Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 23, No. 12, December 1978

Why the Funnies Museum Never Opened by Ron Goulart

Errol was greedier for old gold than for old comic strips...

It was probably the weather that got us onto the topic of death and violence.

The day was grey and rainy, and the Saugatuck River looked murky. Ty Banner had switched to rum but that didn’t keep him from now and then shivering and grumbling about how damp it felt inside the Inkwell Restaurant.

Zarley suggested it was only an allergic reaction. He’d started seeing an allergist about a month earlier and tended to connect most emotional and physical problems with allergens.

“Why are you guys so gloomy?” inquired Hollins as he strolled over to join us for lunch. “Myself, I’m deliriously happy.”

“Probably an allergic reaction,” suggested Zarley.

“Nope. It’s all the fan mail I’m getting.” Hollins took a seat at the large round table, glanced at the choppy river beyond the view window, and lit one of his black cigars. “All of a sudden people love Commuter Chuckles.”

We’re all of us professional cartoonists of one kind or another. When Hollins mentioned his rising popularity, we all leaned toward him. “Probably cranks,” suggested Heinz.

“Nope, these are all sincere devotees,” Hollins assured us. “They dote on my panel, demand originals to treasure.”

“Ha, that’s it,” said Banner, lifting up his rum. “There’s a whole flock of weirdos out there who do nothing but write to you begging for original drawings. Then they haul ’em to those comics conventions they’re always holding at sleazy hotels and sell ’em for fantastic prices.”

“Not your stuff,” said Zarley. “I saw a price list someplace and a Dr. Judge’s Family original was fifteen dollars.”

Banner blinked. “Fifteen dollars?”

“It was a Sunday page too.”

“I’m worth more than that. Don’t they know I won the National Cartoonist Society Award three years in a row back in the Sixties?”

“Collectors are goofy,” said Heinz. “Even my Seaweed Sam original strips go for around twenty-five dollars.”

“Twenty-five dollars?” Banner scowled. “They pay twenty-five bucks for that simple bigfoot stuff of yours, and think my meticulously rendered and beautiful work is worth only fifteen?”

“Collectors are goofy,” Heinz repeated.

Hollins said, “I wonder how much interest there really is in collecting originals.”

“Apparently not all that much,” I put in. “The Funnies Museum that was going to open in New Canaan isn’t. They were going to display hundreds of original cartoons and strips from the 1890s to the present, but—”

“He got arrested,” said Banner. “The guy who ran the setup. That’s why the museum didn’t open.”

Heinz gave one of his knowing chuckles. “No, that’s not the real reason,” he said. “Not the complete reason anyway.”

Puffing on his cigar, Hollins said, “You know Errol Bojack, the guy who was supposed to be the curator?”

“Sure, I know Bojack,” said Heinz. “I also knew Rollo Meech and Corky Tollhouse. I know all about the ghosts of the Fairfield Sisters as well.” He paused, pouring more ale into his glass.

“There are ghosts in this?” asked Banner.

“Ghosts, murder, jealousy, greed,” amplified Heinz. “Almost like a Dr. Judge continuity.”

“You guys sure are needling me today,” Banner complained. “I don’t mind a bit of good-natured professional jealousy, but I—”

“How about Bojack and the Funnies Museum?” interrupted Zarley. “What’s the real story, Heinie?”

Heinz took a long appreciative swallow of his beer. “It’s sort of a gloomy story.”

“Tell us then. This is a good day for it,” urged Zarley.

What started it (Heinz told us) was Rollo Meech and a peculiar desire of his. Rollo lusted after original comic art — strips, panels, cartoons. Some of you probably knew him. He had lunch here at the Inkwell a couple of times and was certain to turn up at any cartoonist’s funeral. He was a tall chunky guy in his late twenties, with curly hair and a big fannish smile. He had a face that looked as though he ought to be saying “Golly!” and “Gee whiz!” He was a hard core comics nut, and wanted to be a cartoonist himself but never got any further than a job as art director for Paddle Ball Digest over in East Norwalk.

The reason you saw Rollo, with his lovable grin and his Gee Whiz! face, at so many funerals and wakes was because of his passion. If a cartoonist died, Rollo was on the doorstep offering to buy up all the deceased’s leftover drawings. While some widows booted Rollo out, others needed the dough and they sold him their husbands’ work and whatever other originals they’d managed to accumulate. Rollo had almost a vulture’s sense of impending death. You kick off, slump over your board, the pen slips from your fingers, and before it hits the floor Rollo is ringing the bell, offering your wife a deal.

He must have had family money — his pop owned three or four bowling alleys in New Jersey — because he managed to buy up most of the originals he wanted. But not all. The one item he wanted more than anything was an original political cartoon by an artist named Harry Clemens.

“Who?” asked Zarley.

