm quoting an exhaus-tive

study conducted by the Greenwich Observatory, five laughs during its entire length. And the heartiest one came when the

audience read the name of the musical director in the opening credits."

My Ford looked to be the least expensive car in the row I parked in, possibly the least expensive in the whole damn lot.

When I mentioned that to Groucho, he said, "True, but you have the curliest hair."

"My hair isn't curly at all."

"Well, gee, Penrod, you don't have to bite a guy's head off when he's only trying to cheer you up."

We were scheduled to meet Marker over at Soundstage 4, where he was going to be sitting in on the shooting of scenes

for his latest comedy, She Married the Butler.

We never made the appointment.

As we were walking past Soundstage 2, the big metal door slid open with a clattering bang. A pretty blond young

woman came running out, pale under her tennis court tan.

She was wearing white slacks and a dark blue cable-stitch pullover sweater. "In there," she called to us, waving her hand

in the direction of the doorway she'd just come stumbling through. "A dead man."

"We could, Rollo," suggested Groucho, "continue on our way and ignore this entirely."

"But we won't," I said, running toward the frightened girl.

Two

The blonde thrust both her slim arms around me, pressing hard against my ribs, then leaned her head against my chest.

"They shot him," she murmured in a low, choked voice. "He's all bloody."

"Are they still in there?" I asked as I pushed her, gently, back a foot or so from me and nodded at the open doorway of

the shadowy soundstage.

"He's dead. I'm certain he's dead." Her hand was shaking as she brought it up to brush a tangle of blond hair back from

her forehead. "I came looking for him, you know, because he wasn't in his office and I had to ask him something about the

script revisions. Somebody's shot him. I don't know who."

Putting both hands on the shivering woman's shoulders, I said, "Take it easy now. Tell me who it is that's dead."

She straightened up some, looking into my face. Her mas-cara had run from the crying and her eyes were underscored

with sooty blurs. "Do you work here at the studio?"

"Although noted far and wide for my patience and stoi-cism," said Groucho, moving closer, "I would like to know when

it's going to be my turn to get hugged?"

"Oh, it's you, Mr. Marx," said the young woman. "You probably don't remember me, but I used to be a script girl at

MGM back when you were still active in the movies."

"Somebody else who missed seeing Room Service." He slipped out of his flamboyant sports coat, shimmying quite a bit

in the process, and draped it over the shivering girl's shoulders. "The important thing for a shock victim is to keep warm.

That's a little something I learned during my years as a den mother with the Brownies. Soon as the Saint Bernard shows up,

we'll give you a slug of brandy."

I asked him, "You know her?"

"Whilst trotting over here, I reflected to myself that the rear view was deucedly familiar." He shrugged. "Alas, the name

escapes me."

"I'm Isobel Glidden." She was shivering less. "I've been a script girl here at Mammoth for close to a year, Mr. Marx."

"Don't be so formal, my dear. You can call me Hopalong."

"Okay, Isobel," I said, "Let's get back to this dead man- do you know who it is?"

"Yes, of course." When she nodded, Groucho's jacket started to slip down off her right shoulder. "It's Mr. Denker."

"Would that be Felix Denker," asked Groucho as he rear-ranged the coat, "the noted emigre director?"

"Yes, he's got a three-picture contract with the studio."

"I ran into him quite a few times at Anti-Nazi League fes-tivities, Rollo," Groucho told me. "I admired his political stand,

even though I thought Denker himself was an unmitigated putz and a pain in the tokus." He puffed on his cigar. "But I suppose

it's not polite to speak too ill of the dead. So cancel the putz part of that remark."

Pointing a thumb at the wide doorway, I suggested, "We'd better go take a look."

Groucho patted Isobel on her lower back. "Are you capable of guiding us, my child?"

"I think so, yes," she said. "I really have to go back there eventually anyway. I dropped my script on the set when I saw

him sitting there dead."

The dead man was sitting stiffly in Sherlock Holmes's arm-chair in the study at 221B Baker Street. He was tilted to the

left in the velvet chair, his rigid left arm hovering over the small stack of early twentieth-century magazines that were scattered

on the end table.

