This Man Does His Holmeswork

Of all those mystery outings that pit you as Sam Spade against her as Jacqueline the Ripper with a rubber knife, the traveling whodidits of Richard Doherr remain the oldest, the most abstruse and the next best thing to reading Agatha Christie on Fantasy Island.

Research and realism, Doherr says. Those are his tickets. Before the game’s afoot, see that history is in place and all locales are authentic, he advises. That way, the play-acting comes closer to actuality than illusion.

So when he wanted a lawyer for one mystery train ride to San Francisco, Doherr, 52, founder and chief inspector of Pickwick Productions of Laguna Beach, thought no further than the real thing: Melvin Belli. Newspaper columnist Herb Caen has been played by newspaper columnist Herb Caen. And Doherr uses a real private eye as Dr. Watson.

Union Station in Los Angeles and Union Square in San Francisco are popular locations for Doherr’s dastardly weekends (55 trips this year from an inventory of several dozen mysteries) because the ambiance is Victorian. Blaggards and molls by Central Casting. Threads and get-ups by AAAZZZ Theatrical Costumers. Everything from sky divers to double-decker buses and deer stalkers. More Madeira, m’dear?

“That’s how we’ve stayed alive in an overcrowded business for four years,” Doherr said. “Because we observe this need to re-create past happenings as realistically as possible, to fully relive and play out the past.

“And as a train is such an antique contrast to the freeways we usually travel, it becomes a time machine that allows you to become someone else and to break any ties to reality.”

The downside to all this factuality, however, has been a magnificent series of bloopers and yuks.

Consider the Case of the Ersatz Terrorist. The tour and its actors had returned to Union Station from Santa Barbara. One player detrained carrying a pair of Uzi submachine guns. They were studio props.

But that didn’t wash with Amtrak and L.A. police, understandably nervous in that Olympic year of 1984 with all its threats of international terrorism.

“I had to go down and get him out of jail,” Doherr said.

Police custody was the curtain for another of Doherr’s acts--a clown armed with a theatrical smoke bomb filled with harmless flash powder. Plus an extra package of powder.

The script called for the clown to leave the train at San Juan Capistrano, stumble over Inspector Clouseau, and blow herself up on the platform.

Poooofff. The clown exploded on schedule. But a nervous, unknowing watcher dialed 911 anyway.

“The officers weren’t too concerned by a smoking clown,” Doherr explained. “But they were very concerned by flash powder they considered a ‘suspicious white substance.’

“The clown spent four hours in jail.”

There was the Santa Barbara trip (Who Is Napping the Great Wines of Santa Barbara?) when Doherr’s guests stepped off the train and straight into the filming of a television series. A natural mistake. After all, the crew was filming a period piece and the mystery seekers were all wearing Victorian costumes.

Yet the horror of them all was a Los Angeles-San Francisco weekend that paused at Santa Barbara en route. Doherr’s actresses were wearing hoop skirts that made it difficult for them to move comfortably along the train’s corridors and aisles. Yet the script called for a full movement of the cast from front to back of the train.

Ingenious Doherr waited until Santa Barbara. Then he asked his guests and crinolined characters to exit the front of the train. He escorted the troupe along the platform to the back of the train.

“We stood on the platform and started talking about clues, what was in store for the weekend ahead and I got completely lost in the details,” Doherr remembered. “When I looked up I saw the rear of the train heading up to San Francisco without us.

“We had to charter two planes to get to San Francisco. There were people in our group who refused to believe that wasn’t part of the mystery.”

Pickwick Productions, Station Box 162, Laguna Beach, Calif. 92652. Call for brochure, rates and schedule of Mystery Train weekends: (714) 494-6800.