Marilyn Maxwell

            On Tuesday morning I worked out the chords for the first verse of “Amour puissance six” (Love to the Power of Six) by Serge Gainsbourg. 

            I played my Kramer electric guitar during song practice for the second session of two. Tomorrow I’ll begin a four session stretch of playing my Martin acoustic guitar. 

            I weighed 85.3 kilos before breakfast. 

            I finished reading the 10th Century Exeter Book Riddles. The ones where the answer is a penis are fairly obvious but most are a mystery. The Broadview Anthology of British Literature has the answers to some of them. I originally guessed correctly that the answer to the first riddle was a storm but then the riddle said that the answer was a cause of war and so I moved away from that conclusion. 

            I started reading “Rhymes and Riddles” by Mark Atherton. It tells what myths, riddles and fairy tales Tolkien drew from when he wrote The Hobbit and some of his other works.

            I weighed 85.1 kilos before lunch. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown. It was lightly snowing but got heavier as I rode down Yonge. I stopped at Freshco where all the grapes were too soft. I bought a pack of strawberries, a pack of raspberries, bananas, two bags of avocadoes, cilantro, two cartons of soymilk, a pack of Full City Dark coffee, and a large pack of toilet paper. 

            I weighed 85 kilos at 17:45. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 18:50. 

            I finished reading “Rhymes and Riddles” by Mark Atherton. 

            I skimmed through Norman Cantor’s “Inventing the Middle Ages”, which gives a history of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien’s Medievalisms. 

            I hand wrote three pages in stream of consciousness about The Hobbit and the questionable ethics of its heroes. I started transcribing my notes into a document but it was time for dinner and so I’ll finish that tomorrow. 

            I steamed a bunch of asparagus tips and had half of them in a salad with the rest of my cucumber, three mushrooms, a scallion, two tomatoes, three avocadoes, and a pack of roasted seaweed with sweet onion dressing and a glass of Clamato juice while watching the penultimate episode of the second season of Burke’s Law. 

            A classical pianist named Arthur Bachner, purported to be the greatest pianist in the world is giving a concert to introduce his new composition, “Bachner’s Rhapsody”. He claims that he is the only pianist in the world capable of playing it. He plays for a minute but when he hits one very dramatic and odd chord the piano explodes. 

            Meanwhile Burke’s elderly Uncle Patrick has come to visit from Ireland. He is played by Gene Barry, the same actor who plays Burke, but with a lot of makeup to render him old in appearance. Patrick is very charming and hits it off well with Burke’s date, so Burke is not missed when he leaves to investigate the murder. 

            At the scene Burke meets Alfred Algernon, Bachner’s personal manager. He says Bachner had a party before the concert. He gives Burke the guest list. That gives him 75 suspects, all of whom had access to the piano. Bachner had two heated arguments at the party. One with his ex-wife Maria Groovy and the other with rival pianist Wilhelm Kasimir. 

            Burke goes to Jazz Heaven to talk with Maria who sings there. She says she has no alibi. When she came to the party they hadn’t seen each other in years. He was very egotistical and thought she came because she was torching for him. She set him straight and they argued. She used to be an opera singer named Maria Pallas. She was untrained but extremely talented and Arthur at first encouraged her until she was on the verge of becoming famous. The night of her big debut in Vienna her husband began to play off her stage fright and to tell her how horrible it would be for her to fail. By the time she was onstage she couldn’t sing. 

            George in the lab says that the vibration bomb was tuned to explode upon the playing of that one chord. 

            Burke looks through Bachner’s personal effects and finds a membership key to the Bunny Club. Maria had told him that Bachner’s new girlfriend was a mother rabbit. The woman who trains the Bunny waitresses is called Mother Rabbit. 

            Burke learns that the heir to Bachner’s estate is his brother Morgus Ghoul, the famous monster movie actor. Ghoul hasn’t worked for years and with his inheritance plans to finance his own comeback. 

            Burke goes to the Bunny Club to talk with the Mother Rabbit. The manager is played by Hugh Hefner. The Mother Rabbit’s name is Penny Allen. She says she knew Arthur well enough to hate him. She dated him but turned down his proposal so he began hounding her. He threatened to get her fired.

            Tim, Les, and Ames go to see Ghoul. His place is very spooky and Sergeant Ames, even though she claims to love monsters, is frightened. He says the manner of his brother’s death was too boring for him to have done it. He hated Arthur because he wouldn’t lend him money to make his epic. He crashed the party and Arthur called him a bum. He threatened to have Ghoul arrested. He has no alibi. 

            Burke goes to see Kasimir who is having a manicure but the technician is dressed like a surgeon performing an operation with a nurse handing him instruments. He says he wouldn’t dirty himself by touching Bachner’s piano. He’s hated Bachner ever since he stole his greatest pupil and then ruined that pupil’s career. At the party Bachner handed him a copy of his rhapsody and told everyone that Kasimir couldn’t play it. Only he could. Burke, Tim, and Les go to see Kasimir and convince him that they are big fans and want to hear him play. He says he will play anything and Burke hands him his copy of Bachner’s Rhapsody. At first he refuses but Burke suggests it’s because he can’t play it. Kasimir starts playing but fails when he gets to that one chord. He says Bachner had exceptionally long fingers and they are required to play that one chord, which has a span of thirteen notes. Bachner wrote that chord into the Rhapsody as a cheap trick to win a reputation. 

            They go to see Algernon who Burke asks why he killed Bachner. Algernon is the student that Bachner lured from Kasimir 25 years ago. He paid for Bachner’s lessons by being his chauffeur. One winter night Bachner insisted on having Algernon drive him in a snow storm. In the accident Algernon lost his right hand. Algernon wrote the Rhapsody but Bachner inserted the chord that had no place in the music. That’s when he decided to kill him. 

            Maria Groovy was played by Marilyn Maxwell, who as a teenager began singing on the radio. She sang in big bands and became friends with Frank Sinatra through the music business. Later they became lovers while he was married. She made her film debut in Stand By For Action. She co-starred in Three Men in White, Lost In A Harem, Champion, The Lemon Drop Kid (in which she introduced the Christmas song “Silver Bells”), New York Confidential, and Rock a Bye Baby. She accompanied Bob Hope on his USO tours through WWII and the Korean Police Action. She became lovers with Hope. She co-starred in the TV series Bus Stop. She had a popular singing act in New York night clubs. At the age of 47 she worked for a while as a stripper.