Felix Denker, a lean man in his middle fifties, had been shot twice on the upper right side of his chest. His twisted ascot

and the front of his cream-colored silk shirt were splotched with dark, dried blood. His black hair was still neatly parted in

the middle and slicked down, but his monocle had fallen to the floor of the set and lay on the white bearskin rug. There was

no sign of a gun.

With Isobel's help, we'd located the control panels and turned on sufficient lights.

Careful not to disturb anything too much, I'd approached the body of the murdered director. Judging by the progress of

rigor mortis, I figured he'd been shot several hours earlier. "Looks like he's been dead since last night," I said. "When'd you

see Denker last, Isobel?"

She'd remained at the edge of the set, her reclaimed script clutched tightly to her chest with both hands. "Well, when I left

the studio yesterday evening at around six, Mr. Denker was still in his office in the Directors Building."

Groucho was wandering around in the simulation of Holmes's lodgings. "1 assume Felix was directing The Valley of

Fear?" he asked the blonde.

"Yes, and he hated it."

"Having to work with Miles Ravenshaw would give any-body the heebie-jeebies." Groucho leaned over to peek into the

microscope that rested on the chemistry bench in the corner. "How'd Little Egypt get in there?"

"He and Mr. Ravenshaw were continually squabbling, sure, but that wasn't what upset him," explained Isobel, trying to

look at Groucho without looking at the corpse. "Mammoth had pretty much promised Mr. Denker that he'd be directing only

quality films, but then they stuck him with a mystery. His first American film, Lynch Mob, was nominated for an Oscar in

1936, you know."

"Yes indeedy, Felix had mentioned that fact to me on more than one occasion." Groucho was inspecting the pipe rack on

the set wall. "It always annoyed him when I stoutly insisted that I'd once seen a Walt Disney Silly Symphony with the same

title as his masterpiece."

"Was he shooting the Holmes movie here last night?" I asked Isobel.

"No, we did only outdoor stuff yesterday over at the Lon-don standing set." She frowned. "We weren't due to use this

set until this afternoon. I only tried hunting for him here be-cause he had a habit of looking over the day's sets by himself

sometimes."

"So he might've dropped in here last night to do that?"

"I suppose, yes."

"That's odd." Groucho was crouched next to Denker's body, eyeing his stiff left hand. "Forefinger's bloody."

There was dried blood thick on the dead director's finger. "Hey, it looks like he scrawled something on the cover of that

magazine."

The top magazine was a prop copy of The Strand from 1915. Up just under the logo Denker had apparently started to

write something on the pale cover, using his own blood for ink.

"Appears to be the number four," concluded Groucho, squinting.

It did look like an open-topped numeral four. "A dying mes-sage, maybe?" I glanced over at the script girl. "Four mean

anything?"

Isobel shook her head. "It could mean just about anything," she pointed out. "Part of a phone number, you know, or an

address, or a page number-and isn't there a Sherlock Holmes story with four in the title?"

"Dying messages always annoy me." Groucho straightened up, with a slight creak, still looking at what the dead man had

written on the cover. "Victims in B movies are always penning cryptic phrases in ancient Persian or gasping out a snatch of

lyric from a fifteenth-century madrigal to give the sleuths a hint as to who did them in." He paused to puff on his cigar. "Much

simpler, in my opinion, if you just dashed off something like 'I was knocked off by Erwin L. Hershman of Twenty-six-B

Syca-more Lane in Pismo Beach.' Or 'My wife's lover-I mean, the lout with the tattoo-did this, officers. It's my guess they're

shacked up at this very moment in the Starcross Motel in An-aheim. Go get 'em.' "

I took a look around the set, tapping my fingers on Holmes's Stradivarius that rested on a table near the door. "Well, I

guess we'd better alert the security people about this," I said, "and they can call the local cops."

"Exactly, Rollo. There's absolutely no need whatsoever for us to get any further involved." Groucho was slouched in the

chair that Dr. Watson usually occupied, gazing up into the Crosshatch of catwalks and dangling lights high above us. "We'll

do our civic duty, pause only long enough to pose for a few flattering photos for the gentlemen of the press, then jour-ney on

to our appointment with Lew Marker."