“Harry Clemens,” repeated Heinz. “He was a major political cartoonist with Hearst early in the century.”

“He won the Pulitzer, didn’t he?” Banner signaled the waiter to bring him another rum.

“No, Clemens was always a shade too unsavory for them.”

“A boozer?” asked Zarley.

“That was one of his vices,” said Heinz. “Anyway, during a particularly severe spell of goofiness, Harry Clemens burned up every blessed original of his he could lay his hands on. He made a bonfire in the courtyard of his Greenwich village studio. There happened to be a blizzard going on and shortly thereafter he died of the aftereffects of exposure.”

Banner set down his fresh drink. “That’s a rotten way to kick off.”

“I see what’s coming,” said Zarley. “There was, someplace, one undestroyed Harry Clemens original and Rollo Meech had to have it.”

“Exactly,” said Heinz. “A single Harry Clemens original, an immense thing showing Columbia holding her torch of liberty aloft, turned up sometime in the 1940s among the effects of an old Hearst editor. It sold for a hundred dollars at the time and continued from collector to collector until eventually it was worth five thousand dollars. By that time it was in Juke Tollhouse’s collection. You all knew poor Juke and his stunning wife, Corky. He died young, poor Juke.”

“This is getting damn depressing,” remarked Banner. “I remember when Juke died. He fell off the bar car on the 6:05 to Westport three years ago. Depressing.”

“Let him get on to the good part,” said Zarley. “To where Rollo Meech tries to persuade Corky into selling him the only known Harry Clemens.”

Rollo Meech was more subtle than to try to seduce Corky (Heinz resumed). He offered to buy the whole of Juke’s collection, which was quite large. You remember all those dreary displays Juke used to stage at the Comic Artists Club in Manhattan — Fifty Years of Funnies, the American Graphic Humor Tradition. Even though Rollo usually didn’t wait for the body to cool before he dashed over to make an offer on the originals, he wasn’t the kind of guy who’d resort to romance to gain what he was after. Money, cheating, lying, cajoling, yes, but Rollo would never permit himself to pretend affection for the widow — even a pretty and relatively young widow like Corky Tollhouse.

Errol Bojack, on the other hand, had no such scruples. He’d long had the dream of opening a museum to house his collection of cartoon art. And being as fanatic as Rollo, Bojack desired the Tollhouse collection too. He had dough too — money that poured in from that chain of fast-food Indian restaurants he owns, Madam Curry’s. And he’s not a bad-looking guy, almost handsome in a too-tanned and varnished sort of way. Corky liked him.

I happened to be at her house down on the Sound the day Rollo came after Juke’s collection. You know I’m handy with tools, so I’d promised to fix some cabinet doors for Corky. Being always thirteen weeks ahead on my deadlines, unlike most of you chumps, I can afford the time to do favors for my friends.

Rollo paid his call at noon, the only time he could sneak away from the Paddle Ball Digest offices. He’d brought a certified check for $7,500, the price of Juke’s entire collection. From where I was at work in the kitchen I could see, with a little judicious stretching, into the big living room.

“Juke was a genius,” Rollo was saying, smiling one of his most ingratiating smiles, his eyes wide with admiration. “America lost a great graphic panelologist when he passed on, Corky.”

“Juke was O.K.,” Corky replied. Something, I noticed, was bothering her.

By thrusting my head a bit more into the hallway, I spotted the problem. A pair of man’s shorts was partially visible under the flowered sofa Rollo was anxiously sitting on. Since Juke had been dead nearly four months at this point, it seemed unlikely Corky was that bad a housekeeper. Furthermore, the shorts had some kind of Indian pattern on them, exactly the sort of thing a guy who ran a bunch of quick curry joints might go in for.

“To own Juke’s collection, including of course so many wonderful drawings of his own,” Rollo said, “is truly, Corky, going to be a real honor. As I often told Juke before he was unexpectedly taken from our—”

“It wasn’t all that unexpected.” Corky twirled a lock of lovely blonde hair. “He’d almost fallen off the darn train three times before. And he was always falling off bar stools. That’s how he did that to his leg Christmas before last.”

“The man admittedly had flaws, Corky. Still, his work on Moronic Metz will most certainly earn him a place in that panth—”

“Rollo,” Corky blurted out, “I’ve already sold the collection.”

His smile fell off. “Huh?”

“I sold all the originals.”

“All? Even the enormous beautiful pen-and-ink drawing of Columbia by Harry Clemens?”

“All.”

Agitated, Rollo rose up, his heel catching on the protruding pair of shorts. He slipped and sat down again, one foot in the air with the Eastern-design underwear dangling from his shoe. “Gee whiz!” he said, and you could almost see the light bulb blossoming over his curly head. “It was Errol Bojack! My old nemesis, the man who beat me to the Rasmussen collection. The turkey who flew to Mentor, Ohio, and wooed an eighty-seven-year-old granny, planting insincere kisses on her raddled old cheeks so he could carry off the late General Hapgood’s priceless collection of Puck originals for eight hundred and seventy-five dollars. Golly. I wouldn’t kiss somebody I wasn’t truly in love with even — even for a Harry Clemens!”

