Death in the Fifth Position (23 page)

I had a long talk with Gleason. It lasted for forty minutes and ended just as the rehearsal did, which was good timing for the company was at least able to get through its rehearsal before the killer was arrested.

I purposely held the final bit of evidence back until I had explained, to Gleason’s annoyance, how I had put the puzzle together. I’m afraid I was a little smug in my hour of triumph.

“You see,” I said in the same quiet, somewhat bored tone a professor of English I had had at Harvard was accustomed to use with his students, “we all were led astray by the later deaths; we didn’t concentrate on the first murder enough, on the character of the murdered woman which was, naturally, the key to the whole business.” I paused in the middle of this ponderous and obvious statement to fix the Inspector with my level gaze, as though I expected him to question what I had said. He didn’t. He just looked at me, waiting. His secretary’s pencil was poised above his shorthand pad. After a suitable pause, I continued.

“Curiously enough, what I considered to be your somewhat morbid interest in the shears, The Murder Weapon as they are officially called, turned out to be, finally, the first clue I had to the killer’s identity; in my pocket I have the final evidence. Between the first clue and the last,
however, there is an extremely complex story which I am sure that you never suspected, in its entirety at least … I didn’t either, I must admit.” I am not sure but I think that at this point, I put the tips of my fingers together.

“Ella Sutton was an ambitious girl, as we all know, and an excellent artist. Her tragedy began (and I think it has all the elements of a classic tragedy: a beautiful, clever, gifted woman rising to glory only to be struck down because of one fatal flaw in her temperament … greed).” I was having a very good time; I had shifted now from the slightly bored professor of English to the more suitable role of classic moralist, a Sophocles sitting in judgment. “Her tragedy, then, began in 1937 when she joined the North American Ballet Company where she met Jed Wilbur, an eager young choreographer, and Alyosha Rudin who, though he was with the present company, was more active in the whole ballet world in those days than he is now. She made, as I construct the case, two friends at that time: Jed, who was not only her choreographer but her political mentor as well, and Alyosha who fell in love with her and, when the North American Ballet folded, was able to take her into this company. Both men had a great influence on her. With Wilbur, she joined the Communist Party …”

“You realize what you’re saying?”

“Yes, Inspector. They joined the Party and belonged, for a time, to the same cell. Ella, however, was not very much interested in politics, or anything else which didn’t help her to get what she wanted professionally … she was a true artist when it came to her work: she would do
anything to get ahead. I believe she became a Communist to impress Jed, who was indifferent to her sexually; and she became Alyosha’s mistress to please him … even taking a Russian name for a while in an attempt to make people believe that she was a White Russian born in Paris. All of this you can find in old interviews.

“As you probably know, she quickly lost interest in Alyosha who adored her but cared for the dance more; he refused to push her ahead in the company as fast as she thought she should go. She deserted him finally and married the next most powerful person, from an artistic point of view, Miles Sutton, the conductor. Their marriage was never very happy. She had a bad temper and she was a natural conniver. I suspect much of the trouble she had with the men in her life came from the fact that she was either quite indifferent to sex or else she was, in actual fact, a Lesbian. In any case, she went quickly to the top, and, finally, this season, she got her dearest wish when she prevailed upon Washburn to fire Eglanova. Meanwhile, however, Ella had made a great deal of trouble for herself. She had got involved with Jane Garden in an abortive affair … she was genuinely attracted to Jane who is not, contrary to your recent theory, a Lesbian … that’s one of those things I would know better than you without
any
evidence. And Ella had decided to shed Miles and marry Louis, partly out of attraction (she seemed always to care only for men and women who would have nothing to do with her) and partly because it would be a glamorous marriage or alliance: the king and the queen of ballet.