"I hope," said Isobel quietly, sniffling, "these things don't really come in threes."

Groucho popped to his feet. "What's that, Izzy?"

I asked, "Somebody else has been murdered?"

"Oh, it wasn't a murder," she answered. "But, you know, I can't help wondering if this darn movie isn't jinxed."

"Details, dear child, provide us with some details," Grou-cho requested, easing in bent-leg strides toward her.

Isobel rubbed at her nose with her thumb. "Well, Mr. Marx, it was only five days ago that Marsha Tederow got killed,"

she explained. "She was an assistant art director here at Mammoth and was working with Mr. Denker on The Valley of

Fear." She gestured in a vaguely northerly direction. "It was really awful-car accident way up on Mulholland someplace. Her

coupe went off the road and down into a gully. It exploded and ... Marsha was only twenty-seven and very attractive."

Narrowing my left eye and nodding at Groucho, I said, "A coincidence?"

"It makes no never mind, Mother Westwind," he told me. "What you're doing is letting these Holmesian surroundings

affect your impressionable young brain. Although we performed brilliantly as amateur sleuths on a few memorable oc-casions

in the past, we are not on the premises today in that capacity. No, I'm here, Mr. Anthony, simply to sign a contract to

coauthor Cinderella on Wheels and then reap the huge fi-nancial rewards that Movietown bestows upon its truly gifted

writers. While I'm at it, I might reap a few acres of alfalfa, too, but only so it'll distract the farmhands and keep them from

dallying with my daughters. For, as Salvador Dali so wisely put it when he was halfway through a six-day bike race and

realized he had neglected to bring his bicycle, 'Six time six is thirty-six except in months that begin with a letter of the

alphabet.' "

"That's a cute title," said Isobel.

"What's a cute title-Salvador Dali?"

"No, I mean Cinderella on Wheels."

"We already registered it with the Screen Writers Guild, sister, so beware," he warned as he lurched closer to her.

I said, "Let's find a telephone, so we-"

"Would you folks mind putting up your hands?" inquired a voice off in the shadows beyond 221B.

Three

Jane asked me, "This is a serious conversation we're having? Not another sample of your kidding?"

I was in a dim-lit section of the big soundstage, slumped in a canvas chair, using the first phone I'd been able to locate.

"I'm being absolutely truthful, sweetheart," I assured my wife. "We found Felix Denker in-"

"He's the German fellow who directed The Confessions of Dr. Medusa just before he fled Berlin in 1934, isn't he?"

"He's that Felix Denker, yes. For a while Groucho and I thought it was the Felix Denker who'd invented peanut butter,

but a quick check of his identification papers proved we were in error," I said. "Anyway, my love, after we looked over the

scene of the crime-"

"You've taken to saying my love exactly the way Groucho does."

"Look, Jane, I just came close to being arrested for murder, so I'm not especially in the mood for tips on elocution."

"You're absolutely right, darling," she said. "Besides, I have to learn to resign myself to the fact that I married a hopeless

wiseass. Who tried to arrest you?"

"Fortunately it was only a security guard," I continued. "He was passing this soundstage and noticed the door wide open.

He came in to look around and spotted Groucho and me and Isobel in the vicinity of the corpse."

"Isobel? Who might she be?"

"She works here at Mammoth as a script girl and she's actually the one who first found Denker's body," I explained. "She

was pretty upset and happened to come running out of the soundstage looking for help just as Groucho and I were passing

on our way to meet Marker."

"So you haven't seen him yet?"

"We've been detained here and won't be able to see Marker until this afternoon," I told her. "Did I mention Felix

Denker was directing a Sherlock Holmes movie and his body's sitting in Holmes's favorite chair?"

"That's probably too obvious to be ironic," she said. "Was he shot there or just dumped?"

"I'd say, from the look of things, that he was shot right where we found him."

"Are you and Groucho going to be investigating this one, Frank?"