Corky reached out and removed the shorts from Rollo’s foot. “I’m sorry to disappoint you,” she said. “Since you were so fond of Juke, maybe you’d like to buy his pipe collection.”

“Stuff his pipe collection!”

Unsmiling and red-faced, Rollo slammed out.

Because of my abilities as a handyman, Errol Bojack invited me over to look around the Fairfield Sisters’ mansion soon after he finally signed the lease on the place. He didn’t appear quite as dapper as usual and I figured he’d been courting too many widows.

“Hey!” he said suddenly while he was showing me through the main living room. He gazed up at the high ceiling.

“What is it?”

He managed a faint smile. “Oh, I thought I heard something.”

“You’ve been living in this place, haven’t you?”

He gave the ceiling another worried look. “Well, as a matter of fact, Heinie, yes, I have. There’s so much work that—”

“I’d be glad to help you.”

“Oh, no. I can do it myself. All I need from you is advice,” he said nervously. “About the plumbing in particular.”

“Old houses are usually weak in that department.”

“Should old pipes howl?”

“Howl?”

“Wail, scream, cry out like an old lady being murdered? Like two old ladies being strangled actually.”

I stared at his pale handsome face. “Come on, Errol, you’re not trying to tell me you’ve been hearing ghosts?”

“Of course not. I’m telling you I hear noisy pipes.”

“I know the Fairfield Mansion used to have a reputation for being haunted, because of what happened to those old ladies years ago,” I said, moving to the drapery-covered windows. “I myself don’t believe in any of that stuff.”

“Neither do I.” He sat in a faded loveseat, crossed his legs, uncrossed them. “Did you ever hear why the two old ladies were murdered?”

“Money, wasn’t it?”

“Gold. A fortune in gold coins, which these two miser spinsters had allegedly hidden someplace in this big old house. The killer never found the dough, nor did any of their heirs. Eventually they gave up looking and decided to get rid of the house.”

“In those days every spinster had a reputation for having cash hidden away.”

“Exactly, Heinie. It’s nothing more than folklore and superstition.” Clearing his throat, he smiled tentatively. “Could you take a look at the pipes?”

“Sure thing. I’ll start in the cellar—”

“No, not the cellar.”

“But that’s the first place—”

“I’m doing some repair work down there, a little digging. We can commence in the kitchen.”

“I don’t know if I—”

“The kitchen,” he reiterated. “You know, I’m planning to open the Funnies Museum in six weeks. There’s going to be a lot of work to do.” Grabbing me by the arm, he led me down a shadowy hallway toward the immense old kitchen. “I still have most of my originals stacked up on the second floor. I haven’t had a chance to sort out the last collection I bought.”

“That would be Corky’s?”

Errol let go of my arm. “It’s the Tollhouse collection, yes. Mrs. Tollhouse was kind enough to let me purchase it for the museum.”

“Corky’s a kind person.”

The kitchen was all white and had a musty smell as well as a population of cockroaches and other bugs who’d taken over while the mansion had stood empty.

“I don’t want the pipes screaming at the visitors when the museum is open,” said Errol, frowning at the darkest corner of the room. “Lots of school kids will be trooping through and they won’t want to hear howls of pain while they’re admiring the works of Caniff, Sickles, Kane, Herriman, Marcus, and— Do you see anybody standing in that corner over there?”

“No, it’s only a mop.”

“Ah, so it is. A mop. Well, we’ll have plenty of use for that.” His laugh was unconvincing.

“He sounds haunted,” said Zarley. “Are you implying a shrewd guy like Errol Bojack would let himself be spooked by that old mansion’s reputation?”

“I figure it was the ghost tales and his own guilt feelings about the things he’d done to people,” explained Heinz, shrugging. “You can never quite be certain what goes on inside somebody’s—”

“The plumbing,” said Zarley. “Did it really scream and howl?”

“I fiddled with the pipes. They did make a few odd gurgling sounds,” said Heinz, “but there wasn’t much I could do since he wouldn’t allow me in the cellar. I left him with a few general hints and never went back. For the rest of what I’m going to tell you I have to rely pretty much on guesswork. But I think I’m right about most of the important details.”

“Bojack was hunting for the gold coins,” I said.

Sure (resumed Heinz). My notion is that when he started tearing the Fairfield Sisters’ place apart to convert it into the Funnies Museum, Errol stumbled onto something that he took to be a clue as to where they buried their gold. During his first week there, I later found out, he did have three college boys who specialized in home repairs helping him get things set up. One afternoon he fired them all and by the time I visited him he was doing everything himself.