“Everything might have worked out perfectly if Louis had ever shown the faintest interest in her, but he didn’t
and there were bitter quarrels. Miles, who now no longer lived with Ella, fell in love with Magda and, as you know, got her pregnant. Even in ballet circles that sort of thing presents a problem and he did his best to get Ella to divorce him. She took it all very lightly … it was the sort of thing that amused her and she made it clear that he would have to work his problems out on his own time. I think she was indignant, deep down, that he had preferred another woman to her even though they no longer lived together, even though she despised him … naturally, he could have killed her. But he didn’t. So, by the time
Eclipse
was to be prèmiered, Ella had infuriated Miles and Magda, Louis, Mr. Washburn by threatening to leave the company and take Louis with her, Eglanova by succeeding her, Alyosha for deserting him and for getting his beloved Eglanova fired, Wilbur for having blackmailed him into joining the company.…

“Now when I had found out all these things, it occurred to me that the person who killed Ella would, naturally, be the one with the most urgent motive or, failing that, the one whose monomania was equal to hers. The most urgent motive was her husband’s and I was just as sure as you were that he killed her. But we were all wrong. That left Eglanova, Alyosha, Louis, Wilbur, Mr. Washburn and Jane. I knew Jane hadn’t done it. Mr. Washburn, despite a rather sinister nature, had no motive, other than exasperation. Eglanova and Alyosha seemed likely candidates, for nearly the same reason. Louis had no apparent motive. Wilbur had an excellent one.

“Ella needed Wilbur for two reasons: she wanted a modern ballet and she wanted to go into musical comedy.
They had grown apart over the years and when she first had Washburn approach him the answer was no. He didn’t like the Grand Saint Petersburg Ballet and he had no intention of leaving his own company, or Broadway. Ella then went to see him and told him, in her definite way, that if he didn’t accept Washburn’s offer she would give evidence in Washington that he had been, and for all anybody knew now, was still a member of the Communist Party … and she had proof. She was the sort of girl who never let go of anything which might one day prove useful. Needless to say, Wilbur joined the company. But like everyone else connected with this mess, he had more than one iron in the fire: you see, he had been in love with Louis for years. Which was, as far as he was concerned, the one good thing about his predicament, about his giving in to Ella.

“Everything might still have turned out all right if Ella had not gone too far and if Louis had been a little brighter. The Grand Saint Petersburg doesn’t have much of a reputation for chic but it is a money-maker and Wilbur was allowed a free hand and he did create for Ella what many people think is his best ballet—
Eclipse.
As for Ella’s going into musical comedy, well, there was nothing wrong in that either. She could have gotten a job with any management in town on her own … so there was no reason why Wilbur shouldn’t sponsor her. The complication arose when Ella became interested in Louis and Louis, who was not at all attracted to Wilbur, used Ella as an excuse for his own coldness, saying that she was the one woman he had ever loved and that they were to be married. Poor Wilbur took this as long as he could. Louis
would even pretend to make love to Ella in his dressing room when he knew Wilbur might be within hearing distance.

“This crisis came to a head the afternoon of the day Ella was killed. Wilbur told her he wasn’t going to stay in the company another minute, that he was going to break his contract. She told him if he did she would expose him as a Communist and that would be the end of his career. So, believing that he would lose his career as well as his love to Ella, he cut the cable; then he put the shears in Eglanova’s dressing room since she seemed as likely a suspect as any.”

I stopped, expecting some outcry from the Inspector, but there was none. “Go on,” he said.

“Fortunately for Wilbur, Miles was immediately suspected and, as fortunately, Miles died a natural death before he was arrested. The case would have ended there except that Miles had known all along that Wilbur was the real murderer … Wilbur never knew that Ella, a very efficient woman, had somehow managed to get hold of his membership card in the Party years ago and, with an eye to the future, had kept it. She was a very shrewd woman … the more you study her life the more you have to admire her for the sheer audacity she displayed. If she had been able to identify a bit more with her friends and victims she’d still be alive … might even have ended up being adored by everyone like old Eglanova.”

“Why didn’t Sutton give us this card?”

“He would if you’d tried to arrest him. He was not rational … no man as heavily doped as he was could be. Besides, he must have regarded Wilbur as a benefactor.
I do know, though, that he discussed the whole thing with Magda that day he went to Magda’s apartment and he either gave her Wilbur’s membership card then, or else told her where it was in case something should happen to him. If he didn’t give it to her then she could have got it the night she came to his apartment. No matter
how
she got it, the card was in her possession at the time of her death.”