"Nope, no, not at all," I said firmly. "It was pure chance we got tangled up in this mess at all. See, Jane, after the first

guard spotted us and pulled his gun-well, then he called in three other guards. They eventually accepted the fact that he was

Groucho Marx, even though he doesn't appear in civilian life with his greasepaint mustache. So the consensus at the moment

is that we probably aren't murderers, but we have to stick around until the police arrive and talk to us."

"I have this feeling you won't be home for lunch."

"Let's try for dinner," I suggested. "Anything new?"

"Well, as a matter of fact, yes," she told me, sounding happy. "I just heard from the syndicate and Hollywood Molly has

picked up twenty more newspapers. Including-and I think that's great-the San Francisco Chronicle."

"Keep this up and I'll never have to work again."

"You really aren't upset by the fact that I happen to be earning more than you are at the moment?" she asked me.

"Not at all," I said, trying to sound convincing. "Oh, and there was one other thing I wanted to tell you."

"Okay, what?"

"Now, what the heck was it?"

From out of the shadows stepped a uniformed policeman. He was tall and heavyset and he made a sour face at me,

beck-oning.

"Frank?" said my wife.

"I'm being summoned by the law," I said. "But I just re-membered what I wanted to say: I love you."

"I was about to say the same," Jane said. "Don't get ar-rested, okay? And when you arrive home we can celebrate the

twenty new papers. If you'd like."

"I would, yeah. Bye." I hung up the phone and stood to follow the cop.

"Young love," he muttered, making his way over a scatter of wires and cables. "It's downright touching."

Sergeant Jack Norment of the Burbank police was sitting on the edge of Sherlock Holmes's unmade bed. He was a

middle-sized man, on the plump side, and about forty. I first met him back when I was on the police beat with the Los

Angeles Times. Norment had a fondness for booze and always gave off a whiskey aroma, but he never seemed to be

actually drunk. He was fairly honest, by Southern California cop standards.

The Holmes bedroom set was about fifty yards from the study. Over there a forensic crew and a medical team were

going over the scene of the crime and the body of Felix Denker.

Norment had just finished questioning Isobel Glidden and told her she could leave.

Still upset, she took Groucho's sports coat off her shoulders and returned it to him. "Thanks, Mr. Marx," she said, giving

him a quick kiss on the cheek before she left.

"Aw, gorsh, not in front of all the fellers, Izzy," he said.

"I admire your capacity to play the fool even under such unpleasant circumstances," said the sergeant with what looked to

me like a mirthless smile.

"If you think this is unpleasant, Sarge, you should've seen the audience we played once in Pittsburgh." Groucho rose up

out of the wicker armchair he'd been slouched in and started struggling into his coat. "They could never use the vaudeville

house for a theater again because of the aura we left behind. They converted it into a funeral parlor. But even that didn't help,

because people complained it was too gloomy."

"Should I write all this down?" Detective Ernie Sales was leaning at the edge of the bedroom set. He was a lanky,

soft-spoken man who, he'd mentioned earlier, had never seen a Marx Brothers movie in his life so far. He was holding an

open steno book and a gnawed yellow pencil.

"Use your own judgment," advised Norment.

"If Pittsburgh is too tough to spell, I can move the theater to Altoona," offered Groucho as he settled back into the chair.

Sergeant Norment fetched a pack of Camels out of a pocket in his rumpled suit coat. "It's gratifying to have a jester such

as yourself to question, Marx. Usually at a murder scene we get only grieving relatives and surly suspects."

"If you want to see grieving relatives, you can drop by my place any weeknight. Every time my wife realizes what a

scoun-drel she was hoodwinked into marrying, she breaks down and sobs. My two offspring, when not weeping into their

gruel, spend all their time going over hospital records in the vain hope they can prove I'm not related to them in any significant

way."

"You knew Denker?" Norment asked him.

"For the past two years or so," answered Groucho. "I met him and his wife, Erika Klein, at a rally staged by the

Anti-Nazi League."

"You saw them socially?"

Shaking his head, Groucho answered, "Even though they both shared my views of Hitler and what he's doing to Europe,

I didn't much like them."