Actually nothing much got done and he started postponing the opening date. A couple of people who passed the mansion late at night reported seeing lights blazing in the cellar.

They did find, after everything was over, evidence of considerable digging down there.

For a guy who made his living from fast food, Errol was fairly imaginative. Living all alone in that spooky old mansion, digging in the murky cellar, he saw things. The sisters had been strangled in their beds and now Errol began to think he was catching glimpses of white-clad female figures lurking just at the edge of his vision. Most likely the lighting in the place, which was inadequate, was causing his eyes to fool him. But those glimpses somehow convinced him that the ghosts of the dead sisters were roaming the house, bent on protecting their treasure and keeping him from getting it.

Nobody was going to do that to Errol. He could always use more money — to build new Madam Curry joints, to buy more cartoon originals. He kept digging and searching, ignoring the ghosts as best he could.

Sometime about then he bought a pistol, a.32 revolver he carried in a belt holster. He wasn’t sleeping well, and began looking very lean and hollow-eyed.

Meanwhile Rollo Meech, as he pasted up the layouts for Paddle Ball Digest and their new magazine, Sports Nutrition, brooded. Brooded and lusted. “Gosh dam Bojack,” he’d mutter to himself. “Charming the collection out of Corky Tollhouse and then piling all those beautiful drawings up in that dusty mansion. What does he know about cartoons anyway? He can’t tell Milt Cross from Sals Bostwick. Golly, he’s just a packrat at heart — hardly ever looks at his collection or really savors it. Corky admitted he barely glanced at the Harry Clemens.”

This went on for a week, two weeks, a month. It continued, in fact, until Rollo read an item in the Norwalk Hour about the Funnies Museum postponing its opening again.

“For crying out loud, the Harry Clemens is going to sit there and decay. The only Harry Clemens original known to exist, and probably nobody will ever see it again.”

Rollo desperately wanted to see it and possess it. Nights, he began to drive over to the vicinity of the Funnies Museum. He’d park in the woods and stalk up to the place like some sort of crazed commando in black turtleneck and pants — silent, intent, barely breathing.

Soon he discovered that Errol, alone in there, was spending nearly all his time in the cellar of the Fairfield Sisters’ mansion. From careful and discreet questioning of the few people, including myself, who’d actually been inside the museum, Rollo learned that almost all the drawings were stored on the second floor. He also learned that there was as yet no alarm system.

After watching five nights in a row, Rollo decided to move. He added a black ski mask to his dark outfit and sneaked up to the rear of the mansion. Climbing up a sturdy trellis, he let himself into the second-floor room that housed most of the drawings.

There were piles and piles of the damned things — politicals, comic-book pages, Sunday pages, illustrations — stacked in uneven mounds, gathering dust.

What Rollo intended to do was simple. He’d swipe a bundle of drawings so no one would guess the burglar had come specifically for the Harry Clemens. He found the huge drawing almost immediately. It had a simple black frame and stood nearly four feet high. They drew big in those days and Harry Clemens, whose problems included terrible eyesight, worked even larger than most of his contemporaries.

Rollo knew the importance of taking more than just this drawing to keep suspicion off himself, but his yearning for it made him decide to carry it back to his car alone first. Then he’d sneak back in and grab up a portion of the stack he’d found it in. He’d brought a few empty beer cans to leave behind so the job would look to the police like nothing more than juvenile vandalism.

The drawing was heavy, with the frame, glass, wooden backing, and all. Rollo found he couldn’t get it out the window and down the trellis with him. He’d have to, therefore, carry it down through the house and out the front door.

It won’t be all that tough, he told himself. Errol’s up to something in the cellar — he never comes up from there until the wee hours of the morning.

Going out the door of the upstairs room with the drawing face out in front of him, Rollo bumped into the door jamb. It only produced a tiny sound.

His heart beating fast, he halted and listened.

Except for a slight screaming from the plumbing, the old house remained silent.

Rollo waited a full minute longer before starting down the wide staircase. There were only two small wall lamps burning and everything had a pale-yellowish cast.

Errol Bojack, down in the cellar digging for gold, had heard the noise. “Those damn ghosts,” he murmured. “They’re not going to stop me.”

Yanking out his new pistol, he padded up the steps to the first floor.

Rollo had been right about Errol. The restaurant man hadn’t paid much attention to his latest acquisitions. Which is why he didn’t recognize the huge drawing of Columbia drifting downstairs toward him. In the dim light he mistook it for one of the Fairfield Sisters in her nightgown.

“It’s my gold now!” he shouted, putting five shots into the drawing. “You won’t keep me from getting it!”

Four of the five bullets penetrated Rollo, who managed to say, before he died, “Gosh dam it, you idiot, you’ve just ruined the only Harry Clemens in the world.”