“Why didn’t she bring it to us?”

“The same problem … why should she? She had nothing against Jed. The death of Ella didn’t disturb her one bit and she realized that now with Miles dead the case was over. And it would really
have
been over if, for some reason we may never know, Magda hadn’t become suspicious of Jed. She began to think that perhaps Miles had not died naturally. She made a date to talk to him; she told him that she had the Party card and he asked her for it. They were to meet after the rehearsal. I admire the way he went through that rehearsal, not knowing what to expect from Magda who was sitting there with the rest of us on the bench, waiting for him to finish. After the ballet they went into the empty classroom … or rather Wilbur joined Magda there after Jane had left her … a break for him, the room being empty. She told him that she had the card with her; they quarreled. She demanded to know whether Miles had died naturally or not. There was some sort of scuffle and he grabbed the purse and, either accidentally or on a sudden impulse, he pushed her through the window. Then, taking the card out of her purse, he rushed back into the studio.”

“Then
he
has the card?”

“Yes. Magda, however, the day she died came to Jane’s
apartment as you know, intending to move in. Since the apartment is a small one I was forced to move out … which naturally irritated me. So, shortly after Magda arrived, I left … after first shoving my own suitcase under the bed and taking hers with me to my own apartment where it remained unopened until an hour ago.”

“What was in that suitcase?”

With a look of quiet triumph I handed Mr. Gleason the photostatic copy Magda had had made of Jed Wilbur’s membership card in the Communist Party, dated 1937.

It was a blissful evening. I had sold the exclusive story of my apprehension of the murderer to the
Globe
for what is known in the trade as “an undisclosed amount,” meaning a good deal … to the fury of one Elmer Bush whose own story on the arrest of Jane Garden had to be killed at the last minute at great expense, and now Mr. Washburn was entertaining Jane and myself at the Colony Restaurant for dinner.

“You know,” said my erstwhile employer expansively, offering me a cigar, “though it may sound strange, I always suspected Jed. You remember how I repeatedly maintained that no one connected with my company could have done such a thing? Well, in a sense, I was right … it was the newcomer who was responsible, the outsider.”

“Very sound, Mr. Washburn,” I said, glancing at Jane who glowed in coral and black.

“But what made you suspect him … when did you get on to him?”

“The evening I went to see him in his apartment and
tried to get him to talk about the murder. At first he wouldn’t, which was suspicious. But then, after much coaxing, he did suggest that perhaps Eglanova had done the murder and then put the shears in her own dressing room to make herself appear victimized. Well, I knew that only three people in the company knew where those shears had been found originally … you, Eglanova and myself. Only the murderer could have known that they had been placed in her wastebasket because it was the murderer who had put them there. Very simple.”

“Isn’t he wonderful?” sighed Jane. I preened myself.

“Now isn’t that remarkable,” said Mr. Washburn with a gentle smile.

“Remarkable?”

“Why, yes. You see I told Wilbur about those shears … or rather I mentioned it to Eglanova in Wilbur’s presence. I felt at that time it would make no difference since the case seemed solved … Miles was dead and the police were satisfied. I must say it was fortunate, all in all, that you were able to locate Wilbur’s Party card. Otherwise he would have said that he’d learned about those shears from me.”

“That may be,” I said evasively, feeling a little sick to my stomach. “Anyway, it’s all over and he’s confessed.”

“
And
you did a bang-up job,” said Mr. Washburn, riding high on the wind he had knocked from my sails. “Not only did you save this little lady from an unpleasant experience but you have cleared the whole company of these crimes. I am more grateful than I can say.”

To this tribute, I made chivalrous answer.

“We are also fortunate that the arrest didn’t take place
earlier because now, I am happy to say, the new ballet is in good enough shape for the Chicago opening. A real bit of luck under the circumstances. It’ll be a sensation … the
Murderer’s Ballet
 … I can see the papers now.”