"But you got along with Denker?"

Groucho left his chair, snatched out his book of Trocadero matches, and provided a light for the cigarette the policeman

had just popped between his lips. "As I understand it, Sarge, Denker was shuffled off last night sometime." He wandered

over to the cabinet that held Holmes's disguises. "Frank and I stumbled on the body this morning around ten and that's

ab-solutely the only connection we have with this murder. As the young lady informed you, she was the one who first spotted

the corpse. And running into a spotted corpse can be very unsettling, although there are those who favor candy-striped-"

"You didn't see anyone else here on the soundstage, Marx? Or anyone else leaving the place?"

"Not a soul." He locked both hands behind his back, hunched, and scanned the disguises hanging in the open

cab-inet. "I wonder how I'd look in this Dutch-boy bob?"

Norment was smiling his unhappy smile again. "You used to be a pretty good reporter, Frank."

"Meaning I've fallen from grace since becoming a script-writer?"

"Meaning did you notice anything that Marx missed?"

"Nothing you and your guys haven't noticed, Jack," I an-swered. "Denker was shot at close range and there doesn't look

to have been a struggle. Except for the bullet holes he wasn't mussed up at all. I'd estimate he was killed last night about eight

or nine, but that's obviously a very rough guess. I think he was shot in the chair we found him in, not moved there from

someplace else. Examining the armchair and check-ing the way the blood's settled in the corpse will probably con-firm that."

Puffing on his cigarette, Norment flicked ashes on Sherlock Holmes's Persian carpet. "You think he was attempting to

con-vey anything by what he appears to have scrawled on that old magazine?"

I answered, "If that's his own blood on his fingertip, it's a possibility."

"Maybe somebody else dipped Denker's finger into his wound and scrawled that shaky four just to divert us."

"Maybe King George V doodled part of one of his mis-tresses' phone numbers on that copy of The Strand and, after

surviving the sinking of the Titanic, it found its way to a quaint secondhand magazine shop in Santa Monica until a prop man

from-"

"If that is a four," Norment asked me, ignoring Groucho,

"and if the director did actually put it there, does it suggest anything to you?"

"Not a hell of a lot, Jack."

"Are you guys here playing private detective again?" asked Sales, looking up from his notebook.

"We visited this mecca of the cinematic arts for one reason only, my good man," said Groucho, taking a shaggy beard out

of the cabinet and holding it up to the light from overhead. "We are interested solely in peddling a script. Later on, I have to

concede, we may take time out to pedal Madeline home. But that's going to depend on-"

"I want to see him, damn you," shouted a woman's voice from the vicinity of the study set. "He's my husband, you stupid

oaf."

"The grieving widow," observed Groucho, swinging the beard from side to side a couple of times.

Erika Klein also worked for the Mammoth studios. She'd been a professor of history before she and Denker had to get

out of Germany. For nearly two years she'd been working at the studio as the head of their Historical Research Department.

Supposedly she'd also been instrumental in getting the director his contract with Lew Goldstein.

"I just found out that poor Felix has been slain," Erika was shouting. "Let me see his body, please!"

Norment nodded at Sales. "Go curtail the lady, Ernie," he suggested. "Escort her to a quiet spot and muzzle her sorrow.

I'll be over to chat with her in a short while."

Shutting his notebook, the plainclothes detective departed.

Norment turned to Groucho. "In some circles, unfortu-nately, it isn't too popular to be openly opposed to Hitler and the

Nazis. Anybody you know of-say somebody who's active in the local German American Bund-ever threatened Denker or

his wife?"

"Not at any of the political meetings or rallies that I've attended, no." Groucho hung up the beard. "Denker wasn't an

especially likable fellow-something of a roadshow Fritz Lang. But if they started bumping off every unlikable director in town,

the studios would have to shut down."

"Okay, what about Erika Klein's relationship with her hus-band? Did they get along well?"

"Every time I snuck over to their place, stood in the tulip beds, and peeked into their bedroom window, Sarge, they

ap-peared to be getting along famously."

"Okay, you can both go." Norment gave us another of his humorless smiles and nodded at the way out. "You sure you

aren't going to try to investigate this mess, Frank?"

"We aren't, nope," I assured the sergeant.

I believed it at the time.

We were nearing the doorway leading out of the shadowy soundstage when a policeman somewhere behind us shouted,

"Hey, Sergeant, it's another body!"

Stopping still, Groucho said, "Dagnab it, Rollo, if that don't get my curiosity up."

"We just vowed not to get involved in this mess," I re-minded him.

"I once took a vow of chastity." Pivoting, he started back the way we'd come.

Sergeant Norment, skirting cables and equipment, was

making his way toward another small set. As we caught up with him, more lights came on and the London pub became

much easier to see into.

A uniformed cop and a plainclothesman were standing next to one of the three small tables on the wooden public house

floor. Slumped at the table, her head next to a tipped-over beer mug and her fat arms dangling, was a heavyset woman. Her

short-cropped hair was an unbelievable black and she was wearing a very rumpled navy blue suit.

The plainclothes policeman straightened up, stepping back and shaking his head. "False alarm, Jack," he said. "She's only

passed out drunk."

"My fault," said the cop in uniform. "She looked dead when I first spotted her, Sergeant."

Norment stopped beside the unconscious woman. "Be nice to know who she is and why she went to sleep a few

hundred yards from our corpse. Any sign of a purse?"

"Nope, and she's not carrying any identification."

I stepped onto the set. "I know who she is."

Frowning at me, Norment said, "Am I wrong, or didn't I already send you home, Frank?"

"We thought there was a national emergency." Groucho came over, leaned an elbow on the dark wood bar, and planted

a foot on the short brass rail. "We rushed back to volunteer our services."

"Shall I give these guys the bum's rush?" asked the uni-formed man.

"Nothing so fancy," said Groucho.

"You know this dame?" Sergeant Norment asked me. "Sie-gel, go get a medic to take a look at her."

Nodding, the cop left the pub.

I pointed at the loudly snoring woman. "She's Clair Rick-son, a writer here at the studio."

"Why in the hell do we find her sozzled on this set?"

"Well, I think I heard she wrote the script for The Valley of Fear." Standing this close to the sergeant, I noticed that he

smelled more like a pub than the set did. "Although that doesn't exactly explain why she happens to be dead drunk at this

particular location."

"The lady," added Groucho, "is noted for having been found drunk at any number of choice locations."

Clair Rickson, whom I'd met at a few gatherings of writers over the past couple of years, was in her middle forties. Born

in Kansas someplace, she'd lived in Europe in the 1920s and early 1930s and been buddies with the likes of Gertrude Stein,

Ernest Hemingway, and F. Scott Fitzgerald. For the past few years she'd made a pretty good living with a series of

hard-boiled, whimsical, and boozy mystery novels about a tough Hollywood lawyer named Jack Muldoon. Two of the

novels, The Case of the Cockeyed Carhop and The Case of the Jilted Jitterbug, had been turned into successful

programmers by Mammoth. Pat O'Brien had been borrowed from the Warner Brothers to play Muldoon.

Seating himself at the table, Norment studied the slumped author. "We have to find out how long she's been here," he

said to the plainclothesman. "And what she may've seen and heard."

"And," added the cop, "if she's the one who shot that director."

I said quietly, "She's the sort of woman who only hurts herself."

Pushing back from the table, Sergeant Norment stood up. "Frank, thanks for helping me determine who this is," he said.

"Once again I'd like to invite you and Groucho to scram."

"You're certain," asked Groucho, who'd wandered over to stare at the dartboard on the pub wall, "we can't help you

tune your zither or give you some tips on crop rotation?"

Norment pointed out at the surrounding darkness. "Good-bye for now, gentlemen."

We said good-bye.

Four

Our meeting with Lew Marker had been postponed until 1:30 and shifted to the producer's vast offices in the Main

Adminis-tration Building. When we entered the huge reception room, his pretty red-haired secretary exclaimed, "This is

exciting!"

Groucho, dead cigar clenched in his teeth, went loping across the pale gray carpeting to her large, wide desk. "Yes, isn't

it? I don't know about you, my dear, but my blood pres-sure just went up ten points. If it goes up another ten, I've half a

mind to sell." Resting an elbow on her desk, he leaned in close. "What exactly are we excited about?"

"I meant I was excited. What with two big events here at the studio in the same day," she explained, reaching down to

slide open a desk drawer. "That terrible murder, of course, and then my getting to meet you. I was elated when Mr. Marker

told me to write your name in his appointment book...." She paused, looking past him and in my direction. "And yours, too,

Mr. Mumby."

"Denby," I corrected as I walked closer to the desk.

"Yes," she agreed. "Anyhow, Mr. Marx, I've been a fan of yours since I was so high and-"

"I've been high myself on a few occasions, but it never prompted me to like Groucho Marx," he confided.

She produced an autograph album from out of the open drawer. "I know this is gauche and adolescent, but... could you

write something for me?"

With a bound, Groucho seated himself on the edge of her desk and crossed his legs. "I accept the challenge, my sweet.

How's this strike you? 'Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate: rough winds

do-'"

"No, no," she interrupted, shoving the book toward him. "I meant write your name in my autograph book."

He accepted the book and dropped clear of the desk. "I offer this wench a sonnet, Rollo, and she says she'll settle for a

cheesy autograph."

She looked perplexed for a few seconds, then smiled. "Oh, I see, you're being silly, Mr. Marx."

He slapped the book on the desktop and found a blank page. "I am, yes, I must confess," he admitted. "I have, alas,

been suffering from silly spells ever since that fateful trip up the Orinoco. Naive innocent that I was when I enlisted, I thought

Orinoco was a vegetable and you can imagine my surprise and chagrin when I found myself coxswain on a leaky rowboat

traversing the fish-infested waters of-"

The intercom atop the desk made a sudden squawking, throat-clearing sound and then a nasal voice inquired, "Has

Groucho showed up yet, hon?"

"Yes, Mr. Marker. He just this minute walked in-with Mr. Wimpy."

"Denby."

"Time's a-wastin', kid. Show them in pronto."

"Right now, sir."

Groucho had finished scribbling in the book and he re-turned it to her, bowing. "I'll carry the memory of this chance

meeting to my grave," he assured her. "But on the way back, somebody else is going to have to do the carrying. Farewell."

He went slouching over to the door of the producer's office.

She was reading what he'd inscribed. "You put To Mitzi with the undying devotion of Groucho Marx,' " she called.

"Not as good, admittedly, as the summer's day stuff, but pithy and to the point, by Jove."

"The thing is, Mr. Marx, my name isn't Mitzi."

He shrugged one shoulder. "There's little or nothing I can do about that at this late date, I fear," he told her. "You might

take the matter up with your parents. If they're out of town, we've had excellent results with the village blacksmith. You'll find

him under the spreading chestnut tree most afternoons from one to five." He bowed again, opened the door, and backed into

Marker's office.

She nodded at me. "I suppose he's like that most of the time, Mr. Dumphy?"

"Yep, he's even like that when I'm traveling under the name of Denby." Grinning at her, I followed in Groucho's wake.

I never liked that kraut," admitted Lew Marker. "All that artsy crap in his films, German Expressionist hooey. And he

couldn't keep his hands to himself."

"Where'd he keep them?" Groucho was sitting deep down in a black leather armchair that faced the producer's desk.

Marker was a deeply tanned man, short, in his late forties.

He was wearing pearl gray slacks and a yacht club blazer with an intricate gold crest on the breast pocket. There were

nine stovepipe hats scattered across the top of his Swedish Modern desk. "The last one Denker made a pass at fell for it," he

said, scowling. "Poor kid, she'd dead."

Groucho asked, "Felix was romancing Marsha Tederow?"

"You heard about her getting killed in that auto accident a few days ago, huh?" He shook his head forlornly. "Real shame.

She had a really terrific little ass. I could never get to first base with Marsha, but she sure went for that kraut."

"His wife knew about it?"

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